UFO encounters run the range between those of a benevolent type, and others that are more sinister in nature. Throughout accounts of such encounters one kind find a wide range of experiences lying along this scale, to the point that it is often difficult to know what to make of it all. One very odd and frightening case supposedly played out over an expanse of the Australian Outback, and which has not been solved to this day. It is the tale of a mundane trip across the desert that would turn into a nightmare from possibly another world.

On January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles, her adult sons Patrick (24), Sean (21) and Wayne (18), and their two dogs were making their way towards Melbourne, Australia across a vast expanse of limestone bedrock called the Nullarbor Plain. The area is a remote desert moonscape of a place, with no one around for miles and other cars a rarity, so it was considered odd when in the very early morning hours a light was spotted some distance ahead, just outside of the tiny town of Mundrabilla. The light seemed to get steadily brighter as they watched it, and as they got closer they could see that it was semi-spherical or egg shaped and was most certainly not another vehicle as it was just a single bright light and seemed to be hovering in the air over that desolate expanse.

Nullarbor Plain

As the family struggled to comprehend what they were seeing, the strange object allegedly emitted a beam of light that swept towards their vehicle and caused the driver, Sean, to take evasive maneuvers. The beam missed the car, but this is when Sean would claim the object had begun to follow them down that lonely roadway, easily keeping pace with them no matter how fast they went. They apparently passed another car going the other direction, after which the mysterious object stopped pursuing them and followed the other vehicle. Sean the reportedly turned the car around to follow the other car and its UFO pursuer to figure out what was going on, but thought better of it and turned around yet again. The object then must have decided to go after them again, because it was soon ominously closing in on them once again.

It purportedly got brighter and closer, passing them a few times to circle around to approach again before positioning itself right above their car as the terrified family within screamed out in fright. There was then a thump on the roof, and the car slowed down as if something very heavy were sitting atop it, leading them to the horrible realization that it had actually lowered itself to make contact with the vehicle. According to the witnesses, it then issued a shrill, ear piercing sound, and Faye would say that they were overcome with the sense of something invading their minds, later saying, “It felt like something was going into our heads,” and Patrick would say “I felt like my brain was being sucked out.” They also claimed that their voices became distorted and that they moved sluggishly, as if underwater or experiencing a slowing of time itself. Things would intensify when they then felt the car physically lift off of the road, after which they were shaken violently from side to side as a grey mist filled the car and dropped back down with such force that it blew one of their tires and disabled the vehicle to leave to leave it lying in that unforgiving place like a wounded beast. Fay Knowles would say of the otherworldly encounter:

I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff. It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball. We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn’t find us.

When the cowering family were sure the object was gone, they warily went back to their car, changed the tire, and got out of there as fast as they could, eventually making their way to Mundrabilla, where they excitedly told of what had happened to them. Interestingly, a trucker at the gas station there would tell them that he had also seen the strange, eerie light out over the desert as well. When their car was examined, it was found to be banged up, and both the exterior and interior covered with a fine film of black material like soot or ash that had an unusual odor like “a blown fuse.” The Knowles were able to get some truckers to go with them out to where the incident had supposedly occurred, where they allegedly found odd skid marks on the road that seemed to show that the vehicle has been dragged sideways by some powerful force, making it all even stranger.

South Australian Police in Ceduna were notified, and analyses of the soot on the car would be carried out that later prove to be divisive, with some saying it was merely sand and dust particles from the desert, while others claimed that there were also traces of an explosive compound called Potassium Chlorate, as well as a radioactive chemical called Astatine. Yet another analysis found that the dust on the outside of the car and that of the interior were different. The surprising differences of these results seem like they would deserve more follow-up, but oddly the South Australia police were apparently very eager to distance themselves from it all, finish the investigation, and sweep it under the carpet, and the whole case was just sort of filed away even as it was hitting the news in a big way. This would cause Faye Knowles to lament:

We are all angry. Everybody knows that this happened to us but the people who should be concerned have just ignored it. There has been a cover-up. The government owes us and the public an explanation.

Theories on what might have happened to the Knowles family out on that lonely and forbidding stretch of road have swirled ever since, ranging from the mundane to the far-out. One idea is that they had been tired from a 13-hour car ride all night along an isolated road in the middle of nowhere, and had then perhaps misidentified some natural phenomenon in their fatigued state. This has been speculated as perhaps being a truck’s headlights in the distance or the planet Venus, that were distorted by a temperature inversion, which is basically a layer of warm air over cooler air that can cause mirages and tricks of light. However, this in no way explains their car being picked up off of the ground and dropped.

