This page is dedicated to the absence of proof and the opinion and thoughts of Aimé Michel and several others about this huge issue.

Already in 1955, that issue of lack of picture had been noticed. By Arthur Constance in the Flying Saucer Review 1955. v1 n3.p12..15

“This article being written for the sophisticated, and not for jibbers or gibberers, I am assuming that you have read at least two or three of the twenty or thirty books published on Flying Saucers in recent years : […] That, at the same instant, they can be seen yet not photographically recorded […]”

This lack of documents is very frustrating to anyone willing to tackle the problem from a really scientific point of view, and match the eminently disillusioned remark of the then director of GEPAN, M. C. Poher: “Of all the UFO pictures I examinated which have not proven to be deliberate fakes, I've never seen a mere single one where an unidentified object appears with a sharp and close definition.”

He made this declaration during a casual break conversation with participants of the Second International Workshop on UFOs organized, like the previous year, with the participation of many European ufologists such as the late P. Guerin by journalist J.C. Bourret and the Grenoble municipality support, on June 16-17, 1976.

(SOBEPS / Franck Boitte)

It comes as a surprise that among these 1,282 COB entries, out of which, without having counted them, I estimate ~10% were Close Encounters less than 100 m away from MW, we are unable to find one single photographic document or more widely speaking “trace” clearly indicating the presence of an unconventional object.

The whole by SOBEPS collected “evidence” - including a photo taken by P. Ferryn with two other SOBEPS members at Ramillies on April 1, 1990 - are of distant objects. They are blurred, indistinct, ambiguous, lending themselves to every possible interpretation and/or misidentification. The Ramillies picture only shows nearly invisible teeny dots where, are we to believe the witnesses' description, the silhouette of a huge silent low flying platform had been expected to appear.

In order to account for this discrepancy, SOBEPS analyst Pr. Meessen has proposed an explanation involving a sophisticated physical mechanism which unfolds as below : “realizing” (how?) it was being filmed, the UFO emitted (why?) infrared radiation beams that destroyed the silver grains impression on film by what is called the “Herschel effect”. But it also has been advocated that, even if actually present, that effect would have been far too weak to blurr or erase the photograph and the picture represents nothing else but the one of a regular or possibly experimental (Ferryn's opinion) airplane on his way to land on the 18 km distant Beauvehain or further distant Zaventem airport

“The Petit Rechain photograph was the only one of the whole Belgian wave - and even of the whole Belgian ufology - which reveals the famous “mass carrier” lights so frequently described in both SOBEPS books.” (Patrick Ferryn to Franck Boitte (2011) )

(SOBEPS / Franck Boitte) ¹⁾

Captain Hollanda from Brazilian air force's project Operation Prato.

He reported that the pictures for the first 2 month, after being developed, appeared to not display at all what was seen.

Even though the lights appeared visually to be as bright as an arc welder, on the films the lights were dim.

The video below is set to start at the relevant segment. Stop when you got it.

1977 🇧🇷 #UFOB [INTERVIEW] mr Gevaerd & Petit interview Capt. Hollanda on the Colares case in 1997

Rony was able in 2024 to unambiguously demonstrate that the UAP that he could see was not being recordable digitally, even when in plain sight, extremely close to a drone

The drone was positioned right in front of the object, confirmed by the multiple point of views that the group of persons had on it.

In addition, like Captain Hollanda (and many other cases in the past), Rony noticed that even though the object was very bright, it was not painful to look at.

I must say that I have some problems with the personality of Rony Vernet. There are bad signs of information control by him.

(vidéo 5mn)

Amazon_UFO_secrets_revealed_Researcher_hears_mysterious_sounds_in_the_rainforest_Reality_Check

Travis Dumsday mentions that there should have been more photos and movies of the apparitions.

Travis Dumsday mentions a research that would have been done by François Brune. In his interviews, people told Father Brune that when they developed the film, nothing showed up.

(Vidéo : 9mn)

The Marian Apparitions at Zeitoun wiuth Travis Dumsday

“We have good reason to think that everyone in the crowd were seing basically the same thing. […] But also, “some people in the crowd were seing more than others close to them”.

Books :

“La Vierge de l'Égypte” by François Brune
“Before Our Eyes: The Virgin Mary, Zeitun, Egypt 1968 and 1969” by Pearl Zaki. A good source for looking at the photos.

In that article, Pierre Guerin, finds only 10 years later (1980), that the case was a sociological experiment to prove the credulity of ufologists. The inconsistencies between the pictures and the reports were actually a sign of the fakery. “It was not objectionable that they had fabricated fake photos of a UFO, if they wanted to test the competence or degree of credulity of those who would have to examine them. However, it was completely unacceptable that the photographer deliberately betrayed the trust of the ufologist to whom he would give these photos—treacherously seeking to gain his friendship in order to favorably influence his judgment. This was not only immoral, but also distorted the conclusions of the experiment in advance and influenced me.”

Extract from LDLN 408. This case is not very striking, but is a “mild” example of discrepancy. It is more representative of what happens often. The other cases listed here are more striking.

Alain Bauquet tells us how he and his wife witnessed what he calls “a magnificent aerial ballet of two incandescent wheels”:

“It's Wednesday, April 11, 2012. My wife and I are watching television in the dark, sitting in our armchairs; the shutters of the French window facing north (in the direction of the Col de Vence and Le Baou) are still open (see photo below); the sky is clear, with only a few clouds.

“Note the narrowness of the field of vision, which significantly limited our chances of seeing the phenomenon.”

At precisely 9:17 p.m., from where I'm sitting, I see out of the corner of my eye something red suddenly appear from the east (i.e., from Nice) in the limited visual space outside.

I say to my wife: “Look! What is that?” I leap towards the window, then go out into the garden, telling him to do the same, but also grabbing the camera (Sony) from the sideboard.

By the time we both reach the window, a second, strictly identical “thing” (in size and color) appears in our field of vision, seeming to follow the first.

I immediately began taking photos, which was far from easy, because not only was it pitch black, but also, to our great astonishment, the “wheels” (because they weren't balls) suddenly diverged, taking completely different paths!

