77 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
77 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
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SUBJECT: FARMER'S TALES OF SPACE TRAVEL FILE: UFO73
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PART 3
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The 1937 best-selling "Secret Life of Plants" includes
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an entire chapter on Vogel. In one scene, he attempts to
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determine whether plants wired with electrodes show a
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physiological response to "spooky stories." The book says that
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at "certain points in a story, such as...`Charles bent down and
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raised the lid of the coffin,' the plant seemed to pay closer at-
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tention."
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Vogel, 70, said Meier's UFO movies convinced him the farmer
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had been in contact with "some form of extraterrestrial
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intelligence" However, Vogel doesn't regard the metal samples
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by themselves as proof of extraterrestrials because he didn't
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have a chance to consult with other experts before the samples
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mysteriously disappeared. Vogel added that since his plant work
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of the 1970's, he had founded a psychic research institute in
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San Jose, employed his "mental energy" to bend spoons and
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studied the use of crystals to cure illness.
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"Light Years" also quotes authorities such as Robert Post,
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head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, as saying:
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"From a photography standpoint, you couldn't see anything that
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was fake about the Meier photos... I thought, God, if this
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is real, this is going to be really something."
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Or is it? In an interview with The Examiner, Post recalled
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that several years ago, Wendelle Stevens visited him at JPL and
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requested an expert opinion on the pictures. Post acknowledges
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he was fascinated by the images, but was unable to perform a
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scientific analysis for two reasons: First, he isn't a photo
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analyst but rather the operator of a photo processing lab ("like
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you take your film to K-Mart", he said); and second, the pictures
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weren't originals but rather copies of originals - perhaps even
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copies of copies of copies. Such multiple copying tends to
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obscure delicate details, making it hard to detect evidence of
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fraud - e.g., threads supporting hubcaps.
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In addition, when Post examined some images with a
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magnifying glass, he realized "a lot of the pictures weren't
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really photographs at all - they were lithographs," or
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high-resolution ink prints made from photos - and, hence, were
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worthless for purposes of analysis. Furthermore, the photos
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were " a lot fuzzier than the stuff on the lithographs, and
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I thought that was a little strange."
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For that and other reasons, Post began "to think, `Nuts,
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maybe this guy is just a con man.' That's not the kind of guy I
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want to have anything to do with."
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In 1983, Stevens was convicted of child molestation in
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Pima County, AZ. He is now serving time in the Arizona State
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Prison and declined to be interviewed. But he did send The
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Examiner a cryptic letter in which he said a "number of high
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officials...have taken a personal interest in some of the things
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we were doing, but they could neither support nor tolerate them
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officially."
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Stevens' conviction triggered a wave of paranoia among
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Meier buffs. Some phoned Vicki Cooper, editor of California UFO
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Magazine in Los Angeles, and said Stevens "was `set up,' that
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certain witnesses were being killed," said Cooper, who is not
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unsympathetic to Meier's claims. "I was discouraged and disgusted
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with the people I was talking to."
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"Its a cesspool out there," she said. "Personality
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conflicts are rabid in this field...There are hoaxers, there
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are fraudulent people who are claiming outrageous things all
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throughout the UFO field.
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End of report
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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**********************************************
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