CLOSE ENCOUNTERS NEWS... April-May 2006

WHITLEY STRIEBER IN NYC ON MAY 23 -- DR. MICHIO KAKU "SCIENCE FANTASTIC" RADIO PROGRAM New York City, Thursday, May 25, 2006 -- WHITLEY STRIEBER made a rare public appearance this past Tuesday evening in New York City. He and his wife Anne Strieber, appeared wth their friends, photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and singer Lou Reed, at a signing and talk at the Barnes & Noble in Chelsea on Greenfield-Sanders new photo portrait book "Face To Face" (a non-UFO book!) The last time Strieber made a public appearance in NYC was over two years ago when the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" was premiered at the American Museum of Natural History. Strieber's next visitors book, "The Greys," will be out on this August 25. Anne Strieber, in her "Diary" entry in "Unknown Country" on May 25, wrote of their visit to NYC in "A Trip Home" linked below..... Theoritical Physicist DR. MICHIO KAKU of New York City (author of "Parallel Worlds" and "Hyperspace") has a new weekly syndicated radio show called "Science Fantastic," which debuted in April. It is on every Saturday evening, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. (EDT) on 90 radio stations around the USA, as well as on webcast. On Sat., May 20 he interviewed Dr. Stanton Friedman on UFOs. For more information: www.MKaku.org.

********************************************************* "My UFO/ET interest lives within those craft which pass through the fabric of our space and time, and more specifically, my attention is on what travels within the hearts and minds of these strange creatures piloting those crafts, and how their presence on Earth shapes and affects our view of ourselves and our world." --- Close encounter witness Joseph Wiek, "S.P.A.C.E. Newsletter," Aug.-Sept. 1995.

JOSEPH WIEK, WHO PLAYED KEY ROLE IN S.P.A.C.E. , DIES AT 41

New York, NY - Monday, May 8, 2006 -- Joseph Wiek, who was for many years the editor of the "S.P.A.C.E. Explorer Newsletter" print edition and played a key active public role in the Search Project for Aspects of Close Encounters, was found dead in his apartment building in Albany, NY, on Wednesday evening, May 3. He was 41.

