Tourist attractions dole out millions on advertising to entice visitors to travel to their location, spend money and go back and tell their friends to do the same. If no one is showing up, it could be the message – while it may have a lot of them, Beaver, Oklahoma’s, slogan is “Cow chip capital of the world.” Is that the best they can do? The same may be true when it comes to extraterrestrials visiting Earth – as Enrico Fermi once asked, “Where are they?” NASA has decided it could be the message sent to intelligent space civilizations back in 1974, so the space agency is developing a new one. ‘Earth is for lovers’?

We put the Rock in the Rockies?

“The decision to send a new message into the cosmos has been hotly debated since the pioneering work of Carl Sagan, Frank Drake and some others in the SETI community famously pro-communication with possible ETI in the Milky Way.”

In their new proposal, scientists from the Jet Propulsion Lab first recognize the message composed and sent out in 1974 by popular astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the ‘Drake equation’ which estimated that there’s a huge number of intelligent civilizations out there waiting to hear from us. Theirs was the binary ‘Arecibo message’ beamed from the late great Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and included the numbers one to ten, the atomic numbers of the elements that make up DNA, and graphic images of a human being, the Solar System and the Arecibo radio telescope.

Would that convince you to visit Earth?

The Arecibo message has already outlived the Arecibo telescope but is still over 24,000 years from reaching its target – the M13 globular cluster. The ‘Beacon in the Galaxy’ message was proposed to send more information in an updated format to different and closer star clusters – 6,000 to 20,000 light years away – which have been identified since 1974 as having a high probability of intelligent life. The message will be sent using stronger telescopes – the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in northern California.

Wait a minute … those telescopes are powerful but, as the Eagles sang in ‘Hotel California’, they are “programmed to receive.”

Right you are, Eagles and astronomy fans. The JPL researchers are hoping that upcoming upgrades will allow them to send. What will they be sending in the binary ‘Beacon in the Galaxy’ message that is deemed to be a better galactic travel brochure than the Arecibo Message? An image of the four building blocks of DNA. A timeline from the Big Bang to when the message was sent which shows the dates of major achievements Newton’s laws, Einstein’s theory of relativity and the landing of a human on the Moon. Digital images of the solar system and the Sun and our location in the galaxy. Digitized images of people. And finally, an initiation to reply to the message with an image of the telescope to send it to.

Would THAT convince you to visit Earth? How about at least texting a reply?

Would a picture help?

“As discussed earlier, this message’s ultimate goal is to start a dialogue with ETI – no matter how far in the future that might occur.”

We’ve got the message – now we need the messenger. Hopefully, FAST or the Allen Telescope Array will be capable of transmitting soon. Unfortunately, even at the speed of light, we won’t be here to read the replies thousands of years from now. That doesn’t discourage the JPL scientists working on it, just as it didn’t discourage Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. They think some intelligent civilization is just waiting to hear about us.

“Humanity has, we contend, a compelling story to share and the desire to know of others’—and now has the means to do so.”

Just don’t send them that Twilight Zone episode about aliens eating humans.

I thought that, today, I would share with you what sometimes goes down in the world of a writer on matters relative to the paranormal, the supernatural, the occult, and the UFO phenomenon. This undeniably strange example of many took place on February 28, 2016, but it’s still just as relevant. On checking my email around 8:30 a.m., I saw I had one from a woman named Belinda. She had a traumatic dream two nights earlier. And, she encountered a Man in Black wearing shiny black gloves. In the dream, the MIB pursued her along an old railroad track – one that was seemingly never-ending. Only when the MIB was within a few feet of her did Belinda wake up with an ear-piercing scream. Something which Belinda’s husband attested to. Over the years, a few reports have surfaced of the menacing Men in Black wearing black gloves, but certainly nowhere near the extent to which they are associated with black fedoras and old, 1950s-era black cars. Between October of 2015 and the early part of 2016, however, I received what I can only describe as a “cluster” of reports of the MIB wearing black gloves. In other words, Belinda’s case was not alone. There were others, too.

(Nick Redfern):

not a bad car at all!