The term “wheels” was the one that came to mind, because they were two discs on their edges, both the same glowing red, the first followed by a very small, clearly visible pale green tail, unlike the second. Size at arm's length: about 2 to 3 mm for each “wheel” ²⁾; Elevation: about 50 to 60°; Distance: difficult to estimate, but giving the impression of great proximity (500 m?). Then begins a veritable aerial “show,” which I can describe as follows: The first “wheel” slowly continues its westward journey, stops, clearly comes toward us, growing larger, stops again, climbs slightly, describes a slight curve, and moves away toward the Col de Vence, with its greenish tail visible, to disappear very gradually, becoming a small dot, which we lose sight of on the horizon.

The second “wheel,” simultaneously, begins to head west following the first, stops for a few seconds, moves toward us, stops for a second or two, and immediately climbs into the sky toward the north, quite quickly, stops suddenly, descends again along exactly the same line, seems to approach us, and finally climbs toward the North Star, at an absolutely extraordinary speed, until it becomes nothing more than a point that blends into the sky. The two “wheels,” which seemed to be following each other at the beginning of the observation, therefore took separate paths to disappear (not together) from our view.

Total observation time: approximately 4 minutes 30 seconds (30 seconds to complete, going to the window using the Sony camera, 1 minute 30 seconds for the first “wheel,” and approximately 2 minutes 30 seconds for the second). I took twenty photos on the fly, some of which are completely black, obviously, due to a lack of precise framing; however, in one of the shots, after enlarging it on the computer, you can clearly see the two “wheels” together, at the moment when the first was heading towards the Pass, while the second was stationary. I think that in some photos, even though the “wheels” were moving, the sinusoids that appear are only due to my arm moving; it's a shame, but in the dark, it's impossible to do better. Photos A little disappointing, then! At one point, when the first “wheel” stopped, I verbally asked it to come towards us, and we both had the impression that it was doing so, growing larger (I know: it's unbelievable!). So, optical illusion or not?

We told ourselves that the next day, the newspapers and radio stations would talk about it… but no response; it seems no witnesses came forward. It's as if we were the only ones to admire this ballet.

Yet, in the street below our house, several cars passed by, and they could only have seen the phenomenon in front of them.

I didn't call the Nice airport tower, because “they never see anything.” Nor did I call the Nice observatory, where scientists are naturally skeptical, as I've already experienced.

It's worth noting that at 10:45 p.m., I went back out into the garden, still facing north, before going to bed;

I then immediately and clearly saw, for several seconds, at a 65° angle in the direction of Nice, what looked like two red distress flares. But were they really? They fell together toward the ground and disappeared behind the hedge in my garden.

At 11:00 p.m., I went home, took notes, and went to sleep. Is there a link between the two observations? I don't know.” Made and certified sincere in Cagnes-sur-Mer, May 21, 2012

Surprised not to find in his photos a faithful reflection of what he had observed, Alain Bauquet entrusted their processing to Claude Minghelli. The quality of the images has thus been improved, but considerable differences are all the more evident between what the witnesses remember and what appears in their photos.

Note from the LDLN's editor: There are other examples of photos showing something completely different from what the witnesses remember seeing. It would be useful to compile a list of these cases…

well, there you go

Jacques Vallée acknowledges that we don't have photographic evidence that is really good. Good to the point of being convincing to a jury of your peers. He asks - WHY ?

Jacques Vallée & Kevin Knuth: The Trinity Case
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal There are well informed skeptics

refs : extracted from (for ref)

(obsolete) The audio can still be heard online for that segment here : https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/TIF8646071078?selected=TIF3779868096 start from 95 minutes.

Extract from the Gérard Deforge files. MP.S., une dame assurément… très singulière, mentions the first case described by Jacques Vallée →

Jacques_Vallee_Lecture_Part_1-RECENT_CLOSE_ENCOUNTERS

For my re-analysis, see : re-analysis_of_mps_pictures

(Vidéo 3mn)

Jacques Vallee Lecture: Part 2 - RECENT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Garry Nolan mentioned also that second case : A case with vision but only a star like thing on the photo :

(Video 2mn)

Dr. Garry Nolan on UFO-related physical effects on humans

At 3mn30 in the vidéo below

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/ntx0kv/sam_harris_goes_further_on_ufos/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Blum, who died in 2016 at 84, also talked to Apollo 9 commander James McDivitt for the book. The astronaut said he had spotted a UFO while in space during NASA’s Gemini 4 mission.

“There was something out in front of me, or outside the spacecraft, that I couldn’t identify,” he said in a 1975 interview. “… It was rotating around. I noticed something out in front that was a white cylindrical shape with a white pole sticking out of one corner of it.”

McDivitt said he quickly grabbed a camera and took photographs, and then, “as the sun shone on the window, I could no longer see out, and the thing just disappeared.”

The photos ended up showing nothing.

After returning to Earth, he said he “went through each frame of all of the pictures that we took [during the mission], and there wasn’t anything in there like what I had seen.”

Source : https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/jun/13/years-before-publication-of-militarys-ufo-images-author-said-his-research-revealed-that-air-force-can-prove-aliens-exist/

In November of 2008 in the City of Claudio in Brazil, military personnel did pursuit in cane fields, two small beings that walked without touching the ground.

“We backed up the Military vehicle and stopped at a command point, we were about a 300 ft away from these “observed beings”, they did not appear in the camera, the lake that was reflecting the moonlight did not appear in the camera's viewfinder, although were ahead of us.”

“The humanoids were very bright, we didn't see eyes, and they didn't show up on the camera. Sgt Waldir Araújo Silva tried everything to photograph those “beings” but they didn't appear, even with the lens zoom, only the fireflies appeared.”

The original document was translated in English by Rony Vernet. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzRNGMjdASGExgY0UqFb5X8fVhyNauZA/view

Here in copy for the long term : relatorio_do_cmt_da_pm_em_claudio_en-us.pdf

This case in Claudio and how the military men (Sergeant Waldir Araujo Silva) could not see the entities on their cameras. This video is cued to start directly at the description of the moment of interest to us. You can activate subtitles translated in the language of your choice.

