The Invisible College

Once again the International UFO Congress -- "the Guinness World Record holding largest UFO convention" -- is upon us, and once again I am not able to attend. But it's ok, because I'm pretty sure the lineup will be the same next year...

As I was looking over the schedule today one session coming up this Saturday caught my eye:

"1:00 - 2:15 PM: JEREMY CORBELL - THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE"I thought that was pretty cool because The Invisible College is a fascinating topic to me. It came about in the early 1960s, when Northwestern University Astronomy Professor and Project Blue Book scientific consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek was able to slowly and stealthily gather together a group of scientists who were interested in studying the UFO phenomenon, even it meant doing it in secret... In 1975 one of the ICers, Dr. Jacques Vallee, wrote "The Invisible College," about his adventures with this group of thinkers, and it remains one of the best, most readable UFO books out there.

How cool, I thought, that the UFO Congress is going to devote some time to this fascinating chapter in UFO history! It's about time someone paid homage to this group of courageous pioneers.

"

The Invisible Man got his degree from The Invisible College"

Then I read the bio of the presenter, Jeremy Corbell, and the overview of his Saturday session, and I got confused. Aside from a single, virtually context-free mention of Dr. Vallee's name, there is really nothing there that sounds at all like The Invisible College.

"In this multi-media presentation, Corbell will seek to weaponize your curiosity and provide a blueprint for dismantling the Immaculate Deception imposed by the irrational mind and blind faith of the resolved believer, and the skeptic alike. You will experience never before screened footage from a number of Corbell's upcoming films, and explore the shadowy and mysterious hallways that compose what Jacques Vallee called, The Invisible College."I'm not sure what shadowy and mysterious hallways he's talking about here. You see, The Invisible College wasn't a "college "college, with buildings and lecture halls and classrooms and desks and dorms... It was a bunch of scientists -- about a hundred of them in five or six countries, according to Vallee -- who corresponded and had conference calls and gathered in Hynek's house whenever a few of them could manage to get to Evanston. At least the presenter didn't make the all-too-common mistake of thinking that Hynek, Vallee and their colleagues had perfected an invisibility device. I believe that was part of the original plan, but they never even came close to making it work, and they didn't want to call themselves The Translucent College.

So, in the end I'm not feeling too bad about missing this. Still, I kind of like the idea of this guy "weaponizing my curiosity", even if it makes him sound just a little scary...

Reference: lights-in-sky.blogspot.com