Phenomecon 2022 - A Review (Part Two)

Day Two’s opener of course follows on from the Bigfoot fest we found (but quickly departed) in the open-air cinema from last night. We are in for an astute, academically-inclined actual “talk” by none other than the inimitable Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum of formal sasquatch studies. It is a remarkable exercise (as we shall see) attempting to re-frame such a fringe topic of cryptozoology in a scientifically respectable context of description, explanation and understanding. (Whether such was in fact successful is a question we shall entertain forthwith.)

Meldrum will, it seems, offer a “naturalistic” framework for what is already a seemingly absurd topic: the existence of a large ape-like creature, unknown to current science, inhabiting the arboreal depths of America’s forested lands (and not only in America!). In other words the question which Meldrum proposes to tackle in a “naturalistic” framework is whether Bigfoot (“sasquatch”) exists and, if so, how to explain (and possibly justify) its existence.

The existential question—does it exist?—is of course the one that most haunts the topic, for according to conventional thinking, such a creature simply does not exist and is the subject more of myth and lore than of real, confirmed science. What is it supposed to be? is perhaps the better initiating question. Here, there is (predictably we might observe) a puzzling array of claims. As with the equally fraught (though evidentially-epistemically somewhat distinct) topic of UFOs, there are, broadly speaking, two general views on the matter of Bigfoot’s nature (of course they all presuppose its existence—naturally): in the first camp—housing perhaps the most fringe of the fringe views on Bigfoot (!)—we find those who think that it is something like an “interdimensional” being, or otherwise not even remotely supposed to be part of the biological world recognized by conventional scientific thinking (not part of the natural evolutionary great chain-of-being); the second camp (into which we might place Meldrum the bone fide biological scientist—he’s an anatomist and anthropologist by doctoral training) accepts that, whatever sasquatch are, they’re going to be part of the world of Earthly evolutionary biology (a heretofore unrecognized and therefore uncategorized biological species, e.g.). So from this latter camp—the naturalists, we might denominate them—Meldrum launches his investigations.

For Meldrum, the consistency of the footprint evidence, coupled with that set of (allegedly) veridical, and therefore convincing, photographic and video evidence (let’s not forget the infamous Patterson-Gimlin footage), is evidence enough that a potential species (of something—for Meldrum, it’s a “relict” hominid) exists that answers to the sasquatch description. Since it’s real, we must then determine its place in the evolutionary biological grand scheme of things. And so, quickly dispatching with the troublesome existential question, Meldrum moves into that territory that is, for him, most comfortable.

Let’s talk about biological niches. If sasquatch exist, and are part of the grand clan Hominidae, then we ought to be able to determine whether and to what extent those places where they are said to dwell are consistent with that habitat in which a relict hominid (such as sasquatch are presumed to be) would be able to thrive. While we’re at it, we also should try to determine if the purported physical evidence (such as it is) is also consistent with the physical characteristics of a relict hominid from Hominidae. In other words, Meldrum is trying to argue that there exists an actual hominid species coeval with but evolutionarily distinct from Homo sapiens sapiens—and that is Bigfoot. It’s a real human relative. It’s not supernatural. It’s not “interdimensional”. It’s not quite a “monster” (as the talk outlines, that’s akin to unnatural and the claim is that it’s anything but!). It’s just a low-population and therefore quite rare species of relict hominid that has thus far gone unnoticed and unacknowledged by the biological/life sciences.

I got the eerie and slightly disturbing sense that I’ve heard all of this before. Not, surely, the specific content about Bigfoot, sasquatch and the like (I admit I really don’t much pay attention to it, or at least not before this conference; now I’m slightly interested in what’s going on here…). But the structure of the discussion, and the form of the arguments: it’s all disturbingly homologous with what’s found in ufology. In the discussions of the evidence for/against the existence of genuinely unidentified aerial phenomena (i.e., as something more than misperception, hoax). In the talk about how credible or not a particular eyewitness is. Or how authentic a certain video or photo is—if they’re all hoaxes or fuzzy pics of known phenomena, or simply of indeterminate somethings. All these things are there in the Bigfoot discussions and debates. Yet, for being a supposed corporeal (or corporeal-manifesting, to wax a bit more ontologically ambiguous, as needed) entity, stomping around, surreptitiously, in (often strikingly beautiful) arboreal environs, the alleged evidence is just that much more ambiguous. As if the ambiguity is inversely proportional to the physicality of the thing: the more allegedly animal/real it’s supposed to be (at least while in our dimension), the less unambiguous the evidence for it seems to be (if you can pardon the grammatical constructions here). In other words, somehow the “evidence” is more ambiguous precisely because it is of a phenomenon that is already contained within the known domain of accepted physical, zoological morphology (at least according to Meldrum’s working supposition regarding the nature of Bigfoot qua relict hominid). Ironically, the “naturalism” Meldrum wants to presuppose dooms his Bigfootology from the get-go: it’s disconfirmable for lack of (or for contradictory) evidence. Yes, I know the constant refrain in these matters: “you can’t prove a negative” … and “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”. Except we have a concept of the fossil record, and, more to the point: we have collections of bones. If these creatures are as-yet unrecognized actual biological species, even if they are rare, they ought to leave physical traces behind in the form of fossilized bones or recently-deposited skeletons. We have to wait for the Q&A to extract a comment on this important point…

