wp8cefe634_02.jpg

EVENTS AND CONFERENCES

 

THE 1997 CONFERENCES

This was the year that saw two LAPIS conferences.

 

We start with our conference on 17th May 1997 held at the Keirby Park Hotel, Burnley.

 

Unfortunately, no image of the flyer exists in our archive but the speakers were Eric Morris, George Wingfield, Dr Rauni-Leena Luukarem Kilde, Tim Rifat and Busty Taylor. The master of ceremonies was Sam Wright (now of UK Probe International).

 

Below is a review of the conference by Andy Roberts of Flying Saucery ...

 

“The Blackpool group LAPIS who put on such an excellent show last November in Lytham brought their roadshow to Burnley on May 17th and presented 'A Day Of Strange Phenomena'. The usual suspects were lurking everywhere, stalls bowed under the weight of ufological tat and there was much gossip to be hoovered up. Eric Morris has returned from the shadows over the past few years and has now left his job as a nurse to devote his full time energies to the Alien Research Counselling Centre (ARCC). Say the C's soft as in 'centre' and oo-er missus Eric could have chosen his acronym a bit more carefully! Serious guy is Eric. Told us some great stories. His favourite word is 'strange' and he seemed to be in a competition to see just how many times he could use this adjective in the course of his talk.

 

Eric example: Woman relates story of being taken into a 'strange' barn-like thingy in a field ...... sees a 'tramp' and a 'tart' across the other side of a pool of green stuff. Tramp & tart start having sex, woman is aroused by this and shortly finds herself in a threesome with the T & T. And she enjoyed it. I ask you, whatever next. If the ufological experience is to be demeaned by people's enjoyment of sex then it's time things changed. Immediately. Aliens? Incubi and sucubi? Or just sexual repression made manifest in a 'olly good fantasy. Let's face it pilgrims, we've all had dreams like that, haven't we?

 

Eric is very sincere and obviously puts a great deal of time and money into the subject, being genuinely concerned about the plight which his informants find themselves in. But I worry about just what he is dealing with, what he is unlocking from people's psyches and what he's going to do when someone freaks out on him. But hey, he's a nurse and no doubt trained to handle all manner of psychic disorder. That's a relief. And then he said he can so many cases he couldn't cope with them all so he started using regression hypnosis to "make things easier". On who Eric, on who?

 

Rule one in the Big Boys Book Of Being A Good Human is that under no circumstances do you mess with someone's mind and unfortunately, glamorous as it is, hypnotic regression does just that. It might seem a good thing to do at the time, it might get results', the client may even want to be regressed, it might even get the media interested in you. But we have a duty not to do this sort of thing. A duty which doesn't need writing into UFO group rules and constitutions. Just something everyone should know. BUFORA has had a ban on using hypnotic regression for a long time now and it was decided to continue with at an N.I.C. meeting earlier this year. It's moves like this which make BUFORA the excellent Organisation it can be. It will lead to less investigators and less 'good' cases as the fame freaks and glamour grabbers go elsewhere so they can hypnotise and impress. Let'em.

 

Back to Eric and his case.

 

Look at it another way. Somewhere on the Cheshire/Wales border, if Eric is to be believed, is a very confused and frightened woman who has fessed up her inner-mosts to Eric. Eric listens and thinks. And then, on a bright May Saturday over a hundred people were 'entertained' by listening to the intimate details of someone's inner experiences life. Many of them perhaps even thought it had all happened in the objective world of the physical. I just thought it was tabloid ufology and didn't in anyway further our knowledge of the Close Encounter Experience.

 

There's a fine line to be drawn between research and investigation and entertainment and titillation. Despite Eric's protestations of confidentiality does that woman know that her story is now his story? And that it will soon be part of UFO history'? Eric presented no evidence that the woman's experiences were anything other than psychic in the literal sense, and no attempt to explain them in those terms other than to tell us that the woman wasn't promiscuous (!). How does he know, what does it matter anyway? In fact throughout the whole orq tale I was strongly reminded of the comprehensive diagram shown in the first episode of Father Ted, and I reproduce it here for your instruction and consideration.

