One of API’s earliest cases. Campers near Sailsbury, Maryland were frightened by what they saw and heard and left the campground.
Month: May 2018
Case 13-081 – a tornado of lights in Pennsylvania
On the night of 22 September 2013, a father and son saw and photographed this “tornado” of light spiraling up from behind the tree line near Wilkes-Barre, Pennyslvania. There were other similar reports the same night from the state.
13-081 (1 of 3 photos)
Case 13-128: A UK Black Triangle
In December, 2013, witnesses in North Petherton in England saw a black triangle type craft.
Read the redacted ROI for the case.
This is a sketch by one of the witnesses (not an actual photograph):
Case 13-128 witness sketch
New Video: The API Sighting Report Form
Unidentified Science 7 – High Strangeness Cases
This is a work in progress – notes on high strangeness cases and the hope, if any of a scientific approach to them. What do we mean by high strangeness cases? I mean cases that may or may not involve anomalous aerial phenomena, but go beyond even close encounters of the third kind, and also involve unexpected elements like interactions with the witness, distortions of time, and other strange events that generally fall under the broad category of “paranormal.”
I have resisted lumping paranormal experiences with UAPs, and continue to resist this, because at face value, different categories of human experience could well admit of different explanations. However, what is common in all this is the human experiencer, and in nearly all cases all we have to study are the memories of the experiencers. In Unidentified Science 3, I talked about some of the problem with eyewitness testimony, rooted in the flaws of human perception and memory, and almost as much of a problem are our oversimplified mental models of how these work.
But this is not a reiteration of those concerns, real as they are. I want to make a point about high strangeness cases, and that is that we have no basis for dismissing them out of hand, or for ignoring the stranger elements, or for regarding the experiencers as mentally deranged. We have the experiencers, their memories, and what they are willing to tell us about themselves, and we are not justified in jumping to conclusions about the reality of the experiences. Note that I am not approaching these cases as a psychologist who wants to know how people could possibly remember such absurd things. That is one possible approach, although I don’t think it’s completely satisfying by itself. As a field investigator, I want to find the facts of the case, and we struggle with the facts, if any, masked by all the oddities.
Superior Autobiographic Memory is real but rare
This article describes the rare condition of people who remember almost everything about their lives. We should note though, that very few of us can expect to accurately remember details of our lives – even highly exceptional events. We also know that how certain you are of your memories has nothing to do with how accurate they are.
That is why we try to emphasize the most recent UFO reports. With details will fade and the memories will bleed into each other. So, when something anomalous happens, write it down and make sketches the same day if possible. Do this before discussing the details with other witnesses or with us.
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