"As a reporter, there are not many stories like this," he said. "These are the ones you remember. You don't talk to your neighbor across the fence about the utility board meeting."

Myers left the News-Journal in 1995 to join the Press-Register. He is now the Assistant Baldwin Editor.

This story, he said, stuck in his mind. He wanted to let enough time pass to let things cool down and sore feelings to be mended.

Apparently, 15 years still isn't long enough. One of the key characters in the book, Ed Walters, called Myers a "scam guy" when contacted by the Press-Register for this story.

Here's a synopsis of the Gulf Breeze UFO tale:

Sightings of some mysterious item in this Pensacola bedroom community began in 1987 with high-quality photos captured by resident Walters. Hundreds of people came to a field where they reported seeing the unexplainable.

Later, while investigating the claims, Myers discovered a model UFO that had been left in the attic of a home where Walters previously lived. The couple who owned the home handed it over, saying it was the only UFO they'd seen.

Investigation showed part of the model was made with drafting paper bearing Walter's handwriting. According to Myers' book, Walters never denied this but when asked about it by Pensacola News-Journal editors, claimed some drafting paper was stolen from his garbage.

Myers also spoke to a man who saw Walters constructing a UFO-like structure.

Walters said he stands by his story, and that he never faked the photos or lofted a structure in the air.

"I stand by what I saw," he said. "The test of time is on my side."

Walters said the paper was from a housing project that was dated 1989, well after the first sighting. Myers details his contention that the paper was actually from a 1987 project.

Myers said Walters is a smart man who likes practical jokes.

"He's a fascinating character," Myers said. "He had to have a genius IQ. My theory is that this started out as a joke, but he got carried away with it. At some point, he had to make a decision that he'd either be the crazy guy who took the photos of a UFO or be the crazy guy who faked the photos."

The author also touches on how a newspaper addresses a story like this, taking readers along on his own decisions on what to cover and what stories his editors decided not to run.

In "War of the Words," Myers tries to make it clear that he's written about the UFO story of a lifetime already.

Myers includes a plea to those who also have UFO sightings to share: "DON'T CALL ME, okay? It's not that I don't believe you. It's that my life is already filled with bizarre inexplicable phenomena, such as the way the right rear speaker in my car never works EXCEPT WHEN THEY PLAY SONGS I HATE."

Myers' book is available in hard cover for $27.89 and in paperback for $17.84 at www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=33539.

As far as we know, no one else had developed the capability of sustained air flight, at least on this planet. But early accounts of our first settlers included an occasional report of something flying in the sky. These happen chance sightings were normally made when one would check the sky for weather conditions, or see birds fly over. One of the very first American sightings of what could be a UFO occurred as early as 1865, over 35 years before the first known flight at Kitty Hawk. Fortunately, there are still newspaper accounts of this and other early sightings of days long since passed.

The Missouri Democrat dated October 19, 1865 gives an account of the sighting of an unknown flying object under the headline of "A STRANGE STORY-REMARKABLE DISCOVERY." The sighting was reported by one James Lumley, who was a trapper. The report states that "if" what Lumley reported was true, it would shake the foundations of the scientific world. Lumely states that in the middle of September, he was trapping in the mountains at a location about 75-100 miles above the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri River. Just after sunset, Lumley saw a "bright, luminous, body" in the skies. This body moved very quickly to the East. After five seconds, the unknown object burst into pieces. He soon heard a thunderous explosion followed by a "rushing sound ." This explosion shook the ground. He could smell sulphur in the air. Though impressed by what he had seen and heard, the next day would bring even more remarkable discoveries.

About two miles from his campsite, he could see a path cut through the forest. Whatever had come through the area had leveled everything in its path. He soon discovered the cause of the great destruction: a giant object which was made of a rock-like material. This object had been driven into the side of a mountain after ripping through the forest. This was much more that an asteroid or comet: the object was divided into compartments. Also, hieroglyphic-like symbols could be seen carved into the object's surface. He also discovered fragments of what appeared to be glass, and strange liquid-like stains located in several places on the object. Almost humorously, the newspaper account ascertains that the object "had" to be a meteor which was used by extraterrestrials. Their theory was that these other-worldly beings traveled on meteors, and would eventually land on Earth, and put mankind into servitude.

A second newspaper report on a strange airship was included in the Denison Daily News of Denison, Texas on January 25, 1878. A Texas farmer, John Martin, was credited with one of the first uses of the term "flying saucer." Martin had actually seen a "balloon-shaped" UFO, but used the saucer term to describe the size of the object from his perspective. Martin's sighting was on January 2. What he saw was a dark object high in the sky. The object was moving closer to him all the while. Because the object maintained a dark color, there was speculation that the object was solid and backlit.

The headlines of the 25th would read, "A STRANGE PHENOMENON." Some of the report is listed here:

"From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eyes to discover its character."



"When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time, Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed."

Another early UFO report of 1896, only recently discovered, occurred at the now defunct Portsmouth, New Hampshire shipyard. Two security guards were guarding the bridge from the mainland to the dock where a navy ship was tied to a floating dock. At about 9 PM an object appeared flying over the ship and over the bridge. Both men shot at it and heard the "ping" of the bullets hitting the craft. The object brightened up and took off faster than when it flew over.

The most enduring account of early air ships occurred in the small Texas town of Aurora in 1897. This account would also be carried in newspapers, preserving details of an alleged UFO crash and the burial of an alien being. This ongoing legend would cause the state of Texas to declare the town a "historical site."

On April 19, 1897, a slow moving space ship crashed into a windmill, bursting into pieces. As the debris was searched through, supposedly the body of a small alien was discovered. Originally the alien pilot was dubbed the "Martian pilot." Some of the debris also revealed material sketched with a type of hieroglyphic. The town folk gave the poor little creature a proper burial in the local cemetery. This incident, whether true or not, had just enough publicity to stay afloat for over 100 years. It was even made into a movie, "The Aurora Encounter" in 1986, starring Jack Elam.

The news of the crash spread quickly, even for that time period. A newspaper article of the event still exists, written by E. E. Haydon, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Below is the original article:

About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

How much of the account was real, and how much pure story telling we will never know. The Aurora incident is still being studied today.

