Feb
5
The RUFO Phenomenon, Part 2 of 3
“I want to believe.” — FBI Agent Fox Mulder, “The X-Files”
In Part 1, we began to delve into the phenomenon of “residual UFOs” (aka RUFOs). We noted several questions/issues that need to be addressed by proponents of both the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) and the extradimensional or interdimensional hypothesis (IDH). This time, I want to take a more detailed look at the strange, physical effects of RUFO encounters on people, places, and things. So, I present to you a somewhat lengthy citation from one of Hugh Ross’s chapters in Lights in the Sky (2002).
I was going to try to summarize and/or paraphrase it but ultimately decided the details would be most beneficial to readers as is:
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“More than a dozen research scientists have reviewed the RUFO database, taking care to eliminate hoaxes, frauds, and individual hallucinatory experiences. Many physical effects remain without physical explanation.
Perhaps the most objectively researched consequence of RUFOs is physical trauma. Soil, plants, animals, humans, and machines in the vicinity of reported UFO landing and crash sites have suffered disturbance or damage. In addition to soil depressions consistent with described ‘landing pods,’ researchers have cataloged some eight hundred scorched, denuded circles of land related to landing marks or depressions. According to one investigator, the general pattern is either ‘a circular patch, uniformly depressed, burned, or dehydrated,’ or a narrow ring, from one to three feet wide and with a thirty-foot (or larger) diameter. Some patches and rings have remained barren for weeks, months, or even years, and tracks as deep as five to eight inches have been confirmed. The soil compression, including crushed rock, at one reported landing site matches that of a thirty-ton object. Heat indicators range from melted snow to brittle or molten rock, calcined materials, metallic slag of unusual composition, and even altered soil chemistry and rock chemistry.
Plants and trees at some sightings have appeared scorched or blighted. In some cases, these plants and trees took more than a year to recover from the trauma. In one unusual case, grass and weeds at the site grew to double or triple the size of identical plants in adjacent areas and maintained this exceptional growth for two years following the sighting. In another case, nearby witnesses confirmed that a hovering UFO, which seemed to emit neither heat nor sound, cooked and desiccated the plants beneath it.
At Trans-en-Provence, France, on July 8, 1981, UFO investigators found more than damaged leaves. They found that the biochemistry of UFO-marred leaves possessed markers of extreme aging, and so did the very young leaves that sprouted after the sighting. Michel Bounias, the research toxicologist who performed the study, ruled out chemical poisoning as a possible cause. The one viable possibility — powerful microwave radiation — could produce some, but not all, of the biochemical consequences. The results do not resemble anything known to exist, natural or man-made….
Apart from the abduction and sexual assault claims common to close encounters of the fourth kind, the physical symptoms most frequently reported by human observers of RUFOs include nausea, headache, temporary paralysis or blindness, numbness, and sensations of heat or weightlessness at the time of the event. Disturbed dreams have followed some observers for weeks, and family members and friends confirm radical changes in the observers’ beliefs and values.
Some observers have experienced serious injuries and even death. Many have required hospitalization for burns and wounds. Such injuries have, on occasion, been accompanied by hair loss, diminished vision, diarrhea, internal bleeding, liver damage, and swelling. [Jacques] Vallée documents twelve cases of fatal injuries, most victims surviving less than twenty-four hours after the UFO encounter.
Machines and electrical systems have also been impacted by RUFOs. Most commonly, vehicle engines, radios, and lights have been observed to turn off during a UFO sighting and then return to normal operation afterward. In a few cases, car batteries overheated and quickly deteriorated. Diesel engines have rarely been affected. Airline pilots encountering UFOs have noted disruptions in radar, radio, and compass operations. In one case, that of a United Airlines DC-10, three cockpit compasses all gave different readings — a circumstance that should have alerted the mismatch annunciator system to shut down autopilot. It did not. Upon landing, all three compasses returned to normal….
A peculiar physical effect associated with RUFOs is called ‘angel hair.’ Certain low-flying, rapidly zigzagging UFOs have been observed to leave extensive trails behind them. According to witnesses, the trail material slowly fell to the ground, sticking to trees, bushes, telephone wires, and roofs, much like spider webs. The white strands have been described as long (up to sixty feet) or short (mere specks). They have been photographed but never retained for investigation. Though reportedly picked up by numerous witnesses, the angel hair disappeared quickly after being handled. Untouched angel hair also disappeared quickly; some observers described it as wafting up into the sky and vanishing.
Given all these observed, measured, and corroborated physical effects, it might seem as though RUFOs have been confirmed as physical reality. But in fact, that is not so…. It seems evident that RUFOs must be nonphysical because they disobey firmly established physical laws.
Unlike physical entities, RUFOs typically exhibit the following characteristics:
- RUFOs leave no physical artifacts.
- They generate no sonic booms when they break the sound barrier, nor do they show any evidence of meeting with air resistance.
- They may be seen but not photographed, or they may be photographed (though never with high resolution) but not seen. In fact, the resolution of a UFO image may change from one moment to the next.
- RUFOs may be detected by radar but not seen, or they may be seen but not detected by radar.
- They make impossibly sharp turns and sudden stops and impossibly rapid accelerations to speeds approaching fifteen thousand miles per hour.
- RUFOs hover aboveground or harm buildings and trees without any movement of air — no downward rush or other movement counter to ambient air currents.
- They change momentum without yielding an opposite change of momentum in matter or in an energy field either coupled to the object or in the vicinity of the object.
- They change shape, size, and color at random.
- RUFOs suddenly disappear and reappear, or they disintegrate and reintegrate.
- They send no detectable electromagnetic signals.
- They emit light that casts no shadows. They project light beams of finite length or emit some light that twinkles and other light that does not. They change the apparent color of people, objects, or vehicles they spotlight.
- They sometimes remain indistinguishable in shape despite close observation.
- RUFOs consistently succeed in evasive action, sometimes vanishing instantly or at other times seeming to enter the ground without leaving a trace.
- They melt asphalt and metal objects, and burn grass and leaves, without fire or flame.
- They physically injure and even kill human observers apart from any identifiable physical agent.
RUFOs’ improbable predictability, the similarity of their physical manifestations, attests to their reality on one hand, but that same quality of predictability also suggests their nonphysical nature. For example, relative to the number of people out of doors and capable of making observations, ten times as many sightings occur at 3:00 a.m. as at either 6:00 a.m. or at 8:00 p.m. Many more RUFOs appear in remote areas than in built-up or populated regions. They seem to prefer lonely roads to fields or villages. The witness list for each RUFO is small, rarely more than six people.
The likelihood of a person’s witnessing a RUFO bears no correlation to that individual’s number of hours spent watching the sky. People trained in night sky observation see no more RUFOs than others. If RUFOs were indeed physical, then pilots, air traffic controllers, astronomers, and other sky watchers, especially those with the most hours logged, should see more RUFOs than those with less time spent looking up, but that is not the case.”
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I don’t know about you, but I find this stuff fascinating. But, while simply seeing a RUFO from a distance would be exciting, anything more than that sounds mighty disconcerting, even dangerous! Next week (or maybe the week after), we’ll conclude our “examination” of RUFOs with a closer look at the probability of the interdimensional hypothesis. Also, if it is true, is that good or bad? And how should one respond if one has a RUFO encounter?
