Nick Redfern

Nineteen-sixty-nine was the year in which an undeniably elaborate UFO-themed Soviet ruse was put into place over in Russia. This strange affair was highly sophisticated and it revolved around a crashed UFO and the top secret study of an alleged dead alien creature. It was certainly shades of Roswell and the notorious 1995 "Alien Autopsy" film. The story itself is undeniably fascinating – which, I am sure, is what the Russians were surely counting on – as the “evidence” is an old piece of film-footage that reportedly chronicled the whole weird thing. While the crash of the UFO is said to have occurred in March 1969, the story – and the attendant film – did not surface until 1998, almost three decades later. That was the year in which a television production, The Secret KGB UFO Files, was broadcast in the United States and elsewhere, too. There's no doubt that a great deal of money was put into the over-sensationalized production and it was hosted by the late Roger Moore, the star of seven of the phenomenally successful James Bond movies. The documentary covered a wide body of UFO-based data (some of it blatantly hoaxed); however, there’s no doubt that it was specifically the film of the supposed crashed UFO and its deceased crew-member which caught the attention of most of those who bothered to watch it.

Certainly, a great deal of effort went into the production of the film: I have to stress  to you that this was most definitely not the work of an amateur, half-hearted operation. The footage is grainy, it appears old, and was filmed by someone with a hand-held camera. It shows around fifteen-to-twenty men wearing Russian uniforms, thick coats and hats; they are all armed and are guarding a small, circular-shaped craft which appears to have slammed into the ground in a wooded, frosty area. The location was said to have been Sverdlovsk, Russia. The trees are largely bereft of leaves and everything points to the incident having occurred in very cold, bleak weather. Only around a half of the saucer-shaped vehicle protrudes out of the soil, in an angled fashion. The inference is that the military unit found the craft shortly after it hit the ground and, at the time of the filming, were in the process of guarding the site from any and all onlookers that might have come along. To this very day, we don’t know where the film came from, and how it reached the producers of The Secret KGB UFO Files. We’re told that the production company had to pay $10,000 U.S. dollars to secure it, after it was smuggled out of KGB archives. Supposedly. That part of the story is very foggy.  

It's worth noting the following from the National UFO Center: “The footage at the crash site does seem to be authentic at least on several points. The truck in the film is a circa 1950 model ZIS151, which has not been used by the military for quite some time, and the truck would have been difficult to find to stage a hoax with. Other elements of the film do not exhibit any obvious signs of a hoax.” It should be noted there are two other, old military vehicles in the film, too. As for the remaining portion of the film, it very much mirrors the notorious “Alien Autopsy” film, which, in 1995, was foisted on the world by a man named Ray Santilli, and to wildly varying degrees of fanfare. Three men appear to be working on the autopsy of a small, humanoid creature, while a woman take notes. Numerous websites claim that the woman has been identified as a “KGB stenographer” named “O.A. Pshonikina.”

This statement has been repeated time and again; yet, there is no evidence to prove the claim. Such is the reliability – or not - of the Internet. Was the footage created to have the U.S. Government and the intelligence community think that the Russians had recovered, and were extensively studying, alien creatures and their technology? These are mind-boggling, yet utterly plausible, questions to ponder on. There is another - and similar - affair to this. The next one, though, was put into place by a man who wrote fiction, but who may have known something of bogus crashed UFOs in the late 1940s and for pyschological warfare purposes by the U.S. government.

Nineteen-forty-eight was not just notable, in UFO terms, for the twisted tale of the supposed UFO crash in Aztec, New Mexico. It was also the year in which a very intriguing novel was published. Its title was The Flying Saucer and its author was Bernard Newman. In some respects, the story that Newman weaved in 1948 closely mirrored the claims of Alfred O’Donnell in 2011, as they related to the Roswell controversy of July 1947. In the 250-pages of The Flying Saucer, we are treated to a tale of cover-ups, conspiracies, and fabricated tales of Martians and UFOs. The story revolves around a group of scientists who decide that the people of Earth need to be united under one banner. A one world society. But, how could such a thing be achieved? By creating a faked, alien threat, that’s how.

