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nepenthe
Lemme tell you ladies and gentlemen, UFO conventions are not as amusing as you’d think they’d be.
I had no plans yesterday. Being a geek and resident of Tempe, AZ, I chose to consult Lighting Octopus to see what kind of geeky things were going on in the area. Most everything posted to the site are for weekend activities where I can only look and pine and go to work while everyone else has a good time/social life. Not Tuesday! Tuesday, the Octopus said there was the International UFO Congress going on in Fountain Hills.
Like hell I could resist that. I mean, I’ve put off writing a fanfic that involves one of the characters going to an UFO convention. This totally counted as research, maybe get the juices flowing again.
So I left &, who was bid me farewell from my bedroom window and off I went to the casino.
Now the main reason why I went Tuesday instead of waiting until, well, today (Wens) was that the website listed Tuesday as $0. Free day, wheeee! Other days were, like $150 or something INSANE like that (dude, that’s like, all 4 days at the San Diego Comic-Con) so I was going Tuesday or I wasn’t going. Trouble was, all that was listed for the day was ‘film festival’, but I was still intrigued enough to valiantly go through with the plan.
The setting was perfect. Gorgeous Arizonan red rock formations overseeing forests of yellow-blooming desert brush and saguaro cacti, it was a lovely day for a twenty minuet desert drive. I resolved to take some outdoor photos (I remembered to bring my camera!) before going home.
The event was easy to find (always appreciated). I knew I’d be in for a smallish event, but I hadn’t anticipated it being a 2 room event. And, obviously, it’s a Tuesday. And the free day. And all they’ve got going on is the film festival, so it’s not like I should’ve expected very may people.
But still. Maybe, 30 people. For the International UFO Congress. By the time I left around 3:30 that afternoon, there were more. Maybe 60-ish. Which is a generous estimate, lemme tell you.
Anywho. The late morning/afternoon programming was slated for short films. The first I came in at the start of was about bigfoot.
It was a bit painful. I say a bit, as I didn’t know what I had in store for me later in the day. Some of the gems from the film include the bigfoot investigator telling us about how one of the ‘signs’ of the creature is that they twist tree branches. The investigator suspects that these are directions left for other bigfeet and represent signs that the beings who leave them are intelligent.
Yeah, right.
He then showed us bigfoot ‘tracks’.
Investigator: As you can see, they look like someone scratching their fingers through this hard packed ice.
He then proceeded to demonstrate to us how it looks like fingers scratched through the ice by scratching an identical track with his own hand next to it. Which, I assure you, looked IDENTICAL, as he said it would.
I face palmed and realized I couldn’t take anything else seriously. At all.
Other pearls of wisdom from this dude:
“People focus on evidence too much” instead, we should view it as, “Something that happens between you and the phenomenon,” and it’s something for, “those who are prepared to receive it.”
Prepare to receive BIGFOOT into your hearts and mind. Amen.
Also:
“It’s not healthy to try and make other people believe it.” Why not? “They’re not psychologically prepared.”
I’m not crazy. You people, asking for carcasses or scat or close-up, clear, concise photography, you’re the crazy, psychologically unstable ones!
Next up was a production called Legend of the Flatwood Monster. I say production because it had a director, producers and a writer by-line, as this one had reenactments.
O, sweet baby Jesus, reenactments.
So the event that they’re discussing happened in Flatwood, WV. It’s one of those ‘events’ that happened decades and decades ago, right at the height of all the classic UFO hullabaloo in mid-1950s. Aliens are everywhere in movies, in our cultural vernacular. The space race is a real, live Thing. The possibility of aliens is new and has captured the attention of everyone, nationwide. Thus, our story begins at the close of one Indian summer day when a fire ball streaked through the sky. A whole group of young boys (among others) saw it.
The young boys ran back home to tell their mother they’d seen a UFO.
And that was that.
