I'm wondering about a coincidence that occurred during my recent trip to Albuquerque, where I gave a talk entitled "Looking at 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul' from a Jungian Perspective" at the 47th annual conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) at the Marriott Hotel on Louisiana Blvd. The session lasted from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on February 27th. I spoke primarily from noon to 1:00 p.m., in part, about the role of Carl Jung's understanding of coincidences and synchronicities in these television shows.
Several miles away, at his home just east of Tramway Blvd. in Albuquerque, between 11:10 a.m. and 12:04 p.m., retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, an expert on astronautics and UFOs, took his hiking boots, his wallet, and a .38 caliber revolver (but not his glasses or phone), and completely vanished. McCasland is now the subject of a manhunt. The New York Post hints at darker doings.
McCasland vanished as we spoke in our session.
There is no obvious connection between McCasland and myself, but there are some affinities:
- He's 68 years old; I'm 69;
- I was a "Stay-in-School" student working at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque from 1977-1980. McCasland was materiel wing director of the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate, and commander of the AFWL successor organization, the Phillips Research Site, from 2001-2004, at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque.
- McCasland has recently done consulting work on UFOs. Indeed, few people in the country are as conversant on the subject. Meanwhile, on this trip, I hunted down several filming locations for 1976's "The Man Who Fell To Earth," (TMWFTE) starring David Bowie, who played an alien visitor to Earth named Thomas Jerome Newton.
- On this trip, I visited a prime TMWFTE filming location, Fenton Lake in the Jemez Mountains. Seventy-seven miles north is Archuleta Mesa, near Dulce, NM, famed as a likely UFO base.
I hope they find McCasland in good health soon. I hope he didn't fly off to the Hale-Bopp Comet with Heaven's Gate. I think we'd have things in common and have lots to talk about.