In The Flying Saucer, those aforementioned scientists decide to fake a trio of UFO crashes, as a means to convince the world that aliens have reached the Earth, and that those same scientists have the priceless evidence in their hands. One of those three incidents occurs in the heart of New Mexico, no less. Another UFO crashes in the Soviet Union, and a third slams into the ground in the U.K. Of course, the crashes are actually nothing of the sort. Rather, they are ingeniously staged events designed to make the world believe that the Martian are among us. The scientists create the futuristic aircraft, making them appear to have unearthly origins. The team even stages a bogus alien autopsy, as a means to even further convince people that we are not alone in the universe. The plan is to unite the human race under a friendly, benevolent government. I’ll let you learn for yourselves how the story develops and reaches its climax. It’s not just the story that is intriguing – given that we now know such machinations were already afoot in the real world – but the author, Bernard Newman, himself, too.

Philip Taylor, a researcher who has dug deeply into the life and career of Bernard Newman, says: “In his unrevealing autobiography Speaking From Memory [Newman] describes how from 1919 onwards he was apparently employed in an undemanding Civil Service job in the Ministry of Works. Somehow he seemed able to take extremely long and, for those days, exceedingly adventurous holidays, including lengthy stays in Eastern Europe and Russia. His destinations invariably seemed to include areas of particular political interest: for example several extended holidays to Germany in the 1930’s.” Taylor also reveals that in 1938 Newman put together a paper for British Intelligence on the then-current state of German rocketry at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. It was overseen by the German Army Weapons Office. In other words, yet another curious thread is carefully weaved into the strange story. But, things don’t end there. There's more to come. Much of it.

In 1945, the New York Times ran an article on Newman who, by that time, was a well-respected, prestigious author on matters relative to the world of espionage. Indeed, his books that were published before the New York Times article appeared included The Secrets of German Espionage; Ride to Russia; Woman Spy; and Spy Catchers. As for that same article, it addresses, in part, claims that Newman worked as a “double-agent” during the First World War, infiltrating the German military and securing some of the Germans’ most prized secrets. This is not impossible, since Newman was fluent in German. He was, however, only eighteen at the time, which admittedly stretches credulity to a degree. On this matter, in February 1968, when Newman died, the U.K.’s Times newspaper suggested that this part of Newman’s life should be relegated to “the realm of fiction.” We may never know for sure all that Bernard Newman learned during his life as a prestigious writer on the world of spying, espionage and counterintelligence. But, we do know that in 1948, only one year after the events outside of Roswell, New Mexico occurred, Newman wrote a novel - The Flying Saucer – that contained just about all of the key ingredients that comprise the primary themes of the article you are now reading: faked UFO crashes, a bogus alien invasion, and the manipulation of the mindset of the populace. We have to wonder if Newman - who cultivated numerous colleagues and friends in the intelligence community. And, finally, there is this...

Kenneth Goff was an interesting character, and someone who had made controversial comments in the 1950s about communist-based plans to covertly introduce fluoride into the United States' water supply, to create what he termed a “spirit of lethargy” in the nation. And: guess what? Goff had a deep interest in Flying Saucers. Indeed, one of Goff’s regular lectures was titled: Traitors in the Pulpit, or What’s Behind the Flying Saucers – Are they from Russia, Another Planet, or God? But, it was not so much from the perspective of UFOs being alien or even Russian, however, that interested Goff. His concern was the very subject matter of the article you are now reading: how the UFO subject could be utilized as a tool of manipulation and control by more than just one government. In his 1959 publication, Red Shadows, Goff loudly offered the following to his readers – which, of course, secretly included the FBI: “During the past few years, the flying saucer scare has rapidly become one of the main issues, used by organizations working for a one-world government, to frighten people into the belief that we will need a super world government to cope with an invasion from another planet. Many means are being used to create a vast amount of imagination in the minds of the general public, concerning the possibilities of an invasion by strange creatures from Mars or Venus.”

