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From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 13:50:47 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 18:02:50 -0400
Subject: Re: Voyager Newsletter, Mogul Parchment Parachutes


>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
>Subject: Re: Voyager Newsletter, Mogul Parchment Parachutes
>Date: Thu, 03 Jun 99 08:26:28 PDT

<snip>

>I'm at a loss to understand what Dennis is trying to say here.
>The notion that UFOs may be living organisms -- "space animals"
>-- long ago went out of fashion, but it was a view held (however
>naively in retrospect) by a number of Ken Arnold's prominent
>contemporaries. Even Project Sign personnel characterized it as
>"one of the most intelligent theories we have received." The
>eminently respectable Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York
>(Bloecher, Davis, Mebane) took the idea seriously, and it was
>discussed in writings by a variety of other early UFO writers,
>including Charles Fort, Desmond Leslie, M. K. Jessup, John
>Philip Bessor, Curtis Fuller, Trevor James Constable, and Ivan
>T. Sanderson.  Arnold picked up his ideas from notions current
>in the late 1940s and 1950s.

>For a full discussion of the theory and its history, see my The
>UFO Encyclopedia, 2nd Ed., pp. 872-77.

>Arnold was anything but a fruitcake, and I am startled and
>depressed that Dennis would suggest as much on such flimsy --
>well, actually, nonexistent -- evidence. This is revisionist
>ufology at its worst.  I would have expected better of Dennis.


Jerry,

Arnold may well have been aware of the writings of the people
you mention. But judging from his own writings, he based his
belief that UFOs were some type of living organism on his own
experiences. See the following, for example:

"This is the same sort of impression [of a living thing] I got
after seeing these same things again in 1952. Two of them flew
under me at Mount Lassen. I got a movie of these, and one was
just as solid as a Chevrolet car. But you could see the pine
trees right through the other one that was following it. I too
got the feeling that here was something that was alive, rather
than that they were machines."

From "How It All Began" by Kenneth Arnold in Proceedings of the
First International UFO Congress, p. 28, which you helped edit,
according to the cover. You quote the article in your The UFO
Book.

Has anyone ever seen that movie, BTW? Does anyone have any idea
of what may have happened to it?

Little more than a month after his first sighting, on July 29,
Arnold had his second encounter with UFOs.

"As I was letting down into LaGrande valley, I saw far off my
left and a little lower than my plane [another airplane].
Suddenly, as I continued to lose altitude, I was confronted by a
flock of what looked like ducks. I knew they weren't ducks
because they were brassy-colored and large -- at least three
feet across or possibly four or five. There were a couple dozen
of them, possibly more, and they were bunched and coming right
at me. Eventually they swerved away -- and because they had the
flight characteristics of the first flying saucers I decided to
take after them. When I dived into the cluster, these things,
whatever they were, soared away as if I was standing still."

That from the following article in the Proceedings,  "The Maury
Island Episode," also by Arnold himself, p. 32.

Too bad we didn't get as detailed a description of his second
sighting as we did with his first one. Even though this is a
much closer encounter, Arnold is vague about their size, speed,
and number, and doesn't even mention their shape, although it's
possible he gave more details in his own book, which I haven't
read.

I'm not sure how many saucer sightings Arnold reported over his
lifetime. I think I've seen anywhere between five and seven. One
can make of that what one wants, or nothing at all. He could
have been prone to "see" saucers (and if his first account is
truly accurate, who could blame him!) -- or he could have been
extraordinarily lucky.

I take back my remark about Arnold being a fruitcake,
personally. Had I been more careful in my original post, I would
have said something like, "One may not always know whether one
is dealing with a fruitcake or not when (whatever)." And then of
course one would have to define fruitcake.

So Arnold was what he was.

And I'd still like to see that movie!

Dennis