[Dion]

‘What I saw that night was real’: is it time to take aliens more seriously?

Still, the topic of alien encounters remains sensitive. I discovered just how sensitive when author Whitley Strieber, who some claim was abducted by non-humans in 1985, terminated our call after learning that I had not read his books. In a subsequent email, he wrote: “I don’t know if I was abducted by aliens or not. The whole point of my work is to describe what happened to me and attempt to understand what it was. I was turned into ‘alien abductee Whitley Strieber’ by the media. That is not my position.” He added: “You are lost in space when it comes to this subject, my friend – all of you.”

After I got off on the wrong foot with Strieber, though, he did come back and introduce me to highly decorated former US navy cryptologist Matthew Roberts. He was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt when fighter jets recorded the infamous “Gimbal” and “Go Fast” videos of unexplained objects off the Florida coast during 2015, which went a long way to prompting the Pentagon’s UFO report.

But Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, is not convinced and thinks that Godfrey is genuine. “He had a lot to potentially lose by coming out with this and yet stuck to his guns.”

Doesn’t a hallucination explain what he saw? “I get that people do have hallucinations, but they tend to be the result of either mental illness or some sort of hallucinogenic substance, and this guy was on duty and was, by all accounts, rational. And so those explanations don’t seem to apply – I’m stumped when it comes to that particular case. Ask yourself: how many times have you been tired and come to the end of a long day? We’ve all been in that situation, and we don’t suddenly construct bizarre narratives about spacecraft and aliens.”

Is it time to start taking these stories more seriously? “I’m not saying that I believe it’s literally true that these are alien spaceships,” says Pope. “But at the very least, these people who were previously disbelieved and ridiculed should be listened to and given a hearing.

“For everyone who tells you these people are attention seekers after fame and fortune, I would say, ‘What fame? What fortune?’ Who outside the UFO community has heard of Alan Godfrey or Terry Lovelace?”

Does Pope think ETs are among us? “I don’t know. I am certain that they are out there, but whether they’re down here or not? I don’t know. I think it’s much more likely that we’re dealing with unmanned probes.”

If not hallucinations, equipment glitches or mistakes, many will say black ops, conducted by the US, China, Russia, or other militaries, are a more plausible explanation than aliens. “I accept that most military personnel won’t have sight of every single black project and, therefore, won’t necessarily know about every secret prototype, aircraft or drone that’s flying,” says Pope. “But the military and government, and the intelligence community have a pretty good idea of roughly where the ceiling is in terms of technology. So, when these expert military witnesses describe the sorts of speeds, accelerations, manoeuvres that are reported with these sorts of incidents, I sit up and take note.”

Lovelace’s night in Devil’s Den changed his life and the life of his friend Toby. The US air force got wind of their ordeal and, per military protocol, separated and reassigned them. Lovelace ignored his orders and visited Toby to say goodbye. “Toby was falling apart,” Lovelace says. The two embraced. Toby said: “It happened, didn’t it?” “Yes, my brother, it really happened. You’re not losing your mind,” Lovelace replied.

Lovelace has suffered enormously since that night. “I’ve had 40 years’ of nightmares. I still have a phobia of crossing open ground. I still sleep with a light on and a gun beside my bed.” But he feels vindicated by acknowledgments made by the US government, military personnel and Obama. “I’ve got a long list of people that I’m going to email and say, ‘I told you so.’”

For Godfrey, it’s 40 years too late. He is adamant about what he saw that morning in Todmorden. “I’ve had all sorts: you fell into some sort of trance when you were driving – all that ####. No, it was real. It left debris on the road – my headlights were reflecting off it, as were the blue lights. This was a real incident. I didn’t need the Pentagon to tell me there are things out there. I know what I saw that night was real, nuts and bolts. If I’d got out and thrown a brick at it, it would have gone, ‘Clang!’ It doesn’t change what happened to me and how I was treated back then.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ore-seriously-