I also personally find it extremely difficult to think of Ufology as a viable science or even as a proto-scientific endeavor, because over the last sixty years, the thrust of the primary inquiry has gone through so many changes and re-adjustments of focus. UFOs have gone from nuts and bolts alien spaceships to portals or star gates in the space-time continuum. UFOs have been linked to everything from a sinister force lurking in the depths of the Bermuda Triangle, to the wee people of the fairy-faith and ancient astronauts that long ago flitted about the skies in gleaming scout ships.

Add to this "pantheon of the dubious" the "Men in Black" mythos (MIB), the "Mothman," the growing Unidentified Submerged Objects (USO) craze, and the ultra-exotic "Flying Humanoid Observation Reports" (FHORs) and one can clearly see that the UFO subculture appears to have no boundaries that human imagination cannot exceed, or that human credulity cannot embrace.

In years gone by, we've read marvelous stories about Buck Nelson's "Martian" dog, (Ol' Buck sold clippings of the dog's hair for just $2), and who could possibly forget Mr. Simonton's buckwheat pancake breakfast with aliens? In South America, Antonio Villas Boas was allegedly "seduced" aboard a space "scow" by a perfectly formed, albeit petite, spacewoman who made barking sounds during her extra-species sexual encounter with Villas Boas. Meanwhile, according to all reports, Captain Aura Raynes of the "counter-Earth," Clarion, was a sight to behold, even for the most discriminating of earthmen's eyes.In more recent times, Budd Hopkins has introduced us to "screen-memories" and "mind blocks," as part and parcel of the alien abduction experience, while his colleague David Jacob's has admitted the possibility of confabulation and alien-induced perceptual distortion into the mix, as well. The quaint, almost comic aspects of the contactee cults have given way to a more sinister sort of alien, out there on the fringes of our reality.

Forgive us, then, if we fail to glut you on the bizarre antics of the contactee movement of the 50s and 60s, and understand that a surfeit of modern-day fringe ufoology awaits us right outside our proverbial front door.

So, what is Ufology? From my vantage point (Or, mountain top view as I've come to call my imaginary perch), I have come to the realization that Ufology is something like an octopus; and unless one removes and identifies each tentacle (category), he or she will never reach the head of the slippery beast. As we embark on our examination, however, it is important to remember that each of the following categories is not necessarily mutually exclusive of the others.

Ufology as a means to emotional fulfillment

Some of the tentacles extend from deep-seated wants, needs and desires concerning what the Ufologist expects and anticipates the UFO phenomenon might represent. These expectations and anticipations are often linked to grandiose, self-serving agendas. In some cases it is merely a quest for some sort of fame or celebrity.

Ufology as a money-making venture

In other instances, the tentacle is grasping for monetary gain or a successful UFO/Paranormal-related business enterprise of some sort. UFO commerce encompasses everything from selling tee-shirts and baseball hats with alien depictions printed on them, to sponsoring UFO conventions and workshops, to establishing UFO museums and even theme park enterprises. In UFO parlance, those who engage in this sort of activity are sometimes called "Saucer Hucksters," and their money-making endeavors are often viewed, by research purists and true-blue enthusiasts, to be detrimental to "serious ufology."

Ufology as a social activity

Another tentacle might be reaching out for social intercourse and friendships forged through a commonly shared interest in the phenomenon. Examples of these types of individuals are commonly encountered in various organized UFO organizations, and abductee support groups. Most are subscribers to numerous UFO journals, periodicals and newsletters, and are hopelessly addicted ufo convention "delegates."

Dare we think of these individuals as mere rumor-mongers and sensation seekers? Or might they actually be attempting to learn something of substance about UFOs? But, then again, might it simply be that their primary objective is one of obtaining confirmation for their own UFO beliefs?

There are also numerous ufo discussion e-lists/discussion forums on the internet, where ufo researchers share vast amounts of information with "colleagues" from around the world. (It is important to stress here that no manner of accreditation is required for one to become a "Ufologist," a "UFO abduction expert" or a "colleague").

A Ufologist often feels that he or she is at odds with mainstream scientific community and the status quo of our social fabric. Therefore, a certain amount of comfort is experienced in being amongst other Ufologists. Yet, there is also a certain amount of unspoken suspicion, mistrust, vocal discord and politicking to be found within such groups. (The primary suspicion being whether or not a new face in the crowd might be a UFO debunker).

Ufology as a "second career"

Yet another tentacle may be linked to a person's desire to achieve in a field of endeavor other than their own profession, which they may view as somewhat unrewarding and unfulfilling.