It has also been suggested that they might have experienced a meteor that just happened to disintegrate and cause a shockwave near their car, or even a rocket fired from a military base at nearby Woomera. Other theories include that they were caught in a dust storm or some sort of electromagnetic storm, but none of these really fits all of the details of the encounter. Of course there is the idea that this was an actual UFO abduction, and a possibly even weirder idea is that it was an attack by a secret government organization using a helicopter and a powerful, technologically advanced electromagnet to lift the vehicle up. Researcher William Buckley has said of this strange idea:

The attack on the Knowles family was orchestrated and carried out by a well-resourced paramilitary organization operating in Australia, using a sophisticated helicopter with specialized lifting equipment. The Knowles’ involvement was purely accidental. They were not the intended target and were attacked only because they resembled the real target group who were also travelling on the same road that night. The nature of this covert action by this paramilitary group and the importance of the assassination attempt on the real target group are now shrouded in secrecy and cover-up and nobody wants the truth to be revealed.

This is obviously a case of attempted murder of four people who were all extremely traumatised by this hour-long attack. There was plenty of forensic evidence and witnesses to prove that the family was attacked and a major police investigation should have been triggered to uncover the truth.

Not quite as interesting as any of these is the idea that the family was trying to pull an insurance scam or even that it was just a flat-out hoax. For their part, the Knowles family has always insisted that what they experienced was very real, and very frightening, and they have never sought to gain fame or large amounts of money from any of it, mostly lying low about the whole thing. What happened to this family out on that bleak stretch of road? What forces came calling for them to follow them around and terrorize them? Was this aliens, a weather phenomenon, or something else? No one really knows, and the case remains controversial and debated to this day.

“You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion… Later, as they grow, follows madness and death…”
– Khan Noonien Singh

Anyone who has ever seen Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, the second movie in the series, can still remember the horror of Khan releasing larvae of Ceti eels into the ears of Reliant officers Commander Pavel Chekov and Captain Clark Terrell, where they wormed their way into their brains, wrapping themselves around the cerebral cortex to cause brain control, pain, madness and eventual death. It’s nice to know that’s pure fiction, right? RIGHT?

“Once you consume them, they can move throughout your body — your eyes, your tissues and most commonly your brain. They leave doctors puzzled in their wake as they migrate and settle to feed on the body they’re invading; a classic parasite, but this one can get into your head.”

According to CNN, in 2013 a British man of Chinese was found to have a tapeworm moving inside his brain in 2013 – a parasite known as Spirometra erinaceieuropaei. It’s extremely rare and found mostly in Asia – the adult parasite lives in dog and cat intestines, but the eggs can be spread via fecal matter, particularly in water, which appears to be how the man contracted it. In 2018, a man in India died after his brain, brain stem, and cerebellum were infected by the tapeworm Taenia solium. It’s a good thing these worms are rare and no one is trying to make robotic versions of them, right? RIGHT?

“It could also be implanted into the brain because its high mobility and ability to transform means it can survive in this harsh environment where there are rapid blood flows and tiny blood vessels.”

The South China Morning Post reports that scientists in Shenzhen have developed a tiny robot worm that can enter the human body, swim through along blood vessels and hook up to neurons in the brain. The 1mm-by-3mm (.04 in by .12 in) robots are powered externally by a magnetic field generator and use infrared radiation to contract their size by up to a third to squeeze through tight spots. On the noble cause side, Xu Tiantian — lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences – says the robot worms will allow doctors to deliver drugs directly to a specific tumor and then exit the body when done.

“But our purpose is not developing a biological weapon. It’s the opposite.”

Needless to say, using the robot worm as a weapon is entirely possible as soon as a more powerful electric field generator with a longer effective range is available and the robot worms obtain the ability to move while the host human is in motion – they currently have to be lying perfectly still. If he were around today, robot designer Khan Noonien Singh might say: “Piece of cake.”

Xu agrees.

“We just hope that day will never come.”

Or is it already here? Mr. Chekov, care to comment?