Wiek's death is under investigation by the Albany police, expecting to issue their conclusions within six weeks. The preliminary report on the cause of death was that it was due to a fatal combination of alcohol and medication, perhaps deliberate, according to what police told his mother, Ms. Jean Wiek of Seattle, who contacted Harold Egeln of S.P.A.C.E. on May 6 about Wiek's death. Wiek was found in the basement and had apparently been dead for two days. Joseph Wiek was born in Seattle on July 20, 1964. He was one of three children, and had two sisters, who also survive him and live in Washington State. His father died some years ago and his mother re-married. He grew up in Seattle, home of the 1962 Seattle's space-themed "Century 21 Exposition" World Fair and the landmark Space Needle, within sight of the towering Mount Rainier volcano where pilot Kenneth Arnold reported "flying saucers" on June 24, 1947. Wiek graduated from college there with a degree in the arts. Among one of his first jobs was working for at a theatre for performing actors, groups and productions in an artistic support position but not as an actor. Joseph Wiek moved to New York City for a few years in the mid-1980s with his companion, Eric, then returned to Seattle with him. In 1987 while watching a two-part ABC-TV movie, "Out On A Limb," the true story of Shirley MacLaine's exposure and opening to the paranormal and UFO contacts based on her book, Wiek's interest in UFOs was stimulated. The movie triggered his own then dim memories of possible childhood encounters. Later in the 1980s he contacted UFO researcher Aileen Garoutte in the Seattle area, who published a print newsletter for the UFO Contact Center, and also had a session at that time when his first "memories" surfaced, he said. In one of the sessions Wiek recalled seeing, at age five, what looked like a mobile home flying through the sky. Wiek returned to New York City in 1991 with his companon Eric, a physician who got a job in Manhattan. Reading a book by Dr. Edith Fiore about UFO abductions, "Encounters," Wiek found the name of Dr. Jean Mundy, a clinical psychologist who worked as a consultant at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village and also as a psychotherapist working with close encounter witnesses referred by Budd Hopkins. She referred Wiek to S.P.A.C.E. In November 1992 Wiek contacted Harold Egeln, who founded S.P.A.C.E. in March of that year. They first met at Homer's Coffee Shop in Greenwich Villlage. He quickly became involved in the S.P.A.C.E. Group, in its meetings and, soon after, in its CE5 field work in Brewster, NY in the Hudson Valley. On the evening of January 12, 1993 Wiek and Egeln, at the Sheridan Square Coffee Shop in Greenwich Village, experienced a strange episode of missing time. It was investigated through relaxation sessions with Dr. Mundy and Dr. Maurice Kougel of Long Island. Wiek's and Egeln's recall accounts matched, backed independently by another person's dream. The central connecting image in the two recalls and the one dream was the image of a trumpet carried by a "space alien" (in the recalls) and surrounding a flying saucer (in the dream). This image, drawn by Egeln, appears in a UFO book by British author Colin Wilson. Wiek never felt absolutely sure whether this whole experience was actually "real." In 1993 Wiek became involved in helping Egeln with the "S.P.A.C.E. Newsletter," a monthly publication. Later that year he took over the duties of editor and publisher, in the production and distribution of the newsletter, with Egeln as the managing editor. Wiek continued in that role until 2001, and the print newsletter soon came to an end, replaced with the on-line editions. Wiek also wrote several articles and reviews for the newsletter, one of which is on-line on the link after this article. Although by nature shy and reserved, as well as often being ambivilent about being an experiencer, Wiek was also active as a public advocate for S.P.A.C.E. and the close encounter reality, appearing on panels and TV shows. Wiek's TV appearances included an MSNBC national cable network program, "America's Talking" on the network's premier day, July 4, 1994, where he appeared with Egeln; two appearances, one with Egeln and one solo in 1996, on "Body, Behavior & Beyond" hosted by Mae Eisenberg on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) public access cable TV station i 1994; and a solo appearance on the "Light Quest" show also on MNN. Wiek appeared as a S.P.A.C.E. panelist at UFO conferences, such as at two UFO East Expos in 1993 and 1994 in Manhattan, and a New Life Expo in Worchester, Massachusetts at that time. Wiek was quoted in an article about one of those NYC conferences in the weekly Manhattan newspaper "The West Sider" on December 2, 1993. In the article he said, "'It's always nice to be around people who are interested in the same things,' said Wiek, 29, an Upper West Sider who works by day as a secretary in a computing company. 'The UFO phenomenon and my relationship with ETs are the most important part of my life. So at something like a UFO conference, there's a lot of information I can get.'" Wiek was also quoted in an article in "Brooklyn Bridge Magazine" in September 1998; the article included interviews with Egeln, Budd Hopkins and Alex Cavallari. His photo appeared in "(t)here" magazine in its Summer 1999 edition in a photo essay about encounter witnesses by Whitley Strieber titled "Beyond The Beyond." The photo includes Lorie Barnes, once Strieber's secretary, and Egeln, taken at Christopher Street by Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. Wiek also kept an active correspondence for awhile with Whitley Strieber, P.E.E.R. and a few others, such as Colin Andrews, giving them the active support of S.P.A.C.E. He reviewed books in the S.P.A.C.E. Newsletter and a comment from one of those reviews appeared as a blurb in one of the books. As part of S.P.A.C.E. "Away Team" nighttime field trips to Magnetic Mine Road in Brewster, Wiek witnessed flights of UFOs over the area and once encountered a "humanoid shadow being" who ran directly in front of him, startling him. Another time in a car there he and others reported being "scanned" by a powerful energy flow. In the mid-1990s Wiek moved with his companion Eric to Worchester, Massachusetts. The S.P.A.C.E. Group gave him a departure party a that time. In 2000 they bought a house in Clinton Corners in Dutchess County, NY, living there until 2004 when they separated and Wiek moved to Albany. Egeln saw Wiek, who highly valued his own personal privacy, twice in the past six years since Wiek moved to upstate New York, visiting Wiek at his house in Clinton Corners in November 2001, and, lastly, when Wiek visited Manhattan near the World Trade Towers disaster site on a business trip in January 2003. The last time Egeln spoke over the phone with Wiek was just before Christmas 2005. By then, Wiek had drifted away, by his own choice, from an active role in Ufology and his own personal involvement, ambivlent about the subject but defending people's and his own interest in it. Wiek, as several encounter witnesses have also reported, had a deep interest in "Earth changes," following closely developments in the mounting worldwide environmental crisis and major devastating natural disasters, seeing that all as a major concern of the ufonauts. "Who am I? Why am I here?" Joseph Wiek wrote in a "S.P.A.C.E. Newsletter" article in 1993. "I just can't seem to shake the feeling that I am just visiting here, perhaps as some sort of inter-galactic anthropologist, documenting and marveling over the fascinating expression of life, and the extraordinary events occuring now and in the near future on planet Earth." Egeln, who was a close friend of Wiek, will soon post his personal thoughts here of Joseph Wiek's important work and contribution to S.P.A.C.E.and Ufology. -- H.E. ********************************************************* NOTE: Attached below is a link to one of Joseph Wiek's columns, "WHO AM I? (A Question of Dual Identity)," which appeared in the July 1993 print edition of the "S.P.A.C.E. Newsletter" and was placed on-line in the "S.P.A.C.E. Explorer Orbitzine" in 2002. Also, there is a link from the UFO Info website's "On This Day" section for January 12, and among the humanoid encounters listed is the Egeln-Wiek incident in Greenwich Village on Jan. 12, 1993.

