Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up Read online

  He says he has a videotape.

  Deedeedeedee deedeedeedee

  The Videotape

  Later that day, shortly past dusk, a Herald photographer and I go to see “Ed.” He lives in a comfortable suburban house in a tidy development. His wife is in the kitchen, cooking dinner. She doesn’t come out to greet us. I get the impression she’s not thrilled that we’re there.

  “Ed,” on the other hand, is very cordial. He laughs a lot. He bustles around, showing us a drawing he made of the UFO and getting out more photographs of it. He seems to have a lot more of them. He shows us the camera he uses, an old, battered Polaroid held together with tape.

  Then the three of us sit on his living room floor, and he shows us the videotape, which he shot with his Sony home video camera. The tape was apparently taken in his backyard, from behind some bushes, which can be heard rustling as the photographer moves around. The tape shows the same object, just above the tree line, moving kind of jerkily from right to left, then back again. It lasts only a minute or two.

  “Ed” shows it to us again, then looks at us.

  “That’s incredible,” we say, almost simultaneously.

  The Questions

  As soon as we leave, the photographer tells me that something is wrong. The film “Ed” uses in his Polaroid has an ASA rating of 80, which means it is relatively slow to react to light. This means that the shutter must stay open a relatively long time, especially in low light. And this in turn means that a moving object, even if photographed by a skilled photographer, would look blurred. “Ed” has stated repeatedly that the object moves almost constantly—as it does in the videotape—and yet in almost all of his photographs, the object is in fairly sharp focus.

  “It just doesn’t look right,” says the photographer.

  Neither does the videotape, at least to my eyes. The jerky motion of the object makes it appear small, almost toy-like, and fairly close, although “Ed” insists it is “as big as a house.”

  Some other things are strange. Why, if “Ed” could sense the impending arrival of the object, didn’t he ever call his neighbors to be witnesses? And why, when he realized the object was visiting repeatedly, didn’t he get a better camera? I asked him both of these questions several times; he never really answered.

  But the most troubling evidence is “Ed” himself. He acts agitated, manic. Not to put too fine a point on it, he acts a little crazy. Of course, maybe this is normal behavior if aliens have put a mental input in your head. But still, I am getting skeptical. And I am not alone.

  The Skeptic

  Philip Klass is the nation’s, if not the world’s, leading UFO skeptic. The UFOlogists do not like him (MUFON’s Donald Ware suggested to me that Klass has a “mental problem”). Klass retired last year after 35 years as senior electronics editor of Aviation Week magazine, but his involvement with UFOs is through an organization called the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, of which he is chairman of the UFO subcommittee. In that capacity, he has spent a lot of time debunking various UFO claims. For example, he recently issued a report charging that the “Majestic 12” documents—the ones that allegedly prove that the government has dead aliens stashed away—are obvious forgeries. I must admit I found that story a tad hard to believe myself. It’s not that I don’t believe the government would try to hide dead aliens; it’s that I don’t think the government would succeed, since every time the government tries to do anything secretly, as in the Iran-contra arms deal, it winds up displaying all the finesse and stealth of an exploding cigar at a state funeral. If there really were dead aliens, I figure, there also would be daily leaks about it from High-Level Officials, and huge arguments among influential congresspersons over whose district the multimillion-dollar Federal Dead Alien Storage Facility would be located in.

  Anyway, Klass, as you might imagine, is very dubious about the claim that UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors.

  “I can think of no more exciting story,” he says, “than to say I have investigated a UFO case for which there was no earthly explanation. In the 22

  years I have been investigating, I have never found a single such case.”

  But what about the photographs?

  “Photographs are the easiest things in the world to fake,” says Klass. “Even the UFO believers are very, very skeptical of them.” Klass is especially suspicious of Polaroids, because they have no negatives, which are often useful in the detection of hoaxes. He thinks it’s suspicious that no negatives were included with any of the photographs anonymously submitted to the Sentinel.

  “The odds against those photographs being authentic are jillions to one,” he says.

  But what about the witnesses?

  “Once the report gets out that there are UFOs in the area, you get all kinds of me-tooers,” Klass says. “Ninety-eight percent of all people who report seeing UFOs are trying to be honest. But we’ve been brainwashed by what we’ve read and been told. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.”

  That’s also the opinion expressed by astronomer Robert Young in a letter to the newsletter of the Astronomical League. Young says that, having investigated “a couple of hundred UFO reports”—all of which turned out to have prosaic explanations—he has concluded that “no eyewitness report of a UFO can be taken at its face value.” He adds that “waves” of UFO sightings “end when editors tire of them. ... My experience is that when news stories stop, the calls stop too.”

  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  I call Dr. Robert Nathan at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He’s the one the Enquirer flew the Polaroids, Duane Cook and all, out to see. He’s the one who’s supposed to be doing the scientific photographic analysis. Only he’s not. He says he’s suspicious of the photographs, both because of the way they look and because more than one set of them came from the same source.

  “I’m way off in the nonbeliever corner on this one,” says Dr. Nathan. “Unless something changes, I don’t care to use government equipment on this. I have the feeling that somebody is perpetrating a hoax.”