There is one more story that ties in with the above cases. It comes from a well-known collector of crashed UFO tales. And. it's a thought-provoking one. That man was the late Leonard Stringfield. Over the decades, he was the recipient of a number of such controversial claims – although, sadly and perhaps inevitably, no films. And no surprise. One such intriguing tale told to Stringfield came from the unsurprisingly anonymous ‘Mr. T.E.’, who, said Stringfield in 1980, “holds a technical position in today’s life.” T.E. told Stringfield that in 1953, at the age of just twenty, and while stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, he was summoned to watch a startling piece of film-footage at the base theatre. Reported Stringfield: “Without any briefing, the 16mm movie projector was flicked on and the film began to roll on the screen…the film showed a desert scene dominated by a silver disc-shaped object embedded in the sand…”

Stringfield continued with this information: “Then…there was a change of scenes. Now in view were two tables, probably taken inside a tent, on which, to his surprise, were dead bodies. T.E. said the bodies appeared little by human standards and most notable were the heads, all looking alike, and all being large compared to their body sizes…They looked Mongoloid.” Interestingly, T.E. and his colleagues were told immediately after the screening to ‘think about the movie’; but were later advised that: “It was a hoax.” And, eerily paralleling the Santilli film, T.E. told Stringfield that: “The 5-minute long movie certainly was not a Walt Disney production. It was probably shot by an inexperienced cameraman because it was full of scratches, and had poor colouring and texture.” What all of this tells us is that when it comes to UFOs, we really don't know what is real and what isn't. Remember that.

Over the last couple of days I've written on two intriguing characters: one was the Indiana Jones-type, Tom Slick. And, the other one was Albert Bender, the guy who began the Men in Black mystery in the early 1950s. So, I thought I would turn this into a trilogy and finalize it with a man named Sheridan Cavitt. You may not know about him, but, if you're into the UFO phenomenon, you really should. Let's see what we know about the man (who is now deceased). He proved to be one of the trickiest players in the entire Roswell story. He revealed very little of substance. On occasion, he even denied having ever been at Roswell or at the crash site. Cavitt may even have withheld what he knew of the incident when, in 1994, the Air Force came knocking on his front-door, wanting answers. But, let's go back a bit. The story of Roswell was quickly picked up not just across the United States, but across the planet, too. In barely no time at all, however, the flying disc angle was blown out of the sky: the whole thing was nothing but a huge, embarrassing mistake. The materials found on the massive ranch – by rancher William Ware “Mack” Brazel – were not the remains of a disc, after all. What had really been found, and subsequently collected and brought to the Roswell Army Air Field, was weather-balloon debris. Or, so the military was careful to try and assure everyone. The truth was much more. And much more disturbing.

(Nick Redfern)

At the site of what really came down at Roswell

With Brazel at the time of the discovery – which had actually occurred days earlier – was a young boy named Dee Proctor. He would go on to be one of the most important people in the Roswell story. We also know for sure that three, key military men, all of whom were destined to become part and parcel of the Roswell affair, were also present at the ranch – and specifically before a veritable battalion was on-site and ordered to recover the massive amount of whatever-it-was. They were Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence-office of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell; Captain Sheridan Cavitt, of the Counter-Intelligence Corps; and CIC Master Sergeant Lewis S. “Bill” Rickett. All three were at ground-zero. They all saw the wreckage. Years later Marcel would open up wide on the matter of the debris he saw and collected. Cavitt and Rickett may have seen more than debris. Way more. Possibly bodies, strange bodies. Brazel and little Dee may have seen one or more of those bodies, too. One of the primary reasons why the Air Force felt that the Mogul balloon scenario worked so well was because of the sheer scale of the arrays. They were gigantic clusters of balloons. In that sense, the Project Mogul balloons could, theoretically, have explained the presence of the huge debris field on the Foster Ranch – a field of debris that clearly could not have been caused by anything as insignificant as a small, solitary weather-balloon. 

