UFO Hunters Premieres on SCI FI
January 28, 2008 by Cynthia
They did it with ghosts, and now SCI FI Channel is hunting UFO’s!
UFO Hunters premieres Wednesday, January 30 at 10 pm. This hour-long special sets out to investigate claims of UFO sightings with the help of New York Strange Phenomena Investigators.
As with Ghost Hunters, the UFO Hunters will use cutting-edge technology to debunk or legitimize the evidence presented to them by a variety of witnesses. It’s time to separate fact from fiction and it won’t be easy
In one case, the team must go to the bottom of the ocean to investigate a fireball that fell from the New Jersey sky. In the other, they interview eyewitnesses, including one man who claims to have been abducted, to investigate an unidentifiable object seen in the skies over two states, New York and New Jersey.
Learn more about the series at the UFO Hunters website where you can meet the team and watch videos of the team in action.
Saw the premiere this evening. Interesting show; nicely revealing; tantalizing coverage; good info and information-seeking approach to the topic. Also same fast-pace of edits/scene-switches, as in Ghost Hunters.
Great depth not was not presented, perhaps because of the constraints of video-time — which, being a TV producer myself, I’m well aware of. But even so, the program did present a good range of various aspects of the UFO investigation in question — including some fascinating material, such as the UFO-lights video — to give an energetic overview of the cases shown.
However, as I too have long followed the pros & cons of the UFO phenomenon, I was perturbed by how the show’s psychotherapist Jed Turnbull conducted his hypnotic-regression of a prime New Jersey-case witness:
In just about EVERY clip in which he was shown speaking with the presumably hypnotically-regressed witness, Turnbull LEAD THE SUBJECT: e.g., Turnbull made DEFINITIVELY LEADING-STATEMENTS/QUESTIONS — which in professional regressive hypnosis is an absolute no-no!
For example, Turnbull, in the hypnosis-session, said to the subject such things as (or words to this effect) “You were driving on____ [name of road or location], right?”, or “You really don’t know what it is at this point”, and so on. Turnbull also used ambiguous, e.g., potentially confusing commands — which could also influence a subject — such as by saying “Now move forward” or (if I recall) “Now we’re moving forward”: “Forward” as in driving or walking in a certain direction, or “moving forward in time”, or what? A hypnotically regressed subject’s subconscious might interpret such phrases (and the other leading-questions/statements) in any number of ways that could influence the subject’s actual — or imagined — emotional state or recollection of an event.
And when the subject, (presumably) under hypnosis, had just barely begun recounting his experience, why did Turnbull suddenly command the subject to jump ahead to a different time-frame? Not only was that instructional “jump”, by Turnbull, odd, but, in a regressive-hypnosis session, such a switch could also easily be subconsciously perturbing to the subject, whose (presumed) mental state at such a moment would presumably be extremely susceptible to any influence – including an emotional shakeup – from the questioner.
When the subject, (presumably) under hypnosis, also spoke of being approached by a strange – but as yet barely-described – entity, Turnbull made another fundamental error: Instead of asking for a pure observational description, which is what Turnbull should have done, Turnbull abruptly commanded, “Let’s try to find out what he wants” – a decidedly suggestive and imagination-influencing command! By so doing, Turnbull has pressed the subject to conjure up a motive– any motive – on the part of the alleged (or imagined) entity.
Big, unprofessional, misleading, error by Turnbull – and it may well have twisted the subject’s presumably-pristine subconscious memory (if indeed it was a memory) into an embellished – even if innocently so – fabrication.
Plus, for whatever reason, at one point in the hypnosis-session, Turnbull also seemed at a loss as to how even express himself in proper English:
When the subject, (presumably) under hypnosis, mentioned the presence of beings who “were not people”, Turnbull asked “How many people is there?” Not “ARE” but “IS”. Huh?? Might that grammatical error have confused the subject and thusly triggered an emotional blip in which the subject’s recollection (or imagined recollection) may have been pushed, perhaps by momentary confusion, to a more intense emotional state, thereby leading to a false or overly-embellished recollection? Maybe — because very shortly, as the subject seemed to quickly start reaching a higher level of fear, the NY-SPI team called for a stop to the hypnosis-session; but I suppose that we’ll now never know.
I’ve had Budd Hopkins (among others) — who I believe has long been very attentive to the intricacies of hypnotic-regression issues such as these — as a guest on my own TV series (a weekly prime-time discussion series that I host on Time Warner in s. Manhattan); I’ve also followed the field for many years as well as I can; and I think I’m at least moderately knowledgeable (though I don’t profess to be an expert!) about the proper and improper ways to conduct a hypnotic regression session — and, in my opinion, Turnbull’s conduct of the portions of the hypnosis-session that were shown on tonight’s premiere episode failed on all measures of reliability. It was, in my opinion, an opportunity lost.
I was also perturbed by how the show presented the purportedly clandestinely-obtained “FAA document”:
The document was never clearly identified (other than by it being claimed to be an FAA document), nor were its relevant (?) contents sufficiently shown or detailed — all that we got was a rapid-pace showing of seconds-long video-snippets of some typed numbers or phrases on a page, backed by a few exclamations of amazement by the NY-SPI team and some of their comments as to how the document showed (they said) that the FAA had indeed tracked and verified the speed of various of the UFOs in question. Titillating, yes, but — presented this way, without clear specifics — worthy of reliance on by the TV audience? No way. Unprofessional, and unnecessarily unsatisfactory, use of the information. Another opportunity lost.
I would hope that Turnbull, and the team, will seek to insure that greater professionality be employed in the above areas in future shows in this TV series.
But I will say this: In my opinion, the show itself, overall, was intriguing, refreshing, and, I think, a very good start.
And it certainly is about time, after all these years, that there is finally a major TV series devoted to regularly and, it seems, fairly, seeking to uncover the truth of UFO events.
I’ll have to say this is one of the best UFO related shows yet!
The show brings new information to the table that breathes new life into some of the most thoroughly researched UFO cases known… Information thats not just some further information on some already well known item, but new details that had not been researched by anyone else previously… And they’ve come forward with new details that have helped clarify past information much more clearly… And in many cases the individuals they have found that have new facts about a case are not just some kook but are in fact very credible witnesses… And they have taken the care to investigate all angles of the case so as to include the analysis that would come from a skeptics point of view as well… They have a hit on their hands with this one!… Keep up the good work!…