Now, if I got – let’s say – a report or two every couple of years of gloved MIB, I probably wouldn’t have given the matter much thought. But, that was not the case: I received eight such accounts across a handful of months, not even including that of Belinda. And, from varying parts of the United States. Admittedly, at first, I thought this might have been some curious kind of MIB “spam.” Or “fake news.” Namely, a group of people deciding to get together and waste my time with a bunch of bogus, concocted tales. But, having spoken on the phone with six of them, and having had extensive email exchanges with the others, I was quickly one hundred percent sure that this was not the case. Of the group, six had experiences with the gloved MIB in what were classic states of hypnagogia. For those who may not be aware of the phenomenon, it is “the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep.” It’s a stage in which people can hear voices and unclear mumbling. Loud “bang”-like noises are not uncommon. Nor are the sounds of a door knocking or a doorbell ringing. Visual hallucinations can occur, too. Sometimes, such events are traumatic. On other occasions, however, they’re uplifting. The phenomenon of “sleep paralysis” can also be a factor in hypnagogia, but certainly not always.

Now, the down to earth explanation for hypnagogia is that it’s purely a product of the brain, provoked by that aforementioned hazy state of being semi-awake and partially-asleep. Over the years, however, I have spoken with more than a few people who are absolutely sure in their minds that there is something else to all of this: a belief that paranormal entities can literally “invade” our dream-states. And, perhaps, our semi-dream states, too. Of course, there’s no hard evidence for this, but that hasn’t stopped such a theory from persisting. And particularly so in so-called “alien abduction” experiences, and also with regard to encounters with the likes of the “Old Hag,” and Incubus– and Succubus-type creatures. It seems that now we can now add the Men in Black gloves to that list. As controversial as it may sound, I’m quite open to the idea that what many people assume to be internal experiences may have an external “Fortean” aspect attached to them. One of the reasons being when I get these “cluster”-style reports. Now, I’m not saying that an entire bunch of people – spread all across the United States and unknown to each other – couldn’t share weirdly similar experiences. But, across just a few months? And all with the imagery of MIB wearing black gloves? And they all decide to contact me? That’s when I begin to think that we’re not dealing with just hypnagogia. We’re dealing with entities from other realms and that, for the most part, appear when we are in the sleep state. Of course, that’s when we are at our most vulnerable. As all the above shows, these “things” know exactly when and where to launch their attacks. And, “attacks” are exactly what I call them.

(Nick Redfern)

Strangers in the night

Some people just seem to be burdened with a weird legacy. Born in Lethbridge, Alberta, in 1910, Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was an engineering specialist who went on to be the chief engineer for radio station CJOR in Vancouver before later working for Canada’s federal Department of Transport in 1939, also serving as senior radio engineer for Transport Canada’s Broadcast and Measurements Section. There he proved invaluable in designing wartime monitoring systems and making several groundbreaking advances in radio technology, gathering a number of patents in the process. It was during this time that he would acquire a deep interest in geo-magnetic forces, which he believed could be harnessed for energy, and in the late 1940s he got caught up in the UFO fever that was sweeping the world at the time. It was with these ideas and theories that he would usher in Canada’s very weird project to investigate aliens, UFOs, and extraterrestrial technology.

At the time this was more than just a passing interest, and by all accounts Smith was absolutely obsessed with UFOs, constantly contemplating them and studying about them. At the time he had many ideas on UFOs and their potential occupants. He believed that aliens perhaps saw us as lower lifeforms to be studied, very much like a scientist might study insects, and that this was perhaps one reason they made little contact with us other than those they deemed capable of comprehending them. He also believed that they would take a very different physical form than us, and that they might even be robots, saying:

If we are to rely on sightings data alone, we are bound to get a rather one-sided idea of these creatures. For example, we see saucers traveling at terrific speeds and then suddenly stop or change direction. Under our concepts of physics, no creature of flesh, blood and bone could withstand the terrific forces which would be associated with such actions. Therefore we are led to assume that the saucerians must be some manner of robot or a creature the like of which we have never encountered.

Smith was absolutely fascinated with not only UFOs in general, but particularly in how they theoretically operated. He became increasingly convinced that if these craft were indeed on Earth, then they were likely powered by geo-magnetic fields. He was so convinced of this, in fact, that he began work on starting a government organization devoted to pursuing this avenue of research. In December of 1950, he met with a Dr. Osmand Solandt, chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board (DRB) to talk about his plans to study the geo-magnetic forces he was so sure were inextricably linked to alien technology, as well as to collect data about UFOs and use this data towards the development of new avenues of engineering and technology. He was certain that this unique research would illuminate new propulsion systems based on the manipulation of magnetism, all he needed was the equipment, funds, and personnel to make it happen. It was officially meant to be the study of geo-magnetism and how it might be harnessed as a propulsion system for vehicles, and indeed UFO research was not mentioned in Smith’s initial project proposal, in which he wrote:

This project is for the purpose of studying magnetic phenomena, particularly those phenomena resulting from unusual boundary conditions in the basic electromagnetic field. There is reason to believe their discovery will open up a new and useful technology. The initial program shall include the following avenues of investigations, to which others may be added from time to time as may appear expedient.

