ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 23, 1996 TAG: 9612230174
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL HILL ASSOCIATED PRESS
Some watch the skies for strange lights and alien ships. Michael Craft has been watching the watchers.
His new book, ``Alien Impact,'' tells their wild tales: UFO abductions, subterranean alien bases, mutilated cattle, government conspiracies, crop circles, magic fairies. The book is a primer of UFO tales that asks the age-old question: What are people seeing in the sky?
Readers expecting an answer befitting the ``X-Files'' will be disappointed, because Craft doesn't pretend to know. But after years of research and travel, he rounds up some unusual suspects. Yes, he says, there could be alien visitors out there. But he also explores the possibility of prankster spirits, electromagnetic phenomenon, hoaxes and higher consciousness.
Craft wants to put the UFO phenomenon in context by giving a wide sample of claims, and then allowing readers to consider the causes. Skeptics need not pick up the book; Craft's intention is not to debunk the many theories he presents.
``I definitely feel that this is not going away. Every day it's getting bigger,'' Craft said in a telephone interview from his home in Ojai, Calif. ``We need to find some way to cope with it, and denial is not an effective way of coping with anything, and blind belief is not effective either.''
Alien tales have been around as long as recorded history, with ancient cultures referring to heavenly visitors as gods. In medieval times, strange lights in the skies were chalked up to evil spirits.
The first mention of the now-common term ``flying saucer'' dates to a 1947 Associated Press dispatch out of Pendleton, Ore., about a strange object streaking through the afternoon sky, according to Craft's research.
Since that time there's been an explosion of alleged alien encounters. Craft is intrigued by their breadth - and their similarities.
Time and again alien visitors are described as gray with big eyes. Witnesses often describe strange ammonia smells accompanying the sighting, with a resulting loss of time afterward.
For those witnesses abducted by aliens - and supermarket tabloids attest this happens often - they too report similar experiences: psychic messages and fumbling sorts of bodily examinations, many of which focus on reproductive organs.
Sound crazy?
Maybe, Craft says, but he says he can ``hear some wild stories - completely unbelievable and at the same time you hear these commonalties.''
Craft, 38, spent years researching his book. But even before that, he had been devouring books on mythology and the paranormal since he was a kid in Baltimore. Years as a Tai Chi instructor and jobs at New Age centers such as the Omega Institute have expanded his contact with the paranormal.
The book is a tapestry of Crafts' inner travels along with exhaustive document research and interviews. In ``Alien Impact,'' Craft explores:
* small towns in the English countryside, where farmers are mystified by the exacting circular patterns in their grain crops;
* a remote Ohio farm, where a family was terrorized by a group of red-eyed, hairy giants;
* ancient claims of spirits, fairies and mermaids;
* Bolivia, where a farmer claimed he had sex with a barking red-headed alien because the far-flung race needed stock from a ``good stallion'';
* research that suggests early civilizations were given technical know-how by aliens;
* a conference of UFOlogists who reveal details of the government's secret time control experiments and a treaty between FDR and the aliens.
The conceivable and ridiculous are infused throughout ``Alien Impact.'' Part of the reason is to give a nonjudgmental picture. But Craft believes its also impossible to divorce UFOs from other unexplained phenomena.
``You cannot study ghosts, the UFO field, or cults or any of these things without connecting to all these other fields,'' he said. ``It's almost like there's all these different camps out there exploring the same thing with a different language.''
In other words, maybe the aliens aren't from out there after all. Craft explores the possibility of strange lights being Earth-based, maybe electromagnetic anomalies or signals from the spirit world.
Craft said modern reports of alien encounters often bear a striking similarity to traditional accounts of fairies, goblins and elves - even down to appearance, speech and mode of travel.
Maybe what's lacking, Craft says, is a belief system that takes that into account and tries to make sense of it.
Craft wants his book to be a start.
``I do believe that there is some sort of phenomenon that we can't explain with our science, and it is not just psychological.''
FROM "ALIEN IMPACT"
``After my first bewildering foray into monster territory, there was no surprise when I encountered Bigfoot's `cousin's,' the hairy dwarves. Though they share a hirsute appearance, reports of the two types' behavior are different. The hairy giants shamble through our lives like a storm, wreaking havoc on fences, leaving tracks and frightening people and livestock in a very psychical way. On the other hand the hairy dwarves sow confusion, not violence, in their wake. Most U.S. reports of hairy dwarves date from the 1950s or earlier. They seem to have been supplanted by the hairless Grays (aliens) around the beginning of the 1960s. Does this represent a change in cultural attitudes or collective unconscious of North Americans, or did one alien race literally supplant another?''
* * *
``Are aliens rustling cattle? For the past two decades, ranchers and farmers from throughout the United States and the world have reported thousands of bizarre animal deaths. The deaths are characterized by highly efficient removal of internal organs, eyes tongues or genitals. The animal's blood is totally drained or suctioned from the corpse, with none left behind on the ground. Cattle, horses, pigs, goats sheep, dogs, and even deer have been mutilated, in some cases found mere hours after being seen alive. Many cases apparently took place in broad daylight.''
* * *
``While researching this book, I met many people who had altered their lives after the shock of an alien abduction, a channeled communication, or an unexplainable sighting. Some had changed their homes or jobs, or moved to another part of the country. Others had left or lost their marriages and families, or had immediately fallen in love with someone who accepted their new belief system. Everyone I met had a drastically different worldview after his or her experience. In such cases, it hardly matters if their encounter was physically real, or only psychically or mythically real. The important aspect, the one that affected their lives, was their altered belief system."
LENGTH: Long : 118 linesby CNB