Tuesday, September 8, 2020

A Story May Be Accurate, but Is It True?

Spooky hallway in the Crescent Hotel and Spa
of Eureka Springs, AR. The Crescent is dubbed
America's most haunted hotel.
Sometimes we hear a story about paranormal subject matter that sounds really compelling. Some reports of unusual experiences might indeed represent odd occurrences, but it should be a given that many do not. How the storyteller frames the circumstances - what they leave in, what they leave out, etc. - can make a huge difference. 

The use of language is very important. We can either inadvertently or intentionally mislead others, as well as ourselves, depending on how we describe things, repeat and embellish them over time, and so on.

People often do not accurately interpret descriptions of things we try to transfer through words. We can't even transmit a thoroughly accurate signal, and they can't receive it if we could. To complicate matters, they often think they understand fully. They are then subject to taking on their own inaccurate mental vision of a story as if it is a correct representation of actuality, and then later describing that evolving and shifting mental vision as what someone else told them took place. The process then repeats as the story is passed along. 

Paranormal stories rarely have resolution. We often just don't know what happened, but understanding points an author may omit or fail to pursue has the potential to significantly help us with listing and ranking possible explanations. Let's consider an example.

The Ghost Story

Several years ago I resided in a house about 100 years old. I taught music lessons and sold instruments, often in the house.

One night I had just arrived home from the grocery store. I carried some bags up the front steps. As I reached an elevated wooden front porch, out of the corner of my eye I thought I caught a glimpse of an old woman standing in the yard to my right. 

She seemed to be standing in a line of trees. I initially interpreted her to be wearing outdated clothes, or, we might say, garments from another era. I thought she perhaps had on an apron or long skirt, and maybe a bonnet or something on her head.

I had the impression she was lost or distressed, which is to say it would be pretty strange to be standing around in someone's yard at night. I set the bags of groceries down before turning to address the woman because I suspected this interaction might require more care than a typical exchange with a neighbor. I was prepared to ask her if she was okay, and take some responsibility for the situation if she was not. I turned to face her and she was gone.

A few weeks later I was working at a musical instrument display I set up in a local store. I was playing an electronic keyboard. This one man, about 65 years old, took my business card. Momentarily he returned with excitement.

"Hey," he told me, alternately looking at me and my card, "I grew up at this address."

"Is that right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I sure did," he continued, telling me how the now paved road used to be dirt, and a few other things of note.

"You know," he eventually said, "that house is haunted..."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, it's my mom. She loved that place, and people saw her for years after she died. She played piano, and people who lived in the house would say they heard her playing a few notes now and then."

I encouraged him to stop by the house if the mood ever struck. One Sunday he took me up on it.

He came up the steps, onto the porch, and I welcomed him into the house. Far and away the most prominent thing one would first notice would be the musical instruments all over the place. This was no regular living area I kept. Electronic keyboards, music books, an old upright piano. He enthusiastically explained how his mom (the piano player) would have loved this. 

I gave him some space and allowed him to browse the home, just him and his memories. We chatted a bit afterward, about his mother and old stories about the house, and I bid him farewell.   

It seemed I had quite a ghost story on my hands, complete with my own sighting!

More of the Story

I would not try to validate or devalue the man's beliefs, as of course I wasn't there and have no idea what all may or may not have taken place. I really can't speak to his experiences and interpretations, but I can speak to mine.

There are some things that should be considered before we assume my experience necessarily has any relevance at all to his story, much less validates spirits walk the earth as apparitions after physical death. The following offers an example of how an author might omit potentially important info, leading readers to make a lot of assumptions about the above ghost story.

At the time in question, my music students were primarily senior citizens. Overwhelmingly so, as a matter of fact. I spent a great deal of time around aged people. I taught recreational music making on keyboards. I had been doing this in one capacity or other, from Florida to Maryland, for years.

We often conducted social events in the house to increase morale and create traffic. These might include keyboard concerts consisting of Big Band music, and costumes were encouraged. We'd do Western Day, 1950's Day, salutes to veterans, and so on, depending on things like holidays and time of year. Suffice it to say I spent significant amounts of time not only with seniors, but with us all dressed in outfits from yesteryear, and on that very property. I think it's reasonable to suppose that if my 'ghost' was a momentary optical illusion, it would seem pretty likely that what I might think I saw would be an older person in outdated clothing. I had, in fact, frequently seen and greeted just such actual people from the porch on which I stood. 

