Thoughts on UFOs and UAPs

I was either too sleepy the other night or briefly abducted by extraterrestrials to stay up for the new spin-off TV show, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch. They hired new actors—I mean researchers. The original show, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, is actually interesting and I usually watch it. The actors are always firing off rockets into the sky to provoke either the extraterrestrials or the skinwalkers.

One of the cast members is an actual scientist. He’s Dr. Travis Taylor, PhD, an astrophysicist. He’s in charge of firing off those rockets. There’s a Wikipedia article on him. He has several degrees and has written many books. He’s a pretty good actor.

The other night, the show hosted a guest who was the guy who came up with the alternative name for UFOs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). I can’t remember his name but he was used as bait to attract attention from the ranch, which is sometimes conceptualized as being a kind of mysterious living entity, capable of ignoring humans and not creating any weirdness—and at other times causing major atmospheric disturbances and UAP activity that makes everybody on the show say things like: “We’ve got to get Travis’s eyes on this piece of dead animal skin—it’s just crazy!”

I’m not sure how any of the cast can keep themselves from laughing. On the other hand, they’ve managed to involve the Utah state attorney general. He has the same tailor as Johnny Cash, apparently. He supports the actors and seems to know better than to try and upstage any of them. He wants to know what’s flying in the air in his state. Judging from the number of sick and dead mutilated animals strewn around the 512-acre property, my guess is that it’s mainly buzzards.

The show might talk to the guy who recently identified himself as an ex-intelligence official and whistleblower who reports that the federal government is hiding numerous UAPs, many of which have no doubt been crashed on Earth by drunken extraterrestrials, none of whom have ever taken a defensive driving course and are doing hard time in underground prisons in Utah for operating UAPs while under the influence of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, an alcoholic beverage described by researcher Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Try to say that sentence in one breath, I double-dog dare you.

I think the producers of the skinwalker show should consider hiring another actor, Nick Pope, the retired employee of the British Ministry of Defense. He investigated UAPs when they were still called UFOs, which of course made him a laughingstock, but that all changed when the name was changed to UAP. He is now a famous member of the Ancient Aliens team and the only one sane enough to persuade people from actually breaking down the gates of Area 51 during the Storm Area 51 crisis in 2019. He also has a Wikipedia entry. He has never publicly denied successfully completing treatment for Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster use.

Unless the new Beyond Skinwalker Ranch spinoff moves to an earlier time slot, I’ll just have to wait for the reruns. It’s probably not as funny as the original and certainly won’t equal the uproariously hilarious Mountain Monsters (which we can no longer watch because it left cable TV). Only a parody like that can top the current UAP TV program fare.

The Proof is Way Out There

I watch the History Channel show, The Proof is Out There, hosted by Tony Harris, an American journalist and filmmaker. The show reviews videos of paranormal events, supposed cryptids, and other weird stuff and generally ends up debunking at least half of them. I’ve seen some of the videos on another TV show, Paranormal Caught on Camera, which airs on the Travel Channel. Interestingly, the hosts of that show tend to uncritically endorse the authenticity of the videos while The Proof is Out There usually debunk them as faked.

I don’t know how the videos get swapped between the two shows. In fact, the last episode I saw of The Proof is Out There was subtitled “The Skinwalker Edition.” The History Channel blurb on it says that Tony Harris “…travels to the Skinwalker Ranch, a place known as the epicenter of strange and mysterious phenomena.”

In fact, Harris does nothing of the kind and many of the videos were previously aired from other episodes. The only connection with Skinwalker Ranch were a few photographs from another History Channel show, The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch. I wonder if the producers of that show didn’t allow Harris to actually evaluate the alleged paranormal events of their show because they were afraid he would debunk them.

Obviously, the title of the show “The Proof is Out There” got its name from the X-Files subtitle, The Truth is Out There. Some viewers have suggested that there may be another meaning to the subtitle, which is that the truth may be “out there” in the sense of outlandish or crazy instead of from aliens in outer space.

So, what’s going on with The Proof is Out There? Is it designed to do a better job of picking out the faked paranormal videos? Sometimes they miss them, like the one about the glitch in the matrix which turned out to be a cool camera trick.

Most often they hedge their bets and say they don’t know what’s going on in the video. But they don’t shy away from calling something a hoax if the evidence points in that direction.

On the other hand, do the producers of The Proof is Out There somehow collude with those of other paranormal TV shows, sharing videos and creating the impression that they’re more objective just to sustain interest in the show and even deliberately foster controversy for the same reason?

