M.J. Rose

Here is a fellow who has researched both UFOs and reincarnation…I’d love to have coffee with this guy!

By RUFFIN PREVOST
Gazette Wyoming Bureau

CODY – While a robotic lander digs in the Martian soil in an effort to detect traces of ancient primitive life, a Wyoming psychologist will speak here Saturday about his belief that intelligent aliens have often visited Earth.

R. Leo Sprinkle, a counselor in private practice in Laramie, has spent 45 years researching sightings of unidentified flying objects and speaking with people who claim to have had encounters with extraterrestrials.

Sprinkle acknowledges that his research seems at odds with the mainstream scientific pursuit of life on other worlds – like NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander, a $450 million mission aimed at detecting water and organic matter on the red planet.

“I tried to get my colleagues involved, but that didn’t go over too well,” Sprinkle said of his years doing research as a professor of psychology at the University of Wyoming.

Sprinkle, who has a doctoral degree in psychology, arrived at UW in 1964 and did research into hypnosis and reincarnation as well as UFOs.

He left the university in 1989 after being pressured to do so by administrators, who feared that his work cast the school in a negative light, Sprinkle said.

His research since the early 1960s has consistently shown that people who report alien encounters or UFO sightings are generally psychologically well adjusted and have strong educational backgrounds, Sprinkle said.

Skeptics point out that no physical evidence exists to support claims of alien visitors or advanced spacecraft.

“There has been a long history of people in the know who say the government has known for 60 years that flying saucers are here and that we’ve had some crashed disks and bodies recovered, but the information has been hidden,” Sprinkle said.

Though he has been a frequent speaker in the past at UFO conferences around the world, Sprinkle, 78, said he now gives presentations only once or twice a year.

More than 40 people are expected to attend a dinner, slide show and discussion Saturday by Sprinkle scheduled at the Thomas the Apostle Center in Cody, said Connie Moody, a director of the retreat owned by the Wyoming Episcopal Diocese.

“We’ve had a tremendous response to this, so we’re really excited,” Moody said.

The center is open to all denominations and also hosts private events focused on a variety of topics not necessarily endorsed by the Episcopal Church, Moody said.

She said that Sprinkle’s talk is part of a planned “out of the box” series of lectures to be scheduled at the retreat.

Sprinkle said his presentation Saturday will “speculate on the possibility that ETs are here to help us raise our level of awareness,” and will explore connections between the concepts of reincarnation, immortality and souls.

“Technology and science are coming together with ancient religious stories,” he said, adding that the world of quantum physics may have connections to UFO sightings and related phenomena.

Sprinkle said he was invited to speak by the Rev. Warren Murphy, an associate clergyman at Cody’s Christ Episcopal Church, who had heard Sprinkle lecture on reincarnation…

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