Ufology as a "devotional"

The assumption among those who look to an extraterrestrial source of "salvation" seems to be that if man has the devices for great destruction at his disposal, he will in time use them, either with or without justification. To these individuals, it's really not a question of if he will put them to use, it's more a matter of "when" and "why" he will use them. Unlike modern man, however, the benevolent saucer people have apparently long-surpassed our need for nuclear weapons and our tendency to indulge in all-around bad behavior. They are in control of their science's potential dark side, which in turn functionally transforms them into "techno-angels" or, "creatures of the light." Are you aware that some Ufologists actually proclaim they are "Living in the Light" and see themselves as "Light workers?"

There is something to be said about Ufology being a substitute for religion, especially for those who have become disenchanted with traditional church traditions and doctrine. These folks will occasionally express their belief that the UFOs are watching over us and will come to our aid if we should foolishly place the planet in irreversible peril.

The notion that UFOs may represent extraterrestrial spacecraft coincided with the close of the 20th century's Second World War, which saw the destruction of large urban landscapes and populations by aerial onslaught - onslaughts which seemed to be virtually unstoppable, and which remain as perfectly acceptable strategies of modern warfare to this very day.

Thus, the fear of things coming upon us from the skies was forced upon the psyche of modern man. There was the terrifying sound produced by the foils fitted upon the wings of Nazi Stuka dive bombers, there was the dreadful, unnatural sound of the engines on the V-1 and V-2 rockets - then, the harrowing seconds of silence as the missiles fell upon near-defenseless civilian neighborhoods in the UK and Holland.

Add to this the shock of Pearl Harbor, the unleashing of the nuclear demon at Hiroshima, followed by decades of the Cold War, where the specter of nuclear annihilation ever-lingered over our heads. Finally, factor in the growing threat of terrorism upon U.S. soil, and the insidious attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, just a few years ago. In such a climate of fear, is it any wonder that while things coming form the skies may be feared, still other things from the skies may be revered and thought to offer hope of a vanguard against the use of such dark human technologies? Are not the "Space Brothers" a sort of technological variant on a Messianic return?

Ufology as medium for apocalyptic visions

The Ufological creature's tentacles continue to reach out, and just as some Ufologists believe the aliens are benevolent creatures - for a host of others they represent a threat! Thus, the aliens appear to mirror the light and dark aspects of our own human nature

To illustrate the extremes to which some people will go to publicize their personal vision of apocalypse, a ufologist from New England who was also a self-proclaimed witch, spoke of the UFOs performing nightly aerial "soul counts" in preparation for the great spiritual battle ( between the forces of the light and the darkness) which she knew to be imminent. Even more dramatic, a gentleman Ufologist speaking at a conference in Chester, Illinois fainted and collapsed at the speaker's podium after allegedly succumbing to forces from outer space. He had just completed speaking about the saucer's bombing and destroying the entire city, where the conference was being held. This historical event happened on the spiritual plane - which explains why no one in the audience seemed to recall seeing the destruction or remembered exactly when the armada of hostile saucers came to town.

Ufology as a source of adventure

Being a Ufologist may be a source of excitement and adventure for some individuals. It's not the knowing what UFOs are that charges these individuals up; rather, their enthusiasm is fueled by the anticipation and promise of learning exactly what UFOs are and why "they" are coming. Why else would someone like a famous Philadelphia radio talk show host actually reveal harboring the wish to be kidnapped and experimented upon by horrid little space creatures? (Her exact words were, "Boy, I'd love to have an experience like that"!)

Ufology as an anti-social/anti-science "enclave"

Still another tentacle may be a bastion for the social malcontent, a person who sees conspiracy in the traditional sciences, organized religion, politics and technology. In fact, some avid UFO buffs find a sense of satisfaction in the thought that the UFOs are "confounders" of contemporary technology and our scientific understanding of physics. In short, for these aficionados the UFOs represent a re-organization of our model of the world and the universe itself.

Ufology as a hobby

Moreover, Ufology may be a "self-science," a "hobby" of sorts, and to varying degrees the pursuit is well-grounded and serious, while in many other instances it appears to be egocentric, delusional and nonsensical. Add to the above the desire in the individual to attain recognition, leading to obsessive attempts to demonstrate one's brilliance in the ufological constellation, and here we have identified yet another "tentacle."

Ufology as a mental/emotional imbalance

Ufology may also be a behavior disorder which compels people to actively, and vocally pursue the enigma even though doing so may jeopardize their professional standing within their career environment. University professors (who are also Ufologists) are sometimes subjected to academic peer pressures and subtle threats. Yet, these learned professionals persist in their researches despite being fully-aware that others like them had traveled down the same unrewarding path.

