A Hidden Event: Portal Areas

Ron Westrum

In 1982 I journeyed across the country to study UFO and other anomalies on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington state. Now, 35 years later, I propose we look at portal areas as a focus of scientific study. Portal areas in the United States and elsewhere display a variety of reported anomalous events. It is this variety of anomalous events that is intriguing and I believe, unexplained. The Reservation, in addition to UFOs, had strange aerial balls of light, bigfoot sightings, “stick Indians” and much more. Its variety of well-documented anomalous events is matched by similar areas in southwest Pennsylvania and the San Luis Valley, which includes parts of Colorado and New Mexico. “Portal areas” will do for a working concept, but I am not sure these areas contain doors to elsewhere, though it is interesting to think so.

But what accounts for the variety? That is the key question. Are UFOs, for instance, the hallmark of some larger process that also brings in, say, bigfoot, or cattle mutilations? What is this larger process? Have these weird events always been in these areas? The notes and tapes from

Yakima sat in my files for years, unresolved, until I began to appreciate that the other two areas offered similar assortments (with lots of commonality), and so the “portal area” concept began to gather force. One interesting feature is that information about these areas tends to circulate locally but not, say, nationally. So there is no pressure to resolve what is certainly a mystery. Yet the “odd stuff” is not random, and so there must be an explanation for at least some of it.

Personally, I don’t find the “earthlight theory” involving geological fields of force persuasive. Something paranormal going on here, but what is it? How does it operate? We tend to think of paranormal forces operating on a micro, or personal level, but what if they operate on a “macro” level, involving hundreds of square kilometers, as well? The “Skinwalker ranch” is obviously a small-scale version of this, but the other three examples are much larger scale.

Bio: Ron Westrum, Ph.D, is emeritus professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University, and specializes in organizational information flow.

Recorded at the Society for Scientific Exploration conference at Yale University, 2017

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Published on December 20, 2018