This year's International UFO Symposium was a conference for the believers. "I'm not here to convert the skeptics", Mr Eisen said, when asked to address a few points skeptics would surely raise. And although I am very interested in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life visiting our planet; when I was confronted by the UFO community which attended the symposium last weekend, due to lack of any skeptical enquiry I had an urge to debunk all I saw as inconclusive, unlikely or fraudulent. Almost all the audience wanted to be assured the extraterrestrials are here, friendly and about to sort out this messy planet into a more harmonious state, accepting claims to be true with the flimsiest of evidence - evidence which in some cases has been shown to be false anyway.
 
 
 

Jon Eisen, the first speaker at the symposium, was not one of the most convincing. He began his talk with the work of Nicola Tesla, one of the pioneers of AC current, suggesting that Tesla had found a method by which to tranfer electricity through space, by manipulating the existence of an ether. He claimed that Tesla proved the existence of free energy, and that this potential for free energy was being suppressed because of the economic problems it would lead to with power companies for example. However, in talking about this theory, he decided not to mention the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which disproved the existence of the ether about 100 years ago, and was used by Einstein as the basis of his special theory of relativity. This experiment may also have been uncomfortable for him because it suggests that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, which causes problems with interstellar travel over short time periods, and thus the possibility of aliens visiting Earth.

Mr Eisen debunked skepticism at the very start of the symposium, arguing that from a skeptical viewpoint one can never have enough evidence to prove anything. This is true, but although skepticism doesn't allow anything to be proved other than pure logic and mathematics, with more and more evidence one can become more and more sure of a hypothesis' truth or falsity. I do not agree with Mr Eisen's opinion that we should believe in something with only a little evidence, which less than proves it.
 

After Jon Eisen, Jaime Maussan and Daniel Munoz came on with an extensive collection of UFO videos and documentaries. Their collection of UFO videos had taken them a year to collect and we were the first audience to see the compilation. The first video which they showed was particularly convincing, and I must admit that I am at a loss for a good explanation of the UFO shown, if the New Mexican 60 Minutes crew reported the incident accurately. They showed us three videos taken from nearby locations during the eclipse in 1991 over New Mexico. Each video showed the same UFO, shaped like the classic Billy Meier UFO, but pulsating with what appeared to be heat distortion like that which you see when you look into a heater or above a toaster. This pulsation was depicted in all three of the videos, which had supposedly been taken indepently of each other. They also showed a lot of other UFO videos, however many of these were not convincing. There were a few which showed a stationary light in the sky which only appeared to be moving because the videoer clumsily moved around while recording it; and the UFOs which were supposedly hiding behind clouds were far from conclusive. The huge variety in UFO shapes was disconcerting, however, I suppose a fanatic could easily explain it by comparison to car brands on Earth, and perhaps UFOs from different planets.

Every video had the date and time in its bottom right-hand corner. My trust in Maussam decreased when, at one stage he was describing a particular video clip, saying it was filmed in 1995 when the date on the video said 1992. When someone pointed this discrepancy out, Maussam said, "Those dates on the videos are wrong". He didn't explain how the wrong dates were imprinted on the film, and nobody seemed to worry about that. Later on, they showed us footage of lights present during plane crashes, claiming that UFOs have been interfering with the landing gears causing aeroplanes to crash in certain New Mexico airports.Unfortunately they chose not to acknowledge the possibility that this footage was part of an insurance plot by the airport to get their money back for crashed aeroplanes. The lights in the videos were nothing special and could easily have been superimposed on the video. It was quite amusing to see what these people required for footage of aliens: we were shown video taken by a screaming women in pitch black darkness of a light moving in the distance, which the 60 Minutes crew claimed to be an alien being with a glowing head and antennae with the rest of its body covered in a suit.

Most of what the New Mexico 60 Minutes crew had to offer was quite easily explainable by terrestrial means. But as they said, if any one UFO video or sighting is real, then it can be concluded that we are being visited by extra-terrestrials; and that first video, although not entirely convincing, definitely made me think.
 