1.Theoretical study of electromagnetic radiation assuming boundary conditions different from those upon which the conventional theory was developed.

2. Laboratory study of mechanical forces associated with electron drift and electric currents in metallic masses.

3. Theoretical and laboratory study of magnetic domain resonance conditions in magnetic materials.

4. Investigation of the propagation of magnetic wave motion in magnetic materials.

5. Investigate the possibility of producing, an effect, a “sink” in a magnetic field.

6. Investigate the possibility of producing, in effect, single isolated magnetic poles.

7. Investigate the effects of a magnetic field on a rotating curviplaner metallic object.

Solandt was intrigued, and after petitioning the government Commander C.P. Edwards, Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, accepted the proposal, and in 1952 Project Magnet was born. It was sold as a project to uncover potential new areas of technology, but with Smith at the helm there was a heavy emphasis on its relation to the UFO phenomena, with him being inspired by the top UFO researchers at the time and their literature on the matter. Smith would write in a 1950 declassified top-secret report:

While in Washington attending the NARB Conference, two books were released, one titled “Behind the Flying Saucers” by Frank Scully, and the other “The Flying Saucers are Real” by Donald Keyhoe. Both books deal mostly with the sightings of unidentified objects and both books claim that flying object were of extra-terrestrial origin and might well be space ships from another planet. Scully claimed that the preliminary studies of one saucer that fell into the hands of the United States Government indicated that they operated on some hitherto unknown magnetic principles. It appeared to me that our own work in geo-magnetics might well be the linkage between our technology and the technology by which the saucers are designed and operated. If it is assumed that our geo-magnetic investigations are in the right direction, the theory of operation of the saucers becomes quite straightforward, with all observed features explained qualitatively and quantitatively. We believe that we are on the track of something which may well prove to be the introduction of a new technology. The existence of a different technology is borne out by the investigations which are being carried on at the present time in relation to flying saucers.

The project itself was a rather modest affair, operated at Department of Defense facilities, with some assistance from personnel at the Defence Research Board. During the course of this research, Smith would write in reports that he had managed to not only successfully extract sufficient energy from the earth’s magnetic field, but also design a sort of mini version of a flying saucer, in essence proving that the technology could work and that they were on the right track, demonstrating the soundness of the basic principles. Smith also had installed an observatory at Shirley’s Bay, outside Ottawa, for the purpose of observing UFOs in the area and to measure and monitor their physical characteristics and influence on anomalies in the local magnetic and radiation fields. The facility was fully equipped for this purpose, complete with a magnetometer, a gamma-ray detector, a powerful radio receiver, and a gravimeter to measure gravity fields. At the time is was all classified, but rumors were making the rounds among the public that the top-secret facility had something to do with UFOs, something the Canadian government denied. In 1952, Smith was one of the driving forces for Project Second Storey, which was sort of Canada’s answer to Project Blue Book, an organization for studying UFO reports and discussing their possible implications and made up of representatives from the Directorates of Air and Naval Intelligence, Military Operations and Planning and members of the DRB.

In addition to this research, Smith continued to make some pretty bold claims. In 1952 he claimed that the U.S. Air Force had in their possession a piece of a UFO that had been shot at near Washington, D.C., and not only that, but that he himself had seen and studied the fragment. His first official preliminary report on his project’s status also stated that UFOs probably came from intelligent, extraterrestrial sources and almost certainly manipulated magnetism for flight. He also would write of classified information he had allegedly managed to get from inside sources which bolstered his theories, saying in one memo:

I made discrete inquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information;

1.The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb

 2. Flying saucers exist.

3. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannavar Bush.

4. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

I was further informed that the United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena and I gather that they are not doing to well since they indicated that if Canada’s doing anything at all in geo-magnetics they would welcome a discussion with suitably accredited Canadians. While I am not yet in a position to say that we have solved even the first problems in geo-magnetic energy release, I feel that the correlation between our basic theory and the available information on saucers checks too closely to be mere coincidence. It is my honest opinion that we are on the right track and are fairly close to at least some of the answers.