(Video 4mn)

CASO_EM_CLAUDIO-MINAS_GERAIS

Please note that the report goes more in the details than what's said in the video.

The thing was less than 2 meters away, almost at arm's length !

One option already considered for the belgium wave by Auguste Meessen has been that the UAP would produce a specific radiation (IR, UV,etc…) that is able to erase the latent image on the film.

In order to test the idea that by some special radiation (like the “Herschel effect”), the UAP did erase the latent picture on the gelatin,
I have checked the negatives graciously lent by MP.S. (the first case mentioned by Jacques Vallée)…

1. To see if the object did block some of the city lights behind in some part of the picture.
   1. If we can see some city lights in the area were the UAP is supposed to be in the picture, then there was nothing here to block light.
2. To see if the latent image was totally erased.
   1. If we can see some city lights in the area were the UAP is supposed to be in the picture, then there was nothing to hide. We cannot invoke erasure.

• The original pictures were taken using a Fujifilm disposable camera.
  • 24×36 (35mm) film format, 27 exposures
  • fujifilm Quicksnap fashion model
  • ISO 400/27°, imported from the USA in 2009.
  • fixed-focus 32mm f/10 lens
  • Horizontal angle of view of approximately 54 degrees
  • focus 1m to infinity, flash effective from 1m to 3m
    • it seems that on this model, you have to move a slider UP to activate the flash.
    • the picture of the camera that I took, shows the slider down

The few candidate negatives were digitized again, at an even higher resolution than previously by Douglas Trumbull for Jacques Vallée.

• Using an EPSON PERFECTION V700 PHOTO scanner,
• 48 bits/pixel
• 4800 ppp –> 6982 x 4581 resolution
• saved as tiff with no compression
• each frame was scanned 10 times and the mean of the 10 was computed using Deep Sky Stacker DSS-4.2.6, for noise reduction purpose (stacking).

That was checked in march of 2023. By elimination (all the other pictures being irrelevant in an obvious way), the pictures 8, 25 and 26, that seem to match in any way the description of the circumstances by the witness, do show almost blank frames.

These 8, 25 and 26 frames seem to match by default the event. But they show nothing more than a very noisy dark field with a few distant lights, like headlights from some cars.

Candidate Pictures 25 & 26 after some contrast enhancement that would have revealed anything.

THESE 2 pictures should not be reused without prior autorisation from MP.S (even though this wiki is under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Picture 8 may also match the circonstances

THIS picture should not be reused without prior autorisation from MP.S (even though this wiki is under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

These 3 pictures can be seen full res by clicking them. The original files are tiff files.

We can see some city lights, car lights here and there, and no dark shape can be distinguished. No light is blocked as far as we can tell.
We did not try to find a match of the lights in the 3 pictures.

Fortunately, she kept her camera, so I was able to measure the field of view of her camera. I would like to make an augmented reality reconstruction, it will be tuned with her. After that we will be able to superimpose the ghost of the object on the film to give us an idea of how shockingly big it is supposed to be in the frame (it was less than 2 meters away, almost at arm's length).

Combining thousands of cases, I can't find any escape route other than to consider that these light sources did exist only in the consciousness of the witnesses.

Still, this can happen in several ways.

1. They went into an altered state of consciousness. What they report did not happen precisely that way.
2. They were projected directly into their minds.
3. A false memory did/was implant/ed
4. …

Pinpointing the characteristics of the process should be easier with multiple witnesses cases

We are looking for new physics, through high strangeness, novel phenomena.

For the case of MP.S in 2010, what is quite amazing is that she could clearly see the UFO in the viewfinder of her camera (I explicitly asked her to confirm that she could see it through the viewfinder's optic made of plastic). She was sure that it should be on the picture. Full frame. The situation is precisely like the Ramillies picture by P. Ferryn. where he used a reflex camera in the 1990s.

That seems to contradict the notion of a direct projection into her mind. Logic will lead us to accept a complex situation.

In addition, she did not report that she felt going into or being in an altered state of consciousness.

Assuming that we are dealing with a sort of mind projection “technology” (into the 3D space representation inside her head)

• how could it also produce “photons” that follow the light path through the viewfinder. And be “seen”.
• but still these “photons” are special because they did not imprint the gelatin.

As far was we know, all conscious experiences (at least apart from hallucinations) have a neuronal correlate. That is, there is a chain on electromagnetic phenomena that starts from the physical object and ends deep into the brain.

Or there is something (and there are many things for sure), that we don't understand, that can connect, in some specific circonstances, consciousness to a “special reality”, but that “special reality” is metaphysical.

That “special reality” could have no direct causal relationship with our reality. That is, it cannot produce any direct effect on our world.

Such special photons, because they did not imprint the film in any way are not classical photons.

They do interact through the plastic material, because they follow the rules of optics.

They do imprint the consciousness of the witness.

But they don't imprint the gelatin (which is behind another plastic lens).

Is there a fundamental difference between these 2 types of interactions : imprint in gelatin vs detection by the cones and rods in the retina ? None.

So, these “photons”, follow physics and don't follow physics at the same time. Hum… what did we miss ?

To keep a minimum of consistency, one should then expect that these “photons” did not directly produce a neural correlate. They did not trigger the cones or rods of the retina of the witness.

We know that there were neural correlates in the end, since this event made the witness MP.S go to the balcony in order to follow the stimuli.

And, as a consequence, that would mean that the first neural correlates occurred, not upstream (as a cause) of the conscious experience (as we would expect, if the eyes and visual system were involved), but only as a downstream consequence of the conscious experience.

Even though we can consider that the witness was mislead, we still have to figure out a consistent process for the formation of the image through the viewfinder.

The optical elements in the viewfinder are not different in principle to the optical elements of the eye.

So, this leads us to think that the view of the UAP is not “directly” injected at the highest level of the though process (the 3D representation of the environment) but rather follows the rules of optics and physics all the way through. But with an a-causal chain.

It looks like these objects are able to interact with our reality according to the laws of physics (or not by the way), yet, the only traces left are in the memory of the witnesses.

