The Ummo affair:

UMMO Special: the other myth that CRASHED.

By José Luis Jordan Peña, Psychologist, collaborator of LAR [the Rational Alternative magazine], and former vice-president of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology.

Ufology is at the edge of agony in the countries of the Old and the New Worlds. The article by Javier Armentia published in the Muy Interesante magazine (Very Interesting, a magazine) puts the nail in the coffin of this so widespread superstition. But all ufologists are not credulous in the same manner. Indeed they can be classified into Mytho-ufologists, Noumen-ufologists, Astro-ufologists and psycho-ufologists.

Psycho-ufologists: these are the most reasonable. Disappointed by the superstitious beliefs and repented from such an amount of stupidity, these first ufologists ended up in giving up the ETH (Extraterrestrial Hypothesis) which rationalized Ufology. They replaced it by the psychological explanation that only hysteria in the masses is the cause of these unknown lights. It is correct, except that this assumption was already very old: it dates from the Condon report, in November 1968.

However, it is necessary to thoroughly examine the paranormal explanations, because they are actually pseudo-scientific. The cultural anthropologists reject those which claim to be ufologists. That is because those lack the authority to be regarded as "rational scientists."

In Spain, one distinguishes some authors with their ambiguous positions; they low-keyed their old irrational astro-ufologic assumption, while considering timidly that absolutely all the flying saucers were lies, and they add that the visual phenomenon would be paranormal in certain cases, pleading in favor of parapsychology and some paranormal phenomena, just at the moment when it was proven that paranormal phenomena do not exist, and that traditional psychology and anthropology explain them.

Astro-ufologists: Conscious of what is ridiculous, some authors indulge in believing only in these mysterious lights which are seen in the sky. They doubt the possibility that they are terrestrial aerial machines. Theses authors reject the suspect attempts at hoaxes, while believing only in the encounters of the first kind (lights in the sky). As arguments, they have only the evidence that it cannot be conventional machines, because of their speed, shapes and quite usual luminosity. With confidence, they call them Unidentified Flying Objects. They forget that there are necessarily certain images obtained by radar, of photography or abnormal visualizations: things reflected in the clouds, the result of temperature inversions, the enhanced images of planet Venus, the luminosities caused by electrostatic effects, the false radar echoes produced by meteors or space debris. It is as if we wanted to allot an extraterrestrial origin to the tales of Arabian Nights by making the point that their author is not known.

The mentality of these Astro-ufologists does not cease being paranoid in its circular reasoning. They insist against any logic that these lights could be extraterrestrial in nature, by scorning Mytho-ufologists as perfect goofies and their Flying Saucers as products of Jokes and Frauds, by forgetting their own madness, namely: paranoia, which proves them enormously more dangerous because of its tenacity and contagion. Remember that the syndrome of delirious paranoia, which is very widespread, makes all distorted things more credible.

Mytho-ufologists: they are called Mytho-ufologists, when they believe that the flying saucers landed (Encounters of the third kind) and extraterrestrial beings of odd shapes came out of it. (They distinguish three types of extraterrestrial beings: the first, which are of small size with pointed ears, the second which have hairs and are of big size, and third, of nearly human appearance; they are tall and blonde.

This typology was made popular by the Junk Press. These are those who believe in delirious abductions by proving them with hypnosis sessions. Hypnosis is precisely a state of increased suggestibility, from where imagination rise, contrary to what is popularly believed. The hypnotized individual is a perfect playwriter. Those who want to see a revelation of the Truth in this are totally in error.

In short: they believe ingenuously that the saucers come with live specimen which can be detected. They were the objects of many jokes and hoaxes (Adamsky, the Hill couple, Ummo, the infamous Matrix...) but that is not a reason for them to abandon their beliefs.

They are regarded as "Chiflados" (Paranoiac) because of their antiquated and obsolete ideas. But thus they are less dangerous because nobody sensible can believe in such gobbledygook, which are only burned traces and photographed rims of cars' wheels. (There is a multitude of photographs falsified with various techniques, all present very academic models of UFOs with domes, some are covered of multicolored lights.

The ones are so different from the others, these flying artifacts that they show us. It is obvious: each hoaxer projects his own image of his fantastic version by decorating it with elements of its own production. Thus we have: spheres, troughs, plates or discs, artifacts in varied shapes can be found in the pages of a certain Press.

Nóumen-ufologists: From the myth of these extraterrestrial which seek a hero and the revelation of the great truths, some have mythified the angels by turning them into extraterrestrial beings and worshipping them. That's how the Aetherius Society, the IRPI Botherhood,the Branche operation and so many mythical and worrying episodes appeared. In our country, the most representative figure is the mythical Fernando Sesma and his faked symbols from the alleged Saliano, and Salvador Freixedo who is already deceased: unsteady but expert of the religious myths.

Those particularly, with this type of Nordics which introduced themselves elusively under the name of Ummites in the Spanish and French areas where they said to have landed during the Fifties there in Digne, a locality close to the Swiss Alps. A myth manufactured by myself.

At that time, I tried to put forth my thesis that paranoia was wider spread than psychiatrists believe. Indeed we are a population which is of 80% people suffering this syndrome. It is rather curious how they accuse thus author of paranoia, those who suffer from this selective delirium, whereas we see that even the Catholics are charging the astrologers with the same superstition of the horoscopes. One gives reason to the insane by accusing of madness those which are not contaminated.