There are a number of other American reports, along with much evidence from around the world going back to early civilizations which indicate flying apparatus were being seen in the skies through the ages. There seems to be little doubt that even before mankind had mastered the art of flying, someone, somewhere had. Of course, UFO reports can often times be explained by conventional flying objects, but what known craft could we use for an explanation in the mid to late 1800's? The Wright Brothers had not yet created their new flying machine.

"When I first talked with her, I could see the manifestation of demons," said Paul Mbugua, a preacher and exorcist at Operation Fresh Start Apostolic Church in Oildale.

"Every Sunday, we were casting devils out of her," he said of the 18-year-old Bakersfield woman. "She was very possessed."

Belief in demonic possession has been part of the Christian walk since Jesus' exorcisms in the Gospels 2,000 years ago.

Once regarded as frightening procedures marked by form and ritual, as described by the Vatican and seen in Hollywood movies like "The Exorcist," many evangelical churches have sanitized and streamlined exorcisms for 21st-century parishes.

These days, Lucifer is being cast out somewhat easily during altar calls in the worship center, in group sessions at retreats and during private office visits -- with nary a sign of growling demonic voices, supernatural feats of strength or people freaking out at holy images.

Yet modern advances in psychology and medicine continue to scrape against the ancient practice.

Ethical issues have been raised about pastors' "divine gift of discernment," in which God reveals truth to the minister. Pastors like Mbugua use discernment to decide if a person requires psychiatric treatment or deliverance.

Lewis Ashmore, a Tehachapi pastor who performed hundreds of exorcisms at revivals in the 1950s and 1960s, said discernment can be tainted by a minister's biases.

Moreover, putting someone with major psychiatric issues through an exorcism, or deliverance as some pastors call it, can sometimes do more harm than good, he said.

"You tell a person they got a demon," Ashmore said, "how are they going to handle it?"

Casting out devils

At Operation Fresh Start, Carol Dill attends healing services that include exorcisms. The 47-year-old Oildale resident said during one of the services, the demons of cigarette and alcohol addictions left her.

"I was doing Satan's will by doing things that were damaging to me," Dill said. "I guess I was bound by the spirit of Satan."

Betty Colbert of Bakersfield attended a two-hour deliverance held by Pastor Max Van Dyke in his office at Christ Cathedral on White Lane.

She decided to go through the process because of "heaviness" within her she couldn't describe. "Something was amiss," she said.

When Van Dyke cast demons out of her, she felt rumbling in her solar plexus followed by repeated coughing.

This is typical of the way devils are ejected, Van Dyke said. "They seem to leave on a person's breath, through a sigh, a belch, a yawn, a cough," he said.

Three years later, thanks to vigilance, prayer and the Holy Spirit, Colbert remains free of the psychic oppression she lived with for most of her 60 years, she said.

Benign exorcisms?

Lack of drama during a deliverance is common, Van Dyke said. If the demons try to manifest themselves, Van Dyke tells them, "In the name of Jesus Christ, stop," and they do, he said.

Indeed, the trend toward benign exorcisms has blurred what is and what isn't a deliverance ministry.

An example is Cleansing Stream, an international program created by the evangelical Church on the Way in Van Nuys. Several Bakersfield churches offer the ministry, including New Life Center, Grace Assembly of God, Bakersfield Community Church and Valley Bible Fellowship.

Organizers don't want Cleansing Stream lumped in with deliverance ministries. New Life Center declined to comment about its program for this article.

Stella Webby of Valley Bible was the most forthcoming of Cleansing Stream coordinators interviewed. The months-long program, which features group sessions that culminate at a retreat, is "preparation for deliverance," she said.

Demonic spirits are real, Webby said. "We need supernatural help."

More than a feeling?

Many modern-day deliverers include psychology in their ministries. What's more, if they detect mental illness, they'll recommend psychiatric treatment over deliverance.

But it's a slippery slope. Pastors rely on their gift of discernment to determine what a person needs. Van Dyke said most of his clients, no matter their diagnosed psychiatric condition, go through "whole personality deliverance."

By contrast, Mbugua said that of dozens of people he counsels showing signs of mental illness, only one might require an exorcism. Most recently that one was Wheeler, whom Mbugua has subjected to numerous exorcisms based on his subjective reactions to her.

"I can feel it, I can see it," Mbugua said.

Wheeler started casting spells in her youth, she said. Visions of winged devils breathing fire and conversations with Satan happened nearly every day.

About 91/2 months ago, she walked into Operation Fresh Start, a small church of 25 members devoid of crosses and religious images as a hedge against idolatry. The church embraced her, and Wheeler is now staying with a church member.

The teenager said she's been depressed in the past and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, one of its symptoms being hearing voices.

She also suffers from bipolar disorder and ADHD, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. In September, she took herself off psychotropic medication.

When told of Wheeler's schizophrenia, Steve Bacon, associate professor of psychology at Cal State Bakersfield, speculated that the voices she hears are probably not Satan's.

But Mbugua begs to differ. "When it's only psychological, that feeling" -- which he described as terrifying -- "isn't there."

Rebuking Satan

A Wednesday prayer service at Fresh Start was attended by a dozen church members. The service featured down-home gospel music, with Senior Pastor Eldon Venable singing and playing guitar.

Guest preacher Edward Shotwell gave a sweaty and impassioned sermon on the wily devil, followed by an altar call where he laid hands on weeping parishioners.

During testimonies, Wheeler stood up from a pew, renounced the dark forces and recommitted herself to Christ.

"I feel happy," she said afterward, "a little depressed, but I rebuke Satan."

No consensus on exorcism; experts disagree on causes

There is no consensus among clergy, psychologists and religious scholars regarding the veracity of exorcisms.

Monsignor Ronald Swett, of St. Philip the Apostle Church in southwest Bakersfield, is a skeptic. He said apparent devil manifestations during exorcisms can be explained by mental disorders such as schizophrenia or psychological theories such as the power of suggestion.

"I think people should be very, very cautious," said Swett, a Catholic priest who has never witnessed an exorcism.

For decades Rev. Lewis Ashmore cast out devils during tent revivals in the Central Valley. People foamed at the mouth, talked back to him in a strange voice and writhed uncontrollably on the ground.