The event was sealed as "aliens" from that moment. With that declaration and certainty, everything they would subsequently see and experience would be framed and contorted to meet that expectation. Undoubtedly, shit went down (ie, a meteor) and they did see a pair of glowing eyes from the shadows swoop down at them from behind a big oak tree when they went out to investigate (Whooo, whooo, could have glowing eyes in the middle of the night when you’re swinging flashlights around and swoop down at you?). I don’t doubt that they smelled a terrible, burning metallic smell in the air that stung their eyes, noses, mouths, lungs. When interviewing one of these ‘boys’, now all grown up and grey, the man described it in this way:
Eye-Witness: It was a nauseous smell. I mean, I didn’t throw up. It burned the eyes and nose, all the membranes and my eyes watered a bit. But I weren’t crying, no sir-eee. And I didn’t throw up, I told you that, I never did. Broke my leg jumping over the fence. Hurt like the bejesus but I didn’t cry.
You got that, right? He did not throw up like all those other boys said he did, and he didn’t cry when he broke his leg running away from the owl, ERM, monster.
Then they had the five boys draw pictures of the monster they saw. They are, in fact, all practically identical. You see? They all saw the same thing! It doesn’t matter that they’re all generically identical: line for spade-shaped helmet, oval for head, two oval circles for the glowing eyes (no one filled in the eye-circles, as EVERY KID I HAVE EVER SEEN DRAW EYES DOES), humps for shoulders, NO OTHER DETAILS. No mouth, no nose. None of the kids drew a body (no chest, limbs, fingers, ANYTHING), even though they all said it was 7-10 feet tall. No color was added, only outline marker.
Look, here’s the thing about first-person witness drawings made by children: they shouldn’t all be the same. Why not? Because we’re humans. Different people will remember different aspects more prominently than others; everyone might remember the criminal was wearing a baseball cap, but some say it was forward, others backward. Some people might remember he was wearing a school ring, others never noticed this detail. At Ikego, when I was a day camp counselor with the children, the kids got it in their heads one day that they were going to draw portraits of us counselors. Most of the children drew me with glasses, which I have—some didn’t. A lot of children drew me with freckles on my cheeks. I don’t have any freckles. Pretty much all of them drew me with pigtails, even though I only ever wore pigtails on the first day of camp; I wore a ponytail every other day, including the day they were drawing our portraits and I was standing right there for them to model.
The children were drawing the idea of me, a character of me, not an exact representation like a photograph.
The fact every drawing these boys made of the Flatwood monster was identical in every way and totally lacking any detail is suspect. None of them were drawing the idea of something they saw otherwise there would be detail. There would be character. Some would’ve drawn it big and looming, the face close up and in detail, others would have sacrificed a close-up of the face in order to fit arms and legs onto the page. But all drew it the same size. With the same pen strokes. The exact same way.
The way someone showed them to.
Whoever did this to these kids, whoever made them repeat the lie so many times they now have themselves convinced of its veracity, FUCK YOU.
Next was the very short film, Skylights.
Of all the films, this was the saddest.
It was a fifteen minuet showcase of a girl who ‘documents’ the lights over Tuscon with her home video camera. I say girl—she’s only a few years younger than me, I suspect, but very soft-spoken and akward in front of the camera. She posts her evidence of alien lights on Youtube.
She explains how some of the lights look like airplanes. She even used to think they were airplanes, what with the wing flashes and moving to and from the airport, but they’re not. The aliens are mimicking airplanes as camouflage.
Then, one night out at a gas station and with her camera handy on her person, she saw lights hanging in the sky. Maybe they were Chinese lanterns, or army flairs but as she explains, she had an epiphany, a feeling. “I thought they were there to see me.”
“They’re like an angel, but they’re aliens.”
There are more than one species, but she wonders why and how they’ve all agreed not to contact us.
When asked about what she says to people who say they don’t believe in aliens:
“They’re as real as Jesus”
(I’m hard pressed to disagree with this assertion)
When asked what she’d say to an alien if she ever met one:
If it’s a grey alien, she admits she’d be afraid, but if it looked like us, human-shaped, she’d ask where it’s from, if she’s an alien, too, and if she can go home with it.
