The Texas Piney Woods UFO: The Cash-Landrum UFO Mystery
Dr. J. Allen Hynek on the Cash-Landrum UFO case
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Speaking on the Cash-Landrum UFO Close Encounter of the Second Kind
“Something sure as hell happened..."
 |
Dr. Hynek, as seen in Spielberg's CE3K
|
Dr. J. Allen Hynek was only
indirectly involved with the Cash-Landrum case, but he knew it well.
From the beginning, John F. Schuessler was sending copies of his Project
VISIT reports to Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). In April 1981, Dr. Hynek’s protege, Allan Hendry, (CUFOS’ chief investigator) was contracted by the Fund for UFO Research
(FUFOR) to investigate the incident. Further, Schuessler made his first
lecture on the case at Hynek’s CUFOS symposium in September 1981. While
Hynek himself did not investigate the case, he was very familiar with
it.
In 1981, just as the news of the
Cash-Landrum story was spreading through mainstream media, Dr. Hynek was
contacted by a Texas newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for his
comments on the case.
 |
| Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A |
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, founder of the
Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Ill., and the country's premier UFO
investigator, termed the Dayton incident a “really crucial case,”
because of the “absolutely unequivocal physical effects.”
“Something sure as hell happened:
Those women didn’t pull out their hair and blind themselves," said
Hynek. "The connection with the event is clear-cut. It's one-to-one. We
have other cases, but rarely as clear-cut as this.”
“We are dealing with a real event ,
but we’re not sure if it’s a government exercise or a UFO sighting,"
said Hynek, who headed Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force study of UFOs
from about 1948 to 1969. "There’s a lot of secret stuff going on that
most people don’t know about.”
Hynek believes the women should file a lawsuit to compel disclosure.
Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A
Texans Tell of Strange Encounter by Pamela Lyon
OMNI Magazine Interview with Dr. J. Allen Hynek
The year before he died, Dr. Hynek
was interviewed at length by Pamela Weintraub of OMNI magazine, it
appeared in the February 1985 issue. A number of UFO cases were
discussed, and in a rather surprising way, the conversation turned to
the Cash-Landrum case.
 |
| Dr. Hynek. Portrait from OMNI magazine |
Omni: ... close encounters of the third kind might be anybody's fantasy.
Hynek: I can't disagree.
That's why I'd like to focus most of my new research on close encounters
of the second kind, where there are actual physical marks. -Perhaps a
foreign consciousness is
creating not just illusions but the real ship and the-real creatures as
well. If they weren't physical creations, they couldn't leave traces.
That's the importance of the close encounter of the second kind. Let us
suppose that a very, very advanced civilization has, as a part of its
everyday technology, the ability to project a thought form that, like a
holographic image, temporarily assumes three-dimensional reality. This
is just speculation of the wildest sort, but if the UFO phenomenon is
doing anything, it's causing us to expand our imagination, to make us
aware that this nice, cozy world we live in is only the world we see
around us, not the sum total of our environment.
Omni: Are there any close encounters of the second kind that you feel would particularly help to reveal this broader reality?
Hynek: I'd like to get to
the bottom of the Cash/Landrum affair. The story there concerns Betty
Cash, Vicki Landrum. and Vicki's grandson Colby The three were coming
back from a Bingo game when they saw a glowing triangle spewing flames
above them in the sky. They stopped the car to watch the thing, and as
it moved off, they reportedly saw about twenty-three helicopters
escorting it out. After they got home there were all sorts of
physiological effects: Their eyes swelled, their hair fell out, they
developed blisters, they were nauseated and weak. The event completely altered their lives.
Omni: What do you think was at the root?
Hynek: My best guess is that they were exposed to some kind of microwave radiation.
Space-shuttle engineer John
Schuessler, who's investigating the case, is veering toward the idea
that the three were exposed to a government device escorted by
twenty-three helicopters, He's even helped Betty, Vicki, and Colby to
institute a lawsuit against the government. But there's another side of
all this: Where would twenty-three helicopters come from? First of all,
it was Christmas week, and people at the bases said they would never
conduct military exercises at a time like that.
Omni: Certainly you can't be suggesting the possibility of twenty-three extraterrestrial helicopters?
Hynek: No, that's
preposterous. But perhaps Cash and the Landrums saw a holographic image
of the helicopters. I could buy that more than I buy twenty-three solid,
physical helicopters from some unknown base, when no baseman will admit
seeing so many helicopters of that particular kind.
Omni: Yet I really think
that we're obliged to consider the fact that some of these sightings
are due to government craft. Recently, James E. Oberg traced many
reports to secret Soviet satellite launchings.
Hynek: Today, of course,
such technology may account for many reports. From 1947 through 1955,
however, almost none of the maneuvers ascribed to UFOs could have been
duplicated with human technology. And even today, our technology can
duplicate only part of the phenomenon. We still don't have craft that
can hover and then take off at fantastic speed.
Omni: As far as you know.
But the government has been implicated in other ways as well. A group
known as CAUS [Citizens Against UFO Secrecy] claims that the government
has been orchestrating a massive cover-up of UFO information. They've
recently invoked the Freedom of Information Act to obtain classified
information. Have they found anything, and do you believe there's a government cover-up?
Hynek: What can be covered
up? You can cover up ignorance, embarrassment, sinister political acts. I
myself don't see real evidence for a diabolical, Machiavellian
cover-up. I do perceive a strong reluctance to share information with
the public.
OMNI Magazine, February 1985
Interviewed by Pamela Weintraub
No comments:
Post a Comment