Elizondo's Orbs

[Mick West]

Can anyone excerpt the relevant section about the green orbs he's supposed to have seen?

The classification of these orbs really varies quite a bit. There are different colors and sizes; some of the colors reported were white, yellow, blue, red, and green. Reports I have seen suggested the blue orbs in particular had a very negative biological consequence, meaning if you got close to one of these, you could expect to be injured. Now, whether that was deliberate or just simply a by-product of the nature of the orb, we really don't know. ... I never had any interaction with orbs until I started working with the program. I was shocked to find that a lot of my colleagues and I began experiencing firsthand some of these orbs at our homes. In fact, my wife was a complete skeptic on all this—that is, until she saw an orb in our house for herself. We had a long main hallway in the house, and one evening a green, glowing ball, probably about the size of a basketball, with soft edges that weren't defined, floated down slowly from the kitchen to our bedroom door just below ceiling height, then disappeared into a wall. Hoping Jenn caught a glimpse of it, I turned to her, catching the perplexed look on her face. She indeed saw it the entire ten seconds it was in our house. Another time, the kids reported seeing an orb appear in the air, hover near them for a few seconds, and then float away. They described what they'd seen as best they could, first to my wife, and again to me when I asked. Their description made my blood run cold. The object had been three-dimensional but still translucent and suffused with an eerie green light. The object behaved as if guided by some intelligence. It parked itself in the air, then drifted off down the hall before disappearing entirely.
...
At Skinwalker Ranch, two dogs owned by a rancher chased a blue orb into the field, only to vanish in a yipe, leaving behind nothing but two grease spots on the sagebrush that contained remnants of the two dogs' biology—body fluid, blood, and small amounts of tissue—literally all that was left of the poor creatures. To researchers it looked as if the orbs had somehow vaporized the dogs, scorching nearby vegetation. A beam of directed energy, from a powerful laser or radioactive weapon, was the presumed cause. Two colleagues in particular were under medical care for both cutaneous and visceral injuries that were sustained from interactions with UAP while working with AAWSAP/AATIP, and we had numerous reports of negative biological effects associated with UAP encounters, especially orbs. The injuries sustained seemed to stem from some sort of directed-energy exposure, almost like radiation. Unfortunately, multiple members of our team (excluding myself) experienced severe biological effects resulting in life-threatening medical issues. These biological effects also extended to their family members, including their children. While I am not able to go into details here, I learned of military servicemen and intelligence officers who succumbed to their injuries and lost their lives due to the biological effects of UAP encounters.
...
Over time, more orbs appeared in our home. Not too frequently: a whole month might go by, and then one would arrive. Since "our" orbs manifested as clear or green, I did not feel compelled to warn my family to avoid them. I didn't want to frighten them further. As far as I knew, only blue was problematic. Nevertheless, we couldn't shake the things. I'd be sitting at the dining room table, working at my computer or catching up on some reading, and I'd suddenly notice one of these damn balls hovering nearby. Other times, we'd be outside, grilling or hanging out near our koi pond with neighbors, when an orb would appear randomly, linger for a few moments, then mosey over toward the trees on the edges of our property. Our neighbors witnessed this too. It got to the point where neighbors would sometimes joke, "Is this one of our government's secret programs you are working on, Lue?" Laughing uncomfortably, I'd think to myself, You have no idea how close to the truth you are.

Elizondo, Luis. Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs: the Former Head of the Program Responsible for Investigating UAPs Reveals Profound Secrets (pp. 68-70). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Emphasis mine.

 

[RTM]

The use of manifested seems to be veering into CE5 territory.

 

[JMartJr]

The use of manifested seems to be veering into CE5 territory.

The orbs floating around the house seem to be veering into the Ghostbusters cinematic universe...

 

[Giddierone]

"Reports I have seen suggested the blue orbs in particular had a very negative biological consequence, meaning if you got close to one of these, you could expect to be injured.."

While reports of small orbs are common in UFO literature there's also some pretty specific ones in science fiction. Such as the above illustration from Eric Frank Russell's Sinister Barrier (1950) which is about intellignet orbs in the superspectrum that feed on humans. Only a few people can see them etc, etc...

 

[Giddierone]

While reports of small orbs are common in UFO literature

Just putting a pin in this and adding a link to the recent interview with Curt Jaimungal, who keeps Elizondo on the topic of orbs seen inside LE's home for almost 10 minutes. I'm in the process of comparing his remarks to other examples in UFO literature.
https://youtu.be/Rh7umwJln38?si=NVlOjjj8zYixuEwR&t=1711 [from 28:31]

 

[Ann K]

Just putting a pin in this and adding a link to the recent interview with Curt Jaimungal, who keeps Elizondo on the topic of orbs seen inside LE's home for almost 10 minutes. I'm in the process of comparing his remarks to other examples in UFO literature.
https://youtu.be/Rh7umwJln38?si=NVlOjjj8zYixuEwR&t=1711 [from 28:31]

I'm not sure which of our many threads on the goings-on at the Skinwalker Ranch this was in, but wasn't there a video of their claims about "orbs" visible in the kitchen of the ranch? As I recall, the location changed in subsequent retellings.

One thread concerned what they called "orbs" in the abandoned shed (carriage house?) which appeared to be merely sunlight on cobwebs.

 

[RTM]

I'm not sure which of our many threads on the goings-on at the Skinwalker Ranch this was in, but wasn't there a video of their claims about "orbs" visible in the kitchen of the ranch? As I recall, the location changed in subsequent retellings.

One thread concerned what they called "orbs" in the abandoned shed (carriage house?) which appeared to be merely sunlight on cobwebs.

Not just any orb, but supposedly something resembling the cover of the album Tubular Bells. Relevant section and link below.