To begin the new day, Thomas Brown began his seminar by claiming that no Earthly spacecraft has ever travelled to the Moon. It was his view that NASA had faked the first trip to the Moon (and subsequent ones) in the studio and the desert, in order to supress the existence of aliens which supposedly live on the Moon. The evidence he provided for this claim, however, was full of flaws. He said that the shadows cast in photographs were not how they should be if the photographs were taken on the Moon, but didn't take into account the fact that a number of these shadows were over inclined planes. His evidence of civilisations on the Moon consisted of blurry pictures of its surface which he made out to be pyramids and temples, but which could have easily been explained by vague patterns created by meteorites, etc. colliding with the Moon in the past.

Mr Brown was basically in disagreement of the scientific world view, and therefore was interested in pseudosciences such as orgone energy and Tesla's free energy. I became very suspicious of his reliability when he claimed that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe, because there is a red shift in all directions from Earth: however, this piece of information by no means supports his claim. He even argued that the Earth curves inwards!
 

After Mr Brown, Daniel Munoz from 60 Minutes returned to the symposium to show more video footage which he had not had time to show to the symposium the previous night. The first video consisted of the voice of Neil Armstrong claiming to see a UFO on the Moon. The video footage which accompanied the audio implied that this sighting was made on the first trip to the Moon; however, the footage was merely complementary, and not real. There is no deep mystery to this UFO sighting because, due to the difference in environment of the Moon compared to the Earth, things could easily be misinterpreted. Even so, it was entertaining to see how many people were convinced by this footage. But even more amusing was the fact that this evidence contradicted what Thomas Brown had to say, and yet much of the audience were happy to accept both accounts as being true.

Once again, he showed some more unconvincing video taken of UFOs, and also a video of two lights in the sky flying over a farm and forming a crop circle. The presence of the crop circle was apparently corroborated by people in the area after its formation, however the lights were less than convincing, and since the video only showed the crop circle after they flew over the area, and not during, the lights could quite possibly have been sperimposed on the video footage.
 

David Icke was the odd-speaker-out in the symposium, in that he didn't speak about UFOs at all, only touching briefly and vaguely on related aspects of the UFO phenomena. He gave an entertaining talk comparing humans to sheep, keeping to a norm set by the media and enforced by peers, but it quickly became boring as he spoke for two hours. He then moved on to how certain secret societies attempt to control people, and then on to a discussion of the philosophy of individuality. He feebly related what he was saying to UFOs by advising the believers not to rely on aliens saving them at the Millenium.
 

Harvey Cook was a more appropriate speaker, and talked about three of the major UFO incidents which have occured in New Zealand. He began with the "Ngatea landing". What was amusing about this case was that the main evidence for it was merely a formation of three triangles indented into the ground positioned as the vertices of a triangle. For me, this seemed far from convincing evidence of UFOs and appeared to be a classic hoax scenario; however, for Harvey and much of the audience it signified three landing pod marks made by a UFO when it landed in Ngatea in the year of 1969. There were other unusual aspects to the area which Mr Cook attributed to the UFO, such as high radiation levels and a region of bleached plants near the "pod" marks. However, the bleached plants were later shown by the DSIR to be the result of a certain fungi, and the high radiation levels could have easily been simulated by hoaxers, for example by planting a little uranium in the ground.

He then briefly talked about the Kaikoura UFO. This case does actually have some convincing evidence to it; however the lights have been proposed to be reflections of boat lights, and the radar is said to have been taken in conditions which were too bad for the results to be considered accurate, even though it corroborated the sightings. It is also possible that the lights were due to some rare natural phenomena which we have not classified yet.

Finally he talked about the Tapanui Craters of the South Island, which he compared to the supposed UFO crash at Tunguska. He said that the Maori described an explosion of light around 1178 AD and named these craters after it; however such an event is entirely consistent with a meteorite crash on Earth.
 

David Summers presented a compelling and entertaining seminar regarding a wide range of conspiracies such as faked moon trips, medical experiments on humans, the new world order and UFOs. I was forced to consider some of these conspiracies in depth, however, I wonder whether it was the fact that he was a TV presenter and magazine editor that made his case seem so compelling, or whether it was the actual data he was portraying.

He definitely had a better argument for the moon trip conspiracy than Mr Brown, in that he suggested that the first trip to the moon may have been faked in order to boost the American economy. This seemed to be a more respectable motive, especially when the reactions of the NASA team were seen in a video of the first trip to the Moon in which they were all jumping up and down waving American flags around very enthusiastically. Even so, evidence for a conspiracy was not sufficient to convince me.

