UFO Encounter in Virginia

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their's wasn't saucer shaped. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their’s wasn’t saucer shaped. To their surprise, the UFO they saw was a sphere. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm.

My entire family of origin had a vivid UFO experience back in the mid to late 1960s. The event was exciting, even amazing, and also at moments terrifying. For years afterwards this encounter affected my family and me in unexpected ways such as the odd actions of the FBI and weird behavior among certain people involved with this incident including myself. Ever since then I’ve had a deep, personal interest in so-called “Unidentified Flying Objects” and the controversies UFOs generated.

Despite some apprehension I feel it’s time to tell my story and some of what I’ve discovered since then. My story is long overdue, too. As I stand for transparency and full disclosure, I feel strongly all of us Americans, indeed We the People of Planet Earth need to know the full truth whether or not others feel we can “handle it.” Indeed, I stand for full and immediate disclosure of all information from all organizations and institutions private and public regarding UFOs and the immense complexity of what’s alleged to have gone on in some cases for millions of years and what goes on in our current timeframe.

The list of what so many credible whistleblowers are claiming is long, overwhelming, unexpected, and goes far beyond flying saucers, claims of galactic empires, alleged free energy, and underground bases. They include numerous species of ETs/ESs/EDs/IDs (extraterrestrials, extrasolarials, extradimensionals, and inter- or intra-dimensionals), Majestic 12 and other hypercompartmentalized units within Earth nation-state regimes, various breakaway civilizations, ancient even prehistoric ET and human civilizations with ruins supposedly throughout the Sol System, the Secret Space Programs (SSPs), the alleged Inner Earth civilizations, secret societies, the mythical German role, the Cabal/Illuminati/Elitist crime syndicates and factions, black budget ops and other USAPs or Unacknowledged Special Access Programs, advanced and hidden technologies and scientific discoveries, global economic and financial manipulation and fraud on unprecedented scales, debunking and disinformation campaigns, grotesque medical and genetic experiments on many lifeforms including Earth humans, widespread human trafficking and slavery, Solarian bases, possibilities for a Star Trek-style civilization, exopolitical ramifications, orbs and plasma life forms, an apparently extreme intergalactic A.I. or Artificial Intelligence menace more omnicidal than nuclear weapons, new understandings about the nature and possibilities of consciousness, and considerations regarding densities versus dimensions and biological evolution with spiritual ascension. The claims are staggering. Many of the claims listed above simple feel unbelievable.

The lines between so-called academic research, mainstream mass media, alternative media, and so-called conspiracy theory first dissolve into murkiness before becoming clearer. Everything one thinks they think they know regarding consciousness, compassion, health, money, politics, religion, spirituality, war, genetics, science, energy, love, relationships, and the definition of life may well be turned upside down and inside out. No, shall be. Let’s return, however, to where and how my involvement in this labyrinthine entanglement began and back to what occurred.

Our family UFO encounter happened on a warm late afternoon after I was home from grade school following a long ride on a yellow school bus. It was dinner time. I think it was early Autumn, although it could have been Spring. I sat around the dinner table with my younger siblings. They were my sister Beth and brother Joe. Our mother bustled about in the kitchen. Our kitchen was a big farmhouse kind of kitchen, and the dinner table was pragmatically placed there off to one side of the room. Dorothy Ussery Bass was my Mama’s real name, but most people who knew her called her Dot. It feels strange to me the actual events of almost four decades ago were so dramatic I remember them in great detail, but, alas, I can’t recall whether it was Spring or Fall.

We had a table full of food, however, a big family dinner farmer-style. We kids began to shove food into our mouths, which annoyed Mama. We were supposed to say grace. My Dad, William M. Bass, known as Bill, was away where he worked up the hill at “the Barn.” As the large cow barn with the enormous hayloft dominated the center of our dairy farm as some Medieval Great Hall, we simply called it “the Barn.” The rest of the farm’s buildings circled around the hill and ridge. The family business had long been named Riverview Dairy Farm from the proximity of Big and Little Sandy Rivers as they looped around the estate. We were in the Rice – Sandy River – Green Bay belt of northeastern Prince Edward County. This area’s in turn is located in Southside Virginia, i.e. Virginia south of the James River, in the Piedmont of rolling hills, woods, ravines, and cultivated fields.

Mama was mad because we’d started chowing down before we said the Blessing. Dad wasn’t expected home until later. As we munched down into our dinner, we heard an unexpected ruckus. Daddy burst through the back door into the house.

“Come quick!” he shouted. “There’s a flying saucer out back!”

Flying Saucer Redux

Flying Saucer Redux.

Cropped closer.

Cropped closer.

And closer.

And closer. But not necessarily bigger.

My father served in the U.S. Navy for five years, most of it on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway. While in the Navy Dad went all over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, from the Great Lakes to the Caribbean to the Arctic Ice Cap to the deserts of North Africa to the port cities of Europe. He served during the time of the bloody Korean War (1950-1953), altho he wasn’t ever in the Pacific, and thus the greater global Cold War (1945-1991). He recalls a tense standoff with the Soviet Navy in the Turkish Dardanelles. Dad remembered both fleets going on alert as combat threatened to break out at any moment between the two navies. He confessed to feeling scared back then for it was expected a major naval battle between the two fleets would quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange and global annihilation. Our father confessed he and his fellow sailors fully expected both fleets would sink each other in mutual assured terror, although few dared to speak of such openly. Ironically he was confident American naval prowess would demolish most of the Soviet fleet in conventional combat, but when atom bombs on rockets were brought into the picture, well, that added a level of grim resignation. The United States had also intervened nearby in the ferocious Greek Civil War (1945-1949), another nasty Cold War conflict.

William "Bill" Bass, U.S. Navy, 1949(?) - 1952, BT3 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway during the early Cold War and promoted to Chief Petty Officer, a post he declined so he could return to the family farm in Virginia.

William “Bill” Bass, U.S. Navy, 1949(?) – 1952, BT3 or Boiler Technician Petty Officer 3rd Class, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway during the early Cold War and promoted to Chief Petty Officer, a post he declined so he could return to the family farm in Virginia.

As a sailor aboard an aircraft carrier and having flown in a number of different planes, Dad knew his aircraft. Even though stationed down below deck in the boiler rooms all sailors were expected to have sharp eyes out for all aircraft whenever they could see the sky and know what craft belonged to whom. Seeing planes way up in the sky and also ships far out at sea were learned skill sets. For many years I treasured an old, brown 1950s U.S. Navy field guide to the identification of airplanes he gave me as a boy after he once showed me what he’d learned. He knew this mysterious object outside our home was an artificial craft of some sort, not anything natural such as clouds or birds, and yet unlike any device he had ever seen. Even he called this “a flying saucer,” the most common term for an unidentified flying object.

He got out of the Navy about ten or twelve years prior to our family’s UFO incident, so his training was still somewhat fresh. UFOs burst upon the national scene before Daddy joined the Navy, however, so they were familiar to him as strange and troubling mysteries. “Flying saucers” appeared literally out of the blue on Tuesday 24 June 1947 with disruptive sightings by Kenneth Arnold. He was a successful entrepreneur, volunteer member of Idaho’s Ada County Sheriff’s Aerial Posse, and a U.S. Marshal. An accomplished pilot, flying was his livelihood. As he flew near Mt. Rainier, Washington, Arnold spotted nine shiny-silver, crescent-shaped objects in the afternoon sky. They rose and fell like “a saucer would if you skipped it across water” at speeds Arnold estimated at over 1,500 mph. Turns out three days earlier, on the 21st of June, there was another dramatic UFO event over Maury Island, also in Washington. In fact, Arnold and another pilot, a professional pilot from United Airlines, interviewed the witnesses.  Less than two weeks later on Thursday 3 July 1947 a mysterious flying disc allegedly crashed on a ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico. This Alien craft was first declared a crashed flying saucer by the military before being dismissed as a high altitude weather balloon or even one of Stalin’s grotesque medical space experiments. The Roswell incident, whatever it was, ignited divisive controversies continuing even today.

Before the month was over, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act on Saturday 26 July 1947. Saturday 6 September 1947 was also an noteworthy day. Assisted by German scientists and engineers, some of them Nazis, brought over from the Third Reich after its last Führer, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, surrendered to the Allies, the Americans successfully launched a Nazi V-2 Rocket from the decks of the U.S.S. Midway. Adolf Hitler’s V-2, or Vergeltungswaffe 2 (“Vengeance Weapon 2”), was the world’s first known guided ballistic missile. Firing it off the deck of an aircraft carrier at sea launched a deadly new arms race as chemical-propellant rocket engines were now able to thrust missiles carrying nuclear and thermonuclear warheads to any location on land while hidden far out at sea.