Perhaps nervous of this candid disclosure or delusional rantings, depending on which one believes, in 1954, the Canadian government would officially end funding for Project Magnet, finally admitting to the public that it had been for the purpose of studying UFOs, but that “no definite conclusions had been reached.” Smith would keep Project Magnet going on his own dime, and during these years his claims would become more outlandish than ever before. He would make the claim that UFOs were linked to psychic phenomena, and that he was in contact with extraterrestrial beings, “space brothers,” who communicated to him through telepathy. He also claimed that he had perfected a way to “direct the signal mentally” to carry out these communications. He would even claim to have seen dead alien bodies and that he had been abducted by extraterrestrials. Many of his ideas and theories were released in his book “The New Science,” and he would continue his own self-funded research at Shirley Bay all the way up to his death in 1962.

Despite what at the time were seen as fringe ideas to the general public, Smith has remained important to the UFO field, often called “the father of disclosure,” and even within mainstream science he is an important figure, having been posthumously awarded the Lieutenant-Colonel Keith S. Rogers Memorial Engineering Award, given for dedicated service in the advancement of Technical Standards in Canadian Broadcasting. Smith has remained an intriguing figure in the history of ufology, as has his mysterious Project Magnet. What was going on here and what was the true extent of their findings? What was the story with Smith and how much of this was real in any sense? We may never know for sure.

Jack Kirby was a skilled artist and storyteller who – with Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee – co-created such characters as the Incredible Hulk, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. But, it’s to a 1958 series that we have to turn our attentions. Its title was Race for the Moon, and it was solely the work of Jack Kirby.  Race for the Moon was a trilogy, with part-2 titled “The Face on Mars.” It is focused upon the discovery on Mars – by U.S. astronauts – of a vast, carved human-like face on the surface of the so-called Red Planet. Kirby’s story would likely have fallen into obscurity, were it not for one, significant fact: in 1976, what appeared to be a huge, human-like face – cast out of rock – was photographed in a region of Mars called Cydonia. The late Mac Tonnies – the author of After the Martian Apocalypse – spent years addressing, and studying, the matter of what became known as a real-life Face on Mars.

Mac told me: “The first two objects to attract attention were the Face and the ‘D&M Pyramid,’ both unearthed by digital imaging specialists Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar. Their research was published in “Unusual Martian Surface Features”; shortly after, Richard Hoagland pointed out a collection of features near the Face which he termed the “City.” NASA itself discovered the Face and even showed it at a press conference after it had been photographed by the Viking mission in the 1970s. Of course, it was written off as a curiosity. Scientific analysis would have to await independent researchers.” He continued: “When NASA dismissed the Face as a ‘trick of light,’ they cited a second, disconfirming photo allegedly taken at a different sun-angle. This photo never existed. DiPietro and Molenaar had to dig through NASA archives to find a second image of the Face — and, far from disputing the face-like appearance, it strengthened the argument that the Face remained face-like from multiple viewing angles. The prevailing alternative to NASA’s geological explanation — that the Face and other formations are natural landforms — is that we’re seeing extremely ancient artificial structures built by an unknown civilization.”

Mac continued: “NASA chooses to ignore that there is a controversy, or at least a controversy in the scientific sense. Since making the Face public in the 1970s, NASA has made vague allusions to humans’ ability to ‘see faces’ (e.g. the ‘Man in the Moon’) and has made lofty dismissals, but it has yet to launch any sort of methodical study of the objects under investigation. Collectively, NASA frowns on the whole endeavor. Mainstream SETI theorists are equally hostile. Basically, the Face – if artificial – doesn’t fall into academically palatable models of how extraterrestrial intelligence will reveal itself, if it is in fact out there. Searching for radio signals is well and good, but scanning the surface of a neighboring planet for signs of prior occupation is met with a very carefully cultivated institutionalized scorn. And of course it doesn’t help that some of the proponents of the Face have indulged in more than a little baseless “investigation.”

