Man in the Moon?

From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by S. Baring-Gould [1867, Kessinger Publishing reprint, Montana] Page 198:

The belief in the Moon-man seems to exist among the natives of British Columbia; for I read in one of Mr. Duncan’s letters to the Church Missionary Society, “One very dark I was told that thre was a moon to be seen on the beach. On going to see, there was an illuminated disk, with the figure of a man upon it. The water was then very low, and one of the conjuring parties had lit up this disk at the waters edge…It was an imposing sight. Nothing could be seen around it; but the Indians suppose that the medicine party are then holding converse with the man in the moon…After a short time the moon waned away…”

This is just one of many such accounts of beings seen inside ships (or moons). Aubeck’s and Vallee’s Wonders in the Sky is replete with such tales.

But what do such tales tell us, about UFOs or anything else?

I suppose that had such an incident as this occurred today, a few avid researchers would descend on that beach and look for tell-tale signs of a moon-landing.

The Indians would be sought out, and one or two would provide testimony and maybe even a drawing of what they purported to have seen.

This is what happened in the Socorro/Zamora sighting of 1964, and in many other so-called UFO or flying saucer sightings.

Such occurrences are not rare. And their redundancy may be intrinsic to the phenomenon we discuss here.

Yet, anyone with a yen to discover the meaning of such accounts is stymied by a lack of concrete substantiation, having only witness testimony as evidence of such events.

So what is the point of pursuing such accounts/stories?

There is nothing that can be examined scientifically.

Those who find such tales to be intriguing or curious are left with ephemeral data, and I’m using the term “data” loosely.

Today, photos and videos are compromised by the onslaught of concocted imagery.

Witness testimony is besmirched by the vicissitudes of modern man: stress, psychological and medical aberrations, the insertion of mind-modules from movies, books, and television, plus the belittled but rampant UFO meme.

Governments and military agencies are holding what they know within the province of secrecy or corrupting what they impart to the point that anything they disclose is virtually worthless.

There is no way forward, as far as I can tell.

Along with our outcry about the unraveling of ufology, the matter of UFO research is beleaguered by the above constraints and the ineptitude or cavalier approach to UFO study hat has been and is endemic to the topic.

Ufological newbies haven’t the expertise to pursue the UFO phenomenon, and the UFO old-guard has missed so many opportunities to clarify significant sightings by diligent research and acumen that those with a penchant for the enigma are hamstrung; separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were, is daunting, to say the least.

Should we give up the pursuit of an explanation for the UFO phenomenon? Common sense says we should, letting the dust settle, and allowing the old-guard to pass away so a new beginning might be attempted, as we’ve written often before.

The muck and mire that afflicts ufology needs to wane, just as that moon waned in the above story.

RR