Sinister UFO Group

There must be a MUFON to which I do not belong... a "shadow" version of the Mutual UFO Network, operating in the dark while the organization I belong to stumbles along in broad daylight...

I first realized this a day or two ago while watching a Season 3 episode of "The X-Files." The episode, "Nisei," dwells on the convoluted conspiracy narrative that forms the backbone of the entire series, and while it's a bit muddled at times it's a pretty good yarn. It involves the death of a bunch of Japanese scientists while conducting an alien autopsy, and the recovery of a mysterious briefcase, in which Special Agent Mulder finds a list of the MUFON members in Allentown, PA.

It's a long list. Lots of people in Allentown, according to "The X-Files," belong to MUFON. Lots and lots of people. Way more than the MUFON membership in the entire state of Wisconsin. What can this mean? Before I can fully understand, Special Agent Scully takes the list and decides to visit the home of a member whose name and address are circled on the list with red pen.

When she gets to the woman's house, Scully discovers that the MUFON member recognizes her. What's more, when the MUFON member quickly assembles the entire roster of Allentown MUFON members in her living room, they all recognize Scully!

Sad ladies with alien implants... This is not the MUFON I know.

This is an amazing moment... Not only are there dozens of MUFON members in Allentown, they are all sad-looking housewives who have been abducted by aliens (or perhaps Japanese scientists) multiple times, all of whom have had implants placed in their necks and then subsequently removed and placed in little glass bottles, which they all carry around with them to sadly display to people like Agent Scully.

Now, maybe this really happens in Pennsylvania, but here in the Wisconsin MUFON chapter we have so few members, and we're so distantly scattered around the state, that we pretty much never have meetings. Even if we did, we're not a bunch of sad-looking housewives with souvenir implants. We're just a handful of guys (and one woman, mostly retired) who investigate UFO sighting reports in our spare time, and to my knowledge none of us has ever been abducted or has ever left the planet.

One one level, none of this has any importance... On that level, I just think it's funny how the "X-Files" writers and producers re-imagine an organization of optimistic amateur UFO hunters as a massive, eastern Pennsylvania-based horde of traumatized and paranoid female alien abductees to fit the dramatic necessities of the storyline.

On another level, however, it makes me wonder if I am, in some small way, part of a conspiracy...