A bit of a wince moment—where Meldrum appeared suddenly extremely tone deaf—came when he wanted to do a bit of comparative anatomy (presumably one of those subjects on which he can claim real conventional expertise). He wanted to give us in the audience a sense of the comparative size of the sasquatch. And whom did he choose in order to give us this sense? A black football player—whose picture was juxtaposed with a depiction of a sasquatch specimen (rendered by an artist’s hand). There was not so much as a huff of air in the 90% white crowd. I simply couldn’t believe my eyes and ears: was I really seeing/hearing this comparison? It seems so. Of all very large human beings that one could have chosen, we had this choice. Interesting.

So we have a good sense, now, of what Meldrum is up to (even if we’re not exactly sure he’s aware of the racist tropes he manages to invoke in some of his comparative examples—which, it must be admitted, have no bearing on the scientific soundness, or not, of his claims). He is at pains to demonstrate that, quite simply, the physical evidence (such as it is) is consistent with the existence of an heretofore unknown and unacknowledged “relict” hominid inhabiting arboreal environs (in America and potentially elsewhere). But inevitably, the thesis—that such a species of hominid actually exists and inhabits those places where it’s alleged to have been seen)—raises a number of other questions (as all good theses should). One obvious one is: but whence cometh these hominids? Presumably they can’t be native to the Americas, so they would have had to have migrated from their point of origin (African, Asia?) to the Americas. That’s not particularly troubling. All sorts of species radiate from their origins (the places where their species was born, as it were—where speciation occurred) and move elsewhere. What is troubling is the apparent lack of fossilized remains: I mean, over the aeons (and I am assuming that Meldrum is not assuming that this species is a very recent deposition to the Americas, evolutionarily speaking—that it has radiated from its point of origin in the timeframe typical for other hominids: many tens of thousands of years) you’d expect there to be plenty of fossilized remains to indicate even the trajectory of migration. I cannot speak to the existence of this very crucial physical evidence, since I don’t care to follow Bigfootalia (and given who all was in attendance at Phenomecon—including the Giant humanoid/androgynous ETs guy—I can imagine someone standing up and confidently asserting that there are such fossils: cryptoidal fossils that would confirm this!), but when Meldrum was asked about it not only did he not produce it, he attempted to explain why we don’t have it. Thus we may infer that, if the top naturalistic theorist of Bigfoot can’t produce it, then probably it doesn’t exist. Or at least it’s not something generally acknowledged as being had by the Bigfoot naturalists. In my mind, this was the real 800lb. gorilla in the room. This would have been the real Bigfoot.

And his reply, you ask? As I said, he proceeded to explain why we don’t have such evidence—but did so in classic academic-expert fashion: we don’t have it because we can’t or shouldn’t have it: the physical forces in this case have conspired to erase such evidence. Or, something to that effect. In his remarks to the innocent questioner (because of whom we even got this consideration at all), he asserted the following as the reasons for the nonexistence of the fossil record one would expect to exist: (1) the rarity of the species precludes it; (2) nature “mops up after herself quite well” (a direct quote if my real-time notes are trustworthy—an issue since my ADHD mind tends to wander). Are we really meant to buy this B.S. response from the world’s “leading expert” on the sasquatch? It was an utterly unscientific moment, one where the pretense of science momentarily dropped, and the man behind the curtain was revealed: maybe it’s all smoke-and-mirrors, or rather, a show meant to distract from the core implausibility of it all. Everything else in Meldrum’s talk came across as pleasantly acceptable (biological, anthropological) technobabble to the uninitiated, giving the right allure (the needed patina) of scientific respectability for so fringe a topic. Yet with this absurdly dismissive and dissembling reply to an innocent—yet fundamental—question, science was suspended. It was an otherwise rather conventional talk, working through the heavy-duty evolutionary biology, physical anthropology and relevant anatomical details of a hypothetical “relict” arboreal hominid species. There was plenty of fact and some theory to go along with it. But it’s one thing to work through an argument to the effect that it’s possible for there to exist, within the relevant evolutionary biological niche, a relatively rare hominid (or perhaps less tendentiously and more generally, a species of large arboreal simian) not generally accepted as part of current zoological taxa. It’s quite another thing altogether to attempt to then explain away the glaringly contradictory fact that there are neither skeletons nor fossilized remains answering to the physical descriptions of these hypothetical creatures. Even if it is comparatively rare a species (and Meldrum did engage in an extended analysis of not only the existence of low-population, and therefore rare, species, but the conditions under which a population could thrive with low numbers—giving us a sense of what’s biologically possible: a minimum viable population), it seems that it would be exceedingly unlikely that there be no fossils or skeletal remains to anchor the species in the realm of zoologic fact. After all, if the species exists on any evolutionary timescale at all, some of its remains would, well, remain. Oh, but “nature mops up after herself quite well”—so well that she provides convenient cover for your hypothesis….