Looks like these “special” emitted photons were able to extend their wave function through

• the air
• the optics of the viewfinder of the camera
• the eye's optical elements
• the whole neural network leading to the conscious experience

All this

• without collapse at any of these steps.
• without any trace left on the path
• without any energy released on the path

The difficulty is that there are many steps : many synapses must be crossed all over the brain before reaching the highest levels.

How come, all these steps can be passed through successfully in a normal way, yet with no trace left ? Could these ghost photons produce ghost electrons, then the virtual movement of neurotransmitters, evolving like in a parallel world, yet exploiting the scaffolding of the neural net of the brain ?

Here, we are describing something that looks very much like an entanglement, where several potentialities coexist. But in the end, only one “wins”. Not the one with the UAP since no trace is left. Yet the UAP is part of the conscious experience of the witness.

This implies that consciousness can sort of lock on an entangled, unrealized, purely potential twin reality.

This puts consciousness in a very special position, much less materialistic, more metaphysical.

We can already say that, that would imply that this experience is essentially a-causal. That is, there is no experiment that will be able to find a materialistic cause to this experience.

Prediction : such photons would not imprint the cmos sensor of a digital camera either. (like it did not in Brazil in 2008)

Observation : such photons, are not able to produce a conscious experience through the imaging system of a digital camera (optics/cmos sensor/serialization/analog to digital converter/memory/transfer to a screen).

Why such a difference ? That would deserve research in order to pinpoint the major differences.

Observation : there are UAP cases with physical traces –> Prediction : these UAPs are not of the same nature.

See PHI, a Voyage from the brain to the soul, by. Giulio Tononi

Tononi has written a few chapters to detail some of the major differences. He emphasized that a digital camera does not integrate information at any step toward the creation of the image in memory or on a display. That is, the information leading to a pixel going bright or dark is never mixed at any point with the information leading to the brightness of any other pixel in order to obtain “higher level” information.

The by product of a camera is just a picture. Each pixel living “it's life” independently from the others.

In his PHI concept, consciousness arrises as relevant information is extracted from the raw picture. Like the detection of edges, colors, shapes, types of objects. The more global the information is, merging lower level concepts together in a “relevant” way, the more conscious the “thing” is. The word “relevant” may look vague, but can be defined mathematically as a minimization function, like a compression function. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) do that.

Tononi, even if he expressed the extension of consciousness in time, did not mark time as playing a fundamental role.

I suspect that, time plays an essential role. Henri Bergson suggested that consciousness itself is a dynamic process that relies on the flow of time to exist. In his view, without the dimension of time, consciousness would lack its fundamental basis.

Tononi did not make use of the word entanglement. It could play some role, because, entanglement, if kept, allows for the wave function to extend further in space.

We don't know how to keep entanglement in the brain; the brain being an environment considered as warm and humid.

Lets list the differences between a digital camera and a human visual system.

In conclusion, at first glance, these experiences cannot be distinguished from “conventional” hallucinations. So, we have to dig for the specificity of hallucinations.

1. hallucinations are not shared among several persons. The existence of mass hallucinations is not a scientific concept in 2023.

Another thing.

Lets assume that these observations are the privilege of some special persons, that would have some special abilities to see these “special” photons. These would be present in human beings with a certain probability p.

That means that if a UAP is present, the probability for a pair of independent persons to “see” it is p².

That means that if in a pair of random, somewhat independent persons, with no special genetic link. If one of them sees a UAP. Then the probability for the second witness to see the same UAP should be p. That is, it should be rather rare to have both see it. That is a testable experiment. But, this prediction should be tested only on cases where a picture was well taken, and nothing was seen on the film. So that we know that we are dealing with the metaphysical type of UAP. Also, it is important that the witness be close to each other. Else there could be another effect at play (anisotropy of the visibility of the UAP). We have the situation with Rony Vernet in the amazon : Multiple witnesses in close proximity see it, but nothing appears on the display of the remote controller of the drone.

In the second case, presented by Jacques Vallée, 3 witnesses did see it from the car. That is a good candidate for having an estimation of p. Maybe p is 1 and they are nothing special !

But, we can also add the case in Brazil in 2008 with multiple witnesses, and the case of the Ramillies picture with several witnesses too. So, it is far from exaggerated to assign a value of 1 to p.

Based on some other cases : Such light sources, even when they are very bright (including extended light sources), are not blinding, do not hurt the eyes (pupil closing reflex present ?). Please note that the pupil constriction does not involve consciousness. It is a “automated” reflex. I bet that these lights produced no persistence of vision (to check). It is also reported sometimes by witnesses that the objects do not cast light on the ground; objects on the ground, in the light of the UFO, do not produce shadows. There are also cases where luminous objects do not illuminate the ground, when the witness would expect it.

And also there is a last possibility, which is that the whole thing is an implanted memory. But that's extremely tortuous, because the experience is not limited to the observation. All the context around should also be manipulated…. all the events that happened as a consequence of the observation. And each memory has a chronological tag attached. And you would have to justify why the blank picture was taken.

UFO investigator Ellen Crystall experienced numerous instances where UFOs seen at close range failed to appear on photographs ³⁾. Pine Bush was a UFO hotspot where Crystall and colleagues repeatedly saw anomalous craft and lights. In one 1980 encounter, four witnesses watched a large triangular craft hovering about 200 feet across. Two cameras clicked away at the object. Yet when the films were developed, “nothing was on them that resembled what we had seen” – no solid triangle, only “exotic discharges and sprays of multicolored lights” in a vague outline

On another occasion, Crystall recalls that “we all saw clearly visible metallic-looking UFOs, but the pictures showed cloudy blue vapors” around where the object had been – an aura the witnesses’ eyes did not register. These bizarre photo results were not one-offs. Crystall reports that many of her close-range UFO photos turned out blank or inexplicably distorted, as if some energy was obscuring the image. “Too many photos had been blanked out in some of the spectacular close sightings,” she writes;

it was as if a trade-off were being made: “You want to see us up close? Then no photographs.”