“I think some of the objects in the Cydonia region of Mars are probably artificial,” said Mac. “And I think the only way this controversy will end is to send a manned mission. The features under investigation are extremely old and warrant on-site archaeological analysis. We’ve learned – painfully – that images from orbiting satellites won’t answer the fundamental questions raised by the Artificiality Hypothesis. I suspect that we’re seeing a fusion of natural geology and megascale engineering. For example, the Face is likely a modified natural mesa, not entirely unlike some rock sculptures on Earth but on a vastly larger and more technically challenging scale.” Given that the Face on Mars – regardless of what it is or isn’t – was not found and photographed until 1976, how is it possible that Jack Kirby was able to seemingly anticipate all of this back in the late 1950s? I don’t have an answer, but I do know there is another “Face on Mars.” It’s right below. Unless you view it as nothing stranger than a case of pareidolia.

Note: The photos above are from NASA. As NASA is a U.S. government agency, the pictures are in the public domain

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Ever since we became aware that the universe extends past our planet and that space exists, people have looked to it as a final frontier. Humanity has made many great strides in our endeavors to conquer this last great unknown, but largely we have only really scratched the surface of getting there, with our progress of manned space missions still limited to the general vicinity of our planet. The desire to delve out into the cosmos is a powerful one, yet while most people may think that our true step towards space travel started in the 20th century, such aspirations have been around far longer than that. There have been serious plans put into space travel centuries before we even put the first animal in orbit, and one of these is certainly the time a 17th century scientist drew up his plans to reach the moon centuries before we actually did.

John Wilkins was born in Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire, England, on 1 January 1614, and was from a young age gifted with great intellect and a passion for the natural world. He would graduate from Magdalen College, Oxford, with a B.A. in 1631 and an M.A. in 1634, mostly focusing on theology, natural philosophy, and astronomy, all subjects in which he excelled. He then went on to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England, after which he took on various posts as chaplain to an array of the rich and powerful, including at one point Charles Louis, Prince Elector of the Palatine, and these posts would take him all over England and Germany, where he became acquainted with scholars from various fields. He would eventually in later years become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, serve as Bishop of Chester, and go on to be one of the founding members of the Royal Society, which had him spending much of his time among some of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and intellectuals of his time. Yet for all of these achievements, he is perhaps most remembered for his groundbreaking ideas on space, space travel, and alien life that were well ahead of their time.

Wilkins was considered a bit of a genius himself, and during these years he had made many advancements in science and proposed many ideas that were extremely unique for their era. In his 1668 book, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, he proposed a universal language that could be used by scientists and travelers alike all over the world, and he also was a pioneer of the idea of using a universal system of weights and measure, as well as using pendulums to measure time and utilizing a universal measure of length. He was also an accomplished inventor, creating the first air gun, an artificial rainbow machine, a cypher and signal system that would allow one to “with privacy and speed communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance,” and an inflatable bladder that would go on to serve as the prototype for the pneumatic tire, among others. Yet although these were all pursuits in which he was pushing new boundaries, it was space that truly fascinated him, and he spent most of his time looking up at the stars contemplating what was out there and how to get there.

John Wilkins

This was an era in which a cascade of discoveries in all areas of science was going on, and astronomy and our understanding of the universe was undergoing a bit of an upheaval. Johannes Kepler had worked out the physical laws governing how planets orbit the Sun. Galileo had completely changed our view of the stars and planets using the newly improved telescope to smash the long held idea of an Earth-centered view of the cosmos, and replace it with Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. We were now coming to an understanding that the stars and space itself extended farther than had ever been thought before. We also could finally see that the moon, which had long been an enigma, had a landscape in many ways similar to Earth, complete with mountains and plains. Humanity was suddenly thrown into a universe that was far more massive and stranger than had ever been thought before, and Wilkins was absolutely fascinated by this.

He would write two groundbreaking books on astronomy called The Discovery of a New World in 1638, and then in 1640 A Discourse Concerning a New Planet, in which he railed against the prevailing physics of Aristotle, which dated back 2000 years, and he introduced this new vision of the universe in plain English and clear vernacular terms that the average reader could understand, something very unique for its era. He also illustrated the idea that not only was Earth just one planet among many others, but that these other planets, as well as our own moon, might be inhabited as well. These were all ideas that had been doing the rounds for some time already, but of all of his ideas on space and the nature of the cosmos, his most bizarre and ambitious were his visionary notions of humans actually travelling to space to meet these beings for themselves. He would write of this:

In the first ages of the world the Islanders either thought themselves to be the onely dwellers upon the earth, or else if there were any other, yet they could not possibly conceive how they might have any commerce with them, being severed by the deepe and broad Sea. But the after-times found out the invention of ships, in which notwithstanding none but some bold daring men durst venture, there being few so resolute as to commit themselves unto the vaste Ocean, and yet now how easie a thing is this, even to a timorous and cowardly nature? So, perhaps, there may be some other meanes invented for a conveyance to the Moone, and though it may seeme a terrible and impossible thing ever to passe through the vaste spaces of the aire, yet no question there would bee some men who durst venture this as well as the other.