And now we come to one gem of a talk—a premonition (I would soon learn) of things to come from the SWR crew. After a pause (at which point I think I departed with my friend to go and secure some delicious Mexican lunch), we find the entrance of the petroglyph guru of the Uintah Basin himself, the one and only James Keenan.

He’s another “researcher” with a number of “books” (ok, yes, they are real physical structures with pages in bound folios) to his name (eight I believe was the number floated). And here I am, scribbling away at one of my notebooks, with no tomes in ufology yet to my name. How could I? Who is this imbecile? Well, I am the reaper of the logically dubious low-hanging fruit, clearing the epistemic road of the debris occluding travel by more competent and gifted minds. I am just the John the Baptist, preparing the way, a sympathetic essayist wanting to see true science emerge even where it seems it cannot. I am a hopeful. I am not a debunker, nor am I a “believer” (how could I be—me, an academic where belief is always held at some distance).Yet I somehow see something in the cracks and the breakdown here of rational, conventional thought—an image of what is possible even as we shy away from the impossible (without elevating it as Kripal does: nothing is truly impossible so much as it’s improbable given what we know under the conditions of knowledge with which we must humbly operate … accepting of course that we’re likely wrong in almost all of what we know).

Many may know Keenan as having been a guest (and I have not bothered to count the number of such appearances he’s made) on the hit series The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch (about which more later—more from those on the inside). He was called in to examine and comment on the petroglyphs found scattered about the Ranch. One wonders what authority he has to comment—at least comment as some kind of an expert. Apparently he has, like many of the speakers (I mean, these days who doesn’t?), a degree—though it’s not said what degree it is. On his boilerplate bio we read he “has a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara” and that “his main curriculum was anthropology and archaeology. He did the majority of his field work,” the boilerplate continues, “in Mexico” and that “his most recent research”—unsurprisingly of course—“has taken place in Northeastern Utah”. And that’s exactly where we are today. His home research turf it would seem.

Yes, I will complain. That same boilerplate lets us know that before his now-current “research” (I’m reluctant to modify that with either ‘anthropological’ or ‘archaeological’—though in some sense that’s correct), Keenan was a law-enforcement officer for some decades, thus making him rather typical of “paranormal researchers” it would seem (somehow the law-enforcement crowd has a distinct predilection for the uncanny). Following this career—which, presumably, didn’t involve much formal anthropology or archaeology—he enters into paranormal field research (for that is what I am assuming “field work” is meant to describe of Keenan’s post-police activity). It is curious as to how this would become anthropological or archaeological “field work” except that, as far as I can tell, this is the dimension of study or interest that he adds to his brand of paranormal sleuthing (and we are talking about brands and branding here: each of these so-called researchers has, it always turns out, some connection to the entertainment industry … a very curious fact). In other words, as he looks into paranormal phenomena of all sorts, he tries to contextualize it anthropologically (many cultures the world over have tales of various sorts of occurrences we might term paranormal—and so Keenan seems to pass over conceptual/foundational issue #1) or archaeologically, by the examination of cultural artefacts which indicate the presence of, at some point in the (possibly distant) past, some paranormality that seems to persist into the present. Like those petroglyphs at SWR: isn’t it a depiction of some kind of a trans-dimensional “portal” (the infamous portal!) that makes its appearance even today? Keenan’s job therefore is interpretive-historical: that swirly thing carved into the rock some unknown number of years ago (interestingly he’s rather vague on dating), which looks (to Keenan) like a portal, is a depiction of the portal allegedly seen on the Ranch. So it must be something which the native tribes also encountered. “Ancient human history” and the paranormal, Keenan declares, “may be intertwined”. And we might place the emphasis on what in logic we call a “weasel word”: may. Sure, many things may be the case…

And so, dear readers, I am not attempting to discount the possibility that any of what Mr. Keenan wants to claim is true. My complaint is much more basic, and more foundational than that: I am simply not convinced at all that he knows what the hell he is, anthropologically and archaeologically, talking about. Not primarily because he doesn’t have an advanced degree—for example, an actual research degree that certifies you as an expert in the eyes of other experts in the field (which is what earning a Ph.D. from a reputable university and decent academic department establishes); but because for several decades Mr. Keenan occupied himself doing something else altogether—something that is only tangentially related to either anthropology or archaeology as formal academic disciplines. Keenan is just not credible as an expert there, making his pronouncements on the paranormal in connection with anthropological or archaeological matters no better than mine (if I would do a bit of reading up on the subjects). And it takes years of actual, formal, disciplined technical work to become a credible expert in those fields—following your formal Ph.D. training. Having a “background” in anthropology (as he announces early on in his talk) ain’t gonna cut it if we’re talking about trying to come to some plausibly expert understanding of the archaeological and/or anthropological phenomena he’s keen on investigating. Otherwise, how is his view supposed to be any better than a random (well-educated) person off the street? I personally doubt that any of it is, so let’s move on to his hypotheses. They provide a kind of case study in the pitfalls of amateurish dabbling. (And not to dis the true amateur—many a great thing has come from the non-expert, for true authority here is not about paper credentials, but actual meaningful and lasting insight or the demonstrated capacity thereof… and on this score I again would hasten to doubt.)

