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| Members of Beta-UFO Indonesia, the country’s biggest online UFO enthusiast community, with 13,000 active Facebook group members. Most Indonesians are more likely to ascribe unexplained phenomena to the occult than to extraterrestrial beings. |
UFO fans in Indonesia on why extraterrestrial life should be taken seriously in a country wedded to the occult
- Just 13,000 strong, Indonesian Facebook group of believers in alien life, Beta-UFO, are up against a widespread belief in ghosts in nation of 265 million
- They talk about what convinces them UFOs exist, and why Indonesia should take them seriously and launch its own space programme to investigate further
Dino
Michael has spent a lot of time looking up at the stars in the night
sky, ruminating on the possibilities of life out there. If there were
extraterrestrial life forms, what would they look like? What would they
be doing? And, maybe most importantly, when would they make contact with
humans?
“Then
I thought, maybe they already did and we just didn’t realise it. After
all, there are historical notes that indicate this is the case,” he
muses.
Michael, a 49-year-old Indonesian office worker, is a UFO enthusiast.
While
it remains a niche interest, research into unidentified flying objects
has been slowly evolving from a nerdy pastime into a phenomenon that is
being examined closely by scientists.
Indonesians interested in UFOs, like Michael, are likely to be followers
of Beta-UFO, the largest online UFO enthusiast community in the Southeast Asian country with more than 13,000 active Facebook group members. Beta stands for
Benda Terbang Aneh (Indonesian for unidentified flying objects).
Members report mysterious sightings in the night sky and discuss
extraterrestrial-related topics, such as foo fighters (not the rock
band, but a second world war term for mysterious aerial phenomena) and
plans by the American space agency Nasa and its associates, including
the Artemis programme’s aim to send 13 astronauts to Mars.
Beta-UFO members believe it is time to take the possibility of extraterrestrial life seriously.
“We live in a time where many countries, such as China and India, are focused on space exploration, including the possibility of life out there,” says Michael, who thinks Indonesia needs to play a part too.
The Beta-UFO group, initially established in 1997 as a mailing list, has
seen Indonesian interest in UFOs expand over the last two decades.
Since its inception, founder Nur Agustinus has worked to bring UFOs into
mainstream conversation. His community has published fanzines dedicated
to UFOs, conducted surveys and held regular gatherings and seminars
where senior members of the group pass on their knowledge to a younger
generation.
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| Children of BETA-UFO research group members look through a telescope at a recent meet-up. |
Beta-UFO
members actively blog and vlog on YouTube. The group’s website,
betaufo.org, includes an exhaustive list of hundreds of UFO sightings around Indonesia, from 1883 until the present.
Despite
members’ enthusiasm, their 265 million fellow Indonesians remain
largely indifferent to UFOs. They take more of an interest in equally
mysterious matters – the occult.
“Indonesians
are often sceptical [about UFOs and aliens], not because of scientific
reasoning but because they are more inclined to think that any
unexplained happening must involve the mystical,” says Agustinus, who is
a psychologist. “For them, it is easier to believe in ghosts.”
As
well as diligently posting updates and answering queries on the
community’s Facebook page and website, Agustinus, 53, still frequently
blogs about his passion. He says he is enamoured with the idea that
other beings exist in space, and that unknown extraterrestrials will one
day reach out to humans.
He
says he got hooked on the notion of alien contact when he read a 1978
Indonesian newspaper article that encouraged him to read books by
Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, who jointly wrote Flying Saucers Have Landed. That
book, published in 1953, “was a very intriguing and extraordinary read
for me at the time”, Agustinus recalls. He acknowledges that most
investigators have since concluded Adamski, an American who purported to
have travelled on alien spacecraft, was a con artist.
"To seek intelligent
life beyond us, if we are serious about it, will benefit Indonesia. It
will encourage us to engineer spacecraft of our own, and to dive deeper
into scientific and technological studies,"
 |
| Beta-UFO group founder Nur Agustinus gives a lecture about the community in Malang |
The psychologist became engrossed in the idea of alien visitors after reading Swiss writer Erich von Daniken’s popular book Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past.