This was more than just a thought experiment for Wilkins, as he seriously believed that it was possible to fashion a craft to actually travel out into space, an idea which was mind-blowing for its time, the realm of wild, fanciful fiction. Inspired by such great explorers into the unknown as Columbus, Drake and Magellan, Wilkins truly believed that it was just the next logical step that we head past the horizon and into the new frontier of space. To do this, in around 1640 he proposed building a “flying chariot” that would be capable of reaching the moon, which he really felt was possible and which he really felt could be built.

In order to make this a reality, he had many ideas on how it could be accomplished. The first thing to do was to escape the pull of the planet, which was a bit of a challenge considering this was well before Isaac Newton had identified the force of gravity, but Wilkins thought he had it worked out. He believed that everything was held to the earth by a force of magnetism, but that if one could get just 20 miles into the air they would be free of this force, as the thinking at the time was that the power of gravity depended on the proportionate distance between objects, with the further apart they were, the weaker the force became. Wilkins reasoned that his could be done with a flying machine designed like a ship and equipped with a powerful spring, clockwork gears, gunpowder as a sort of propulsion system and internal engine, a vertical rotating sail sprouting from the backrest, wheels for when the thing landed, and a set of wings covered with feathers. This craft would then take off at a low angle, eerily predicting how planes would take off in modern times centuries before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight and in a time when inertia physics was scarcely understood.

17th century engraving of the moon

Once in space, Wilkins suggested that the temperature might not necessarily be cold, and also explained that since the astronauts would be free from the magnetic pull of the planet, there would be nothing pulling on their digestive system to make them hungry and therefore they would not have any need for food in space. He similarly argued that astronauts would not have to worry about breathing either, as their lungs would get used to breathing the “pure air of angels” at that altitude. To him, flying across space would in a sense be even easier than flying on earth, and would merely be the next step past the ships used by the explorers of the past. He was under the impression, as was the common knowledge of the day, that Earth’s atmosphere was nearly identical to the conditions of space. All that needed to be done was to escape Earth’s attraction and we were set to make a journey to the moon that he estimated would take about 180 days, comparable to a long voyage across the oceans. Simple. He was sure his flying chariot would work, and said “I do seriously and upon good grounds affirm it possible to make a Flying Chariot; in which a man may sit and give such a Motion unto it as shall convey him through the air.”

Looking back at this with what we know now about flight and space travel, we understand that the whole plan is absurd and would have never worked at all, but at the time this was pretty visionary stuff. Although space travel and trips to the moon had been mentioned before in science fiction as pure fantasy, no one had ever seriously considered and drawn up plans for an actual working spaceship, and indeed this was an era in which the idea of real, actual space travel was not even really a thing. As the years went by and more discoveries were made, Wilkins himself would come to understand that travelling to the moon through his plan was not a possibility, although he did continue to experiment with various flying machines. Dr. Allan Chapman, a historian at Wadham College, Oxford, calls it the “Jacobean space programme,” and has said of the rise and fall of Wilkins’ grand vision:

His ingenuity was enormous. He saw his flying chariot as being the space version of Drake’s, Raleigh’s and Magellan’s ships. In the same way that it was an Englishman, Thomas Harriott, who beat Galileo in using the telescope, so on the anniversary of the landing on the Moon it was an Englishman who came up with the best argued possibility of getting to the Moon in his day. This was a honeymoon period of British science. The vacuum had not yet been discovered. In 1640, flying to the Moon was a heroic possibility. But by 1670, they realised it was impossible. They’d made so many discoveries in physics and astronomy in 30 years that they could see that flying to the Moon was not on. But in that glorious period around 1640, it seemed a real possibility.

