By Dr. Donald
A. Johnson, PhD
Beyond mere
curiosity value, could it be important to study the UFO phenomenon
by calendar date? It’s
possible, indeed likely, that there exists an important signal in
the noise that might be isolated by taking this approach.
What we do know is that similar experiences happen on the
same day. Although it is
too early yet to apply any statistical tests to the data, it seems
at first blush that these similarities occur far too often to be due
to coincidence alone.
Below is a revised version of my article on the topic from the Ohio
UFO Notebook, included in issue no. 24, the 2003 Membership Issue,
published by William Jones and MUFON of Ohio.
I have sifted
through tens of thousands of UFO reports from many
perspectives, and one impression I have gained is that there
is something remarkably strange about the similarity of UFOs
encounters that occur on the same month and day, in different years!
I haven’t yet
come up with a good working hypothesis for the cause of this
phenomenon, which I have nicknamed the “same time next year”
syndrome. But I am
reasonably sure I may be onto something important.
I would like to invite you to judge whether I am deluding
myself.
Here is some
of the wild speculation that I have briefly entertained as a
possible cause for what I have been seeing in the data:
1)
Perhaps with
UFOs we are dealing with some kind of time traveling phenomenon that
winks out in one year and comes back in future years.
It may not actually be “gone” in the spatial sense, only in
the temporal sense. This
sounds very far-fetched, but I can cite you instances of places
(so-called UFO hotspots) that have the same or similar object show
up on the same date over multiple years, and engage in the same type
of behavior.
2)
Perhaps UFOs
are indeed extraterrestrial in origin, and because planetary
orientations need to be correct for travel, similar events tend to
occur at the same tome of the year, maybe within a day or so each
year.
3)
Or perhaps we
live in a “multiverse.”
The UFO phenomenon may be a manifestation of a “many worlds”
phenomenon—one in which the UFO occupants come from different
versions of parallel Earths, but some constants or spatial
invariants are necessary for passage from one world to another.
One restraint might require entering and exiting parallel
worlds from the “same location” to avoid materializing in an adverse
situation or solid rock.
4)
Or we might
be dealing with a psychological response to some external stimuli in
our environment. We
humans may be predisposed to react to the same seasonal or
geomagnetic stimuli that cause, in at least some of us, a similar
set of hallucinations, delusions, or even psychic phenomena.
This external trigger may be natural, caused by some poorly
understood electrical phenomenon, or artificial, such as due to
government mind control experiments popular in some conspiracy
theories.
As Mark Twain once quipped, “Science is wonderful.
You can get such a wholesale return of conjecture from such a
trifling investment of fact!”
But I have looked at a LOT of data—probably a good deal more
than most of you, my esteemed colleagues—so I am going to be
presumptuous and tell you that my hunch is a hunch, but at least it
is an educated hunch.
If you are skeptical about my assertion, so much the better!
Act as my sounding board and check it out for yourselves.
To this end I have been writing a daily report of incidents
that occur on the same calendar day, regardless of the year.
Due to time pressures some reports may be incomplete and
shorter than others, but I am doing my best to develop a report on
the anniversary of each calendar day.
Above article source credit and link to:
http://www.ufoinfo.com/onthisday/sametimenextyear.html
Click here to link with the Calendar Day research by Dr. Donald
Johnson:
http://www.ufoinfo.com/onthisday/calendar.html
A biography on Dr. Johnson and his UFOCAT Database
(CUFOS/UCAT.COM):
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1028.htm