Prime Time Replay:
Jan Aldrich
Director of Project 1947
MsgId: *high_strangeness(4)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:03:06 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
Our scheduled guest tonight is Jan Aldrich, director of Project 1947, a data-gathering enterprise aimed at documenting the origins of the UFO phenomenon. Jan, are you with us?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(6)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:05:30 EST 1997
From: Aldrich At: 209.54.79.97
Hi, Dennis. It has taken me almost 18 minutes just to log on. Hopefully, we can go faster than that.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(7)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:07:02 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
Maybe I shouldn't make any AOL jokes at this point! Can you tell us a little about yourself and why you're interested in UFOs?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(8)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:16:26 EST 1997
From: Aldrich At: 209.54.79.97
Well, It looks like this is going to be a slow night at the rate we can communicate. To answer your questions. I am retired military with 25+ years in the Field Artillery -- 16 of those in meteorology. BA in histroy from the U of Maryland, University College. I became interested in UFOs as a teenager when I saw ball lightning. At the time most publications said that ball lightning did not exist. In my research into BL, I started to read about UFOs and became interested.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(9)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:17:40 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
Obviously, Jan is having some problems. Maybe Trick or Treat came a few nights early, or maybe Microsoft pulled the plug on Netscape, or the entire Web. Jan, are you still with us?And so now you've started Project 1947. Why go back 50 years? Aren't you making your job harder in a sense? Aren't half-century-old trails pretty cold?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(11)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:25:15 EST 1997
From: Aldrich At: 209.54.79.97
Okay, it is taking 5 minutes just to get a message back and forth. Let me just tell you a little about what it going on. For the last almost three years I have been working on Project 1947 which is an intensive study of the UFO wave of 1947. From about 5000 newspaper world wide, we have found about 3000 reports. Interestingly enough in the six to ten weeks after the Arnold sighting on 24 Jun 1947 we can see all the current elements of UFO behavior except perhaps abductions.Why go back, 50 years? It was the beginning of the modern ufo era. There were no fixed ideas. There were no satellites and air traffic was much less. There had not been nearly the amount of belief surround this phenomenon. If you want to understand something sometimes, the best thing is to go back to the beginning. It does present difficulties. There were obviously from a little newspaper research still large amounts of data waiting to be found.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(12)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:27:56 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
You're talking close encounters, landings with aliens outside the ship and so on?Since Jan is experiencing a serious time warp, I might as well go ahead and mention his URL: http://www.iufog.org/project1947/ Correct me if I got any of that wrong, Jan.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(16)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:43:42 EST 1997
From: Aldrich At: 209.54.79.97
CEs in 1947? Yes. On 30 June 1947, the Pendleton, OR newspaper that broke the Arnold story reported that a motorist had seen a landed UFO with what appeared to be little men. Similar reports are know from Brazil, France and elsewhere. There were landings, trace case, physical effects such as EME cases, several reports of trees swaying as UFO passed overhead. And there were effects on humans and animals.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(15)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:39:48 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
I understand you've got a number of global correspondents now contributing. Was the 1947 wave a local one, or was it worldwide in nature?Since we're having such a long lag time, let me go ahead and ask you what you think you've learned about the UFO phenomenon by studying its earliest manifestations?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(18)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:52:16 EST 1997
From: Aldrich At: 209.54.79.97
About 300 people world wide have contributed. In my first report we have sections written on Sweden by Anders Liljegern of Archives for UFO research, Bill Chalker for Australia, Ilkka Serra for Finland, and Dominique Weinstein, Perry Petrakis and Jean Sider for France. In addition others such as Edoardo Russo in Italy have supplied large amounts of data.There were sightings in South American, Asia, and Europe. To a less or extent there were a few examples in North Africa and Australia.
Lag time is drving me crazy . . . I think first we have found that the 1947 wave was more extensive than ever thought. It can no longer be characterized as "a flyover wave." It was international in scope. The amount of information collected by official investigators -- that we know of right now -- was a very small sample of the actual data available about 2-3%.
Peoples reactions were also different. While there were jokes about "war of the worlds", generally people did not think UFOs were ET.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(19)
Date: Tue Oct 28 22:55:27 EST 1997
From: Dennis At: 206.127.5.15
Jan, I want to thank you for taking the time to share your research with us. Thanks for coming! And for High Strangeness this has been Dennis Stacy. Good night and Happy Halloween!
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