2006 New Frontiers Symposium Diary - The Conference

Nick Redfern, Will Wise and Will's totally cool wife Lisa were already in the lobby at 8:30 when I stumbled down for our ride to St. Mary's University. Paul chauffeued us in his leather-upholstered transport. The skies were threatening, with a hint of the deluge to come.

The gloomy weather, added to the fact that Nova Scotia was a British colony more recently than the U.S. probably made Nick feel right at home. St. Mary's looks like it was transported block by rough-hewn block from the motherland.

Stan Friedman, an old hand at this, was already set up with his table of wares. He worked the passing crowd like the pro he is. He even tried to put the finger on the other speakers to buy some of his books, pamphlets, and reprints. I regret that Paul Kimball has decided to retreat to the normal convention-in-the-hotel format for next year. The lecture hall at St. Mary's makes things look official, whether you're in the audience or up front at the microphone.


Batting leadoff was Will. As instigator and proprietor of the Project Blue Book Archive (http://www.bluebookarchive.org), he and his staff have painstakingly scanned and posted about 38,000 pages of Blue Book reports from microfilm. Will said that there are approximately 60,000 to go, and the site will eventually have them all available for free. Words cannot describe the monumental nature of this project, or the incalculable value it will be for future research. Everyone seems to be interested only in new UFO cases and the classics (Roswell, Thomas Mantell, Rendlesham, etc.) but some of the best research is turning out to be new looks at old events languishing in the files of the government and civilian organizations. The recent re-assessment of the Rex Heflin photos is one example of using new info and massaging old data to come to new conclusions.

Introductions of the speakers were done by Paul's friend, beautiful actress Veronica Reynolds. She talked up Nick Redfern, who began his spiel a little after 10AM. I suspect Nick is not asked to speak on his cryptozoological adventures very much, and he relished the chance to tell us about his hunt for the Chupacabras, Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and some lesser-known beasties like giant devil-dogs and my personal favorite, the MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM! It might have been the first time many in the lecture hall had heard about this strange creature, which the natives say hides in the sand dunes and stuns its victims with a bolt of electric death from seven feet away. It sounds like some sort of joke, or the plot of a great cheapo sci-fi movie, but who knows? Perhaps certain Mongolian tribes are having a good laugh behind our backs, but Nick takes it all in stride, and concluded that the cryptids he studies may not exist in our reality all the time, which would of course make them hard to pin down. On this point, as in many others, Nick and I are on the same wavelength.


What is the "post-human future?" Mac Tonnies (yes, that's his real name--I demanded to see his I.D.) took the podium at 11:15 to tell us. In a few years, we should be able to upload our entire mind and personality into some as-yet unimagined hardware and essentially become immortal, as long as the software can be transferred about (or, since we were in Canada, "aboot.") Given the nature of the internet, this may not be a problem. Mac suggested that this might be a good way to explore the universe, broadcasting ourselves around the stars, or sending hardware up containing our data rather than our bodies. Cameras, robot arms, and the craft itself would temporarily house the "person." Actually, the being, or whatever it was wouldn't have to limit itself to the confines of a spaceship; it would be omnipresent in infospace. Later, I asked Mac how consciousness could arise out of a mass of data. His reply was brilliant: "How does it arise out of a bunch of meat?" Exactly. This might also be a fruitful area for speculation with regards to the UFO subject. Mac says the mainstream trans-human and post-human movement likes his ideas, but recoils in horror at his UFO musings. Iconoclasts show the way where others fear to tread. He's a new friend for sure.

I was cornered by a few college students after my talk and we spoke about contactees, alien writing, psychedelic drugs, and psychic phenomena, as well as avant-garde art. These moments are the ones I remember for a long time. Who knows, we may see one of them speaking at the conference within a few years.

Under threatening skies, Paul and Victoria shuttled us to lunch at "Freeman's of New York," apparently some temple of "New York cuisine." I had a couple of slices of pizza, which although not anything like I've had in NYC proper, was good. I noticed that Stan ordered the reuben.

A quick trip back to St. Mary's, and according to the lineup card, I got to bat cleanup. At his blog (http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/) Paul suggested that I had done this talk many times before, but it was only the second occasion I have had to speak on this interest that predates my "evil government" investigations. It was actually the first for this particular talk, wherein I compared the 1950s Contactees to an unrecognized and unorganized art movement. Using the surrealists as a touchstone, I argued that the Contactees were creating in the same spirit, even though many of them were simply trying to keep their stars on the rise by concocting new stories to keep their flocks interested. I also carefully suggested that some of them may have had some sort of contact with extra-
human intelligence, at least in the beginning.

