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10 Alien Encounters Debunked Ten Alien Encounters The UFO Invasion.) Debunked The Real Story: #8 - AREA 51 While many people assume that those Benjamin Radford living in earlier times (such as the ancient The Story: Area 51 is where the U.S. government www.space.com Egyptians) were not resourceful enough to stores and studies extraterrestrial bodies and possibly have created impressive engineering feats without extraterrestial aid, this is not true. aircraft, including the unfortunate (and As a longtime investigator of unusual Actually, the methods by which the pyramids apparently poorly-trained) alien pilots that phenomena, I have no doubt that UFOs exist. could have been constructed are well crashed in Roswell. Some even say that it is an UFOs, are, of course, Unidentified Flying documented, and have appeared in many places officially-sanctioned landing base for Objects, and "unidentified" simply means that including National Geographic magazine and spaceships. what the eyewitness saw was not immediately Mark Lehner’s book The Complete Pyramids. recognized by that person, at that time, under The only real mystery surrounding the pyramids The Real Story: those circumstances. There are many things in is why anyone would still think aliens were The simple fact of the matter is that the the skies that the average person may not be involved. ( Further reading:Mark Lehner. The public doesn’t really know much about what able to identify from a quick look but that a goes on at the military base near Groom Dry pilot, a meteorologist, or an astronomer might Lake, Nevada (popularly but not officially instantly recognize. There are also seemingly called Area 51). It is a top secret military base, unusual experiences that most people may not and there are of course perfectly legitimate understand but that a psychologist can explain. government and military reasons for keeping With alien encounters, we find that often an the base’s purposes secret that have nothing to explanation lies not necessarily in the skies but do with aliens or UFOs; 60 Minutes in our minds. Humans are pattern-seeking correspondent Leslie Stahl suggested that the creatures, and our brains try desperately to area may be a dumping ground for toxic waste. make sense of things we don’t immediately There’s no reason to think that anything alien is recognize. Often we are correct in our going on there, but where there is secrecy, there assessments of what we see and experience, but will be conspiracy. (Further reading: Robert many times we simply misperceive, Carroll. The Skeptic’s Dictionary. Available at misunderstand, or misremember. Those who claim to encounter aliens and see UFOs are sometimes ridiculed as crazy, but in fact we are all hardwired with the same fallible brains. While some people seek out the Complete Pyramids.) skeptical or scientific explanations, others decide that since they can’t explain something, # 9 - CATTLE MUTILATIONS no one else can either, and therefore that experience is mysterious or inexplicable. The Story: So with that, here are 10 alleged alien When alien visitors are not abducting encounters—those brushes with aliens (or people (see number 2) or implanting things in supposed aliens) that have been definitively them (number 3), or making circles in crops debunked over the years. (number 7), they butcher cattle, either for -- Benjamin Radford research purposes or perhaps sadistic amusement. Since the 1970s, hundreds of Benjamin Radford is a writer and the managing animal corpses have been found with unusual or editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine; inexplicable features, including being drained he is also author or coauthor of three books, of blood and having their organs removed with http://www.skepdic.com/area51.html.) including Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We "surgical precision." #7 - CROP CIRCLES The Real Story: Livestock predation has plagued The Story: ranchers and farmers for millennia, but it wasn’t Aliens are the most likely explanation until the last few decades (during the public’s for the mysterious circles and other designs that peaking interest in UFOs) that anyone thought occasionally appear in farmers’ fields. They are to attribute the deaths to aliens. Research has some sort of sign or message that humans have shown that the "mysterious" features are in fact not yet deciphered. quite ordinary and are caused by natural decay processes and scavenger attacks. Curiously, The Real Story exactly the same phenomena has been attributed Despite films like Signs, there is no to not only aliens but also to Satanic cults and evidence that crop circles are made by alien the dreaded chupacabra creature of Hispanic intelligences. Hoaxing is by far the best folklore. (Further reading: Kendrick Frazier, ed. explanation for crop circles—far more so than aliens who supposedly travel across the vast universe to reach Earth, only to flatten wheat in rural English and American farms as some sort Need Critical Thinking. of information. (You’d think that aliens with superior intelligence would realize their # 10 - ALIEN ENGINEERS messages aren’t getting through, and be a little more direct.) (Further reading: Kevin The story: Christopher. "CSICOP Crop Circle Science can’t explain how the Great Experiments." Available at Pyramids of Egypt were constructed; because http://www.csicop.org/hoaxwatch/cropcircles.ht they are so precisely aligned and designed, ml.) aliens must have had a role in creating them thousands of years ago. Continued on Page 19