It’s ironic, however, that one of the primary Roswell players – and who the U.S. Air Force spoke with, hoping he would add weight to their Project Mogul argument – completely failed to take the bait. On the matter of the nature of the debris, he would have nothing at all to do with the Mogul program. That man was one of the very few people that just about everyone who has studied the Roswell controversy agrees was definitely on-site when the materials were found and recovered: Sheridan Cavitt, formerly of the Counter-Intelligence Corps.   On May 24, 1994, Colonel Richard L. Weaver, USAF – who, at the time, was the Air Force’s Director of Security and Special Program Oversight – interviewed Cavitt at his, Cavitt’s, home. Mary, Cavitt’s wife, was also present throughout the interview. In its published report, the Air Force had some intriguing things to say about Cavitt and his comments on the Roswell event. There is an important reason why I have reproduced, below, a specific section of the Cavitt interview. That reason will become apparent imminently. The USAF said, in its 1994 report and prefacing the interview:

“Cavitt is credited in all claims of having accompanied Major Marcel to the ranch to recover the debris, sometimes along with his Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) subordinate, William Rickett, who, like Marcel, is deceased. Although there does not appear to be much dispute that Cavitt was involved in the material recovery, other claims about him prevail in the popular literature. He is sometimes portrayed as a closed-mouth (or sometimes even sinister) conspirator who was one of the early individuals who kept the ‘secret of Roswell’ from getting out. Other things about him have been alleged, including the claim that he wrote a report of the incident at the time that has never surfaced.” In view of the above, it’s not at all surprising that the Air Force wanted to speak with Cavitt. The USAF report continues: “Since Lt. Col. Cavitt, who had first-hand knowledge, was still alive, a decision was made to interview him and get a signed sworn statement from him about his version of the events. Prior to the interview, the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken. Subsequently, Cavitt was interviewed on May 24, 1994, at his home. Cavitt provided a signed, sworn statement of his recollections in this matter. He also consented to having the interview tape-recorded.

“In this interview, Cavitt related that he had been contacted on numerous occasions by UFO researchers and had willingly talked with many of them; however, he felt that he had oftentimes been misrepresented or had his comments taken out of context so that their true meaning was changed. He stated unequivocally, however, that the material he recovered consisted of a reflective sort of material like aluminum foil, and some thin, bamboo-like sticks. He thought at the time, and continued to do so today, that what he found was a weather balloon and has told other private researchers that. “He also remembered finding a small ‘black box’ type of instrument, which he thought at the time was probably a radiosonde. Lt. Col. Cavitt also reviewed the famous Ramey/Marcel photographs of the wreckage taken to Ft. Worth and he identified the materials depicted in those photos as consistent with the materials that he recovered from the ranch. Lt. Col. Cavitt also stated that he had never taken any oath or signed any agreement not to talk about this incident and had never been threatened by anyone in the government because of it. He did not even know the incident was claimed to be anything unusual until he was interviewed in the early 1980’s.”

Cavitt told Colonel Weaver:  “…I couldn’t swear to the dates, but in that time, which must have been July, we heard that someone had found some debris out not to far from Roswell and it looked suspicious; it was unidentified. So, I went out and I do not recall whether Marcel went with Rickett and me; I had Rickett with me. We went out to his site. There were no, as I understand, checkpoints or anything like that (going through guards and that sort of garbage) we went out there and we found it. It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type. And we gathered up some of it.” Cavitt had more to say: “I don’t know where we even tried to get all of it. It wasn’t scattered, well, what I would call, you know, extensively. Like it didn’t go along the ground and splatter off some here and some there. We gathered up some of it and took it back to the base and I remember I had turned it over to Marcel. As I say, I do not remember whether Marcel was there or not on the site. He could have been. We took it back to the intelligence room in the CIC office.”

The Air Force’s statement is notable for not just what it says, but also for what it specifically does not say. The USAF report makes it clear that in Cavitt’s opinion, what he saw and picked up was weather-balloon debris. From one, single balloon. Not more than one balloon. And definitely not an array of balloons. Given that the materials used in both weather-balloons and Mogul balloons were essentially one and the same, that meant the ball was still just about in the Air Force’s court: the Mogul theory still held water, and one of the last-surviving people who were at the crash-site was endorsing it. Well, no, he wasn’t. The exact opposite, actually. The most important document in this aspect of the Roswell puzzle is not the Air Force’s 1994 report, but its massive 1995 publication / behemoth, The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, a copy of which was mailed to me by Colonel Weaver when it was published, and which runs to more than 1,000 pages. Unlike the far slimmer 1994 report, the huge 1995 USAF document contains a full transcript of the interview between Colonel Weaver and Cavitt. 