Did I mention that he took pot-shots against “university standards” and “expectations”? Well, I know enough of the history of actual science to know that part of what explains the rise of science (in its distinctive European form—which is the model with which we’re still essentially operating) is precisely those “university standards” and “expectations”: a formal system of authentication and validation, a filtration mechanism for quackery and ignorance. Not only formally within the university system itself, but also those adjunct but significant learned societies—like the British Royal Society, or its counterpart in France—which confer honor and respect (and therefore credibility) among intellectual peers. Of course, many decades of philosophical (and sociological) criticism of such institutions has taught us to moderate our adulation of these structures, but even so they play a valuable role in society, helping us keep track of what it is we can say we know with some measure of substance grounding that knowledge, as opposed to what is mere opinion, conjecture, speculation or just plain nonsense. Such institutional structures do not provide us with an absolute guarantee of intellectual substance or soundness; they’re guides, ways of vetting or testing the soundness of someone’s supposed “expert” views against the informed opinion of the relevant collective of peer experts. Yes, the “truth” here is a collective, social product and thus subject to the usual criticisms. The pronouncements, determinations, judgments and views so determined are not in themselves categorically, unconditionally right; but rather an indication of what we can with justification come to believe is right, and what we cannot. Some of Galileo’s claims, for example, could not be entirely justified given the state of knowledge and technological precision that was possible during his time. What is perhaps painful to realize is that the Church’s position (notoriously tortured—no pun intended) was in several instances rather justifiable. The epistemological history of science is complicated. Epistemology is complicated always by the fact of our being eternally embedded in the present, whilst at the same time we develop the conceit of knowingness as we look to the past. We are never the past; we are always the present, and a receding ancestor to the future of knowledge. But we must remain true to our limitations now, while we recognize the potential for overcoming them sometime later (potentially—not necessarily, for we cannot think ourselves universally wiser in future).

What follows from this is that, of course, the decidedly unconventional—which precisely Phenomecon is all about—has in fact got to face a perhaps long and protracted uphill battle in order to get through the intellectual gatekeepers. I like that fact. It’s epistemically healthy. It’s what we have to do battle against in ufology. It means that potentially insightful minds will be dismissed as quacks or kooks, important (and indeed key) evidence ignored or missed. That’s the price we pay for academic discipline. And it’s this dialectic that perpetually sustains both intellectual conventionalists and their assailants (though I am again reluctant to camp Keenan here, since I couldn’t find much systematic thought in his talk—but that’s my opinion). But it is a necessary dialectic, the dialectic of knowledge as such (a mention of Adorno would seem to be apropos here, who, with a slight bit of high-handed haughtiness, noted that those fighting against “The System” needed that System as much as the System needed them—an inexorably unresolvable rift that was constitutive of any social structure).

Well, back to those “hypotheses”. (I don’t think he used the word, so I may very well be overstating the case.) From what I could gather (trying not to dip out from my heavy Mexican lunch), he was fascinated by underground caverns—and found them under the Uintah basin. Almost everywhere. There was something about electromagnetic radiation as well. The Skinwalker Ranch kind of stuff. I think he was trying to connect the dots. He found some kind of a NASA seismological study (at the McCoy Flats) that had buried, long ago (well, maybe in the 1960s), wiring that could be loaded with lots of voltage. His argument, though, was some mixture of suggestion and associationism—lots of circumstantial evidence, in the end, as best I could make out. What was distinctly lacking was a theory that connected the dots supposedly being connected: paranormality (especially at SWR), electromagnetic phenomena, caverns, seismological studies. It would have been better if this was all a show-and-tell us your ghost/UFO/wolfman/orb stories, but no, we had the distinct pretense of “investigation” and the suggestion of some kind of insight. Yeah, no. Like much of this kind of “research” and “investigation”, when you remove that patina of expertise (bucking the academic system!), and get right down to what’s there, it is just a repetition of some collection of stories of paranormality. Stories. And I’m fine with the stories. But let’s drop everything else and do a good storytelling. I mean, what in the hell does flowing water (a typical concern of the paranormal researcher/investigator) have to do with paranormality? I’ve heard this numerous times, especially in connection with hauntings (and I will admit that in my family we have a real case of a poltergeist haunting—I’d be happy to Zoom with anyone about it): is there flowing water nearby? goes the question. So what?! How is flowing water related? What’s the theory of that connection? Consistent association of X and Y explains neither X nor Y; in other words: a correlation between X and Y doesn’t show what the actual connection there is between them such that X and Y are correlated. And they may just not be causally related at all. Correlation isn’t causation, as they say. But ok: we’re dealing with the paranormal, you say. Fine. But then provide to me an analysis of why the association is determinative in this case (if that’s what’s being said), or otherwise explain to me how to resolve the relation between the two phenomena in such a way that that relation is thereby explained. And along the way you might have to tell me what it means to ‘explain’ things in this case—why conventional notions or categories or concepts of explanation are inapplicable, and what is to be their replacement. It is that which I mean by saying that Keenan provides no insight here. It’s pretty much a useless talk, beside vaguely characterizing the contours of some sort of uncanniness. And even by that standard, the talk failed. It was actually quite tediously boring, neither convincingly expert, nor entertainingly interesting. At least for me. But what the hell do I know. (Apparently just that water is scarce…)