The conspiracy which I found most interesting, however, was that of medical experiments being conducted on human subjects without their permission. Mr Summers actually presented documents which stated that such experiments were officially taking place, and although the source of these documents must be questioned, the actual idea of conducting experiments on humans makes sense. There must be a lot of scientists wanting to find out data about human beings, but cannot because they require live human subjects to do so. Also, the methods of this data collection may eliminate the possibility of volunteers. So when a government or secret agency wants this data too, then it is quite feasible that for the benefit of everyone, a few innocent citizens may be experimented on. It is also possible that "alien abductions" could be the misinterpretation of these experiments. Unfortunately, his last words, even when said jovially, made me doubt him - "Remember... if it's on TV, it must be true".
 

Stan caught my attention when he began his seminar with a skeptical viewpoint on the phenomena of cattle mutilations. He said that rather than the result of alien experiments, the mutilations were due to experiments conducted by the government, possibly to monitor a cattle disease. He said that if the government simply took cattle it may look suspicious, and promote an unecessary phobia of cattle or beef. So certain government agencies might abduct cattle, remove the organs of relevance, and return the rest animal. He explained the surgical precission with which the organs were removed by a new technology for doing such operations, even showing videos advertising these tissue cutters. This theory is quite possible, however I would tend to favour the theory whereby farmers profit out of reporting alien cattle mutilations as these can be considered as vandalism and covered by insurance provided that a policeman will write the report up this way. An interesting line of evidence for this theory is that cattle mutilations seem to respect police jurisdiction lines, outside of which vandalism isn't covered by insurance.

He then moved on to the "face on Mars" and the pyramids on Mars. I was relieved to hear that he viewed the "face on Mars" as a mere optical illusion coupled with the formation of dust falling on the windy planet. He observed that if you enhance the area under the shadow, the formation doesn't look like a face at all. Stan Deyo also faked a photo of a UFO once and put it on his webpage, and to his surprise he began receiving e-mail from visitors asking how he got such a good UFO photo.

Next he began talking about a possible mechanism of propulsion by which UFOs could travel the vast interstellar distances required to visit Earth. As far as I could understand, his proposition system seemed to involve air circulation, relativity and a restriction of the force of gravity; and it appeared to be very similar to that described by Bob Lazar. I have heard that Bob Lazar's description of the UFO he apparently worked on didn't really make sense, and that he seemed to just be throwing scientific words into his description with very little knowledge of their meaning. This is my suspicion of Stan too; however, in my ignorance of many of the physical concepts involved in such a propulsion system I cannot make any concrete conclusions, and must acknowledge that it is possible that Stan's description of propulsion works.

From here on, Stan's talk became very cult-like, and my respect for him decreased dramatically. He began describing Armageddon scenarios in which the world is going to have an anti-christ, asteroid collisions, earthquakes and other natural disasters within the next seven years. He claimed that during these events, aliens would come to Earth and save any humans who had faith in them. These humans would supposedly be whisked off to a higher dimension where they would live eternally and have all the conveniences they desired. He even had an alien called Satan to fit in to the story. What was amusing during this part of his talk was the importance that a large proportion of the audience placed on it. He had given no evidence, and yet a large number of people were evidently convinced already. When the lecture theatre had to be closed down, there were a lot of very disappointed and strong-minded audience members shouting out things such as, "this isn't about time... this is very important for everybody". Those that wanted to, had to finish talking to him outside.
 

Bruce Cathie started the last day of the symposium with a mathematics lesson. He plotted the positions of chosen UFO sightings on a map suggesting that they formed a sort of grid, firstly only for New Zealand, and then for the whole world. Next, he calculated the distances between certain sightings on his grid. By what he admitted to be random playing around with these numbers he came up with all sorts of constants, such as the speed of light and the force of gravity on Earth. What was amusing was that he had this operation called a harmonic, which he decided to use from time to time, and whenever he used it, he came up with the same answer - 33 - only he didn't explain how this harmonic function worked. What was so special about these numbers that kept on popping up? There was no doubt in Bruce Cathie's mind that they concluded that the UFOs use anti-gravity and a world energy grid. The only problem was that he didn't show why these numbers suggested this.