The report shows that Colonel Weaver asked Cavitt: “…when you went out and saw this material, there was no doubt in your mind that it was some sort of man-made material? And, you thought at the time was a weather balloon, some sort of balloon?” Cavitt replied: “When I first saw it,” implying to the colonel that he knew immediately it was balloon debris. Now we get to the important part. Colonel Weaver continued with his questioning and asked Cavitt how big the debris field was. Cavitt’s response: “Maybe as long as this room is wide.” The colonel asked for clarification on Cavitt’s words : “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt said, as he pointed around the room: “Some here, some here, some here. No concentration of it.” That all brings us to the biggest problem in this aspect of the overall Roswell debate: almost no-one of significance in the Roswell story disputes that the debris field on the ranch was expansive. Even the Air Force believed that. It still does, if asked. And, the fact that the field was so huge, and packed with debris, allowed the USAF to make a somewhat plausible case that it came from one of the military’s goliath-sized Mogul arrays. But, when talking to Colonel Weaver in 1994, Cavitt outright disputed the size of the field. It was, he said, just about “as long as this room is wide.”

Cavitt’s testimony was potentially extremely important to the Air Force, as it could have helped bolster the idea that the materials came from Project Mogul. But, Cavitt’s words on the size of the area in which the material was found, were wholly inconsistent with what one would expect to see if Mogul was the culprit. Instead, what Cavitt described was consistent with just a small weather-balloon: not much wreckage and a very small area in which the materials were strewn about. On top of that, when Colonel Weaver brought up the matter of Project Mogul, Cavitt shot back: “Never heard of it.” Perplexing is the fact that the USAF never addressed that one, notable inconsistency: how could Project Mogul have been the culprit when, according to Cavitt – who even the Air Force accepts was at the ranch in July 1947 with Bill Rickett - the amount of material found would have fitted comfortably in his and Mary’s living-room? Does that sound, to you, like something which could have comfortably fitted inside one room of the Cavitt home? Remember, the Cavitt’s living-room was not large. When asked about the size of the debris field, Cavitt told Colonel Weaver it was no longer than the width of the room in which the interview was then taking place. To which Weaver asked: “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt made not a single attempt to dispute Colonel Weaver’s math.Good luck trying to shovel 600-feet of Mogul-based balloon materials into a twenty-foot-wide room. 

There is something else, too: if Cavitt knew all along that what he, Marcel and Rickett saw and collected came from a weather-balloon, why then did Cavitt – or all three of them – not nip things in the bud and lay matters to rest before the “flying disc” statement was released to the media? The Air Force’s only theory on this issue goes as follows: “…it seems that that there was overreaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting that a ‘flying disc’ had been recovered when, at that time, nobody knew for sure what that term meant, since it had only been in use for a couple of weeks.” That statement does make some sense – after all, flying saucer hysteria was definitely growing, as it was only two weeks earlier that pilot Kenneth Arnold launched the era of UFOs. But, that Cavitt was so adamant that he immediately knew the material was from a weather-balloon still means he could have quashed everything before it erupted. Also, Colonel Weaver’s report makes it clear he was familiar with the testimony of the RAAF’s Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, who had told Kevin Randle that, with respect to Roswell, he was sworn to secrecy. Easley died in 1992, but no attempt was ever made by the USAF to address his revelations. 

Recall that the Air Force stated: “Prior to the interview [with Cavitt], the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken.” Cavitt was not too bothered by this, as he made it clear to Colonel Weaver that he “was not sworn into secrecy ever about any of this stuff.” That, unlike Cavitt, Easley was adamant he had signed a secrecy oath is surely something that should have caught the attention of the USAF. And, more importantly, the Air Force knew Easley had made such a statement. That this important matter was not chased down can only be described as troubling. My view on all this? I believe that, just like John Keel, the Air Force was absolutely right to go looking for a balloon-driven program. As I see it, that is where all of the evidence points. But, also like Keel, the USAF got the wrong kind of balloon. It wasn’t a weather-balloon. It wasn’t a Fugo balloon. It wasn’t even one of the gargantuan Mogul affairs. As one of my original sources told me years ago: there is no better way to hide a classified balloon-based operation than by hiding it behind another classified balloon-based operation. Mogul, then, may have been the convenient fall-guy for a project that was far more controversial in nature; a project of sinister proportions and which was also inextricably linked to new and novel balloons flown in the skies of New Mexico in 1947. 

