From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:00:01 -0400
Archived: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:00:01 -0400
Subject: Believers Hunt UFO At Annual Meeting




Source: The San Francisco Chronicle - California, USA

http://tinyurl.com/7gaukv

Sunday, March 8, 2009


Believers Hunt UFO At Annual Meeting

By Kathleen Hennessey
Associated Press Writer


LAUGHLIN, CA (AP) -- A high-pitched cry of delight rings through
the desert night. A few dozen heads cocked skyward turn in
tandem toward the sound. They move deliberately, trying not to
lose sight of the stars, trying to see what the others see.

"Oh my God, you guys, it's a giant delta! It is a great big
delta!"

"That huge, that's a mothership, probably."

"We're going to see a battle."

This is UFO hunting among the believers.

And this is how you end a day at the recent International UFO
Congress Convention & Film Festival, which has brought together
the extraterrestrially curious in the United States for 18
years.

Late last month, the group gathered in this desert casino town
to discuss the truth they believe is out there. This year, that
meant lectures on alien implant research, alien technology, the
secret societies that "threaten to take over America" and
something called "exoconsciousness." Nearly 1,000 people
attended the annual meeting.

The convention is the brainchild of co-founder Bob Brown, a
former commercial pilot and a filmmaker who says his captivation
with the paranormal dates back to his northern California
childhood. When he was 9, a family friend gave him a copy of
"There is River," a biography of self-described psychic Edgar
Cayce, and "Autobiography of a Yogi." A searcher was born.

Years later, after a UFO sighting of his own and countless hours
of research, Brown concluded that even the mainstream UFO
community was suppressing information and wrongly dismissing
some important paranormal events. He and co-founder Wendell
Stevens, a UFO investigator, set out to create a less political
forum.

"We decided that it needed to be done better. People needed to
have a respectful and wonderful place to disseminate
information. You don't do it for money," said Brown, a soft
spoken man who might pass for a salesman if not for his Marvin
the Martian tie.

Indeed, there is an come-one-come-all feel at the conference.
Conspiracy theorists mingle with new-age artists. Dense,
scholarly treatises sit next to self-published tales of alien
encounters.

The community of believers has its own celebrities, trends and
language.

When asked her name, Cari Barlow, of Siena Vista, Ariz.,
stumbled. She usually goes by her star name "Joujoului," she
explained. She also can write in Reptilian, the language of the
alien race she believes to be in her blood line.

"I've know I'm a hybrid," she said plainly. "I knew all my life,
but I realized when my ex saw me shape shift."

At the UFO Congress she feels at home: "Even the skeptics are
open minded. It's like family."

However deep this subculture, it is not impervious to current
events and popular culture.

Among the hottest selling DVDs was "Hidden Agenda: The
Capitalist Conspiracy =97 An Inside View of International
Banking," according to Tom Bearden of UFO TV, a DVD distributor
in attendance.

President Barack Obama graced the cover of the latest issue of a
journal published by Italian UFO enthusiast and journalist
Maurizio Baiata.

"You Americans, with Obama you have hope. Obama represents a new
hope for the country but also for disclosure, if he starts
pushing for disclosure of the big secrets," Baiata said.

The big secrets seemed as open as the night sky to those who
joined Ed Grimsley on his evening sky watch trip. Grimsley
believes he's been watching battles between unknown aircraft
since he was a teenager. Armed with night vision binoculars and
laser pointers, he led expeditions of the curious to a roadside
overlook just outside of town.

The group passed around the binoculars and were told the rules =97
conventional wisdom for the unconventional.

If a light is moving slowly in a straight line, it's a
satellite. If it blinks and has two wings, it's a plane. If it
moves quickly, starts and stops, or dodges the beam of the laser
pointer, it's =97 unidentified.

"I saw a Lexus on the freeway, I don't know who the owner is,"
explains Melinda Leslie, of Costa Mesa, Calif., an alien
abduction researcher, office manager and spotter of the giant
delta.

"Could it be ours? Theirs? I don't know."



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