Soon afterwards our father joined the Navy. He eventually went on to serve most of his naval carrier aboard the same U.S.S. Midway.

Nazi V-2 rocket test launch from the U.S.S. Midway, the aircraft carrier William's father Bill Bass was soon to serve on his time in the U.S. Navy during the early Cold War. 6 September 1947.

Nazi V-2 rocket test launch from the U.S.S. Midway, the aircraft carrier William’s father Bill Bass was soon to serve on his time in the U.S. Navy during the early Cold War. 6 September 1947. Altho this V-2 experiment occurred prior to the elder Bass’s service, it fed into the mythos and reputation of this magnificent AC during a new and dramatic time in history.

In July of 1952 fleets of flying saucers and other odd-shaped unidentified flying objects buzzed Washington, D.C. so heavily President Harry Truman was alarmed and there was widespread fear of invasion. Orders were given to shoot down any such craft if they refuse or ignore orders to land. UFOs were witnessed all over the world. While the concept of alien space ships was believable, there was also a growing drumbeat of bizarre and fantastic behavior associated with UFO events that challenged and even undermined many people’s capacity for belief. Several times Soviet and American officials were so concerned UFO intrusions would accidentally trigger a nuclear world war between them they agreed to communicate with each other regarding the issue.

Back in the 1960s I wasn’t aware of all this then, although I had seen a few science-fiction movies such as 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still and later, 1956’s Forbidden Planet and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. During my childhood two sci-fi shows aired on TV that galvanized my imagination, the campy Lost in Space (1965-1968) and the classic Star Trek (1966-1969). A spookier, more sinister TV show, The Invaders, ran from 1967 to 1968. There were also the classic, mind-bending TV anthologies, The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and The Outer Limits (1963-1965).

My parents must have been aware of the bigger picture while I, still a boy, was enamored with movies and television. The full range of possibilities spread out before our minds anyway. Our imaginations ranged in seconds from salvation to invasion, from wonder and awe to fear and paranoia and back again.

Excited we all charged outside into the backyard and faced toward the Southeast. We wanted to see this “flying saucer!” Behind our yard was a fence. On the other side of that was a large cow pasture. A forested ravine bordered the far side of the pasture. On the other side of the big gully sprawled a large cornfield. Barns and sheds were up the hill on our left. There were not any livestock kept out in this pasture this particular day.

Directly above the strip of woods that divided pasture from corn hovered a large, perfectly round sphere. “Hovered” is a misnomer as the object was perfectly still in the air just above the tops of the tallest trees. At times it seemed to spin slowly then stop and maybe turn a little bit more only to become motionless again.

The surface of this object appeared metallic and golden in color, but it did not glow. No lights were visible. There were no projecting antennas, windows, ports, doors, lines, symbols, rockets, landing legs, hanging baskets, wires, balloons or any other item to be seen. We saw no flames, smoke, fumes, or any kind of exhaust associated with this strange machine. Nor did we smell any fumes, smoke, or odd odors. From what I can remember, this large, golden sphere seemed to be at least twice as tall top to bottom as the tall trees over which it “hovered.”

According to my hearing family, there was no sound from this UFO, not even strange humming or whirring noises, nothing but silence. I wore a large, boxy, analog hearing aid hanging around my neck in a little sack of cloth my Mom had sewn for me. Being a sci-fi fan and the target of bullying, I often referred to the bulky ear piece of my hearing aid and the braided wires connecting it to the box as my “Frankenstein monster neck bolts.” Or just my Frankenstein bolts! Although still hard-of-hearing with them I would have picked up anything loud or acoustically out of place.

We looked over and through the fence and gaped in awe as we beheld before us what we thought existed only in science fiction. I felt a strange mix of fear, excitement, and wonder. Before that moment my only exposure to “flying saucers” were those TV shows and old 1950s sci-fi flicks mentioned earlier. We did not know what this Unidentified Flying Object was, but we knew what it wasn’t.

That round, metal, ship-like UFO was sure as hell NOT a balloon, or an airplane, or a jet, or the Planet Venus. That round, metal, ship-like UFO was certainly NOT the North Star or any star. NOR was it a flock of geese, or angels and demons. While clearly seen and yet a mystery, this alien anomaly was just as clearly NOT a rocket, NOT drug-induced hallucinations, NOT glowing swamp gas, and NOT lenticular clouds. NOR was this UFO ball lightning, goblins, elves, or airplanes viewed on edge, helicopters, fireflies, or a floating impersonation of Elvis in the clouds. It wasn’t even saucer shaped. And we weren’t drunk.

I remember feeling curious and excited, but my parents were both agitated. I wanted to run closer to the object. Maybe the UFO would take me to the craters of the Moon! On to Mars! Swerve through the asteroids, swing pass the Great Red Eye of Jupiter, and surf the Rings of Saturn! Woo Hoo! I was one excited little boy! And a little scared, too.

My Mom wavered between her desire to run closer, too, as she was possessed by an almost-dangerous curiosity, and her deep fear of something so unknown. At some point Daddy declared he and our Mama needed “to get the kids back in the house.”

We ran into the house to call our Sheriff, the Sheriff of Prince Edward County, the only law enforcement around. The telephone was dead. Mom and Dad darted over to the kitchen counter to turn on our radio. The radio filled the inside of our house with weird noises. We couldn’t pick up any channels at all. The radio crackled and hissed with static. The sound of the static scared us.

After a quick back and forth between my parents, we dashed toward the family car parked nearby. We jumped into the car, but the engine refused to start. Dad tried to turn on the car radio, an old AM radio. It was full of crackly static.

At this point everything seemed to go dark. Blank. I don’t remember what time it actually began to get dark either. Nor did this temporal memory-space feel blurred with crazy back and forth and running around in all directions. We kept together. We were excited, but we were not in a panic. There is just … blankness, like a black void. Nothing. That only means I have no memory or explanation for this space of time.

The next thing I remember is we were all back inside the house in the kitchen. Daddy, Mama, my sister Beth, my brother Joe, and me. The ceiling lights were on.

We ran back outside into the back yard just in time to see the strange object zooming away at incredible speed in a straight line toward the Southwest. It glowed red at that point.

Suddenly, without appearing to stop, it made a gravity-defying, sharp right angle turn upwards. The UFO shot straight up into the sky and out of sight. Without a sound. Not even a sonic boom. It vanished.

An enhanced representation of a "Silver Sphere" UFO seen from the Arecibo Radio Observatory, Puerto Rico, in the early 1990s. From: http://www.iraap.org/martin/ufos_arecibo.htm. This image closely resembles what the Bass Family witnessed on their Virginia farm in the 1960s.

An enhanced representation of a “Silver Sphere” UFO seen from the Arecibo Radio Observatory, Puerto Rico, in the early 1990s. See source below in Notes for UFO Images.
This picture closely resembles what the Bass Family witnessed on their Virginia farm in the 1960s.

We ran back inside and now the radio was working. Reports of people seeing UFOs were announced. There were indeed military bases in the general vicinity. The phone worked, too, and Dad spoke with the Sheriff, who confirmed his department had received numerous calls of similar sightings. Dad said the sheriff was busy trying to keep folks calm and declared our “flying saucer” was probably some Top Secret aircraft from the U.S. Military. Our car also started back up and ran as if nothing had ever been wrong with it. We didn’t drive anywhere, however, as my parents apparently sought to make sure the car was still functional.

Years later as I studied the phenomena it turned out electromagnetic disturbances such as car engines, radios, TVs, and telephones failing to function near UFOs are common occurrences, as are reports of extreme, gravity-defying, and even shape-shifting maneuvers done with apparent ease. I also discovered several UFO flaps, or waves of frequent sightings, occurred during the mid and late 1960s when I was a child.

“Flying saucers” were the buzz of school and the neighborhood for a few days. My school buddies and I couldn’t think straight, as all we cared about were space ships to Mars. For a couple days I felt a bit of a hero as, yes, I saw a flying saucer! But we were kids, the novelty wore off, and snickers of ridicule began.

My parents would call the Sheriff’s Office again. I recall the Sheriff even came out and met with my parents. I followed behind as they walked about, and watched the Sheriff briefly place his right hand upon my Dad’s shoulder as they walked side by side. Mama was by far the most animated of the three adults. No real answers ever came, however, as the Sheriff and his deputies didn’t have a clue what was going on other than the Cold War threatened to go all hot on us with thermonuclear Armageddon at any moment. The Soviet-American Cuban Missile Crisis felt like just yesterday.

Trained to debunk anything so taboo to our rigid paradigm, the media soon dismissed these and all UFO reports. Government officials ridiculed the very idea that lights in the sky could be alien spaceships or Earth-based secret weapons. Virginia was dotted with a concentration of military bases from all branches of the Armed Forces, the closest one to us we knew of was an army base at Camp Pickett about an hour’s drive away. We couldn’t help but wonder.