Lacatski started visiting Skinwalker Ranch. On one trip, he reported seeing a sort of technological apparition floating in midair in the ranch kitchen. It resembled, he said, the object on the cover of Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.

https://reason.com/2022/11/15/the-military-ufo-complex/

 

[jimmyslippin]

Just putting a pin in this and adding a link to the recent interview with Curt Jaimungal, who keeps Elizondo on the topic of orbs seen inside LE's home for almost 10 minutes. I'm in the process of comparing his remarks to other examples in UFO literature.
https://youtu.be/Rh7umwJln38?si=NVlOjjj8zYixuEwR&t=1711 [from 28:31]

So for seven years Elizondo's house was been routinely invaded by supernatural hitchhikers and it just never occurred to him that he should attempt to capture this phenomena on video or in still images.

His thunderstorm analogy makes zero sense. If these things were so common in his everyday life right up until he quit his DoD job then why is he relying on declassification of information held by his former employer to prove their existence? He could have just published his own personal videos taken from within his own home.

Even some of the true believers are incredulous about this.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

it just never occurred to him that he should attempt to capture this phenomena on video or in still images.

If I had a floating metal pipe appear in my kitchen without any prior metal pipe appearances, it would take me about 90 seconds to get one of my cheap-y web cameras I've got laying around the house (there's a few of them around the house that I use for checking in on the cats when we're away) pointed at it and recording it.

If I failed to do it the first time I saw a pipe, I'd do the second time.

By the third pipe appearance, I'd have more cameras and they'd be running 24/7 recording any possible pipe in every room in the house.

But nope, this didn't occur to him over seven years.

 

[Ravi]

So for seven years Elizondo's house was been routinely invaded by supernatural hitchhikers and it just never occurred to him that he should attempt to capture this phenomena on video or in still images.

His thunderstorm analogy makes zero sense. If these things were so common in his everyday life right up until he quit his DoD job then why is he relying on declassification of information held by his former employer to prove their existence? He could have just published his own personal videos taken from within his own home.

Even some of the true believers are incredulous about this.

It just doesn't add up, indeed. It comes across as an attempt to create extra fluff to fill his book..
The disappearing dogs.. Come on man.

 

[Giddierone]

It's a bit of an aside, although somewhat related to orbs, so i'll mention it because it might have some resonance...
'The Voice of Space' by René Magritte, 1931 (seen in some books around the UFO topic) depicts spherical hovering (jingle) bells (orbs!) over a landscape, and Trevor Key's cover for Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' depicts a hovering triangular bent bell over a landscape.

 

[Mick West]

So for seven years Elizondo's house was been routinely invaded by supernatural hitchhikers and it just never occurred to him that he should attempt to capture this phenomena on video or in still images.

Something to consider here is that a surprising amount of people have reported such experiences.

Source

2,240 votes, and 18.2%, or 407 people, report seeing something like this in their own home.

I suggested some possible explanations in an email this morning:

People claim to see them, but they never show up on camera. That suggests one of the following:

1) They are dreams or hallucinations
2) They are made up
3) They are faulty memories
4) They are invisible to cameras

Is there another option?

5) The people seeing them are somehow unaware of their world-changing significance, so it never occurs to them to try to get them on camera.

What are people seeing, if anything? I think I'd also add:

6) They are misperceptions.

We know that certain things get perceived in certain ways. Planes are "cigar-shaped craft" or Tic-Tacs. Starlink trains or space debris becames a giant craft with windows. Things a drone lies past in the air are "fastwalkers" or UFOs. Flys become giant fast UFOs. Specks of dust become orbs (but only on camera) when lit by a flash or IR.

There are other UFO archetypes, like the black triangle, which are common enough that there might be some underyling misperception that explains some cases (three points make a triangle)

But what about visible orbs in the house? Headlights of a passing car? He lives in the Wyoming now, in an isolated region. Were some of the orbs linked to his Californian home's layout?

It's hard to imagine what could be misperceived as a basketball-sized orb floating down the hallway. But then, perhaps that's why it's unidentified.

 

[deirdre]

It's hard to imagine what could be misperceived as a basketball-sized orb floating down the hallway. But then, perhaps that's why it's unidentified.

Large Eye Floaters Explained - Posterior Vitreous Detachment (PVD)

Doctor Eye Health


add: i should note i had a ton of floaters when i had covid. i guess a few if i was looking down the hallway and not knowing they were floaters (or something funky eye related) could be described as "basketball size". thats kinda like saying "the ufo was football field size" without knowing how far away the thing is, so im not sure what "basketball size" means.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

I would offer painless ocular migraines as a cause. I don't get the jagged zigzaggy auras or rainbow auras a lot of people get. I do get flashing lights in the corners of my vision or, if I close my eyes, I see colorful jagged firework looking things. There's no associated headache, just the nuisance of distracting visual effects that go away in a few hours. Sometimes the lights are colored, but almost always at the periphery. If I was a slightly less rational person, I'd be able to tell you an "orb" story instead of "one time I really had a bad migraine" story.

I was in my office crashing to meet a major deadline and was under significant stress, which is a trigger for me. Plus that stress increases the old blood pressure, I hadn't really eaten anything (low blood sugar?), and was effectively fueled exclusively by Dr Pepper (high caffeine?). The eye flashes were already going on. Suddenly, I was startled by what clearly appeared to be a physical object between me and my monitor. A bright blue light about the size of a golf ball with a white core appeared, moving from 12 o'clock to the vertical center of my field of vision. It took about a second to cover that distance. It scared the hell out of me. It was in vivid focus, which made it seem like a solid object despite being a "light." It stopped at the center of my vision for maybe a second, before moving off at a ninety degree angle to the 3 o'clock position and vanishing.

