Distinctly Montana Magazine

28 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 3 So what are our mysterious visitors? Even the recent whis- tleblower was cagey when asked if they are extrater- restrials. Some have speculated that they could be a pre-human species that grew to prominence in Earth's oceans millions of years before humans shed their tails. Some, including Montana Tech Professor of Anthropology Michael Masters, PhD (frequent guest of History Channel UFO documentaries and podcasts about "the phe- nomenon"), theorize that the craft are time machines from the future. Still others think they may be demonic entities, as did abductee Whitley Streiber, at least for a while. Early on in his best-seller Communion he wrote, "Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the eternal... Alone at night I worried about the legendary cunning of demons ... At the very least I was going stark, raving mad." www.ephemeraconfection.com (406) 890-2146 Est. 2019 120 Main Street, Kalispell Mt 59901 Best Cakes in Montana On the other hand, Mariana had something of a reputation as a showman. He claimed almost supernatural powers in his abili- ty to predict which players would pan out, and was never above a good promotional opportunity. The most significant evidence against his credibility comes from a story collected twenty years after his death. His secretary Virginia, dubbed Witness II in the Blue Book report, also claimed to have seen the craft. Yet in a Great Falls Tribune article written in the 2008, the writer contacted her to in- terview her and got her husband. The reporter asked if Virginia had anything to add, all these years later, to the Mariana footage narrative. "Well, I'll tell you this," her husband told the reporter, "he threatened to have her job if she didn't cooperate." And yet, what did Mariana have to gain from claiming that the footage was real, and repeatedly submitting it to the Air Force? And even if Mariana did lie about the Air Force editing his foot- age, the question remains as to what the objects really were. It seems clear they couldn't have been the reflections of passing jets, a judgment later refuted even by the notoriously skeptical Condon committee, whose investigator would, in 1966, proclaim that the F-34 reflection explanation "conflicts with some of the soft data." "It is judged reasonable," the report concluded, "only to re- gard this object as unidentified." TODAY THE FOOTAGE, HELD IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, IS A LITTLE OVER SIX FEET OF CELLULOID.

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