By playing around with numbers in a random fashion, such as he appeared to have done, you can basically come up with any number you want. But this was not the only hole in his theory. It was interesting to note that he even fitted numbers around places such as the face and pyramids on Mars, claiming that these supported his theory. Since these have recently been shown to probably be mere natural dust formations and optical illusions, these would surely illustrate his scientific incompetence.
 

Wendelle Stevens was the investigator responsible for verifying many of the famous Billy Meier UFO photos, such as the one in the UFO poster that appears in Mulder's office on The X-Files. Colonel Stevens had prepared a huge database of over 100 recent UFO photos to show to the audience at the UFO symposium. While I am skeptical regarding the validity of a number of these photos, he claimed that he had checked a few of them by phototechnological means and verified their authenticity. However, the photos which he showed had unfortunately been taken in the absence of any other witnesses or corroborative evidence, and this made me suspicious. One photographer, Joe Plower, had given Colonel Stevens photographs from several US states. They were blurry polaroid photos of dark oval-shaped objects in the skies, which Colonel Stevens set great store by, because as he said, it's hard to tamper with a Polaroid photo since it comes out one minute later. Someone commented it was a shame Joe Plower didn't have a better camera, but when another audience member suggested providing him just that, Colonel Stevens smiled and said he didn't think so, "Joe doesn't have much money, but he's doing all right".

I appreciated the photos, but it was his interpretation of them that I disagreed with. Colonel Stevens observed that 98% of the craft he had seen were slightly different in one way or another, and the conclusion he drew from this was that 98% of the aliens that visited Earth were from different planets. He claimed that this conclusion was corroborated by the contactees who he had spoken to. This is a very brave conclusion to make, because with the number of UFO sightings made every day, this would imply a phenomenal number of races visiting Earth. It is unfeasible that all of these races would have the common desire not to expose themselves to the world, and even for that many races to find planet Earth in the vastness of the Universe.

I was amused when Colonel Stevens claimed to have been given a note by an alien once. He had been asking people in contact with extra-terrestrials to ask the aliens questions, and one answer came back on a piece of paper, apparently written by an alien. Was it alien paper? "It looked like Earth paper". The writing? "It was in block letters". What did he do with the note? "Unfortunately, I didn't keep the paper". That was a poor excuse, because a UFO researcher would surely keep the paper.
 

Daisy Kirkby was a "new age" fanatic who used scientific and religious words without any understanding of their true meaning; and based her reasoning around a simple idealogy which has no basis in reality whatsoever, providing no evidence to back up her claims. She began by reasoning that because we are moving in to the age of Aquarius, our bodily vibrations are increasing and we are transmitting at higher frequencies. It was her view that as a result of this we are become more spiritual beings, we are developing telepathic ability, we can see things that we couldn't used to see, and that our dreams are becoming more prophetic. She spoke of aliens as spiritual and friendly beings who we will learn to live in harmony with, and who will help us greatly. She totally disregarded the trauma that abductees are reported to go through, which was interesting because she is an abductee counsellor herself. She finished by making a pathetic attempt at debunking the famous crop circle hoaxers, Doug and Dave, because two people would not be able to make so many crop circles. However, she totally disregarded the possibility of Doug and Dave not being the only crop circle makers, giving her argument very little substance.
 

In my view, Kelly Cahill was the most convincing speaker at the symposium. She had had a strange encounter with strange beings that was corroborated by two independent sources, which actually had a lot of physical evidence to back it up. It was the night of August 8, 1993 when she and her husband were driving home through the outskirts of Melbourne. They saw something like a blimp in the sky and a couple of kilometers later they came across what seemed like a barrier of light across the road. In the paddock there was a three-storey high structure the width of an Olympic swimming pool. Two other carloads independently described the same structure, and all three carloads independently led researchers back to the same location, drawing very similar sketches of the craft they saw. Later, researchers found circles of burnt earth where the craft had been seen. She and two women in another car later found a triangular mark on their stomachs, below the navel. Two individuals from two separate cars had ligature marks around one ankle. And three, again from separate cars, had a row of three dots on their thighs.