  The Ray People

  If it is a hoax, the question is, Why? I am no psychiatrist, but I think the answer is suggested by John Keel, author of several UFO books. Keel argues that the modern era of UFO sightings was launched by a pulp science-fiction magazine called Amazing Stories, edited by a man named Raymond Palmer. In 1947, Palmer published a story about fiendish alien beings controlling life on Earth through the use of rays. Suddenly, Amazing Stories was deluged with mail from readers who insisted that the story was true, because they had been affected by the beings.

  “Palmer had accidentally tapped a huge, previously unrecognized audience,” writes Keel. “Nearly every community has at least one person who complains constantly to the local police that someone—usually a neighbor—is aiming a terrible ray gun at their house or apartment. This ray, they claim, is ruining their health, causing their plants to die, turning their bread moldy, making their hair and teeth fall out and broadcasting voices into their heads. Psychiatrists are very familiar with these ‘ray’ victims and relate the problem with paranoid schizophrenia.

  “In earlier times, [the paranoiacs] thought they were hearing the voice of God and/or the devil. Today they often blame the CIA or space beings for their woes. ... Ray Palmer unintentionally gave thousands of these people focus for their lives.”

  The Call

  Back in Miami, I call “Ed” one morning. I tell him my theory, which is that he really does think he’s being hounded by aliens but that he has faked all the photographs, using different cameras, in an effort to get others to believe him.

  “Ed” tells me that since I last saw him, he was attacked by the beam while he was driving alone. “I was blown off the road and had to crawl underneath the truck,” he says. He says he gave a full report on this to the people at MUFON, for their ever-growing data bank.

  He also says that two armed men from the “Special Security Se
rvices” of the Air Force (he didn’t get their names) came around with a “material seizure warrant” and demanded his photographs. He says he didn’t want to send them to Duane Cook, so he told them he gave the photographs to me.

  So that’s the situation in Gulf Breeze, as far as I know it. Of course, there are some unanswered questions. For example, if “Ed” is faking the photographs, how is he doing it? And—this one still bothers me—what did the Somerbys see?

  As of this writing, I haven’t seen anything about this in the National Enquirer. I also haven’t heard from the Air Force.

  I expect, however, that I’ll hear from you out there in Readerland. One thing nobody disputes is that stories about UFOs generate reports about UFOS. But listen: If you have anything to report, the place to send it is:

  The Miami UFO Center P.O. Box 313

  Opa-Locka, Fl, 33054

  The important thing is: Don’t call me. OK. It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s that my life is already filled with bizarre, inexplicable phenomena, such as the way the right rear speaker in my car never works except when they play songs I hate. Deedeedeedee deedeedeedee

  Reader Alert

  This next section is mostly columns about Amazing but True things that I found out about thanks to mail from alert readers. One of these readers, as you will see, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, who alerted me about a ground-breaking new antiflatulence product called Beano. This resulted in a column that some newspapers found too offensive to print, a fact that resulted in another column, which was either about censorship or circumcision, I am still not sure which.

  This section also contains vital information about an issue that everybody needs to think about more, namely, toilet snakes.

  Plumber’s Helper

  Here at the Bureau of Animal Alarm we have received a disturbing Associated Press photograph sent in by alert journalist Russ Williams of the Asheville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times (motto: “A Newspaper Whose Staff Has Too Much Spare Time”). This photo shows a goat, looking fairly calm under the circumstances, hanging by its horns from a rope going through a pulley attached to the side of a building. Two men in a window are holding the other end of the rope. Here is the caption, which we are not making up:

  SPAIN—A goat hangs by his horns from the bell tower of the church in Manganeses de la Polvorosa, some 200 miles northwest of Madrid. Villagers, who open the religious festival of St. Vincent by dropping a goat from the church belfry, attacked police who tried to block the tradition. The goat was uninjured as villagers caught the goat with a tarp.

  As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons. We are sure that the people of Manganeses de la Polvorosa would be amused by some common American religious practices.

  “We may drop goats from belfries,” they’d probably say, “but at least we don’t thank the Lord for touchdowns.”

  Nevertheless, we here at the Bureau feel that the Immigration authorities should keep a sharp lookout for Manganeses de la Polvorosa tour groups coming to the United States, particularly New York. Because they might decide to visit the Empire State Building, and while they’re up on the observation deck they might suddenly smack their foreheads and realize that it’s time to open the festival of St. Vincent, and the next day’s New York Post might print the following tragic headline:

  TERRIFIED CROWD FLEES 120 MPH DEATH BUTT

  Another animal menace that we all need to be more concerned about is giant toilet snakes. This is a growing problem, as can be seen by the following statistics:

  Number of Articles About Giant Toilet Snakes We Received Prior to 1992: Zero. Number of Articles About Giant Toilet Snakes We Have Received in 1992: One.