“Everyone keeps hoping for a definitive photo — the clear-cut “real” picture of a craft in the sky. I understand and share those hopes, but after photographing the ships in a systematic manner for so many years, I've made startling discoveries that indicate those hopes are in vain. Those in the know — i.e., the government intelligence community — apparently discovered it before I did but kept their knowledge a secret.”

Her experiences in Pine Bush (captured in Silent Invasion, 1991) exemplify a pattern of camera evidence being seemingly suppressed – either by technical interference or, as she eventually suspected, by the phenomenon’s own intent.

According to the Gallup poll of November 29, 1973, 11% of the American adult population, or 15 million people, claimed to have seen UFOs ⁴⁾.

These results, although impressive, do not allow us to know the real number of objects observed (several witnesses may have observed the same object, the same witness may have observed several objects), nor how many of these objects would have remained “unidentified” if they had been observed by competent people, nor the specificity of these cases.

Sturrock’s study answers these uncertainties ⁵⁾. In fact, his survey was carried out by the people in the world best able to decide whether an object is identifiable or not. The 1175 members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (of San Francisco}; he gives the total number of these unidentified cases: 20: the total number of witnesses. 33. of which 17 belong to the AIAA; the number of these cases very high strangeness: 2.

The previous statistic studies ⁶⁾ had shown that the probability of observing a UFO is substantially the same for all categories of the population. If there is a difference between the Sturrock sample and the population as a whole, one can apparently foresee the following causes of variation: on the one hand the members of AIAA can be assumed to be the most curious to look the sky ; but this possible cause cannot play any role in cases with a very high level of strangeness, where the witness cannot not see; on the other hand, the members of the AIAA are scientists who spend a large part of their time under the ceiling of laboratories or offices and must be presumed less often exposed to the opportunity to observe UFOs and especially to encounter UFOs on the ground in open country (those that interest us here). It therefore seems that a prudent attitude authorizes us to take the results of Sturrock as not exceeding, rather on the contrary, those of the whole population.

Table I STURROCK DATA

The total adult population of the United States considered in the 1973 Gallup is approximately 136,000,000. Applied to this population, Sturrock's data give the following results:

Table II REAL UFO SIGHTINGS OVER THE UNITED STATES

There is no indication that the manifestations of the phenomenon have a particular character in the United States. On the contrary, all studies so far show its constancy and homogeneity throughout the world ⁷⁾.

If we extend Sturrock's data to all countries with an advanced technical level (whose definition is debatable, but whose population will be difficult to set at less than one billion three hundred million) we obtain the following results:

Table III REAL UFOs IN ADVANCED COUNTRIES

We can therefore, from Sturrock's data, estimate at more than two million the number of cases of very high strangeness observed so far in countries with advanced technology.

Almost all cases with very high strangeness are landings and close-up observations.

In advanced countries, most people have a camera. Many have a super 8 camera. They are happy to always have these devices with them. But the opportunity to take very close-up photos and films, therefore of high quality, with lots of detail, has occurred so far two million times in these countries.

But we have no photos, nor any films of this kind, while we should have dozens of millions. We should have a complete and very numerous stock of photos of objects on the ground with entities facing, from the profile, from the back, doing their activities so many times described. We should have films of all this. We have nothing. Panic. giddiness, the tool, the absence of apparatus can explain why many opportunities have been missed. That all have been missed is unbearable.

The objection of the very small number of witnesses who come forward is also untenable. A witness who has only his story to report has excellent reasons to keep quiet. And if he keeps quiet, his testimony remains unknown. But a photo or a film are physical objects that go astray, reproduce, propagate, especially when they are extraordinary. If we have neither film nor photo, it is because, on the two thousand occasions when they could have been taken, they were not taken a single time.

a) First explanation: There are no UFOs and all the stories are fabrications.

There would therefore be more than two million fabricators. In these two million, all professions (we know this from statistics) are represented proportionally to their social distribution. There is therefore the required number of professional photographers. of tricksters professional photographers. of professional directors of special effects. However, all these individuals, without consulting each other, would have chosen a single type of fabrication. the story.

We will say that they abstain because it is difficult. But, 1) why? why are there not thousands of photos and films badly filmed by presumptuous tricksters? 2) We have thousands of absurd and ridiculous stories. Why not thousands of absurd and clumsy photos ? (I remind you that we are only talking here about cases with a very high Strangeness Index, which in photography corresponds to detailed, nervous, close-up photos). 3) It is false that, for a professional, such fabrications are difficult. However, there are none.

Not only is the explanation by fabrication untenable. but the absence of visual fabrication teach us something that seems fundamental. namely that the detail of the UFO phenomenon comes from a single source: the oral source, the story.

b) Second explanation. the close-up UFO cannot be photographed.

This can be understood in several ways: either that it is not of a physical nature (but the traces on the ground ? the photos and the distant pictures ? the various detections, by radar, by magnetometer etc…) or that the close witness is prevented from using his devices.

If he is prevented from using his devices (which the cases that I have studied incline me to accept as a true explanation) it is that the witness is psychologically controlled and that he is so without his Knowledge. We have some cases where witnesses, after the fact realize that they have not thought to use their devices and find this oversight “inexplicable”. It remains in fact. However this “inexplicable” oversight is the universal rule.

c) Other remarks suggested by the figures.

From a statistical study of 831 cases of landings in advanced countries. Ted Phillips was able to establish that the average duration of landings is around five minutes (5). If we accept that the number of landings in advanced countries is 2,000,000, that is 10^7 minutes, or 19 years during which a UFO remained on the ground somewhere in advanced countries under the eyes of one or more witnesses. If we accept that the people questioned during the surveys report cases that occurred mainly during the last quarter of a century, we must conclude that every day, a UFO landed on the ground under the eyes of one or more witnesses for 19 hours in average.

These calculations (and others like them) all show how inexpl1ceable is the absence of photos or other close documents.

These considerations have taken as a basis: the data of Sturrock because they contain all the elements of the calculation. One may be tempted to object that it is risky to base too much on a single source.