I really do not know what the UFO we encountered was. I do not know what UFOs are. I do not “believe” in UFOs or ETs as I have already experienced them as real and generating real effects such as electromagnetic disruptions. The evidence is compelling unknown objects exist that maneuver under intelligent control in ways that violate our current understanding of physics. The extraterrestrial or interdimensional hypotheses these UFOs represent alien intelligences from other worlds and/or dimensions are the most likely hypothesis for those not hoaxes or misidentifications. There is also an emerging ultradimensional hypothesis which posits entities emerge from different densities, vibrations, and even dimensions into our perceptions. In addition, the still confounding recognition consciousness and co-creation of reality may somehow play a role in this mystery.

UFOs exist. It is not the same as believing in God.

I do know my family and I experienced a real event that remains unexplained and which cannot be dismissed by arrogant, know-it-all skeptics as a bunch of drunken country bumpkins watching flocks of ducks flap through marsh gas with Venus in the background. My parents had college educations. As my father served in the U.S. Navy on the U.S.S. Midway, an aircraft carrier, he knew aircraft better than the Sheriff and his deputies did. He showed me his Navy manuals instructing sailors how to spot and identify different types of aircraft from countries around the world. To label this highly maneuverable craft as a “balloon” is an insult as to do so is so stupid.

Over the years our family had animated conversations about this event. I remember my mother being obsessed with the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case. She poured over the October 1966 issue of LOOK magazine with me regarding the Hills’ experiences. Some of my first books on “flying saucers” I read after our shared family UFO encounter were hers. Mama introduced me to much that many today would label alternative. When she realized I’d already dove down the so-called rabbit holes to investigate these anomalous mysteries, she jumped in behind me. She jumped in to not to pull me back out but to protect me as I plunged ahead. I feel forever grateful for her actions there.

William Bass, "Little Dudley," just over a year old, at his grandparents' home in Blacksburg, VA. Behind him is a frame foto of his mother, Dorothy Ussery Bass. June 1960.

William Bass, “Little Dudley,” just over a year old, at his grandparents’ home in Blacksburg, VA. Behind him is a frame foto of his mother, Dorothy Ussery Bass. June 1960.

William "Dudley" Bass at almost one year old, with his father, Bill Bass, 30 years old. Home on the family farm, Easter Sunday 17 April 1960.

William “Dudley” Bass at almost one year old, with his father, Bill Bass, 30 years old. Home on the family farm, Easter Sunday 17 April 1960.

"Dudley" and his family at home on the farm about 10 years later in 1970. Left to Right: William, his brother Joe, his mother Dot, & his sister Beth. I clearly did not want my picture taken, ha ha! Dad took our picture.

“Dudley” and his family at home on the farm about 10 years later in 1970. Left to Right: William, his brother Joe, his mother Dot, & his sister Beth. I clearly did not want my picture taken, ha ha! Dad took our picture.

While my siblings and I continue to remember this event vividly, however, over time our parents became very reluctant and embarrassed to even talk about that incident. Eventually Mom and Dad, once excited to discuss the mystery, came to deny ever seeing a UFO. At a family gathering at home in the early 1980s, my siblings and I began to reminisce about this event. I was half-way thru college then. My girlfriend at the time, Margaret Manuel, soon to become my first wife, was over visiting my parents with me. No stranger to esoteric strangeness, she nonetheless was surprised and amused as this was the first she’d ever heard of this incident. My younger brother and sister were there, too, and we were all babbling at once about UFOs and flying saucers and extraterrestrials and government suppression of evidence. My father grew irritated.

“You kids don’t know what the hell y’all are talkin’ about,” Dad shouted. “So shut up!”

His outburst baffled us. Dad used to calmly share his story briefly and directly. Mom, who had a voracious appetite for all things weird but true, struggled to say something but grimaced, shook her head, and kept quiet. Now that really baffled us. Even Margaret, witnessing this for the first time, picked up on fear, anger, and deception emanating from my parents.

A government run by deception learns that ridicule is more powerful than suppression and lies repeated often enough become viewed as truth. Our government’s official position was and is absolutely ridiculous and dangerously embarrassing, yet it has been distorted to represent the truth when such official explanations are mostly lies and half-truths and in some cases seemingly deliberate deception.

There was another strange event I know of which may explain the sudden shift in my parents’ stance. The following events were related to me by my father in a separate conversation that did not involve UFOs:

My father was part of a group of dairy farmers from the Maryland Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association that were taken on a tour of the new FBI Headquarters. The Milk Producers Association was located at Reston, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. where the FBI HQ is located. The date of this tour was sometime in the late 1970s, certainly by 1981. The FBI Headquarters was not on the original itinerary, and the farmers were to spend most of their time on the Maryland side of the Potomac and in the D.C.

Something shifted in the plans, and the farmers were driven into Virginia from their MVMPCA headquarters. I do not know if this was an arbitrary decision, or if the farmers were tricked, or if one event closed and the FBI was “conveniently” available. Perhaps the farmers were present with a list of choices in the time available, and out of some sense of patriotic solidarity voted, “Hell, yeah, let’s go see the FBI! Shoot ’em up with J. Edgar Hoover, Al Capone, and Bonnie and Clyde!” My father never clarified.

It was bizarre for a group of dairy farmers to go on a tour of the FBI HQ. But the Cold War was on, many bizarre things happened, and I even had an uncle whose career as a scientist was spent developing super sweet potatoes to survive a nuclear war so as to feed any survivors concentrated nutrition. As my family treated my uncle as a Cold War hero, it never occurred for them to consider how ludicrous it was to imagine survivors staggering across a post-nuclear holocaust landscape, suffering from radiation, burns, and perhaps even human predation by starving cannibals, rooting around for super sweet potatoes. The food was, however, packed with nutrition and designed to withstand harsh conditions.

At the FBI HQ an FBI agent/tour guide stopped by a massive computer data base machine. He asked for a volunteer among the group of farmers. Dad raised his arm. The gentleman up front punched in my father’s name, and Dad’s FBI file popped up. My father was shocked. He didn’t even know he had an FBI file for aside from some speeding tickets he had not broken any laws or committed any crimes. He did serve in the U.S. Navy for 5 years when Harry Truman was President until Dwight Eisenhower replaced Truman.

There was an outbreak of nervous laughter as the FBI man smiled back. Dad came back smiling sheepishly and with a mix of outrage, surprise, and uncharacteristic meekness declared, “the FBI knows more about me than I know about my own self.” When pressed for details, he said his file was long, surprisingly long, but “nothing really wrong was on it.” The FBI “had everything” in his file. It was soon after this event Dad began to insist the UFO incident never occurred and for us not to talk about it.

I don’t know what was in the report my Dad claimed to have seen. Or who among the group of dairy farmers saw what, or if Dad was discreetly taken aside and “advised.” He did imply and led us to believe he may have been pulled aside from his group and spoken to privately or in secret. He wouldn’t confirm our suspicions. He ignored them. Dad only told us what he told us. He acted evasive and wouldn’t say anything more regarding his FBI tour. And his behavior shifted dramatically after this visit to FBI HQ especially around anytime the topic of UFOs arose. My Mom at the same time shifted from believing in UFOs to denying them even though she continued to read about such anomalies. Furthermore, Mama grew more and more fundamentalist in her religious orientation, but her mannerisms often felt forced to me, melodramatic even. Whatever was suddenly going on with my parents was just too weird. Eventually I did briefly ask two other farmers in my parents’ neighborhood who were also on the same dairy farmer trip with my Dad if they noticed anything odd about him during their excursion. None of them noticed anything out of the ordinary other than it was a little odd to go from a dairy convention to the FBI Headquarters. Ultimately we don’t know what really happened to my parents, but they denied their own UFO story forevermore after the trip.

Dad & Mom at home on the farm sometime in the early 1980s, soon after the bizarre incident at FBI HQ and my parents subsequently denying any UFO event and become more reserved, even hostile, toward alternative narratives of UFOs. ETs, and other anomalies.

Dad & Mom at home on the farm sometime in the early 1980s, soon after the bizarre incident at FBI HQ and my parents subsequently denying any UFO event and become more reserved, even hostile, toward alternative narratives of UFOs. ETs, and other anomalies.

There is another element to this story. One I have not told anyone about until now and which I’m only beginning to understand. There is a remembrance of a sense of great activity, great urgency, a wide-awake urgency, during my family’s encounter with this UFO, then nothing, blank time-space, even darkness, then us standing there together all surprised and suddenly noticing the “ship” racing away at incredibly high speeds. Something didn’t feel right, didn’t make any sense, and I’ve always dismissed it until recently. No one in my family has ever discussed this, both of my parents are now dead of cancer, and my siblings, being much younger than I, recall fewer details.