  Statistically, this represents an increase of infinity percent in the number of giant toilet-snake reports. The most recent one, sent by alert reader Jack Sowers, was written by reporter Mike Leggett for the Austin (Texas) American Statesman. It concerns a man named Steve Ashenfelter, who used to manage an Oklahoma hunting and fishing club. One day he went into the clubhouse bathroom, and, in his words, “there was a big snake lying in the toilet. As soon as he saw me he just swirled around and went down the pipes.”

  So Ashenfelter did exactly what you would do; namely, he moved to another continent.

  No, really, he followed standard toilet-snake procedure, which is to go around flushing the three clubhouse toilets in an effort to get the snake to come out.

  “I went in the bathroom upstairs, and there he was, lying in the toilet up there,” Ashenfelter recalled. “So I went and flushed all the toilets, and he came back up in the toilet where I saw him the first time.”

  Eventually, Ashenfelter got the snake, but it took him two days, and he ended up using—we are still not making this up—two fishing poles, chlorine bleach, muskrat traps in all three toilets, an eight-foot piece of lumber, rope, and heavy metal hooks. The snake turned out to be over seven feet long.

  We do not wish to create a nationwide panic, but apparently there is a new breed of large, commode-dwelling snakes that have figured out how to move from toilet to toilet, which means they could easily travel across the country via the Interstate Plumbing System. This has serious ramifications, especially if you’re a parent trying to potty-train a small child. Psychologists agree that the best way to handle this situation is: lie. “Don’t worry!” you should tell the small child many times, “A big snake won’t come out of the toilet!” This is the approach Mister Rogers is taking.

  Meanwhile, however, something must be done. One practical approach would be for the government to require all U.S. citizens to put muskrat traps in their commodes. The only problem here is that if the trap is not removed prior to commode usage, there could be severe consequences for guys of the male gender. On the other hand, many women might view this as a fair punishment for all the billions of times that guys have left the seat up. It’s definitely something to think about as each of us, in his or her own way, prepares to celebrate the festival of St. Vincent.

  Watch Your Rear

  As you are aware if you follow international events, over the past year I have written a number (two) of columns about the worldwide epidemic of snakes in toilets. As a result I have received many letters from people who have had personal toilet-snake encounters, to the point where I now consider it newsworthy when somebody reports NOT finding a snake in a toilet.

  But now I am getting nervous. I say this because of a recent alarming incident wherein a woman, attempting to use her commode, was attacked in an intimate place—specifically, Gwinnett County, Georgia—by a squirrel. I have here an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, written by Gail Hagans and sent in by a number of alert readers. The headline—a textbook example of clear journalism—states: Squirrel somehow makes way into commode, scratches Gwinnett woman’s behind. I am not making this headline up.

  The woman is quoted as follows: “I went to the bathroom and lifted the lid and sat down. That’s when I felt something scratching my behind.”

  So, following the recommended “Jump, Slam, Call, and Tell” emergency procedure, she jumped up, slammed the lid down, called her husband at work, and told him to come home immediately, which he of course did. We may live in an age of gender equality, but men have a protective instinct that dates back millions of years, to when they would have had to defend their mates from such vicious predators as the saber-toothed tiger and the mastodon (toilets were much bigger in those days).

  Unfortunately, by the time the husband got home, the squirrel had drowned, forcing us to once again ask WHEN the failed Clinton administration will demand that ALL commodes be equipped with tiny life preservers. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that the squirrel apparently got into the plumbing system via a roof vent, which means that if you, like so many people, have a roof, your toilet is vulnerable to any organism with a long,
narrow body, including (but not limited to) otters, weasels, dachshunds, squids, and international fashion models with only one name, such as Iman.

  But that is by no means the only major toilet development. There is also the Mystery Toilet in Texas that produces ballpoint pens. I am not making this up, either. According to a story in the Wichita Falls (Texas) Times/Record News, written by Steve Clements and sent in by several alert readers, a man named David Garza of Henrietta, Texas, has fished 75 Paper Mate ballpoint pens out of his toilet over the past two years, sometimes as many as five pens per day. Garza has no idea where they’re coming from, and neither do the local sewer authorities.

  The story was accompanied by a photograph of Garza sitting on the bathtub next to the Mystery Toilet, holding a pen, looking like a successful angler. I called him immediately. “What’s the status of the toilet” I asked.

  “It’s still a mystery,” he said. He said he hadn’t found any new pens since the newspaper story, but that he has become something of a celebrity. This is understandable. People naturally gravitate to a man who has a Mystery Toilet.

  “Everywhere I go,” he said, “people say to me, ‘Have you got a pen?’”

  I asked him if the pens still write, and he said they do.

  “Paper Mate ought to make a commercial out of this,” he said. “The slogan could be, ‘We come from all over and write anywhere.’ You know, like Coca-Cola, ‘It’s there when you need it.’”

  Actually, I don’t think that’s Coca-Cola’s slogan. But Garza’s statement got me to thinking about a possible breakthrough TV commercial wherein an athlete is standing in the locker room, sweating, thirsty as heck, and the toilet gurgles, and up pops a nice refreshing can of Coke. Yum! A commercial like that might be exactly what Coca-Cola needs to counteract all the free media attention Pepsi got recently with the syringe thing.