Yet, they could have just as effectively written their UFO books under a pen name, later emerging from the shadows if they discovered something of significance to unveil in the public arena.

Certainly, there are some very sincere and honest individuals involved in the study but, they are few; and these are generally quite gullible and not very good at detecting charlatans and liars. They are incapable of being dishonest but they are often guilty of projecting their honest nature upon others. This was the Achilles heel of several well-known UFO researchers who shall go unnamed, here.

Moreover, we have only caught a glimpse of the tentacles affecting the Ufologists. What are we to suspect about the tentacles that may be wrapped about the witnesses' accounts of their UFO experiences?

I once interviewed a young abductee in New Jersey, who told me that she had undergone two abortions, but was happy that her third fetus (a daughter) was taken aboard a UFO and cared for by the Grays. She further confided that she had recently gone to an animal shelter and adopted a puppy. She said, "I just had a need to mother something."

Perhaps, as Jim Moseley, editor of the comical "Saucer Smear" newsletter speculates, "The UFOs are in some strange way reflections of our selves."

So, have we happened upon a piece of the answer? Is hearkening to the UFO phenomenon a "preoccupation" and/or an overly indulgent quest for the discovery of one's self?

Didn't Carl Jung mention something along those lines way back in 1958?

Ufology and the "Human Factor

As one can see, there are a multitude of factors that are "all too human" mixed into the UFO equation. Thus, from the sociologist's, psychologist's and folklorist's points of view, the UFO phenomenon is a potential treasure trove of insights on the human condition at the dawning of the 21st century

In my thirty-four years of studying the UFO phenomenon, encompassing both field investigation and the interviewing of witnesses, I have not seen any sustained trends or discernible spikes emerge among the data collected. Yes, people are reporting their observation(s) of "similar" anomalies in the skies. But, on a much closer examination of these data, it turns out that these "similarities" are largely superficial, and the differences from report to report are substantial.

Even if we allow for subjectivity, and for minor confusion about angular view points and distance or darkness factors creeping into the eyewitness testimony, it is still obvious that the consistency one might expect to find in reports of physical objects of presumably similar origin is simply not there.

So, after sixty years of active research and investigation into these strange aerial objects, we find that they still elude our attempt identify them, and we still have no understanding whatsoever of the phenomenon's core meaning, and significance - if there is any.

It is this lack of a core meaning and the lack of consistency from report to report that points to the phenomenon's "headless" character. It appears that there is no head to this octopus, at all - just disembodied tentacles that wrap around the Ufologists and ufo enthusiasts and embrace them in a kind of self-induced obsession, accompanied by a general denial that Ufoolishness is a shared pathology.

The Failure of Ufology

I do not believe that most UFO writers (pro or con), write for the common man's enlightenment or, for that matter with objective research in mind. Rather, many "pro-ufo" authors tend to write for each other's approval, and for book sales royalties. If the enigma were to ever to be scientifically resolved, they would write pithy rebuttals to the findings of that study or, simply switch gears and start chasing down "Flying Humanoid Reports".

So, perhaps the central question of this essay should not be whether Ufology is, or will ever be, a real science." It might be more revealing to ask " What do we want or need the UFOs to be?" These are answers only you can provide. The Ufologists already have their answers stored in their conscious and unconscious minds, and they have been aggressively expounding their brand of "saucer truth" (much of it contradictory) over the last six decades - yet, the riddle of the saucers remains completely unresolved! Could it possibly be it was never properly addressed?

Keep in mind that one man's Ufology is another man's Ufoology and vice-versa. Do not allow your own mountain top view to cause you to ignore and dismiss the other person's vistas. For each is a marvelous expression of something very human that deserves our notice, concern, understanding and exploration. These are the down-to-earth pieces of the UFO puzzle - Fleeting glimpses of the UFO's (i.e., Projections) that hail from the inner-space of modern man.

"I think the first origin of life must have involved the combined resources of all the stars in a substantial part of the cosmos. It is gratifying to see that a point of view that seemed so obvious to me 25 years ago is now being accepted by an ever growing body of scientists."

The BBC team filmed Professor Wickramasinghe in both Cardiff and India exploring his pioneering theory, developed with late Sir Fred Hoyle, that life was introduced to Earth by comets, and that alien life in the form of microbes still arrives on Earth from comets.

"The guys on the Hill won't touch it," even though, according to Bassett, "it's more important than the war."

Many of Bassett's mainstream counterparts on K Street have expressed similar frustration this year with their inability to advance their clients' priorities, as lawmakers spent valuable time trying to stem political scandals.

