2006 - The year I made contact

 

The July 2006 MUFON symposium was the very first I ever attended and the first UFO conference of any kind for me. Being a brand new MUFON member, I decided to head on out to Denver to see it all for myself.

Friday July 14th

I landed in Denver at about noon, local time. The shuttle ride from the airport was about 40 minutes. The event was held at the Denver Tech Center Marriott hotel - a nice hotel and great facility for this event.

After checking to my room I headed down to the MUFON area to pickup my badge & kit. The first person I ran into was Paola Harris. She and I talked for a while and I praised the interview she did with Paul Hellyer. I also spotted Linda Howe arriving. It's such a treat to finally see these "celebrities" in person. Although celebrities to me, not a single one acted like it. They would all turn out to be quite accessible and fun to talk to.

I took some time to peruse the vendor area. Since it was early on the first day, only about 60% of them were setup. Back to the room for a nap and then get cleaned up for this evening's reception and dinner.

The reception began at 6 p.m. and was a chance to meet & mingle. MUFON people openly welcomed me and encouraged me to be part of the effort. I met many interesting and friendly folks. I had a chance to chat with Robert & Ryan Wood. So many of our best UFO people in the room at once was exhilarating. Being the "newbie" that I am to these events there was a definite WOW factor.

After a fine dinner, the festivities kicked off with John Scheussler's opening remarks. He gave awards and special recognitions for all the folks that make MUFON work and the announcement of his successor - James Carrion. John Scheussler will continue with MUFON, he is merely passing the leadership torch to another generation.

Then the main attraction - Jesse Marcel Jr. His talk, as you would expect, related his experience with the Roswell Event and how that has affected him ever since. Besides being an active duty flight surgeon his passion is astronomy. His talk was accompanied by many Hubble telescope photos of galaxies and the cosmos.

What fine, decent man we have in Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. His integrity and straightforward truthfulness are unmistakable. When he says "Roswell - it really happened", you can take it to the bank. I had a nice chat with him the next day.

Saturday July 15th.

Saturday morning I headed downstairs again and after a nice breakfast ran into Richard Dolan's wife, Karyn. Rich is hunkered down trying to finish up volume two of his great book and therefore couldn't be there in person. She and I talked about his current book, the new book and other things that Rich is up to. Rich Dolan's book "UFOs and the National Security State" is one of those "must have" books. By now all the vendors were setup in the main atrium area.

At the hotel's internet café I ran into Paola Harris again and had more time to talk. The day's activities started off with some more MUFON announcements and then the show was turned over to master of ceremonies, John Greenewald. John is a documentary producer for the History Channel and has been instrumental in getting some really fine UFO related material on the air. John was the consummate professional and perfect emcee - another MUFON class act.

First speaker of the day was Ken Storch. Ken's talk was entitled UFOs and police officers. The first half was about the pressure and ridicule faced by many police officers who were only doing their job and reporting what they saw. Many of them have had their careers ruined simply because they saw a UFO and said so.

The second half of Ken's presentation detailed his investigation of cattle mutilations. He had actual police crime scene photos and other photographic evidence to document this grim but fascinating story. His comfortable, humorous style helps make Ken is a natural at public speaking.

The next speaker was Steve Reichmuth. Steve is responsible for creating the new MUFON UFO "weather maps". He has plotted every available sighting by for all of North America and some of Central and South America. It's one thing to look at dry sightings statistics but when they're plotted out using color coded symbols you really get a feel for the month by month distribution of sightings and flaps. Patterns emerge as to frequencies and concentrations. Steve initially did all this MANUALLY. He is working with others to automate this process via computer programming. Go to MUFON's home page on the web to see these "weather maps".

Lunch was hosted by John Greenewald who related to all of us his trials and tribulations within the TV industry and his own personal journey through Ufology. I shared my table with John Scheussler, Dr. Jack Casher, Bill Olinger to name a few. Quite an eclectic crowd to be amongst (!) and the conversation was always fascinating.

Ron Regehr led off the afternoon with an in depth look at the Iranian UFO encounter. Ron had some involvement in the actual case as a DOD spy satellite specialist. This is one of the most spectacular and well documented of modern military encounters. The intense interest and involvement of so many credible witnesses, military and government agencies makes a strong case for just how interested governments are in UFOs whether they publicly admit it or not.