But one arrives at the same results by panning the most severe and most negative figures, for example those given formerly by the USAF. according to which only 2% of UFOs remain unidentified. It is enough that the order of magnitude of the number of witnesses be what is regularly in the surveys.

If only 2% of the cases (the lowest figure given by the USAF) remain unidentified with 11% of witnesses, we still have 2,800,000 witnesses of real UFOs. Let's estimate the proportion of cases with a high Strangeness Index at 1% (which seems unreasonably low when examining the catalogs). There are still 28,000 cases. Even with these estimates reduced beyond all possibility, the absence of photos and films remains inexplicable. I have been able to meet and interview five witnesses of ball lightning and compare this phenomenon to the close observation of a UFO. Ball lightning seems rarer, it is more unexpected, more fleeting and more petrifying than the UFO. However, there are photos of ball lightning.

For unknown reasons related to their nature, everything we know or think we know about what UFOs seen up close really are comes from a single source: the story told after the fact by close witnesses; but the statistic seems to be able to be explained only if all the close witnesses are under the psychic control of the UFO. (The only alternative explanation would be that the UFO can, from a distance, erase any document that one takes of it. There is a recent case suggesting such a possibility. But why would it not erase photographs taken from a distance?) It seems, then, that we must admit our total ignorance about the real nature, appearances and behavior of UFOs seen at close range ⁸⁾. In my opinion, we may only begin to have an idea of ​​what a UFO really is when we can have impersonal witnesses, offering no hold for psychic control (multifunctional detection station like the one proposed by Poher). In the meantime, the accounts of witnesses must continue to be collected with care and considered, not as a statement of the truth, but as an effect of close observation on the human psyche. Perhaps we will one day find a fruitful way to analyze these accounts. We do not know whether impersonal witnesses will escape UFO control any more than human thought. But since it is possible to infinitely modify artificial devices (which is impossible to do on the human psyche), perhaps the difficulty will one day be resolved in this way. I admit that I do not see how it could be otherwise. In my opinion, the facts presented here also require other conclusions, including in areas far removed from Ufology. But it seems wise to first examine whether these initial conclusions are solid.

Aimé MICHEL, 29/9/1975.

P.S… After discussing this article with several important ufologists, including Mr. Lagarde, I would like to clarify two points:

(1) It should not be forgotten, when reading the calculations above, that they should only be taken as invitations to think. To be definitively conclusive, statistics must be based on very large numbers. Here we are missing the percentage of witnesses who said they were very close in the Gallup polls. I have supplemented this with the Sturrock results, which are based on too small a sample, and with catalogues, which perhaps do not represent a sample. Despite this, the absence of a photo does not seem to me to be explicable.

(2) Before accepting “psychic control” as an explanation, all other less dramatic hypotheses must be explored. In particular, it is possible that the optical properties of the UFO are such that up close it burns all emulsions.

About the lack of clear unquestionable pictures

I am a bit surprised that his list below does not contain the situation discussed above, where an object seen leaves nothing on the film

In what follows, the absence of fakes as an argument can be ignored and does not change the core of the problem : the absence of authentic documents of good quality

Even though he does not consider the consciousness element, I think that he was on a good track.

Michel had already analyzed that issue in 1976.

Almost 45 years later, the analysis by Aimé Michel looks outdated. It mostly remains correct.

The first edition of the book was released in 1958 after the 1954 wave of sightings in France, with many ufo landings.

There are certainly some remaining fake pictures, but they are essentially lost in the “noise”. Most fakes have been identified. And what follows is not sensitive to that issue.

The ETH as presented looks naive now. Michel already knew that this was much more complex than just visitors in their ships.

Yet, this hypothesis is not falsifiable.

Little has changed since 1976. We are just more cornered to a smaller subset of what Michel could imagine.

We all have cameras at hand. But no convincing document (see below).

Jacques Vallée went a step further to Aimé Michel and proposed the alternative idea that ufos are in control of space time locally. ”UFOs and their operators are able to materialize and dematerialize on the spot and to penetrate physical obstacles”. “I think it constitutes both a physical entity with mass, inertia, volume, and energy, and a window toward another mode of reality. In this alternative reality the witnesses describe psychic manifestations reminiscent of our own dreams” ⁹⁾.

Jacques Vallée warned : “The genuine UFO phenomenon, as I have shown in Confrontations, is associated with a form of nonhuman consciousness that manipulates space and time in ways we do not understand. None of the revelations of crashed disks at Hangar 18 or Area 51 is adequate to explain the enormous data base researchers have assembled about real UFOs, but in the heat of debate such logical, rational standards are swept aside. We have forgotten which problem we were trying to solve.” ¹⁰⁾

Vallée was trying to combine the seemingly absurd characteristics reported by the witnesses.

I would then add : So, it would be physical, but in an “alternative reality”. An “alternative reality” that leaves no trace upstream to the conscious experience, even though it makes use of the physical reality for reaching the status of a conscious experience.

Aimé Michel wrote in the book “Mystérieux Objets Celestes” in 1977 …

3. Here we must confront the most incomprehensible contradiction of the phenomenon, the one that may one day lead us to the truth.

We have seen that the number of real witnesses (who do not speak) is very high. The most cautious percentages (of which Sturrock's polls give us an idea) suggest numbers of the order of a million for a country like France, four to five million for the United States, etc. We have also seen that nothing distinguishes the witness from any other member of the population.

In particular, they are statistically distributed in the same professions.

Among the tens of millions of witnesses in countries with advanced technology, there is therefore the required number of professional photographers, professional cameramen, professional tricksters, and image amateurs.

If we evaluate, even roughly, the ranges of probabilities, we arrive at this: that there should therefore exist dozens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of documents, photos or films, showing in close-up, with all their details, UFOs landed on the ground, their maneuvers seen up close, all the phantasmagoria reported in this book and elsewhere, and especially the characters so often described by the witnesses, also in close-up, from the back, from the front, in broad daylight, at night with a flash.

But we have none of that.

There are indeed a few hundred photos, but none (except for a few proven tricks) show the details of what I will call the “primordial scene”: object landing on the ground, characters coming out and engaging in their mysterious activities, a scene of which every detail, over the last thirty years, should have been photographed and filmed a great number of times ¹¹⁾, since it has been seen on hundreds of thousands of occasions.