But advocates of more eccentric causes have felt the tightest pinch. Bassett, a former tennis pro and business consultant, moved from a second-story home office in Bethesda, Md., to Northern California, where he says friends are supporting him as he hunts for new benefactors to restart his push in Washington, D.C.

It wasn't always this way. Just a few years ago, the UFO cause had backing from some of the Beltway's heaviest hitters. Former White House chief of staff John Podesta headlined an October 2002 press conference at the National Press Club calling on the government to disclose what it knows about the flying crafts.

"It's time to find out what the truth really is that's out there," Podesta, a self-proclaimed fan of the spooky Fox show "X-Files," told the crowd that day.

The event was sponsored by the SciFi Channel, which in part was looking for promotional opportunities to attract viewers to "Out of the Blue," a documentary that argued for the existence of life beyond Earth.

The channel decided to put some major corporate muscle behind a lobbying campaign on the UFO issue, hiring PodestaMattoon, the firm headed by Podesta's brother, Tony, and Dan Mattoon, a confidant of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), to spearhead it.

Lobbyists at the firm collected $380,000 working the issue for the next three years. They helped the science-fiction network set up the Coalition for the Freedom of Information, or CFi, to pry new disclosures from the federal government. The group launched with a slick Web site and a well-publicized lawsuit against NASA to get the space agency to release information about a reputed UFO crash in Pennsylvania during the 1960s.

To top it off, the CFi commissioned a poll showing that not only do roughly seven in 10 Americans believe the government is withholding information about extraterrestrials, but that one in seven report they or someone they know actually has had a close encounter with aliens.

For the PodestaMattoon team, however, close encounters with Members and staff were harder to come by. Firm officials decline to speak publicly about their work on the issue, since it ended in 2004. But a source close to the effort said finding receptive audiences in Congress was "very hard."

"I don't think most Members were that much into it," the source said. "The bottom line is that if you're living in the real world today, everything else is more important, so this kind of issue has no traction whatsoever."

Any group of 535 people should include a few with offbeat interests, but the few friendly faces that UFO enthusiasts once found are no longer there. As recently as 1994, they had won their biggest advance when then-Rep. Steven Schiff (R-N.M.) decided to look into claims that an alien craft had crashed 50 years earlier in his district near the tiny town of Roswell and that the government swiftly covered it up.

Federal officials over the years had issued several explanations for the craft - which slammed into the desert in the summer of 1947 - including identifying it as a weather balloon and a Soviet satellite. But UFO believers dismissed the reports, and a mythology involving a repaired spacecraft and recovered alien bodies made the incident a rallying point.

Responding to constituent pressure to get new answers, Schiff asked to see radio traffic records from Roswell Army Air Corps Base between 1946 and 1949, but both the Defense Department and the National Archives declined to help. The lawmaker then took his request to what was then known as the General Accounting Office. He again was denied: Officials there told him records for that time period were missing.

At the GAO's request, the Air Force launched its own inquiry, arriving at the conclusion that the craft was an experimental high-altitude balloon to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. But Barry Bitzer, the lawmaker's then-chief of staff, said the Air Force's report left more questions than answers.

"My conjecture at this point is that none of the answers we've been given so far square with all the facts," said Bitzer, who's now chief of staff to the mayor of Albuquerque.

Schiff died in 1998, and Roswell and the nearby crash site now are represented by Republican Rep. Steve Pearce. David Host, the lawmaker's communications director, said Pearce believes the Air Force report was "fairly conclusive and credible."

"He is not actively working on that issue today, but there is a tremendous interest in this story across the country, and Rep. Pearce certainly encourages everybody to come to Roswell and find out for themselves," he said.

Those who work on the UFO issue agree that the challenge is getting Members of Congress past the fear of looking foolish by taking the subject seriously. Bassett says the lawmakers are "too weak, in terms of fortitude, to put their status on the line."

But others say figures like Bassett, who talks openly about an alien civilization attempting to disclose its existence to humankind, only contribute to that problem. Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist who now heads the CFi, said that "by leaving himself open to ridicule through his particular style of rhetoric, [Bassett] has greatly diminished his possible effectiveness."

A better approach, Kean said, would be to treat the subject as a valid, open question, without pushing any conclusions. In other words, The Truth Is Out There.

"Our premises are different," she said. They are "based on the fact that there is much evidence that demands further scientific investigation, while he believes that the government and the media must accept the UFO phenomenon as a self-evident extraterrestrial incursion."

Either way, while the current elected establishment regards both of those sides as if they'd just flown in from Mars, the UFO lobby takes heart in knowing that a long line of top-ranking politicians have indicated they're open to considering the topic.

Former President Gerald Ford held hearings on the issue while serving in the House in the 1960s. Before Ford's successor won the White House, then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter filed two formal reports describing his observations of UFOs.