Today the 75-year-old reverend, who heads Tehachapi's Life Awareness Center, dismisses all of it.

"Back in Christ's day, these mental conditions weren't yet diagnosed," he said. "All exorcisms can be explained by psychology and science."

Meanwhile Stafford Betty, a religious studies professor at Cal State Bakersfield, is sympathetic toward exorcists.

Last year he published a study of demonic possession in an academic journal. Based on evidence of successful exorcisms within various religious traditions, Betty concluded that "spirit oppression" is real.

In some cases, Betty wrote, "spirits" may cause psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, in which sufferers hear voices.

"It may well be that the voices belong to realities we cannot see," Betty writes, "just as many schizophrenics claim."

Catholic exorcisms rare, but rules for rites ready

In the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples cast devils out of people. These exorcisms influenced the church to perform the practice and eventually create an official rite.

In various writings, the Vatican has outlined signs of possession and ways possession can occur, but these days, exorcisms in the Catholic Church are extremely rare.

Exorcisms rules

Created in the 17th century, the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism brims with rules, rituals and form. - Only a bishop trained by the church can perform an exorcism.

- The exorcist must wear specific holy clothing, such as an alb and a purple stole, and say certain prayers and quote Scripture at specific times.

- A rosary, crucifix, holy water, Bible and relics of a saint should be present.

- The exorcist presents holy objects to and speaks directly with the devils in the possessed person.

Signs of possession

- Speaking or understanding languages the person never learned

- Knowing things "that are distant or hidden"

- Ability to predict the future

- Intense hatred of holy things

- Physical strength beyond human capability

Causes of possession

- A curse

- Addictions to sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.

- Dabbling in the occult, black magic or witchcraft

- Proximity to evil places or persons

She has been having this "sixth sense" since she was a child, when she began to hear "dead people" whispering or even having a conversation around her.

She can only hear their voices but can't see them.

"Hearing their voices is creepy enough, if I start seeing them, I don't know if I could take it," she said when I questioned her after reading her essay.

She recalled how it all started at the age of eight when she stricken with a viral fever and hospitalised for weeks.

Eventually she recovered but, after that, she started hearing strange voices around her all the time.

At first, she found it difficult to handle the situation. She used to cry at night, afraid of the voices. Although "they" didn't harm her, she could feel their presence everywhere she goes. Eventually, she got over this fear.

I was impressed with her because she handled the whole situation on her own without much help from her parents.

Being illiterate, they didn't bother to take her for a proper medical check-up and simply concluded that she was hallucinating because of the medication she was taking.

Tired of being accused of telling lies, she stopped complaining to her parents, and she eventually got used to the situation.

Nowadays, she hears voices everywhere around her, when lessons are going on, when playing with her friends, when watching television and even when she goes to the toilet.

However, one good thing about it is she doesn't understand "their" language.

One day, in the wee hours of the morning, she heard someone crying in her room. I wonder what I would have done if I were in her situation.

Life was usual for her even with this strange situation which keeps haunting her.

But recently she heard her name being called: "Ling, Ling!" She turned around to find no one behind her. She felt a cold shiver running down her spine.

I advised her to consult a monk or, better still, to see a psychiatrist for help.

She's afraid "they" might harm her if she tries to get rid of the voices.

However she did go to a monk and she was given some talismans to ward off the spirits. But nothing happened.

One day, we were talking in the teacher's room at about 3pm, after school was dismissed. Only the two of us were there.

She suddenly stopped talking and stared right through me.

"What happened, why are you staring at me?" I asked her.

"Ma'am, I can hear someone talking behind you!" she said.

I just stared at her.

# We all love spooky stories, strange encounters and spine-tingling tales. If you have such an anecdote based on a real experience, e-mail it, in not more than 800 words, to starmag@thestar.com.my. Original contributions will be paid.

Some clues indicate that it's not a wolf from among the 1,200 or so that live in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The animal shot in Garfield County in early November had shades of orange, red and yellow in its fur, unlike the Northern Rockies wolves, which tend more toward browns, blacks and grays.

The orangish coat may be more indicative of wolves that roam the upper Great Lakes region, Sime said.

The animal also had long claws and teeth in good condition, somewhat unusual for a 4-year-old wolf, raising the possibility it might be a hybrid that had spent some time in captivity, Sime said.

On the other hand, the wolf was fairly large at 106 pounds with a big head and hunting skills, which may suggest it was wild, Sime said.

"Right now," Sime said, "we're just as curious as everyone else."

Whatever it was, it had landowners in McCone, Garfield and Dawson counties on alert for months. About 120 sheep were killed and others were hurt in a series of attacks that started about a year ago.

The animal roamed wide swaths of the landscape, occasionally attacking sheep before moving on only to circle back later. Several landowners were given permits to shoot if it was seen attacking livestock but it was never caught in the act.

The animal eluded trackers for months until this fall, when footprints were spotted in deep snow. Agents with Wildlife Services shot it from the air Nov. 2.

The animal was initially reported as a wolf, but closer inspection raised concerns about the identification.

Muscle tissue has been sent to the University of California Los Angeles, where scientists have been analyzing DNA from the Northern Rockies wolf population and putting together a sort of family tree.

The animal's carcass was sent to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore., for genetic analysis.

The work could take several months to complete.

Sime said that if the animal is a wolf that came in from the Rockies or Canada or the upper Midwest, the genetic testing should provide clear evidence. It wouldn't be the first time that a wolf has wandered hundreds of miles. In recent years, wolves from Yellowstone have been found in Utah and Colorado.

"If it's neither of those, the question becomes 'OK, what is this animal and where is it from?"' Sime said. "The uncertainty level goes up a lot."

Just at the moment sea monsters constitute what is known in newspaper parlance as "hot copy." Almost any week in the daily papers, in Sunday supplements, in magazines, the reader can find some yarn telling of this or that strange creature seen in the sea. It is almost as though all the hidden monsters of the depths had suddenly taken it into their heads to pop up to the surface.