Tales of birds and the world of the paranormal are easy to find. Some accounts, however, are far more intriguing than others. Here are a few examples that, for me, stand out. We’ll begin with a man named Elliott O’Donnell, an acclaimed authority ghosts and life after death, and who penned dozens of books on supernatural phenomena. Born in 1872, he continued writing until his death in 1965, at the age of ninety-three. O’Donnell also had a deep interest in reports of strange creatures, as the following 19^th century account demonstrates: “Henry Spicer, in his Strange Things Among Us, tells the story of a Captain Morgan, an honorable and vivacious gentleman, who, arriving in London in 1841, puts up for the night in a large, old-fashioned hotel. The room in which he slept was full of heavy, antique furniture, reminiscent of the days of King George I, one of the worst periods in modern English history for crime. Despite, however, his grimly suggestive surroundings, Captain Morgan quickly got into bed and was soon asleep. He was abruptly awakened by the sound of flapping, and, on looking up, he saw a huge black bird with outstretched wings and fiery red eyes perched on the rail at the foot of the four-poster bed.”

The tale continues: “The creature flew at him and endeavored to peck his eyes. Captain Morgan resisted, and after a desperate struggle succeeded in driving it to a sofa in the corner of the room, where it settled down and regarded him with great fear in its eyes. Determined to destroy it, he flung himself on the top of it, when, to his surprise and terror, it immediately crumbled into nothingness. He left the house early next morning, convinced that what he had seen was a ghost, but Mr. Spicer offers no explanation as to how one should classify the phenomenon. It may have been the earth-bound spirit of the criminal or viciously inclined person who had once lived there, or it may have been the phantom of an actual bird. Either alternative is feasible.

O’Donnell concluded: “I have heard there is an old house near Poole, in Dorset, and another in Essex, which were formerly haunted by spectral birds, and that as late as 1860 the phantasm of a bird, many times the size of a raven, was so frequently seen by the inmates of a house in Dean Street, Soho, that they eventually grew quite accustomed to it. “But bird hauntings are not confined to houses, and are far more often to be met with out of doors; indeed there are very few woods, and moors, and commons that are not subjected to them. I have constantly seen the spirits of all manner of birds in the parks in Dublin and London. Greenwich Park, in particular, is full of them.” Now, moving on…

The Reverend F.G. Lee was the author of a still-acclaimed 19^th century book titled Glimpses in the Twilight. Published in 1888, it is filled with all manner of amazing and chilling tales, including one of a terrible, monster-bird. Lee, who extensively researched the strange story, said: “In the middle of the last century, circa 1749, owing to several remarkable circumstances which had then recently occurred, a conviction became almost universal among the inhabitants of the village, that the vaults under the church of West Drayton, near Uxbridge, were haunted.”

He continued: “Strange noises were heard in and about the sacred building, and the sexton of that day, a person utterly devoid of superstition, was on inquiry and examination compelled to admit that certain unaccountable occurrences in regard to the vault had taken place. Others maintained that three persons from an adjacent manor-house in company had gone to look through a grating in the side of the foundation of the church – for the ventilation of the vault, and from which screams and noises were heard constantly, and there had seen a very large black raven perched on one of the coffins.”

According to the Reverend Lee: “This strange bird was seen more than once by the then parish clerk pecking from within at the grating, and furiously fluttering about within the enclosed vault. On another occasion it was seen by other people in the body of the church itself. The wife of the parish clerk and her daughter often saw it.” Eventually, however, the beastly bird’s reign of terror was brought to an end, as the reverend noted:

“The local bell-ringers, who all professed to deny its existence and appearance, one evening, however, came together to ring a peal, when they were told by a youth that the big raven was flying about inside the chancel. Coming together into the church with sticks and stones and a lantern, four men and two boys found it fluttering about amongst the rafters. They gave chase to it, flinging at it, shouting at and endeavoring to catch it. Driven from hither and thither for some time, and twice or thrice beaten with a stick, so that one of its wings seemed to have thus been broken and made to droop, the bird fell down wounded with expanded wings, screaming and fluttering into the eastern part of the chancel, when two of the men on rushing towards it to secure it, and driving it into a corner, vaulted over the communion-rails, and violently proceeded to seize it. As the account stands, it at once sank wounded and exhausted on to the floor, as they believed in their certain grasp, but all of a moment – vanished!”

In relation to this particularly weird saga, the wife of Reverend R. L. Burgh, who served at the church of West Drayton in the 1800s, wrote the following to Reverend Lee: “It was many years ago; and I had quite forgotten it until I got your note. I can remember feeling persuaded that a bird must have got into the family vault, and in going outside to look into it through the iron bars to try if anything could be seen there, the sounds were then always in the chancel in the same place.”