Mrs Cahill was approaching the craft when she says a wave of energy hit her like a ton of lead. She saw figures come from the structure with large, glowing red eyes and no other distinguishing facial features. But what was so good about her account of the incident was how open minded she was in explaining it. Never did she refer to the strange beings as alien, and she seriously considered the possibility of them being human. Later on, she came across a defence equipment magazine where she came across a picture of a Chinese-manufactured night vision mask, with large red goggles. She also found reference to kinetic energy paralyser weapons. The night vision mask was exactly what she remembered from the experience, so it is quite possible that it was human beings who operated on her, and not extra-terrestrials.
 

Alec Newald definitely came across as a less reliable "abductee" than Mrs Cahill, and the only evidence for his experience was his own testimony. He claimed to have been abducted during a car trip from Rotorua to Auckland for persoanl reasons which he did not want to tell us. The story of his journey to the spacecraft and encounter with the aliens was reminiscent of a typical science fiction movie, as was his description of the ship. The aliens, with whom he communicated telepathically with, mentioned genetically tampering with humans, as usual. They also told him that the spectral emisions of the Sun are increasing, and surprisingly, that the Moon weighs more than the Earth. The latter statement is definitely false. There was nothing special about his testimony, and it seemed like a reasonably easy story to make up, so I would favour the likelihood of fraud, evidenced by the fact that he released a book of his "encounter" at the symposium.
 

Sue Hanson was another unconvincing "abductee" who provided no evidence to her claims, and who claimed to have been visited by aliens a number of times since she was a young girl. She also claimed to have had a missing time experience when she was 20 which freaked her out for some time. She believes that her encounters have given her paranormal powers such as telepathy and seeing the future. The tentative nature with which she told her stories didn't make her look like a fraud, and it is remotely possible that her accounts may be true; but with nothing to back them up, I find it a tall ask to ask us to believe them.
 

Frank McManus was not the best final speaker for the symposium, and was apparently only a last minute addition to the speakers, who actually suggested he spoke at the symposium himself. He was another "new age" fanatic who seemed to have an obsession with some famous contactee who I had never heard of before. The alien contacts of this contactee apparently enabled him to prophesise such events as atomic eplosions and waves of UFO sightings. He basically told us about his world view, which consisted of a combination of the world's religions and a few aspects of today's society. He was using stories from the Bible as proof for his world view and likened himself to Galileo in that he was going against the Church by saying that Jesus and Buddah were aliens. He was another speaker who provided little evidence to support his claims, and how he came to this world vew which he believes in so passionately is a mystery.

He had little knowledge of science, and once again talked about the existence of an ether. It was his idea that atomic energy signalled the end of a civilisation, and when it signals the end of us, another civilisation will magically appear and the cycle will repeat. He said that aliens were visiting Earth in order to divert our attention from atomic energy. He even claimed that there were people living on Venus and Mars, but how any life could survive the harsh, acidic conditions of Venus beats me. He claimed that aliens are radiating energy to us to make us happy. It is interesting to note how "new age" fanatics interpret energy, because our emotion and enthusiasm have more to do with our instantaneous chemical make-up than the amount of energy we possess.
 

In the symposium, we were led to believe that Gordon Cooper was the astronaut who stayed orbiting the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first lunar landing. However, it has since come to my attention that this information was incorrect, and that Mike Collins was the astronaut who circled the moon on the first trip with Armstrong & Aldrin. Gordon Cooper was one of the first into orbit back in the early 1960s. To my knowledge he was not even involved in the Apollo moon landings. Apparently, after circling the moon, he later told the United Nations General Assembly that he believed extra-terrestrial vehicles were visiting this planet from other planets. Since he had been unable to attend the UFO symposium in the weekend, Mr Eisen had organised a phone interview with him instead. There was nothing special about this interview though. He admitted to this statement, but claimed to have never seen a UFO other than on video. He also said that he was unaware of any coverup. Jon Eisen kept probing for information, but to his disappointment, didn't get any. Whether Gordon Cooper really had nothing to tell or was in denial cannot be said, but he appeared genuine.
 
 

The nature of the questions and the general acceptance of the answers posed in the forum on the final night summed up the symposium very well. They indicated the gullibility and lack of both skepticism and scientific knowledge of the majority of the audience and speakers who attended the symposium over the weekend. I am not saying that the UFO symposium was a waste of time, but rather that it was a good opportunity to realise the reality of the majority of the UFO community, because in my naievity I had always imagined a competent and reasonable group of researchers who actually had some reliable information to share. In conclusion, this is not the case!.