Of course there is nothing new in this matter of sea monsters. For hundreds, even thousands of years, sailormen have brought to port tales of sea serpents-but their stories have been scoffed at. Scientists have gravely declared that no such creatures exist. To a layman such certainty cannot help arousing wonder. We know that strange and monstrous forms of life existed on land when the world was young-and in the sea as well. Granted that the land creatures are long ago extinct by reason of revolutionary changes in living conditions, nevertheless, those same changes have not been so pronounced in the sea. It would not seem beyond the realm of possibility that some of them may have survived. For good and sufficient reasons, as will be seen, personally I believe they have.

Be all that as it may be, however, the fact remains that recently there seems to have been a sudden revival of these intriguing tales.

We have the serpentine creature allegedly seen by some hundred-fifty more or less reliable persons in Loch Ness, Scotland. There are those two with the Louisa Alcott names said to disport themselves off Juan de Fuca Straits. In Lake Okanagan, British Columbia, there is another one, sufficiently credited by the authorities that they offer facilities to anyone who will go after the thing in a spirit of true scientific research. Then, from Acapulco, comes that amazing story of the track of a great, three-toed creature coming up out of the sea and returning, all between tides; of the deep furrow plowed by its dragging tail; of the deep, barrel-like depression in the wet sand where it rolled and wallowed! I happen to know the man who saw those tracks. He is not a liar.

Quite probably some of the reported sea serpents-I do not mean those which I have specifically mentioned-are inventions pure and simple. Others may have been illusions. After all, a flight of low-flying birds along the horizon, bits of floating stuff (it's queer the shapes that flotsam on the surface sometimes takes), might, in poor light, take on the semblance of an undulating sea serpent. However, one would not go far amiss to accept that queer creatures have been seen upon the face of the sea.

Now most of the above mentioned beasties, with the possible exception of the one near Acapulco, have been given wide publicity. However, there is still another, about which little or nothing has been told or written. This is that huge Thing sometimes called the "San Clemente Monster"-and monster it truly is if ever there was one! I have seen it-and I know whereof I speak.

San Clemente Island is a lonely, wind-swept bit of rock and sand lying some fifty miles south of Los Angeles Harbor. It is little frequented except by fishermen. Its waters are lonely, too. Days can go by when one will never see a boat. The Thing, itself, appears to like this remote bit of the ocean-that windy channel between San Clemente and Santa Catalina.

Just why so little has been said about so strange a resident of so publicity-minded a community as Southern California it is hard to say. Certainly it has been seen by enough persons-some twenty-five or thirty that I know of and many of whom bear reputations for veracity beyond reproach. Furthermore, it has been seen periodically over the last fifteen or twenty years. Perhaps this paucity of detail is mainly due to the fact that the Thing is so monstrous, so utterly incredible, so impossible, that any sane man shuns the incredulity with which his tale is inevitably received. In fact, I know this to be true. Some of my intimate friends have seen it. They know that I have seen it. Yet, despite friendship, despite this mutual knowledge of one another's experience, I find most of them reluctant to talk, even to me. One interesting phase of the matter is this. Whenever I have been able to persuade one of these friends to do so, we have independently drawn sketches of what we saw. Barring differences in artistic skill these drawings show one and the same thing!

About fifteen or twenty years ago rumors began to be current around Avalon that there was something queer out in the Clemente Channel. There were guarded hints of some huge, unnameable Thing lifting up out of the sea. These rumors were shadowy, difficult to run down. No one credited with having seen the Thing would admit it. Still the rumors persisted. Perhaps the very evasiveness encountered was tantamount to admission.

I was out in the Southern California channels a lot during those days, fishing for tuna and swordfish. Naturally I heard about the Thing. Being by nature curious. I proceeded to ask questions-but learned nothing. My boatman, Percy Neale, an old timer at Avalon, was said to have seen it. I asked him. Percy looked out to sea-made some irrelevant remark-then, when pressed, muttered something about "eyes as big as dinner plates" and changed the subject.

Then came my first view of the Thing!

We were fishing for tuna about ten miles off Catalina in the Clemente Channel. It was a windy afternoon-the channel a welter of breaking seas. Suddenly Percy let out a yell.

"Look! Look! Over there!"

He pointed to seaward. I saw it! About a mile away something huge, wet and glistening, was lifting up out of sea! Higher and higher it raised until I felt my skin crawl. To this very day I vividly remember that queer, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Why should I be scared! Just picture it for yourselves. A tumbled, broken sea, flecked with white, and stretching away to the horizon's edge. Catalina looming through the golden haze of afternoon. San Clemente a vague shadow far to southward. Sea birds wheeling, hovering, darting. That monstrous Thing rising up out of the sea!

I don't know how long he stayed up. Perhaps a minute-perhaps less. Fascinated, spellbound, we watched him. Then, before our very eyes, majestically, slowly, he sank back into the depths from whence he had come.

There was a scarcity of small talk aboard that ship from then on. Tuna fishing seemed to have lost a lot of its charm. Swiftly developed a multitude of perfectly good and sufficient reasons why we should forget further fishing for that day and go home early-leaving that particular bit of the world to whatever might care to claim it.

As we slipped up the coast toward Avalon through the quiet waters of the lee side-as we began to encounter other boats-to meet again man and his handiworks, the horror of what we had seen seemed to lessen and our tongues were loosed. We talked grandly about how we would go ashore and spread the wonder of what we had seen to the world at large-possibly make our everlasting fortunes out of it. But we did no such thing! Somehow or another, face to face with the orderliness of Avalon town, with the smug scepticism of the Tuna Club, we found our lips sealed. Words would not come. Instead we slunk furtively to the nearest bar and tossed down two stiff drinks.

Two or three years passed. Others saw the Thing. Some, braver than their fellows, talked. Little by little the earlier discoverers came out of their shells and talked, too. All accounts from those who had been really close to the Thing agreed upon three fundamentals: that it was enormous; that it possessed huge and horrible eyes; that it was something absolutely unknown to man. A composite description of the Thing was forwarded to the late Dr. David Starr Jordan of Stanford University. He replied by suggesting it probably was a sea elephant! Our descriptive powers must have been woefully weak. It was no more a sea elephant than I am. I have seen them, many of them-roaming around the sea-in their native rookery at Guadalupe Island. Sea elephants look like seals except that they are larger and have a prolonged, hooked upper nostril. This Thing was not a sea elephant nor did it remotely resemble one.