At this point, it would be wise to wonder about Paranoia, or the symptoms which characterize it.

Mental modification of the neural networks by which the patient has systematized delirium. His delirium consists of an erroneous idea, persistent and resistant to any logical argumentation. Many doctrines actually were elaborated by very intelligent perfect paranoid. There are two methods of delirium: the first is most current: Systematized Paranoia: strange beliefs which have a certain logic. For example: to be sure that extraterrestrial beings have landed and to denounce with indignation photographs negatives tampered by an impostor, disguised in extraterrestrial being. This is the most important thing which characterizes these paranoiacs. To denounce some frauds with irritation, while they believe or drown in their delirious ideas.

How do we know that an idea is erroneous?

One managed to support the doctrines contrary to asepsis or theories which were opposed to the vaccines, until the discovery of infectious germs and of immunity by inoculating neutralized bacteria.

To refute the idea that the belief in the UFOS comes from physical causes like curved rays, trails caused by cosmic debris, or weather balloons... I decided to create a myth called Ummo, providing it with a false landing and falsified traces. I point out that I obtained polyvinyl fluoride parts so resistant to traction and temperature that they were catalogued as coming from NASA, so much they were unknown in our peninsula.

The hoax was almost perfect. Enhanced with pseudo-scientific writings, I started it by means of anonymous letters which caused the expectancy you can guess. It should be said that it became particularly contaminated with other writings of unknown origin, of which the last releases are staging Gorbatchev and former president Reagan in a delirious desire to sign a world peace agreement.

I created a group to study what really were extraterrestrial forgeries. I can warrant that, composed of very intelligent people, they received the phenomenon with a certain mistrust and caution. The paranoiac manifested itself only seldom, with mistrust from their part. Although they did not know anything of my experiment. It was actually the psycho-ufologists, though the voice of a psychiatrist fond of UFOs, which revealed the well kept secret. Thanks to a journalist, Javier Sierra, I decided thereafter to reveal "the affair".

As with the Russian dolls, they accused the Madrid group of Collective Paranoia: these were the most contaminated Paranoiacs. Indeed: There is not better base for being delirious that to dwell into extra-scientific reasoning by insinuating that extraterrestrial beings arrived on the Earth while manifesting their presence by unidentified lights.

What is the effect proven by Ummo on Nóumenufologists?: Very weak. It should be said that they accommodated the idea with a certain mistrust, and even almost with incredulity. As they are uneducated people, they are only interested in little green men who come in a farmyard lost in some forest. Jargon of scientific appearance does not appeal to them. This only interest mytho-ufologists.

Indeed, somebody who has his common sense does not create these grotesque mythoufologic stories of abductions by little green men. In Spain, the promoters of the pyscho-ufologists tendency gather around the Ufological Diaries by Julio Arcas.

Psycho-ufologist want to distinguish themselves by a certain "scientificity:" Rey Breas, Vicente Ballester Olmos, Carlos Berché, Ignacio Cabria... with the paranoid illusion to proceed in ufology by the scientific method. Vain hope, and this is why the academics, reasonably, continue to scorn this pseudoscience.

They qualified this superstition with the unfortunate anglicized name of "Ufology" - It is an Anglicism: it would have been more correct to call it "OVNIlogie" [OVNI is spanish for UFO] but they had such a small "brain". The true story of this joke starts in the United States plugged by the heritage that P. Lowell and G. Schiaparelli had left them, with the Canals of Mars, illusion which awoke the notion of the "probable existence" of extraterrestrial inhabitants of this planet.

And Charles Fort, by insinuating that they perhaps visited us, appeared in the literature a the first convinced saucermaniac. Ray Palmer. What was the origin of this superstition? What started as science fiction mythical stories: Déros: harmful beings which lived in the underground world of other worlds (March 1945 "Amazing"). They took existence and were regarded as realities by the paranoiac ufologists of the U.S.A.

"Fate" magazine, regarded as junk Press, was the first of the publications which encouraged this pseudoscience, Arnold and Palmer wrote in 1948 the first article of the long series: "have we visitors from space?"

Logically, all the forgers and the societies which exploit superstitions rushed in, everyone started to invent any sorts of imaginary situations such as landings, photographs of saucers, denatured images of humanoids, abductions, up to the point to record the excited ones, releasing series of fakings with the impossible hope to make a reality of this sauceristic dream.

The Ummo hoax extended so much, that it showed that Ufology is a paranoia (see in the Parapsicología review, N 29, Dec. 1989, Page 19, my article "the Anubis Syndrome and Psi", SEDP, c/Bethléem 15-1, 28004 Madrid) and far from disappearing, it will be a widespread delirious idea, and it will resist to any logical argumentation. It will be an unconscious dream for disillusioned people who want to escape from this world which makes us live. This is why the myth of the space travelers will never die. It will be also useless that scientific authorities rebuke it via specialized magazine which denounce the superstitions. Because despite the discovered frauds prove beyond doubt that it is a myth, the ufologists say that there is 1% of true contacts.

Actually a proponent of the Flying Saucers believes that 99% are lies, frauds, deceptions, myths, although 1% are real and this is precisely the root of their delirium. Do you think that it is with this 1% that the proponents of mythical animals such as sirens or the centaurs create them?

It is necessary that the uneducated public distinguishes the cosmological theories which frame true science: exobiology: (xenology), the public must considers that extraterrestrial beings most probably exist, but that they are unfortunately light-years away from us.