I will move passed several pages of my notes, but they go on and on about magnetic anomalies, and “high energy” flows, more about underground water (isn’t Utah in a severe drought, I wonder—so maybe, just maybe, we’d expect a reduction in paranormality longitudinally?) … oh and the descriptions of what appears to Keenan to be a beam of some energetic kind being shot into space—apparently found on a petroglyph! Now we’re getting somewhere…but we somehow end up nowhere that we haven’t already been a hundred thousand times before. Which is what every “paranormal researcher” or “investigator” has said, done, written about and exploited for personal gain. Yes, Phenomecon was, as a colleague of mine reminded me, quite aptly named.

And then there was Erik “the Bard” hailing from the protected realms of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. I almost want to suggest that Secret is not Skinwalker Ranch itself; that this burgeoning media Empire (a virtuality that brushes up against Brandon Fugal’s very physical real estate mogulalia), is not the real thing. But will that real thing please stand the hell up and announce itself?! It never seems to do so with any degree of surety. We’re always edging on the cusp of having it finally documented, demonstrated, shown, disclosed, portered by a wolfman beamed to Earth from a ufological portal in the sky, silhouetted by orange-and-blue orbs delight…

I will preface my review of The Bard here by noting that Erik is quite possibly the most erudite, intelligent, well-spoken and thoughtful of the entire crowd of Phenomecons—and by far a gem within the unfortunate media trappings of Secret. Someone at casting did a good thing, and got someone with a real (as opposed to a ‘roided) mind to take the lead. Which is curious, if we pause to think about it for a moment: why, you might ask, is Bard—who does not hold a Ph.D. (according to a “net worth” snoop site, he’s got a Masters in “plasma physics”, presumably from Brigham Young U in Utah … so he’s a Utahian)—why is Bard the “principal investigator” over Dr. Mr. T.T., who has several Ph.D.’s (as we are always reminded), and who’s done work for the USG (most infamously as lead on their somewhat abortive UAPTF)?

Bard’s got the feel for what you want in a principal investigator, at least from a casting standpoint: he’s staid, educated, somewhat silver-tongued (in an understated sort of way), well-mannered and well-intentioned … the outer presentation of The Bard is excellent. And I don’t think it’s at all an act (other than the kind of acting we all do). He’s the real deal in terms of that quiet American ingenuity, practicality, know-how and entrepreneurialism, and all that. He seems to be a (Masters-level) scientist who, like many, made it for himself by capitalizing on his training and interests—in this case, scientific instrumentation. According to that snoop site, and his own LinkdIn profile, he’s the co-founder of “ML3 Scientific” (whose website link from their LinkdIn profile is oddly inoperative). Looking for the website for this company turns up little but puzzlement—“forbidden” links and a public listing of nominal value (if I were more journalistically inclined, I’d dig deeper, but I want to finish this article before the next total solar eclipse). The company seems to be into X-ray technology, among other things.

And X-rays—or more specifically, those gammas higher up on the EM spectrum—are all the rage on Skinwalker these days. So naturally, The Bard takes up his rightful position as lead down at the Ranch.

We enter a cloistered, hallowed space filled with the believers, and the paying-to-play “insiders” gathered breathlessly to watch The Bard (this is his actual on-set nickname!) deliver his afternoon (post-lunch) talk. I was not about to let my n-th visit to the Mexican place (with Dr. Knuth) induce a drowsiness sufficient to cause my dipping out of this one. Oh no. This is what I came for. Well, I had hoped I’d somehow get myself a trip out to said Ranch, but as I soon discovered, you have to really be somebody to get inside—even beyond the insiders. And, as I’m nobody, I had to watch from the crowds, melded into the hoi polli as rightfully I should be.

It was quite a show. But I should write “show” for what I am about to describe was, to the best of my knowledge (and intuition) neither planned nor expected. The real tends to emerge from within the fake—don’t forget to read my review of the cinematic masterpiece Nope. We’re right inside the mind of Jordan Peele. We’re in the truth of the matter, the real thing at last. Well, as Bard took up his wireless mic—a hand-held unit—it immediately cut out. The battery appeared to have been drained!?! And so, the audience members, we looked at each other: here it goes again. The Skinwalker effect. And so the mic was fussed with, with Dr. T.T. chiming in for comic effect. And then another mic unit was handed over. Same thing! It went out, just like that—the instant Bard handled it. Unbelievable, I thought (with about 150 others). So, as the jokes and comedy goes a’flyin’, Bard starts his spiel unamplified, as if we are being taught a lesson in reduction to the primitive by the phenomenon—again, Nopeian themes pour forth from art-film space (… a portal?). Few can pay attention, since now our attention is garnered by this phenomenon we are all prepped to intuit (how can we control for confirmation bias?).