Then came my second and only close-up view of the Thing!

It was in September, 1920. I was fishing for marlin swordfish at San Clemente with the late Smith Warren. We were staying at Mosquito Harbor where the fish camp used to be. It was early in the morning-about 8:00 o'clock. We had worked close in shore the three miles from the camp down to the East End. We had then turned back up the coast and worked along about a mile and a half to two miles off shore. The sea was glassy with just a little roll coming down the island. Overhead it was overcast-one of California's summer fogs. Objects on the surface showed black in that light. The brown slopes swept up abruptly to almost meet the gray mist. We passed Mosquito and the white tents of the camp and were nearly abreast of White Rock. Smithy was down in the cockpit doing something or another. I was perched on top of the cabin looking for fish. My bait trolled along astern, the rod tied to the fishing chair.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something huge lifting up out of the sea. Turning swiftly I was face to face with something I had never seen before-will probably never see again!

Here it is-just as I saw it. Take it or leave it.

A great barrel shaped Thing, tapering toward the top and surmounted by a reptilian head strangely resembling those of the huge, prehistoric creatures whose reproductions stand in various museums. It lifted what must have been a good twenty feet. Widely spaced in the head were two eyes-eyes such as were never conceived of even in the wildest nightmare! Immense, at least a full foot in diameter, round, slightly bulging, and as dead looking as though they had seen all the death the world has suffered since its birth! No wonder those who had seen it close by could speak of little else but the eyes!

This was the picture that came into the lenses of my seven power binoculars the moment I clapped them on to the Thing-knowing what I was looking at. At the same time I yelled to Smithy to head for it.

Through the glasses the head, those awful eyes, that portion of the body showing-and it must have been at least six feet thick, perhaps more, appeared scarcely a hundred feet away. It was covered with what looked like stiff, coarse hair, almost bristles. Strangely enough, considering the light, I gained a distinct impression of a reddish tinge. Remember that.

The bulk of the Thing simply cannot be told. To this day I don't believe that I saw anything but the head and a section of the neck-if it had a neck. What was below the surface only God knows. But listen to this. You will recollect that I mentioned a little roll coming down the island? The Thing did not rise and fall in that roll as even a whale would. The waves beat against it and broke.

As we drew nearer, the great head which had been slowly turning, stopped. The huge, dead eyes fixed themselves upon us! Even today, after fourteen years, I can still see them-yes-feel them. For seconds-it seemed like hours-they stared at us incuriously, dull and lifeless. Then, without convulsion of any sort, it started to sink, slowly, majestically-and disappeared beneath the surface. There was no swirl, no whirlpool, no fuss, no nothing. The waters closed over it and it was gone.

With its disappearance I think we breathed for the first time. I looked at Smithy-Smithy looked at me.

"J--!" I croaked.

He threw out the clutch and we lay to-staring at the empty sea. I was wringing wet and my knees shook. Smithy, normally a voluble man, was speechless. Mechanically he stooped down and picked up a little piece of wire leader from the cockpit floor, tossing it overboard. Around us was the same gray sea, the same sea birds, the same lonely, brown-sloped island. Overhead was the same gray fog. But everything was different. All the friendliness had gone. We, two frail humans, had looked into the eyes of the Past-and looking was not good.

Only a week later I was talking to N. B. Schofield, head of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the California Division of Fish and Game. Schofield is an ichthyologist of considerable reputation and a pupil of the late Dr. David Starr Jordan. He suggested that I was said to have seen a strange monster and asked me about it. After I had described the Thing he was silent for a minute or two then went on to say that fishermen out of Monterey, California, swore that they had been seeing a similar creature only recently.

So frightened were some of them at what they had seen that they refused for days to go to sea. I drew a sketch of the Thing which Schofield pocketed to show to them. I haven't heard whether or not they identified it as one and the same thing. Mind you, Schofield in no wise accepted my story or theirs.

From my own experience and from those of others I will say unequivocally that the Thing is very shy.

I was never closer to the Thing than three hundred yards-perhaps more. I know two men who have been closer than that but there is no material variance in their stories and mine other than one of them thinks he saw a mouth with teeth. I am quite sure that I did not.

As to how large the Thing is-your guess is as good as mine. I have a feeling, probably a sort of sixth sense, which tells me that I saw only a small portion of the beast-that beneath the surface was a body greater than that of any known creature, a whale included. However, that is nothing more than an unprovable hunch. I do not know whether it was serpentine in form or not. I again have a feeling that it was not. If it was-then we had better revise our views on serpents.

I have told all I know about the Thing. Now, I will lay all my cards face up upon the table. Smith Warren is dead; his lips are sealed. Neale is still living but was never as close to the creature as were we. True, there are a number from out of the ranks of those twenty-five or thirty who have seen the Thing who are still alive. Some of them might come forward in defense of my story-but I shall not ask them to.

I shall never ask any man to put his neck into a noose of ridicule on my behalf. There is one man who has been closer to the Thing than any of us-but he refuses point blank to talk, even to me.

So-there you have it. Just as I wrote earlier-take it or leave it. It is all one to me. Smile if you want to-laugh if you want to. I have taken it before-I can take it again. But, when you laugh, if you do-just remember those old immortal lines- "There are stranger things," etc. Also, remember one other thing. You have not been out alone upon the sea and seen a monstrous Thing lift up out of the depths and close beside you-you have not felt the baleful stare of those awful eyes-you have not sensed the cold breath of ages past upon you. I have-and that's that. Adios.

When you published your original paper on quantum computation, what was the general reaction?

I was expecting many people to be shocked and to say that no fundamentally new mode of computation can possibly exist, or it can't work, or there's this flaw you haven't noticed - but I got no reaction like that at all. The immediate reactions were either, yeah that's right, well done, or more usually to just ignore it altogether. People didn't take it on board as a new way of thinking. It took several years before the physics community began to work on quantum computation. There were a handful of people who saw the importance right away but the field didn't begin until several years later.

What motivated you to begin working on quantum computation?