BRITISH WAR DEPARTMENT: UFOS DON'T EXIST -- 'PURE RUBBISH' U.S. REPORTER & UFOLOGIST SAYS

London, May 9, 2006 -- Add to the long list of UFO debunking stories a secret 2000 British study by the Ministry of Defense that UFOs are nothing but natural phenomena, like meteors, mistaken for alien spacecraft. The secret report by British officials was released concluding there was "no evidence" of UFOs, according to a Reuters news service release yesterday,

"No evidence exists to suggest that the phenomena seen are hostile or under any type of control, other than that of natural physical forces," goes part of the 400-page report extracted and quoted by the BBC. The secret study was obtained under freedom of information laws.

Such debunking reports go back to the flying saucer sightings of 1947 and all the years since. "Although natural phenomena, such as an ultra-bright planet Venus in the evening or morning sky and fireballs, do cause many mistaken UFO reports, there are still a great many truly enigmatic objects that appear to operate under intelligent control and which respond to and interact with humans," said Harold Egeln of S.P.A.C.E. in New York City.

"As UFO witnesses well-know, the British report's conclusion is pure rubbish," said Egeln, who works as a newspaper and TV broadcast journalist. "The Ministry of Defense, like similar U.S. agencies, are very adept and skilled at deliberately spreading disinformation in attempts to confuse the public. This is yet another sorry example of that old, tired routine of debunking."

Famous close encounter witness and author Whitley Strieber also made a statement about the British study, to be quoted here soon.

This comes at a time of two other UFO stories in England. Gary McKinnon, [shown above in a BBC-TV News photo in this article] who was accused in 2002 of illegally hacking NASA and U.S. military computers and faces possible extradition to the U.S. for his alleged crime, said he found highly suggestive clues in that search that the U.S. and British governments are engaged in a UFO cover-up. On May 5 he was interviewed about this on the BBC News program "Click" by host Spenser Kelly.

McKinnon unearthed evidence of a secret U.S. military piloted spacecraft program, with the craft flown by "non-terrestrial officers." This backs up recent revelations in "Aviation Week & Space Technology" magazine about the top secret "Blackstar" spy spaceplane flown into suborbital and orbital space by crews of phantom pilots and co-pilots. Althugh that program s officially unconfirmed, as expected, it has existed since the early 1990s, with landings of the spaceplane observed at three different U.S. airbases.

And a British psychologist is about to release a study on the transformative effects on witnesses of their close encounters, the latter reported in the linked article below.

[NOTE: This CEN article is based on a Reuters report "Secret Brit Study Debunks UFO Sightings" from London in the N.Y. "Daily News" on May 8 on page 20.]

A picture of an unknown craft which Gary McKinnon obtained in his allegedly illegal computer hacking of NASA and U.S. agency computers. What is it? [photo from BBC-TV News]

Illustration of the allegedly top secret U.S. miiltary "Blackstar" suborbital and orbital spaceplane, flown into space by phantom spy pilots ("non-terrestrial officers"), since the early 1990s, according to a recent feature cover story in "Aviation Week & Space Technology" magazine, also reported by ABC-TV News.

AN ABDUCTEE SPEAKS OUT: REVIEWS OF JEREMY VAENI'S MOVIE & BOOK

By Harold Egeln

New York City, May 1, 2006 -- On the movie screen and in book pages, close encounter witness Jeremy Vaeni wears a smile with a healthy laugh which is the face fronting a daringly complex and deeply thoughtful mind working on unraveling the mystery of UFO encounters... his own and in general.

