UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Military bases, with their secretive natures and security clearances, often seeming to operate in the dark beyond the public eye, have always drawn to them tales of conspiracies. It sometimes seems that there is not a single military base that doesn't have at least some dark rumors swirling about it involving strange experiments, UFOs, and aliens. For the most part these just remain lore and more or less urban legends, but they become more interesting when actual people who were supposedly there step forward to talk about the outlandish things they've seen at such places. One such very odd case comes from a witness who claims to have had several surreal encounters with aliens in secret underground facilities beneath two U.S. military bases.

The report in question was released by the radio station KPFA-FM, in Berkeley, California, during a 4-hour show on UFO phenomena. The station itself is part of the Pacifica Foundation, which was founded in 1947 and is a non-profit organization that owns several non-commercial, largely non-censored, alternative listener-supported radio stations. These stations are known for being rather off the grid and the last bastion for free speech and activism, as well as pioneers of First Amendment rights, so it makes sense that they might be more inclined to open up about their more fringe experiences on such a station. According to UFO researcher Elaine Douglass, in this case, KPFA-FM had acquired tapes of an interview taken in April of 1981 with a man who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran, former Green Beret, military medal-holder, and construction contractor who had done work at military facilities such as Nellis, Scott, Edwards, and Andrews Air Force Bases, and had quite the tale to tell. According to him, he had had two separate encounters with alien beings there, the first being at Edwards Air Force Base, in the Antelope Valley of Southern California.

Edwards Air Force Base

Edwards Air Force Base is the home of the Air Force Test Center, Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, and is involved in all manner of research and development of flight technology, as well as testing and evaluating aerospace systems from concept to combat. Many experimental aircraft are tested here, with some historic occasions such Chuck Yeager's flight that broke the sound barrier carried out at the base. According to this witness, it also has an expansive underground network of tunnels and labs that are up to top-secret research involving crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and aliens.

On the tape, the witness claims that the underground facilities he had seen during his contract work were “definitely not normal military structures,” and that they featured very thick concrete walls, unorthodox oval door ways with doors that electronically slid open and shut, and arrays of bizarre equipment the likes of which he had never seen. He describes various laboratories and high-security areas he was not allowed to access, the whole place giving off a sinister vibe and feeling very much like a place he didn’t feel welcome in. The size of the facility itself he could not say, but he estimated, judging by the time it took them to get from the top of the elevator to the bottom, that it went at least 30 stories down. It was as he walked the halls with his colleague that they wandered into an area they felt they were perhaps not supposed to be in, and that was when they had their bizarre encounter with an alien. The witness says:

We were walking down a hall, and these doors opened and there was a very particular person or things that caught my eye for an instant. This man was over seven feet tall. I’d say between 8 and 9 to 10 feet, wearing a lab jacket and talking to two human engineers. This man’s arms were almost down to his knees! It threw me into shock. It was definitely not human. He had big slanted eyes. A big head. Fingers were extremely long. Greenish skin. I saw him for just a few seconds. Three-quarters of its face is what I saw and I said, this guy would make a hell of a basketball player! And then the doors closed. Security saw us and told us to get out of there. The next day I walked off the job. After that I said, ain’t nobody pulling the blanket over my head anymore. l know what’s going on now. l know what I saw at Edwards is real. Somebody’s playing games with us.

The witness’s second encounter allegedly happened at the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, located in the Western Mojave Desert region of California, approximately 150 miles north of Los Angeles. The base was originally called the Naval Ordnance Test Station, and is involved in a variety of research, testing and evaluation programs for the U.S. Navy. The sprawling site covers a massive 1,100,000 acres, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, has 19,600 square miles of restricted and controlled airspace, and according to the witness it also has a vast secret underground facility holding aliens and alien tech. It was as he was doing work there with some colleagues that he purportedly saw aliens for the second time in his life, and he explained of what happened:

They security thought we had left–me and two other guys. But we decided to stay over and finish this job. We walked past a hangar and we could see through a window,” the witness said. One of the guys I was with, Paul, he saw them first. He said, ‘Come here! Hurry up! I want to show you something!‘ And we looked in the window and there are these four little grey guys about 3 feet tall. Right then, security saw us and they told us, ‘We thought you guys left.’ And they escorted us and said, ‘You’re not allowed around this hangar. This hangar is off- limits to everybody. You’ll get yourself shot.‘ And it messed with Paul’s mind so much that every chance he got he snuck over there. He finally got caught and was kicked off the base. About three months later they found him mysteriously dead in Orange County. This kind of put a scare in me. I know why not to mess with something.

