LAPIS 2007 UFO Conference

EVENTS AND CONFERENCES

THE 2007 CONFERENCE

This year saw another great line up but unusually for a LAPIS June conference the weather was quite cool. There would be no late night drunken beach party after this one unlike the previous two years where shorts and t-shirts were very much the order of the day.

This year was the first time that our new head honcho, Janet Walkey, was master of ceremonies after the emigration of Rob Whitehead to Cyprus during the previous April. Janet did an excellent job once we’d figured out how to lower the microphone to Janet’s world view and will be hosting all our conferences from now on!

Here’s a review of the conference by the rising star of the paranormal world, the amazing and very youthful Sam Willey of Alienationsam.com ...

LAPIS Conference 2007 - Event Report

Posted on June 17th 2007

Written by Sam Willey

On Saturday June 16 2007 I attended the Lancashire Anomalous Phenomena Investigation Society (LAPIS) UFO conference which took place in St. Anne’s Lancashire, England. The event began at 10:30am with Janet Walkey giving her opening address to the good turnout of UFO enthusiasts from all parts of the country. Janet gave the opening address which would usually have been the job of the chairman Rob Whitehead however Rob recently moved to Cyprus and had to leave his group responsibilities behind. At any rate the conference got under way and the first speaker was announced.

Alan Murdie who has written for Foretean Times Magazine and is the former chairman of the Ghost Club organization was first to lecture. His talk entitled “UFO’s and the gateway to the magical mind” firstly detailed an interesting UFO case from Columbia, South America. This well known UFO case took place in July 1969 and apparently involved a Columbian farmer who chased a strange ball of light only to meet his death a day later. The main point of his lecture was light ball UFO’s that thousands have reported. Mr. Murdie gave his opinion on what he thinks these lights may be stating that they could be strange mystical creatures or spirits instead of the widely believed extraterrestrial hypothesis. Murdie went out of his way to really dismiss the Roswell 1947 alleged UFO crash calling the event a “folk story” and “a good story but nothing more” to the disagreement of myself and many others in the audience. With the disagreements aside Murdie made a good point regarding our mind and how we see things, he said that he believes there is something within that makes us all see things as being strange. For example he showed a ghost photograph and said if you expect to see a ghost you will no matter if there is an explanation present. Though I had strong disagreements with many points of Alan Murdie’s lecture it was still extremely well presented and one of the best of the day.

During a break between the first and second lecture I noticed that Larry Warren due to speak at the end of the conference had arrived at the venue. I walked over and shook Larry’s hand and to my surprise Larry said “Have we met before” I thought for a moment then replied saying that I didn’t think so. I had a file full of information with me at the event and I presented the April 2007 issue of UFO Magazine were I had wrote an article about the Rendlesham Forest Incident which Larry was a witness to back in 1980. As soon as I opened the magazine and showed him Larry realized that it was actually UFO Magazine were he had seen me previously. It turns out that Larry has read my work before and thinks I am doing well thus far in this field. Larry believes it is excellent to see that younger people are getting into this subject so early on in life and told me it is what this subject needs, new people to carry on with the research.

After my first conversation with Larry Warren the next lecture was ready to go and this second speaker was Joe McGonagle who was presenting reports from airline pilots. Joe presented some intriguing information which was direct from official ministry of defence documents which he had obtained from the national archives. The main theme of the reports was grey delta shaped objects reportedly flying beneath aircraft these objects had been tracked on radar. Many technical problems occurred through his lecture, the talk had to stop for a break at one point, but with that aside the content which was the main point of the lecture was excellent and very interesting to say the least. It was most interesting to find out that the MOD think an unknown grey object picked up on radar flying right below aircraft is no risk to the security of the United Kingdom.

This second lecture of the day was followed by a lunch break and during this time I had a chat with fellow researchers and experiencers. I had a chat with Satcha Christie who writes for UFO Data magazine on a number of occasions and found her to be a truly great person with many amazing experiences to talk about. During the lunch break I also had a brief talk with Joe McGonagle about his lecture and then sat down and interviewed a young UFO enthusiast like myself called Alex Devereaux who was a witness to a UFO and missing time experience known as the High Bentham Incident which LAPIS investigated back in 2005. Alex was one of four family members who, whilst returning home from a restaurant saw a strange bright light. They did not realize until taking the exact same route they took the evening of the encounter a few days after that up to one hour of missing time was present. Not only did Alex agree to an interview about the event but he also showed me some interesting UFO video footage taken in 2005.

After the one hour lunch break I returned to the conference hall and the third speaker of the day Jon Downes was ready to begin his lecture. Jon Downes is the founder and chairman of the Centre for Forten Zoology which promotes research into mysterious animals. Downes has personally searched for lake monsters at Loch Ness in Scotland and has searched for monsters in many other countries around the world. Jon presented some information about Loch Ness and eels but the main point of his lecture was co-operation between all subject matters. Jon Downes believes that there should be greater information sharing network between researchers of all subjects including UFO’s, Ghosts and Zoology as he believes they could all be connected and we can get further working together.

The final lecture of the day was from Larry Warren who like I mentioned previously I talked to Larry on a number of occasions throughout the day. Larry’s lecture was obviously focused on Rendlesham however he also mentioned the conspiracy theories behind the 9/11 terror attacks. Larry attended a 9/11 truth movement conference in Liverpool and was no impressed by the theories calling it “selective information” and his reasons behind not believing the theories was simply because he lost friends in the attacks. Larry does not believe that a half-minded president such as George Bush could pull off the largest mass murder in American history. After 25 years of being in the public spotlight about his Rendlesham Forest experience Larry finds it hard to talk about the events and told me that the last time he did he felt physically sick which is understandable after going over the event over and over again over the past 25 years. I would like to thank Larry for also giving me a quick mention during his lecture I hope the new researchers can live up to everything the older researchers have contributed to the subject.

In conclusion I enjoyed the event and enjoyed meeting with other researchers, I would like to personally thank the LAPIS events organizer Janet Walkey for putting on a great conference and I look forward to the next LAPIS event.

Here’s some piccies - apologies for the poor quality as they are either video screen captures or taken while the photographer was too drunk to adjust the settings on the camera!