In 1996, I saw something in the sky that to this day I can’t explain. I was at the top of the sightseeing spot, Arthur’s Seat, on the Mornington Peninsula. It was around midnight, and I was with a friend. We parked and gazed out over the bay. Instinctively, I turned to look at the You Yang mountains, and heard a voice inside my head: “Something will happen over there.”
Instantly, four bright orange orbs appeared in the sky. They began to dance around one another, coming together in various formations: crosses, squares, quarter circles, triangles with the fourth trailing the other three. Periodically, the orbs would “switch off” and reappear in another part of the sky, many kilometres away judging by the landscape below.
There was a group of strangers next to us. They saw it too. One woman was on the verge of tears, repeating over and over, “What is that?”
Then it was over. The orbs switched off for the last time and didn’t return.
Perhaps they were natural phenomena. Yet their formations and patterns seemed to have logic and purpose. I even managed to catch one through the pay-telescope. It looked like a fireball, a burst of swirling energy with a ring of red around the circumference.
There’s a lot more to this story, including some frankly unbelievable synchronicities and after effects, but I’ll save those for when I record this moment in full detail. Honestly, it sounds insane when I talk to people about it.
Searching for answers, I rang the “Australian National UFO Hotline” listed in the phone directory. I spoke with an operator who told me that what we saw weren’t extraterrestrials but the product of “psychic witches”: evil people who liked to enslave victims with mind control.
The operator then went on to describe his “holographic” theory of the universe: how reality is a hologram and how certain parts get broken and need repairing. He said that the fireballs were “bleeding through”, some kink in the system. He continued to question me, asking me if I’d associated with any “unsavoury” types at university or at work, anyone who might have cause to mess with my head.
I ended the call. So much for an impartial service.
For the past few years, I tried to put the incident out of mind, yet it kept bugging me. The strangers had seen the orbs, independent witnesses, so it wasn’t a matter of my personal psychosis. The bizarre phone call to the hotline bothered me too. What was their agenda?
So, I emailed the Australian National UFO Hotline, requesting an interview with Ross Dowe, the hotline’s manager. I’m sure it was Dowe who’d taken my call as the hotline doesn’t appear to have any other staff .
There used to be other hotlines available for people to report UFO sightings, but they all seem to have fallen by the wayside – except Dowe’s. As a result, whenever the mass media reports a sighting, he invariably gets the call to explain away things.
On such occasions, he appears to be impartial and knowledgable, generally trotting out a scientific explanation for what has happened while offering no firm conclusion. However, away from the mainstream – on his website, for example, which is filled with jokes ridiculing UFO witnesses – he disregards anyone who claims to have witnessed unexplained phenomena.
Eventually, I received an anonymous reply to my request stating that if I was a hacker, a virus would be sent to destroy my hard drive. Quite an introduction, yet I persevered and Dowe agreed to talk.
Hi , Ross. When did you first become interested in the subject of UFOs?
In 1991. I sighted a plasma fireball discharge in Narre Warren Rd, Narre Warren. It looked like a bright yellow-white fireball with a bright orange halo.
That sounds a little like something I saw a few years back. What exactly is a ‘plasma fireball discharge’?
Science has little data concerning these events. We don’t have all the facts in yet.
What motivates you to continue your research into this phenomenon?
We are no longer involved in the area of UFOs. We are now about ten levels from it.
OK. So what exactly does your research involve these days?
No comment.
How would you classify your work in comparison to an organisation such as the Victorian UFO Research Society?
We know what they don’t know!
What, then, is problematic with VUFORS’ line of enquiry?
We don’t even think about any other group – we do our own thing. For us, they just don’t exist.
A feature of your research is its playfulness: your web site announces itself as a ‘fun site’ offering ‘ripper tales’ and your mailing list used to be called ‘Wack-O’. Do you think UFOlogists are fruits? What attracts eccentrics to this field?
Many of them are fruits, if not all. In the US, they’re attracted to the money to be made from UFOs; in Australia, UFOlogy provides a forum to meet other odd people.
How does your research differ from these people?
We are not UFO nutters. We are neo-hobbyists who have developed a professional service business. Remember: to be of English blood means you are eccentric by custom, form and habit. Now, the world would be a boring place without us!
Another feature of your research is its refusal to be drawn into any discussion of extraterrestrial hypotheses when discussing UFO sightings. Instead your web site proclaims that ‘there is a real man-made factor involved’. Are you suggesting, perhaps, a government cover up of some very secret technologies?
Human weakness is the main factor here: the seven deadly sins. Yes, there are advanced technologies out there but the question remains, are they American or Russian?
What do you mean by ‘human weakness’ and ‘the seven deadly sins’?
You think about that.
If instances of secret government technology accounts for UFO sightings world wide, what happens when people see (or think they see) alien beings? How can the huge amount of abduction cases be explained in this fashion?
Those are ‘open-house’ technologies, mainly! And they account for some UFO sightings. If people report to us that they’ve ‘seen’ alien beings, we refer them to the Church. One of the Catholic exorcists in Gippsland has a 100 per cent success rate in this area. Each time, people ring us back and thank us for the referral.