A sense of mild dread, a haunting if you will, remains as some kind of psychosomatic residue inside me. I’ve read of “missing time” phenomena and of alien abductions, but I don’t remember anything remotely similar to those such events as experienced by other people. Yet the missing time one feels eerily familiar in a slightly disturbing way. I’m tempted to dismiss it, and I do want to note this high strangeness anyway. After the power came back on upon the UFO’s swift disappearance and the telephone conversation with the sheriff, there is this big, blank, blackness in my memory. It doesn’t make any sense, however, as the golden sphere was already gone. At the same time, my memory is still just that, my memory. However sharp and clear my memory often is, it’s still fallible. Am I unconsciously creating more story than actually existed? I don’t think so, and, still, the possibility, of course, is there.

The actual time of the UFO being out back of the house down in the fields and woods, however, seemed to expand as if there was some weird kind of temporal dilation. If time is a dimension with length, depth, and width, it is just common sense time changes shape and direction along with those defined by Euclidean and Cartesian geometry. Common sense and science, however, are sometimes mutually exclusive, and none of those succeed in determining the dimensions of Alice’s rabbit hole, a Shaman’s burrow, or the tunnel to the Light. These are expressions of language I didn’t have at the time I experienced the encounter, but what I came to understand later from my studies.

I remember what I described earlier: we were in the car, nothing worked, and then nothing. Just a blank, black nothingness. Next we found ourselves all in the house, then quickly realized as we woke up but weren’t ever truly asleep, a strange feeling in and of itself, we were actually in the house with a “flying saucer” sphere out back. We dashed out the back door together to see the UFO zip off at incredible speeds, change directions at a fantastic 90 degree angle, shoot straight up into darkening skies, and vanish from view.

This is the first UFO encounter I have any remembrance of, however, as there would be more. I sometimes wonder if there was any strange synchronicity between me being re-diagnosed as a child with a profound hearing impairment, not “mentally retarded,” starting the first of almost 6 years of weekly speech therapy, and within a couple of years or so having this bizarre UFO experience. Other weird and unnerving events, often of an intensely personal nature, occurred soon afterwards as well. At this point, I don’t know what to make of this weird stuff, and don’t wish to speculate or autosuggest. What I am clear about is what I described above.

As I revise this at age 52 this November of 2011 from various pieces I’ve written over the years and especially a year ago as an essay for my old Blogger blog, I am surprised I can remember so much. And yet it was only recently as I read some of the most compelling research on UFOs, including works by Richard Dolan and Leslie Kean, that I came across the statement remarking on people’s memories of events so unusual they are unable to forget them, much less make them up. UFO encounters are so out of the ordinary and are such extreme experiences for numerous people. Long after many years have passed, even decades, people’s memories of these UFO events remain as vivid as if they occurred yesterday.

This is a controversial topic. It’s so controversial I am afraid to mention it. Let’s face it: UFOs are taboo. Dangerously taboo. I feel afraid because this subject matter usually invites public ridicule and career destruction, and I will put it out on the table anyway as the topic must be confronted. The issue concerns unidentified objects flying in our atmosphere, in space around our planet, and even moving underwater. In addition this topic concerns possible government cover-ups, deep compartmentalization and inter-government conflict, and our relationships with not just unknown intelligences but also our own Global Financial and Power Elite.

These issues concerning UFOs and alien intelligences ripple into matters involving socio-political, military, economic, health, energy, science, and even religious issues. Controversial as this enigma is, it must be dealt with responsibly. It presents a massive yet unknown global security matter that would be best addressed openly by an as of yet nonexistent Democratic World Government. For any such DWG to be effective, it must also be transparent and have established public control over the money power as well as civilian control over the military power.

So far Earth’s nation-states and their organizations have failed in their responsibilities to address this potentially dangerous situation as they hide behind an iron curtain of public ignorance and denial. Perhaps even more dangerous is the Breakaway Civilization embedded within the global-empire-in-the-making as it expands and deepens its control over UFO-related information. We clearly need to grow up as a species.

Why is the official policy of most national governments around the world, but especially the United States toward all UFO phenomena, rank with suppression, dismissal, and ridicule? Why ignore and dismiss without proper investigation the large quantity of official accounts by and alleged evidence? There are so many credible witnesses and much evidence although not necessarily proof.

Outrageous public debunking and official destruction of careers has replaced healthy skepticism and turned a significant phenomenon into a taboo topic. Now not even the mainstream media wants to have anything to do with UFOs except to trot out the old, shopworn idiocy about UFOs being balloons, automobile hubcaps tossed through the air, drunks shooting off fireworks, Chinese lanterns, and Planet Venus without even bothering to investigate events, interview witnesses, and scrutinize the evidence. As these events also challenge our current understandings of physics, many scientists refuse to even consider these real although unknown and surprisingly common events rather than studying them.

Scientists who refuse to even consider events and actions that do not fit into preconceived formulas have turned science into orthodox dogmatism. Science has fallen from the open sense of human wonder and imagination that once drove the exploration, discovery, research, and the measurement of our Universe. Science has been crushed into a rigid, institutionalized secular religion as fundamentalist and fiery as those religious organizations dominated by fundamentalists busy wrecking the world’s religions. The backward and fearful mindset, however clever, is the same.

Educated people who believe today’s “laws of physics” represent the absolute truth are quick to dismiss anything contrary as “impossible.” Such hostile and medieval attitudes  reflect an arrogance usually associated with fundamentalist religion. Human interpretations  of data have been overturned in the past while others current may be overturned tomorrow, in a decade, or in another thousand years. Those who dare to challenge orthodoxy are often marginalized, sometimes with surprising and unsettling results.

A surprisingly large number of people have experienced UFO events. Those who have had either direct experience with or amassed evidence regarding these phenomena are astounding in caliber of character and in number. These people include astronomers, engineers, and other scientists. Also included in these numbers are many military and civilian pilots, military officers, government workers, military and civilian intelligence agents, police officers and sheriffs, doctors, researchers, astronauts, journalists, soldiers and sailors, air traffic controllers, farmers, hunters, veterinarians, governors, presidents, skeptics who experienced UFOs and then changed their minds, and just regular people.

Yet all are ignored or ridiculed as hoaxers, frauds, mentally unstable psychos, drugged-up drunks, liars, fools, egotistical publicity seekers, or worse ignorant and uneducated buffoons that can’t tell the North Star or the Planet Venus from a balloon or street lights reflecting upon the white bellies of a flock of flying geese.

Really? Maybe all these “crazy people” have more knowledge, wisdom, and experience than the Power Elites want to disclose. Yet these “crazy people” are not just ridiculed. They face worse than snickers and stupid jokes.

They are pursued relentlessly and their careers destroyed. Many have been intimidated to shut up or risk having their families targeted. Those in the know who refuse to tow the Empire’s official line are pursued relentlessly and their careers destroyed. A number of whistleblowers have died under mysterious circumstances. Some of these may well be coincidental accidents. Others, however, seem to imply murder. These unresolved cases riddled with sensitive matters and key personalities in turn give some conspiracy theorists excuses to pour gasoline on fires which in turn, even if true, triggers more ridicule and bizarre deaths. Therefore it is not surprising so many other witnesses choose to keep their mouths shut, at least for long periods of time.

Evidence mounts more than four dimensions exist and our Universe is filled with far more stars than once thought. Thus there are likely far more planets than once considered possible, billions more, in our galaxy alone. The evidence indicates many more Earth-like planets and Goldilocks zones than ever imagined exist beyond our solar system. Life developed and continues to evolve right here on Earth in the most extreme conditions.

The probability then seems high planets billions of years older than Earth developed life more evolved than upon our planet. These exoplanets simply had far longer time frames than here. Galaxies collide and consume one another, exchanging elements while mixing and matching suns, comets, asteroids, and planets. A star has been found gushing forth staggering quantities of water. Several moons in our solar system may have as much water as Earth’s and possibly more, proving water is far more commonplace than initially realized. We identify this unusual and precious chemical, existing as gas, liquid, and solid, with life itself.

Who dares believe we humans are alone at the top of the universal evolution of life? Many people, unfortunately, continue to believe so. To take that stand and deny what may be commonplace is arrogant and foolhardy.

We humans may be unique as all life is unique, but imagine more evolved intelligences with a one million year head start over us. Imagine a two or three million or a even one or two billion year head start! Would such species regard us as we regard apes, ants, and honey bees? Do you even bother to attempt to initiate an intelligent dialogue with bees, ants, and orangutans? Except now we Earthlings have many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons plus arsenals of weaponized biological agents, poison gas, and are building battle lasers, computerized combat robots, and other deadly armaments.

