Q+A
- YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Tony Eccles, co-founder of The Merseyside Anomalies
Research Association, has investigated over 150 UFO sightings and
answers a selection of the questions you emailed us.
You
asked the questions - here are the answers
Question:
How come you have seen so many UFOs and other people in Liverpool haven't
seen any when they are looking up at the same sky?
I personally have only seen one UFO, which was in Halewood back in 1988.
However, many people do report seeing UFOs each year in Merseyside, the
majority of these are sightings of misperceived mundane phenomena such
as aircraft and astronomical bodies. So I am not talking about reports
of visiting alien space ships here.
UFO studies show that witnesses are generally not very good at making
accurate observations. Most UFO sightings are made when it is dark outside.
Unless a person watches the sky each night, becomes familiar with it and
learns about what natural lights are visible then they will not correctly
perceive what they are observing.
For example, we all know what a plane looks like but at night aircraft
lights can actually be deceptive and accompanied with high altitude winds
can actually appear as a strange silent light.
I recently demonstrated this with an experiment I conducted with the audience
at a recent Halton Paranormal event. In addition to this, ask yourself,
how much time do people spend looking up at the sky each night? And I
don't mean after a few pints on the weekend =)
 |
| Tony sets up
a camera to watch the night sky |
Question:
Do you know what is under Helsby Hill as it is where a lot of ufo activity
is coming from?
I'm not sure without checking a geology map or consulting with my geology
colleagues first, but like many places in Merseyside, there are geological
fault lines running underground. Helsby Hill does sit on a number of small
faults but I don't know if this is the actual stimulus for the UFO sightings.
To my knowledge no one has conducted a scientific study regarding earthlights
in the Merseyside region, only Bill Bimson and myself have started doing
this. There is currently a debate going on as to whether the stresses
in faultlines actually do release an energy, which may also have a luminescent
property.
The processes that may be involved are not properly understood and it
may be a combination of geological and atmospheric phenomena that creates
these unusual lights.
Helsby
Hill may be similar to Bidston Hill on the Wirral or May Hill in Hereford,
but no one knows as no proper scientific study has yet been conducted.
Check out our website www.mara.org.uk for recent cases that have a possible
link to earthlights.
Question:
Where does MARA get funds from to conduct it's research?
At present, all of its funding comes from the MARA members. I put my own
money into my own work like many other researchers. It would be nice to
receive private funding so that we can purchase technical equipment.
Question:
What is the bright object in the southern sky at night at the moment?
Is it a star or a planet?
The planet Mars, which is prominent in the sky at the moment and also
the planets Neptune and Uranus are to the Southeast (it's difficult to
see these in the sky, as they are not very bright). Checkout www.liv.ac.uk/~ggastro/
for more information about the night sky. Although the constellations
of Pegasus and Aquarius are there too there are no stars bright enough
to equal the appearance of Mars.
Question:
Have you ever experienced anyone trying to cover up one of the sightings
you have investigated, such as the police or the Government?
Yes but only once. A witness came to me some years ago with video footage
of an unusual light over Knotty Ash. It's good night-time footage as there
are buildings in view too so we can see how the object moves in the space
of a few minutes and the object is not far away either.
Part of my investigation involved contacting the police, the airport,
Air Staff 2a at the Ministry of Defence and RAF West Drayton. My enquiry
did not include any mention of the video footage.
One response I received came from the MoD who said that the light was
due to an F-15 American military aircraft doing manoeuvres over Merseyside.
Then due to my enquiry to RAF West Drayton, I received a second response
from the MoD stating that the UFO was now an F-111 American fighter-bomber
from RAF Lakenheath doing manoeuvres over Knotty Ash!
This made me laugh as I realised that Air Staff 2A was more of a public
relations office than anything else, plus the officers there had not connected
the two letters relating them to the same case and I was given two bogus
answers.
As a general rule, the RAF are not legally supposed to fly over residential
areas, but this does not extend to secret experimental aircraft which
supposedly do not exist, such as the spate of flying triangle UFOs in
the 1990s in the Merseyside region. The MoD did not know what the Knotty
Ash light was at all. I don't think the government is concealing any great
secret, apart from its ignorance of the subject.