 

Oh yeah, and she'd been shown scenes of the destruction of earth and one particular horrible one of a horse being ripped to shreds. Two years later she was taken to an adult creche on board this flying barn thingy and shown the evidence of alien tramp/human rumpy pumpy. An ickle baby. All say Ahhhhhhhhh. And if that's not conclusive evidence of alien intervention in the affairs of mankind then I'm a banana.

 

During this tour de farce I had a dizzy spell and suddenly thought I was in an episode of Coronation Street being served by Roy in the cafe - but it was only Eric after all. Worse still I realised that 'veteran' (i.e. bloody old and boring) ufologist Arthur Tomlinson who was in the audience looks like Norris, and Judith Jafar (you can't keep the secret about fieldmice conferences for ever Judith - the world needs to know. Now. Before it's too late) bears more than a passing resemblance to Alma! Oh my God.

 

After that the whole day took a tumble. Grumpy old George Wingfield (as Don Brennan of course) took the stage next. Crop circles? Pshaw, thing of the past boyo. George is right at the pointy sharp end and he was telling us about Flying Triangles - or as he's 'humorously' dubbed hem - UIFTS. In one of those very special moments ufology sees all too frequently George reinvented the whole history of Flying Triangles in his own image, missed out totally the north and midland waves of the 70s and 80s, and 'forgot' to mention they were known as the Silent Vulcan at that time. Using the work of Omar Fowler as 'evidence' (and isn't it funny that both Omar and George are both chums and on the Flying Teapot Review consultants list) George proceeded to give us the history of FTs according to him and his chums.

 

Oh George, george, george. In his ever so public-school manner George 'compared' the FTs to known aircraft and concluded they weren't them and indeed it was our old friends the allens' piloting them. Sorry ....... the aliens. George read out numerous eye witness accounts and demonstrated a touching faith in the literalness of people's narratives. i.e. if they said they saw X then they sure as shit saw X and not Y from a different angle or even B with some unusual lights or maybe they'd never even seen X in the first place.

 

The flaws of perception and cultural analysis are not really George's strong point at all. Realising the audience had heard all this before from people who actually knew what they were talking about George quickly fell back on that old ufological trick of defining himself by his enemies. Tim Matthews was one ("Tim are you here, before I insult you?"). Tim wasn't, so George waved a copy of Stealth, Lies and Videotape around in a disdainful fashion and poured scorn on it. Just because he didn't agree. He then proceeded to get Tim M completely wrong by suggesting he thinks all FTs are flying out of Warton. He doesn't. God we were impressed. Well into a rant by then he rounded on Matthews and 'others' for their motives' in the subject and suggested they may have 'sponsors', hinting heavily that of course they were all paid tools of government disnformation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too much time in the crop circles George baby.

 

But wait. The fragile limits of my world view were to be severely tested when George told us the tale of the 'missing file'. He'd once had a file called 'UFO' which in the 80s he stored on a mainframe at Warwick university and which contained some information about IBM in relation to UFOs (I think this was how he told it). The mainframe was an IBM one and lo, when George went to retrieve his file it was 'lost'. The Lovecraftian obviousness of what was going on should stagger us all.

 

George paused, the air heavy with inference. IBM had, of course, stolen his file, having an inbuilt program to detect anything to do with UFO's/ The computer hadn't just eaten it or anything like that which happens to us normal folk. Nosireebob. But, George continued, FTs have been conclusively proved to be taking an interest in nuclear power stations. And he finally, but somewhat shyly, conceded that they "could be ET craft". Well, yes they could. Why these people - and you see them all the time at UFO cons, can't just come straight out and say at the beginning of their lecture that they believe wholeheartedly in ETs, have done since they were a puppy, and that their lecture will illustrate the proof of this, I just don't know. Other than, of course, the fact that there is a fundamental contradiction inherent in the juxtaposition of 'proof and extraterrestrials'.

