From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac@compuserve.com>
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 00:09:34 -0400
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 10:07:01 -0400
Subject: Re: Black On Current State Of Ufology - Maccabee


 >From: Chaz Stuart <Daydisk2@webtv.net>
 >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net>
 >Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 13:14:44 -0500 (EST)
 >Subject: Re: Black On Current State Of Ufology - Maccabee


 >Bruce Maccabee, List,

 >Jerry Black doesn't just "proclaim" that Gulf Breeze is a hoax,
 >he has darn good evidence,

What about the evidence that contradicts the hoax hypothesis?
There is some (a lot), you know. Had there been no such evidence
(contradicting the hoax hypothesis) I would have rejected this
long, long ago.

 >not just limited to the Hyzer's analysis (with their 55 years
 >of experience) of the infamous 'road shot'.

Which has been discussed ad nauseum and hoax arguments rejected.
55 years of experience in conventional photographic analysis
does not guarantee a correct analysis of unconventional photos.

Hyzer was very clever to figure out a method to fake photo 1,
for example, in which the dark tree branches apparently hide
part of the brighter UFO.

However, analysis of the original photo by Jeff Sainio showed
that the quantitative requirements on brightness for the Hyzer
method to work simply were not consistent with actual
measurements on the photo. (For Hyzer's method to have worked it
would have been necessary that the tree image be the darkest -
  least reflective - portion of the picture. It wasn't. Other
parts of the picture were darker than the tree.

To understand why this is important one has to read Hyzer's
discussion of his method and Sainio's discussion of the
measurements to test the Hyzer hypothesis.)

As for Photo 19 - the road shot - the failure to have a
reflection in the hood was a result of the hood being bent... a
_fact_ that was actually recorded in the photo itself... (the
unexpected portion of the image of the reflection of the sky).
Furthermore, Sainio found evidence of light on the road near the
UFO, (Note that Sainio used the original photos, Hyzer worked
from copies supplied by Walt Andrus)

 >To mention just a few items, there are his interviews with Ed's
 >neighbors,

Lot's of people talked to Ed's neighbors. George Filer visited
the area and talked to lots of people in Gulf Breeze (see
introduction to 'UFOs Are Real'...)

 >the fact that Ed, prior to the UFO business, liked to fake
 >"ghost" pictures at parties using the double exposure method,

Wrong. He defocused the camera to create a "ghosty" effect
(defocusing made the person look funny).

There is one photo which had a anomalous 'light distribution' (I
hesitate to call it an "image" because an image is an image of
something) which skeptics have claimed to be a 'ghost image'
created by double exposure. Anyone looking at the 'light
distribution' would be hard pressed to call it the image of
anything.

But at any rate, it has led to the myth that Ed faked photos at
parties using double-exposure.

_If_ a photo of a 'ghost' had been created by the Simple Double
Exposure technique proposed by the skeptics, it would have been
done as follows:

Take a photo of a mask or a face of the person who is to be the
ghost in a dark room using a flashlight or similar to light the
person's face. This is an old Polaroid camera where you can
click the shutter as many times as you want before pulling the
film out to start the development.

So, don't pull the film.

Now go out into the party room and photograph the person who is
to have a 'ghost' in the picture. This second exposure of the
same piece of film is taken with a flash and then the film is
pulled out and developed.

Upon looking one sees the photo of the person and a 'ghost'
image. Said ghost image will look like whatever mask or person's
face was used in the first exposure (in the dark room). I say
again, the 'ghost' image will look like something distinct... a
face, a mask, whatever. It may be faint, but it will be
distinct. I know, 'cause I created photos this way with Ed's
camera.

The "ghost image" discussed by the skeptics is not a distinct
image. It is a 'random distribution of light' and it is a
Rohrschack (sp?) test for the observer to see a 'ghost' in it.

 >said on TV that he was abducted, then later denied it,

Yup. He hated the thought that he had been abducted. In his book
The Gulf Breeze Sightings he says nothing about being abducted
although the title of the last chapter (the title was written by
the book editor, he says) does say he was abducted. But the last
chapter says nothing about it. He denied being abducted on the
Oprah show.

This was clearly an error on his part because by that time he
had gone through some 8 hours of regression, preceded by a
personality test and other tests, with Dr. Dan Overlade, a
clinical psychologist.

The information from regressions clearly indicated that, at the
very least, there was more to his experience than 'just' photos.
But more than that, the regression information did indicate
repeated abduction. Eventually he 'owned-up' to this portion of
these experiences and wrote all about them in his second book,
'Abductions In Gulf Breeze'.

Incidently, Overlade was skeptical at first... and probably at
last - he died in the early 90's - but his work with Ed
convinced him that something new was happening here and so,
after working with Ed he made himself available to 8, as I
recall, other people in GB who had abduction experiences.