Two things immediately came to me, despite my surprise and a level of "never seen that before." Knowing my vision in general (near sighted with and an astigmatism), I knew that it could not have been a physical object. It was between me and my monitor. If you'd put anything in that space while I was focused on the monitor, it would have been fairly out of focus. It was sharply in focus. The other was that as it moved off, I was distinctly aware that it only appeared in my left eye. When it moved from left to right, it never reached my right peripheral vision. If it had been a physical object, I assume I'd have seen it with both eyes? I took it as a rather severe symptom of my stress and decided no matter how important work was, I had to take a break.

That was about eight years ago and I haven't had anything else like it appear, but I have also noticed a reduction in my migraines in general over the same period. Thinking back on it, if I had been looking across the room or something instead of focused on my computer, I could have "seen it" as being much larger and farther away.

 

[Giddierone]

I guess since the claim is that multiple people saw the same orb at the same time you'd have to include prank, like a vape cloud bubble. [Skip to 0:20]

Source: https://youtu.be/swq61GWahrU?si=uMdqnyW4PvYEVtD6&t=20

 

[JMartJr]

Is there another option?

Maybe 2A) It is hard to get a possible poll response to come back as 0. Some people give a false answer to "stand out" or mess with the pollster, some click the wrong thing, some get confused The answer might not be "made up" as mush as "answered erroneously," but in any event are not accurate answers.

 

[john.phil]

Elizondo and his wife mentioned the orbs to Ross Coulthart (16:18 to 17:20):

(16:41 - 16:57) - Elizondo - Well, we would have these weird glowing balls of light in the house. They were green, they were small, they were diffuse, kind of like a little neon ball, and it really caused some disruption for my kids and my wife.

(17:00 - 17:20) - Jennifer Elizondo - I would routinely see orbs. Small little spherical, green, lightish green type of colour, and I'd be just walking down the hall, and I would stop and it would just continue to go right through the wall.

After the To The Stars Academy went bankrupt, Elizondo was living in a trailer with his family (34:42 to 35:47), they don't mention seeing the orbs whilst living there.

(35:36 to 35:49) - Ross Coulthart - Why is this worth it Lue? I mean, you were a GS-15, in the senior executive service of the defence department. You ended up having to dig your own pit toilet, you couldn't continue to pay your rent.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgM5V44eQHU&t=978s

 

[John J.]

I would offer painless ocular migraines as a cause.

Yes, good call I think, painless migraine (AKA acephalgic migraine) with scintillating scotoma

Acephalgic migraine (also called migraine aura without headache, amigrainous migraine, isolated visual migraine, and optical migraine) is a neurological syndrome. It is a relatively uncommon variant of migraine in which the patient may experience some migraine symptoms such as aura, nausea, photophobia, and hemiparesis, but does not experience headache...
...Scintillating scotoma is the most common symptom...

Wikipedia, Acephalgic migraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acephalgic_migraine

Scintillating scotoma, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma has a couple of artistic conceptions:

As Alexandria Nick implies, some migraine sufferers might be familiar with them. But perhaps some people experience this but in the absence of headache, don't consider migraine- perhaps more understandable if the experience is a one-off or very infrequent event.

1) They are dreams or hallucinations

I think we have to explicitly include perceptions resulting from sleep disorders in this category. Many of us are familiar with the Old Hag/ incubus/ succubus type manifestations, but these are not the only strange perceptions reported.

Similarly, in a small number of reports maybe we can't exclude an epileptiform event of some kind.

Although not regarded as an orb sighting AFAIK, Robert Taylor's 1979 account features spherical motifs. Walking near Livingston, Scotland, the forestry worker saw a UFO about 480 metres (530 yards) away. Two smaller spheres which he described as "similar to sea mines" rolled towards him, somehow seized him and were dragging him towards the UFO when he blacked out.

Patricia Hannaford, founder of the Edinburgh University UFO Research Society and a qualified physician, advised Campbell on medical aspects of the case. She suggested that Taylor's collapse was an isolated attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, and the fit explained the objects as hallucinations. Symptoms such as Taylor's previous meningitis, his report of a strong smell which nobody else could detect, his headache, dry throat, paralysis of his legs and period of unconsciousness suggested this cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_incident

I think it's extremely unlikely that anything seen by Luis and Mrs Elizondo could be down to a physiological cause for obvious reasons. But maybe, when recording the accounts of claimed orb witnesses in future, researchers might consider asking about any odours present etc.

Something to consider here is that a surprising amount of people have reported such experiences.

That's interesting. Maybe the respondents weren't representative of the general population?
In any future survey, it might be worth asking about magic mushroom, DMT etc. use. We've seen on another thread that some DMT users think their hallucinations have some sort of objective reality independent of the time that they're under the drug's influence. Some of their visions seem to have circular/ spherical features.

But what about visible orbs in the house? Headlights of a passing car?

As you say, it's hard to see how that could be misperceived as a basketball-sized "orb", especially one that's green or clear as Mr. Elizondo claims. Same goes for any other domestic or nearby light sources, he must be (at the least) a reasonably intelligent guy, I can't see him not identifying such a cause over a period of some months.

I think it's unlikely many prosaic explanations- optical illusion/ external lightsource, misperception, migraine or other cause of visual disturbance/ endogenous hallucination- will be of any use in explaining the Elizondo's orbs (although they may be relevant to other reports).

Lue Elizondo implicitly links "his" orbs, as a phenomenon, with the blue orb that reportedly vaporised two dogs, and claims

...we had numerous reports of negative biological effects associated with UAP encounters, especially orbs. The injuries sustained seemed to stem from some sort of directed-energy exposure, almost like radiation.