The first feeling, faced with such a huge and inexplicable gap, is that, as Bergier says, “there is nothing”, that the story of UFOs is that of a myth gradually elaborated by liars: the liars, too, must form a correct sample of the population.

However, this explanation is contradictory in itself. It is inconsistent, because if the witnesses were lying, then all those filmmakers, photographers, “special effects” technicians that the results of the surveys indicate among them would also be lying: we should therefore have tens or hundreds of thousands, not of authentic photos and films, but of tricks! We do have some tricks, but bad, clumsy ones. These are crude amateur works. There are certainly liars among the “witnesses”. The total absence of good or only passable fakes shows that they are very few in number, not enough to represent the “testimony” of good professional fakers. The absence of these fakes that statistics would lead us to predict is as inexplicable as the absence of authentic documents.

4. It takes time to become aware of what this double gap, so inexplicable, implies one way or the other. For me this time has lasted two years, circa 1974-76. Anyway, the first question to consider was to know why those who should have been in a position of shooting such films or photos have not done so. In advance we could predict that their explanations would be improbable, since the absence of documents cannot be explained.

It so happens (going through the many collections of testimonies published in recent years) that the explanations, taken separately, are on the contrary all perfectly plausible and attributable to the conjugation of two or three contrary circumstances:

• the witness had no device at hand;
• he had one, but this one was not loaded;
• it was loaded, but the scene was happening at night and it had no flash;
• the witness had everything he had to, but he was stunned, thinking of nothing else than to look without believing his eyes;
• he only had one idea: to run away, trembling with fear;
• he took pictures, all misfires, the film was overexposed or underexposed, which the panic explains enough, and we did not see nothing ;
• the development of the film happened to accidentally destroy the film;
• the device has been lost or stolen;
• the tape sent in development was misplaced by the post, etc.

You can attribute some of these to bad luck. It is impossible to believe in all (the reader keeps present in his mind the results of the polls) .. Their monotonous repetition is contrary to all the laws of chance when, precisely, we do not see here any other possible cause than chance.

Circumstances perpetually unfavorable ?

For thirty years, while the “primordial scene ” (the polls prove it) is contemplated in average every day a number of times of the order of ten in all high-tech countries, where devices and cameras exist in the tens of millions? Come on! It's impossible. We are no longer here in the uncertain world of human testimony, that science only handles with tweezers and with a mind guesswork. It is according to the laws of large numbers that we are dealing with the very ones who do physics the most reliable science.

We are faced with a totally unacceptable alternative in both cases.

a) If what these people are saying happened as they did say (and, obviously, as they believe, the investigators know this well), then there should be dozens, even hundreds of thousands of authentic documents clear and detailed.

b) If they are lying, why those of them whose profession is to make fakes (for the cinema, the arts, the press, etc.) tell like the others a fantastic story while limiting themselves to telling it, often quite moved and trembling, knowing that hardly anyone will believe them, when nothing would be easier for them professionally than to tell no story and to confine oneself to showing photos, films, etc. ?

Where are these thousands of faked photos and films (I'm talking, let's not forget, films and photos showing the “primordial scene”)?

Don't say, “It's difficult. ” No. All professional will tell you. I worked for twenty years in the Research Department of the Office de Radio French Television: it's not difficult. The rigging on Film does not stand up to scrutiny, it is true. But it is very easy to photograph and actually film a rigged scene. And it's exceedingly easy to put on a staged saucer. If no “document” shows us this ¹²⁾, it is, in my opinion, that the witnesses are telling the truth, as fantastic as it appears. The scientific study of dozens of thousands of recorded cases also confirm this.

I do not know or have never heard of any man from science which, having directly studied a reasonable number of testimonials, say a few hundred, concluded to their unreality. We have surveys conducted among scientists before and after study of the files. Before, the majority thinks like Bergier that “there is nothing”. After, those who admit the testimonies form almost 100% and the few who reserve only have doubts about the nature of what these people saw.

5. We are therefore led to admit this unprecedented enormity that the close observation of the U.F.O puts in default the surest laws of science, those of large numbers. But how ? Let’s make this remark once again capital, in my opinion: if we choose, to try to save these laws, to believe that all witnesses deliberately lie, nothing is saved at all, since this does not explain the absence of false documents. But, moreover, this hypothesis closes the way to any possibility of explanation. I don't see how to escape these inextricable difficulties (and, let us emphasize, posed in terms of science, not speculation or testimony) other than admitting in the very nature of close observation a component, say, irrational.

Witnesses do not lie. But they are wrong. And more precisely (because not everyone can always be wrong), they are deceived. What they say (and believe) they have done or seen, or both, when closely observed, does not correspond to reality.

And here, beware ! The polls are warning us that we must rule out the hypothesis of an ordinary pathological error: psychopathologically speaking, the witness is in no way different from the common mortals.

It can only be an error to which all the close witnesses would be induced. And this error cannot be either a small one, slight slip from a real memory or a slight embellishment. No show in the world can, at the price of a boost, turn into the story that tell the children of Prémanon, or more recently Maurice Masse, the Hills and the Kellys in the United States, that millions of other witnesses in the world only tell their most trusted friend, or no one.

6. What is the nature of the error, where surely almost all, and probably all close witnesses are misled ? To try to approach this problem, we must finally ask ourselves on the real nature of U.F.Os. What we surely know (observations and radar recordings, reception on military countermeasure devices, traces on the ground, effects of various electromagnetic appearance, etc.) leads us attribute to U.F.O.s the main characteristics of an aerial vehicle.

But no known machine is capable of the observed performance, and all “secret” gear is known.

The space competition of the Russians and the Americans spread out, under the gaze of the world, the limit of what they are capable;

U.F.O., it's infinitely different.

Between the most sophisticated rocket and the U.F.O. turning to acute angle at 10 Mach without making any noise, there is nothing common.

