That Guy: Open mind essential for Roswell meet

Opinion

In just over three weeks, I will be in Roswell, New Mexico, attending the annual UFO convention.

On day three, I will address the international ufologist community, speaking about New Zealand's colourful UFO history.

Our most famous incident is the Kaikoura "dancing light" incident in the summer of 1978, but I will brush over this in favour of some of the less well-known cases, like the Pukekohe incident, the Pakuranga incident, the Papatoetoe incident and, to a lesser degree, the Panmure incident.

Through my undisclosed contacts at an undisclosed organisation which is privy, to a degree, to classified information stored at another unnamed organisation, I have been given fifth or sixth-hand information about these unverified cases.

It is worth noting that much of this information was further corroborated by Ian Wishart, but for obvious reasons he was unable or unwilling to reveal his sources as he has his reputation to think about.

He is also unwilling to admit he even met me at an undisclosed Irish tavern/bistro in the city. Which city, I am unwilling to disclose.

The Papakura incident seems to fall into the category of a close encounter of the first kind.

This means that the eye witnesses saw something that they could not identify and that it was the first time they had seen it.

Scott Lee reported his encounter in July 1991. Clearly this witness has two first names but I have swapped them around to protect his identity.

"I was walking home when I saw a bright light in the sky. It flew right over my head and then disappeared in the direction of the airport. Then I blacked out and woke up on the couch at my neighbour's house."

There are clearly so many gaps in this story, like the lost time between seeing the lights and waking up on his neighbour's couch, and although much of it can be put down to a well-documented history of alcohol abuse, surely not all of it.

This case has been made harder to solve by the fact that Lee now can't even recall reporting the incident. It is now up to us as UFO researchers to fill in the gaps as best we can.

The Pakuranga incident has similarities but would probably fall into the category of an encounter of the second kind.

This incident involves the entire staff of a Pakuranga plant barn which, in the summer of 2006, was simply called Big Dave's Garden Centre.

As early as July that year, Dave began reporting strange behaviour among certain members of staff, claiming that he believed many staff members weren't his staff as they were being cloned in large pods located at the rear of the plant barn near the yuccas and outdoor furniture display.

Fearing the cloned humanoids would take over the garden centre and then later the planet, he naturally chose to torch the entire operation.

It is difficult to prove what actually went on that night in December, but other than the fact that the store was clearly running at a loss since it opened in 1994, investigators were unable to find a reason Big Dave would torch his business.

We know that Dave obviously had concerns for a number of weeks before the fire as he chose to have a huge fire sale two weeks before torching the business.

The file on the Pakuranga incident remains unsolved and currently has a number of staples through it, holding it shut.

The Papatoetoe incident is slotted just before the Pakuranga incident and just after the Panmure incident in an unlabelled filing cabinet. That filing cabinet sits in the basement at an undisclosed location somewhere I am not at liberty to reveal.

This case falls into the category of an encounter of the third kind as actual "contact" may have been made between the major parties involved, in this case a group of Tongan stonewall workers and what can best be described as stonemasons from another solar system.

The Tongan work gang claim that one day after work in July 2001 they were visited by strange, unearthly beings wearing silver jump suits.

They maintain they were taken to the mother ship which was idling in space over New Zealand, and it is was here that they were given unearthly secrets about stonemasonry in exchange for taro.

By all accounts these stonemasons from another solar system had an impressive resume, their most well-known work being the Machu Picchu contract.

They explained telepathically that towards the end of the Machu Picchu contract the local people went on strike because of the use of cheap "foreign" labour, meaning they had to leave the job prematurely.

Their work records show that they relocated to Britain to build Stonehenge, landing the lucrative Easter Island contract on the way.

Why these highly intelligent beings would travel light years through space in search of stonemasonry contracts on other planets is anybody's guess, but until we have all the facts we must keep an open mind. This is the kind of attitude you need to take into the UFO conference at Roswell.