Denise Murter, an aging, blond bombshell, wouldn’t say her name on television because she feared “creeps” would contact her. Yet she happily talks to me as men with ponytails, creative facial hair and abduction stories involving sperm-hungry aliens wait to get her autograph.
We are standing in the middle of last week’s UFO Conference at Bucks County Community College and oddly enough, I am more uncomfortable than Denise.
UFO sightings in Bucks County — north of the City of Philadelphia — were up 700 percent last year. There were well over 100 sightings in the woods, suburbs and towns of this expansive county, making it one of the most popular places in this nation to see — or claim to have seen — a UFO. Murter was one of the Bucks County residents who contributed to that statistic.
“I saw this beam of light up in the sky above the tree-lines and it was some form of craft. And it had three headlights on the bottom of it. It was starting to hover around the sky with weird movements, and so I went inside and got my husband out of bed and I said, ‘Please hon, you know I don’t believe in UFOs but I think there’s a freakin’ UFO in the backyard, please come out!’” Murter is almost vibrating as she recounts this story.
She continues to describe how she spotted the craft several more times over the next few months. “The last episode was when the craft was in the backyard and spilled these litter things into my trees, and then I contacted MUFON [The Mutual UFO Network] and the next thing you know, Discovery Channel is at my house seven different times during the summer, camped out over night and you know, there were lots of news reporters. They did find scientific evidence that there’s boron magnesium in my tree like it’s been microwaved.”
As Murter continues to talk, she keeps using that term — Unidentified Flying Object. She maintains that up until several months ago she never believed in UFOs. She liked the movie E.T. and always kept her eye out for shooting stars, but flying saucers and aliens were rarely on her mind. Yet when asked what she thinks the flying object in her backyard was, she takes a deep breath and says with conviction, “I feel 100 percent it was from another planet.”
Under Dark Skies
Humans have long been fascinated by what they see in the sky — even ancient societies, such as the Mayans and Egyptians, recorded stories about extraterrestrial visitors descending from the heavens. The beginning of the Cold War was monumental for ufology, the study of UFOs. As UFO historian Stephen Klass has remarked, by the early 1950s, the U.S. and Soviet militaries had the ability to invade each other’s airspace with nuclear weapons, and as a result America began monitoring its skies with newfound interest and advanced technology. Because the watch-points that composed the radar defense shield were kept hidden, most reports of strange sightings were classified as “secret.” Mysterious observations made by pilots and radar operators began to cause a stir, especially when the government refused to comment on leaked stories. Sensational news items like the 1947 Roswell incident, in which a civilian reported finding the wreckage of a flying saucer, created modern legends that were fueled by popular culture, distrust in the government and an increasing number of reported sightings.
However, by 1969, the Air Force closed its furtive Project Blue Book of UFO investigations and opened up the records to the general public. Intelligence experts concluded that the unexplained radar “blips” and observations were neither Soviet invaders nor extraterrestrial craft. UFO interest persisted, though, with thousands of sightings all over the world every year. The U.S. leads the list and within our country of neck-craning citizens, Pennsylvanians have reported more UFOs in recent years than any other state.
The Mutual UFO Network
Imagine a bigger and more alien-obsessed version of Gene Hackman and you get John Ventre, the head of PAMUFON, the Pennsylvania division of the Mutual UFO Network. MUFON has been investigating sightings since 1969, when it was founded as a non-profit organization in Chicago. It now has thousands of members around the world, with 133 residing in Pennsylvania. Ventre comes across as militantly pro-UFO at times, spitting condemnation toward skeptics like Bill Nye the Science Guy and the U.S. Air Force. He seems like the kind of guy who would talk indefinitely into his microphone if only his mostly middle-aged and elderly audience had younger bladders. Indeed, the demographics of this conference paint a very old and white picture, and it’s hard not to notice how some in attendance evoke a Gandalf-like aesthetic.
Ventre introduces a fellow MUFON member named Bob Gardner, newly appointed as the State Section Director of MUFON for the Philadelphia area. The broad-shouldered man saunters up to the podium wearing rectangular glasses and a leather newsboy cap placed backwards over his balding skull. He clears his throat with a smoker’s growl and jumps into a Power Point presentation on the recent abundance of UFOs in the region.
During the conference’s intermission, I catch Gardner talking to a woman with bags under her eyes and fire-red hair. She is flipping through a pocket-sized photo album of under-exposed pictures and pointing nervously at each one.
“Here! You can see the lights right nexta those trees. And now, I swear, those trees are growing in unnatural ways. Those lights were not natural, no they were not.” Her long fingernail jabs each photograph as she punctuates her sentences. “Come investigate!”
Gardner’s eyebrows are furrowed. “Oh wow. Yeah, I can, um, see exactly what you’re talking about. Well, have you filed a claim at the MUFON website? That’s the way to report sightings,” he says. He looks up at me, sees my notebook and microphone in hand and asks if I’d join him outside while he smokes a cigarette. I am his escape. “Too many people here. Too long without a smoke,” he mumbles as we duck out of the theater into the January air.