Now, it’s time to share with you a story that involves me. Just like almost everyone who has lost someone, my family and I mourned a passing and celebrated a life. For me, it was when my mom died of the effects of Alzheimer’s in 2010. There was, however, something very odd which occurred at the time of my mother’s death. It’s something I have never forgotten. On one particular morning, at my dad’s place in England, we were sitting in the living-room when our conversation was briefly brought to a sudden end. By a loud, single thump. It clearly came from somewhere outside. Puzzled, we took a look out back and found that a blackbird had slammed into the kitchen window and was lying on the ground. It had clearly been killed on impact. Then, the very next day, we drove to the nearby nursing-home which my mom had permanently lived in since 2002. The purpose: to thank all of the staff for their help and care over the years. Right outside the main door to the facility was a dead, brightly-feathered, small bird. We literally had to lift our feet above it to get into the building.

About a week later we had my mom’s funeral, and a few days after that it was time to fly back to the United States. Well, on getting home, what was practically on the doorstep? Yep, another dead bird. And again, it was a brightly colored one. Of course, at some point in their lives pretty much everyone stumbles on a dead bird. But, three of them, across less than two weeks? And one at my dad’s place in the U.K., one in Arlington, Texas where I live, and one at my mother’s care-home, all in the aftermath of her death? Could it have been an odd coincidence? Of course it could. I can’t say I’m a full-on believer in the afterlife. I guess like a lot of us, I just don’t know. I sometimes think there’s something on the “other side.” On other occasions, and also like others, though, I think it might be lights-out forever. But, I still occasionally think of those three dead birds after my mom’s funeral.

Scientists have determined that the Earth’s oldest asteroid crater – named the Yarrabubba crater – happened 2.229 billion years ago. The crater, which is located between Sandstone and Meekatharra in Western Australia’s outback, measures 43 miles wide.

A team of experts from Curtin University in Perth were able to determine the exact age of the crater by using isotopic analysis of the minerals found at the impact zone. They studied zircon and monazite minerals that were found at the bottom of the Yarrabubba crater and were “shock recrystallized” because of the impact. Their study was published in Nature Communications and can be read in full here.

Australian outback

It was always agreed upon that the Yarrabubba crater was one of the oldest on Earth but scientists weren’t able to determine its exact age until recently. In fact, it’s so old that it happened 200 million years before the next oldest impact zone that’s located in South Africa and called the Vredefort crater.

What’s even more interesting is that this impact may have helped lift our planet out of an ancient ice age called “Snowball Earth”. Curtin University Professor Chris Kirkland explained, “Now we know the Yarrabubba crater was made right at the end of what’s commonly referred to as the early Snowball Earth – a time when the atmosphere and oceans were evolving and becoming more oxygenated and when rocks deposited on many continents recorded glacial conditions.” “This twist of fate suggests that the large meteorite impact may have influenced global climate,” added Associate Professor Nicholas Timms.

The Yarrabubba impact may have helped lift our planet out of an ancient ice age.

Half a trillion tons of water vapour would have been sent into Earth’s atmosphere with such a large asteroid hitting a continent covered in ice, therefore, possibly causing changes to our climate. “This finding raises the question whether this impact may have tipped the scales enough to end glacial conditions,” said Timms.

Their study is very important in properly dating ancient craters, some of which may even be older than Yarrabubba. “Yarrabubba is about half the age of the Earth and it raises the question of whether all older impact craters have been eroded or if they are still out there waiting to be discovered,” stated Dr. Aaron Cavosie from Curtin University. As a matter of fact, materials that came from an ancient impact crater have been found in Africa and Australia and they date back to over 2 billion years old, however, the craters in which they came from are still unidentified.

For as long as the UFO phenomenon has been around there have been those cases of people who claim to have actually been physically whisked away by these entities. What happens after they have been captured varies from report to report, with some speaking of gaining amazing new knowledge, to more cryptic encounters, to truly terrifying ordeals. The case we are looking at here is of the latter variety, and revolves around a group of men who just wanted to have a peaceful vacation in the wilderness, but who would experience what is considered to be one of the most intense and scariest alien abductions on record.