After all, our species, Homo sapiens, has only been in existence an estimated 300,000 years and our hominid lines diverged from the closest great apes, the ancestors of today’s chimpanzees, a mere few million years ago. Our own species has experienced accelerated evolution in just the last 10,000 years alone. Apparently our ancestral Homo sapiens shared the planet with up to three or four other known human species. DNA evidence indicates interspecies mating between closely related hominids. The dates for the beginnings of earliest human civilizations continue to be pushed back, from 5,000 years ago to 8,000 then 10,000 years ago. Currently the oldest confirmed civilization seems to be the ruins of a large stone and earth temple complex at Gobekli Tepe on what is today the Turkish side of the Syrian border at about 11,500 to 12,000 years ago.

Generating more controversy are the stone ruins stretching from South Africa up into Kenya. The oldest, called Adam’s Calendar, is located within Mpumalanga Province in eastern South Africa. These extended clusters of megaliths, walls, and stone-lined roads are likely about as ancient as Gobekli Tepe but possibly dating from 75,000 years ago with some indications they may be far, far more ancient. More and more prehistoric ruins are being found around the world, most of unknown origins, so much the anomalous begins to feel almost commonplace. The world’s oldest known art are cave paintings discovered in Spain that are about 40,000 years old and may even be Neanderthal in origin.

Until those were discovered, the oldest known cave paintings, some of which are incredible expressions of high art, are around 33,000 to 35,000 years old. These cave paintings are surprisingly large and are often found high up well above the height of even tall hominids. There are also clear examples of what we recognize today as UFOs including flying saucers as well as non-human humanoids in cave art and petroglyphs going back from 5,000 to 15,000 years ago. Such doesn’t mean the original artists saw them as such, and they clearly described what we recognized today as “alien,” as something other than belonging to Homo sapiens. There exist other prehistoric and ancient anomalies whose mysteries remain unsolved and whose existence boggles the mind. What else may yet be uncovered? Place this in the big picture where our Universe is now thought to be almost 14 billion years old. In addition, consider the concepts of parallel universes, of the multiverse, of the holographic or simulated universe, of dark matter and dark energy.

We’ve evolved and migrated across Earth and continue to develop sophisticated systems and tools. As of yet, unfortunately, we still fall short of building a united planetary democracy with full human rights for all and with sustainable economic systems that include responsible environmental stewardship, clean energy, and a stable financial system. Instead we seem bent on a perpetual thrust for war, conquest, financial domination, social control, and Empire.

Consider, too, that among at least two of the world’s largest religions the possibility of life elsewhere is acknowledged. In Islam salutations to God often begin with “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.” The Qur’an also states Allah “created the heavens and Earth and has dispersed his creatures throughout them.” I’ve had a small number of Muslims tell me they had no problem with the idea of intelligent life elsewhere as Allah created the Universe and everything in the Universe. Allah is Lord of everything, not just of people on one planet. (The Holy Qur’an, Surats Al-Fatihah 1:2 and Ash-Shuraa 42:29.)

In 2008 and 2009 high Roman Catholic officials within The Vatican began to acknowledge the strong possibility of intelligent aliens elsewhere in the Universe. Implying it would not be incompatible with Christianity, Father Jose Gabriel Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory, the top Vatican astronomer to Pope Benedict VXI, in then-recent interviews declared advanced extraterrestrial lifeforms would “not contradict Christian faith.” They could even be our “space brothers.”

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno claimed he would be willing to baptize aliens “if they asked,” and reminded us “God is bigger than just humanity.” (“Vatican says aliens could exist,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7399661.stm; “Vatican prepares for extraterrestrial disclosure,” http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-honolulu/vatican-prepares-for-extraterrestrial-disclosure; “Alien Life Out There,” http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=dedestaca&id=410; “Pope Benedict XVI’s Astronomer: the Catholic Church welcomes aliens,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/the-pope/8009299/Pope-Benedict-XVIs-astronomer-the-Catholic-Church-welcomes-aliens.html.

Unidentified objects from somewhere other than here and under intelligent control present a global challenge to our planetary security. We don’t know what they are or where they originate except we know what they do and what actions they perform even if we don’t understand how. UFOs penetrate our airspace and our oceans at will, they penetrate military bases and scientific installations, including nuclear, at will. They engage in dogfights with military jets, shut down electronics, shut down or turn on nuclear missiles in their silos, change shape radically, and accelerate and decelerate and even appear and disappear from view and from radar with astonishing speed. They shadow civilian airliners and enter numerous restricted areas in many countries. Other UFOs appear as pulsating orbs of light that appear as a result of a conscious, telepathic calling that float, flutter, and zip about then quickly change shape and size and morph into classic spaceship-like metallic crafts zooming around that split into multiple vessels then merge back into one ship then unexpectedly vanish in mid-air in full view before incredulous observer-participants.

UFOs range in size from small ball-like objects to massive ones over a mile long or in diameter. Some claim to have encountered craft measuring an astounding five miles long. A few whistleblowers declare there are massive spaceships hundreds of miles wide and likewise long. These giants, however, were likely never intended to enter a planetary atmosphere or land on a surface. There are other spacecraft, spherical in shape, alleged to be as large as planets. Cloaking technology is common. Our own military-industrial-intelligence complex has already demonstrated cloaking technology that bends light and sound. Other people have witnessed tiny, fairy-like shapeshifting orbs that fly around as if they are living, glowing, little blobs of protoplasmic plasma.

They appear to be under intelligent control and direction and have demonstrated capabilities far in advance of anything known to humans. These unknown things seem to overcome what we think of as “impossible” limitations of electromagnetics, gravity, inertia, time, space, and transforming shapes. They are associated with the mutilation of livestock, mutilations so precise they are beyond the skills of current surgery and are clearly not the result of wild animal attacks, as the government likes to claim. UFOs are also associated with the abduction of humans as well as engaged in behavior so bizarre and surreal our minds often refuse to consider it.

We don’t know what the agenda or agendas of whatever commands these UFOs is, was, or will be. We don’t know if it is a singular phenomena or whether there are many different even opposing intelligences behind these events, or if such intelligences originate from different planets, dimensions, time frames, spiritual realms, or from right here on Earth. The sheer number of UFO events is of itself unnerving, as even if one can imagine interstellar or interdimensional travel made easy with technologies beyond our limited physics. Still how can so many objects appear around one planet for possibly millennia?

Rather than ask, “Where’s the evidence,” instead ask why is the evidence ridiculed, ignored, or hidden by the authorities as they simultaneously expend so much time, energy, and resources in their attempts to control this phenomena. Denial is easy. The sheer immensity of the enigma makes denial easy. Too easy for something so powerful and so difficult to understand. Can an ape truly comprehend an airplane? Could humans from even a few centuries ago? It is also too easy to speculate, for while there is much evidence little exists in the way of absolute proof. Perhaps it is time we face the Truth here.

Recently released documents from the British Ministry of Defense reviewed by the BBC include records where wartime U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was greatly alarmed by a meticulously detailed incident between a UFO and RAF bombers returning from a raid during the Second World War. The UFO was somewhat flying saucer-shaped and was illuminated by red, green, and white lights rotating counterclockwise.

Churchill supposedly involved both U.S. General Eisenhower and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in the cover-up. The Prime Minister wanted the incident kept secret for 50 years to “prevent mass panic” and feared its release would “shatter people’s religious views.” You can view this at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10853905 under the 5 August 2010 article titled “Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show.”

It had only been a few years earlier in October 1938 Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of a fictional invasion by Martians in The War of the Worlds caused widespread panic across the East Coast of the United States. The resulting fear and chaos is allegedly one of the reasons governments cover up information related to real unidentified flying objects.

What are the reasons Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan, both ex-Governors, perform an about-face on the UFO issue once in the Oval Office as President? Both men publicly claimed UFO experiences prior to becoming President. Both men swore once they got to the White House they would strip away all the secrecy and make public any conspiracy. Instead, Carter and then Reagan shut up on the issue upon becoming President and remained silent through the end. Why? In addition, was there any synchronicity between the UFO mystery and the massive military buildup by the United States under these two back-to-back yet very different presidents toward the end of the Cold War?

This relentless military buildup, including that of atomic weapons, is generally associated with the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan. It began under President Jimmy Carter and his Democratic administration in the mid-1970s and cost upwards of almost two trillion dollars. It is noteworthy as well that Carter felt compelled to sustain this massive effort even though he was a political liberal, deeply religious, and an outspoken foe of atomic weapons. Carter was, however, a Navy man and a Cold War warrior. This gargantuan buildup started before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the 1981 labor revolts in Poland triggered fears of Soviet armed intervention in Eastern Europe or a drive of conquest south to the Indian Ocean.