“I’m out on Social Security Disability with a bad back, so I got plentya time.” Gardner lights up next to a trash can on some snowy cement and begins to pace back and forth. He’s also a chief investigator. He explains that once you become a member of MUFON, which costs $45, you can request the field investigator’s manual, which comes with a test. You read the book, take the open book test, send it away, and if you get 80 percent or better, you become an investigator. Gardner has been assigned to investigate 115 cases since the beginning of last year, when he first became interested in UFOs. “I wanted to get into ghosthuntin’ and there was like way too many people doin’ that. So I thought, lemme find something that not a lot of people are doing. And sure enough, a year ago I found MUFON on the web and I joined.”
Gardner is representative of the conference’s audience, many of whom hold long standing interests in paranormal or occult subcultures. Bouncing from genre to genre, people like him “have a sighting” one day, join an organization like MUFON and begin networking with other “believers.” Indeed their descriptions of UFO experiences have distinct religious undertones.
“I’m here because of ultimate values. You know, the big picture. If UFOs are real, then that’s going to change my world and the human world. And I guess this has all the appeal of a religion,” says Mark Boada, a 58-year-old freelance writer who lives just miles away in Newtown. “Terrified people lose terror in the company of others. Why do you think so many people are here today?” Boada is whispering in the corner of the auditorium while everyone else watches a short documentary. The large man is excited to be here, though he speaks with a self-aware sense of embarrassment. “I had a sighting when I was 14, but I never really talk about it. I have corporate clients and I’ve brought the subject up in meetings before, but people don’t look at me the same after that.” He explains that he graduated from Princeton along with a good friend who also claims to have seen a UFO. His friend got a PhD in philosophy and is now a college professor. They have confided in each other, but have always been hesitant to talk to others about their sightings. “I look out at the audience and I know there are some lunatics out there,” Boada says, waving his hand at the crowd. “But am I a lunatic?”
Obama’s Little Secret
Like any good 20th century conspiracy theory, UFOs have had a strong presence in pop culture, from The X-Files to Signs, the 2002 M. Night Shyamalan movie about crop circles that was filmed in Bucks County. Less well known are the recordings of real people — Richard Nixon, Jackie Gleason and an elite team of Nazi rocket scientists — discussing their experiences with UFOs. But that’s where Pat Marcattillio comes in.
Marcatillio, one of New Jersey’s foremost and oldest experts on UFOs, wears a baggy sweater and has Saturn-red rings around his eyes. It looks like he hasn’t slept in several years, and judging by all the UFO-related books, CDs, posters and DVDs on the table in front of him, there’s a decent chance he hasn’t. Though I decline to buy his merchandise or sign the Pro-UFO-Disclosure petition he’s sending to Barack Obama, he seems happy to discuss his and his wife’s passion for UFOs.
“We started getting books on UFOs, putting them together with research, started 25 years’ worth of monthly meetings at the Trenton Township Library, put together a conference in 1990 and I’ll have my 40th conference in May,” he says. As Marcatillio talks, he adjusts the name tag pinned to his sweater that reads “Dr. UFO,” and begins to polish a framed picture of a flying saucer with his sleeve. “It seems that more and more people are seeing UFOs. It was in Morristown, NJ where a UFO was seen three weeks ago. Buzz Aldrin just revealed to us on the Discovery Channel that he, Neal Armstrong and Michael Collins [the first astronauts on the moon] watched a UFO, and they filmed it.” He leans over and taps the piece of paper in front of him. “So we are in a million-letter mail-out to President Obama from all around the world to start releasing information about UFOs.”
Marcatillio is hopeful. “I think he’ll start to consider the idea, and maybe later in his reign, he’ll begin releasing information,” he says, squinting his eyes and crossing his arms.
I smile, nod and add my name to the list.
Abducted and Hypnotized
History professor David Jacobs, of Temple University, is pointing to a drawing of a bug-eyed alien vacuuming sperm out of a man. Despite the conference’s low-key start, it’s clear that Ventre had been saving Jacobs, with his gray hair, scholarly mustache and academic title, until the very end. If ufologists need an Einstein, Jacobs is sure trying to be their man.
“For the better part of 40 years I’ve been involved in research into the UFO phenomenon and then starting in the 1980s, into the tenets of the abduction phenomenon,” he begins his lecture. Jacobs, who studies U.S. history, has a flabbergasting lesson: throughout his research, which consists entirely of hypnosis therapy performed on hundreds of patients, he has ascertained that aliens have been abducting people for over 30 years. “These hybrids,” he continues, “may be living among us — and will eventually control us.” Though he has no formal certification as a psychologist, therapist or hypnosis practitioner, Jacobs has the weight of consistent and detailed witness accounts, not to mention a very scholarly mustache.
After the presentation, a crowd congregates around the Temple professor. He is shaking hands, taking photos with people and pretending to remember faces that he has obviously spoken to at past conferences and conventions. That’s when a young woman walks up, holding a copy of Jacobs’ 1998 book, The Threat. As he signs the title page, she begins talking, “So I have this neighbor who, you know, just isn’t like anyone else. Like for example, everyone on our block has nice plant arrangements in front of our houses, and you know, our yards are well-kept, but him, nope. Nothing. It’s so strange. And sometimes, I get to thinking… what if he’s one, you know?” she trails off, waiting for a response.
I stare at this desperate housewife and don’t know whether to be more scared of her or her alien neighbor. I turn to the professor for guidance, but Jacobs is either only half-listening or half-willing to respond. He manages a perfect mix of smile and grunt.