"I don't laugh at people anymore when they say they've seen UFOs, because I've seen one myself," he was quoted as saying.

And enthusiasts have long gossiped about a report that President Ronald Reagan, after a 1982 screening of the movie E.T., turned to director Steven Spielberg and said, "There are probably only six people in this room who know how true this is."

Meanwhile, UFO advocates are holding out hope that a breakthrough is on the horizon.

The SciFi Channel, since purchased by NBC, has shifted its focus, but Ed Rothschild, a PodestaMattoon lobbyist who worked on the account, is still listed as a volunteer director of the CFi. Kean, who is working on a documentary about the possibility that consciousness survives after death, also is birddogging the group's NASA lawsuit.

Bassett, for his part, has signed up two new clients - the Exopolitics Institute and www.exopolitics.com - albeit on a pro bono basis. And he has set up a political action committee called the Extraterrestrial Phenomena PAC. It has received only $4,555 and has given no money out to candidates, but Bassett said he is hopeful it will grow.

Shortly before the elections, Bassett sent out an e-mail alert announcing that in anticipation of Democratic majorities, his group was swinging back into action. "Direct meetings will be sought with a larger than usual freshman class of members," he wrote. "More importantly, secrecy, institutional lying and abuse of power are part of the lexicon of issues being addressed in the election coverage - all aspects of the past and present management of the extraterrestrial presence truth embargo."

To kick off the new push, Bassett said he is planning to return to Washington. "There's going to be a concerted effort to engage some of the new Members in the Senate and House and let them know there's a real issue here," he said.

Respected for his ideas and erudition, the combative ex-Jesuit priest (he was granted an "ad divinis" suspension by the bishops of Puerto Rico on account of his controversial book Mi Iglesia Duerme in 1968) has investigated some of the most mind-bending cases on record in South America and Spain. The government of Ecuador discreetly solicited his advice concerning UFOs in the late 1970s, following a rash of aircraft disappearances over the Andes--some of them within range of the airport traffic tower. On the other hand, he was accused by Mexican authorities of inciting a panic when he personally investigated a number of deaths that had occurred in San Luis Potosí (north of Mexico City) in which the blood had been extracted form the victims in almost vampiric fashion.

There is no room for cowardice, intellectual or otherwise, in Freixedo's writings. He has openly stated his dissatisfaction toward "official science", as he terms it, and its refusal to take an interest in paranormal and overtly supernatural phenomena which occur everyday on our planet, and what is even worse, suppressing the research efforts of other scientists who have manifested an interest in the phenomenon.

The translation of Visionaries, Mystics and Contactees (Illuminet Press, 1992) permits those unable to read him in the original Spanish to sink their teeth into the life work of a man who has been hailed by his peers as a source of information and inspiration.

Visionaries, Mystics and Contactees can be considered to be the first book in a "tetralogy" that explores in chilling detail--backed up by human legend and contactee lore--that Man is merely a creature of the gods, immensely powerful and non-corporeal entities who have masqueraded for centuries as the God. The worst offender among this gallery of entities is the biblical Yahweh, Freixedo tells us in Israel: pueblo contacto (Israel: the contactee nation). These gods (always with a small "g") avail themselves of humanity much in the same way that we make use of animals: we kill them without hesitation for their meat and hides, but we do so with little, if any, animosity. Earth is a farm of the gods, he writes, and they exploit us for two things--blood and the waves emitted by our brains when we are either in pain or suffering. He has said of these "gods" in a recent television appearance:

...the ones from within have always been here and have created humanity much in the same way it has bred animals. They have toyed with us since the beginning. [...] Some dwell in giant spaceships, others beneath the earth, some 100 to 1000 meters below the surface. Others are totally invisible as they move among us...

The last two books in this tetralogy, the monumental ! Defendámonos de los dioses! (Defying the deities) and La Granja Humana (The human farm) expand on this theory, providing case histories and commentary on a graphic, and often grisly, theory.

Padre Freixedo has never backed away from controversy. In 1979, he squared off against Puerto Rican ufologist-contactee Orlando Rimacs in a lengthy and unprecedented radio debate in which he stated that the only truly human race was the black race. By popular demand, the debate was rebroadcast at a later date and was even carried over Spanish-language radio stations in New York City.

In the 1950's, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista asked him to leave that country in the wake of having penned 40 casos de injusticia social: examen de conciencia para cristianos distraídos (40 cases of social unjustice--a soul-searching exam for forgetful christians). Almost twenty years later, Mitos religiosos en las relaciones humanas, a book on human relationships emphasizing the myths created by Catholicism, landed him in jail in Venezuela.