Under President Reagan the U.S. Military launched the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” publicly to defend the West from Soviet nuclear missile attacks. The Central Intelligence Agency, however, knew the Soviets were already in serious decline, in significant economic breakdown, and although still militarily dangerous were not the demonic threat portrayed in public. President Reagan defended “Star Wars” with great fervor even though the Strategic Defense Initiative violated the antiballistic missile treaty with the Soviet Union.

There were much cheaper and effective ways to shoot down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the relatively simple kinetic-energy shotgun-pellet delivery system proposed by the High Frontier project. Instead the push was for expensive orbiting space-based laser platforms; a plan that generated intense criticism from many scientists who believed the Federal government’s declared purpose of the platforms to destroy Soviet ICBMs was serious and seriously flawed.

Is it possible this two trillion dollar military buildup by both Democratic and Republican administrations, presided over by presidents who both claimed to have experienced UFOs, two presidents armed with CIA knowledge the Soviet Union was in steep decline and no longer was a credible threat, is it possible this buildup was aimed at some feared extraterrestrial alien invasion? I do not know, and yet I wonder.

Perhaps the clincher is President Reagan’s serious offer to share Star Wars technology with the Soviet Union, an offer that generated incredulous dismay by many subordinates down the line. Recall this amazing offer by a staunch anti-Communist Republican came at the height of the Cold War as the Soviets shot down South Korean civilian airliner KAL 007 with Democratic U.S. Representative Larry McDonald on board. During this same period ugly U.S.-Soviet proxy wars blazed across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. President Reagan famously and publicly called the Soviet Union and its communist satellite states an “evil empire.”

At the same time there were attempts by both sides to communicate with each other regarding ways to address UFO incursions and prevent accidental nuclear war. Imagine what the average person on both sides of the Cold War with no knowledge of this reality must have thought of President Reagan’s groundbreaking offer to share advanced space weapons technology with such a determined foe? What was really going on behind the scenes there?

One wonders if there were and possibly remains any covert significance to President Reagan’s remarks in September 1987 to the 42nd UN General Assembly it would take an “alien” invasion “from outer space” to unify the “mutually antagonistic” nations of the world. Such an invasion, as far as I know, never occurred or hasn’t happened yet, at least not any conventional-looking invasion.

Today after the fall of Soviet-style Communism, a form of totalitarianism more properly termed State Capitalism, the specters of terrorism and rogue states are used as an excuse to continue large-scale military buildups. Terrorist groups and failed states today are dangerous and deadly indeed but certainly NOT the equivalent of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or Soviet Russia. Yet this massive military buildup continues with American military bases scattered around the world. Why? What is the real reason? Or is it merely the so-called “inertia of empire?”

Is there any truth to controversial allegations that U.S. President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, wanted to reveal to the American public what facts have been covered up concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens? It is established that President Kennedy, even though he was a naval combat veteran of the Second World War and a Cold War warrior, was strongly opposed by the military-industrial-intelligence complex. Kennedy faced enormous opposition to his plans to pull American forces out of the Vietnam War. JFK was hated by many in the same “complex” for his refusal to invade Cuba or attack the Soviets and Chinese. The fiasco of the Cuban Bay of Pigs War followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis with imminent threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation turned many in the Power Elite, especially those in the CIA, against JFK.

President Kennedy riled up many enemies among the Financial Elite and their Allies. Not as well known as JFK’s desire to engage more pragmatically with the Soviet Union were his battles against giant American steel companies. These included his toe-to-toe battle in 1962 with U.S. Steel, a massive corporation founded and owned by the J.P. Morgan & Co. banking colossus, and their price fixing duplicity, an echo of sorts from President Truman’s seizure of the steel industry after a mass strike by workers against U.S. Steel back during the Korean War. Even less well known and often poorly understood was Kennedy’s challenge to the Federal Reserve System with its Federal Reserve Notes. JFK began his attempts to wrest power away from the Fed with his Executive Order 11110 returning to the U.S. Department of Treasury the authority to issue United States Notes backed by silver. The President was also targeted for the domestic war his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, waged upon the Mafia crime syndicates.

Kennedy was murdered. Anything related to UFOs hushed or debunked. Democrats and Republicans escalated the Vietnam and related anti-Communist wars at great profit for the military-industrial-intelligence complex and the wealthy families behind them. The Federal Reserve and its allies in industry, banking, and government dismissed and ignored JFK’s Executive Order 11110. Any attempt to investigate, inquire into, or otherwise illuminate these matters for the general public was squashed and ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theories.”

The majority of efforts to shed light on what occurred for the benefit of We the People is crushed and debunked. We just do not know what really happened or what these connections and relationships “mean.” Just because the Bay of Pigs antagonized the CIA or the Cuban Missile Crisis angered the Pentagon or Executive Order 11110 threatened the Fed or certain Elite felt their power truly endangered by Kennedy’s purported intention to go public with UFO Disclosure doesn’t mean any of these factions were involved in his assassination or, for that matter, with each other. And this president, just as the last one (Bush II) and the current one as I write (Obama), made a significant number of enemies. JFK, however, was among the few from the Global Financial and Power Elites who rebelled against his own privileged class.

Many who speak out about these taboo topics and inquire into them are often ridiculed. They’re lampooned as “loony tunes” “conspiracy theorists” and “crackpots” by mainstream media and academia. Some conspiracy theorists themselves don’t help as they often fill in gaps with incredulous speculation while mainstream academics won’t even enter the gap.

Oxford-trained historian Richard M. Dolan did enter this realm. His interest in UFOs grew out of his research into the Cold War with his analyses of American nuclear strategy and Soviet history. It became apparent to Dolan certain governments including the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union had instituted similar dual policies in regards to UFOs. These governments publicly ridiculed and debunked UFOs while behind the scenes existed enormous covert efforts to study unidentified air, space, and ocean objects.

These mystery objects clearly intruded into restricted and prohibited airspace to, for example, swarm over military and especially nuclear installations around the planet. Numerous individuals high up in government including scientists, the military, and in intelligence were pressured and pressured severely into silence. Those who spoke up were ridiculed, debunked, dismissed, and some died under mysterious circumstances. I repeat these charges to emphasize the gravity of what we’re dealing with.

At the same time the American and Soviet governments presented a front to the public that dismissed and even denied UFOs. The mainstream mass media followed suit, especially in the years after the Second World War when the media were still loyal to government. These big news enterprises were also under the control of the Corporatocracy. Other national governments followed the lead of the two superpowers. There was serious, ongoing concern within the inner circles of both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. that UFOs could trigger accidental nuclear war between the Soviets and Americans. Mistakes and accidents were made and caught in time. These close calls have been well documented by a number of researchers with impeccable credentials.

Richard Dolan himself presents his case and the evidence for a number of cover-ups as well as events mentioned earlier in this paragraph in his massive trilogy UFOs and the National Security State. The first volume came out in 2000 to critical acclaim, was reissued in 2002, the second in 2009 with the third yet to be completed. Pioneering investigative journalist, human rights activist, and Freedom of Information Act activist Leslie Kean led with her own critically acclaimed book in 2010, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. Both authors addressed the global ramifications of these phenomena as well.

In late November of 2010 a number of retired military officers and scientists who have studied UFOs held a full, public press conference on UFO activity over American military installations including incidents of UFOs disabling nuclear-armed ICBMs. This press conference got very little coverage or respect and was soon forgotten by the mainstream media. One would think such an event worthy of international coverage and perhaps even consternation. A recent challenge to the Federal government to disclose information relating to UFOs and Extraterrestrial Aliens came to naught with the Government claiming not to know anything about such issues even as a number of former officers and released documents demonstrate otherwise.

As I described earlier, our parents’ initial excitement in talking about “the flying saucers” followed years later by denial that anything ever occurred baffled us kids. It’s wise to remember and remember well that government run by deception learns that ridicule is more powerful than suppression, that lies repeated often enough become viewed as truth. The government position was and is absolutely ridiculous, embarrassing, and dangerous.

Government cover-ups are not limited to the realm of UFOs and so-called “conspiracy theory” matters either. The rise and mutation of the National Security State as the Second World War transitioned into the Cold War, among the most dangerous and challenging times in human history, is marked with numerous cases of unethical, even criminal behavior.

These events involved deception, lies, hoaxes, and byzantine power plays regarding coups, assassinations, Nazi German and Imperial Japanese scientists, grotesque medical and psychological experiments, and spraying American cities with chemicals and biological agents to see what would happen. Experiments with mind-altering drugs and with psychic phenomena were conducted. The use of unsuspecting human subjects in numerous experiments, many of them U.S. citizens including those serving in the military, occurred without their knowledge or consent proved alarmingly common.