Another mic is brought in, and finally all seems to be restored back to some functional normalcy. We can now begin the talk itself…

Bard, after now having gotten comfortable with the crowd (he did seem a bit jittery—like an introvert forced to endure the emotional chaos of a social crowd), starts his talk off by (and oddly he’s not quite aware of the irony) recounting tales of electronic mishaps that started up very soon after his having been hired to be principal down at the Ranch. He wants us to understand (they all do!) that he’s not making any of this up; that this, and what else he’s about to discuss, actually happened. I wish fact or truth worked assertorically like that: by declaring that X actually happened, the statement to the effect that X happened actually happened (by assertorical implication). Wouldn’t it be nice …

According to Bard, the loci of anomalous activity (such as it is—more about that alleged activity in a moment) is both the “Command Center” and “Homestead 2”, especially the latter. But the weirdness is, as we all know, much more general than that. Allegedly. There is the ambiguous “electromagnetic interference” we have all come to expect at the Ranch, but then there are perhaps the more vexatious physiological anomalies—some of which seem to correlate with that alleged EM interference. Bard describes one incident that happened to him early after starting his tenure at SWR: while atop a mesa doing some data gathering, as the EM interference starts to be detected, he gets a sudden dizzy spell. “What am I in for?” goes his (comedically replayed) reaction. Another incident he tells us about is a case of seeming paralysis or cognitive aphasia: a visitor at one point stops in his tracks, and goes blank—while still standing.

With the purported correlation (very loosely speaking) between these physiological effects and the EM disturbances, could the latter be a physical cause of the former? That question isn’t addressed, presumably because even if one can establish a casual relationship between the two, the question would still remain: what was the initiating cause of the EM disturbance to begin with? Which is always the question with SWR phenomena: aside from the all-important question as to whether what’s being claimed to have occurred actually did occur, that is: aside from whether the reports we’re constantly getting are veridical—and this is the point at which most of us jump off the train and remain incredulous—there always remains the question of why this phenomenon at that time, under those circumstances? As Dr. Knuth pointed out to me very succinctly: there’s plenty of ambiguity here (what exactly was the timing and exact character of the allegedly strange phenomena?), but ambiguities don’t equate to anomalies. We have to keep that distinction in mind. It is the crucial distinction as we try to think through what’s being said—or what’s being suggested, on film—about what’s actually going on at the Ranch. (We’ll see a case of this distinction being ignored in a moment.)

I mean, the whole set up is fairly ridiculous, both from a basic critical thinking 101 standpoint, and from the more rigorous and disciplined standpoint of real, bone fide scientific inquiry. Not only are we offered allegations based on the testimony of paid cast members on a show whose primary aim must be, if capitalism is at all in play (remember that?), to turn a profit for the show (the primary vehicle for that being interested and perpetually intrigued viewership), but from an entire media entourage operating under any number of NDAs, from a place to which access is severely restricted—even to any interested third party scientists! Add to that the fact that, while Bard is seemingly a competent science guy who knows his way around some set of real scientific instrumentation (though his exact credentials and bone fides are somewhat murky, if his aforementioned profile is any indication), we have and are provided absolutely no real insight into the nature and functioning of those scientific instruments which dance before our minds like mere Hollywood props. If they want us to move from incredulity to acceptance that this is in fact a true scientific endeavor, then we need details, transparency and independent confirmation of what’s being alleged. We need to know the instrumentation. We need to have any alleged anomalies recorded on those instruments evaluated and assessed by the right experts who know the nature of the instruments used (and whether they’re being used properly, effectively, and so on)—and what artefact we can expect therein. We need to have someone other than Erik Bard and Dr. Mr. T.T. doing this work. Or we at least have to have some real documentation written up, explicating their methods, their equipment, their recordings, and the accompanying written testimony—and then that all has to be independently confirmed and verified. Short of this what we’re dealing with is a whole lot of ambiguity. Not anomaly. I mean, we—the audience, those who can’t gain access to the inner sanctum itself—are perfectly justified in remaining entirely incredulous and disbelieving. Even if there’s some there there (and I have it on good authority from someone I know who did gain access to the secret of the secrets that there is something strange in the data—just not what’s really being dished up for consumption by the paying fans, and so something that is likely too tenuous to make for good reel), on general principles of reasoned thought, no one has any real justification for believing what’s being claimed. Let me say that again: in the manner in which the information, the claims, the allegations are dished up to us, we, outsiders, have no good reason to believe what’s going on inside the Ranch. Period.