Yet it was precisely in that country where Freixedo stumbled upon one of his most amazing cases: he made the acquaintance of a woman named Lula, a society hostess who had left her husband to marry a superhuman, if not outright supernatural, individual named Jorge. Upon the latter's untimely death; a medical exam revealed that the man had lived without lungs!

Jorge's uncanny talents and his jokes of coming from "another world" were no longer a laughing matter. An autopsy was forbidden at the time, but the enigmatic personage was known to hundreds of witnesses.

When Freixedo returned to Venezuela in later years to attend the exhumation of the body, he learned that Lula had disappeared off the face of the earth.

The fascination that sex holds for non-humans he states thus:

"...they are interested in three aspects of humanity: the generational, the genetic and the genital. I do not know the reason for this. What we have to do is conscientiously study the facts...there are many reasons why some entities are more interested than others in these matters. One group, the small ones, is becoming extinct. They have lost their reproductive ability; they claim, due to wars, atomic wars, which is why they are trying to stop them here. This has destroyed them genitally--they can no longer attempt male/female reproduction like we do here. They are all clones, which is why they resemble each other...they say it is not exactly cloning, but a similar process."

While no stranger to the U.S. (he has taught and studied here), American audiences were first able to hear his message directly at the First World UFO Congress held in Phoenix AZ in May 1991. His presentation, entitled "Gods and Spacemen", was well received by the audience. More recently, he has appeared on the Spanish-language television shows like the Cristina show as part of a panel of experts on the phenomenon.

The message of Visionaries, Mystics and Contactees remains a constant throughout his later works: Never turn over your mind to anything or anyone, not religions, politicians, cult leaders or anyone else. The brain, he explains, is the only means we have at our disposal to wrestle against the dominion of the gods. In an age when people are all to willing to surrender themselves to a cause, an ideology or a faith, Freixedo's words come as sound advice.

Peterson, who discovered a similarly mutilated cow on his neighbor's ranch five years ago, knew he was the latest victim in one of rural Montana's greatest mysteries.

Since the 1970s Montana ranchers have found dozens of cattle carved up in similar, macabre fashion.

The first known incident was a mutilated steer reported near Sand Coulee in late August 1974. By December 1977, sheriff's deputies had investigated 67 mutilation cases in Cascade, Judith Basin, Chouteau, Teton and Pondera counties.

In each case, the cuts were made with surgical precision, often in circular shapes.

Similar cases have haunted ranchers in the Southwest since the 1970s, when a 300-page federally funded report concluded the killings were the work of natural predators.

Peterson, a lifelong rancher, says he knows a predator kill when he sees one. Grizzly bears, wolves and coyotes aren't suspects in this case, he said.

"It's the weirdest thing," he said. "A guy hates to say too much because I don't know how far you can go before they'll put you in the nuthouse."

Others theories besides predators involve pranksters, satanic cults and space aliens.

Whoever, or whatever, is responsible has left precious few clues for Pondera County Sheriff Tom Kuka.

At least not the kind of clues lawmen are used to.

Like the others, Peterson's cow was found with no blood spills or splatters, no footprints and no sign of a struggle.

Nor were there footprints in past cases when the ground was muddy or snow-covered.

"There's no reasonable or rational explanation for this," said Kuka, who is investigating the case as felony criminal mischief. Peterson's cow was worth up to $1,200.

"I'm hoping to find anything that would show how did this animal come to get there," he said.

Perhaps the most unsettling hallmark of the mutilations is that hungry predators leave the carcasses untouched.

Peterson discovered the cow Oct. 9 and the birds are just now starting to peck at it.

"We had a cow die a week after this one about a half a mile away and there's nothing left of that other cow," he said.

Those oddities - no blood, no footprints and no predators - were all part of a similar spate of mutilations in the area in 2002, when ranchers reported at least 15 killings.

In one case, a rancher west of Dupuyer found a carcass with the skin peeled off the left side of the face and nose in similar fashion to Peterson's cow. The left eyeball, rectum and genitals were cut out. Part of the left ear was cut off, but the utter was intact.

On a ranch between Fort Shaw and Cascade, a carcass was missing its left eye, one teat, its genitals and rectum.

But in this latest case at Peterson's ranch, Kuka found an intriguing clue.

A few feet south of the carcass there was an impression in the stubble field, like the cow had lain down there. But there were no footprints or drag marks between the impression and her final resting place.

It was as if the bovine had fallen from the sky - and bounced.

Could she have been pushed from an aircraft?

There are numerous farmhouses in the area, and none reported hearing low-flying aircraft.

Aliens?