Was the Air Force of 1994 hiding the history of a series of post-war human experiments behind something else, such as Mogul? Or, incredibly, was the truth hidden from the Air Force, too? Do I think the Air Force engaged in chicanery, lying and obfuscation? Did the Air Force make a legitimate search, only to find little at all? These are all important questions. Personally, I think the USAF legitimately went looking, but in doing so found nothing of a smoking-gun nature in the slightest. So, its investigators continued to search, finally focusing on Mogul, and coming to accept that without definitive documentation to make a cast-iron case, the whole thing was destined to remain a ufological equivalent of Jack the Ripper. Namely, an old mystery, one that was filled with intrigue, but which was lacking in a definitive answer. Perceiving quite correctly and astutely that coming up with no answer, at all, was unacceptable, the Air Force went with the only candidate that it thought made at least some degree of sense: Project Mogul. Based on the words of my sources, I am as certain as I can be that either (a) the relevant files were destroyed decades ago (which would explain why the Air Force of 1994 came up with nothing solid), or (b) the documentation was locked away – also decades ago – to prevent a dirty secret from ever leaking out and embarrassing not just the Air Force, but the entire U.S. Government, and even the President. 

If the former is the correct scenario, we may forever be reliant on nothing more than the old memories of equally old people who are now nearly all gone. If the latter proves to be accurate, however, there is still a chance we might one day get our hands on the elusive proof: documents, photos, autopsy reports, and so on. If that happens, I predict the Air Force of 1994 will be shown to have been out of the loop, but not sinister conspirators. As for Cavitt, was he carrying out some kind of secret duty right up until the very end? Was he – even as late as the 1990s – still answerable to someone else? Was it the same person, or agency, Bill Rickett was still so concerned about crossing? Someone above the Air Force and the GAO? Someone concerned that, if the USAF kept pushing for answers, the hidden truth might still surface? Was Cavitt, by maintaining the weather-balloon scenario, even determined to keep the hidden facts out of the hands of Colonel Weaver? Quite possibly. In other words, Cavitt was the guy who knew the full story, but chose not to reveal it. Now? The whole thing is long gone. Unless, that is, there are still some old, faded files that might blow the whole thing wide open. I'm not giving up on it. Ever.

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The beautiful city of Prague in the Czech Republic is known for its rich history, Gothic cathedrals, medieval squares, art scene, nightlife and restaurants. On the other hand, its name rarely comes up when the discussion turns to ancient monuments and monoliths like the Great Pyramid of Giza or Britain’s Stonehenge. That may change soon as the world learns of the discovery of mysterious round monumental building on the outskirts of the city that dates back to about 4900 BCE – making it older than the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge. And, despite being well-preserved, its purpose to the people living there in the Neolithic period is a mystery.

“Roundels were built during the Stone Age when people had not yet discovered iron. The only tools they could use were made of stone and animal bones.”

Despite being erected by people of the New Stone Age using stone and bone tools, Jaroslav Rídký from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague marvels that the “roundel” – a circular enclosure (‘rondely’ in Czech) – discovered recently in the Vinoř district on the outskirts of Prague is in such ‘monumental’ condition for its age of 7,000 years. Roundels are actually common structures in Central Europe – about 200 have been uncovered in total, with 35 in the Czech Republic. Despite their size, most tourists and even many Europeans have never heard of them.

“The so-called roundels are the oldest evidence of architecture in the whole of Europe. They are a series of circular ditches and they are always arranged in a circle with two, three, four or more entrances to the center, four being the most common.

The whole structure reaches an average of between 30 to 240 meters, but you most commonly find them in the range of 60 – 80 meters.”

Jaroslav Rídký has seen roundels reaching 787 feet (240 meters) in diameter, but the newest discovery in is 180 feet (55 meters) across. (Photos of it here.) 

An aerial view of the Vinoř roundel near Prague, showing three separate entrances. 