It was a desire to understand the foundations of quantum theory, of physics, of everything. The foundations of one field tend to overlap with the foundations of others. Quantum computation, for instance, has implications not only for the foundations of quantum theory but also the foundations of physics in general, and mathematics and philosophy.

Why do you think the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, of which you are a proponent, is still only a minority view among physicists?

I don't know. I suspect it is related to a more general anti-rational phenomenon that was present in nearly all 20th-century philosophies, especially logical positivism, and reverberated into other fields. This was intended to be a retreat from metaphysics, which many philosophers considered meaningless, but really it was a retreat from reality and explanation. In physics, it took the form of deciding as a matter of principle that science is not about discovering how the world really is, but instead must confine itself to predicting the outcomes of observations. When quantum mechanics came along it required a drastic revision of people's conception of the world. Many physicists responded by denying that physics is about the world at all, only about what we see.

Logical positivism is a form of solipsism. If you say physics is only about predicting the outcomes of experiments, you can only really say it's about experiments that you personally do, because to you any other person is just another thing you're observing. But solipsism is a dead-end philosophy and when it comes to science it's a poison. It doesn't allow further progress from existing theories, and that's why I think applications of quantum theory, particularly quantum computation, were overlooked for decades. You could say people didn't really think the theory was true because they had rejected the idea of truth in science. Truth in science must mean correspondence to reality, or it means nothing.

How does quantum computation shed light on the existence of many worlds?

Say we decide to factorise a 10,000-digit integer, the product of two very large primes. That number cannot be expressed as a product of factors by any conceivable classical computer. Even if you took all the matter in the observable universe and turned it into a computer and then ran that computer for the age of the universe, it wouldn't come close to scratching the surface of factorising that number. But a quantum computer could factorise that easily in seconds or minutes. How can that happen?

Anyone who isn't a solipsist has to say the answer was produced by some physical process. We know there isn't enough computing power in this universe to obtain the answer, so something more is going on than what we can directly see. At that point, logically, we have already accepted the many-worlds structure. The way the quantum computer works is: the universe differentiates itself into multiple universes and each one performs a different sub-computation. The number of sub-computations is vastly more than the number of atoms in the visible universe. Then they pool their results to get the answer. Anyone who denies the existence of parallel universes has to explain how the factorisation process works.

This kind of theorising requires considerable creativity. What inspires your creativity?

It so happens that all of my creative work has come from trying to understand existing ideas better, rather than discovering new ideas altogether. Not from seeking new laws of nature or new particles - I have looked at existing theories and tried to understand them, and in some cases have come to understand them a little better than they were understood before. Quantum computers could have been discovered in the 1930s or 1950s, but people didn't take quantum theory seriously enough to understand what it is telling us about reality.

What advice would you give to a young physicist seeking to become a pioneer like you?

In fundamental physics research, progress is only made when people address problems within existing theoretical physics. A typical example is Einstein wondering how light is accommodated in the Newtonian universe. In the last few decades, many theoretical physicists have assumed that further progress can only come from looking at new mathematical models and then wondering if the models are true representations of nature. An example is string theory.

I think it's unlikely that a research programme of that kind can work. Even if you found the right mathematical object, you probably wouldn't even recognise it because you wouldn't know how it corresponds with the world. For example, if someone had invented quantum theory purely as a mathematical model, how would they ever guess that its multi-valued variables correspond with quantities that we measure with single values? After all, it assigns multiple values to observable quantities simultaneously. I would warn against expecting the answer to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way around: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it.

Do you still come across sceptics who don't believe in the possibility of quantum computers?

Occasionally. At the beginning there were quite a few prominent physicists who thought a quantum computer couldn't be built. Today the sceptics are merely saying that this is much too hard, and it will take centuries. The prevailing view, I think, is that it will take decades to build a quantum computer. I've recently come to think that it might not take that long, perhaps as little as a decade.
From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 50-51

David Deutsch is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford's Centre for Quantum Computation. In 1998 he received the Institute of Physics's Paul Dirac prize and medal, and in 2005 was awarded the Edge of Computation Science prize for work that extended the boundaries of the idea of computation. He is author of The Fabric of Reality (Penguin, 1998).

I was at a closed conference with friends and acquaintances from the gravitational wave world, a group I have studied and written about for 30 years. The dress code was informal - T-shirts and jeans, or open-necked shirts and sports jackets for the older scientists. There at the podium was a medical doctor with a halo of white hair, in a smart grey suit and red bow tie, spouting management-speak. As far as we could tell, he seemed to be telling the group that it did not understand its $250 million interferometers, and that his microscale experiments showed they had missed something vital about the interaction of the mirrors. I swapped smirks with those around me. But we were wrong. A couple of stubborn scientists extracted the important bit of sense from the packaging, and the design was changed.

If science were a matter of combining unambiguous data from perfectly conducted experiments with flawless theories, assessing the claims of "outsider" scientists and their maverick ideas would not be that hard. But the logic of science is not so far removed from the logic of ordinary life (though admittedly ordinary life lived among extraordinary ideas and amazing machines) and so fallible human judgement still determines what happens at the heart of even the hardest science.

Since the 1960s, the tension between the canonical model of science (experimentation and theory) and the everyday practice of science (pottering around and hunch) has been explored by historians, philosophers and especially sociologists. One way to get a sense of how that tension compounds the problem of dealing with outsiders and their ideas is by comparing funding policies.

Consider, for example, that the US military spends around $1 million per year on anti-gravity research. This is best understood by analogy with the philosopher Blaise Pascal's famous wager. Everyone, he argued, should believe in God because the cost of believing was small while the cost of not believing could be an eternity in hell. For the military, the cost of missing a technological opportunity, particularly if your enemy finds it first, is a trip to the hell of defeat. Thus goes the logic of the military investigating anti-gravity.

The same rationale led to the funding of some unlikely experiments by University of Maryland physicist Joe Weber. Weber founded gravitational-wave research, but failed to find the waves. By 1975, he had lost most of his credibility, yet in the 1980s, the US military paid to test an implication of a theory he had invented in his struggle to regain his former glory. The implication was that it was possible to detect neutrinos emitted by the reactor of a nuclear submarine, using only a crystal you could hold in your hand rather than vast underground tanks. If the US navy ignored Weber's idea but the Russians used it to build technology that could detect US nuclear subs, the undersea deterrent would no longer deter.