The witness insists that his story is true, and apparently throughout the interview seems very sober and sincere. When the segment was originally aired on the KPFA-FM UFO program it generated so much interest that were planning on broadcasting it again, but shortly before they were to do this they allegedly got a message from the KPFA-FM program producer Ralph Steiner, somberly stating, “Do not re-broadcast the tape. Persons whose testimony is on the tape have been threatened and their lives are in danger.” Was the radio station silenced, and if so by who? There is very little to verify any of this, and it could all very well be someone playing a hoax and having a laugh at everyone's expense, but it does certainly add to the already rich lore of secret, ominous military bases and their supposed bizarre dealings with extraterrestrials.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

The UFO subject can, at times, be a strange one. On other occasions it can be sinister. But, what about downright fatal? In other words, mysterious deaths and getting too close to the truth of the UFO phenomenon. That's the theme of today's article. We'll begin with a man named Danny Casolaro. It was the summer of 1991 – specifically August 1 of that year – when the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in a hotel room in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton Inn. His body was lying in the shower. It was a grim sight for the maid that made the discovery. The man, it seemed, had committed suicide: his wrists were cut deep, something which effectively meant that without anyone to help him, the man was doomed. And, he was. It didn’t take more than a few moments for hotel staff to figure out who, exactly, the man was. He was identified by the person on the front-desk as Danny Casolaro. For around a year and a half leading up to the point of his reported suicide, Casolaro had been looking into a powerful group of people who sound very much like candidates for a New World Order. Casolaro termed this group, “The Octopus.” Appropriately, but unfortunately and tragically, the Octopus soon got its tentacles into Casolaro and dragged him down to an untimely death.

On the Area 51 angle, things got even more controversial. Casolaro was told that a secret group, known as Majestic 12, oversaw at Area 51 the wreckage and alien bodies said to have been found in New Mexico in the summer of 1947 – the legendary Roswell affair, of course. For the record, the Majestic 12 issue has been an integral one to the field of Ufology for decades. For some UFO investigators, Majestic 12 is the real deal. For others, though, it’s nothing but government disinformation designed to confuse the Roswell incident even further. Unfortunately, Casolaro did not live to see the truth of the Octopus unveiled – by himself, he hoped. The matter of his death in August 1991 ensured that. While Casolaro’s death could have been due to suicide – certainly, that’s what it looked like – there were solid and valid reasons to suggest that his death was due to something very different. At the time of his passing, Casolaro was certainly not in a state of woe or depression. It was the exact opposite: he was energized by new leads, and new revelations, in his quest to find the truth of the Octopus, its activities, and its motivations. The mystery remains exactly that: a mystery.

Note: As this map was created by the U.S. government, it is in the public domain

Now, let's jump back to the 1960s and a journalist named Dorothy Kilgallen, who had an interest in the UFO subject. For Kilgallen, it was when she started to dig into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - at Dallas’ Grassy Knoll - that things began to get dicey for her. She was particularly interested in the connections between JFK’s alleged murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Dallas strip-club-owner, Jack Ruby; a man who knew all the influential, powerful, and murderous characters – including the Mob - who called Dallas their home. When Oswald was shot and killed by Ruby on November 24, 1963, Kilgallen really sat up, suspecting that Oswald had been killed to prevent him from revealing what he knew of the complexities surrounding the president’s death.

Things got even more intriguing when Kilgallen got her hands on an advance copy of the controversy-filled Warren Report that investigated the death of JFK. How she got a hold of that is still a much-debated issue for those who haven’t given up on the matter of who was behind the president’s killing. Kilgallen even managed to secure an interview with Ruby, himself. Kilgallen was no fool: she knew that, by that time, her life was in a fair degree of danger. Kilgallen’s hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, made no bones about it: “Her life had been threatened.” The threats became more and more. Then, on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found stone cold dead. As well as looking deep into the JFK assassination, Kilgallen was also tied to the UFO mystery. There’s little doubt at all Dorothy Kilgallen had an interest in the UFO phenomenon; in 1954, she said, in a press article, that: “Flying Saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer.” If such a thing went ahead, it was carefully hidden to the media and the public.

(Nick Redfern)

Marilyn Monroe murdered for what she knew about UFOs?)

Sadly, Kilgallen died at a young age and under suspicious circumstances. Was it an accidental case of Kilgallen being fatally fueled by too much booze and too many pills? A suicide? Or, a skillful murder made to look like one of the two scenarios above? Just like Marilyn Monroe’s death, the questions – even now, decades later - are many, but the answers are sorely lacking. The mystery remains. As does Kilgallen’s involvement in controversies of the UFO kind. And, talking about Marilyn, what about her link to the UFO phenomenon? Murders made to look like suicides and accidents. Classified government documents fallen into the wrong hands. Stolen diaries; some of them burned and shredded for fear of what, one day, they might reveal. Powerful people with dangerous agendas. Famous faces. The Feds prowling around. Hollywood conspiracies. CIA agents keeping watch. Frightened people with secrets to hide. Wild sex. Drugs. Crazy parties and flowing booze. And, an incredible story of UFOs, aliens, Roswell, Area 51, Flying Saucers, and the death of a beautiful, but tragically scarred, icon. They all appear in the final years of Marilyn's life.

