The Surprise Film

Conventional wisdom within the ufology community says that the US military and government know all about UFOs and are keeping what they know secret. This may indeed be true but historically the behavior of military and government personnel has been highly inconsistent. There are many documented cases of officials trying to cover up cases and silence witnesses. There are also cases where no attempt to keep anyone quiet was made by any agency. Then there is The Surprise Film (my term) which, in a coverup protocol, makes no sense at all.

The Surprise Film works like this: a group of military personnel is directed to enter a room at a military facility. In the room they are shown a film that quite clearly shows aliens, alien vehicles or both. The clarity of the film is striking. Those who have talked about the films are absolutely convinced of the reality of UFOs. Then the audience is asked to leave. There is no introduction to the film. They are given no instructions or explanations before, during or after the film. They are not asked to be quiet about the film or to agree to any kind of secrecy.

My first encounter with the story of The Surprise Film was when I was a teenager. My father had just returned from training duty with the Navy. His career with the US Navy and The Naval Reserve spanned forty years. As a reservist he spent two weeks every year on active duty. Most often this was aboard ship but on that year he was assigned to The Pentagon. Like the incident described above, he and other officers of similar rank were directed to enter a room and sit down. They were shown a film and afterward told to leave. They were told nothing before, during, or after the film. Before the film my father did not believe in flying saucers. Afterward he did.

A similar occurrence is discussed in the latest issue of The MUFON UFO Journal, January, 2014 No. 549. Access has recently been obtained by MUFON to the research of the late Leonard Stringfield who was interested in UFO crashes and subsequent retrieval of the downed objects. He had received a report from a retired Air Force Colonel who was shown a film during a regularly scheduled briefing, possibly in 1956. The film showed a circular, silver-colored disk on the ground. The interior of the apparent craft was shown as well as at least three short bodies. He stated that no details were given before, during, or after the film. He did say that things discussed during briefings were considered military business and not to be discussed.

I have learned that others have been shown films like this. Most often these are reported to be interceptor gun camera footage of UFOs in flight.

If the Air Force or Army wants to cover up UFOs, why show anyone this kind of film? It's completely counter-intuitive.

Two hypotheses come to mind: 1. a psychological experiment 2. a security test.

The psychological experiment hypothesis is reminiscent of the wild experiments run by the CIA. During the fifties and sixties, for example, the CIA exposed unwitting Americans to LSD to see how they would react. Exposing Americans to apparently conclusive evidence that UFOs are real and that we are not alone in the universe may seem tame by comparison but it's important to remember that, for most people, this revelation would be a life changing event. It would completely reorient how they perceived themselves in the universe.

The experiment would involve first showing the subjects the film and then observing them to see their reactions. It's not unreasonable to suppose they might have been under surveillance for years. The data gathered from such an experiment might be useful in determining when, how, and perhaps if, the American public should be informed about existence of UFOs.

The security test hypothesis is much simpler. Show military people a film in a military environment, then watch them to see who talks. During World War Two, the FBI often tried to coax personnel attached to atomic bomb related projects to talk about their work. Those who did were often reassigned. An experiment like this might suggest who can be trusted with higher security clearances.

Neither of these hypotheses require that the films be genuine. They could be Hollywood type special effect productions. In fact, neither hypothesis requires that the experimenters themselves believe in UFOs. What makes me believe that they possibly were genuine however is the reaction of those who saw these films. They were struck with their clarity. After watching them any doubt vanished. They believed UFOs were real.

I am an enthusiastic fan of science fiction. I've seen every science fiction film I could and enjoyed them thoroughly. Even as a child, however, I could easily pick out which things in the movie was real and which were model or photographic special effects. I could spot the matte lines, recognize rear screen projection, and tell when stop motion animation was used. I'm sure most other people could spot these things as well. If they didn't recognize how a scene was done then at least they were aware that it was some kind of trick. It wasn't until the Nineties that special effects became so advanced that the line between the real and the imagined became difficult for the average viewer to distinguish. Yet no one who has seen The Surprise Film has come forward and said they were shown a Hollywood fake. Rather they believe that what they were shown was undeniably real.

Field Investigation Frustrations

A field investigation for MUFON can often be an extremely frustrating experience. When this becomes the case, the most important thing you know may be when to walk away.