Exercising his extraordinary creative processes applied with vigor and humor, Vaeni's approach is refreshing to experience, especially watching his movie, "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story" and reading his book, "I Know Why the Aliens Don't Land" not merely as an act of observing but involvement. The movie and the book are experiences in themselves which are meant to draw a viewer or reader into the life of close encounter witness, aka alien abductee.

Vaeni says so himself at the start, "Do not merely read this book. Witness it... Ths book is as much me as it is you... You will not learn anything that is not already inside you... Again, don't read; witness openly...." Something like S.P.A.C.E. tries to do, and that's healthy.

Vaeni, who writes the "Vaeni Abductions" insight column in "UFO Magazine" (now a monthly rather than a bimonthly magazine as of this April). was at the debut showings of his movie, "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story" on March 23 and March 27 in New York City at the Two Boots - Pioneer Theatre in the East Vllage, talking with the audience and signing his book. (see March 2006 CEN Newsletter).

Information on his movie is available on Vaeni's Valiens website - www.valiens.com - and information on his book is also at www.filamentbooks.com.

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JEREMY VAENI'S "I KNOW WHY THE ALIENS DON'T LAND" "It was a yearning deeper than a child's imagination. And it was a call answered." - Jeremy Vaeni (page 331) ************************** "I Know Why the Aliens Don't Land" - Jeremy Vaeni, Kynegion House, Canada, 2003 ************************** "Does our species really still believe it is the only game in town?" Humanity's vanity comes under Vaeni's scrunity with a look at the effect of perspectives in a discussion with "Norm De Plume" - his alter ego who dialogues throughout his feast of a book, "I Know Why the Aliens Don't Land." "It's a matter of altering our basic perspectives," Whitley Strieber has said in helping us to perceive our place in the cosmos and open us to endless possibilities and realities which would escape our attention. By entering Vaeni's mind through the gateway of his book, where he not only mulls over close encounters but tells of his own interesting life so far and placing it all in an ever-expanding context, the reader journeys with him, riding his thoughts as one would take all the rides in an amusement park for adventure. "There are two types of believers," Vaeni writes "Those who take abduction reports as gospel and those who are diehard skeptcs. Each have their own psychological holes to fill and have chosen this subject as their plaster." (page 37). When the believers, he goes on to say, put their subjects on a TV show like dancing "minstrels" and the armchair, non-researching skeptics try to explain the UFOs away, it's all a sad sight with the seriousness of this topic glossed over by the madcap marketing methods of the culture. In providing his insights, Vaeni does a service to Ufology by giving it a jolt that comes from a need for honest and creative independent thinking which is not tied down to existing belief systems and rigid interpretations of the CE phenomena. Being truly open to what is going on is vital to Vaeni's theme. In dealing with what close encounters may be all about, Vaeni writes that one must realized that is "a phenomenon that hides in your psychic." (page 335). What's pure imaginaton, speculation, falsehood, misunderstanding? What's actually happening? "It''s that humans cannot think outside the box," Jeremy says to Norm later, calling for the need to really think. Why? Norm asks him. "Because insight is an affront to the ego. It is pure wisdom sprung up internally, yet not created by the brain." (page 329) Vaeni soons goes into a discussion of his first comphrension of "a larger reality" by relating his and his mother's UFO sighting when he was 13. The account involves the sighting of an object with portholes in a field as his mother drives the car. Vaeni the describes waking up at three in the morning and having vivid flasback dreams. One of those flashbacks is of "an enormous black triangle with a pulsating red light," and then recounts a stealth encounter at his home. The book's sections on close encounters, Vaeni's own and the subject i general, are a refreshing look by a witness with a clear mind and a sense of humor, both characteristics which yield a refreshing new look at a longtime phenonmena which plays out in different ways in people's lives. From Vaeni's book was born his movie, "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story," another giant step outside the box and withi the UFO Experience in working out his own experience of the close enounters enigma and explaining it to both himself and to the outside world.

