UFO Show, Monster Mash Focus On Alien Phenomenon
Margaret Smith/Staff Writer
Thu Oct 18, 2007, 07:00 AM EDT
Watertown - “Welcome, Earthlings!” To the terrestrials filing into the Ancient Order of the Hibernians Hall in Watertown Friday night, the greeting on the slide at the start of a PowerPoint presentation was a little bit more than a playful jest.
Before making their way to their seats, they bought some refreshments and collected their complimentary copies of “Fate” – the pioneering digest-sized publication filled with stories of mysteries lights in the sky, alien encounters, government conspiracies and tales of consorting with the supernatural.
Many took the opportunity to shake hands and buy autographed books from a panel of researchers studying various aspects of the UFO phenomenon. The panelists delve into phenomena ranging from so-called crop circles – strange, geometric patterns cut into fields of grain or grass – and triangular crafts some have say they saw hovering or gliding overhead, a little too close for comfort.
And so began the second annual 2007 Mass UFO Show and its counterpart, the Mass Monster Mash. The event is a two-night extravaganza with the former focusing on whether visitors – friendly or otherwise – have left their calling cards on our planet.
The latter is devoted to cryptozoology, the study of reported but unclassified that have crawled, slithered and tromped their way into modern folklore. Of these, the most familiar to the general public include Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.
Both events are the brain children of John Horrigan of Watertown, amateur astronomer and hobbyist historian who says the unexplained shouldn’t go unexplored.
Horrigan, a member of the Mutual UFO Network – a large organization of investigators of UFO reports -- said, although many reports are debated or dismissed, a fascination with the subject is more alive than ever and finding new avenues and adherents.
“It’s all over the Internet – UFOology, cryptozoology, ghosts…I felt that there was a void here in New England, especially in Boston, where people could meet and hear the top speakers of the word. My wife describes it as a reunion of sorts.”
A reunion it appeared to be, as those who share a passion for spooky stories converge at the gatherings.
Among them was Tim Binnall of Burlington, who founded and moderates www.binnallofamerica.com, a Web site with a companion Podcast that provide a forum about UFOs, cryptozoology and other subjects.
Taken together, these and related subjects are often referred to as “paranormal.” Binnall prefers the term “esoterica,” adding that “paranormal” has taken on too much of a commercial connotation.
“It really started as sort of a hobby in the fall of 2003, and then it really picked up in 2004. I started traveling around to some of these conventions. I cover all different paranormal topics.”
And while there are plenty of unfounded claims – and some would say, outright hoaxes – Binnall said, “We are a more studious type of Web site. You could say I am more of a specialist in the UFO world, the UFO field. I am really not interested in lights in the sky, so much as the people on the ground — how long have they been doing it, their influences as they became more and more popular.”
Asked about the impetus for these forums, Binnall said, “It just sort of came about after I came out of college,” said Binnall, who obtained a degree in radio, film and television from Syracuse University. “We get about 30,000 hits on the Web site.”
As with any endeavor, these fields of research have their stars, if you will – who often devote their efforts to particular areas of study.
These researchers include guests at the Mass UFO Show and Mass Monster Mash, such as authors Chris Styles and Don Ledger, authors of the book, “Dark Object,” which chronicles a reported UFO crash at Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, on Oct. 4, 1967.
Another guest, Carl Feindt of Delaware, specializes in so-called USOs, or unidentified submarine objects.
Binnall said, although there are plenty of would-be experts who lack proper scientific training, many conduct tedious and painstaking research in order to test their ideas. Binnall is more interested in the struggles of these researchers. “I am not big on, ‘Tell me about your UFO story. After you have heard two or three, you don’t’ need to have 200 or 300. Once I tell someone this is what I do, they sometimes say, ‘Oh I’ve got a story for you.’”
For all the fascination with the possibility of exotic life forms – both those from other worlds, and those that may be natives of Earth – Binnall said a stigma still clouds the subject. “I liken it a lot to professional wrestling. There are a lot of people who like professional wrestling. They don’t admit that they do.”
Binnall holds no opinion on way or the other about individual UFO reports and says he has no burning desire to prove that intelligent, extraterrestrial life does exist. “I don’t have anything invested in the UFO secret. If it were to be cracked tomorrow, or if UFO lands on the White House lawn, it may or may not bring me other guests. I’ll have just about anybody on the show, because it’s more a showcase for their opinions or their beliefs.”
And believers don’t always agree. Debate rages among UFO enthusiasts about the so-called Roswell incident, in which, some say, an alien craft crash-landed 60 years ago in or near Roswell, N.M. Since then, theories have run rampant, and the story has developed a cult following, with UFO researchers and the merely curious making pilgrimages to the reported crash site.
One doesn’t even have to travel that far to get a good UFO story. In October 2006, a Billerica couple related to the Billerica Minuteman – a sister publication to the Burlington Union – about what they said was a traumatic encounter with a huge, luminous object in December 2004.
They had reported their story to Mark Petty, a researcher with the Massachusetts Mutual UFO Network, who in a 2005 article in the Minuteman said he sought other reports in an effort to solve the case.
Horrigan said, although stories of the strange can make for an evening’s entertainment, he wishes more people who are interested in them would apply a bit more skepticism. He praised the investigative methods of Petty and others whom he said attempted to use objectivity. Or, in the words of late astronomer Carl Sagan – no stranger to a barrage of reports of alleged alien sightings and kidnappings -- “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Horrigan lamented, “There isn’t enough skepticism among the people who investigate these things. If it’s on the Internet, it doesn’t matter if there are any facts – to some people, it must be true. There is not enough hard, scientific investigation in the field.”
To that end, Horrigan said a UFO Show attendee approached and introduced himself as a denizen of the planet Zoltar, and one person claimed that Charon – the moon of Pluto – was itself an alien craft.
He also expressed concern about beliefs that go too far, with deadly consequences. He cited the fate of the Heaven’s Gate cult, whose members in 1997 poisoned themselves, believing their spirits would rendezvous with a spacecraft traveling in tandem with Comet Hale-Bopp.
That said “People are still looking up,” Horrigan said, adding that store about strange objects or lights in the night sky date back centuries, well before aircraft and weather balloons. “They are looking for an answer.”
For more information, visit www.ufoshow.org.