The same logic drives companies such as Pirelli, which is still pursuing Weber's idea in the hope of transmitting modulated neutrino signals through the Earth to carry messages without cables (New Scientist, 17 April 2004, p 36), and Canon and Toyota, which funded cold fusion long after the research councils would not touch it.

The logic of state funding agencies such as the US's National Science Foundation or the UK's Engineering and Physical Science Research Council is quite the opposite. Here the pressures of accountability can make them too conservative. There are a few new agencies aiming to fill the ground between the wild logic of the military and certain companies, and the worthy work of "official" science. One such is Donald Braben's Venture Research, which plans to back projects by picking promising researchers rather than wading through research applications (see his book Pioneering Research, Wiley, 2004).

But even multiple funding styles cannot address the problem that it is impossible to explore every new scientific idea to the standard set by science: there are just too many. Many scientists in the public eye are deluged by self-styled pioneers claiming to have found the fundamental flaw in relativity or a new energy-free method of transport. Discriminating between them requires a mixture of the "green-ink and no margins" test, and more sophisticated short-cuts, such as knowing that papers in Physical Review that describe new physics tend to be taken more seriously than articles in New Scientist doing the same, and that scientists from major institutions are trusted more than scientists from obscure colleges. No one has time to track everything to the bitter end.

Ironically, even exploring an idea to the bitter end may prove impossible. For example, after a hundred years, no one has absolutely proved the non-existence of extrasensory perception. If anything, the findings run very slightly in its favour. Weber's claims that his early detectors caught high fluxes of gravitational waves and that his crystals could detect neutrinos have also never been disproved to the standards of logic. The reason that the US military finally abandoned both strands of research was sociological: Weber had had a good run and it was time to move on. There is no logic that says that Pirelli is completely crazy for taking another look.

The irreducible tension in science is to maintain enough "social control" over new ideas and spending to ensure science isn't engulfed by seas of possibilities, while leaving room for new ideas. Tossed on the waves of these possibilities are people such as Martin Fleischmann (cold fusion), Eric Laithwaite (anomalous gyroscopes), Albert Einstein (relativity), Linus Pauling (vitamin C), Alfred Wegener (plate tectonics), Thomas Gold (origin of oil), David Duesberg (non-viral causes of AIDS), and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (black holes). The list goes on and on. Such ideas eventually wash up on one shore or the other, but only 20:20 foresight will tell you which one.

However, sometimes what looks like "outsider science" has content of quite a different sort. Take the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism affair in the UK. Andrew Wakefield, the doctor behind the furore, published some evidence in The Lancet suggesting a link between autism and measles-related virus particles in the gut. But these particles were never linked to MMR vaccine. There was word-of-mouth testimony from some parents, but no link between MMR and autism has ever been proved. Wakefield simply speculated about a relationship at a press conference - and no one has ever gone further than to hypothesise about it.

This case was presented to the public as a genuine scientific controversy, and, to my discomfort, the MMR story as told by many social scientists is one of struggle between wise parents and uncomprehending, authoritarian medical authorities. There have been (and will be) many real struggles of that sort, but this was not one of them. The only usable scientific evidence was epidemiological - and that pointed to the safety of MMR. Because it is so hard to prove a negative, none of this shows that there is not a hidden link between MMR and autism lurking below the statistics. But there is no evidence to show there is.

The energy it took to deal with Wakefield's claims, and to persuade parents to vaccinate their children at all after the scare, could have been much better spent. Wakefield was not behaving as a scientific outsider: he was simply not providing scientific evidence at that press conference.

In addition to the difficulty of proving a negative, scientists are also very unwilling to face up to the social and financial logic that drives their choices. A tentative claim about, say, telepathy, can provoke a sort of fundamentalist zeal among some scientists refuting the claim, which in turn undermines their claims for science as an exemplar in a divided world. They should say merely this: "Well, it's not inconceivable, I can't absolutely prove you wrong, but my time is better spent doing things I judge to have more potential."

Scientists, then, are not always their own best friends when it comes to helping others navigate the loss of absolute certainty about our world. I am also not sure how it helps if they assume omnipotence in the name of science, as Richard Dawkins did recently when he insisted that scientists must be atheists. And Stephen Hawking has been turned into a new kind of religious icon, with his books taking the place of the incomprehensible Latin Bible in our homes.

Here science becomes "revealed truth", obscuring the long hours of tedious work, the experiments open to reinterpretation (and failure), and theories with their infinities and arbitrary variables that can never quite be tamed. The Dawkinses and the Hawkings threaten to make the hard-won victory of science over religion a pyrrhic victory by replacing old faiths with new.

If science is essentially ordinary life albeit conducted in extraordinary circumstances, it must contradict literal interpretations of texts that clash with its findings, but it should not claim the right to address deeper questions of existence.

The biggest danger for science is that in missing its footing on the tightrope of certainty, it crashes to the ground. In the social sciences, this danger is best represented by the romantic value today placed on the instincts of the general public: the folk are said to be as wise, or wiser, than experts. It is a political necessity and responsibility in a democratic society to take account of the technological "preferences" of the people, but this should never be confused with technological or scientific "wisdom". That road leads to a society none of us would want to inhabit.

There is no easy and sure scientific way to sift every claim, but there are good and bad judgements. That is the safety net protecting us against scientific populism. This populism is a way of evading the hard search for the grounds of knowledge by giving equal weight to everyone's frame of reference. We must keep hold of the idea that judgement, though never perfect, is generally done better by those who know what they are talking about.

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 46-48

Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor at the school of social sciences of Cardiff University, UK. His books include: The Golem: What everyone should know about science (with Trevor Pinch, published by Cambridge University Press); Gravity's Shadow, and Dr Golem (with Trevor Pinch), published by University of Chicago Press. His next book (with Rob Evans) will be Rethinking Expertise.

