Despite the TV and radio commercials infiltrating human minds faster than cell phone brain tumors (sorry, but I have a particularly concerted respect for close-approach forms of energy, even though I realize the jury is still in -- and out -- and in -- and out regarding this issue) about what we "deserve," I'm afraid I can't always agree. We don't "deserve" to win the lottery, we don't "deserve" a luxury ski vacation and we don't "deserve a break today." But we do deserve the truth from our government. Truth, the jewel whose image often fails to shine through the muck of sanctioned impedance.
If tomorrow happened to be my last day on earth, there are three things out of hundreds (including military encounters) about UFOs that I'd like my government to come clean about. Well, no, actually there's a fourth, which has nothing whatsoever to do with my government, and that is, when are the broadcast giants of this planet going to snap up Canada's Errol Bruce-Knapp (he of the Virtually Strange network and his now-podcast show, "Strange Days...Indeed!") to have him host his UFO-related program on a major radio network? Errol's approach and his stable of knowledgeable and reliable guests should be heard via The Biggest Microphone in the World.
But getting back to those three things. First, I'd like the scoop from the U.S. government about the April, 1964 Socorro, NM UFO encounter. If you've read this blog from the start, you already know of my interest in this case -- and the fact that I received a letter from the Air Force in 1965 (posted in an early blog entry for your viewing) calling patrolman Lonnie Zamora's UFO a "vehicle" only enhanced my interest. After 43 years it's time, as it is for so many other incidents, for the government to tell us what is known. You can't just chalk this impressive case up to the "unexplained" category and never say anything again. Somebody knows, if not highly suspects, something -- and I think that something is worth knowing. Yes, we "deserve" the truth. If the truth clashes with somebody else's belief system or annually contrived fantasies, that's just too darned bad.
What else? Well, Chicago's O'Hare Airport sky object of November 7, 2006 should cause everybody's eyes to pop. Beginning with the first hint from Peter Davenport's National UFO Reporting Center (see link), extending to the January 1, 2007 Chicago Tribune article exposing the incident to a profoundly curious public (the Trib's circulation soared) by reporter Jon Hilkevitch, and ending with the final and lengthy report a few months ago issued by the organization NARCAP (see link) which determined the UFO -- oops, I mean unidentified aerial phenomena, the term NARCAP prefers so as not to inflame those who detest the UFO designation, because those of us who use that term at any time of the day or night are deficient in some way -- was indeed real, strange and a particular flight path hazard as an intruder at one of the world's busiest airports, the O'Hare incident appears a one-punch, knockout UFO case. While the commercial airlines, always concerned with the bottom line, denied the obvious and attempted to shovel away the evidential poop deposited conspicuously by the ufological elephant almost sitting on a runway (bad for business, you know, and currently, of course, we had the U.S. government trying to hide a brand new report -- unsuccessfuly, we are now promised, and we'll soon see -- about potential sky hazards from the public because the public may well panic to the degree it rightly "deserves" to panic), government spokespeople who are supposed to speak in instances of the nationally dramatic spoke nothing, and continue to speak nothing. Again, we are deterred, we are ignored and we are denied the truth. I want the truth and I demand it. We all must.
And this brings me to the last thing I would wish to know if tomorrow were the final tomorrow. Unless you follow the UFO story regularly, you might not even know about the story within the story. Again, it's something I wrote about in the early weeks of this blog, months ago, when I posted my five-part series entitled, "As Weird as it Gets." You may know it as the Hickson-Parker case, or the Pascagoula, Mississippi UFO incident: The alleged abduction and physical examination of two fishermen, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, by extraordinarily strange-looking creatures from a UFO. This most bizarre of bizarre incidents had so many things going for it, including the known fact that other people probably witnessed the UFO that swooped down over the fishermen early in the evening of October 11, 1973.
But years later, the story took on a new life when Mike Cataldo, a retired Navy chief petty officer residing now in Florida, approached a newspaper reporter to announce that he and a carload of fellow Navy servicemen had seen a very strange object, all lit up and about the size of a large passenger jet, late during the day of professed abduction while driving on U.S. 90, between Pascagoula and Ocean Springs. Cataldo's rational story, intriguing enough to impress ABC Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, who spent a considerable amount of time on it during a Saturday broadcast, instantly increased the Hickson-Parker case credibility.
Unfortunately, and not uncommonly, major press sources did not pick up Cataldo's story anywhere near what they should have. The Pascagoula incident cries out as a warning, even if just a warning for warning's sake, of something intruding in our lives almost on a whim that seems to influence in ways unknown, and terrifies or mentally overpowers almost routinely.
When Cataldo's admission as a probable additional Pascagoula witness surfaced at last, Hickson and Parker's experience took on a new prominence. There is something for us to know here, and as much as the government may not know, it is essential that we, the people, be informed about the known. About the real. About the plain and simply bizarre and complex truth. What the hell occurred in Pascagoula that night? Tell us what we know. Tell us what we don't know. Tell us what might be. Number three on my list of a list that could go on for pages and pages. Just three little UFO cases, only three. Please. For starters. Why must we beg? In a universe so strange and still so woefully unexplored by humans, why should we expect to be anything but surprised, pleasantly or otherwise?
Unexpectedly, disturbingly, I find myself quoting President George W. Bush: "Bring it on." Come on, this is big stuff. Give us the truth we truly deserve about the UFO issue so we can honestly say, at last, that we got what we deserve.