"NO ONE'S WATCHING: AN ALIEN ABDUCTEE'S STORY" A Movie Review by Harold Egeln, May 2006 Yes, Jeremy Vaeni, we, your fellow experiencers, are watching your movie, "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story," with great interest. OK, mass popular culture, Steve Speilberg does "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) and "ET - the Extraterrestial" (1982); the SCI FI Channel does "Taken" (2003), CBS-TV does Budd Hopkins "The Intruders" (1992), NBC-TV both a movie on the Betty and Barney Hill story (1975) and the Jack Webb "Project UFO" series (1978-80), Robert Wise "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), and Desmond Leslie (George Adamski's friend and co-authr) "Stranger From Venus" (1954), and a Boston filmmaker "Touched." But only two Close Encounter Experiencers, - Whitley Strieber with "Communion" (1989) and, now, Jeremy Vaeni with his in 2006 - have ever put their own stories overtly bravely on the Big Screen, aside from others who disquise theirs. And, folks, "it ain't easy." But both Strieber and Vaeni, in their own ways, are giving us an insider's take on being taken. Books by the dozens have been written by witnesses, abductees and contactees. However, translating their own bizzare and transforming stories from book and life experience to the movie screen is a rare art. The beauty of "Communion: A True Story" and "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story" is that they are an expression of Strieber's and Vaeni's personalities and deeply felt responses to their Close Encounters. In the movies, they act ou their unique life stories and those responses, with mindful depthness and powerful emotions. To Vaeni's credit, with his delightful goofiness and profoundly in-depth curiosity about "What On Earth Is Going On Here?", he has done a brave act for himself and other encounter witnesses (abductees, experiencers, contactees, etc.). And he plays as he informs movie watchers of the complex inner terrain of the unexplainable, always out of reach. But his movie, like Strieber's 17 years ago, puts it all in touch. Vaeni, like Strieber, does not demand belief in his experiences. They both request an open mind to both a doubting and interested public. Vaeni's movie informs through the magic of "An American Family" type reality venue -- like the PBS-TV series of the early 1970s of that title did: by relating his story through his family - mother, father, sister, and his friends - a "girlfriend" and others. In doing so, he illustrates and expands on the incidents and thoughts in his earlier written book. That is the magic of filmmaking and the wonder of how a really good movie-maker, in this case producer, director and star Jeremy Vaeni, conveys a truth or a magic box of dounts filled with hidden truths mixed in with wrappings of trickery, stealthiness and contradictions. Vaeni's movie is a gift not to be judged but appreciated and accepted as you like. -- It emerges wildly from inside the Close Encounter Experience through his own life. It must be widely seen, respected and, as Vaeni would say, experienced, for what it is. It is a rarely precious movie window into the soul of a Close Encounter Explorer. It is an celebration and a joy to watch. ********************************************************

S.P.A.C.E.'S "DREAMSPACE EXPLORER" NOW ON-LINE

Sunday, April 16, 2006 -- S.P.A.C.E.'s new "DreamSpace Explorer" website is now on-line in preview form, launched into cyberspace today!

The new website, published by the S.P.A.C.E. Explorers, explores Close Encounters of the Dream Kind, -- dreams related to UFOs, close encounters and space. Such dreams seem to be gateways to the cosmic drives and sources of the UFO enigma. They appear to be a working laboratory of seething consciousness that may contain great amounts of information and give rise to breakthrough insights which may prove valuable to understanding and moving the UFO mystery forward to meaningful actions.

The preview edition contains the most recent dreams of CEN Editor Harold Egeln, along with easy homepage access to Swiss depth psychologist Dr. Remo Roth's works on his 25-plus years as a pioneer UFO dream researcher, along with information on dream researcher John Layard who wrote the early 1940s classic "The Lady of the Hare: A Study in the Healing Power of Dreams."

S.P.A.C.E., from its beginnings in 1992, has made the study of dreams an integral aspect of its research and it has been a vital part of our actual experiences, which we have explored through our portals and publlications.

The illustration above is of a 2000 UFO sighting with a craft which has an unusual shape. The precise shape of UFO came through a train dream before this report was printed.

The new website can be accessed at the following link:

S.P.A.C.E. ON MANHATTAN CABLE TV ON MARCH 29 & APRIL 5

"UFO UPDATE 2006 - Parts 1 & 2," a program with CEN Editor Harold Egeln of S.P.A.C.E, was broadcast in New York City on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network on the "Uniquely You Now" cable television show hosted by Mae Eisenberg.

The taped broadcasts aired on MNN cable TV channel 67. Part 1 aired on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 at 5:30 p.m., and Part 2 airs on Wednesday, April 5 at 5:30 p.m.. There was no public nor experiencer feedback from these programs.