In the shadows behind public smiles, allied governments plotted against one another as they jockeyed for power, influence, and access to classified secrets. Internecine conflicts between American “compartments” of the military-industrial-intelligence complex were as covert as the CIA-KGB “wars.” These Byzantine, subterranean palace intrigues were complex, deep, and difficult to untangle or verify as so much disinformation was dished out to the media. Hypercompartmentalized elements within the Breakaway Civilization succeeded in keeping elements of the Armed Forces, Congress, and even the Presidency out of the loop with “black projects” in what are called Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAPs).

USAPs are barely acknowledged to even exist and what they address remains completely unknown to anyone outside that micro-compartment. “Need to know” access is so restricted that many if not most at the public top of political and military power don’t even know what goes on inside these USAPs. The American National Security Agency (NSA) is another example of prolonged success at maintaining secrecy. This state-within-a-state developed in stages when President Harry Truman, a Democrat, signed the National Security Act, presented by Congress, in late July 1947.

Note the President did so soon after the Mt. Rainier, Maury Island, and Roswell UFO incidents.

As a result of Truman’s Act, American foreign policy, the Armed Forces, and the various intelligence entities were reorganized and integrated. The National Security Council (NSC) was established in late 1947. The NSA itself, however, was not disclosed. It originated in 1949 as the Armed Forces Security Agency, became the NSA by 1952, and its existence was publicly revealed in a 1975 Senate investigation.

Much about the NSA itself remains secret, however, and inaccessible to most government officials including other military and intelligence ones. This degree of secrecy run amok is hostile to democracy, hostile to government in general, and undermines republican institutions. Public trust is eroded by paranoia and suspicion. Such a secret and powerful organization cannot be allowed to coexist within any democracy, yet it does.

Many of America’s allies and enemies soon modeled their own national security states after the United States’. Such organizations and their actions certainly must be disclosed in varying degrees. These institutions would not be at all necessary with all of Earth’s countries united in a democratic world republic. Indeed, such an empire-within-a-democracy would not be tolerated.

What is the truth behind this widespread deception among the institutions of political power and the levers that control them? How, if at all, is this mysterious phenomena or at least the manipulation of information regarding it related to financial, social, economic, and media control of the masses? Is the truth behind UFO phenomena cause for alarm or not?

Perhaps no one, including those involved in maintaining this deception, understands what UFOs really are. Maybe they do. As there is a lack of consensus on what they are by those who have directly experienced and studied them, they could represent a variety of different even unrelated phenomena with distinct explanations.

Concerns have been expressed that the hyped fear of an alien invasion would be used by those in power to justify imposing a global dictatorship upon humanity with a planetary military force ostensibly established to protect Earth from above but to secretly control humanity upon the Earth. Consider otherwise. For if we achieve a peaceful, planetary democracy and stop fighting among ourselves there would be no need for enormous standing military forces and the taxes to maintain them. Small, agile military forces to help police areas of violence are likely to be necessary until Earth is so unified and at peace as to be finally disbanded. It would be more crime fighting than war. If indeed there were hostile aliens to defend ourselves from, we would likely require a very different military response than massive, overgrown militaries designed to fight each other in endless and self-destructive wars.

There is also the possibility that if alien extraterrestrial, ultraterrestrial or interdimensional species exist, either biological, machine, or both, then their science, technology, and even sociopolitical and economic structures could possibly be harnessed for the benefit of human civilization. Elements of the military-industrial-intelligence complex and perhaps some among controlling financial elite, however, are alleged to have an interest in suppressing such information in the name of national security, financial power, and social harmony.

This “dangerous” information may well demolish their current means to wealth and power including maintaining current addictions to oil, gas, and coal as well as to fiat money and income taxation. Global climate disruption, however, and other human-generated environmental damage, which in turns damages the economy may get the elite to shift their perspective.

The UFO phenomenon, whatever it truly is, is a human and planetary security issue of global dimension that is of great concern to many within the military-industrial-intelligence complex even as it is scorned and otherwise ridiculed and ignored in public.

In addition, there are many pushing for and have been for decades calling for what UFO information activists call “Disclosure.”  Disclosure is usually viewed as an event during which the existence of such entities is openly announced and confirmed by officials viewed as trusted public authorities of international clout, such as the Presidents of the United States and Russia or perhaps the Secretary-General of the United Nations. World leaders may directly announce the Alien presence and the truth of UFOs even if governments and corporations know little about them beyond their existence.

If not a major public declaration, perhaps Disclosure occurs gradually in many steps over time by lesser officials. Many think Disclosure will be forced rather than voluntary and rife with unknown consequences. A so-called Soft or Partial Disclosure already seems underway. The Elites behind it seem to be counting on most of those of us among the masses to not pay any attention for fear of ridicule. Besides, who has time in an era cursed with busyness to the point of “busyitis” to read so many thousands and thousands of documents from around the world, many of them redacted? The sooner we humans can organize ourselves across Planet Earth into a united democratic federation the better. Once untied we are in a stronger position to address this phenomena and its numerous challenges, especially as we don’t really know what to expect.

One of the challenges with this issue is so many people don’t want to really know the truth about UFOs and ETs. These anomalies don’t fit their worldview and opens them up to public ridicule. People will realize the possibility their governments are to some degree helpless, even fraudulent. The human mind has an amazing capacity to compartmentalized data and to deny the existence of what it doesn’t want to confront. It’s time to face up to reality here and challenge the debunkers, the cynical, the resigned, and the national security state regimes.

I felt as if I was in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz and both witnessed and helped expose the Wizard as a fraud, an evil and devious fraud. No one noticed, however, because they were all too busy working increasingly more hours a day to earn more worthless money to buy more and more consumer “goods” at great cost to our environment. When any of us who threaten the established “wizard” view of reality, we make it easy for the pro-wizard faction to dismiss us all as “crackpots” to maintain their grip on the levers of power.

It was just a lot easier to agree with the Wizard and not the whistleblowers and others who sound the alarms, often at great personal cost. In the 1999 movie The Matrix it was easier for one to take the blue pill and stay a slave kept deluded in ignorance than swallow the red pill which awakens one to the hard work of freedom and responsibility reality demands.

The general population became normalized to living life a certain materialistic way. We’ve all been brainwashed by psychologically based advertising and marketing campaigns to desire that certain way.

I am by no means the first to point out the emperor wears no clothes. The biggest elephant in the room when we gather to address the problems affecting our world including what steps to take toward building a democratic world republic is the UFO issue. Unless these objects and entities go away, they, whatever they are, are here and must be reckoned with. People, however, have to desire and demand the truth about what’s going on. They must insist upon a democratic world parliament, clean energy, and an overthrow of the banksters. People must desire them strongly enough to act, not ignore Unknown Big Elephants.

I still remember that evening so clearly. I recall standing out in our backyard with my Mom, Dad, and little sister and brother on that warm Spring/Fall day. We watched in wonder, awe, and fear as a metallic, golden sphere hovered and spun over the fields and woods behind our house. We experienced the electromagnetic interference with car engines, radios, and telephones. We observed this machine accelerate and turn at near-impossible speeds and angles to vanish into the sky.

We witnessed the flurry of activity by many people toward this and related incidents from that afternoon and the enormous amount of effort and energy the authorities put into pretending it was all nothing. I remember Mama’s deep interest in flying saucers and aliens and animated conversations among our family regarding this event. I recall the sudden and unexpected silence toward it all by both parents after Daddy’s odd episode with the FBI in Northern Virginia.

 

William Dudley Bass
20-21 November 2011
Revised 6 March 2013
*Missing time/memory void material finally added 16 November 2015
Revised again 16-18 March 2016
Revised 29 May 2021
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

NOTE: This is a significantly rewritten and expanded revision of a article originally published in my blog Cultivate and Harvest called “UFOs: An Encounter” at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html on February 2, 2011. Much of this article on UFOs also appears in my book-in-progress for local-global democratic world government.

UFO Images:

The images of the classic flying saucer are from a photo from “August 3, 1965 – Santa Ana, California, USA,” in UFO EVIDENCE: Scientific Study of the UFO Phenomenon and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, @ <http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm>.

The image of the silver sphere is of a “Representation” slightly boosted in iPhoto. The image is from Jorge Martin’s “More UFOs at the Arecibo Radio Observatory,” Independent Researchers’ Association for Anomalous Phenomena (IRAAP), 2005, @ <http://www.iraap.org/martin/ufos_arecibo.htm>.

Thank you.

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Copyright © 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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15 thoughts on “UFO Encounter in Virginia

  1. Great read, I too had an experience with UFO. 4th grade night time looking out my window. A series of lights hovering just beyond my backyard, above a private school in Norfolk Va. . Silent and in formation almost like they were there for me to see and me alone…very weird, and hovering at so low an altitude. Thanks for the story, and the part about your Dad going to FBI is chilling.