Do you think the UFO Phenomenon has become a replacement for religion in these Godless times? Is the mythos of a ‘descent from the heavens’ an archetype that must surface in the collective consciousness – by any means possible?
We are not really in Godless times – we are in a time to re-explain God. Our system of power or leadership has moved from England to the US; now, the EU and Nato want it. But the US wants to give it to the UN, under American control.
I don’t quite follow you.
The masses are feeling the effects of the hand-over from England to America, and those who have been victimised by such events look for a way to explain the world, to find out what life is all about. The Churches have failed to offer what the market wants so all the oddball ideas come to the surface, including current ideas on finance and the banking system. There will be a new understanding and it will not be wicca or feminist: the world has tried those ideas before and they have failed every time. We are apart from nature – wicca ideas are one level below stone age tribalism. In fact, we are now entering a new order of Feudalism on a worldwide scale. The new Feudalism is currently called ‘MultiNationalism’ and ‘Free-Tradeism’ and this process of change is called ‘The Quickening’!
Can you tell me more about ‘The Quickening’?
Not much more.
Why do you mention wicca and feminism? Do you mean as a possible replacement for religion?
You think about it.
What do you make of Jacques Vallee’s research, which links alien abduction stories to myths of faeries and religious miracles? Can the UFO Phenomenon be explained as a reoccurring, collective archetype along Jungian lines?
Who is Vallee? Don’t know this person. However, I agree – if we’re talking about myths. The UFO Phenomenon is a ‘social collectiveness’; this is a good measure of a nation’s health. Social, economic and national leadership also account for stories of alien abduction. In Australia, for example, the Keating Government sent the nation mad. Now that he has been kicked out, people have returned to normal under the Howard Government.
And yet sightings and abductions continue unabated.
Well, that’s not Howard’s fault.
What about Timothy Good’s rigorous research, strongly linking UFO activity to the ET hypothesis?
No Good.
What about Aboriginal spirituality and Dreamtime legends? Can they shed some light on the contemporary UFO phenomenon? Bill Chalker documents some interesting examples in his book, The Oz Files, including accounts of shamanic rituals with strong parallels in Western UFO and abduction myth.
Total bunk! Stone age thinking!
A while ago, I contacted your hotline with regards to a sighting witnessed by myself and others. Whoever I spoke to offered some very interesting explanations for what we’d seen: something to do with witches’ covens exerting psychic control, and holographic theories of reality. Can you elaborate?
Well, I don’t know about what you saw, but this business about rituals can be linked to weird orders and criminal activities. And yes, they are witches: perverted types, anti-religious. These people use alien images and lights, drugs and masks, in an attempt to cover their trail after abducting people and abusing them, raping them and so on. One of these groups promotes sex with children, about three years old, and human sacrifice as a monthly routine.
That all sounds quite frightening and rather sensational. Why don’t we hear more about this in the papers?
Don’t know. These incidents are not uncommon around Australia. Call the police for more info.
You’re based in Narre Warren, the scene of many UFO sightings including the well-documented Kelly Cahill abduction case. Is Narre Warren a ‘hot spot’ of UFO activity? Do you have any theories as to why this would be so?
Narre Warren is where the weather banks up from the Melbourne basin area, causing electrical discharges. Check your maps. Also kids’ tricks account for a lot of sightings – flares and helium balloons from the Ferntree Gully area floating down to Narre Warren. As for Kelly Cahill: good story or good tail? She is said to have got only $4000 for her publishing efforts.
You include the ‘grey control’ recording on your web site, in which someone operating a video camera notices a backward message on the soundtrack. When played forwards, it says, ‘You are under grey control’. What does this recording suggest to you? Is it anything to do with the alleged sightings of ‘small grey’ aliens that are so common today?
I have no idea what it means, other than what we have published. We came across it by default.
You web site states that it has been hacked quite often. Who would be doing this and why?
UFO nutters. I have no idea why. We tell the truth.
It has been 20 years since the Frederick Valentich case, perhaps Australia’s most famous UFO mystery. Valentich’s Cessna vanished after he sighted a large metallic craft over Bass Strait. Do you have an explanation as to what happened?
The ‘mystery’ surrounding Valentich is mostly rubbish. He crashed into Bass Strait! We have the recording here and it’s not very nice to hear a man’s last minutes. There’s nothing there of interest to us anymore.
Any more to add?
Well, I don’t think aliens would waste good energy coming here. They would be better off using remote technology to inspect us; think of a holographic telephone or the Greek mythos, Zeus and so on.
Our current technology is only 150 years old and most of it has been developed in the last 80 years. What would alien technology be like if it was 100,000 times older than us? Concepts such as ‘mc2’ were formulated in England 110 years ago – we have to look at the ideas of today to see where we will be tomorrow. Nonetheless, I am sure that alien worlds are out there, and I agree with NASA that the chance of finding life in space is about 100 per cent.
Ross, how would you like to be remembered?
As ‘Ross Dowe: Recording History for the Future’.