From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 07:04:34 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 07:04:34 -0500
Subject: Enthusiasts Founded Center To Find Answers




Source: The Daily Nebraskan - Lincoln, Nebraska

http://www.dailynebraskan.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/18/419c668554214

11-18-04


Enthusiasts Founded Center To Find Answers

By Billy Defrain


They met where they could. At coffee shops, pizza parlor
basements and eventually a conference center.

They shared their research on paranormal phenomenon both in
Lincoln and abroad.

UFO sightings. Spontaneous human combustion. Bigfoot.

But it=92s been nearly 10 years since the Lincoln-based Fortean
Research Center has done any research.

Its founders and prominent members have found other callings,
other research and the responsibilities of family life.

But they still believe. They still search for the truth.

***

Before the fictional Fox Mulder investigated the unexplainable
on "The X-files," Charles Fort investigated the same strange
phenomenon in reality.

Born in Albany, N.Y., in 1874, Charles Fort was editing a Long
Island newspaper by age 19 and quit shortly after to hitchhike
around the world, eventually returning to New York and making
ends meet by freelancing with newspapers and writing 10 novels,
all of which he ended up burning for fuel.

After befriending magazine editor Theodore Dreiser, Fort=92s
interest in the paranormal was sparked. Dreiser encouraged Fort
to begin compiling strange events into a book. In 1916, Fort
received a small inheritance following an uncle=92s death, which
allowed him to delve full-fledged into his research.

The culmination of that research was four books. "Book of the
Damned" (1919) chronicled strange, inexplicable events like
raining frogs. "New Lands" (1923) was a scathing response to the
arrogance of astronomers who were his critics. "Lo!" (1931) told
of claims of teleportation and his research on psychic
abilities, and "Wild Talents," was finished just before his
death in 1932.

The era of Fortean research had begun.

"He was really intrigued by =91damned facts,=92 " said Ray Boeche,
founder and former director of the Fortean Research Center.

"Fort took possibly the best position you could take between
skeptic and advocate=85he looked at himself not as an explainer,
but a chronicler," he said.

***

Boeche founded the center in the early 1980s with Scott Colborn
to investigate similar unexplained phenomenon using Fort=92s
approach. Boeche said the two came together after reading a
column in Lincoln=92s newspaper, which mentioned a motorcycle
crash that happened when the victim ditched his bike when
Bigfoot crossed the highway in front of him.

"I had done a lot of fieldwork investigating the Bigfoot
sightings, cattle mutilations, hauntings," Boeche said. "Once
you stick your toe in the paranormal field, you have a lot of
things running your way =85 you may be the only person someone
with an unusual encounter may know to contact."

But Colborn and Boeche weren=92t the only people with an interest
in unusual encounters in Lincoln. Membership in the non-profit
group swelled, and the Fortean Research Center began publishing
a monthly newsletter of its findings, with documents culled from
government archives and libraries across the country, courtesy
of the Freedom of Information Act.

"Before the Internet kicked into its glory, it was harder to
find info on the UFO phenomenon," Colborn said. "The Fortean
Research Center was designed to research and collect data =85 we
had local groups that would meet and share information."

Colborn said the group met in local coffee houses or rented out
the Valentino=92s basement for its meetings, but increasing
interest in the group merited activities larger in scope. The
Fortean Research Center decided to organize conferences on
paranormal studies, drawing in some of the world=92s foremost
experts.

***

UFO expert Stanton Friedman and spontaneous human combustion
expert Larry Arnold are prominent researchers in their
respective fields.

"I=92m the original civilian investigator in the Roswell
incident," Friedman said from his California hotel room while
traveling from his Canadian home to lecture at a community
college.

"I take a clear-cut, unambiguous stance that some (UFOs) are
intelligently controlled spacecraft," he said.

Friedman spoke at a Fortean Research Center conference in the
late 1980s. The conferences were held in the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln=92s East Campus Clifford Hardin Center for
Continuing Education building.

Friedman earned his bachelor=92s and master=92s degrees in physics
before spending 14 years working on advanced nuclear research
and development. He said his interest in flying saucers first
came in 1958 and his first lecture of the subject was in 1967.

Since then he=92s traveled the United States and the world giving
lectures to colleges and groups much like the Fortean Research
Center.

