Diana Walsh Pasulka

“As a professor of religious studies, this was outside my usual research territory, but not by much.”

“When I started my research in January 2012, I thought that the people I would interview and learn about would be experiencers”

“I go to a Catholic Church, but I started out as a born-again Christian when I was eleven years old, to the surprise of my parents.”

“I coined the term “meta-experiencers” to describe this group of scientists. I cautiously observed them, noting that most were reticent to admit they believed in the reality of UFOs, but they readily scooped data from the primary experiencers.”

“Tyler was one such person, an employee in the space industry.”

“He was a wealthy rocket scientist.”

“he was an aeronautical engineer, and on the other hand, he was a biomedical entrepreneur”

“A few months prior to our trip, I had organized a small conference, to which Tyler had not been invited, on the phenomenon. The small, closed meeting was unique because it brought together ufologists and scientists with scholars of the humanities, all of whom studied the phenomenon.”

“On the day after I got back from the conference, I received a phone call from Tyler. Now that I had begun to understand a little more about the phenomenon, he would like to take me to a special place in New Mexico where I might understand a little more about the phenomenon’s physical nature.”

“We were to wear a blindfold for the last forty minutes of the car ride, so we wouldn’t be able to see where we were or how we arrived.”

“He started the car, and we jolted forward... We drove for forty minutes”

“He was examining a small, metallic object. It had been identified as an artifact by the metal detector.”

“James found this particular part lodged in a crevice between a bunch of rocks in a gully that certainly looked to me like a nesting place for rattlesnakes.”

“Tyler took out a plastic bag and a label. He photographed the specimen and labeled it with the date, and he also photographed where it was found. Then he put it in a special bag he carried for the occasion.”

“James agreed to take all the parts with him so he could study them.”

“As the bag moved slowly down the conveyor belt and through the X-ray scanner, the whole thing suddenly stopped. The contraption shut down with a loud BEEEP.”

“The bag re-scan went without further incident. Security searched James, his suitcase, his jacket, and everything that he was carrying.”

“My research partner was James Master, one of the world’s leading scientists and a professor at a major research university.”

“He held an endowed chair of molecular biology and headed a laboratory at one of the top universities in the world.”

“the theories of Jacques Vallee, the famous researcher, astronomer, and computer scientist”

“We were all well acquainted with the theories of Jacques Vallee, the famous researcher, astronomer, and computer scientist. Vallee's approach addressed three aspects: the physical aspect, which Tyler represented; the testimonial aspect, represented by experiencers; and the social aspect, how belief in the phenomenon persists regardless of whether there is any verifiable evidence to support it.”

“Jacques Vallee once told me emphatically, “Trust no one. Do not even trust what you see.””

“Jacques and I interviewed one of the people who saw and photographed the object.”

“the well-known scholar Donna Haraway had asked me to think about what was happening in my brain and my mind when I looked at images on film, or in the minds of people who witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary.”

“I arrived during her office hours, when she was officially available to talk to students, and explained my plan of study. I told her that I wanted to study the then-recent apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, a small town in what was then Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

“Scott is the creator and moderator of *In the Field,* an international study group of trained videographers, photographers, and graphic designers who also study the UFO phenomenon on a regular basis.”

“I told him that I studied UFO phenomena, and then, on the chance that he might respect Jacques Vallee’s work, I told him that I was a fan of Jacques and that I worked with him. That was credential enough; he immediately let me into the group.”

“Scott Browne has been called a debunker—and far worse than that. In fact, the names he has been called are not fit to be printed. Yet they have been posted on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, and in internet forums.”

““Talk to me face-to-face, and I will show you what I think of debunkers!” The threat, posted on social media, devolved from that point into a series of very specific descriptions of bodily and emotional harm. It was directed, by name, to Scott Browne.”

“I was reminded of a recent incident on social media in which Scott had exposed a series of images of supposed UFOs. The original photographs had garnered a large following. The images were of a distant object that was circular and did not look like an airplane or anything conventionally seen in the sky. Scott took the images, blew them up, and posted them side by side, showing what they really were, which were different types of oddly shaped balloons.”

“I also saw images of levitation... The ascension of Christ is depicted in two panels, and then a third shows Christ ascended.”

“We took a tour of Rome on a golf cart... At one point, we were pulled over by the police. The guide and the police haggled for twenty minutes. We waited patiently and were finally brought to the beautiful church of Santa Sabina”

“Tyler texted, “Should I tell them who I am?” ... At that point, after almost two hours of Tyler’s translator haggling with security, I thought it couldn’t hurt, so I said, “Okay, go ahead.””

“Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, regarded as the founding father of rocketry and aeronautics”

“Tsiolkovsky perhaps regarded himself as one of these geniuses, as he discovered the equations that would later help scientists develop rockets to take humans off Earth and into space.”

“Jack Parsons was uniquely American in that he collaborated with Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard and spent time both launching rockets and engaging in provocative rituals in the Los Angeles desert.”

“He was thirty-seven when one of his rockets exploded as he was experimenting in his garage, and he perished with it.”

“Jeff and I looked down at my pink iPhone.”

“As I watched scenes with the monolith, I realized that it resembled a larger version of my iPhone.”

“It was New Year’s Eve. That night, I went to bed early and fell asleep immediately. At midnight I was awakened by fireworks and the merry-making of New Year’s revelers. Amid the noise, I had no hope of returning to sleep, so I picked up the book on my nightstand. I opened it up randomly.”

“I happened to open it to the only three aphorisms in the whole book devoted to New Year’s Eve. The first was titled “Sanctus Januarius” (Saint Januarius or Holy January).”

“The cultural narratives were formed through processes anticipated by Jung with his concept of amplificatory interpretation.”