It all started as just a camping and canoeing trip with a group of buddies up in the remote wilderness of Allagash, Maine, in the United States back in the summer of 1976. The plan was for the group, composed of brothers Jim Weiner and Jack Weiner and their friends Charles Foltz and Charles Rak, who had all met at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, to go canoeing down the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, camping out and fishing along the way, and it was supposed to be a great week-long adventure for them. The first day and night went as well as they could hope for, but things would start to get strange from the second evening of their brave excursion, when Weiner noticed a very strange light in the sky, of which he would say:

It was just floating above the treetops, didn’t seem to be moving in any direction. And I looked at it through the binoculars for maybe 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and it suddenly just winked out from the outside edges inward. I mean, it literally just went whooht, like that, and it was gone. There was something about this thing that left me with an odd feeling that wasn’t quite right, but I really didn’t dwell on it.

He tried to just write the strange incident off as an aircraft and get on with his trip, but it would not be long before weird phenomena started up again, this time witnessed by the entire group. On the fourth day of the trip, the group was out night fishing on their canoe at a place called Big Eagle Lake. On the shore they had lit a large bonfire, which flickered eerily out over the black water below them and was meant to give them a sense of direction in the darkness, but even as that beacon sat there on the shore, another light entirely caught their attention, this one in the star flecked sky above them. Rak would explain of it:

I had a feeling there was someone staring at me from behind me. I turned over my right shoulder like that, and I saw this large, round globe of light that looked exactly like what we had seen two nights previously. It had this roiling effect to it, like a miniature sun, very, very bright. It lit the treetops up like daylight, and it was absolutely silent. After looking at it for what seemed like several moments, we decided to signal this thing. That’s when Charlie picked up the flashlight and squeezed off a message–s.o.s.

The plan to signal the object was in retrospect probably not such a good idea, as it then reportedly changed course to head directly towards them. Alone in the wilderness, with no civilization for miles around and bobbing about in the middle of this darkened frigid lake, the sight of this intimidating otherworldly bright object, estimated as being around 80 feet in diameter, caused them to panic and start rowing for shore as fast as they could even as the object drew up upon them. Jim Weiner could not help but look behind him at the inexorable approach of this odd light, and could see that it would soon be right on top of them. He recalls:

I remember looking over my shoulder, trying to keep an eye on this object as it was coming up behind us. It was getting very close. It was almost on top of us at this point.  I remember thinking that we’re not going to outrun this thing. I remember thinking, ‘I could pick up a stone and bounce it off this thing’s side.’ That’s how close it was. And then, all of a sudden, it just streaked away very, very fast, and within a few seconds, it was like a star, just another light in the sky.

Reaching the shore, the group of men was surprised to see that the robust bonfire, which should have been blazing strong after so little time had passed, had been reduced to mere smoldering embers. This suggested that several hours must have passed, yet each of the men agreed that they had only been on the water for less than half an hour, making the dying fire a puzzling conundrum. Even so, they found that they were all extremely exhausted and tired out for some reason, and so just wanted to get back to camp to get a good night’s sleep and continue on with their trip. In fact, at the time they didn’t even really talk about the strangeness that they had just seen, the overwhelming fatigue taking over. This might have been the end of it, and for several years it was, until Weiner began having very vivid, horrific nightmares that would invade his sleep nearly every night and leave him waking up in a cold sweat and state of absolute terror. The content of the dreams was always the same and very specific, with Weiner stating:

I was starting to have nightmares, really terrible nightmares that I could not explain. I found myself in a very brightly lit room. I had no idea where I was or why I was there.  To my left, I could see my brother Jim, Chuck Rak, and Charlie Foltz sitting on some type of bench, and they were all naked. I was wondering why they weren’t helping me, because I felt like I was in danger, and while I’m trying to figure this out, I notice this figure or a dark, shadowy-type figure emerging from this light– this bright light in front of me. I would wake up, uh, uh, sweating and breathing heavily and just in a– in a state of terror and shock.

These bizarre nightmares got so bad that they started to affect his waking life, and it would get stranger when he discovered that the other men who had been with him on that trip were having similar nightmares as well, all of which had shared elements of a feeling of helplessness and of an unknown entity present in the shadows. It did not take long for them to connect these strange nightmares to the incident they’d had out at that remote lake with the mysterious light, and this caused them to contact a UFO researcher by the name of Ray Fowler, of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), who speculated that they might have been abducted by unknown entities and were having suppressed memories bubbling up to the surface in their dreams. He arranged to have the men hypnotically regressed in order to see if their memories could be dug up, and this is where the story would get even weirder than it already was.