Anthropology of Consciousness
British Journal of Psychology
Consciousness and Cognition
Cortex
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
International Journal of Neuroscience
Journal for Transpersonal Psychology
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Perceptual and Motor Skills
Personality and Individual Differences
Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Reports
Transcultural Psychiatry

Anyway, Downes recently got a chance to visit Mattoon, and was surprised to find out that as far as the residents of the town are concerned, there is no mystery.

The journey was a real pilgrimage for Downes:

It was a strange experience standing in the warm, early summer rain outside the home where, 60 years before, the Kearney family had been attacked. For the first time, I understood why generations of American tourists would fly to London and stand in awe outside a building society in Baker Street, as they searched for the authentic Sherlock Holmes experience. I may have been six decades too late, but I was looking at one of the real 'Mad Gasser' locations, and nobody could take that away from me.

In one of his first encounters with a local from that neighborhood, an old man tending a grocery store, he passed himself off at first as a journalist researching life in the Midwest in the war years, but eventually dared to ask a question about his real interest:

I gritted my teeth and asked the old man whether he had heard of the Mad Gasser. Fully expecting ridicule, I was amazed by his answer. "Yeah, sure. It was that young fool Farley. His family used to own this store." [...]

It has always been implied that, like Jack the Ripper or Spring-heeled Jack, the culprit was never identified or caught, but this is simply not true. Everywhere I went in Mattoon I was told the same thing. Yes, of course they knew about the Mad Gasser - and they all knew who he was: a tragically disturbed young man called Farley Llewellyn.

This conclusion had already been publicized by Illinois historian Scott Maruna, in his 2003 book The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria. Farley had lived in a trailer behind his parents' store. He had been a chemistry major at the University of Illinois before coming home. He was alcoholic, and homosexual, and the target of rumor and gossip in the town because of this and because of his increasingly erratic behavior, which included chemistry experiments in his trailer which at one point, shortly before the attacks, caused an explosion that damaged the trailer badly. "Farley would never reveal what had caused the explosion, but Maruna believes that he had been synthesizing 1,2,2,2-tetrachloroethane(C2H2Cl4), which, as he writes, 'is a clear, oily liquid that is extremely volatile, with a sweet, fruity odour. Breathing high levels of this can cause fatigue, vomiting, dizziness, and possibly unconsciousness.'"

If it was Farley's gas behind the attacks, it couldn't have been Farley behind all of them, because he was arrested on the 10th of September and there was one attack on the 11th. However, that attack was reportedly committed by someone short, plump, and wearing women's shoes, which describes neither Farley nor the previous Gasser descriptions, but which does describe Farley's two sisters, who were about as well integrated into the community as Farley himself was.

If the explosion did arise when Farley was synthesizing that gas, the gas would have degraded beyond any effectiveness in about the time between the explosion and September 11th, 1945.

Downes continues:

..I visited several shops and spoke to a number of the older members of the community I found there. Everybody knew of the Mad Gasser; everybody knew that it was Farley; and everybody told me that, because Farley's father had been such a well-loved and popular member of the community, nobody had been prepared to pillory the family in public just because his son was insane. In order to protect the reputation of Farley's family, the whole town had put up with 50 years of visiting UFO freaks, conspiracy theorists, and assorted nutcases...

Now there were no longer any living relatives, people were prepared to talk, and several told me they were happy to do so because - at long last - the myth of Mattoon's Mad Gasser could be laid to rest.

It's hard to describe how big a deal this is in terms of American Forteana, at least as I know it. It would be up there with discovering the ape suit used to fake the Patterson Bigfoot film (if it was faked...) - or, I don't know, finding out that there was a secret military balloon project which was responsible for the "saucer crash" at Roswell but which couldn't be discussed for decades because it was classified... No, wait. That actually happened. (Unless of course there's something more sinister or strange behind that story...)

Anyway, there was no version of this article on the web to link to or I would have gratefully done so. I hope I haven't over-quoted but I think this is information that should be more widely available, at least for those few people interested in such a topic.

Vallee's question is of obvious importance to the cryptoterrestrial inquiry. If we really are sharing the planet with a "parallel" species, searching for underground installations becomes imperative for any objective investigation. Our failure to find any blatant "cities" beneath the planet's surface invites many questions. Could the CTs have colonized our oceans, potentially explaining centuries of bizarre aquatic sightings? Have they intermingled to the point where they're effectively indistinguishable from us? (And, if so, how might such a scattered population summon the resources to stage UFO events?)

Finally, we're forced to consider that at least some CTs have achieved genuine space travel, throwing our definitional framework into havoc. Space-based CTs wouldn't be extraterrestrials in the sense argued by ufological pundits, but they would be something engagingly "other," even if the difference separating them from their Earth-bound peers is as substantial as that distinguishing astronauts from humans of more mundane professions.

Still, the prospect of an underground origin beckons with the inexorable logic that colors our most treasured contemporary myths. Given our yawning ignorance of our own planet -- especially its oceans, which remain stubbornly mysterious -- it remains worthy of consideration. From the lusty politics of Mount Olympus to Shaver's pulp cosmology (complete with telepathic harassment and other ingredients later found in "serious" UFO abduction literature), even a cursory assessment of subterranean mythology indicates a nonhuman presence of surprisingly human dimensions.

This striking familiarity -- so unlikely in the case of genuine extraterrestrial contact -- meshes with modern occupant reports, which typically depict humanoid beings seen in the context of extraordinary technology. Villas-Boas had sex with a diminutive female who, while strangely mannered, can hardly be termed "alien." The alarming fact that intercourse was possible at all smacks of an encounter between two human beings -- an observation routinely dismissed by proponents of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, who seem inordinately enamored of Villas-Boas' own conviction that he had been used as breeding stock for a race of apparent space people.

The beings encountered by Betty and Barney Hill seem at least as human when addressed safely outside the confines of ETH dogma; even Betty's dialogue with the "leader" has the nuanced, bantering quality of two strangers attempting to come to grips with a mutual predicament. Indeed, the beings' puzzlement when confronted with dentures tends to argue in favor of the Indigenous Hypothesis. We might reasonably expect bona fide ET anthropologists to set aside the minor mystery of artificial teeth with clinical detachment; instead, Betty's ability to note her abductors' astonishment (feigned or genuine) detracts from the ETH by indicating a suspiciously human rapport.