That would be way out there, although I still like the show. And the cryptid chaser parody, Mountain Monsters, obviously pokes fun at other sasquatch-themed shows. Not only do they get away with it, some people love it for just that reason—including me.

When we’re taking ourselves too seriously, I think it’s healthy when somebody comes along and makes us laugh at ourselves.

Mountain Monsters Mooners Mothballed

I just noticed that the Travel Channel may have cancelled the Bigfoot hunter parody Mountain Monsters show. There were 268 comments complaining about it and I don’t think any of them realized that the show is a parody.

The first time we saw it about a month ago we laughed ourselves silly. The second time I saw it, which was the following week, the whole gang of them mooned the camera. Maybe that’s why they got cancelled. Or maybe they knew they were going to be cancelled and mooned the camera as a parting shot.

I’m not sure why anyone tries to produce a serious show about Bigfoot and cryptid chasers. You never see anything. The camera pans and the flashlights stab the dark forest, bigfoot hunters whistle, howl, knock on trees, and—the woods are empty.

The only Bigfoot I’ve ever seen in these shows is a GI Joe style doll strapped to a guy’s backpack.

The serious Bigfoot hunters all talk in loud stage whispers, say swear words so they can get bleeped, which supposedly is more realistic, yet never find so much as a turd proving that the beast moves its bowels occasionally.

That’s why Mountain Monsters was so funny. You knew they were lampooning the whole idea and looked like they were having a great time doing it. Whoever saw a Smoke Wolf outside of a cartoon panel?

We fell over laughing at Wild Bill imitating a Bigfoot having diarrhea in the woods. Where could you find a gun like his but in the Walmart toy section?

Americans need to laugh more. That’s why the Travel Channel should sign those guys up for another season.

But please—no more mooning.

Update: I think you can view episodes on Dailymotion at this link.

Featured image picture credit: pixydotorg.

Proof Out There for Paranormal?

I get a big kick out of watching TV shows about the paranormal, and I’ve seen something weird happening in the past few weeks. I watch a couple of programs fairly regularly: The Proof is Out There hosted by Tony Harris, and Paranormal Caught on Camera.

They both have roughly similar formats. They solicit videos of the weird from viewers and provide commentary from a panel of experts. Usually the Proof Panel has physicists, anthropologists, video processing pros and other scientists assessing the evidence. The Paranormal Panel is usually made up of those with such titles as Paranormal Investigator, Paranormal Researcher, Folklorist, Dowsing Rod Salesman, and Bigfoot Personal Trainer.

I’ve seen the same 3 videos evaluated on both shows. That was puzzling. Do the people submitting the videos lose all rights to their videos? Anyway, all 3 were validated by the Paranormal Panel, and all 3 were debunked by the Proof Panel.

The first video is of an alleged Yeti running across a snow-covered road in Russia. The Paranormal Panel members all seemed in favor of calling the creature an unknown cryptid, probably a Yeti. However, the Proof Panel members thought it was a hoax, even saying that the observers who made the video started yelling “Moose, Moose, Moose!” seconds before the creature was even visible. One Proof Panel member went so far as to suggest the video makers were in cahoots with a guy in a monkey suit. She also pointed out that the “creature” tripped over the edge of the road, something a real Yeti probably wouldn’t do. The Paranormal Panel validated the video. The Proof Panel debunked it.

The 2nd video was of some animal streaking across the yard of the person who caught the image on a home security camera. It was incredibly blurred and appeared to be dragging something. It was the middle of the night. The Paranormal Panel basically agreed with the person who shot the video, saying that it was probably some kind of dinosaur. The Proof Panel said there was a lot of smearing artifact in the video and that it was probably a dog running across the lawn, dragging its leash behind it. Once again, the Paranormal Panel validated it and the Proof Panel debunked it.

The 3rd video was a shot of something big, possibly an aquatic animal, making a big wave somewhere off the Florida coast and racing toward the boat of the people who shot the video. There wasn’t a lot to see, just a large black shape. The Paranormal Panel validated it as possibly a prehistoric sea monster. The Proof Panel debunked it, saying it was a large snake wrapped around its equally huge prey, attempting to both throttle and eat it, even though the “snake” was not visible.

So, what’s going on here? I like watching these shows because I like mysteries and the unexplained. There a lot of shows like this nowadays. I tend to think of The Proof is Out There with Tony Harris as being the more scientifically based program, but even Tony got fooled by the video shot by somebody speculating it was evidence that reality is a simulation, when in fact it was a cool smartphone camera trick which people have been fooling around with for years.

I think both shows are fun to watch and they’re best thought of as entertainment. What do you think?