Luis Elizondo, Imminent, quoted by Mick West here.

Elizondo claims some injuries were serious and the children of some AATIP staff were affected, raising (IMHO) questions (my post here) about the management of the situation if taken at face value.

It might be difficult to find a plausible (terrestrial) explanation for the orbs described in Imminent* if we also accept the narrative in which they feature- dog killings, injuries to staff, passage through solid walls etc.
The possible causes of "straightforward" orb sightings, though useful in discussion of such cases, cannot in themselves account for Elizondo's orbs.


*At least one down-to-Earth possibility exists.

 

[Ann K]

I do get flashing lights in the corners of my vision or, if I close my eyes, I see colorful jagged firework looking things. There's no associated headache, just the nuisance of distracting visual effects that go away in a few hours.

(OT: I've had that occasionally, but an antihistamine usually gets rid of it without having it turn into a migraine.)

We'd need an ophthalmologist to tell us, but I'm sure there are more eye-related problems which might be involved in seeing unexplained things. (Edit to add: I see @John J. has just explained a lot of that. Thanks, John!) There are also insects (someone earlier mentioned how quickly a mosquito can disappear when you're chasing it), and I have both seen an occasional mouse (I live in the woods, and animals are a fact of life) and imagined I saw one, perhaps because a bit of hair was dangling within my sight line.

 

[John J.]

I'm sure there are more eye-related problems which might be involved in seeing unexplained things.

Maybe phosphenes at a pinch, (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene).
As Ann said, we need an ophthalmologist. And if there's enough petty cash left, a neurologist.

 

[Ann K]

Maybe phosphenes at a pinch, (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene).
As Ann said, we need an ophthalmologist. And if there's enough petty cash left, a neurologist.

I find as I age my iris doesn't open and close as fast as it once did, so when I've been outside in bright sunshine it takes longer for my vision to adjust to the relative darkness of indoors.

A possible visual effect may also be the well-known after-effect of having one's photo taken with a flash, and the lingering afterimage of ...well, I guess I'll have to say it... an "orb". I think the same thing could happen if one happens to look up at any bright light. Say, for example, you have a reading light shining over your shoulder, but you turn around for some reason and there you are, staring at the light bulb.

 

[JMartJr]

A possible visual effect may also be the well-known after-effect of having one's photo taken with a flash, and the lingering afterimage of ...well, I guess I'll have to say it... an "orb". I think the same thing could happen if one happens to look up at any bright light. Say, for example, you have a reading light shining over your shoulder, but you turn around for some reason and there you are, staring at the light bulb.

Hadn't thought about this, but yeah, as someone who is ALSO aging (I guess we all are, now that I think about it!) I have an odd visual phenomenon of a green/yellow/blue "Eye of Sauron" type of effect in my eyes some nights, often after getting up in the middle of the night for some of the reasons an old man , with an insomniac cat, might get up most nights! At time it gets so "bright" white that a real light at that intensity would be painful I think. It is similar to the after-effect of a flash picture, but though I have tried to link it to looking at various lights in the house or out the window, and tried to cause it intentionally, I have not found a real-world light that seems to trigger the effect - - some nights it happens, some nights it doesn't. Takes the form of a bright orb or ring, with a darker bit in the middle, which slowly fades out with intermittent re-brightenings. I suspect that the shape is perhaps related to the area around the blind spot where the optic nerve comes into the retina, but that may be incorrect.

I do not have a dog: so far it has not vaporized the cat but I can ask...

So yeah, eyes and brains are prone to do stuff like that. If it happened while I was falling asleep, might it seem to me, in memory, to have interacted with the family, pets and the like? And I of course would have no pictures. Hmmm...

 

[Ravi]

The problem is though, that his kids and wife (and neighbours?) all saw it. At least, that is what he says...

 

[JMartJr]

The problem is though, that his kids and wife (and neighbours?) all saw it. At least, that is what he says...

I am considering the possibility that what he says about the orbs in his house is not accurate, but also the possibility that he might honestly think it is. Closest I can get is "happened on the edge of sleep, where real and not real an mash up together, possibly then embellished in memory." I'm not sure that works, but it's the best I got.

 

[NorCal Dave]

This section of the book almost sounds like something completely different from the UFOs and government stuff. Unfortunately, it reminds me a lot of The Amityville Horror.

I think the amount of medical damage done by these orbs and the supposed SWR contagion as described by Elizondo and other like Knapp/Lacatski, up to and including the vaporizing of dogs and injured children with nothing more than a few anonymous MRIs analyzed, not by a radiologist, but a geneticist with a history of involvement in dubious cases (see Nolan and Ata https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879981718300548?via=ihub) as the only evidence puts most of these events firmly in the realm of stories. I'll quote @jarlrmai from another thread, as he says it so well:

And in my experience UFO people absolutely LOVE stories, videos get upvotes on the reddit, but the 'telling my story' posts get comment engagement from true believers, videos can be debunked (again) or are blurry lights (again) but stories, they are the real deal no-one can really debunk a story.

They just need the background detail that they are all supposed to be true, or maybe it's the LARP element as well, people using it as an escape a partial belief, a suspension of disbelief that goes a bit to far.

The linking of paranormal and UFOs is not new, but he seems to be following in the footsteps of George Knapp, who in the 2 Skinwalker Ranch books argues for an overarching "phenomenon" that includes everything and anything perceived as out of the ordinary, or in Knapp's words "high strangeness".

In this world, ghost stories, aliens in UFOs and supposed metal samples from Roswell are all the same thing. It creates a sort of giant Gish Gallop. While on this thread possible explanations for orbs are being explored, there is still the mutilated cattle to deal with:

Just dead cows? What about the UFO over SWR?