(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Archaeologists working on the excavation of the Stone Age roundel. 

(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Open trenches undergoing excavation by a team from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. 

(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

A trench wall revealing stratigraphy (different layers) of the excavation. 

(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

The “ditches” – all that is left of the mysterious structures – average about one and a half meters (5 feet) in width but some of the largest span fourteen meters (46 feet) and are six meters (20 feet) deep. Only a few of the roundels discovered are well-defined – most are mere outlines of where the ditches once were. That explains why the first ones weren’t discovered until the 19th century and most were unknown until the 1980s with the advent of aerial photography, using drones and planes, and satellite imagery. As they were uncovered, the first mystery of the roundels emerged – virtually all of them across Central Europe were built during a brief 300 year period between 4900 and 4600 BCE. Here is how Jaroslav Rídký describes it:

“There was simply some kind of societal change, where the roundels could no longer fulfill the function they had before and they just stopped being used.

The structure of settlements changes in some areas, the ornamentation changes.”

What happened to cause Neolithic cultures across Central Europe to abandon such huge round structures they spent so much time building and maintaining? The largest (787 feet) is in the Czech Republic and is a series of three concentric ditches with a fourth apparently under construction when it was abandoned. The massive structure had four gates leading to the center. In addition, a second single-ditch roundel was located a mere 165 feet (50 meters) away. Another Czech Republic roundel recently located in Třebovětice in the Jičín district was hidden in a thick forest and, back in its time, was protected by ramparts (fortifying barriers) which are still visible today. It is details like these, along with the discoveries of more roundels like the one in the Vinoř district, which give Miroslav Kraus, the principal investigator of that roundel for the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP), some hints to their mysterious purpose.

“One of such theory is that it could have been used as an economic centre, a centre of trade. It could also have been a centre of some religious cult, where rites of passage or rituals connected to the time of year were performed.”

Kraus and others believe that some of the Czech roundels – and possibly more elsewhere -- were built by the so-called Stroked Pottery culture noted for making zig-zag bands on its pottery vessels. The Stroked Pottery culture existed in Poland, eastern Germany and the northern Czech Republic between 4900 and 4400 BCE, but were more known for building longhouses -- large, rectangular buildings that held 20 to 30 people. If the roundels were built the same way, the inner ditches would have been lined with wooden poles with mud between the gaps. These tightly-erected poles may have been protective fortress walls, but they could also have been load-bearing walls to hold roofs also made with wood like the longhouses. The research team is continuing to comb the area for clues.

Organic material found at the site are being carbon-dated to determine exactly when the Czeck roundel was built and if the builders were indeed part of the Stroked Potter culture. If the roundel was for social gatherings or ritual functions, the organic materials should show where the people gathering there came from, since they appear to have been too large to serve just the local population. It would be impressive to find that these Late Stone Age people living 7000 years ago – before Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid – built such impressive structures for socio-ritual purposes rather than just religious – commemorating events such as rites of passage, astronomical occurrences or economic activities. All of this was done by people working with stone and bone tools.

Who were the people of these Czech roundels? What were their purposes? How did they build them? Why did the suddenly and mysteriously abandon them? If we can answer any or all of these questions, perhaps we can apply that knowledge to other mysterious civilizations which have flourished, then vanished. Perhaps we can find some solutions to our own problems before we vanish as well.

It will be just our luck that the research into the roundels of the Czech Republic will show their builders left because of climate change.

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The 1990s can be considered to be a period of renaissance of interest in all things paranormal with the debut and popularity of the television series “X-Files” and the rise and nationwide expansion of Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM” late night radio show. As many have found since then, those two shows were – and continue to be – hard acts to follow. One TV series that gave it a try was “Dark Skies,” which aired NBC from 1996 to 1997 and was later rerun by the Sci-Fi Channel. With the slogan, “History as we know it is a lie,” “Dark Skies” focused primarily on fictional UFO conspiracy theories about aliens living among humans, the government cover-ups hiding the fact from the public, and the attempts by the aliens to expand their influence. The alleged secret government group Majestic 12 played a prominent role in the short-lived series. While some real people were depicted on the show (Robert F. Kennedy, Jim Morrison, and J. Edgar Hoover to name a few), the plots were fictional.