I’d like to tell you about two cases in point that I have been investigating. Both are referred to by FIs as historical cases. They are cases that occurred years or decades ago and only now a witness has come forward to report them. This leaves the FI in a difficult position. Physical evidence can be difficult to impossible to find, if it ever existed, due to the passage of time and land development. Corroborative witnesses likewise. Often the only source the FI has is the original witness. All then depends on the cooperation of that one person.

The first case:

Sometime in the 1970s a group of teenagers spent the night out in a heavily wooded area for, what the primary witness (Witness A) referred to as, “a night of romance.” The location they chose was a deserted spot on the shore of a major reservoir. The surrounding area was undeveloped except for a few dozen houses on the shore, a few bait shops, and a marina. The reservoir was a popular fishing and boating area. Since then the area has been heavily developed and it's crowded with restaurants, strip malls, and very expensive houses.

According to the initial statement by Witness A, well after dark a large number of dogs began to bark from what he believed to be a kennel on the other side of the lake. A red lit object then descended over the water. It emitted a flash that silenced the dogs instantly. Most of the group, including all of the girls, then retreated to their cars in panic leaving two boys, Witness A and Witness B, to continued to watch from the shore. The red lit object resolved itself into a domed saucer shaped craft which hovered over the water, then and suddenly shined a light on the boys. It then appeared to depart quite abruptly. When the boys returned to the group they were asked what took them so long. Apparently a good deal of time had passed.

This had the potential to be a significant case. First, two individuals stayed to watch the object and may have experienced missing time. It was possible that both had been taken aboard the craft. If I could find the second individual he could corroborate the statement of the first. Hypnotic regression of both individuals revealing the same indecent from two entirely different points of view, could be very exiting. Second, there are the others who retreated to the car. These could be witnesses who experienced no missing time and may have been unaffected by the craft. Their statements could offer new details and vital support.

I was soon deflated. I was successful in identifying only three other witnesses. Witness B was deceased. My hopes of having two significant witnesses to an important case vanished. I located two of the girls whom I designated Witnesses C and D but they were difficult. Witness C refused to see me or speak on the telephone. Her only communication with me was a short email stating that the only thing she saw was a light on a boat and “We were all stoned out of our gourds, anyway.” Without more evidence that last sentence alone would invalidate the case.

Witness D refused to respond. Witness A didn't want to try to contact her himself.

MUFON Field Investigators are not police! We have no authority at all. We cannot just knock on somebody's door and insist they talk to us. Pestering someone to do something they don't want to do is called harassment. My final communication to both these witnesses was to inform them how to contact MUFON or myself should they decide to do so and to promise never to initiate contact myself again.

This left me with Witness A and his completely unsupported statement. I spoke to him extensively over the phone. He seemed very troubled by the event and was seeking help. He had read a good deal about UFOs. He agreed to meet me and other FIs for a hypnotic regression. This seemed to me the only way learn more about the event and to corroborate his statement.

In Indiana our hypnotherapist is Craig Lang. Craig is a certified hypnotherapist and has conducted hypnotic regression on many apparent UFO abductees. He has written a book on the subject, The Cosmic Bridge. He is also the Director of MUFON Minnesota, and has recently been appointed Assistant Director of MUFON's Abduction Research Team. Craig's approach is as much therapy as investigation. An abduction experience can be quite traumatic. Along with discovering details about the event, Craig helps the subject to deal with the trauma and leave the session in a better state than when they approached it.

Witness A did not appear for the session or call to say he wasn't coming. When I spoke to him about this he said that some friends had told him that hypnosis could “mess with your mind.” He was afraid to go deeper in this in any manner.

I closed the case.

The second case:

A similar case involved a couple who saw a large object at very close quarters while on a drive. This was also an historic case reportedly occurring in the summer of 1989. The couple was a man and a woman who it seems had an off again, on again relationship. They were on a drive together for the purpose of discussing the future of that relationship. At the time of the actual sighting they were arguing over Whitley Striber's book, Transformations, which had come out the previous year. At one point the woman threw the book out of the window. The couple noticed a light in the trees and decided it was a flying illuminated object and it appeared to be stalking them. After several minutes they drove around a bend and the object or craft was sitting on the ground waiting for them. Nothing else was remembered beyond that point.

The couple reported other experiences, including one where they were out doors again at night, they briefly noticed a light in the sky and then suddenly found themselves lying in the grass naked next to an astronomical observatory on a college campus. Their clothes were nearby.

Here was a case with two witnesses reporting the same experience. The similarity to The Betty an Barney Hill Case is striking.

