On this day
Have you ever wondered what strange phenomena have occurred on the same day? If so, then the new feature “Encounters with Aliens on this Day” is something you should check out. Its a compilation of high strangeness UFO events by calendar day, written by Dr. Donald A. Johnson, the archivist for UFOCAT.
The “Alien Encounters On This Day” project began in November 2002 when the current archivist for UFOCAT, Dr. Donald A. Johnson, began to notice what he believed were an unusual number of connections or similarities between UFO reports occurring on the same day, but not necessarily in the same year. In checking for multiple references to an event occurring at a certain geographical place name, Dr. Johnson was struck by what first looked like researchers recording the wrong year for incidents in the same place on the same day and at roughly the same time, involving the same or similar type of objects. On further investigation it became apparent that some UFO hotspots have produced anniversary “repeat performances,” with an entirely different set of witnesses.
For some dates these uncanny connections across the years were definitely more striking than for other calendar dates. Why would it be, for instance, that a particular calenter date would have an unusually high number of landing reports with ground traces found, yet another calendar date would have none? There are statistical tests that can be applied to see whether relatively rare events are occuring at remarkably higher rates on certain dates, but a qualitative review of the data needed to be performed first, to capture a full range of the kinds of similarities that may be present. It seemed worth pursuing this in a series of daily reports that outlined the most important UFO events recorded for that day in the UFOCAT database, and making note of any common themes at the bottom of report.
This is the beginning stage of a qualitative analysis, much like that performed by Dr. Thomas E. Bullard in his ground-breaking dissertation study of UFO abductions. It is too early to say for certain if any added knowledge will come from this approach, other than the production of an interesting historical record from a new pespective. If certain events occur on particular days with statistical significance, it is also too early to say what might be causing these commonalities.
We hope the reader will share some of the same excitement in the quest for answers that motivated Dr. Johnson to begin this study, and if he or she discovers some other heretofor hidden connections between events occurring on the same date, will share them with us!
Bio
DONALD A. JOHNSON, Ph.D.
Donald Johnson has been an industrial/organizational psychologist and test developer for many years and is now living and teaching in Thailand.
Dr. Johnson has had a long term interest in the UFO phenomenon dating back to Michigan “swamp gas” UFO wave of 1966, and maintains a computer database of over 170,000 UFO reports for the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, called UFOCAT. He is the author of The UFO Phenomenon: A Guide for the Perplexed (in press). He is also an avid student of cultural and biological anthropology, behavioral genetics, and the evolutionary history of human beings.
Donald Johnson can be contacted at: donaldarthurjohnson@gmail.com