Starlink? Yeah but what about Stratton's wife seeing a 7' werewolf in Virginia?

Just some shadows? But what about hitting a sample with enough terahertz to make it float?

It doesn't? But what about the success of remote viewing?

Not very successful? But what about the orbs?

Round and round.

 

[Mick West]

The problem is though, that his kids and wife (and neighbours?) all saw it. At least, that is what he says...

It would be great to hear from these neighbors!

Over time, more orbs appeared in our home. Not too frequently: a whole month might go by, and then one would arrive. Since "our" orbs manifested as clear or green, I did not feel compelled to warn my family to avoid them. I didn't want to frighten them further. As far as I knew, only blue was problematic. Nevertheless, we couldn't shake the things. I'd be sitting at the dining room table, working at my computer or catching up on some reading, and I'd suddenly notice one of these damn balls hovering nearby. Other times, we'd be outside, grilling or hanging out near our koi pond with neighbors, when an orb would appear randomly, linger for a few moments, then mosey over toward the trees on the edges of our property. Our neighbors witnessed this too. It got to the point where neighbors would sometimes joke, "Is this one of our government's secret programs you are working on, Lue?" Laughing uncomfortably, I'd think to myself, You have no idea how close to the truth you are.

Elizondo, Luis. Imminent (p. 70). Kindle Edition.

I can imagine something happening like Lue pointing out a bit of cottonseed fluff high in the sky, thinking it's one of the orbs he saw in his house, and his Neighbors going along with it, and then him retelling the story years later. But that's pure speculation. All we have is his rather unusual and unlikely-sounding story.

 

[yoshy]

I am less inclined to believe that these orbs were actually seen...but I digress. Orb hallucinations can actually be induced in multiple ways: e.g. via visual flicker or infrasound.

Hallucinations occur in both normal and clinical populations. Due to their unpredictability and complexity, the mechanisms underlying hallucinations remain largely untested. Here we show that visual hallucinations can be induced in the normal population by visual flicker, limited to an annulus that constricts content complexity to simple moving grey blobs, allowing objective mechanistic investigation. Hallucination strength peaked at ~11 Hz flicker and was dependent on cortical processing. Hallucinated motion speed increased with flicker rate, when mapped onto visual cortex it was independent of eccentricity, underwent local sensory adaptation and showed the same bistable and mnemonic dynamics as sensory perception. A neural field model with motion selectivity provides a mechanism for both hallucinations and perception. Our results demonstrate that hallucinations can be studied objectively, and they share multiple mechanisms with sensory perception. We anticipate that this assay will be critical to test theories of human consciousness and clinical models of hallucination.

Sensory dynamics of visual hallucinations in the normal population

There is a story that an engineer, called Vick Tandy was working alone in a medical lab one evening in the 1980s. There were already reports that the lab was haunted. Vick reported suddenly feeling anxiety, cold and unease with a sense that he was being watched. He then noticed a grey object floating into in his peripheral vision.
...
His investigation led to his conclusion that these vibrations were due to sound waves being bounced from wall to wall within the room and resulting in a standing wave at the centre of the room. When he measured the frequency of this sound wave it was about 19Hz, just below the range of audible human sound.

Infrasound and the paranormal

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

He's stunningly confident that orbs can't change colour.

Or that after a few green visits they send the blue ones in.

I don't get "frightening them further". What was the family frightened of in the first place? Did it "mosey" in a threatening manner?

 

[deirdre]

I don't get "frightening them further". What was the family frightened of in the first place?

no offense, but that's a ridiculous question. very few people would NOT be frightened if unexplained orbs were floating around their house.

 

[yoshy]

no offense, but that's a ridiculous question. very few people would NOT be frightened if unexplained orbs were floating around their house.

I really don't see what's frightening about a colorful floating orb. My first assumption would be I'm having an LSD flashback, and then first action would be trying to catch an orb to see if it's physically there lol

 

[John J.]

Maybe ball lightning is a cause of reported orb sightings, if it exists (discussion here, https://www.metabunk.org/threads/when-ball-lightning-isnt-ball-lightning.13205/).

Some accounts of ball lightning describe it passing through solid structures (as described by Mrs. Elizondo with walls in her home), although how this might physically happen is problematic I would guess.

At least one report has a blueish "orb",

...a glowing sphere a little more than 20 cm in diameter emerged from the pilot's cabin and passed down the aisle of the aircraft approximately 50 cm from me... ...the optical output could be assessed as approximately 5 to 10 W and its colour was blue-white...

R.C. Jennison, Nature 224, pg.895 (1969), https://www.nature.com/articles/224895a0

And maybe ball lightning might discharge via two unlucky dogs (although the details recounted by Elizondo don't seem to describe this), there are reports of ball lightning causing damage but it's not clear how accurate those accounts are.

But it's hard to understand why the Elizondo home would be affected regularly by such a phenomena (if it exists),

Over time, more orbs appeared in our home. Not too frequently: a whole month might go by, and then one would arrive.

Luis Elizondo, Imminent.
This does kind of imply that an orb or orbs visited the Elizondos approximately monthly.

Again, whatever theoretical causes for orbs (or the perception of orbs), Elizondo's orbs exist in a narrative which is puzzling.
Although it has been alluded to that Luis Elizondo isn't a physicist or engineer (see Errors in Luis Elizondo's UFO Book "Imminent") he does have a science background,

At the University of Miami, Elizondo studied double majors in microbiology and immunology, with minors in chemistry and mathematics.

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Elizondo
He must have had some acquaintance with the principles of gathering scientific evidence /experimental methodology.