"We=92re dealing with the most important story of the past
millennium," Friedman said, calling efforts to conceal UFO
evidence a "cosmic Watergate."

"None of the arguments made against UFOs stand up against a lot
of scrutiny," he said.

Friedman said it was likely alien contact would be within our
own galaxy, probably at the Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, two
stars similar to our sun that are 39 light-years from earth and
one eighth of a light-year from each other.

"Those two stars being so close, you have a greater incentive
for interstellar travel," Friedman said. "I presume the aliens
know some things we don=92t know and if they got a head start they
don=92t need a million years."

Friedman also said he admired what Fort had done for his area of
expertise.

"Charles Fort was a leader in collecting stories of the unusual
=85 people are unwilling to do what Fort did," Friedman said.
"You=92ve got to bring an ounce of realism to this whole picture.
I=92m an expert on flying saucers but I=92m open minded enough to
find it fascinating."

Larry Arnold has written the book "Ablaze!" which investigates
the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, where human
beings are apparently burned to ash without affecting their
surroundings. Arnold said he spoke about "the fascinating, hotly
debated issue of spontaneous human combustion" at Fortean
Research Center conferences in 1987 and 1991.

"Scott (Colborn) has become a good friend of ours. He=92s a
wonderful scholar and we=92ve appreciated his research over the
years," Arnold said.

Expanding on a childhood interest in UFOs and Bigfoot sightings,
Arnold said spontaneous human combustion =96 or as he calls it,
SHC =96 piqued his interest because of the lack of existing
research into the phenomenon. After spending the =9270s as an
electrical engineer, Arnold spent weeks digging through the
Library of Congress, the archives of the American College of
Physicians archives and the National Institute of Health.

Arnold said that when John Bentley died in his Pennsylvania home
in 1975, his only remains were a pile of ash and one half of his
leg. The incident firmly entrenched Arnold=92s belief in SHC.

"The only damage in the house was the hole that the body bored
through the floor," Arnold said.

Unsatisfied with official explanations of stray cigarette burns,
Arnold began his own research.

He said the mainstream theory explaining SHC is called the
"human wick effect" =96 that the body, once ignited, begins to
burn slowly in a self-contained blaze. Arnold, however, was not
prepared to accept this theory.

"It takes a lot of heat to render to get the body fat to have
its own self-sustaining combustion," he said. "Friends of ours
who barbecue have never walked away from their T-bone and had it
burned to powder =85 if skeptics have to go to such extremes to
dismiss SHC, then there=92s probably something to it."

Arnold has researched nearly 120 different theories explaining
SHC, with explanations ranging from body chemistry gone awry to
a simultaneous discharge of electrical energy in every cell of
the human body.

"There was something that seems to be credible that science was
ignoring," Arnold said.

***

For the Fortean Research Center, membership had grown to 230 by
the late =9280s, partly because of Colborn and Boeche=92s dedication
to research. Boeche said one of his and Colborn=92s major projects
was investigating a 1956 UFO landing at Bentwater Royal Air
Force base in England. Boeche and Colborn tracked down enlisted
men on the base at the time and recorded their recollections of
the incident.

"The deputy base commander described watching the lights, seeing
them through the forest, seeing =85 the trees where the craft had
scraped the trunks, seeing impressions on the gear," Boeche
said. "We were able to gather a lot of info on that and brought
the subject to the attention of (former Nebraska senator) Jim
Exon on the senate intelligence committee."

But much to the disappointment of Boeche and Colborn, no action
or discussion of their research followed.

"It was like everything went into a black hole," Boeche said.

The group=92s own demise can be explained much easier than the
phenomenon they investigated.

"At the time I was involved with the (center) I was the Nebraska
state director of the Mutual UFO Network and the Center for UFO
Studies. I just did not have time to keep things going anymore,"
Boeche said.

Colborn said he left the group in 1992 after the birth of his
first child. Lacking strong leadership and organization after
Colborn=92s departure, the group disbanded.

"It was a neat group and I think back with a lot of fondness,"
Colborn said.

Boeche also reflects positively on the group=92s work.

"It was a lot of fun. We met a lot of interesting people and we
got to poke around in some really interesting situations,"
Boeche said. "As long as you an keep an open mind that these
things are happening and people are experiencing something, the
search for that is a lot of fun."


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]