Question:
Do you think that sightings will be more possible now mars is the closest
it's been in 60K years?
This is an interesting question. As Mars is a very bright light in the
sky I should hear of more UFO sightings simply due to people misidentifying
it or an optical effect such as autokinesis. But this will happen with
any planet that is bright in the sky.
Many years ago a UFO researcher by the name of Jacque Vallee had noted
a significant pattern. There was a noted increase in UFO sightings every
time Mars came closer to the Earth in its cycle around the sun. The explanation
for this may lie in a complex social, cultural and psychological context.
Another planet that gives rise to more UFO reports than any other is Venus
due to the scintillating colours from its clouds. Saturn has caused a
number of sightings in Liverpool too.
Question:
Do many people laugh at you and mock the sightings?
Yes some people do, but that is only because they have not spent a lot
of time studying the subject. I also take ridicule with a pinch of salt
and always retain a sense of humour, which is needed for this subject.
This topic is a fascinating one, it tells us about ourselves as human
beings and the environment that we live in. Although the UFO subject lacks
proof to demonstrate any sort of ET visitation there is sufficient evidence
to show that there is a genuine phenomenon which requires detailed study
from the scientific community, from lights being created by the ground
to atmospheric anomalies such as Matrix clouds.
We need to let go of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and look more closely
at studying things like our consciousness and reality, we may get more
answers there in explaining some of the more exotic phenomenon. If another
intelligence is at work it maybe found here.
Question:
Are more men than women interested in ufos?
According to my own study here in Merseyside there are equal numbers of
men and women who show an interest in the subject, especially those who
contact me over their own UFO sightings.
The data shows that gender is not significant to the study of UFOs, however,
when I look more at the witness as an individual then more important factors
appear.
Question:
If UFOs exist do you think they could be coming from our future to warn
us or something?
This is another popular UFO theory and it depends upon our understanding
of time. Time travel may become a technological possibility in the far
future. With regards to a warning, this sort of idea reminds me of a deep
human fascination with the ending of the world.
The 1940s and 1950s sci-fi movies would contain plots about this end as
we were living in a new Atomic Age and feared a third and final world
war using nuclear arms.
Time
travel warnings nicely link into the stories of the contactee many years
ago who claimed to be in contact with human like aliens and they always
bore apocryphal warnings about the way humans are steering themselves
towards their own destruction.
It's amazing now that the Cold War is over and the fear of nuclear destruction
has declined that we now hear of stories from 'abductees' that aliens
now warn us about the destruction of our environment.
Is it coincidental that we are a society of people who have become consciously
aware of the environment by protecting the ozone layer and recycling our
waste?
I think this sort of 'warning' may reflect our own psychology and social
behaviour and a biological need to survive. I think that it may be a group-generated
fear about the decline of our society; as a species we want to survive
and this is a way of ensuring that we do survive into the future.
Question:
What is the weirdest thing that you have ever seen?
My UFO sighting in 1988 although I'm more inclined to attribute that to
the faultline that lay adjacent to my home back then.
Question:
What percentage of the sightings are you able to explain as being a mistake?
The given standard statistic is 95%. It is true that the majority of UFO
reports can be solved and are mainly due to misperceiving normal events
such as aircraft, laser lights, meteor showers and planets.
There are cases that can be solved outright; then there are those cases
that stand inconclusive because there is insufficient data to solve them
but with an educated guess you can more or less identify them.
The very few that remain, something like 1-2%, stay unidentified, and
this could be due to not having sufficient resources to make an accurate
ID or it is the wait for scientific research to provide the explanation,
such as Peter van Doorn's work on Matrix Clouds or Paul Devereaux's work
on earthlights.
It just may be that some UFO sightings are destined to remain unsolved,
people love mysteries and therefore the UFO will never go away. Some UFO
sightings may take several years to resolve and a solution only comes
with solid objective investigation. |