As first mentioned, the ghost woman seemed to be standing in a dark tree line. I was standing on an elevated porch, illuminated by a porch light. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to suspect I may have momentarily mistaken a tree or shadows in the outlying dark for a person. A storyteller could, hypothetically, leave out the part about it being night, omit the fact they were standing in an illuminated area while glancing into the darkness, fail to mention the perception was simply a fleeting glimpse, etc. 

Also, and I came to think this might be pretty relevant, I had just arrived home from the grocery store. As the story suggests, it was nearing the end of the day. It was a work day, I was tired, and I went grocery shopping on top of that. So not only do those points seem potentially relevant to me, but particularly the part about being in a store just before it happened.

I had just left a place where lots of people were milling around. It wouldn't seem all that odd to mistakenly think I saw a person when I looked into the dark, or, in a manner of speaking, looked at an ink blot. This might be considered similar to spending a day at an amusement park riding a roller coaster, then continue to have the dizzying sensations when closing our eyes at night to go to sleep. When veterinarians get home after a long day, do they 'see' dogs in the shadows? And particularly if they saw a few more on their way home from the office? 

The musical aspect of the story might be considered an intriguing coincidence. While that is indeed the case, it's also true that it was extremely common for women of the relevant age group to play piano. It was once considered a pretty standard part of a well rounded education and cultural upbringing. We might also consider it's extremely unlikely the other residents of the home who apparently reported ghost sightings, as mentioned by the man, were using the property as a music store. It's a pretty shaky connection, albeit a potentially fun and entertaining story to tell.   

We'll never know for sure about the vast majority of these kinds of situations. However, the discriminating reader realizes all possibilities are not equal. A great deal more hypothetical circumstances must be taken into evidence to assume a ghost sighting than, for instance, a trick on tired eyes. Whether a writer chooses to research optical illusions or spend their time learning about seances may make all the difference as to how they frame a story. Similar may of course be said about a UFO writer allocating some attention to exotic aircraft as compared to spending inordinate amounts of time absorbing and relaying sensational stories.

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Recommended related reading:

UFO Critical Thinking 101

Eye of the Beholder

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

CIA Serves Assist to Researchers Seeking Previously Processed UFO Docs

The CIA FOIA response referenced in this post and containing a CIA list of UFO documents may be viewed in its entirety and downloaded at either Keep&Share or Google Drive

The Central Intelligence Agency recently provided The UFO Trail a list of UFO-related documents generated from an internal "Requester Report" database. The list contains identifying information of 713 previously processed documents totaling 2,780 pages. The Agency explained the documents may be requested individually or the entire package may be purchased on CDROM for $10.

"Please be advised," the CIA wrote, "the Agency has released to previous requesters numerous pages of UFO-related documents under the FOIA. Most of this material was located as a result of previous searches for records conducted on behalf of earlier requesters for information regarding UFOs. Any releasable material as a result of these earlier, thorough searches is included in this package."   

The 33-page list was supplied in conjunction with a July 28 CIA response to an FOIA request pertaining to Stuart Nixon, a former executive director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. The request sought records referencing Nixon in addition to two documents already located on the CIA website. 

The CIA provided one additional item in response, a 1973 newspaper clipping featuring Nixon. He commented in the article on a rise in the number of UFO reports in the wake of the now legendary Pascagoula alleged alien abduction case. Reports apparently increased tenfold, and Nixon stated NICAP was "literally swamped with calls" after the event in Mississippi.

The July 28 CIA response emphasized in bold font there is no current organized CIA effort to conduct research in connection with UFO phenomena, nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1960's. The CIA indicated many of the documents on the list relate to the Scientific Advisory Panel, or Robertson Panel, and to sightings as reported in the foreign news media.

For those interested in requesting some or all of the records, the response stated:

View the full CIA response

If you want to obtain some of the listed records, it might be a good idea to first search for the document by title at the CIA online reading room. It may already be posted online. 

If you don't find the doc on the website, submit an FOIA request to CIA. Reference the document title along with its "CadreRefID" number and publication date. You'll find them on the list. Ask to be notified prior to filling the request if charges are applicable, or if costs are estimated to exceed a specific amount you state you are willing to pay. They'll often just mail you a free hard copy of the doc if it's only a few pages. The Agency will otherwise inform you how to proceed. Here is what the list format looks like:













To obtain the full set of records on disc, submit an FOIA request for the entire package of UFO documents on CDROM as referenced in FOIA response F-2020-01742. Be sure to clarify you want the CDROM (not hard copies with printing and postage fees for 2,780 pages). Specify to notify you of charges and the Agency will instruct you how to complete the transaction from there.