Even Peterson, a down-to-earth sort, admits he's pondered extra-terrestrial explanations.

"You never know," he said. "I ain't gonna say they're out there. But I ain't gonna say they're not."

And thinking about it, maybe the misplaced "L" was not the letter slipping out of alignment, but was purposefully put there as just one more way of "hiding" the true name so that it looked like Tuba Cain rather than Tubal Cain.

And for those of you keeping score at home, I too have had a long interest in OOPARTs, or the name that I prefer, OOPTHs for Out Of Place Things. I did not invent the term. I think Ivan Sanderson came up with it three or four decades ago.

But, since this article struck a chord, let's take a look at some other examples. In an account given before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir David Brewster said that a nail had been found embedded in solid rock. About an inch of the nail was protruding and the rest was lying along the stone and projecting into a layer of ground, where it had rusted. The report suggests that the nail was partially in the stone but had not been driven into it. In other words, the nail was part of the sedimentary material that had congealed into granite so that it was part of the rock. That would mean that the nail had been manufactured millions of years earlier if all aspects of the report were true and the observations about it accurate.

Many more such objects seem to have been found in coal. Brad Steiger, in Mysteries of Time & Space reported that Wilbert H. Rusch, Sr., Professor of Biology, Concordia College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, quoted a letter from a friend had received from Frank J. Kenwood (yes, this sounds like the old friend of a friend), who said that he had been a fireman at the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, Oklahoma in 1912 when he split a large piece of coal and found an iron pot encased inside.

Quoting from the letter, Steiger wrote, "This iron pot fell from the center leaving the impression or mold of the pot in this piece of coal. I traced the source of the coal and found that it came from the Wilburton, Oklahoma, mines."

Others have made similar discoveries in lumps of coal. Mrs. S. W. Culp, according to the Morrisonville, Illinois Times, published on June 11, 1891, found an artifact when she broke a lump of coal as she was preparing to toss it in a stove. According to the story, "Mrs. Culp thought the chain had been dropped accidentally in the coal, but as she undertook to lift the chain up, the idea of its having been recently dropped was at once fallacious, for as the lump of coal broke, the middle of the chain became loosened while each end remained fastened to the coal."

The coal was identified as coming from mines in southern Illinois. Steiger suggests that the coal is from the Carboniferous era.

I queried the Smithsonian about this and several other like reports a number of years ago. They suggested, "... manufactured items... would not normally be found in rocks or coal since the latter were formed before the advent of man. The only such inclusion would be the rock material had been broken, and the artifacts had gotten lost among it and then moss had recemented it by sedimentary action."

This is certainly a conventional explanation and is, of course, possible. It is also possible, as in the case of the metal vessel from Dorchester (see the following article) that it had not been embedded in the rock, but was associated with material around the rock. That means, simply, that it could have been something buried in softer ground that was uprooted by the explosion and fell in among the debris of the quarry where it was found giving the impression that it was blown out of solid rock.

Some support for that conclusion comes from the study of the history of OOPARTs. Info Journal, #59 reported that about 1900 an Englishman found a coin embedded in a lump of coal. The coin was clearly dated 1397. So, we have an artifact that was found in coal that was clearly dated long after the coal was formed unless we are willing to believe that some ancient, unknown or alien civilization used a numbering system just like ours. We have seen, since the beginning of written history a variety of numbering systems so why believe the ancients would use the same system we do. Why wouldn't they have invented their own? And would they have a base ten?

There is further information that sheds additional light on this and we don't need philosophic discussions of numbering systems to understand it. After Mount St. Helens blew up a group of scientists discovered that peat deposits had developed in an unexpectedly short time at the bottom of a lake. It suggested that some coal beds could theoretically form in far less time than conventionally believed.

What all this tells us is that there are some interesting enigmas out there and that there seem to be some rational explanations for some of these strange finds. But, and this is critical, those explanations rely partly on speculation. Further study is required on this before we can either accept the data as proved, or reject it as flawed.

One of the first of the Out of Place Artifacts (OOPARTs) I came across was a reference in several UFO books to some sort of "bell-shaped vessel" discovered during blasting in a quarry in Massachusetts in the mid-19th century. For some reason I have always envisioned this as a "gravy boat."

According to those UFO books, the original source was the Scientific American in 1851. The story was headlined "A relic of a by-gone age" although some suggested it was labeled as "A Curiosity."

The story, as reported in those other UFO books, was that the blasting in the quarry "threw an immense mass of rock... in all directions." Among the shattered debris, the workmen found a small metallic vessel in two pieces that when reassembled formed a "bell shape" about four and a quarter inches high and about six inches wide at the top. The whole thing was something like an eighth of an inch thick.