The bestseller posited that the technologies and religions of ancient
civilisations were actually brought to Earth by extraterrestrial
visitors, who were believed by our ancestors to be gods.
Published in 1968, Chariots
was popular for a long time, selling millions of copies in numerous
languages and spawning sequels from the prolific Von Daniken, including The Gods Were Astronauts and The Gods Never Left Us. But the writer’s premise has now been dismissed by many academic experts and his so-called proof discredited as fraudulent.
Even so, the influence of the original Chariots book is still sporadically seen in science fiction – most recently in the 2012 blockbuster film Prometheus, directed by Ridley Scott.
Agustinus has also read the work of English astronomy science writer and UFO sceptic Ian Ridpath, who wrote the 1988 book Star Tales, among other scientific works.
Far
from being a cult or simply a hobby collective, Agustinus’s Beta-UFO
community includes members driven to proving that an interest in worlds
beyond the Earth can be both credible and worthwhile. The impetus for
these members isn’t mere curiosity, but the chance to help their country
progress scientifically.
“To
seek intelligent life beyond us, if we are serious about it, will
benefit Indonesia,” says Michael. “It will encourage us to engineer
spacecraft of our own, and to dive deeper into scientific and
technological studies.”
For
instance, he believes the planet Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has
enormous potential for human settlement and that further investigation
is urgently needed. Many Indonesian scientists, he adds, are already
assisting with this sort of high-level scientific work around the world.
“A
lot of our people abroad are involved in important physics discoveries
such as work on quarks and the Higgs boson particle,” he says.
Anugerah
Sentot Sudono is a senior Beta-UFO member who has been part of the
community since its early days. He says the development of scientific
knowledge is integral to the study of UFOs.
An
IT learning development manager, Anugerah has expanded his interest in
UFOs and outer space into related subjects in the fields of humanity,
astronomy, biology, physics, geology and palaeontology. Like many of his
fellow space enthusiasts, he says he is obsessed with books on these
subjects and always keen to learn more. An avid collector of UFO and
alien literature, he often resorts to photocopying articles if he cannot
buy the publications.
Senior
members of Beta-UFO are fascinated by the philosophical questions
surrounding the possibility of extraterrestrial existence. Anugerah says
these questions are deep and difficult, and they awaken musings on the
nature of the human race, where humanity is heading in the vast expanse
of the universe, how humans might deal with alien beings, and the
potential for either immense leaps forward or utter disaster.
They are questions that he has been exploring since 1990, the year he says he first saw a UFO with his own eyes.
“It
was June or July in Bogor [a city in West Java] around midnight,” he
says. “I was there for my high-school farewell party. Our class was
staying at a house there in the hilly area. I fell asleep but was
awakened for some reason. I went outside and saw a bright, white,
oval-shaped object slowly manoeuvring downwards.
“It
was not the moon because the moon was on the other side. Three of my
friends and myself stared at it for about five minutes before it flew
off and disappeared on the other side of the hill.”
Anugerah
says he has not been blinded by his experience despite his enduring
personal interest in UFOs. He describes it an “anti-mainstream” interest
and readily admits that a lot of UFO research is “pseudo science” at
worst, and “debatable” at best. “You cannot force someone to start
getting into this,” he says.
For his part, Michael says that on the balance of probabilities, it does not seem as though humans are alone in the universe.
“These
extraterrestrial beings appear to be very intelligent,” he says,
explaining that his conclusion is drawn from the many books and articles
he has read and the documentaries he has watched on the subject.
“We
can learn a lot from them, especially about their technological
capabilities. If we can overcome all of the barriers, then we will be
ready to look for aliens in the 21st century – right alongside all the
other countries that have gone to space before us.”
* * *
Marcel
is a Jakarta-based journalist and writer who covers everything from
culture, lifestyle, to business for the Nikkei Asian Review, Rolling
Stone, VICE, The Jakarta Post, and more.