Or were they?

“He said he was from the Office of Naval Intelligence and he wanted to help us.”

President Ronald Reagan once warned the American public that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” Bryce Zabel -- a television producer, director, writer, and occasional actor – had undoubtedly heard this quote, but he probably never thought he would hear it in real life as the showrunner (developer/producer/writer) for “Dark Skies.” A new article in The Daily Star seems to confirm a story that has been hinted at before – the tale of what Zabel claims happened in 1996 at the show’s launch party.

“I didn’t know this guy.”

Zabel claims a person he had never seen before came up to him at the party and introduced himself as “JC.” Trailers and information about the show were already being spread by the network – the premier would introduce Congressional Aide John Loengard, who is investigating Project Blue Book, the real but secret Air Force study of UFOs, when he is contacted and finds himself being contacted by members of the Majestic 12. Is Zabel about to experience a case of his own life imitating his own art?

“They were looking at a disclosure scenario, so ‘How ultimately does this secret become known to the public?’.”

Yes, 25 years ago at a TV show premier party, showrunner Bryce Zabel claims he was confronted by a mysterious man named JC who told him that the government was planning to disclose to the public information about UFOs and extraterrestrials, and JC wanted “Dark Skies” to help by being a realistic precursor that could ‘condition’ the public to be ready to accept these revelations when the government decided to release them. Zabel already knows that upcoming episodes will depict such revelations – one of them has John Loengard testifying to the Warren Commission (The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy) about Majestic 12’s involvement in the JFK assassination. Apparently, JC wanted fictional accounts such as these to play out as closely as possible to how the real government wants them to happen when the time comes for similar real revelations – again, to condition the public to be less shocked and more receptive to the ideas.

“The President just can’t come out and say, ‘Here’s everything’ all at once’. So they wanted to see more of the truth through fiction.”

For example, JC wanted Zabel to write situations that would – for lack of a better overused word – leak some truths about UFOs and aliens via the fictional scenes in “Dark Skies.” Yes, this premier party encounter was itself starting to sound like an episode of the show – something that was not lost on Brent V. Friedman, Zabel’s co-creator and co-producer.

“I can’t tell you how surreal this was. They wanted to help us come up with some story ideas.”

Friedman, also at the premier party, said JC and his ‘associates’ in the government knew they had not yet filmed the rest of the season or even written the rest of the episodes, so there was the perfect opportunity to intervene and direct the directors in their preferred direction. Friedman sensed that they were looking for nothing too big or too obvious in the script changes.

“JC said to me, ‘It’s a drip system… get the truth out there in small ways.”

JC was obviously aware of how hot the paranormal/UFO interest was among television viewers in the 1990s after the surprise and long-lasting success of “The X-Files,” whose initial run went from September 1993 to May 2002, and spawned a couple of later seasons, movies, books, video games and graphic novels. He gave Friedman and Zabel some advice:

“You have a television show that millions of people are watching right now… if we start lacing it with bits of the truth we’re preparing everybody’.”

Was someone or something really behind the scenes trying to leak information to the public?

Everybody? That is is quite possibly the point where the mysterious JC and his equally mysterious cohorts “from the Office of Naval Intelligence” may have given away that they were not as sharp as they hoped Zabel and Friedman would think them to be. This was obviously the kickoff to the first season of “Dark Skies” but JC did not do his research -- the series was cancelled before the end of that initial season of 18 episodes due to low ratings. According to Zabel and Freidman’s five-year plan, the first season would cover the period from 1961 to 1969, the second from 1970 to 1976, the third from 1977 to 1986, the fourth from 1987 to 1999, and the fifth and final season would cover the final conflict between humans and aliens taking place from 2000 to 2001. Did JC miscalculate the potential popularity of “Dark Skies”? It’s possible – we’ve seen that the government isn’t too good at collecting accurate polling data in other fields. Or did they decide the American public wasn’t ready for trickle-down UFO disclosure or conditioning to accept real truths about extraterrestrials?

In any event, Zabel and Friedman said they never heard from “JC” again.

If he was a real Man in Black, they’d better keep watching their backs.