Two New Articles Discuss UFO Demons in the Defense Department

​This week, two very different articles both discussed the same bonkers idea, namely that a significant faction in the U.S. Department of Defense believes that the country is battling demons, poltergeists, psychic mind storms, and other refugees from bad horror movies. A Den of Geek article pulled together a number of statements from the past year given by various players orbiting around ESP investigator, former U.S. government paranormal researcher and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science executive Hal Puthoff to the effect that the U.S. government has been investigating what one former employee of Robert Bigelow’s UFO research company called “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more,” all under the cover of UFO studies.

 

​According to Den of Geek, Luis Elizondo of To the Stars alleges that there were two different Pentagon programs. The broader was Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications, which explored all manner of paranormal and demonic activity. Within AAWSAP was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which focused on UFOs. According to Elizondo, Christian conservatives shut down AAWSAP for fear of demons, leaving only AATIP, which was less likely to summon Satan accidentally. And I am writing this as though any of this is a normal thing for the military to do. If even half of these claims are true, we need to purge the military of all its paranormal-believing idiots.

While it is disturbing to see all of the information laid out in one article, we have long known that Hal Puthoff, working variously for the government, Robert Bigelow, and To the Stars, has consistently pushed the government to explore supernatural phenomena. Bigelow folded his research into the Skinwalker Ranch “phenomena” into the research done for the Pentagon as part of its UFO tracking program, for which Bigelow was the primary contractor. Indeed, Elizondo told Den of Geek that AAWSAP was created specifically to fund research into Skinwalker Ranch’s alleged interdimensional poltergeists. We know from the recent Hunt for the Skinwalker documentary that the Skinwalker Ranch hunt produced no evidence of otherworldly phenomena, though the researchers involved were nevertheless convinced that the “entities” were simply too crafty to leave any trace of their existence.

But the second article, in which Nick Redfern also discussed the role of Christian conservatives in limiting military paranormal studies for fear of demons, was more interesting for how it dovetails into information that Puthoff’s former paranormal research partner and current “metamaterials” investigative partner Jacques Vallée had to say about exactly where the Pentagon was getting its batshit ideas about demons and flying saucers.

Redfern writes that Linda Moulton Howe of Ancient Aliens received a letter back in the 1990s from two men who allegedly worked on one of the Pentagon programs dedicated to contacting demons or ghosts, which they termed “Non-Human Entities.” The two men read Howe’s book Glimpses of Other Realities and felt compelled to send her a fan letter in 1994. According to Redfern, part of the letter read this way:

Our misguided program directors cling to the false belief that we can control or manipulate the NHEs, when in actuality, the reverse is occurring – we are the ones being manipulated and deceived. […] The ultimate diversionary tactic to this point (and diversions will begin to increase in frequency, degree of strangeness, and in a more overt fashion, visible to greater numbers of observers) is the UFO abduction scenario. The concept of these events, real though they are, being the result of extraterrestrial beings is a masterful piece of disinformation to divert attention away from the real source of the NHEs. Our information as to the true nature of these events does not negate the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But the causal source of the UFO and UFO abduction phenomena is not extraterrestrial. […]  Your comments and thoughts (in Glimpses of Other Realities) concerning ancient civilizations and their contacts with the NHEs need to be considered in light of the bigger picture of the deception of mankind as a whole. If this grand deception is taking the course it seems to be, then it makes complete sense to analyze the false gods of ancient civilizations in light of the current level of deception. It is only logical that given their non-human, other-dimensional nature, the NHEs would be able to foresee the need to establish a foundational base, the facts of which could be slightly twisted, or distorted, by the fog of antiquity and forgotten cultural distinctiveness, to seemingly establish themselves as the bringers of all good things to humanity. Explore [Jacques] Vallee’s Passport to Magonia again, for more close parallels between the ‘faerie’ manifestation of the NHEs, and current events. Dr. Vallee was so close to the truth of the situation, with the exception that the ultimate manipulators are not human.

​Normally, I would simply discount the whole thing as made up garbage, but the theoretical background the alleged defense officials describe is basically the same one developed by Jacques Vallée and Hal Puthoff in the 1970s. Puthoff helped to push those ideas onto the Pentagon, and the letter is sadly consistent with what we know of Puthoff’s research interests and government efforts to explore Puthoff’s vision of interdimensional poltergeist tricksters.

The reference to Passport to Magonia recalls what Vallée wrote in early 1973 when Hal Puthoff discussed with him an early effort to shape Pentagon UFO/space ghost policies:

Hal has spoken to other “Government officials in a position to discover the true state of affairs” about UFOs. They told him that people who recently saw strange objects in the sky in the Southwest had only been watching classified prototypes. However they also conceded that there were “true” saucers. Hal said his high-level contacts walked around with UFO books in their briefcases, particularly mine. I found this depressing: Doesn’t that imply that they know less than I do?

​I am bothered by the consistency of reports that a faction of Christian military brass are afraid of demons and that another faction of UFO-hunters are in thrall to the works of the ancient astronaut/Ancient Aliens shared universe.

Nearly half a century after Vallée wrote, we still seem to have government officials mistaking pseudoscience and fringe history books for serious revelations, and I am worried that Ancient Aliens influences Pentagon UFO research as much as Fox & Friends shapes the president’s morning agenda.