The report continued, saying that it was made of zinc with "a considerable portion of silver." The sides were inlaid with silver and the carving was "exquisitely done by the art of some cunning workman." The magazine concluded, again according to all those other UFO books, that the find was worthy of additional investigation because the vessel was extremely old, pre-dating the first inhabitants of the continent.

I discovered that the University of Iowa library, (Pat Williams looks through the 1852 Scientific American in the bound periodicals) in it's bound periodically section, held the entire run of Scientific American. It would be easy enough to check the primary source of the story. So I did. To my disappointment, but not great surprise, there was nothing in the 1851 issues about anything like the metal vessel being found. True, there were a number of things labeled as "curiosities" but nothing that told of manufactured items coming out of a quarry.

But research isn't always that simple, and there is always the chance that someone had written down a date wrong and it was then copied by all those others who failed to do primary research but who believed the others had. So, I decided to look in both 1850 and 1852, and being somewhat compulsive about such things, I quite naturally started in 1850 because it came before 1852.

The article appeared in the June 5, 1852 edition of the Scientific American, on page 298. The details as listed in most of the UFO books were substantially correct. There was some additional information in that article, including that "On the sides there are six figures of a flower or bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel a vine, or wreath, inlaid also with silver. The chasing, carving, and inlaying are exquisitely done by the art of some cunning workman."

The entry continues, noting "There is no doubt that this curiosity was blown out of the rock... but will ... some other scientific man please to tell us how it came there?"

While I had been at the mercy of those other writers in the past, until I began to roam the stacks in the bound periodicals section of the University of Iowa library, researchers today aren't so restricted (and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of them have never seen the inside of a library). I typed "Scientific American 1852" into a search engine and in seconds was looking at a complete listing for Scientific American available on-line. Since I already knew the date, I could easily pull up what I wanted. Anyone with access to a computer and an on-line service could do the same (and therefore stay out of the library).

Like so much else in the UFO field, there is always something left out of the stories in all those UFO books. What is rarely mentioned is a paragraph at the end of the article in which it is suggested that Tuba Cain, one of the first residents of the area, meaning from the 17th century, had made the vessel.

But sometimes UFO research takes off on strange tangents. On closer examination of the Scientific American, it begins to look as if the mark at the end of the sentence that I thought originally was an artifact caused by the microfilm process, and right after the word Tuba, is an "L" that slipped out of alignment and into the margin. This means the name is a reference to Tubal Cain and Tubal Cain probably wasn't an early reference to one of the first residents of Dorchester County, but was a descendent of Adam and Eve. Tubal Cain refers to blacksmiths from antiquity and the original Tubal Cain supposedly worked with bronze and iron in the far distant past and no where near the New World.

Here is something else from outside the UFO field (and that I wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for access to the Internet), Tubal Cain is a secret Masonic phrase, and something that certainly wasn't well known in 1852. So now the question becomes is this tale of a metallic vessel found in solid rock true or does it have some significance to the Masons and the use of Tubal Cain is the clue. I confess that I don't know. I am more than a little disturbed to learn of the history of Tubal Cain and the reference to it, or him, in this particular article. There is no reason for those other writers to have made anything out of the reference, unless they themselves were Masons and knew the code. Without the Internet, I certainly would not have made the connection, nor would I have been able to ask the question.

Ignoring that little bit of diversion, we find that if we are going to look at the rest of the case with a scientific detachment, we must ask a couple of other questions. First, did they find anything to suggest the vessel had been embedded in the rock? Did they find bits of rock that matched the contours of the vessel? If we were to date the "vessel" according to standard archaeological methodology we would be forced to conclude that the vessel was millions of years old because that was the age of the material in which it was found.

Second, they suggest that a scientific man should take a look at the vessel and named Professor Agassiz, as someone to study the find. The Scientific American wondered what Agassiz's credentials were to make any sort of study. I confess that in today's world, I'm a little curious about the man's credentials as well, though there is nothing to suggest that he ever looked at the vessel or rendered an opinion about it so this is really a dead issue.

In the end, we're left with many unanswered questions, including that of the placement of the vessel and if it was actually embedded in the stone as originally suggested. It is always possible that it was not embedded in the stone but was associated with it. That means, simply, that the vessel was in the ground on top of the stone maybe lost in it, but had not been embedded in the stone.

And we now wonder if there was a hidden meaning in this article that was meant for the Masons because of the use of Tubal Cain. In a world filled with speculations about a da Vinci code, Templars, and a bloodline related to Christ, it is not difficult to believe that the Mason of the 19th Century planted the article for some, probably trivial reason.