This post presupposes that:
- You've been fascinated by UFOs since you were a kid.
- As a teenager, you read all the UFO books in your small town's public library
- ... and you became terrified of being abducted by aliens
- ... and you paid $20 to get a library card at a large metropolitan library so you could read more UFO books
- ... and you talked all about UFOs for your valedictorian speech at your high school graduation.
- As an adult, you've written well over a dozen posts about UFOs on your blog.
If you don't meet the above criteria, this post may not apply to you.
To stop believing in UFOs, follow these steps:
- Buy a copy of the book Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington, but don't read it because you sense it might poke holes in your UFO belief system. Instead, let it sit on your bookshelf for 13 years.
- Meanwhile, discover a book called Cranioklepty by Colin Dickey in a cruise ship's library (see this post). Read it and love it. Start following the author on social media.
- Get excited when Colin Dickey releases a new book, The Unidentified, all about UFOs and other paranormal topics. Read the book and discover the author is a huge skeptic of all things related to UFOs and spends much of the book debunking numerous claims. Be disappointed, even depressed about this for a while. And be angry at the author for being so stoopid.
- Stumble across a cheap copy of a book called Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect by Mick West and read it. Learn that we all have our own personal demarcation line when it comes to deciding what constitutes believable and unbelievable conspiracies. Learn that sometimes it's a single piece of evidence that makes a person believe a conspiracy, and that providing alternative explanations for that evidence can help a person break free from their belief. Also, be very glad you never fell down the "9/11 was an inside job" rabbit hole, even though you may have peeked into it a few times.
- 13 years after buying it, finally read Mark Pilkington's Mirage Men. Be completely astounded at the damning evidence that for years some U.S. military/intelligence agencies have been feeding fake information to the UFO community to promote belief in UFOs, and that at least one of the UFO researchers you've followed over the years has been duped by it. Be sad after reading the book because you, too, have been duped. Realize that your intuition was right, although the book didn't just poke holes in your belief system, it tore down load-bearing walls.
- Find a YouTube video of a talk Mark Pilkington gave in 2011, shortly after releasing Mirage Men, and think long and hard about the part at the beginning, where he reads this quote:
- "They are not material creatures, they are spiritual beings. They live in outer space, and when they feel hungry, they swoop down and kill innocent women and children. They eat the corpses, and then fly back to their spatial residences for a siesta in their bedrooms in space. It has been going on and on like this for years."
- The quote is from a Pakistani villager, who is actually describing CIA drone strikes.
- Discover Jack Brewer's blog, The UFO Trail. Get a copy of his book The Greys Have Been Framed as a birthday present. Read it and learn that:
- Hypnosis, which has long been used to recover alien abduction memories, has been firmly established as an ineffective technique for memory retrieval. It is, however, very effective at creating false memories.
- One of the most influential books you read as a teenager was written by a researcher who was not practicing sound research, but rather using questionable methods like hypnosis to seek confirmation of his pet theory.
- In the 1950s, the CIA was out of control, performing many involuntary human experiments, and these "blatant violations of human rights continue to disturb and anger researchers well into this century."
- It's possible that some claims of alien abduction, including some of the very first claims, may have nothing to do with aliens and everything to do with those CIA experiments.
- Discover a new book called "The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony" that contains 57 cross-disciplinary essays from academic researchers. Download a free PDF copy of it and learn that:
- There are credibility issues with some of the more famous UFO cases. That includes the alien abduction of an Arizona logger (which was made into a terrifying movie you watched in high school) that has been exposed as a hoax.
- Even competent, highly trained, intelligent people can misperceive a mundane event and become convinced they've seen a UFO.
- Studies of criminal cases show that when witnesses are highly confident in their testimony ("I know what I saw!"), all it indicates is that they have constructed a coherent story in their mind, not necessarily that their story is true.
- Claims of UFO sightings and encounters with aliens can serve a psychological purpose, such as self-esteem regulation (e.g., feeling special for being chosen). They can also help alleviate feelings of loneliness.
- Similarly, alien abductions can serve psychologically as a metaphor for traumatic events the person can't face. The abduction scenario allows the trauma to surface in a "quasi-hallucinatory form".
- The above points are just from the first half of the book. What else will you learn when you read the second half?
- Realize that for years you've thought people who don't believe in UFOs are ignoring all the evidence that the phenomenon is real, and it turns out you are the one who's been ignoring evidence of hoaxes, deception, and shoddy research.
- Be sad about all that you've learned, and write a blog post about it.
Those are the steps that worked for me. Your experience may be different.