Strange Encounters

A look a the UFO Phenomenon with Special Guest Patrick Huyghe Author of "Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat" and numerous Field Guides to the Unknown.

Looking out my front window I see the green, pointy tops of a few coniferous trees silhoueted against a pale blue sky. My cat is perched on the sill, enjoying a peaceful view, watching birds go by, and the occasional car. A cool, quiet, ordinary, suburban morning, and the perfect setting for something out of the ordinary. But nothing happens. Nothing ever happens to me.

Nothing I can't identify, that is. Quite a few years back I saw two glowing balls of light moving along a road, just above the powerlines. Initially I was baffled, but my skeptical brain refused to entertain any thoughts of supernatural or alien origin. I quickly deduced that I had just observed ball lightning. Neat, and not very common, but explainable.

Yet many people around the world witness strange lights in the sky that they cannot explain. What are all these UFO witnesses seeing? What are those strange lights caught on their video cameras?

In his book, Swamp Gas Times, Patrick Huyghe shares a quote from Jeffrey Sainio who has analyzed UFO photos and videos for the Mutual UFO Network, "'Right off the bat,' notes Sainio, 'you can eliminate about 60 percent of the videos as yet another good shot of the planet Venus. Or you look at others and say, how could people not recognize an airplane? By the time you're done with that, 85 to 90 percent of them are easily recognizable.'"

I agree that a majority of UFO sightings can be explained as ordinary, manmade objects like airplanes and satellites, and also celestial bodies like Venus. People can get carried away. Still, there is the other 10 to 15 percent. If anything, these unexplained cases give us reason enough to examine the phenomenon closer.

"Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat" is a chronicle of Patrick Huyghe's twenty years "on the UFO beat." It consists of a compilation of articles published under the Antimatter section of OMNI magazine and in various other publications. Introductions have been written for each article which help to establish perspective as well as cross reference other related articles in the book.

In all Swamp Gas Times presents a comprehensive examination of the UFO phenomenon and research throughout the years, including a closer look at many famous events and sightings, government conspiracies, cover-ups, alien abductions, implants, religious angles, MJ-12, and the release of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

While Swamp Gas Times may not solve the UFO mystery outright, it does put some thoughts to rest and provides a nice overview of the media's role in UFO history.

I recently contacted Mr. Huyghe and asked if he would mind answering some questions for us, and speak further about his experience in the field of UFO research as well as covering some of the material in his book. He happily agreed, so it is with great pleasure that I welcome Mr. Patrick Huyghe (pronounced Weeg with a soft "g") to Strange Encounters.

SE: I enjoyed reading your book. It puts many things into perspective, and has refreshed my memory on cases I've read about but have since forgotten. I will keep it on hand as a solid reference. You've successfully produced a nice overview of many aspects of the UFO phenomenon through the years, was that your original intention with this book?

PH: UFOlogists often fault the media for not covering the UFO subject adequately or fairly. While this is basically true, it's also true that most people don't understand how the media operate. There is so much misunderstanding and suspicion about why the media do what they do, especially when it comes to a subject like UFOs. Being a journalist, I thought I could throw some light on the subject. Swamp Gas Times explains how I covered the UFO field as a journalist for more than two decades.

SE: Is there one remarkable case you can single out that proves we need to look closer at the UFO phenomenon, or is it, as you mention in your book, simply the small percentage of unexplained cases left over after the obvious misidentifications are weeded out?

PH: There are many remarkable single cases. I devote an entire chapter to one such case in Swamp Gas Times and that is the 1964 Socorro case. It's probably the best single witness case there is. But you don't need an iron-clad case to prove we need a closer look at the UFO phenomenon. The Michigan "Swamp Gas" sightings of 1966 were not that remarkable, but because the case was so mishandled by the Air Force, it lead to congressional hearings and eventually, the UFO study by the University of Colorado. Unfortunately, like almost everything else in life, the "best" things aren't always the ones that attract the most attention.