I teared up with want to reach out and hug her, and tell her it was okay, she’s not crazy for wanting to have a place to feel like she belongs, to want to have a connection to people outside herself, to love, to find her home, but, sweetheart you won’t find people to love you in the sky.
No one else seemed concerned for her loneliness.
The speaker praised her for her Youtube hit count. I wanted to hit the shallow speaker. Was disappointed when the speaker asked if anyone from the production was in the audience, but no one was. I swear, if that girl had been there, I would have gone over to her, given her a hug, and offered to take her somewhere, anywhere that had the kind of food or drink she liked, someplace safe and comfy to sit and I’d let her talk it out.
There was another film about another unidentifiable craft with graphics and shit, but I’d sorta lost all taste for this crap. It was only about 20 minuets long and after that, things broke for lunch.
I like McDonald’s fries, so I went out and had a few, but had no appetite for anything else.
I seriously debated whether or not to go back. They’d be having their feature films later on, and well. I’d come all this way out here. It was sorta a waste of time and gas not to attend, but the very nature of film viewing meant I wasn’t getting any of the personal interaction I’d sorta been after. Meaning, no one to chat with. So I go back, reluctant. Whilst I’d been away, a table was set up in the lobby and badges were now being passed out. I was taken aback by this—I mean, I hadn’t paid for anything, and I was a bit leery. But may as well ask if the vender’s room (the one next door) would be opening anytime soon, or if it’d only be more films the rest of the evening. Turns out, the film festival was all free as advertised. Venders wouldn’t be opening until tomorrow, but was still free to access when they did open. Only the speakers tomorrow had any fee. Good deal, but I was a bit 'filmed' out and indecisive as to whether I wanted to continue this experiment or go home.
Then I saw a woman, middle-aged, made-up with crazy curled hair, wearing and all-green tunic and matching leggings, leather and gem-stoned belt and boots stomping down the hallway. An older gentleman, white-haired, slow, balding, was making his way toward the hotel.
“Where are you off to?” she asked him (she called him by a first name, but I don’t remember it).
“Back to my hotel room,”
“Why?”
“To lay down.”
By her face, I could tell she wasn’t really hurt, just cajoling. “But my film’s about to be shown! You don’t want to miss it.”
Now, before or after all the previous films, the speaker overseeing the proceedings had always asked if anyone from the production was in the audience, explaining she always asked as to give them the chance to introduce their own work, and to give us a chance for Q & A at the end.
This lady? This New-Age lady burgeoning with her own self-importance as to chide a slow moving old man for needing to have a lie-down when her film was up next, this I had to see. And maybe take advantage of the Q&A session.
This lady I would discover is Patty Greer.
The speaker presiding over events had no need to call Patty up when it was time for her film to start. She was already ‘backstage’ behind the curtain and mounted the stage with the speaker. She introduced herself, taking the microphone and choosing to hold it by hand. She stated she was Patty Greer, winner of this festival for two past years (to give you an idea of the importance of winning this festival, she is saying this to an audience of maybe 50 ish people in attendance, 12 of which were the round globes of mens’ bald-ed heads—I counted—and only one POC (an Hispanic woman) to give an idea of demographics and the importance of gaining the majority of votes to 'win'.).
Patty explained how everything we were about to see was true, because she, Patty, had been there. Had taken the photographs herself and in this film there were no special effects or graphics or manipulation of photographs. There were 4 different groups of witnesses from three different countries of these orange lights making the crop circles in England! You know it all has to be true.
Then, the film rolled.
It, too, is narrated by Patty. But not often as a voice-over, oh no. The film cuts to Patty in a darkened room filmed in soft focus, in case you forgot this is a New-Age spiritual film and she Tell You Things.
What was apparent, but not outright stated was that these were not 4 groups who saw the lights by happen-stance, independently of one another.