Now, it does not follow that there is, consequently, no there there; all that follows from the set-up the SWR team has in place is that there’s no good reason to take any of it seriously. If they want to (a) operate as a media entertainment group hosting and bankrolling scientific research, and (b) prevent anyone from talking about what’s going on that isn’t approved by said media group, and (c) disallow independent verification or confirmation, then we on the outside can say: bullshit; you ain’t got nothing until (a) through (c) is eliminated. We’re all entitled to take that position.

To wrap up this frustrating waltz through the presentation of what could very well turn out to be nothing but more dissimulation from an otherwise honest-seeming guy, let’s take the final two cases as examples of precisely what we’ve been complaining about: the “lightning” videos Bard presents to the awed audience, and the strangely distorted live-feed from somewhere in the Command Center/Living complex. (Oh, there was a sound thing too which Bard, just before these final two videos, presented to us; a hum that became a kind of deafening roar of some ambiguous sort—to which members of the audience started claiming physiological effects in response!)

First, the lightning video. So, we had a video of a (very hauntingly beautiful) lightning strike one late evening (it was just after 11pm local). It was striking “right where we put the launch pad” Taylor indicates, referring to what must be his favorite backyard experiment he oversaw: the rocket launching. A bit of background is in order at this point, before we move on to the enigma itself. So, as many who’ve seen the show will know, there is supposed to be an anomalous zone of space above a certain area of the Ranch (near or over the infamous “Triangle”). It goes to about 5000ft above ground (add an extra 5 or 6k on top of that for altitude above sea level, since we’re already atop a high desert plain). That’s where they claim (primarily it’s Taylor) to have seen strange visual distortions and deflections of light beams (remember that episode where they shined a high-powered laser into the night sky?)—distortions suggestive of some kind of a spacetime/gravimetric bending (at least that’s Taylor’s going hypothesis—not surprising given that he’s next-of-kin to ufological insiders like Eric Davis and Hal Puthoff , who favor some kind of a spacetime approach to some UAP/UFO observations … “advanced propulsion” concepts, let’s not forget, is rather big small business for Davis et al., and a number of other DOD contractors, as their salaries are tied to getting this idea to fly in warped spacetime; everyone has some pet theory). Well, Bard (along with Taylor’s suggestive comments as Bard does his talk) thinks that’s about where the lightning is striking: through this allegedly anomalous zone of space above the Ranch. Now, back to our program…

When the video is slowed down, something—yet another ambiguity that is presented as an “anomaly”—happens to the crooked blade of lightning: it isn’t exactly continuous, as you’d expect it to be. It appears that it’s a broken streak, with the break itself (at about 5/6ths the way up the streak) oddly haloed by what appeared to me (little old me) to be a small cloud or vaporous formation of some indistinct kind. Bard gets the audience to focus on that break; it’s anomalous, right!? Lightning doesn’t just have breaks in it, right?! Lightning streaks are smooth and continuous, right!? Well, hell if I know the answer to that question—and thus once again the absurd proposition seems to be that, to a roomful of non-experts (there are atmospheric physicists who study this stuff!), which by the way includes both Taylor and Bard himself (for neither I am sure can claim expertise in the phenomenon of lighting, even if Bard has some level of degree in “plasma physics”), we’re supposed to concluded by mere visual inspection that we have an anomaly. Hell no. We have something that, to the non-expert and untrained eyes of everyone there, must be considered ambiguous before it’s anomalous. Doing one’s due diligence would suggest that one submits the videographic evidence to those who know, and with that checked out, then report on the results of this—even if it’s a mere preliminary analysis—to the audience, not to stand up there and wow the audience with what is in all likelihood going to turn out to be what UAPx science team member Dr. Matt Szydagis (also in attendance for two of the four days) likes to call a “nothing burger”. The point I’m making, of course, is: we just don’t know what it is we’re looking at. I don’t study lightning, and I’m sure 99.9% of everyone there doesn’t either, so no one present is qualified to really comment on such a phenomenon of nature. Sure, it’s seems odd. But it’s just seeming.

It gets better, of course, for towards the end of the video clip we were wowed with, there is this bright flash—and Dr. Mr. T.T. refers to this Dr Who thing called a “weeping angel”. It looks like a weeping angel! he blurts out at one point from the corner where he was seated (and I was unfortunately directly aside of him, interfering with his line-of-sight to The Bard, with my trusty American-flag cowboy hat I’d bought for this trip out to Utah). I must admit (and will have to go back to my audio recordings) that Dr. T in his infinite science fictional wisdom had some other point to make about the phenomenon of the weeping angels (it’s supposed to be related to some kind of quantum something or other) in relation to the lighting and other supposedly anomalous phenomena being recounted that late afternoon (as a slow hunger grew for another hit of that delicious mole chimichanga Dr. Knuth and I enjoyed earlier). What was odd was that first Taylor mentioned the weeping angels not for its physical depictions in the famed science fiction series, but somehow the audience took us there anyways, with Taylor happily going along for the ride of credulity.