For a while in the late 80's and early 90's there was an
abduction support group in GB.

After subjecting Ed to a battery of psychological tests and
after seeing Ed go through these regressions Overlade stated
clearly that, in his opinion, Ed was not a sociopath - someone
who essentially can't distinguish truth from falsehood and who
has a 'con-man-type' of personality - and furthermore gave no
indications of lying.

The same opinion was voiced by Harvey McLaughlin to me in a long
interview... McLaughlin tested Ed _twice_ by polygraph.

 >etc. etc. Apparently, ignorance is bliss because no one has
 >contacted me about talking to Mr. Black and learning the gory
 >details of this sordid affair. I'm not surprised.

Anyone can access the UFO UpDates Archive to see arguments,
discussions, charges and countercharges.

 >Neither does Mr.Black "proclaim" that others have not seen UFOs
 >in Gulf Breeze.

Interesting. I wonder which cases he accepts as real?

 >Billy Meier? I don't understand, Bruce, how you can believe Ed
 >Walters and not Billy Meier. The cases are very similar.

I guess you didn't read my article in IUR wa,y back when,
entitled 'Billy Is Not Ed'.

 >Both include repeated 'contacts' with aliens/UFOs,

Yes, but Meier's contacts over many years were pleasant events
and resulted in 'spiritual contact' with many religious
overtones... and Meier supported himself, apparently, with the
donations of his followers

 >a model found on the property of the claimant, (which in both
 >cases the proponents claim was planted!),

The model found on Ed's property was found under very suspicious
circumstances..... It resembled what was in the photos, but that
model did not appear in any of Ed's photos.

 >and at least one photo which has been proven to be a fake.

Well, I certainly question Meier's move of the 'pendulum-like'
object/UFO that swings back and forth.

As for Ed., I wonder which one was "proven" fake. The road shot?

(See above)

On the other hand, how about the blue beam photo #11? I have
proven that it wasn't a simple double exposure. Also, as pointed
out above, Photo 1 wasn't faked by The Hyzer method. Neither was
it faked by simple double exposure. There are other photos which
argue strongly against the faking.... the most important being
the collection of stereo photos.... which the skeptics
apparently don't understand.

 >I'll leave you with one final (hopefully) comment/question
 >about the Ed Walter's sham:

 >How can anyone take the photo of Ed, clad only in a towel,
 >shaking his fist at a hovering UFO, seriously?

If that were the only photo and if there were no consistent
story behind it, it would probably would have been rejected.....
The same thing could be said about any one of Ed's photos taken
out of context.

But then, you could say the same about _any_ UFO photo taken out
of context. Trent's garbage can lid, or hubcap, or pie pan
or... truck mirror(!)... for example. Even the New Zealand movie
would fall flat without all the supplementary information that
establishs the context for the images on the film.

Some people have been 'dismayed' that I wrote a book with Ed -
  'UFOS Are Real' & 'Here's The Proof' - which present some
analyses of his original sightings, plus a lot of what happened
after 1988.

My response is: I'm not sorry you are 'dismayed'.

 From the point of view of a physicist, Ed has done more
experiments that would have proven his photos to be fakes - if
they were fakes - than almost all ufologists combined - Harley
Rutledge and the Hessdalen investigators come to mind as
comparable in the number of experiments done. He certainly has
done more than the experts discussed by Black.

There are those who would say I was gullible and Ed Was
brilliant and therefore I fell for all his faking, including his
faking of the experiments I requested. Well, I'm not so naive as
to believe what the 'guilty party' - Ed, presumed guilty until
proven innocent - says.

The experimental procedures to check out Ed's photos were all
checked by me. I never found evidence of him faking an
experiment. To the contrary, he sometimes provided even more
experimental evidence than I had asked for. But I checked out
even this added information.

Remember.... I started off assuming it was all a fake. I looked
for evidence of fakery.

On the other hand, I was not impressed by the weak arguments for
faking that were promoted by others in the early spring of 1988.

Nevertheless, I wasn't taking any chances.

I well knew the import of saying it was real - after all I had
'suffered' the consequences of proclaiming McMinnville/Trent and
New Zealand to be real.

I studied the case for about 5 monthes before, at the MUFON
Symposium in July 1988, I made a strong case for _not_ rejecting
Ed without really solid evidence of a hoax. The reasons I gave
for _not_ rejecting Ed included all the photo analysis, the
stereo photos, the context of his own (and his family's)
sightings and also the other sightings in the area.

But that's all history, available to anyone really interested
enough to look it up. No point in using up mondo bandwidth going
over old, archived arguments. If anyone has anything _really_
new... I'd be interested.