    • Joey, I keep going back & rereading your response. Good little share. And you’re welcome. Yes, the FBI thing was chilling…partly because we never knew exactly what occurred. Whenever those of us who were involved attempted “to connect the dots,” we could extrapolate a likely scenario but without being able to prove it so. The FBI’s intimidation technique my father experienced was similar to what I’ve understood to be experienced by others as a covert attempt to prevent potential leaks by frightening the Hell out of would-be whistleblowers. Look today at all the recent revelations by Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, & Edward Snowden via Wikileaks, etc.

  2. Ohhhhh, Bro….eventhough I was very young, I still have some vivid memories of that evening… I will add that I clearly remember the sheriff came out afterwards, and we were all standing in the yard, Mom & Dad pointing and telling him what we saw. I have trouble recalling what the “sighting” looked like, as I was so young. I do know that Mom & Dad were very reserved individuals and that a very unique sighting event took place. That is a fact.

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  9. Hi William – I just wanted you to know that I just finished all of the posts of the UFO tab – very interesting observations and twists and turns you describe and describe well. As expected.

    While I’ve read them over the course of a few days and the ones previous to this are a bit fuzzier perhaps – I was wondering if your daughter who said `mind tricks’ about the one experience had ever heard YOU previously express that point of view? And, I love the turnabout of your dad and mom – wow. That said, some other people who have shared high strangeness events – at a later point – have differing memories of the event… even basic details.

    Our views and certainly our view of what is possible are largely shared IMO – indeed, I maybe even recognize a bit of my thoughts – as you know perhaps I wrote about humans being entertainment for billion year old entities. The orb phenomena is certainly near the crux of the phenomena also IMO – but, may not represent all of it either.

    I also have a slightly different take on the Disclosure Crowd in all its elements – most of which in my opinion are either disinfo on purpose or simply unwittingly.I also see the chance of less control by the elite – which is what worries them. (Hence the possible powerplay in 2008?) – I like the idea of or fantasy of an elite upper echelon with escape from Earth plans…. hey, to me, if one has a billion dollars and doesn’t have a hideaway at least – one isn’t preparing for the possible. Additionally, it would seem likely or possible that some group could be cultivated to exit our realm if such a thing exists – if only for the military value. All that said, I personally view the Disclosure folks as using their voice to simply pushback against the powers that be (TPTB) – to embarrass the military for their own self importance if you will. Hey, could do worse things than that, right?

    Rick

    • Hey there, Rick. Thank you for taking the time to read my articles on UFOs. You’ve prodded my tired ol’ brain to go pokin’ around in strange places again, LOL!

      What you write about my daughter and her phrase, “mind tricks,” and recognizing your own thoughts and so forth reminds me of concepts such as memes, “going viral,” self-limiting beliefs, consensual reality, breaking open consensual reality, and those ideas regarding reality is composed unconsciously by our self-referring universe with psycho-neurological feedback loops.

      Throw in holograms, discoveries that consciousness exists before birth and after death, that consciousness surviving beyond death is not necessarily anything to do with religion or even spirituality at all, and the increasing possibility our multiverse is a software program…and are “things” as consciousness, the holographic universe, and a multiverse generated by the equivalent of a software program arise spontaneously? Many scientists including Stephen Hawking feel strongly the evidence supports spontaneous origination from nothing. Bottom line: I don’t really know. My instinct and intuition inform me reality is far vaster, deeper, more complicated, and yet simpler than we imagine.

      In regards to my daughter and her phrase, “mind tricks,” it is completely hers. She was 12 now and is 15 now, the middle of two. Kate is pragmatic and not given to fantasies or to fantasy culture. She has been exposed in the past, however, to stage magic, i.e. magic as illusion and “tricks” as opposed to magick as a psycho-spiritual manipulation of matter by mind such as is claimed to occur with sorcery. Stage magic is mechanistic. Magick is mind physics. Both are real yet in different ways. Both generate illusion or the sense of unreality or something manifested into being from pure energy of thought, will, and emotion. I myself do not use the term mind tricks. I don’t talk much about or for magic, magick, or use the term “tricks.”

      There are also fascinating considerations how magical thinking, religious dogma, scientific thinking, the sensory mechanisms of emotions and feelings in the body, shamanic witchcraft and healing, atheistic opinionation, scientific humanism as a sort of neo-religion, etc. influence our world view. Yes, the expression “mind tricks” is all pure Kate. Her words struck me with a mix of brilliance and child-like simplicity.

      Perhaps the orb/ship hybrid is a self-referring distortion of our own minds under stress, or a warning, or simply curious mindless play. We speak what we want to see but fear and don’t understand. The orb phenomena as crux may be the key to the lock on the linchpin between mind and matter, spirit and soul, mass and no-mass (light), energy and matter, machine and the biologic, or riffs back to the Ancient and Medieval inquiries among the Esoterics debating which came first, Mind or Matter? Did the multiverse pour out from the so-called Mind of God, whatever that is or means, into the Void to form a Universe of matter and energy?

      Did consciousness arise first, before the big bang even, and continues to evolve as it continues to penetrate and interpenetrate matter? Or is reality purely reductionist? Everything in existence exploded out of the Big Bang and evolved over 14-15 bilion years to produce sentient organisms with multiple brains such our one surviving human species.

      Disclosure seems more complicated than ever. It is as if it already occurred, as you point out, but no one much heard it and few were listening. Having mountains of archives to peruse means taking a hella long time digging thru musty old docs.

      I’ve come to feel the whole UFO thing is far too complex to pin a simple example on it. Perhaps we are indeed entertainment for two billion year old entities who’ve evolved into beings of light and energy who yearn to experience what it was like to run around inside a warm, wet, biological body composed mostly of water?

      I don’t think the global financial elites or the plutocracy or the 0.01%ers or the Breakaways are monolithic. There are factions within factions intent on preserving their self-interest and expanding to secure their power. And…I really am not sure.

      Yes, I would do different things with my billion dollars were I to have it. Probably use it all up in one shot to buy the last surviving loaf on the planet of gluten-free nutty-brained Weimar banana bread. No just kidding. Depends on perception of value in relation to market forces and the psychology of branding and a few anchors of investment strategies as orbs and spaceships and time machines pour out of the fabric of the sky into our view.

      William

  10. Hey William, great response – glad to have provided a bit of brain stimulation (as you just did). As you may know or not – many of these ideas I covered at my blog called The Heavy Stuff – especially from 2006-2010 or so. I will throw out a few rehashes I’ve done or opinions on what you lay out above just for fun (attempt to look at your many huge statements and inquiries).

    My purpose with the question about your daughters statement was simply the wonder if it could have been influenced in some manner. I’d put that UFO/Orb (structured Orb) experience in with what I call the Neighborhood UFO experience – but not quite…. as it wasn’t CLOSE enough. IMO it’s the proximity to the Orbs that matter what the ultimate perception is going to amount to. These are indeed triggered IMO by someones consciousness. Could have been one of you six, could have been someone else. No, I do not believe all orbs are consciousness triggered but many are.

    Now for a random hack at some of your huge visions of questions that could be asked and as I said a bit of a gut reaction. `Reality far vaster and deeper’ – yepper and indeed what you are talking about is Phenomenology – literally the ideas about consciousness and objects as defined by Husserl. (And extended by Sartre into a Philosophy with Being In Itself, Being For Itself, and Being For Others.) I don’t go the values route for philosophy like Sartre – and as you may know, developed one similar to Husserl. What I called the Phillips Phenomenology – where all things are spaces of a particular type – Not Able To Be, Able To Not Be, Not Able To Not Be, – and I can make a lot of even the paranormal fit in. But, vaster and deeper – you bet cha.

    As far as a Universe beginning, IMO, the providing, evolving of the phenomenology structure – be it by being or some matter component – isn’t as important as the structure allowing things to actualize and set the phenomenology in motion. IMO, out of all things – spaces – is what consciousness was able to evolve from. Space in this instance precedes mind or consciousness of an actualized area. Before (the universe) it certainly could have been all Beingness and no space or thing. My stuff is kinda dry when it comes to some grand emotion setting reality into existence.

    Disclosure DID occur of course in late 2011 and indeed has HUGELY altered the way we see this covered on TV – hey, it may be to those who seek truths advantage as the Orb phenomena seems to be seeping into folks consciousness as something possibly special – be it the orb callers or other MSM coverage.

    Finally for now – when I tackled the `we are in a computer and are a software program question’ – it’s hard to discount that in a universe as large as ours that somewhere at sometime some being hasn’t developed software that would allow for our total self-aware illusion (being within a reality that has extensions) – let alone HOW MANY COPIES might exist of such software. Here’s the funny final rub – I remember that when I wrote my next post I’d come up with some reason why all of that shouldn’t be a concern…. I can’t remember it. Probably in one of my books now.

    Rick

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