These were all New Agers who’d come out to the fields to watch for this phenomenon, specifically. Which doesn’t discount them! But it does mean they were out looking for trouble, and well, you know what happens when you are looking for trouble. Two of the families who apparently made up the two ‘different’ groups were up on the hill together (why does this make them two different groups? Why isn’t this one group made of two different families?). The other ‘group’ (I’d call ‘party’) is Patty, which is the only person of the lot to take a photograph of the event, out of 8 people who, might I remind you, came out that night specifically to see this phenomena. The other party to observe the event was a psychic writer. The interview with him was done in a hotel room. He’s the tool-y-est tool that was ever a douche: reclining back in his chair, slicked back hair, fake tan, button-up shirtsleeves with his sunglasses hung where those buttons were undone, he exuded sensitive, New-Age sleeze. I thought for a time he had seen the lights separately, the same way Patty had been a separate witness, but as the film went on I realized he’d seen the lights, ie, he’d gone to dinner with everyone—
here is where I went, “Woah, hold the phone, what do you mean everyone went to dinner?!”
—the next night—
“HOW DO YOU ALL KNOW EACHOTHER IF YOU’RE INDEPENDENT WITNESSES?”
—and after discussing with everyone about the lights everyone ELSE, but not him, had seen,—
“Also known as getting your story straight, hmm?”
—and how one of the kids had said at the dinner the circle wasn’t complete, he’d then gone back to his hotel room to consult with the orange spirit beings. Doing his 'spirit writer' thing, these spirit beings drew a few squiggly lines. And they wrote the word ‘orange’ with his hand. And then when he asked if they were the orange spirit being who made the circle, they told him 'yes' and when asked if the circle was complete, they said 'no'.
Somehow, the spirit beings who were, as Patty explained, ‘Ultra-Dimensional’, seemed extraordinarily familiar with and at ease utilizing and communicating with written English.
The next part was a story about a woman in Australia who after having two epileptic fits (“Realignments” she calls them) now sees these light beings and a gift for photographing them.
I have two words to describe the next painful, painful half-hour:
Lens. Flairs.
Specifically dust flairs, but who's asking? The dust lens flairs heal people with their magical powers. They are beings who meant to come from their dimension to ours ‘help’ us sooner, but our ‘lower energy’ had prevented them from crossing over when they wanted.
Good news everyone! The Ultra-Dimensional energy beings are here to solve ALL OUR PROBLEMS! Things won’t be as shit as they are now! Patty says they have an affinity for the sick, whom they hover around and heal, the patients making inexplicable recoveries. I extrapolate from this that soon, people all over the world will be healed with inexplicable rapidity.
In the middle of this second part of the movie was a montage of this Australian lady’s spirit lens flair photos. This montage is accompanied by a New-Agey song whose vocalist sounded an awful lot like an auto tuned version our friend Patty. And turned out to be Patty, according to the credits.
To conclude, Patty was a witness. Did all the interviews. Directed, wrote, narrated, edited and wrote and performed the music for the film. . .
Part of me must commend her. This is a woman who must consider herself a director, film writer, film editor, song writer, singer, and a spiritualist, keeper of sacred knowledge of beings from other dimensions and they Speak and Show Themselves to Her.
If any of this were true, she’d be entitled to that inflated ego she has.
There was no Q&A with Patty at the end. So disappointed.
I’d had enough. Went home before the traffic would become frightening. Could’ve gone back today to scope out the venders, but I couldn’t bring myself to justify the gas expense again.
Besides, I would've wanted to go and take artsy photos of the people and stuff. Like I did for my photo-documentation of my trip to Jerome. It would’ve been worth it to go and document the sights and people I’d meet. Except, next to all the big signs announcing the proceedings, were equally big signs telling everyone that any unauthorized photography either of the speakers (understandable) or venders (er, why not?) or anywhere on the premises (er, what about friends taking pictures of one another? No?) would have their cameras or recording devises confiscated.
Yeah. The International UFO Congress doesn’t want you to leave with any evidence of the proceedings.
What do they have to hide, I ask you?
