"The Phenomenon." Directed by James Fox. Released October 6, 2020. (The final installment of a three-part post. For the first two parts, click here and here.) There are impressive UFO witnesses. There are not-so-impressive UFO witnesses. And then there's Salma Siddick. She's a … [Read more...]
“The Phenomenon” – Reflections on James Fox’s New UFO Documentary (Part 2)
"The Phenomenon." Directed by James Fox. Released October 6, 2020. In my last post, I began talking about my reactions to James Fox's new UFO documentary "The Phenomenon." I talked about what I thought the film had succeeded in establishing: first, that some very smart and very serious … [Read more...]
“The Stranger” and the Westall UFO – Does Life Imitate TV? (Part 2)
"We shall forget all about this meeting, yes? We will say nothing to anyone about it. Please?" So speaks the mysterious "stranger"--real name unknown, even to himself; called "Adam" after the "new man" of the Bible--to his three young friends, midway through episode 2 of the 1964-65 Australian … [Read more...]
“The Stranger” and the Westall UFO – Does Life Imitate TV? (Part 1)
They say life imitates art. Do UFOs imitate cinema and TV? That is to say, when a particularly compelling image of spaceships or aliens figures in a popular movie or TV show, do people start imagining—and testifying, with every appearance of sincerity—that they’ve seen it in the sky? There’s at … [Read more...]
The Westall UFO – A Teacher’s Testimony (Part 1)
Toward the end of June 1967, the American physicist James E. McDonald visited Australia. His ostensible purpose: to do research on cloud physics. McDonald had another aim as well. He'd become convinced that UFOs were a scientific problem of the first magnitude, to which orthodox science had … [Read more...]