The couple is no longer together. Both have married other people. He lives in Ohio, she, it turned out, lives about twenty minutes from my house. I thought this would be easy.

I interviewed both extensively over the phone. I arranged for them to meet with Craig Lang at one of Indiana MUFON's regression sessions. They both backed out.

Since the woman lived near me I decided to conduct a cognitive interview. This is an advanced technique of interview that must be conducted in person. It forces the subject to recall events in different chronological orders and from different points of view. This give the technique a capability of discovering new previously unremembered details almost as strong as hypnosis. Unlike hypnosis the subject remains fully awake and a trained practitioner is not required. It's described in detail in the MUFON FI manual as well as Wikipedia. Jill Beitz, Indiana's Chief Investigator, agreed to be present to observe. The witness also agreed to meet with us but on two occasions, when the time came she couldn't make it.

The man has again contacted MUFON HQ and I have spoken to him. Now he's reported nightmares. I'll try again to schedule a regression. So however I have never been able to meet either face to face.

I will visit the observatory site this summer with a Geiger counter and magnetometer. After so many years I really don't expect to find anything out of the ordinary. Barring a major development I will then walk away.

Both of these cases appeared to have great potential. Both have a complete lack of physical evidence. Both have apparently met a dead end due to a lack of cooperation from the witnesses. Both may not be true.

Hypnotic regression and cognitive interviews have another important capability beyond the discovery of new details. They can uncover a lie. The field investigator must keep in mind that if a purported witness is trying to carry out a hoax he might try to avoid something that would expose him. A skilled conman may try to string his target along with little snippets of information while keeping the prize just out of reach. Until one of these definitive techniques is applied these cases remain in a state of limbo. They may be hoaxes or they may be two important abduction cases where the subjects could benefit from hypnotherapy and understanding of the trauma they may have gone through.

Launch of a new blog

I've launched another blog. 

It's called  A Cosmic Artist's Notebook.

I mentioned elsewhere on this site that I am an artist specializing in paintings of astronomical and space related themes.   I've decided to blog about my artwork as well.  Sometimes writing about helps me to refine that work and plan new paintings. 


You can find a link to this blog in the right column of this blog.  I hope you enjoy it.

Skeptics, Old SF Movies, and UFO Reports

After the experience of Betty and Barney Hill was reported in The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller, skeptics forwarded the hypothesis that the origin of the recovered memories of the Hill's were nothing more than those of forgotten memories of an Outer Limits episode with Sally Kellerman featuring an actor in big eyed alien costume.  The theory goes that once viewed a highly shocking and dramatic visual experience such as a really good TV show is lodged in the collective consciousness to resurface, slightly altered, in hypnotically recovered memories.  The Hill's, as reported in Captured, by Stan Friedman and Kathleen Marden denied ever watching that show.  Another accusation was that the memories came from The Invaders from Mars. (1953)  Responding to this Betty Hill denied ever watching science fiction movies, ever.  This of course slowed down the skeptics not at all.  (The Hill's experience was in 1961.  The Outer Limits episode was broadcast in 1963.  Most of the hypnotic regression sessions occurred in 1964.) Since then UFO reports, sightings of greys, and reports of abductions have been blamed on the apparently traumatic influence of Close Encounters, Star Wars, Star Trek, and virtually every other SF movie or TV show with anything or anyone even remotely extraterrestrial as a character.

An alien in The Bellero Shield from The Outer Limits threatening Sally Kellerman (Google)

I frankly do not believe that there is anything to the belief that watching a movie can plant a subconscious memory that can later be interpreted as real. (Planting false memories under hypnosis is another matter,)  I believe that this takes a much stronger experience such as real trauma that can induce post traumatic stress disorder.

Killers From Space (Google)

Having said that in fairness I have found an SF movie that does fit the profile of an alien abduction and is old enough to have been seen by all of those who have reported abduction experiences if they can overcome their intense boredom while watching it. The film is Killers From Space. This film was released in the early fifties and starred Peter Graves. Graves is a scientist working on a nuclear experiment. He acts strangely and is given truth serum to discover why. Under the serum he relates being abducted by aliens with large eyes and taken to their underground base.  His experiences there are terrifying.  After interrogation he is sent by them under a form of mind control to sabotage the experiment he is working on.  Of course, since he is the hero, he recovers his will and defeats the aliens.