 

So George went off to fettle his Whippet (true, I saw him coming out of the lift with one - unless it was an alien with a particularly effective cloaking device). Dr Rauni-Leena Luukarem Kilde (Ivy Tilsley) next. 'Different' ufology, benevolent aliens, love as the central power of the universe, governments unable to face the change that is sure to come etc. etc. Course, Rauni-loobi is being harassed by 'them', microwave beams are aimed at her (shut the bloody microwave door then Rauni), she has had all her thoughts sucked out of her at a UFOcon by some dude with a belt device, and had to change rooms three times at the conference hotel for unspecified but presumably paranoiac reasons.

 

Hard core - you know the score. I didn't see Tim Rifiat's lecture on Remote Viewing but I did 'see' it. And I know what you're doing now as well, so stop it! 'Busty' Taylor last. I thought everyone had long since got over the schoolboy humour inherent in Busty's nickname, but the compere made it new for us each time he referred to him as 'Buster', conjuring up visions of a Beano cartoon strip based on 'Buster' Taylor and the adventures he has pulling on his joystick aloft the crop circles of England. Nice bloke actually, entertaining speaker, seemed genuinely interested in crop circles but not concerned about making money from them. In fact he's become financially poorer from his pursuit of the mystery.

 

And that dear reader if I may digress a while, is the mark of someone who's serious about the subject. Simple fact: If you're making money you're invariably a charlatan. If you're loosing money due to your interests it's a safe bet that whatever your beliefs you hold them sincerely. Or am I wrong readers? Busty's seen it all and photographed most of it. He's even come upon people shagging in crop-circles. Accidentally, and in his 'Plane, of course. He believes most circles are hoaxed, but that the simple designs represent a real phenomenon. Fair enough, so far so good. But his logic seemed less than rigorous on this as he'd already showed us one of massive complexity which had allegedly formed in 35 minutes and was thus not a hoax. When pushed he 'admitted' he thought they were caused by ETs and that maybe even the old ring barrows ("which look just like a UFO") were done thusly because the ancients were copying what they saw in the sky. He wouldn't be drawn too much on the subject of hoaxers, saying he was going to reveal 'all' at a meeting later this summer. Why not now, a few of us cheerily taunted - chicken or what? At this a somewhat haughty George Wingfield turned his steely gaze on us mere insects and left us in no doubt who he thought, nay knew, who the hoaxers were - Jim Schnabel, Chris Kenworthy, Rob Irving, Wessex Sceptics, he snapped. Old news George, old news. Even Busty agreed. He was going to unveil someone else.

 

Not now, but soon. We wait. Actually old Busty really doesn't like hoaxers and even said he would 'fight' (a technical croppy term apparently) anyone he found hoaxing a circle. That really would be the last straw. I share the belief about most if not all crop circles being hoaxed but where the are good examples of a complex circle which has been aborted or made wrongly? They surely can't get them all right. Equally, why has no team of hoaxers taken a video of them doing the dirty deed, to whip out when the corn maniacs are proclaiming it to genuine? Answers please. End of day - all went home rejoicing.”

 

Our second conference of the year was our usual two day November gathering at the Lowther Pavilion in Lytham with Sam Wright (now of UK Probe International) master of ceremonies.

 

Unfortunately, we've also lost the flyer for this one but the speakers were Dr Brian O'Leary (former NASA astronaut who spoke on free energy), Bill Holden (USAF sergeant who met aliens), Dea Martin (an aura reader), David Percy (TV producer who spoke on the Mars, Avebury & Stonehenge connection) and Simon Lewis of the Morecambe UFO group who spoke on transient lunar phenomena.

 

The main memory of this year was the bizarre sight of former NASA astronaut Brian O'Leary and his Lapis Pig. Every time he quoted scoffers of his alternative energy ideas he would launch into a ventriloquist act with his hand thrust firmly up his blue muppet. Lytham, nor Sesame Street, has seen anything quite like it since!

 

We also recall Bill Holden arriving a couple of days before the conference and entertaining us all in a Lytham pub with stories of his meetings with aliens and showing us a model alien head.  The locals looked on in fascination and the ever resourceful super salesman Sam managed to flog them a few tickets!

 

Not surprisingly, with a former NASA astronaut on the speakers list, we recorded our highest ever attendance this year and filled the 400 seat auditorium.

 

Happy days!

 

wpfa354999_02.jpg

© 2008 LAPIS