Wilkins would go on to act as Bishop of Chester with a seat in the House of Lords in 1668, and continue his work in the Royal Society, as well as work as an educator all the way to his death in 1672. Although his ideas concerning space travel might seem extravagant, crude and silly by today’s standards, many of his basic ideas such as flying ships and long distance communication would eventually come true, things he was envisioning centuries earlier. During his era, he was a major influence and force in science, advancing the field and looking into the future frontiers of science, a visionary who may have failed in his quest in space, but holds a great legacy in science. He may not have ever reached the stars, but he was a consummate dreamer who encouraged others to dream too, and in many ways it is dreams that fuel our push into new realms of scientific discovery.

The year 1973 remains significant in the history of UFO studies for being a year where some of the most widely discussed and controversial incidents ever to have occurred were logged. From the alleged abductions of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker at Pascagoula, Mississippi, to the famous “Coyne Incident” involving a near midair collision between a U.S. Air Force Huey helicopter and an oblong-shaped UFO, 1973 presented several incidents that remain among ufology’s best-known cases.

“As mutilation reports exploded across the Midwest and West in 1975, the number of ‘mystery helicopter’ reports also increased in many areas,” read an entry by Scott H. Colborn in the Fortean Research Journal in 1989. “This helicopter/mutilation concurrence has continued throughout the past decade,” Colborn wrote. “We have concentrated much of our attention on the ‘mystery helicopters’ because we suspect that if we can acquire some concrete answers illuminating the role of these helicopters, we will be much closer to an understanding of the mutilation phenomena as a whole.”

According to Colborn, by the end of the 1980s, there were “well over 200 accounts of mystery helicopters near or at or in the vicinity of mutilation sites.” While he acknowledged that some of the reports had merely been “innocent flyovers” that were unrelated to the animal mutilations occurring nearby, there were nonetheless “too many reports of helicopters that harass herds of livestock, spotlighting cattle, chasing ground observers and even landing in pastures.”

More ominously, as Colborn noted, some of the incidents involved multiple helicopters numbering anywhere from five to seven of the aircraft all in the same vicinity. “People have been paced and chased down country roads. Deputies have pulled into pastures to watch unlit choppers rise and quickly fly away.”

In 1975, the cases involving purported “mystery helicopters” began to escalate, particularly in states like Colorado. According to Colborn, farmers in the eastern part of the state that year were so wary of the helicopter sightings that they were “ready to shoot down anything resembling a chopper,” resulting in a temporary grounding of all known and accounted-for helicopter flights in the region.

Elsewhere in New Mexico, the issue was similarly tense, and even led to the FAA launching a probe into the mystery helicopters. However, once a National Guard helicopter was stationed at the Clayton, New Mexico airport with instructions to chase any unidentified helicopters that were reported in the area, the sightings seemingly stopped for a time.

“We do not know the results of the FAA investigations,” Colborn wrote, “as they have since denied having any knowledge or information about it.”

“Perhaps they found a reason not to announce their findings,” he added.

Strange helicopters of unknown origin hadn’t been exclusive to the areas where cattle mutilations were occurring. During several incidents involving aerial incursions that occurred at U.S. Air Force missile launch sites along the northern tier during the mid-1970s, military personnel occasionally described seeing what appeared to be craft with lighting arrangements that most closely resembled helicopters, rather than exotic-looking aircraft.

In 1975, missile sites that included Loring, Wurtsmith, and Minot Air Force Bases on the nights or early mornings of October 27, 29, and 31, and again on the nights of November 7, 8, 9, and 19 were host to sightings of what many servicemen described as helicopters. However, after probing by The National Enquirer, an official U.S. Air Force response stated that the “helicopter assumption was based on the sound and light perceptions of the eyewitnesses,” and that there had been no overflights at these bases that the Air Force managed to identify as helicopters.

Strange helicopters were also reported during the famous Cash-Landrum UFO incident that occurred in December, 1980 near Daton, Texas. Witnesses Betty Cash and Vicky Landrum described seeing a large number of helicopters that appeared to pursue (or possibly escort away) a large, hovering diamond-shaped aircraft which produced hot jets of flame from its base. In the days and weeks following the sighting, the witnesses developed an array of medical conditions that they believed to have been related to the object they observed. Despite persistent inquiries made with the U.S. Air Force, the source of the helicopter sightings that coincided with Cash and Landrum’s observation of a UFO was never determined.