The hypnotic sessions were conducted by an Anthony Constantino, and each man was hypnotized separately, with no interaction between them in the meantime, and the stories they had to tell are terrifying to say the least. In every instance, the men described being taken aboard a strange craft at the time of the lake incident, where they were put into a diffusely lit room that looked, according to one of the witnesses, “like a vet’s office.” Here they were approached by grey, long-necked entities with large bald heads, metallic, lidless eyes, and four skeletal fingers, which approached them and proceeded to carry out a series of humiliating medical experiments on them, including taking bodily fluid and tissue samples, as well as performing painful procedures with silvery machines. Foltz in particular was described as being especially subjected to various strange probes and painful scans with a metallic, curved machine, which apparently caused him to scream out in agony. Weiner would say during his session:

They’re–they’re– they don’t know what to do. I think they think I’m going to come after them. I feel like I want to. I feel like I want to– the first one that comes near me, I’m going to throttle him. I don’t like these things. I don’t care where they come from. They shouldn’t be doing this to people. They’re right there. Their face is right in my face. I don’t know why. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what they want. They’re saying things. In my head they’re saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. They say, ‘Do what we say. Just do what we say.

Interestingly, although the accounts were independent, all of the men involved described the exact same thing, right up to Foltz’ bizarre body scans. Being artists, they were able to draw detailed sketched of the entities and the room they had been in, all of which looked the same, and additionally they all passed psychiatric evaluations and polygraph tests with flying colors. It was all very harrowing and frightening, with Constantino himself saying of it all:

It was the most intense experience I’ve had as a hypnotist. After working with those guys, I was scared. I still am. I think it’s true. I think they were being tagged — the way we tag and study sharks and bears and then release them.

For all appearances it seemed as if they were telling the truth, or at least strongly believed they were. Fowler was so excited about the case that he would go on to write a whole book on it, called The Allagash Abductions, but over the years there would appear some cracks in the story. It all started when Charles Rak began to fall unusually silent on the matter of the abduction, even as the other men freely discussed it with researchers. He would finally come forward to make the claim that, although the lights in the sky had been real, the abductions had been entirely fabricated by the group for the purpose of making some money. Pretty much the only thing he agreed really happened was that they all saw anomalous lights in the sky, but according to him the missing time and the eerie alien encounters they all described were a load of bunk and had never happened, and that on top of this they were all stoned at the time. Yet, the other three men adamantly stuck by their story, with Weiner saying:

Jack, Charlie, and I, after all these years, are still in agreement with the Eagle Lake event as we (three) remember it. We also accept the results of the hypnotic regression sessions and subsequent polygraph tests as supportive of an abduction scenario.

To make matters more complicated still, they and Fowler believe that Rak was intentionally trying to destroy their credibility after a falling out, interestingly because they say that he was the one trying to make money off of it and the rest of the group did not agree with that. They are also quick to point out that Rak was always a bit of a wild card and had long had temper issues, essentially painting him as someone who had lost control and then flown off the rails. Weiner would tell Fowler of Rak:

We definitely steer clear of him because the guy is a loose cannon and a mental disaster area. I personally believe that Mr. Rak’s self-aggrandizing rationalizations and disparaging accusations are simply the rantings of an angry and resentful individual, on whom his former friends have turned their backs.

So what is going on here? Was Rak just fed up with his friends and wanted to spoil the party? Are the other three correct in their assessment of what went on? The case of the Allagash abductions has gone on to become quite the classic case, and has been debated and discussed to this day. What happened to these men out there in that remote land? Was this a genuine UFO abduction or is there something else going on behind the scenes? The three witnesses other than Rak have continued to stand by their story, and the truth of the matter is that we will probably never know, and this just serves to be one more weird case to add to the many.

“The center of the galaxy is where extreme astrophysics occurs — the X-sports of astrophysics.”

If that description of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way doesn’t get more young students interested in astrophysics, nothing will. Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group, used those words in a press release to describe a new discovery concerning Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole that the rest of the Milky Way revolves around and tries to avoid being sucked into. Unfortunately (well, not for the black hole), Ghez and her team have discovered four mysterious objects that may belong to a new class that will soon (in space terms) be a lost class.

“One of the things that has gotten everyone excited about the G objects is that the stuff that gets pulled off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole must inevitably fall into the black hole. When that happens, it might be able to produce an impressive fireworks show since the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit copious radiation before it disappears across the event horizon.”