Killers From Space (Google)

To say that this film is a low budget "B" movie is to be exceptionally generous.  The aliens are stock bad guy actors wearing close fitting hoods and ping pong balls cut in half as their bulging eyes.  The terrifying monsters Graves' character is shown are magnified images of ordinary earth creatures like frogs.  Only the basic plot of the film has the form of a typical alien abduction.  The subject is taken,  he is examined, his memory is altered, he is released and later recovers his memory using a therapeutic aid in this case truth serum instead of hypnosis.


The problem with this film having any effect on collective memories is that it is so consummately bad.  It really is difficult to sit through.  You can watch it on You Tube and other sources online and see for yourself.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Alien in Hocus Pocus and Frisby. (Wikipedia)

Another alien abduction story that has a little greater chance of having an effect on the collective unconscious is a Twilight Zone episode called Hocus Pocus and Frisby.   Frisby does not refer to the flying saucer in the story.  That, it seems in pure coincidence.  Frisby, played by Andy Devine, is a teller of tall tales.  He loves to relate how he singelhandedly won World War Two and was instrumental at many other great turning points of history.  He is a pathological liar.  The aliens watching him do not understand this and capture him thinking he is the greatest human alive.  He escapes before the saucer has lifted off, when he discovers that the sound of his harmonica is intensely painful to the aliens.  If he had a set of bagpipes it might have been lethal and he might have had the saucer to support the tale he inevitably tells to his usual audience at the small town general store.  Without proof their reaction is predicable.

An interesting aspect of this story is the appearance of the aliens once their human disguises are removed.  The eyes are something like those of the greys.

Still I have trouble believing that memories of science fiction movies and plays can have any real effect on memories.  Involved in the science fiction culture as I am I know many, many, people who live and breath science fiction.  Very few of them accept UFOs as a reality or have reported a UFO experience of any kind in spite of he fact that they have read hundreds of SF stories and have seen all of the movies and TV shows.   I myself became fascinated with SF at the age of four when I watched Godzilla.  Yes I remember it vividly. Thus far I have yet to experience my first alien abduction even though I have investigated a dozen or so.

Why Do They Look Like Us?

Skeptics often pose the question: If we are being visited by aliens from another planet or dimension, why do they look so much like us? Why should they walk upright on two legs, with two arms, two legs, a head with two eyes all placed in the same general location as our own? Its reasonable question. All of the alien types we believe exist, the reptilians, The mantis-like insectoids, the Nordics and the iconic grays share with us the same basic configuration in spite of the likelihood that they evolved completely independent of humanity. shouldn't they instead look completely different from us? shouldn't they appear alien?



Science fiction never had this problem. In his classic War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells reasoned that a being from another world should look otherworldly.  He described a tentacled bear shape like a brain crawling. Taking Wells as inspiration SF writers imagined a zoo of intelligent species.  Edgar Rice Burroughs gave his Martians four arms and improbable tusks,  Frederick Brown described a globular being with tentacles, Heinlein depicted a noble giant dragon capable of extremely delicate work using its incongruously tiny hands.  Larry Niven, in his Known Space stories described his Puppeteers as tripedal, two feet in front, one in back, with the brain between the shoulders.  An eye and a "mouth" with manipulating mandibles were set in each of two tentacles coming from both sides of the shoulders.  Descended from grazing animals like deer the entire species were natural cowards.

Our collective experience with interviews of those people who have been contacted by aliens reveal none of these.  All of the aliens are bipedal humanoids.

Evolution fills niches like water naturally seeking it's own level.  A species will evolve into a certain appearance that functions well in the niche it lives in.  A land predator has four legs, sharp binocular vision with eyes that can be raised above it's body so that the rest of it will remain concealed.  The ears are designed for maximum sound gathering and can swivel, but are most efficient when directed forward.  It has very capable claws and teeth.  Jaguars, tigers, wolves, Tasmanian  wolves, hyenas, and dogs all share these characteristics because they are the ones that work and survive to pass these traits along to the next generation.  Similarly all birds have the same basic form expressed in many variations. 

The so called humanoid form is simply the best that we can imagine for and intelligent species.  First it is bipedal allowing the being to stand up straight and have the greatest field of view.  the eyes and ears are close to the brain so that the information from them will be received soonest.  The brain in at the top to allow for maximum cooling and is protected in a hard skull.  The forelimbs, freed from walking or running can be used for manipulation of objects which in later evolution inevitably become tools igniting the further evolution of grater intelligence.  The bipedal upright humanoid for may in fact be the only form an intelligent species may take.