The Master of Ceremonies followed me with a look at his project to find the best objective evidence for UFOs as a real phenomenon. Of course I think they are, although Paul and I may slightly disagree on their origin and how to look at them. What Paul is concerned with is convincing the scientific establishment and the skeptical segment of the public that some UFOs are not imaginary or a byproduct of misidentifications of natural or man-made objects. His "best cases" concentrate on multiple witnesses (separated geographically and who don't know each other) and other evidence, such as radar tracking. To his credit, he is attempting one of the toughest jobs in the field. He is out for the big fish, while many are content with the daily catch, and he spiced up the proceedings with pantomimes and other antics.



Stan the Man Friedman stood out from the rest of the speakers with his slide presentation (everyone else used powerpoint or jpegs.) He's been at this for almost 40 years and his ease on the stage, and professor-like delivery made me feel like I was in class. I'd be thankful to be in a class with Stan's first slide--a color picture of Betty and Barney Hill and their dachsund. I asked Mac the game show trivia question: "What was the Hill's dog's name?" (Answer somewhere else in this post.) What was refreshing about Stan's talk was that there was not a blacked-out document in sight. Paul convinced him to speak on his work with nuclear rockets and the physics of space travel. What he proved, at least to the layman, was that the reported movements and accelerations of UFOs do not violate any physical laws, and the beings who supposedly operate them would have no trouble withstanding the forces involved. Years ago, someone told me about an experimental craft in which the pilot breathed some oxygen-rich liquid that surrounded him. The idea was that the liquid and the pilot's body moved together and shielded him from crushing g-forces. Interesting, if unproven.

A ride through the after-dark downpour took us to something that looked like a converted mansion, but is in fact the Henry House restaurant. I really wasn't hungry, so I had gingerbread smothered in caramel sauce and candied pistachios, washed down with a couple of shots of single malt scotch. It was so damned civilized. Before we left, I discovered that I had the drinking munchies, and Veronica begged Lisa Wise's fries (or "chips" since we were in a Brit restaurant) and we made quick work of them. I talked with "Uncle" Don Ledger about Bill Moore's 1989 MUFON speech. He thinks he has a connection to locate a video of that dramatic event. We weren't that late getting back to the hall.

Space historian Robert Zimmerman was the last and keynote speaker at 7PM. What a relief to hear about actual space exploration at a supposed "UFO conference." Zimmerman has authored a comprehensive encyclopedia of the history of space travel. What is surprising for us in the west is that not only Russia but also China have had active space programs for years. Zimmerman concentrated on the Soviet program and described in detail things most of us have never known, such as the story of 2 cosmonauts that nearly died in space. They had no training in spacewalks, but had to do it with one suit that had a hole in it. They fixed it with a section of aluminum tubing, silk thread, and--you guessed it--DUCT TAPE! The infuriating and frustrating part of Zimmerman's story is that NASA invited representatives from the former Soviet Union to the U.S. to see our operations and ignored their advice, even with almost 30 years of experience behind them. This has apparently changed somewhat as a new generation moves into the ranks.

One of the bugaboos of any convention is the Q&A session, when everyone who has paid good money to hear the speakers sometimes has to listen to another attendee give a speech rather than ask a question. This is not only annoying to the speakers and organizer, but rude to others in line for the "Q" of the Q and A. We had one of those. He wasn't so bad, but I challenged him when he got off the subject. I like doing that. He was polite enough to realize what was going on, and I usually ask this type to talk to me after the presentation so that others can step up to the mic and ask questions.

During the questions, we found some minor disagreements among the speakers, (all seated up front for this) such as who was willing to accept the phenomemon of remote viewing. Paul said that he had seen no evidence that it worked. This depends on what sort of evidence you look at and what you accept, which in this field tends to be quite individualized. To his credit, he said he would look into it further, or at least reserve judgment. Having experienced it myself and interviewed some of the Army RV people from Stargate/ Grillflame etc. programs of the 1970s and '80s, I have a different perspective. I suppose I'm a "believer." That's a limiting and stupid term for what people go through to come to conclusions. Perhaps an "accepter" might be better. I don't know. Believers need no proof.

The conference adjourned at about 9:30PM.

Everyone met at the hotel bar for a wind-down round and we all talked until a little after midnight. I changed into my Marshall Applewhite t-shirt, which was a hit. I was hungry again, but just about everything nearby was closed and I passed out after everyone else in the hotel was already asleep. I could tell becuase I couldn't hear the elevators any more. The Hill's dachsund was named "Delsey."