SE: You present a few articles in your book that discuss Whitley Strieber and his novels "Communion" and "Breakthrough". In these articles I detect a mildly sarcastic tone. Do you think that he may have fabricated his abductions and has attempted to capitalize on the whole UFO and abduction phenomenon? He has certainly gathered a cult-like following.

PH: I think Whitley Strieber experiences are genuine in that I think he thinks they really happened to him. The problem comes in how he interprets his experiences and relates them to the public. I don't think he realizes that it's the way he portrays himself in these experiences--often as the center of the visitors' attention--that turns some people off and leads them to think that perhaps his stories are fabricated. The interpretation--by definition--is certainly fabricated, but the experiences are almost certainly not.

SE: Can you tell us a bit about your personal interest in UFO's and the unexplained in general? How did you become interested in these mysteries?

PH: In the Introduction to Swamp Gas Times, I explain how I became interested in UFOs as a teenager living in Virginia. It all started in the mid-1960s when I began reading about these incredible UFO sightings in and around my hometown and how in the years that followed the UFO subject was actually taken seriously by congress, the media, and by scientists. Of course, that serious interest didn't last long, but I was hooked.  And my interest in UFOs naturally led me to explore other phenomena that was largely ignored by science--Bigfoot, ghosts, etc.

SE: You have co-written a series of field guides to the unknown, including The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials and The Field Guide to Ghost and Other Apparitions. What draws you to the unknown, and what inspires you to continue your research?

PH: It's the difference between taking the highway or the side roads. You're not going to learn much new taking the well trodden path, but the side roads are basically unexplored and unknown and are more likely to provide you with new knowledge and experiences. I think that if we make an effort to understand what we call "the unknown," we'll learn something quite significant about the nature of reality.

SE: Are you also involved with research concerning bigfoot and other unknown creatures, and if so, in what regard?

PH: I do literature research on the unknown in order to write my books, but I do very little field research on these subjects. I'm not a scientist but a journalist and author.

SE: As editor of the online journal The Anomalist you no doubt sift through countless mysteries of all kinds. Is there one that is most memorable?

PH: Astonishing stories occur everyday. Whether it's a stone-throwing poltergeist in Africa, a strange "hum" report from Indiana, a monkeyman sighting in India, or a rain of fish in England, the unknown is an everyday occurrence somewhere in the world. That's the whole point of the Anomalist Newsline--to see what weird events are happening where and how the media reports these events. By the way, Richard Hendricks is the editor of the Newsline; he's the one doing such a fabulous job searching the online media each and every day of the year for these stories.

SE: What's on the horizon? Can we expect to see some more writings about the UFO mystery, or others?

PH: For the past four years, I've devoted my time not so much to writing but to editing books on the unknown. As the editor of Paraview Publishing, I've had the privilege of working on such wonderful books as Bigfoot! By Loren Coleman,  Unleashed by Bill Roll and Valerie Story, Three Men Seeking Monsters by Nick Redfern, The Phaselock Code by Roger Hart, Watermark by Joseph Christy-Vitale, and After the Martian Apocalypse by Mac Tonnies. These are all great reads. No other publisher is producing such serious, high quality books on the unknown.

SE: Along with Swamp Gas Times, what further reading would you suggest for someone truly interested in studying the UFO phenomenon and learning more about it's history and the various people and groups involved?

PH: I would highly recommend The report on unidentified flying objects by Air Force's Project Blue Book director Edward Ruppelt; Jerome Clark's definitive multivolume UFO Encyclopedia; the two volumes of Richard Hall's The UFO Evidence, which does a terrific job of laying out that evidence; Firestorm by Ann Druffel, the portrait of a brilliant scientist who tried to tackle the UFO subject on his own; and any UFO book by Jacques Vallee, who is clearly one of the field's best thinkers. If you read those books, you'll know more about UFOs than 99.9 percent of the people on this planet.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us Patrick. I hope to have you back again to discuss your work and experiences in the future. Best regards!