Frustrating Television

By Romana Annette  09/21/2009

Certain television programs, about UFO’s, cryptozoology, and ghosts, can create a speculative kind of journalism that plays games with peoples’ minds, but generates no resolution.  While such programs can really stimulate our sense of wonder or even give us goose bumps, they can feel like time wasters, especially if nothing is proved.  It could even be embarrassing to realize that one might even have done something useful, instead of spending a lost hour in front of a television screen.

Programs on these subjects are mostly seen on the History Channel, but some are on SyFy (formerly SciFi) and the Animal Planet channel.  These programs have titles such as Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth, Monsterquest, Mysteryquest (coming soon,) UFO Hunters, and UFO Files.

Ghost programs strive to create spooky pseudo-documentaries and haunted site testing.  There has never been a good explanation for why there could even be encounters with ghosts.  If ghosts exist, I think they would have to be a natural phenomenon, which would preclude any and all supernatural concepts.

How can ghosts walk through all the haunted areas if they are non-corporeal?  How can they walk on the ground without sinking?  If they do not have mass, gravity will not hold them to any part of the Earth.  Ghosts, even if they do exist, should be thrown out into space.  If ghosts were mobile, it would take a great deal of concentration to maintain their location on a rotating planet.  More likely, ghost hunters are measuring some type of unexplained energy emanating from objects and places.  However, a show title Strange Energy Phenomena would not likely attract the desired audience.

UFO phenomena can cover a lot of territory.  There are endless eye-witness testimonies, but never any hard evidence.  Photos and videos never have any clarity.  Once, there was a mention that the Roswell Crash of 1947 was actually a secret U.S. military aircraft, but that seems to be just speculation too.  UFO-related programs can also recycle stock footage and events, such as the mystery of Flight 19, lost off Florida in 1945.

We have constantly been taunted with the Aurora, Texas, crash of 1879.  It was supposed to be so long before present UFO lore that it could give credible evidence.  However, excavations came up with no alien bodies and no technology.  New evidence even suggests that it was all a hoax, perpetrated in a year known for many strange flying object sightings, to pull the town out of an economic slump.  It turned out that alien visitation lore was already widespread, even in the 1870’s.

Carvings and hieroglyphics from around the world are said to show that extra-terrestrials have been visiting and interacting with us for thousands of years.  While all the structures, such as pyramids, and all the carvings and landscape etchings are impressive, none of it points to extra-terrestrials.  Futuristic artifacts are never found.  No modern plumbing is ever found either.  Apparently, extras-terrestrials did not need to use restrooms.

A new kind of UFO was recently added to the vocabulary: USO’s, Unknown Submerged Objects.  If chasing UFO’s on land is difficult, doing so underwater is nearly impossible.

Cryptozoology is about unknown animals or beings; the animals themselves are referred to as Cryptids.  The field can also be so broad as to include some ghosts and UFO’s.  Much of the lore of Cryptids was pioneered by the late Swiss naturalist, Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) in the 1950’s.  Heuvelmans has been described as the Immanuel Velikovsky of zoology, in reference Velikovsky’s controversial theories of catastrophes causing major events in natural history.  In due respect, some of Heuvelmans’ predictions, such as the Australian marsupial cats, were verified.

It was Heuvelmans who first introduced me to a menagerie of fabled creatures, long before there was any cable television.  It was exciting to read about Mokele-mbembe (an African dinosaur,) Nandi-Bear (an African night killer,) Yeti (a Himalayan humanoid giant), and the legendary European Tatzelwurm (a large, burrowing reptile or salamander.)  Still, not much has really happened in the intervening half century, except the move of the search to cable television.

If I had placed an order for a live Tatzelwurm fifty years ago, I would still be waiting for delivery.

Cryptids on cable television often includes a lot of running around jungles in the dark using night vision…it is spooky, but it is hard to see anything.  Really large animals, such as purported ground sloths and dinosaurs, would likely be diurnal anyway.  Generally, large animals do not do well with obstacles at night.

Great strides have been made recreating animated versions of extinct animals, such as dinosaurs.  However, programs on cryptozoology often use such animations in a questionable manner, by tying reconstructions directly to Cryptids.  For instance, how can the audience not believe that there are pterosaurs in New Guinea , when film makers imply the real things exist, by showing them via special effects?  I refuse to believe that prehistoric pterosaurs have survived, let alone have also turned nocturnal.

There have been reports of monsters in nearly every significant lake around the world.  Eye witness accounts and local legends all describe large animals similar to prehistoric plesiosaurs.  Some speculate that a number of these monsters became stranded after the last ice age.  However, no one can explain how such massive animals could survive in cold water environments where there is not much to eat.  The Loch Ness monster is the most famous, but sightings have been down in recent years, so there has been a concerted effort to find the creature’s body.

The majority of all lake-monster sightings can be attributed to natural features found on the surface of all large bodies of water.  Waves can often simulate the motion of an undulating sea serpent.  Logs can sink to the bottom, but periodically rise to the surface.  Unusually twisted or gnarled wood can look almost alive to the naked eye, but very much like dead pieces of wood in photographs.

Some animal sightings are constantly misidentified, because people are not used to seeing rarer species.  This is the case for the Chupacabra, an almost mythical creature with a fearsome reputation.  In a recent SyFy movie, it was even bullet-proof.  However, all the examples I have seen just look like unusual wild dogs, which people somehow refuse to believe are dogs.

In a Far Side cartoon, one lucky photographer was able to capture the Loch Ness Monster, Big foot, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis in the same picture.  Jackie Kennedy Onassis was not really cryptozoological.  I have already discussed the Loch Ness monster, so that leaves Big Foot.  Big Foot, also known as Sasquatch, is known primarily from its large humanoid foot prints.  Big Foot is hard to see or photograph, despite its extra-large size, which is puzzling, since there have been sightings in forests around the world.  This was explained in the SyFy series, The Invisible Man.  A special gland was used to make people invisible…the gland came from a Big Foot.  If some Cryptids turn out to be invisible, it would make no difference if one searched for them day or night.

One cryptozoological mystery has been solved.  This was about the appearance of spinning rods in many videos.  The phenomenon generated a lot of excitement about documenting a new class of Cryptids; however, it turned out that standard video cameras do not handle rapid motion well, so fast moving insects and birds were showing up as spinning rod-shaped artifacts.  Once faster video cameras were used in scenes where the rods showed up, there were no more rods, just known animals; all the mystery vanished.  If better cameras were used everywhere with some skill, perhaps the majority of mysterious sightings would cease to be so fantastic.