Other-Worldly Conference At SML

Scott Melford is interested in UFOs and paranormal activity – and hopes that people who share his interest “are open-minded and willing to explore and examine new ideas.”  Medford was one of a small group of people that gathered at The Point at Mariner’s Landing Resort and Conference Center at Smith Mountain Lake recently for a one-day conference sponsored by the Virginia Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

While admitting that he really didn’t know what to expect by attending the event, or if he’d learn anything new from it, Melford said, “I’m always interested in learning and exploring things that I don’t understand. This seemed like a good opportunity.”

The conference featured speakers and merchandise related to UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects),  books, CDs, copies of newspaper articles and police department reports. There were UFO Club of Virginia Beach member patches and shirts, and copies of the MUFON “UFO Journal.”

Founded in 1969, the primary purpose of  MUFON, according to State Director Susan Swiatek, is “the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of mankind.”  One of the topics covered at the conference, a connection between UFOs and paranormal activity, was a subject of interest to two of the conference speakers, Clayton Trout and Dr. Shari Stacy.

They co-host “Out of This World,” a radio program airing on WEHC 90.7 from Emory and Henry College. Stacy and Trout pursue their interest in UFOs and the paranormal away from their full-time occupations, respectively, an English professor at Southwest Virginia Community College, and  public relations at the same college.

“I became interested in UFO investigations through ghost hunting,” explained Stacy.  “My ghost hunting partner [Trout] has been studying UFOs for practically his whole life, and he convinced me that some of the activity we were seeing was not the traditional ghost-type haunting—that it could also be UFO activity.”

Trout stresses that whenever they get a report of some unusual occurrence, their main purpose is to help, rather than sensationalize these events.

“Interviewing is the largest part of what we do [and] then we go back in with an investigation.”  They utilize the latest scientific equipment available, in Trout’s words, “[to] help create situations,” with clients “[so] that we can either confirm what they’re experiencing or offer an alternative solution—too much electricity, an animal in the house, things like that.”

Thus far, the people Trout and Stacy have helped have been down-to-earth, mainstream types:  school teachers, bed-and-breakfast owners, people who work in hotels, restaurant owners and people who own local theaters.

“We’re always expecting to get that call where someone is claiming to be from the Planet Xenon, or something like that,” says Stacy, who adds, “I would like to have a case like that.  That would be very interesting.”

Another conference speaker, Richard Lang, has a background in flight instruction and law enforcement. In his view, the best UFO investigators are trained police officers or retired law enforcement types.  “They spend twenty, thirty years of their life learning how to investigate.”

“Such professionals,” said Lang, also a banker, “tend to be much more reliable in terms of accuracy and reporting data, which is what we’re really interested in,” as opposed to someone who has become an investigator because of an experience they had.

A Physics Examiner in aerospace technology at the U. S. Patent Office, as well as sitting on MUFON’s Board, Robert Swiatek believes established science in the United States still views UFO’s with a skeptical eye on account of the government, other scientists, and the media.

Swiatek said a lack of funding hampers investigative efforts. “We [have] independent scientists involved in the UFO subject but we don’t have the mainstream scientific community behind this.”

Swiatek’s wife Susan, an art major, is interested in how UFO’s have affected popular culture, specifically artists and musicians. She said central Virginia, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Danville triangle—is extremely active – paranormally speaking. “I get a lot of abduction and close encounter reports.”

Her husband Rob hopes that conferences such as this one will get people “to realize that we are dealing with a phenomenon here that is of appreciable significance, in the sense that we have sightings of unknown, unusual objects. Science needs to look into it and, in order to find out how these things behave, you’ve just got to look into cases and interview people.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s not easy to get a handle on the subject but when you do, you’ll find that you can’t explain some of these things – and some of them are mighty creepy.”

For more information go to www.mufon.com.

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