Next Rueben Uriarte's segment "Border Crossings of the Third Kind" displayed a treasure trove of videos and photos from Mexico and other foreign countries. This was one of the most entertaining sessions of the whole symposium. Rueben started out with a bunch of really funny Mexican TV commercials that all include UFOs, aliens and related material - really creative and funny stuff. Then he showed some of the latest and greatest video from Mexico and other countries. This included a video of a triangle and some of the weirdest stuff I ever saw - flying "entities". These are flying objects that look exactly like the silhouette of a standing human and even one that looked like a horse! Also, a "flying inchworm" - something that looked more organic than mechanical. It constantly morphed its shape from straight line to boomerang and back. Incredible.

After a break for a fine meal it was time for Linda Moulton Howe. Folks, I have to tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed every speaker's presentation. I'm taking nothing away from anyone else when I tell you that, in my humble opinion, Ms. Howe "hit it out of the park"!. Linda tied together leaked documents, press reports and a brand new eye-witness from the military to paint a picture of military encounters with alien technology and their short lived war on the aliens. From the end of WWII 'til the early fifties, they had orders to intercept and shoot down UFOs anywhere and everywhere.

According to her report, many people and planes were lost. E.T. it turns out, didn't particularly like being shot at and was quite capable of retaliating. I categorize this report as a brief look into the "dark side" of the UFO phenomenon. The military's unbridled aggression towards the perceived threat which, in turn unleashed a period of "paybacks" from E.T. against which they were defenseless. She also chronicled the military's intense interest in converting anything E.T. related into weapons - particularly the potential of Alien viruses as biological weaponry. At some point in the early fifties, the military essentially "stood down" before the situation escalated into galactic war.

Not only was the material she presented powerful and persuasive, Linda's performance was flawless. The "media pro" really showed everyone how it was done. Her skills at presenting this material from the integration and flow of her slideshow to her abundant skills as a public speaker were something to behold.

The last speaker of Saturday night was Marshall Summers "the Alien Agenda and the Ethics of Contact". At this point, lacking anything like sleep for the last 36 hours due to some jet-lag and after a belly full of food and drink, I had to crash. Sorry but I did not catch Mr. Summers presentation. Everyone I heard talk about it said it was good. Sorry I had to miss it.

Sunday July 16th.

Ted Phillips started up Sunday's program with his presentation on UFO trace evidence cases. Ted is a delight to hear speak. He's a natural comic and wit in addition to being THE MAN on trace evidence. He divided his time among trace evidence cases in general, an in-depth look at the Delphos, Kansas case and concluded with an eerie tale of weird events and discoveries in a central European cave.

Carl Feindt's talk was a fascinating look at water based UFOs and a scientific analysis of their effect on water. He drew upon the work of Paul Hill's (Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis) work on UFO propulsion theory and how the projected force field interacts with the water's surface.

After lunch, we heard from David Marler. David gave a great report on triangular UFOs that was as interesting as it was informative. I learned that triangular shaped UFOs have been around for a long time and next to disc shaped, it is the most common. Theories as to the origins of SOME triangular UFOs were explored and a consensus seems to be that some may be ours. I had the chance to have some extended conversation with David on this subject. He's a good guy and extremely well informed on the triangles.

Ryan Wood reminded everyone it was 61 years ago today, July 16th 1945 at 5:29 a.m. that the first atomic bomb was detonated. Ryan then launched into his material on the sheer volume of crash retrieval cases. His talk closely followed the outline of his excellent book "Majestic Eyes Only" and DVD production "The Secret". Ryan and his father Bob Wood, are two of the leading researchers in the field today. They are using the same forensic procedures to validate the documents they've received as would be admissible to any court of law. Ryan also talked about the constant need for more researchers and more detective work.

The event's final speaker was Brian Boldman. Brian's presentation was on the one of the strangest of trace cases - Angel Hair. Brian related how Angel Hair flaps are tied to UFO flaps. Brian showed us reports, photographs and video of actual Angel Hair samples as well as some scientific analysis of the stuff. Really good stuff and a job well done by Brian.

Then it was all over. My last "official" act was to have dinner with Mark Easter - the Nevada MUFON director. Mark is also an independent film maker and a great guy to hang out with. We shared a lengthy conversation that covered a lot of bases over some good Mexican food and beer.

I came to the MUFON symposium on a mission of validation. You can read all the books, watch all the videos, surf all the websites but for me at least, until you meet these people face to face and look them in the eye - only then does the reality, the sincerity and the motivation of these great people sink in.

I got the chance to be totally immersed in this subject for three straight days. I got the chance to rub shoulders with a lot of my UFO "heroes". I made many new friends and found all these people - universally - to be warm, friendly, intelligent and positively motivated. The phenomenon is real, MUFON is real, and MUFON is phenomenal.

RM