The final act for the lightning enigma was some claim about an anomalous effect that happened to the sophisticated (gaming) computer purchased for examining in detail recorded video frames. Bard tells us that, as the storm system approached, he unplugged the gaming computer, not wanting it to be damaged; cameras were still of course recording as the storm rolled in. The next day, Bard says he was examining the footage those cameras recorded (which included those enigmatically discontinuous lightning streaks and the orby flashy “angels”). As he’s watching the footage on that computer—which he specifically had unplugged during the storm, let’s not forget—he thinks “glad I turned it off during the storm!” and not just a few moments after he thinks this … yes, you guessed it (Bard actually delivers this aside to the audience!), the computer on which the recording plays turns suddenly off. Ok, fine. Happens all the time, right? Well, when he tries turning it on, it “does something in Bios”, as if it’s attempting to boot, but then immediately powers down. And it keeps up this pattern, powering up, going into the Bios screen, then powering down and off. It’s a twenty thousand dollar machine! So, he reaches out to the laptop man (“Dan”): what’s going on?! He brings it back to the facility where they built the computer platform itself to have it looked over, and as the lead tech opens the computer up they discovered that the CPU had melted. Now we have the puzzle in place: an originally disconnected computer, while playing footage of an electrical storm and a (seemingly strange-looking) lightning strike, later experiences a malfunction that turns out to be something like what would have happened had the machine been plugged in and lightning caused a power surge, which in turn (through known physical processes) caused the CPU to melt. The reading of this event, spreading rapidly around the room, was, of course, that the lightning had retroactively (and paranormally) caused the CPU to melt—or else that the mere replay of the footage of the lightning strike precipitated the meltdown. But all we had, again, was an allegation and a purported correlation: between video viewing, specific video content viewed, and prior natural phenomenon (precisely of a sort that could have caused the melting of the CPU had it gotten a surge from a lightning strike—just like the one that was actually recorded and being viewed when the melting happened). And it is this phenomenon that makes Taylor think of the weeping angles in Dr Who, since one of their powers is to be able, like Medusa, to cause someone to turn to stone—something that could happen even if you caught sight of them on a computer or TV monitor! (There is a notion of “quantum locking” that is relevant here, to be exactly accurate to the science fictional details, but it is something I have passed over in absolute unknowing silence.) This is classic Skinwalker…

(If my admittedly—and I did admit to this at the get-go—mottled review has you wondering what actually the hell was being said, claimed, speculated, proffered and so on … then the effect should be to inspire you to attend with me at next year’s paranormality gala—maybe I can be coaxed into more seriousness.)

In any case, after the weeping angles moment, we got hit with what could only be Bard’s best shot at intensifying the intrigue and mystique surrounding the Ranch (certainly his production bosses were watching him: I noticed some spooks—not Men In Black, but Men In Kakis—manning the doors and the tables and the official SWR booths all around us). We got a Paranormal Activity video! So let’s set this one up carefully. It was spooky, I’ll admit.

So they had this live video-feed camera set up in a “Living Room” (in one of the trailers) whilst other recording and sciency activity was going on elsewhere. Bard sets himself to receive alerts to notify him whenever there was movement in the room where the live-feed was being recorded. He gets a stream of them late one night, so he decides to sit by the monitor and watch the feed live to try and locate what was triggering the sensors constantly pinging him with those annoying cell-phone push-notifications. He entered into a kind of trance, a “stupor” as he admits, since his viewing went on just about all night. In his somewhat altered state of mind, he addresses the screen itself and demands: “if ya got somethin you want to tell me, then tell me!”. And for the drumroll: we get a response, or so it seems (a whole lot a’seemin on the Ranch, ain’t there?). The live-feed camera goes a bit haywire, and gets all distorted, freezing on an eerily distorted display: over in the upper left-hand corner, some kind of a mathematical-looking “equation” appears; the word “living” is distortedly smeared across the lower right-hand side of the video frame. What I couldn’t figure out was why this was interesting, except if you’re already spooked by being at the Ranch itself (which he admits to having been). The “equation” was a distortion of the numerical time display; the “living” was just “Living Room” smeared out to just the first word of that phrase. I guess it’s odd that the thing distorted when it did. But what can we really conclude? As many on the Ranch admit: not much, since the phenomenon seems to be operating on another level, a more playful level. And so that’s where we are: at the level of play, filtered through the distorting lens of a Hollywood Production Team, embedded in the private property of a Real Estate Mogul of questionable socio-political leanings (social, political and economic factors are oddly washed out of all consideration here, as in ufology generally—except when it comes to the question of gov’t secrecy and all that).

At this point I have had enough, and, after the Q&A (which I pass over in silence), I look forward to my dinner.

Speaking of which, I am presently feeling some hunger as I have to dash off to meet once again my Greek friend in Downtown LA for dinner first, and then yet another phenomenal meeting—a moderated colloquium of sorts on how we should prepare for aliens to arrive on Earth. I don’t know if I’ll review this one, but we can surely move on in the next (and final part) of this review to some of the last of the scheduled events of this wonderfully kooky Phenomecon 2022.