Sometimes I don’t know why I do it. Why do I watch this stuff? UFO Hunters. Paranormal State. Ghost Hunters. UFO Psychic Hunter Ghost Kids International. Why do I clog my TiVo with these shows? They routinely feature self-deluded “researchers” and equally deluded “clients” and “sources.” These teams investigate strange phenomena and struggle to find explanations — not the most likely or best-supported explanations, but the most interesting explanations. The explanations that make the best TV.
They are a guilty pleasure, to be sure. And the most pleasure comes in clips like this one from the History Channel’s UFO Hunters.
The show’s intrepid investigators, Bill Birnes, Kevin Cook and Pat Uskert, travel to Europe in search of evidence of secret WWII Nazi UFO projects. In the woods of western Poland they find — a concrete ring!Now it should be no surprise that a global conflict involving millions of people might leave behind some decaying infrastructure as much as seventy years later. Even if that infrastructure is entirely of this earth. But that’s kind of boring, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be more exciting it this ring were a SECRET NAZI UFO TEST SITE? Damn right it would.
Fortunately, the UFO Hunters are prepared. They have a local source of hearsay and a basic-cable-quality CGI team. You want a secret Nazi UFO test site? You got it!
But wait – the best it yet to come. The highlight of this clip starts at about 3:30.
Kevin Cook plays the role of scientific skeptic on the UFO Hunters, or as close to a skeptic as this crew seems likely to tolerate. Often I think he’s too easy on his fellow UFO Hunters, that he is a little too indulgent of their wild suppositions. But in this scene his frustration is clear.
Rather than accept the idea that this concrete ring must be related to Nazi UFOs, Cook confronts the team with another explanation. It appears that the mysterious ring is virtually identical to the support structure for a common type of water tank, some of which are still in use today. What’s more likely — that the ring in the woods is the remains of a similar tank, or that it is a part of a UFO test faclity?
How do you think Cook’s fellow researchers react?
Pat Uskert has the grace and good sense to seem at least a little befuddled and embarrassed. But Bill Birnes, publisher of UFO Magazine, soldiers on with the last best defense of of the conspiracy theorist: of course the water towers look like the Nazi UFO ring! The similarity to a water tower was PART OF THE COVER-UP!
I’ve got to hand it to Cook. He tries. As much as I might question his involvement in this kind of TV series, scenes like this make me want to consider him an honorary member of the Occam’s Razor Investigation Society.