If Elizondo led/ was an investigator for AAWSAP/ AATIP he must have done some background reading about UFOs.
Unless he were extraordinarily unimaginative, which I doubt, he must have known that strong evidence of orbs/ UAP (1) existing as a discrete phenomena and, much more importantly (2) being of alien origin could be of unparalleled significance.

He must have understood that anecdotal evidence about orbs/ UFOs might be of interest, but is of little value scientifically.

Yet, with regular orb visits, as far as we know Luis fails to set up any recording devices, or other monitoring equipment, in his home. He doesn't arrange for other potential observers to stay over -obviously an imposition on domestic life, but this is potentially one of the most momentous discoveries in human history.
As far as we know, he doesn't reach out to other agencies or departments which might have surveillance/ monitoring equipment or the ability to have personnel present around the clock (Lue relates how the neighbors see orbs as well, so some are outside the house).

There's no evidence that any significant part of the $22 million budget allocated to AATIP was used to record the extraordinary orb visits at the home of the head of AATIP.
I predict there will be no evidence that Luis ever informed the Department of Defense that his security had been compromised by the very entities he claims he was studying (or that AATIP conveyed that message to an appropriate agency).

As either a UAP investigator, or as a former intelligence operative brought in to aid AATIP security, Luis Elizondo's actions (and apparent lack of them) are hard to understand in a favourable light.

 

[jdog]

"Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere."

― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

[NorCal Dave]

I think the orbs may serve an additional purpose in the narrative. In this paragraph form the OP, Elizondo has reached the stage when the orbs are almost ubiquitous:

Over time, more orbs appeared in our home. Not too frequently: a whole month might go by, and then one would arrive. Since "our" orbs manifested as clear or green, I did not feel compelled to warn my family to avoid them. I didn't want to frighten them further. As far as I knew, only blue was problematic. Nevertheless, we couldn't shake the things. I'd be sitting at the dining room table, working at my computer or catching up on some reading, and I'd suddenly notice one of these damn balls hovering nearby. Other times, we'd be outside, grilling or hanging out near our koi pond with neighbors, when an orb would appear randomly, linger for a few moments, then mosey over toward the trees on the edges of our property. Our neighbors witnessed this too. It got to the point where neighbors would sometimes joke, "Is this one of our government's secret programs you are working on, Lue?" Laughing uncomfortably, I'd think to myself, You have no idea how close to the truth you are.

pg: 70

He's seeing orbs all the time. Recall the theories of Garry Nolan as explained by Elizondo:

After digging through files, Garry noticed something else. All 105 of the patients were high-functioning and had high IQs. All had an overdeveloped part of the brain known as the caudate-putamen. This is the area of the brain that many researchers have begun to associate with intuition, though the link has been proposed by some scientists as far back as the 1960s. Some researchers had also correlated the size of one's caudate-putamen with one's intelligence, but of course this is a controversial claim that many researchers still disagree with.

pg: 133

And as Nolan himself talks about this idea from Mic's post in the thread on errors in the book:

We started to notice that there were similarities in what we thought was the damage across multiple individuals. As we looked more closely, though, we realized, well, that can't be damaged, because that's right in the middle of the basal ganglia [a group of nuclei responsible for motor control and other core brain functions]. If those structures were severely damaged, these people would be dead. That was when we realized that these people were not damaged, but had an over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen [The caudate nucleus plays a critical role in various higher neurological functions; the putamen influences motor planning, learning, and execution]. If you looked at 100 average people, you wouldn't see this kind of density. But these individuals had it. An open question is: did coming in contact with whatever it was cause it or not?

For a couple of these individuals we had MRIs from prior years. They had it before they had these incidents. It was pretty obvious, then, that this was something that people were born with.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/sta...alyzing-anomalous-materials-from-ufo-crashes/

People that see orbs are special. They are born with an ability, or they gain this ability from contact with the phenomenon.

The orbs are multi-faceted. They are great stories that can't be debunked. They play on the theories about Skinwalker Ranch. They are a manifestation of the phenomenon that are related to special people. I've never seen orbs like described here, that's because I'm not special.

 

[CasualDebunk]

Something to consider here is that a surprising amount of people have reported such experiences.

View attachment 71330
Source

I've had such an encounter, twice actually, over back to back days. The second time some friends and I were sitting around playing PlayStation, in a weird coincidence I think it was Tony Hawk, when it floated over the TV set and blinked out like a light turning off. One of them actually took off and refused to visit again for a while

I don't think it's controversial to say people have experiences they themselves cannot explain. We all know how limited human perception and memory are. My issue with this new breed of UFO influencers are them providing nonsensical explanation for these rare occurrences.

A subset of these people having these experiences might actually need medical intervention. It my eyes it's awful to your large audience having these experiences is not a cause for concern in any way.

 

[Ann K]

Our neighbors witnessed this too. It got to the point where neighbors would sometimes joke, "Is this one of our government's secret programs you are working on, Lue?"

This sounds much too far-fetched to be believable, and I suspect both the neighbors witnessing something weird AND them joking about it is all a figment of Elizondo's fertile imagination. If even a small fraction of the strange events he mentions have actually happened, and he (supposedly involved in scientific investigations) paid only a casual attention to them - enough to mention them in a book but not enough to try to understand the phenomena - it leaves me undecided as to whether he was a really poor investigator, or a really poor author.

 

[John J.]

Orb hallucinations can actually be induced in multiple ways: e.g. via visual flicker or infrasound.

The study referenced, Sensory dynamics of visual hallucinations in the normal population, Pearson, Chiou, Rogers et al., eLife October 2016 is interesting, but the hallucinations were generated in a specific experimental set-up.

