UFO Jounalist Roger Marsh ignores abduction reports

__________________________________________________________

FOLLOW UP REPORT:

I spoke directly with Roger Marsh on the phone. We talked today, and all is fine. There is no stress at all between myself and Roger. I can say that the overall weirdness just got even weirder! More soon, this story continues...

Mike C

Aug 30th / 9:05 Mountain Time 

__________________________________________________________

(initial posting Aug 28th 9:19 PM)

Roger Marsh has multiple titles as a UFO investigator and journalist. For MUFON, he’s noted as a field investigator, Director of Communications and editor of the MUFON Journal. He’s also a contributor for both the UFO Examiner and the Huffington Post.

Marsh was interviewed on a video podcast series called Topic UFO a little over a year ago. During that interview he shared a fascinating close up UFO sighting from his youth that obviously had a big impact on the direction of his life.

In the beginning of the interview, he made it quite clear that he was a seasoned reporter, "I'm qualified, I could write for the New York Times. I'm at that level as a writer."

Over the last few years I’ve read a few interesting reports penned by Marsh, but what struck me during the podcast was his curious dismissal of the abduction phenomenon.

At one point in the interview he stated:

They have their vehicles, they don't really care about us, you know, unless you want to go down the alien abduction route, that's another fair area to be in.   

Well, I for one have gone down the alien abduction route. He says that's fair, but at the same time he seems to want to ignore the implications. From my ongoing research, as well as my direct experience, I can say with some conviction that they are profoundly interested and deeply involved with us. Saying they don't really care about us requires dismissing one entire aspect of the phenomenon.

He was asked by the host: “If these UFOs are real... what do you thing they are trying to do here, or what do they want? What are your personal feelings?”

Okay, if it's my personal feelings, there may be one section of the listening audience that maybe follow alien abductions, I kind of have to push that aside. It doesn't appear to me that they are really that interested in humans. They seem to be just kind of doing their own thing... 

But of course if I said that they just sort of do their own thing and leave us alone then my next fifty emails are going to be from people who are very strong with the alien abduction and that's a whole other thing, and we could just talk for hours on that some night. I have my own opinion, and we could do a whole other show just on that...

Then he goes on to say that he spent some time with Dr. John Mack, and he mentions Budd Hopkins. it seems like he respected both of them as far as being dedicated folks, but he didn't say much.

But, a whole different world out there with that [alien abduction subject], you know, people think they are mining us for something, maybe they are creating another race or something.

Marsh spent part of this interview describing how some reporters will ignore or belittle the subject of UFOs. It seemed odd that he would then follow that up by belittling the subject of abductions.

I need to repeat one thing he said, he brings up abductions and then says: I kind of have to push that aside. So, this self proclaimed New York Times caliber reporter says he needs to push aside evidence that doesn't fit his personal feelings.

My sense is that we have come to a point where it is okay for a UFO organization like MUFON to talk publicly about lights in the sky, but it’s probably safer to just ignore all those people who tell of interaction with the UFO occupants. I wonder if Marsh would have gotten the position as Director of Communications at MUFON if, during his job interview, he said he was really eager to get the word out about the whole abduction thing.

I did a quick google search where I plugged in Roger Marsh and abduction; this yielded surprisingly few hits. When I read through the short list there are a few about peripheral abduction related items. Like an artist doing a comic book about the Herbert Schirmer case from 1967 and another about a stage play dramatizing a 1975 case where three women were abducted in Kentucky. He also wrote a 207 word article about the 1976 Allagash case. Not much, and all three cases are from over 35 years ago.

I also found about 20 or so reports by Marsh with the term missing time in the text. This seems surprisingly low given that he’s been posting a regular column about UFO reports for over four years now. Also, when a witness tells of missing time, this (to me) implies possible abduction, but there was no follow up information in these articles that asked any deeper questions about the missing time events.

Please know, I only did a cursory search of his on-line material, there may be examples detailing abduction reports that I could have easily missed.

Okay, here’s my beef... 
The abduction aspect is being marginalized within the UFO research community. This is an absolute truism, and both Roger Marsh and MUFON are towing that line. They seem to be wishing this aspect of the phenomenon would just go away. Wouldn’t it be so much better if it was all just lights in the sky?

Please know, I've connected with a lot of very real people with heart-wrenching stories of UFO abductions, I consider many of them to be among my dearest my friends. I don’t have any good answer to what is at the source of these sometimes deeply traumatizing experiences, but ignoring them, to me, is perfectly irresponsible.

__________________________________________________________