Recap

Ufology: Personalities & Cases

Film director and UFO researcher Paul Kimball discussed the field of ufology and the personalities working in it. He also touched on some lesser known UFO incidents and his research into cattle mutilations taking place in Canada. While he believes that UFOs are a real phenomenon worthy of scientific study, he thinks it's healthy to be skeptical when looking at cases. For instance, he was critical of Paul Hellyer (Canada's former Minister of Defense) for basing his claims about the reality of UFOs solely on Col. Corso's book (which Kimball said has been "discredited"), rather than his own data. He also doesn't find validity in the MJ12 and "Cosmic Watergate" theories of his Uncle (by marriage) Stanton Friedman.

He shared his Top 10 list of ufologists, which placed Jacques Vallee at number one, and included J. Allen Hynek, Friedman, Jim Moseley, James McDonald, Coral Lorenzen, Richard Hall, Donald Keyhoe, Peter Sturrock, and surprisingly the late Philip Klass, who as an inveterate debunker forced people in the field to "refine their research," in order to escape his criticism. Among the younger generation of UFO researchers that Kimball is impressed with, he named Nick Redfern, Mac Tonnies, Greg Bishop and William Wise, the archivist at the Project Blue Book Archive.

The RB-47 case from 1957, in which an Air Force surveillance plane was tailed by a UFO for two hours, is one that will be featured in his Best Evidence documentary, Kimball said. Another documentary he is working on, Fields of Fear, profiles Canadian rancher Fern Belzil who has conducted first-hand research into the animal mutilation mystery and concluded that there is "an anomalous paranormal aspect" that can't be explained away by scavengers.

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A Case of Ball Lightning?

One of Paul Kimball's entries from his blog The Other Side of Truth features an account of a "strange meteorological occurrence," that took place in Venezuela in 1886, in which a family of nine was made ill by a "vivid, dazzling light" that entered their home. Kimball looks at ball lightning as one possible explanation. Read the full entry here.