Subjects watched a monitor displaying a broad white ring on a black background.
The ring was "turned on and off" (leaving a black screen in its absence) at various rates 5-30 Hz.
Subjects reported seeing grey blobs on the surface of the ring/ where the ring would have been, often travelling around the circumference.
From the author's Fig. 1:

Arguably the what the subjects saw could be described as "induced optical illusion" as well as "hallucination"; we don't normally describe e.g. optical afterimages as hallucinations (to be clear, the authors present evidence that the grey blobs cannot be solely explained as retinal afterimages and that cortical processing is involved).

There's no evidence that subjects saw orbs per se, or that their grey blobs moved from the fast-flickering, high-contrast ring area. Cool study though, thank you.

There is a story that an engineer, called Vick Tandy was working alone in a medical lab one evening in the 1980s. There were already reports that the lab was haunted. Vick reported suddenly feeling anxiety, cold and unease with a sense that he was being watched. He then noticed a grey object floating into in his peripheral vision.
Infrasound and the paranormal

The writer Naomi misspells "Vic Tandy",

Vic Tandy (1955 – 23 July 2005) was a British lecturer for information technology at Coventry University, England, and an engineer. He was known best for his research into the relationship between infrasound and ghostly apparitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Tandy,
and he was working for a company designing medical ventilators (it seems, though that term isn't used), not in a medical lab.
And he didn't describe anything as "floating".

His experience doesn't seem to be connected to orbs as such. He (and a co-author) tells us what happened to him in
"The Ghost in the Machine", Vic Tandy and Tony R. Lawrence, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 62, 851 April 1998:

As he was writing he became aware that he was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to his left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of his vision but it moved as V.T. would expect a person to. The apparition was grey and made no sound. The hair was standing up on V.T.'s neck and there was a distinct chill in the room. As V.T. recalls, "It would not be unreasonable to suggest I was terrified". V.T. was unable to see any detail and finally built up the courage to turn and face the thing. As he turned the apparition faded and disappeared.

http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/ghost-in-machine.pdf, my emphasis added, PDF attached below.

Tandy ascribed his experience to an infrasound standing wave. He might have underplayed the role of psychological factors such as suggestion for his specific unpleasant experience; before it happened

...V.T. heard suggestions that the lab was haunted...

...but (perfectly sensibly) assumed this might be due to misperceptions of the various bits of medical ventilators "..wheezing away", lighting conditions, "...wild cats" (presumably feral cats), etc. etc.
His insight about infrasound occurred after the apparition incident.

I think it's accepted that in some circumstances infrasound can cause people to feel uneasy, "spooked".

The BBC 2 TV series Uncanny, series 1 ep. 3 "The Oxford Exorcism" featured a fun (if low-powered!) experiment
(Available on the BBC iPlayer here, apologies to non-UK people who probably can't get it, minutes 19:53-23:22 approx.)

A small group of student volunteers were told they were entering a haunted aircraft hangar at RAF Upper Heyford.

They were asked to place card "ghost" markers on the floor at any location where they felt particularly uneasy or had unpleasant sensations.

Unknown to them Steve Parsons, an engineer with expertise in infrasound had rigged up several emitters (19 Hz).
The theory was that the subjects would feel most uncomfortable where the infrasound was most intense.

The resulting distribution of markers suggests that infrasound might have played a role.

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

no offense, but that's a ridiculous question. very few people would NOT be frightened if unexplained orbs were floating around their house.

Well then I'm putting his family in the very few. What part of the narrative we are presented suggests they aren't?

His wife could easily have had a look of horror on her face. But it was perplexed instead.

Only Luis ever gets scared. So scared he doesn't seem to bother doing anything about it other than trust in green. Unless there were really some attempts to "shake the things" that we don't hear about.

But then how do you shake a orb? How do you shake something you have no idea what at all it is or what it can or can't do?

Or even, why would you want to shake them when it's your job to investigate shit like this? Get the family to safety, get the lab guys in, let's show the world! Nah, it's just another of them damn green balls. We only research the blue ones

 

[Giddierone]

The description of seeing coloured orbs of light has parallels in occult & early UFO literature. In fact early reports of UFO literature are simply technologised occultism based on a Theosophical worldview.

The question to ask about this is whether these parallels increase the likelihood of what Elizondo describes being real, because it's phenomena supported by other historical witness reports, or whether this new stuff he's reporting -at this late stage in his public statements- is simply carefully calibrated unfalsifiable embellishment to conform more fully with experiencer literature for the purpose of selling a book and promoting a dubious UFO threat narrative which is provided with full knowledge that these claims can't be tested. They're not measurable by cameras or science. (Even Uri Geller gave us some bent cutlery to ponder over).

UFO Percipients / Contactees

Some examples include:

• Orfeo Angelucci - one of the earliest UFO contactees wrote in his book The Secret of the Saucers (1955) about green orbs descending to create a screen before communication with a UFO. (Carl Jung dedicates more than a dozen pages to Angelucci's story in this book Flying Saucers (1959)

Green orbs feature in his UFO encounter [bold added]:

the glowing red disk was directly in front of me and only a short distance away. As I watched it in bewilderment it pulsated violently; then shot off into the sky at a 30- or 40-degree angle and at very great speed. High in the sky to the west it decelerated abruptly, hung for a moment; then accelerated and disappeared like a meteor.

But just before the glowing red orb vanished, two smaller objects came from it. These objects were definitely circular in shape and of a soft, fluorescent green color. They streaked down directly in front of my car and hovered only a few feet away. I judged each to be about three feet in diameter. Hanging silently in the air like iridescent bubbles their green light fluctuated rhythmically in intensity.