Some of the helicopters observed by Cash and Landrum in December, 1980, reportedly resembled the CH-47 Chinook with its distinctive twin-blade configuration

(Credit: Unsplash)

As to the possible origins of these mystery aircraft, Colborn presented several theories, which included:

1) The objects resembling helicopters were actually UFOs which merely resembled more conventional military aircraft (or were perhaps intentionally disguised to look like them) but instead shared a common origin with other more exotic craft.

2) The mystery helicopters might originate from some private, non governmental organization or agency, which might include a corporate or even a cult group. Other possibilities Colborn proposed were secret societies, paramilitary groups, or an “international cabal of industrialists, energy czars or similar manipulators.”

3) The helicopters might be part of a U.S. government group, which for clandestine reasons may have been involved in operations that included surveillance of high security installations, and even cattle mutilations, possibly as part of a “massive chemical-biological warfare (CBW) experiment.”

4) Alternatively, the mystery helicopters might have origins from within the U.S. government, but rather than playing an active role in the cattle mutilations, their purpose might have been part of a secret investigation of these incidents.

5) Another possibility is that rather than merely investigating cattle mutilations, the helicopters were being operated by an investigative group or agency within the U.S. government which had a much firmer grasp on the problem than the public does.

As Colborn proposed of this fifth possibility, this hypothetical U.S. government group could know “much more than ‘civilians’ do,” adding that the mystery helicopters “are of military origin” and that the government of theUnited States “possesses a very substantial amount of knowledge about the mutilators, their means and motives.”

“The government may be attempting to persuade mutilation investigators and the populace as a whole that perhaps the military might be behind at least some mutilations, a diversion away from the real truth,” according to Colborn, who noted the apparent presence of “implied a prior knowledge” in some cattle mutilation cases, “which enable the helicopters to arrive around the time of a mutilation.”

Even after the passing of several decades, the “mystery helicopters” of the 1970s and 80s remain mysterious. It seems hard to imagine that their presence represents anything but the clandestine efforts of one or more U.S. government agencies, although their proximity to UFO incidents, as well as overflights of high-security installations, and even apparent relationship to the ongoing cattle mutilation mystery also represents one of the more ominous unresolved questions about the modern UFO mystery.

“The direct evidence from the Dyatlov Pass area obtained in those expeditions confirms that the region is avalanche prone and that slopes above the location where Igor Dyatlov and his group pitched their tent are steep enough for avalanches to release. Independent research by Russian snow and climate scientists supported assumptions and the main results of our slab avalanche modeling.”

The nine individuals who lost their lives at Dyatlov Pass in 1959.

Alexander Puzrin, a professor of geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich, and Johan Gaume, head of the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, have been the leading proponents of the slab avalanche cause since last year when their first paper on the subject was published in Communications Earth & Environment. Slab avalanches get their name from situations where a slab-like layer of snow pushed by winds forms on top of a weaker layer, causing pressure to be built up and small fractures to form – fractures that need only a small trigger – like a tent post being hammered – to release the slab to slid down a slope, even a not-so-steep one. In their new follow-up to that study, published in the same journal and in an article in Vice, Puzrin and Gaume describe three expeditions to the infamous location, including one just two months ago when professional mountain guides Oleg Demyanenko and Dmitriy Borisov witnessed and recorded video of slab avalanches.

“The initially favorable weather conditions quickly deteriorated, with wind and temperatures becoming similar to those on the night of the 1959 tragedy. Several times, the 300-kg snowmobiles and their drivers were overturned by wind gusts. Visibility became extremely poor. And then, when after a few failed attempts the two mountain guides approached their destination, the visibility briefly improved and revealed traces of two snow slab avalanches.”

Still photos of the videos are included in the study and shown in a documentary video, which is fortunate because

Demyanenko and Borisov watched as the evidence of the avalanches disappeared under snowfall less than an hour later. This explains why the Dyatlov rescue team could not find signs of an avalanche three weeks after the incident. It also shows why no one believes in slab avalanches … unless they see them for themselves. The study admits that the conditions were slighting different on February 1st, 1959.

“Nevertheless, the area is clearly avalanche prone, and the avalanche danger on the night of February 1st, 1959 was real.”

No avalanche is a good avalanche

Their first study concluded that the slab avalanche cause was “plausible.” Now, Puzrin and Gaume have visual evidence of similar slab avalanches causing similar destruction under similar circumstances with similar disappearances. They plan to continue building the case that the Dyatlov Group was killed by slab avalanches.

Are YOU convinced?