Not piling on, just following on from
@JJB comments above. Even in the case of "confabulation, lying or hallucinating" only lying is intentional and even then not always.
Confabulation is just part of human memory, stuff gets jumbled. I've told before of my still very clear memory of meeting a guy, who is now a good friend, out in the desert. He was all set up a little ways from us with a blue Toyota Tacoma (Toyota's small truck in the US). It was several years later when he pointed out that he had been in a white RAM 2500 (a large truck from Dodge/FCA) and he'd never owned a Tacoma or a blue truck. I'd have sworn on it.
Hallucinating varies, but is often associated with mental health issues, like schizophrenia or possible hallucinogen use. But things like waking dreams are very much like hallucinations and are very common. Some people can also reach an altered like state through meditation, chanting, dancing or whatever. I also think any of us can just zone out sometimes and think we saw or experienced something, especially due to stress, exhaustion and other things life throws at us. If that something then gets a bit confabulated later it can create a false memory that feels real.
I think most of us here are careful about saying people are outright lying about something. Some do it maliciously of course, but I think a lot of what might be considered lies regarding UFOs, are more like exaggerations and tall tales. We all know that guy that tells tall tales, sometimes knowingly so and sometimes they've told them so often they now believe the stories. Are they lying? Yes and no.
Even when we look at Penniston's evolving claims, was he lying? He clearly made no mention of a notebook at the time of the incident and the note book wasn't mentioned at all until the mid '90s. And it wasn't until the mid '00s that he mentioned the telepathically transmitted binary code he supposedly wrote down the day after the event. I think it's very likely he wrote the code down at some much later date, but Ian Ridpath notes that he underwent hypnotic regression therapy in the '90s:
External Quote:
After undergoing regression hypnosis in September 1994 he seems to have become convinced that it was a craft from tens of thousands of years in the Earth's future. According to what Penniston
told the hypnotist, it contained our distant descendants returning to obtain genetic material to keep their ailing species alive: '
They are time travellers. They are us,' he said.
It sounds like the plot of a B movie, and very possibly that's where it came from. A TV movie called
Official Denial was broadcast on the Sci Fi channel in November 1993 and was released on video in May 1994, both within a year prior to Penniston's hypnosis. In it, an alien craft is shot down by the USAF and lands in a forest. It contains creatures that are here 'To get genetic material to help them reproduce because their race is dying out.' And where are they from? 'They're not aliens. They're us. From the future – our future.' The similarities with Penniston's story including the statement 'They are us' are striking. This would not be the first time that a UFO witness under hypnosis has told a story from
false memory based on a TV show.
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/pennistonnotebook.html
We now know this kind of therapy not only doesn't "recover" hidden memories, it often creates them. It would seem his stories are a mish-mash of what he remembers seeing that night, some confabulations, hypnotic memories and a desire to be part of the story, perhaps the main part. So, is he lying? I don't really know.
The "truth or lies" false dichotomy is a standard in UFOlogy. There is some guy that shows up over in the Ariel School thread every so often and just comments like:
"Are you saying these children , now adults , are lying ? Isn't it possible that they are just telling what they saw ?Did this ever occur to you ?."
Nobody said they were lying.
