What you don't know won't hurt you ... or will it?

Mermaids, abducting aliens, cattle mutilations, human combustion, hairy bipeds — some say these and other strange occurrences are figments of the witnesses' imagination. Others, in an attempt to explain the inexplicable, propose flimsy solutions.

Should you dismiss what you can't explain? Or should you pay attention to the startling evidence and frightening personal accounts of those involved? Or, are you somewhere in between?

Reactions to unexplained phenomena range widely ... and sometimes wildly. Heaven's Gate followers, for example had such extreme faith in UFOs they committed suicide because they believed an approaching space vessel would board their ascending souls.

At the other extreme, some find any possible reason to dismiss the inexplicable. In 1953 a CIA sponsored group of scientists, the Robertson Panel, reviewed in only 12 hours six years worth of data on UFO sightings. Their conclusion, " ... since most sightings could be explained ... it would be a great waste of effort to continue investigating ... because it could be assumed plausible explanations could be found."

The word prejudiced is defined as an opinion for or against something without adequate basis. The Robertson Panel appears to be the apotheosis of prejudice.

Most of us are in between these extremes. A 1996 Newsweek poll showed that 48% of Americans believe that UFOs are real. Increasing popularity of TV shows and movies like The X-Files, Millennium, Independence Day, and Men In Black show this percentage is probably increasing. Why?

Perhaps it is because the number of credible people, astronauts, airline pilots, law enforcement officials, and many others, are finally coming forward and telling their stories. These people must feel it is important, in spite of the risk to their professional careers.

Or, perhaps it is simply the human compulsion as James Michener explored in his book, The Source, human beings are driven to find an explanation  ... and thus create Gods to blame and credit ... for all of those things that are uncontrollable and unexplainable.

Jerome Clark is the best person to explore this fascinating story. He is widely respected expert on UFOs and other areas of 'high strangeness,' and has been an investigator of anomalous claims and occurrences for nearly three decades. His book, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial, won the coveted 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Science/Environment category. He is also the author of Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences & Puzzling Physical Phenomena. A frequently consulted expert on physical phenomena, Clark worked on A&E's program, Where Are All the UFOs?

He is a board member and past vice president of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO studies and editor of its magazine, International UFO Reporter. He formerly edited Fate, a popular monthly devoted to anomalies and the paranormal, and now a columnist for the magazine. His other books include The Unidentified, written with Loren Coleman, and, with Dr. J. Gordon Melton (our speaker in September) and Aidan A. Kelly, New Age Encyclopedia. Clark also did consulting work for the Time-Life series Mysteries of the Unexplained and has contributed to Omni and Cryptozoology.

He urges a cautious approach tied closely to documentable evidence, along with an intellectual modesty that acknowledges the limitations of human knowledge, and an open-minded agnosticism about claims that, however interesting and suggestive, can be neither proved nor disproved.

"Here at the fringes of reason and experience, we can only marvel at how little we understand about some kinds of human experiences ... they remind us what a mystery this world is and what mysteries we ourselves are." — Jerome Clark

Note: The leader of Heaven's Gate once approached Cheyenne Turner and proposed an appearance before The Eclectic Viewpoint. Cheyenne declined the offer and told me at the time, "Something warns me about this strange man." Several years later, when the Heaven's Gate story exploded, she was contacted by national media and again declined to have any involvement. But, she asked me, "Do you remember, I told you there was something weird about the man?"

I often marvelled at her ability, extra sense, or what I called 'woman's intuition,' and she lightly dismissed with a chuckle as, "Oh. I have an angel to guide me."

Another unexplained phenomenon? — Jim Turner