Are You Experienced? Shock and Awe Documents Released, UFO/UAP Language Hang Ups & Jimi Hendrix Live in Davenport, Iowa!

Are You “Experienced?”

In my lifetime thus far, I’ve had four verifiable UFO sightings – witnessed by second and third parties – and a range of high strangeness events in my home and elsewhere. But are all – or even some – extraterrestrial in nature? That is one of the prevailing and puzzling themes in THE SPACE PEN CLUB, this writer trying to find the truth of these events and in several cases, eye-witnessed close encounters of …. something.

Language used in the UFO/USAP world often describes people as “contactees,” individuals contacted by an extraterrestrial being or beings during a sighting or in other settings like inside a home or a remote cabin (a la Whitley Streiber, as explored in Communion). Another is “abductees,” used liberally in the now-classic so called abduction phenomenon, aka as a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind (CE-4). You know, where someone is allegedly beamed up into a spacecraft and, occasionally, examined, probed, analyzed, scrutinized and then levitated, sent packing or otherwise booted back to where they were “abducted” from. UFO literature and much of pop culture entertainments are rife with positive -- but mostly negative -- abduction accounts.

My book explores in detail one very positive one in Wisconsin by a University of North Dakota professor, John Salter and his son. It also touches on a fairly detailed sighting by Owen Husney in rural Minnesota, during daylight. Owen was Prince’s first manager who netted Prince an unheard-of recording deal at Warner Bros. And there is mention of the internationally known 1994 case in Zimbabwe of many school children, which the late Harvard professor John Mack investigated. This fascinating and extremely credible event lies at the heart of Jamie Fox’s must-see film The Phenomenon. In it, he interviews some of the children who are all now adults and they describe their Close Encounter with convincing honesty and personal, if sometimes conflicted, reflection.

Somehow, somewhere in the UFO/UAP subculture of the past few years, the word “experiencer,” has become the prevailing usage seemingly for anyone and everyone who’s ever had a contactee, abductee or sighting experience. I can’t seem to find how experiencer became the nom du jour for these events, but it now seems as pervasive as the word “streaming” (where once the word “broadcasting” seemed to work just fine to define the relay of produced “content” – once upon a time also known as “programming” -- to viewers).

Is Jimi Hendrix to Blame -- or Credit?

On his first album in 1967, Jimi Hendrix asked in the title track, Are You Experienced? Many presumed he was asking if people had experienced psychedelia, the album a stunning aural assault on your senses and sensibilities. But on his equally trippy sophomore effort, Axis Bold as Love, Hendrix plays the ET card, as described in Michael C. Luckman’s fun and deeply informative book, Alien Rock: The Rock ‘n Roll Extraterrestrial Connection.

Luckman writes, “… Jimi presented an imaginary, tongue-in-cheek interview between a news announcer and a man from outer space (voiced by Jimi) in a segment called ‘EXP.” The announcer introduces “a very peculiar-looking gentleman (named) Paul Caruso to give his opinion on ‘this nonsense about UFOs and space people?’ Caruso cautions, ‘You just can’t believe everything you see,’ and then blasts off, leaving the announcer awestruck. The announcer exclaims, ‘I, I don’t believe it!’” One excerpt from the Jimi chapter, prominently displayed on the book’s back cover, quotes the highly innovative and influential Hendrix telling a friend, “I am a spiritual messenger, sent here from another place.”

Like the rest of the richly researched book, Luckman explores the UFO sightings and strange experiences experienced by rock’s greatest, from Elvis Presley to John Lennon, who immortalized his NYC sighting in “Nobody told Me” to David Bowie and many others. His chapter on “The King” will blow you away.

Other Experiencers Injured from Their Encounters?

Meanwhile back in the “real world”….Earlier this month, The Sun tabloid announced that – after 4 years after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)  -- it had obtained a substantial amount of material - -1,500 pages -- released by the government from the secret UFO/UAP  Pentagon study,  the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that made global headlines from 2017 to the release of a disappointing 9-page DIA report last June in 2021.The piece is titled, “X-FILES:  Pentagon releases 1,500 pages of secret documents about shadowy UFO programme after four-year battle.”

 Interestingly, among the 1,500-pages, the DIA dumped the shock and awe documents alleging that some close encounters and other high strangeness events caused physical and psychological harm to experiencers. For my tawdry money, this “threat analysis” is purposeful to drive the narrative that the ETs are a threat to humans, and to pry more funding from government/defense coffers now that the subject is no longer perceived as a joke and a jive from “conspiracy theorists,” whoever these so-called crackpots may be.

I would also point out that a similar discussion tales place in the relatively new book, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (SEE PREVIOUS BLOG POST). But let’s allow The Sun reporting to tell this side of the story since they waited 4 years for the info:

“The bombshell Freedom of Information haul includes reports on the DIA's research into the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans. And this includes burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances - and even bizarre occurrences such as ‘apparent abduction’ and ‘unaccounted for pregnancy….’

“…The report noted that often these injuries are related to electromagnetic radiation - and links them to ‘energy related propulsion systems. ’And the report - prepared for the DIA - warns that such objects may be a ‘threat to United States interests’ [that’s what we call the money quote!]. ‘Humans have been found to have been injured from ‘exposures to anomalous vehicles, especially airborne and when in close proximity,’" it reads. “The report said it had 42 cases from medical files and 300 similar ‘unpublished’ cases where humans had been injured after “anomalous’ encounters.”

Of course, it’s hard to know if these threats from the reported propulsion systems or close encounters with other unknown objects are ours or “theirs.” Clearly nobody talked to Professor Salter or any other contactees who had healing experiences, or no residual effects from their experiences. Let the reader beware.

Given that it’s finally a warm spring Sunday in the Twin Cities, it’s time to move away from the screen and head outside. So, I leave you with two cuts of the Jimi Hendrix classic, “Are Your Experienced.” One is from his first 1967 album by the same name, the other, a rare live concert recording from Davenport, Iowa in 1968. It takes a couple minutes for the band to finally lift off into the song, but after that, it’s a pretty sweet, feedback-laden ride into the realms.

·         Jimi, live in Davenport, Iowa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfZHGJxv3qQ

·         Jimi on his debut disc with the Jimi Hendrix Experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxHS9lTUN4Y

As one comment notes of the Davenport experience, “This is the same energy that creates a universe.”

Amen!