Angels and Aliens: UFO's and the Mythic Imagination

I found this book thoroughly engaging and enjoyable. Thompson does a good job laying out the various debates over the years and gives a thought provoking overview towards the end.I tend to agree with Keith, Dr. Vallee, Dr. Mishlove (who wrote The PK Man), and several others who have gone beyond the simplistic idea these experiences are merely beings from another planet. There is in fact a lot of evidence that at least some of the UFO experience is a form of psi. I've been studying the subject (again, did so years ago)for awhile now and I personally agree with the conclusions Keith Thompson does.I highly recommend this one for the book collector on UFOs.

A fascinating read, that links the past to the present, showing how beliefs have changed as time has gone on. Things once attributed to divine intervention are now attributed to aliens and UFOs. I loved to read this analysis by Keith Thompson.

This book offers a very good historical overview of major ufo events, and provides an excellent discussion of connections between ufo's and religious/spiritual/folklore experiences.If you just want scary stories that go into depth about one individual's experiences, then this is not the book for that.Very thought provoking.

Excellent read

Author Keith Thompson wrote in the Prologue to this 1991 book, “ I have never seen a UFO… During my formative years I read no books promising to present the ‘startling, never-before-revealed facts’ about UFOs. I wasn’t even acquainted with the world of science fiction… Instead, I have watched with fascination as a persistent body of remarkable stories … has given rise to provocative mythic horizons and imaginal realms. In the pages that follow, I explore the ways in which these symbolic worlds are real, vital, and filled with significance whether or not any particular UFO case was the planet Venus or a Venusian starship.” (Pg. xi)He continued, “For over forty years, the curiously compelling acronym ‘UFO’---as an idea at work in the world soul---has shaped human belief and imagination in complicated ways. A robust contemporary prodigy has emerged in our midst, enticing us with the vivid ambivalence of its images, systematically resisting definitive explanation, fostering rancorous debate, comprising a provocative enigma of global proportions. This is a chronicle of the wanderings of that prodigy.” (Pg. xii)He notes, “‘It was inevitable that someone, somewhere, sooner or later, would claim contact with the alien beings aboard a flying saucer,’ writes journalist and UFO historian Dennis Stacy. This dubious distinction fall to George Adamski… After … an undistinguished career as a … factory worker, hamburger flipper, and author of an unsuccessful science fiction novel called ‘Pioneers of Space,’ George Adamski became a luminary of sorts in the southern California occult scene by the mid-1930s, founding a religious group called the Royal Order of Tibet and lecturing on ‘universal law’ before live audiences and on radio programs… [On] November 20, 1952, Adamski… and six of his associates drove to the desert with the express hope of seeing a flying saucer and (they hoped) meeting its passengers… Adamski set off alone by foot… he realized he ‘was in the presence of … a human being from another world!’ … That Adamski was the only human witness to this alleged encounter did nothing to diminish his success on the saucer circuit, where he regaled audiences of devotees with accounts of ongoing contacts with the ‘Space Brothers.’” (Pg. 28-29)He recounts, “[Donald] Keyhoe and his comrades in NICAP, along with the entire civilian saucer research community, suffered a far more important setback when Edward Ruppelt [author of ‘The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects’] recanted his longstanding commitment to the view that UFOs constituted a true unknown… When word got around that Ruppelt had embraced the air force’s anti-UFO position, Keyhoe said this meant that Ruppelt would be in the strange position of ‘debunking his own book.’ … Ruppelt died … in 1960… Modern conspiracy buffs continue to insist that Ruppelt was ‘forced’ by the air force to disavow his prior stance, although there is no documented evidence to this effect. His widow told interviewers that her husband’s continuing exposure to the wild claims of soutnern California contactees ‘soured’ him on the UFO phenomenon. Edward Ruppelt would not be the last thoughtful individual to find the social tensions of being perceived to be in favor of UFOs too much to bear.” (Pg. 50-51)Of the Betty and Barney Hill case, he observes, “The Hills’ claims of ‘missing time’ were … open to suspicion. Because Betty and Barney variously offered 11 P.M., 1 A.M., and 3 A.M. as the time of capture, debunkers were able to make a persuasive case that this four-hour discrepancy accounts for the missing time. Others were quick to note that there were more details of the ‘abduction’ in Betty’s account than in Barney’s, suggesting that the story of capture and examination by aliens was a fantasy unknowingly absorbed by Barney as he listened to Betty recount her dreams in the first days following their strange drive home. Dr. Simon, who spent many hours with the Hills… speculated that as an interracial couple… the Hills may simply have been dramatizing deeply embedded, unresolved conflicts relating to racial difference.” (Pg. 60)Of Erich von Däniken, he states, “For once, ufologists and mainstream scientists had something to agree on: opposition to what they considered von Dániken’s outrageous metaphysical assumptions disguised as empirical research. In response to von Däniken’s claims about ancient Peruvian landing strips… Carl Sagan snorted: ‘The space vehicle sets down on the ground… Most remarkable that they need airfields.’ Others scoffed at many hundreds of factual errors, including von Däniken’s assertion that Sumerian culture simply appeared ‘tout ensemble’ rather than---as archaeological records clearly demonstrate---over a period of 6,000 years.” (Pg. 112-113)About Billy Meier, he says, “An even greater blow to Billy Meier’s credibility came from Martin Sorge, and early admirer of Meier and his mission who had soured on the drama. Sorge told of turning up several partially burned slides taken of a model bearing a striking resemblance to the beamships. Meier’s wife, Popi, had run from the house in tears one evening after fighting with her husband. Later she secretly gave Sorge several color slides that had been burned by fire: slides of a model beamship either suspended in the setting or somehow superimposed.”(Pg. 137)Of the MJ-12 documents, he notes that skeptic Philip Klass wondered: “It was curious… that Admiral Hillenkoetter, the briefing officer names in the documents, would be entrusted to manage a cover-up of unprecedented complexity and sophistication, when he was on active duty as a naval commander outside the United States during the year prior to the alleged briefing… But it was certain anomalies in the document’s format that most raised Klass’s eyebrows. ‘Whoever typed the Hillenkoetter briefing document used a peculiar style for writing dates… a highly unusual extra coma: ’18 November, 1952.’ This was… constant all through the document… ‘By a curious coincidence, this is precisely the same style used by William I. Moore in ALL of his letters to me since 1982, when our correspondence began.’ Equally strange, to Klass’s way of thinking, is the Hillenkoetter document’s use of a ‘zero’ preceding a single-digit date, a practice that came into limited use LONG AFTER 1952, when the briefing document was allegedly written… ‘My files of correspondence from Moore show that he used a single digit WITHOUT a zero until the fall of 1983---roughly a year before the Hillenkoetter document film was reportedly sent to Shandera---when he then switched to the same style used in the Hillenkoetter briefing document.” (Pg. 176-177)He notes, “The question of the reliability of [Whitley] Strieber’s memory took center stage … [when] Kathy Davis, a young abductee who is the central character in [Budd] Hopkins’s book ‘Intruders,’ came to New York to continue hypnosis sessions with Hopkins. Strieber wanted to meet her, so Hopkins arranged for them to have lunch. According to Davis… [Strieber told her] ‘I think I’ve seen you before, Kathy, inside a UFO, but it wasn’t all of you. It was just your head…’ … [Kathy was] suddenly deeply frightened by the man who was sitting across from her… the incident corroborated [Hopkins’s] belief that Strieber’s personality was becoming less, not more, well-organized during the course of his psychotherapy… But it was over…. [another matter] that the relationship between Whitley Strieber and Budd Hopkins collapsed beyond repair… Strieber’s book ‘Communion’ and Hopkins’s book ‘Intruders’ were ready to go to press at approximately the same time… Striber wrote to Random House, urging that the publication of ‘Intruders’ be delayed… Hopkins… felt both outraged and betrayed.” (Pg. 206-207)Of Ed Walters and the Gulf Breeze photos, he points out, “Ed’s credibility was dealt a serious blow when Zan Overall… uncovered evidence that Walters had used his old Polaroid to take trick double-exposure phots at parties well over a year before publicly stating that he knew nothing about how to perform such feats. Overall located a photo taken by Ed with his old Polaroid… Ed predicted that a ‘ghost-demon’ would materialize over the shoulder of a particular girl when he took her picture. Sure enough, a ‘ghost’ image appeared over her shoulder.” (Pg. 213)He concludes, “more than four decades since the term ‘flying saucer’ was first spoken, the UFO phenomenon has revealed considerably more about our nature than about theirs… [Perhaps] it finally dawns on us that mythic realities always imply much more than can ever be precisely defined or fully explained? Will… we admit that whatever conclusions we reach about UFOs will lead inevitably to new questions about what it means to live a human life in a galaxy of uncertain hospitality? If UFOs do disappear tomorrow, will we simply find another domain in which to continue what is inevitably a RELIGIOUS search to recover lost intimacy? Of course we will, just as we always have.” (Pg. 246)This book will be of keen interest to those studying UFOs, and their interpretation.

This is a good synthesis of a lot of information, but it's a bit annoying at times, with a fair amount of talk about mythical figures (Proteus, Dionysus, etc.) and the 'roles' they play (allegorically) in the UFO phenomenon. Thompson presents two sides of the UFO coin - material/biological extraterrestrials vs some great "other", a phenomenon that may have coexisted with or have been a part of mankind for who knows how long (loosely stated, because it's hard to define that "other" very clearly). He clearly sides with the latter proposition (as I guess, do I, at least at the moment...), but stresses that we may never know, and that this inability to fully understand the phenomenon is an essential part of the phenomenon.While the book doesn't exactly represent a fresh perspective - it may have been fresher at the time it came out - it is certainly still a good introduction to the complexities of the subject matter. Thompson uses a broad range of source material, including personal interviews with 'experiencers' and well-known authors in the field. He treats the subject with respect; his mind isn't closed but he maintains a healthy skepticism. His writing is crisp and not boring.If you haven't read a whole bunch of books on this stuff, or if you would like a good introduction to/overview of the subject, particularly its multilayered, ever-shifting meanings, then this is a very good place to go. I would also like to recommend Daemonic Reality, by Patrick Harpur.