Twilight of the Skeptics

Klass Act

The famed UFO debunker’s legacy was his 1983 acknowledgement that UFOs represented a genuine challenge to science, which he inadvertently spelled out in his ‘UFO Curse’…

Ajournalist whose UFO skepticism was favorably quoted this year in Skeptical Inquirer came at me recently in the rough-and-tumble world of Twitter, and alas, before I even knew what was happening, the bastard nailed me with a UFO curse.

And not just any UFO curse, but the UFO curse … the Philip J. Klass UFO curse.

In ufological circles, Klass needs no introduction — although given that a new generation of UFO investigators is on the scene, perhaps a brief one is in order. Philip Julian Klass was arguably the most influential and well-known UFO skeptic of the 20th century. He began his career as an electrical engineer with General Electric. In 1952, he went to work as a journalist for the industry magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, where he spent more than three decades as a senior editor.

From that perch, he fell easily into investigating the UFO phenomenon. A polarizing figure, Klass delighted in his role as the “skunk at the garden party.” He died of cancer in 2005; the 3-page obituary published by Skeptical Inquirer was written by his friend and colleague, fellow UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer.

Interestingly, Sheaffer’s “in memoriam” piece does not mention the Curse, which seems odd, given that Klass made a point of having it published under the headline THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS in the UFO newsletter Saucer Smear in 1983. And, as we’ll see below, skeptics today love to throw it in the faces of “believers.”

Trolling Zac Cichy

The occasion for this curse, invoked by New York journalist Keith Kloor, was a Twitter exchange I had toward the end of October with Washington podcaster Zac Cichy, who I’ve mentioned here before. His Project Human podcast has featured some fascinating, thoughtful conversations with very smart people who have various views on ufology, including Luis Elizondo, Tim McMillan, Stephen Bassett, Jamarl Thomas, Ross Coulthart and Mick West, among others.

I won’t presume to tell Cichy’s story here, in part because I don’t know it all. But suffice to say, it’s sufficiently complex and personal that he brings what I regard as a unique, intellectually-grounded, and open-minded independence to ufology. It wouldn’t be fair to label him a “skeptic” as if that fully explains his perspective; it doesn’t. Bottom line, he’s his own man, looking for truthful answers by asking thoughtful questions.

Kloor, meanwhile, is (I suspect) a handsomely-paid journalism instructor at New York University and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism who, when he’s not writing his Substack and magazines, likes to troll Cichy (and others, including myself) with petty, condescending snark. I won’t even speculate what that’s all about.

Anyway. One evening on Twitter, shortly after the release of the Skinwalkers at the Pentagon book, Cichy opened up:

I sympathized with Cichy, and replied that it’s all incredibly disorienting. At which point, Kloor saw his opening to invoke … The Curse!

“It’s Halloween,” he chirped the next day. “So let me remind you of the Phillip (sic) J. Klass curse.” And here it is:

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS

To ufologists who publicly criticize me, … or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:

No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.

Firstly, I may enjoy some natural immunity from the curse. Given that my entry into the world of ufology journalism was fairly recent, I’ve not yet had occasion to publicly criticize Klass, nor have I ever had unkind thoughts about him in private. Arguably, this curse would not have exerted any power over me a few weeks ago — although I suppose that after today, this column will function as my Achilles heel.

But anyway, where to begin?

Perhaps inadvertently, Klass’s so-called “curse” gets to the heart, to the unavoidable ontological reality, of what we’re talking about when we talk about UFOs — of what we’re (ahem) “really” talking about.

He could have written …

Even if UFOs are extraterrestrial (and they aren’t) you will never prove it …

Or:

Face it, there are some UFO cases you’ll just never be able to solve, ever, and it will drive you to madness …

Or:

You will never learn that whatever it is you believe the U.S. Government is supposedly hiding about UFOs is actually true …

Klass was a smart man. One doesn’t spend three decades editing a highly-regarded national publication without understanding language. He could easily have written his “curse” any number of ways, but he didn’t opt for any variation of those imagined above. Whether it was his intention or not, and for whatever reason, reality barged in.

After one discards the hole-punch clouds, Venus, swamp gas, plasma spheres, ball lightning and mistakenly identified birds, balloons and airplanes, there is a “there” there, it seems. Really. We may not know what it is, but it exists.

Of course the fucking things are real.

Sadly, the image conjured by the Klass Curse is that of Klass laying on his death-bed, still “mystified about UFOs” and apparently oblivious himself as to what they “really are or where they come from.” Whatever his intention was in publishing the “curse,” Klass’s plain acknowledgement of the reality of a genuinely anomalous phenomenon — one worthy of being what UFO investigator Jacques Vallee termed “a challenge to science” — could not be more explicit.

You will remember this curse. What compels an ostensibly serious, mature adult to troll his intellectual adversaries in this way, especially when, at some level, he suspects they’re on to something? To celebrate the prospect of others’ distress as they work through problems — and then to express the desire that they remember you when they do? Basically, it’s bullying; the online taunting by Kloor and others is certainly of a piece.

The task now for serious journalists and researchers and activists is to press forward so that when future generations have any reason to regard Klass, his “curse” is the only thing they remember, but not in the way he imagined.

Trail of the Saucers is edited by writer/producer Bryce Zabel and published by Stellar Productions. Zabel co-hosts the popular new podcast Need to Know with Coulthart and Zabel that can be found on all major platforms.