Teen fascinated by unexplained

[SeanF...@gmail.com]

UFO sightings among his investigations

By Karen Gutiérrez
Enquirer staff writer

COVINGTON - Sean Feeney is hoping people saw ABC's two-hour special on
UFOs this week.

Maybe it will inspire them to come forward if they have a sighting,
Feeney said.

A senior at Holmes High School in Covington, he has been fascinated by
all manner of lore - ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot - since he was a kid. He is
not a believer, he said, but an investigator who likes to research wild
claims.

He does this through his Anomaly Response Network
(www.anomalyresponse.org).

"It captures me because it's one of the last areas of science that has
yet to be explained," Feeney said.

Take, for instance, the 2000 tracking of a strange object in the sky by
a series of police officers in southern Illinois. Their reports of the
object were recorded on tape.

In his special on Thursday, ABC's Peter Jennings played excerpts from
the tapes and conducted interviews with the officers.

"That was a good case to include," Feeney said.

He was less impressed by the show's mention of the "Phoenix lights" in
which thousands of people saw mysterious lights over the city. It's
been proven that flares caused the lights, Feeney said.

The ABC special mentioned that explanation but still aired interviews
with citizens who insist they saw something otherworldly.

Feeney, who takes advanced-placement courses at Holmes and calculus at
Northern Kentucky University, said he once had a small
UFO-investigation group at the high school.

But people lost interest because there weren't enough cases to probe,
he said.

This is where the public comes in.

"The big thing with getting the public involved is they're the ones who
bring us the cases," Feeney said. "We don't have any proactive way of
observing the sky 24-7."

E-mail kguti...@enquirer.com

STRANGE PHENOMENA
People who think they've had an unexplained encounter are invited to
visit Feeney's Web site, www.anomalyresponse.org.

[DBd...@aol.com]

In a message dated 27/02/2005 08:27:46 GMT Standard Time, SeanF...@gmail.com writes:

It's
been proven that flares caused the lights, Feeney said.

Umm. No it hasn't. And even if the big display of lights were flares, the Phoenix phenomenon included a fly-by earlier in the evening of a huge boomerang shaped UFO, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Baz

Sometimes things just are..

[SeanF...@gmail.com]

Yep, but the included filmed part were the flares and I'm tired of
seeing them touted as the UFO seen earlier in the evening.

[DBd...@aol.com]

In a message dated 28/02/2005 05:55:21 GMT Standard Time, SeanF...@gmail.com writes:

Yep, but the included filmed part were the flares and I'm tired of
seeing them touted as the UFO seen earlier in the evening.

Problem is that if you diss one outright, without referring to the other as legitimate you detract from the credibility of the more important sighting and the "Phoenix Lights" case, which includes the two seperate events, suddenly becomes the "Bunch of nutters seeing flares thinking the Mothership is landing" case, and the potentially more significant part of it gets lost in the translation.

 

Just as I see it anyway. UFOlogy sometimes shoots itself in the foot by not being as careful as it could be with the things that get said in "official" statements, which then lets the skeptics in and allows people to be played off against each other.

 

Imagine the following argument from a skeptic

 

"Acknowledged UFO investigator Sean Feeny says the Phoenix lights were flares, but the British "expert" Baz Badrock says that there were two seperate sightings, one of which might be flares and the other more significant involving either a genuine UFO or a secret government aircraft. I thought a UFO was a UFO and yet these people can't even agree on what they think they saw! It just proves they don' know what they are talking about, doesn't it?"

 

Now obviously, thats a simplistic argument, but I'm sure you can see the potential problem.

[SeanF...@gmail.com]

Yes, I can see the potential problem.

Interestingly enough, as a result of the article I was invited to join
the "SKEPTIX" listserv.

The article was supposed to cover not only ARN, but KYMUFON and SOAAR
as well but Earle Benezet of KYMUFON informed me that the reporter hung
up on him. I'm assuming after her experience with him she didn't even
bother to call Donnie about SOAAR.

Earle: Well I am beginning to think it is true that the media has their
OWN agenda and it doesn't include getting the truth out.....

Sean: We don't have a truth to get out yet. What we do have is an
open request to the public for them to share their experiences with us,
so that one day the truth may be found through careful scientific
investigation. As far as any media agenda goes, I can't speak for the
big five (nbc, abc, cbs, fox, cnn) but at the national level Channel
One News would be more than willing to run a story on UFOs if we had a
good recent newsworthy one to tell, and here in Cincinnati the Post,
Enquirer, and even WKRC 12 have ran stories about UFOs and crop
circles. They even gave Kenny a spot on their morning show when he
hosted the National UFO Conference here. Having worked with the media
for years now (Daniel Lilly can probably back me up on this since he
works at a newspaper), what it all comes down to is, "is it
newsworthy?" Newsworthy means that it is timely and interesting to
your expected audience. To us in the UFO field, a UFO sighting in the
mid-twentieth century is interesting. So is speculation about what UFOs
are and where they come from. But to the general public those things
may or may not be interesting, and a news outlet is taking a gamble
each time they run something like that. What is more guaranteed to
generate interest is a RECENT event involving LOCAL people. You add
their eyewitness testimony with some official-sounding lingo from a UFO
investigator and you have yourself a story worth printing or airing.