Mark Morris, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and co-author with Ghez of the new study published in the journal Nature, sounds equally excited as he describes the discovery of G3, G4, G5 and G6 – strange objects joining G1 and G2 in orbit around Sagittarius A*. Ghez also discovered G1 and both were puzzling because they “look like gas and behave like stars.” The new four also appear to be the same but have very different orbits. Ghez now believes that all of this strange behavior and appearance is due to these G-objects once being binary stars that have been forcefully merged together as they approach the supermassive black hole.

“Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common. Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now.”

“Blame the black hole” could become the new catch-all excuse for strange occurrences around the universe, but in this case it sounds plausible. Of course, everything is ultimately about us, so Ghez addresses the inevitable question of how this discovery will affect Earth – even though our Sun isn’t a binary.

“The Earth is in the suburbs compared to the center of the galaxy, which is some 26,000 light-years away.”

That sounds somewhat comforting … except discoveries like these keep making the universe seem smaller and supermassive black holes, wandering black holes, supernovas and other destructive space objects and events seem so much closer. Perhaps it’s inescapable (just like the gravity of Sagittarius A*) that young astrophysicists will continue to make these kinds of discoveries and scare us with more stories of the extreme sports X-sports going on int the not-so-distant supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

A couple of nights ago I was asked for my thoughts on the hugely controversial Project Blue Beam. If you don’t know about it, read on. Within the field of conspiracy theorizing, there are few greater controversies than Project Blue Beam. Allegedly, it is the brainchild of a secret group of powerful figures in, among many others, NASA, the United Nations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Vatican. Project Blue Beam, so the story goes, will be at the forefront of a program to create a new society dominated by martial law and a ruthless world government. And how might such a government come about? By faking the second coming of Jesus Christ, specifically by using sophisticated hologram-type technology to project huge images of the Son of God across the skies of the United States, Canada, Australia, and much of Europe. Other parts of the world will see massive images of Buddha, of Allah, of Krishna, of Mohammed, and of multiple other gods, depending on the regions, the people and their cultures, and the beliefs of the relevant nations.

In mere days, however, each and every one of those images will merge into one far more sinister and terrifying image: that of the Anti-Christ, who will inform the people of Earth that not a single one of the world’s religions has the correct version of events. Only that of this nightmarish entity is the accurate version. As a result, the entire human race will be expected to bow down and worship the Anti-Christ. Such a thing will result in worldwide chaos, disorder, and anarchy – which the people behind Project Blue Beam shrewdly know only all too well. With the world plunged into states of fear and mayhem, this terrible ruse will then allow the United Nations to coordinate a planet-wide program to enslave the Earth’s entire population. The story is as fantastic as it is terrifying. But is it true?

The source of the Project Blue Beam story was Serge Monast, a journalist from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Although Monast began in his career in regular journalism, by 1994, he was focused almost exclusively on conspiracy theories, including matters relative to Masonic-based conspiracy theories and matters relative to the one world government scenario. It was at this time that Monast claimed to have uncovered massive amounts of secret information on Project Blue Beam, and how it would be utilized to enslave all but that aforementioned elite. That Monast died in December 1996, of a heart attack, and at the age of just fifty-one, has led to suspicions within conspiracy-driven realms that he was murdered by agents of this dangerous program. The reason: to prevent Monast from blowing the whistle, big-time, on the project.

The story has provoked numerous questions: Are our gods about to be brought before us, but in a fashion few could scarcely imagine? Does such sophisticated holographic technology really exist? Could such an incredible ruse fool the entire Human Race? What are the long-term goals of Project Blue Beam? Who was Serge Monast? Who were his sources of information? Was he murdered for what he knew? Is Project Blue Beam looming just around the corner? Or, is the Project Blue Beam saga nothing more than one of the most outrageous hoaxes of the modern era?

There’s no doubt that government and military agencies have worked hard to perfect the ultimate holograms – chiefly to use them on battlefields. When it comes to the matter of Project Blue Beam, I can sum up my views in four, concise words: “Give me a break!!!” It’s one thing to develop advanced holograms for military purposes. It’s quite another, however, to have the entire planet and everyone on it controlled by secret societies and government agencies – and all in a matter of just weeks, which is what Monast suggested. As our technologies develop, so will our holograms; that is all but inevitable. But, a holographic Anti-Christ and a one-world government, one that we all accept and don’t stand up against in our billions? Don’t worry: it’s garbage. Entertaining garbage. But, still garbage.