We are therefore cornered in what we called the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis, or ETH. There are many, even among ufologists, who reject the ETH because they have a contradictory idea. It is impossible, they say, to travel from star to star, and the slowness of the journey even technically supposed mastered is such that the probability that the Earth is visited by other humanities is almost zero. Besides, how can a tour de force so prodigious anyway can end up with furtive appearances without making contact with earthly humanity ? Finally, the maneuvers of U.F.O.s are impossible. These questions and objections are unanswerable. But this logical rigor stops halfway. Don't start it and then refuse to see where it leads us. It is true that everything we know shows us the impossibility of travel in the order of interstellar distances.

That if, despite everything, someone in the vast universe is able to cross these distances, it is certain that he is not using any means currently imaginable by man. This someone if he exists does not use the technology or the science that we know.

Jean Pierre Tennevin notes the physical abnormalities in paranormal cases, like in ufo cases. In the paranormal, the paranormal part of it is always blurry.

“When it comes to UFOs in flight, it's the same photographic mess every time you try to capture one: the void, the blur, the ambiguous shape, or, if you think you have something good, the difficulty in proving that it's not a fake.”

“What is absolutely missing is the indisputable image of either the humanoid or its machine on the ground.”

“It is clear that these combined misfortunes denote a very mysterious - and disturbing - intervention which does not only act on the psyche of the witnesses but on the circumstances themselves. […] and concerns all paranormal phenomena”

In the book “Le vrai visage du Padre Pio” by Maria Winowska, “The most surprising thing is these photos, which we think are successful, reveal a completely neutral film. In the cited work on Padre Pio, I note (p. 62): For years, photographers tried hard, from the front, from the back, sneaking around, trying to catch him by surprise: the film remained blank: the same film could capture impeccable shots: as soon as the camera was pointed at the Father, the shutter did not operate properly. ¹³⁾”

(I am extremely doubtful of this very last example, because, here we are not dealing with a fleeting materialization. Counteracting is much much much easier. I'd rather check the end source of this information)

Flying Saucer Review (fsr) 1975 volume 21 number 5, also has an article by Aimé Michel about this very subject. In this article, he was bound to accept that the witness is prevented from using his photographic equipment.

He wrote in this article : “Up till now I have managed to meet and interrogate five eyewitnesses of ball-lightning, and to compare this phenomenon of ball-lightning with a close-proximity sighting of a UFO. Ball-lightning seems much the rarer of the two phenomena, and it is more unexpected, and more fugitive, and more terrifying than a UFO. Nevertheless photographs of ball-lightning exist”

But he also wrote : “The only alternative explanation would be that UFOs can erase, at a distance, any documentary evidence of them that we can get. There are in fact a number of cases which do suggest such a possibility. But then why don't they erase all the long-range photos too?”

Hence the relevance of what I wrote.

fsr 1973 volume 19 number 2 THE OREGON PHOTO – Using photography to tackle a mystery

That case does not really fit.

“The difference between what the man saw and what the camera recorded has made this one of the most controversial pictures in UFO circles in years. However, the quality of the picture and the witness have kept the issue in the centre ring of concern and as yet, without resolution.” (1973)

Well, it happens that this case was (at least) a mis interpretation of a picture. It was a road sign being passed at speed. (Irwin Weider UFO Magazine 1994) (a picture of the road sign is shown in THE UFOS THAT NEVER WERE by Jenny Randles, Andy Roberts & David Clarke)

The witness said that he did see the UFO in the viewfinder.

So, actually, if not a fake, this is another case where the UFO did not imprint the film.

fsr 1976 22 5 UFO Physics I

How is it possible that such a vivid light doesn't illuminate its surroundings? The answer is simple: it isn't possible. This is an unknown type of radiation, perceived by us as light. It is apparently much less reflected by common objects than normal light is. It doesn't illuminate. Only direct rays reach the observer. It is somewhat disconcerting to realize that at night such an object would be (almost) invisible when looked at in a mirror. Apart from not being reflected, this radiation very much resembles normal light. It penetrates glass, we see it and it can be photographed ¹⁴⁾. A very strange effect was noted in case 201 (see also the previous paragraph): a 'solid light' beam emitting non-reflecting light entered a room through the window and projected the window frame on the opposite wall, while maintaining strictly uniform luminosity itself.

Radar Cover, from the SCEAU archives. 1954 wave in France

https://www.8newsnow.com/news/statement-from-a-senior-manager-of-baass

WARNING : this article cites no source, provides absolutely no context information.

Statement from a Senior Manager of BAASS

by: Staff

Posted: May 4, 2018 / 05:28 PM PDT / Updated: May 9, 2018 / 10:05 AM PDT

BAASS broke new ground in professionalism by hiring, training and deploying 50 full-time staff comprising retired military intelligence and law enforcement officers, PhD level scientists, engineers, technicians, analysts, translators, and project managers to create the largest multi-disciplinary full-time team in history to investigate the UFO topic.

The investigations by BAASS provided new lines of evidence showing that the UFO phenomenon was a lot more than nuts and bolts machines that interacted with military aircraft. The phenomenon also involved a whole panoply of diverse activity that included bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more. The exclusive focus on nuts and bolts machines could be considered myopic and unproductive in solving the larger mystery of UFOs.

One of the major successes of BAASS was in adopting the novel approach of utilizing the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with the UFO phenomenon. This novel approach aimed to circumvent the increasing evidence of deception and subterfuge by the UFO phenomenon in that multiple eyewitnesses co-located in the same vicinity frequently reported seeing widely different events. The evidence was multiplying that the UFO phenomenon was capable of manipulating and distorting human perception and therefore eyewitness testimony of UFO activity was becoming increasingly untrustworthy. The BAASS approach was to view the human body as a readout system for UFO effects by utilizing forensic technology, the tools of immunology, cell biology, genomics and neuroanatomy for in depth study of the effects of UFOs on humans.

This approach marked a dramatic shift away from the traditional norms of relying on eyewitness testimony as the central evidentiary arm in UFO investigations. The approach aimed to bypass UFO deception and manipulation of human perception by utilizing molecular forensics to decipher the biological consequences of the phenomenon. The result of applying this new approach was a revolution in delineating the threat level of UFOs.