Elsewhere the colour Green seems significant:

Over the hills to the west I noticed a fuzzy green light apparently hanging suspended in the sky. I watched it for several moments, then went inside and called Mabel and seven or eight others to come out and see it. All of them saw the mysterious light hanging motionless in the sky over the hill.

It appears to signify some kind of transmission / communication device:

It further stated that the small green disks were instruments of transmission and reception comparable to nothing developed on earth.

---

A more closely matching description can be found in Jenny Randles research.

In The Pennine UFO Mystery (1983) we hear reports of:

light ball phenomena in the immediate vicinity of the home while still a child. At age eleven or twelve (about 1952) Mike remembers getting out of bed in Bacup, to where his family had now moved. Floating by the bedroom window was a greenish ball, only inches in diameter and seemingly composed of pulsing tiny 'horseshoe' shapes.

Randles coins the term Psychic Toys to describe these orbs of light seen by UFO percipients.

"Psychic Toys: are very specific in appearance and behaviour. They are balls of light — between tennis-ball and basketball in size - which enter the bedroom of the youngster and quite often start to 'play' with them."

Another witness says:

Lights used to come and play with me,' she explained.
'What kind of lights?' Jenny asked.
'Balls of white light. They'd fly in through the walls and windows and I would play with them.'

---

Alan Godfrey, police officer and UFO witness - under hypnosis describes a childhood 'dream' of a ball of light in his bedroom.

---

In John Mack's Abduction (1994) we see a similar description from an abductee:

When Melissa was in her early twenties she saw a ball of light come
through the sliding doors of her apartment, "bounce around the
room," go down the hall and into another room and "through a wall."

Elsewhere, abductees refer to Tinkerbell-like dancing balls of light they'd seen in their youth.

In folklore

• Green light emitted from Faery Knolls. Grassy hillocks which appear to emit light from open doorways, signifies some kind of window to another world.

---

Supposed medium Eileen Garret (1893-1970), wrote about a similar perception in her memoir Adventures in the Supernormal. [ISBN: 1-931747-01-6]

• NB: Is this book what Elizondo is referring to in his attempt to distinguish "paranormal" from "supernormal"? (People living in earlier times couldn't understand today's tech e.g. a cell phone, but they'd still be able to measure it's dimensionality, colour weight etc - "paranormal" things defy all measurement (image capture), so I think he's simply wrong about that).

Here the 'Psychic Toys' are referred to as 'The Children'. In addition to seeing them she describes being able to see auras around people and plants (IIRC a concept later popularised by The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield (1993)).

She also saw orbs or "Globules of light" in her home:

I perceived globules of light that moved and wove in patterns and burst at intervals within the slanted brightness. I discovered that they floated in light and without light, swirling about one another, carrying color within themselves, expanding and bursting like bubbles and creating tiny rainbows of beauty as they burst. They were of different sizes and shapes within the field of their tiny dimensions, not quite round but rather ovate in form. I had to watch them intently follow their whirling dance — at times my eyes ached from the tension —

Trees, shrubs and flowers drew nourishment, air and color from the dancing spherical bodies of light that filled all space. I had been familiar with these tiny globes for a long time, but I now discovered that they contained a color-stuff which was absorbed by everything living. At midday, I saw tiny globules drawn away from the flowers by the intense heat of the sun, but at dawn and at twilight the light-substance of the little spheres danced swiftly toward the outer manifestations of all living forms. Theirs was a steady affinity between them, a lightness of interplay akin to laughter.
In the darkness, I saw the globules intensified. They were absorbed by the flowers with a new intensity. The perfume of the blossoms became stronger and their petals more vigorous. The overblown rose revived for a moment, and drooping plants lifted their leaves again until the night air recharged all living things with new vitality.
In the moonlight the alabaster-like globules moved with renewed rhythm. The influence of the moon's rays was different from those of the sun. The little spheres grew seemingly stronger; the blue tones turned to violet and purple, matching the night. I, too, drew conscious strength from the moon. Under its magnetic light, I threw off my clothes and allowed its rays to flow into my body. I moved to the rhythmic melody of darkness and moonlight. When I shared my thoughts about these things with "The Children," they understood and sagely nodded their heads.

---

Additional suggested explanations:

• Synesthesia (the crossover of senses i.e hearing colours, seeing sounds) although how this might be temporarily triggered in multiple witnesses in one location makes this seem unlikely.
• Tectonic strain in rocks (earthlights).
  • John Keel referred to geographical areas that saw more psychic activity as "window areas" where people witnessed floating light balls.
• Ball Lightning: For example see this survey of ~300 observations: Hungarian Ball Lightning Observations [See illustrations of the path some balls took, however Green is not part of the description] https://egely.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/HungarianBallLightningObservationsKFKI-1987_LQ.pdf

To quote from it:

"the most frequent type of observation is when during a summerer storm, a shining sphere "floats" into a room, it goes round the walls, and leaves the room through the same or another window without doing any damage"

 

[deirdre]

How do you shake something you have no idea what at all it is or what it can or can't do?

you google it. then call in the Warrens to cleanse your house. Then you go on tv interviews and tell people about it. Then you sell your story to the History channel or Warner Bros and they make a blockbuster movie.

 

[yoshy]

Does Elizondo ever provide citations for any of his claims? For example:

This is the area of the brain that many researchers have begun to associate with intuition, though the link has been proposed by some scientists as far back as the 1960s. Some researchers had also correlated the size of one's caudate-putamen with one's intelligence, but of course this is a controversial claim that many researchers still disagree with.

Does he cite any papers or research to back these claims? If not, then he's using weasel words, which is poor form for any author.

n rhetoric, a weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word or phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "it is thought", and "researchers believe".

Anyone making claims as fantastical as Elizondo should follow Wikipedia guidelines as the bare minimum!