In 1955, one of the most controversial of all the many and varied UFO books published in the fifties was released – and, for the UFO field, to a distinct fanfare. Its title was The Case for the UFO. The author was Morris K. Jessup. His book was a detailed study of the theoretical power-sources for UFOs: what was it that made them fly? How could they perform such incredible, aerial feats, such as coming to a complete stop in the skies, hovering at incredible heights? Jessup believed that the vitally important answers lay in the domain of gravity. Or, as he saw it: anti-gravity. Jessup may well have been onto something, as it wasn’t long at all before the world of officialdom was on Jessup’s back – specifically senior figures in the U.S., Navy. And it was one particularly intriguing office of the Navy that was watching Jessup – a “special weapons” division. Clearly, someone in officialdom was interested in, and perhaps even concerned by, Jessup’s findings and theories.

In the early evening of April 20, 1959, the lifeless body of Morris Jessup was found in his car, which was parked in the Matheson Hammock Park in Miami, Florida. The car’s engine was still running and a hosepipe, affixed to the exhaust, had been fed through the driver’s side window. Jessup was dead from the effects of carbon-monoxide. Jessup’s body was found by a man named John Goode, who worked at the park. Shocked at the sight before him, Goode quickly called the police, who arrived in no time at all. While it certainly looked as if Jessup had killed himself, not everyone was quite so sure that things were as clear cut as that. The window through which the hose was stuffed with a couple of towels, to prevent air from getting in and carbon-monoxide from getting out. Curiously, Mrs. Jessup - Rubeye – confirmed that the towels were not theirs.

Why, if Jessup took his own life, did he not take towels from the family home? What would have been the point of buying new towels? And, if he did buy such towels, where was the receipt from the store they were purchased from? It certainly wasn’t in the car, or in any of Jessup’s pockets. Equally suspicious is the fact that on the very night before his death, Jessup was in a very upbeat, fired-up mood: he spent more than an hour chatting on the phone with a good friend, Dr. Manson Valentine, expressing his enthusiasm for his latest work and plans for further investigations. Jessup even told Valentine that they should have lunch together the next day, as Jessup had something incredible to reveal. Valentine never got to see what it was that Jessup had uncovered – and he never saw Jessup again, either. Suicide or murder? The jury still can’t make its mind up, decades later.

May 22, 1949 was the date on which the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, died. Specifically at 1:50 a.m. As will quickly become apparent, the circumstances surrounding Forrestal’s final hours are swamped in controversy. All that we know with absolute certainty is that in the early hours of the 22nd, Forrestal’s body was found on a third-floor canopy of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland. Did he take a fatal leap out of the window of the 13th floor of the hospital, his mind in turmoil and suicide on his mind? Was it an accident? Or, was Forrestal assassinated? For years, there have been rumors to the effect that Forrestal lost his life to an assassin - and because of what he knew of UFOs. And what he might have been on the verge of revealing what he knew. Ufology: sometimes it just might be deadly. Consider that when you do your next investigation into the subject of aliens and UFOs.

Zo werden er ook nadat zijn hart gestopt was nog hersengolven gemeten en zou het zomaar kunnen dat stervende mensen de hoogtepunten uit hun leven echt aan zich voorbij zien schieten.

Wanneer neurochirurg Ajmal Zemmar de elektroden op het hoofd van zijn 87-jarige patiënt met epilepsie laat plaatsen, kan hij onmogelijk weten dat deze patiënt postuum een hoofdrol zal gaan spelen in zijn volgende onderzoeksartikel dat zal handelen over de hersenactiviteit in een stervend brein. De hoogbejaarde epilepsiepatiënt in kwestie is na een val in het ziekenhuis opgenomen en Zemmar en zijn team stellen alles in het werk om hem te helpen. Met behulp van de elektroden wordt zijn hersenactiviteit continu gemeten en kunnen epileptische aanvallen gedetecteerd en behandeld worden. Maar ondanks de goede zorgen van de artsen gaat de man zienderogen achteruit om vervolgens – toch nog onverwacht en met de elektroden nog op de schedel – aan een hartaanval te overlijden.

Uniek
Het is een tragische gebeurtenis, onder unieke omstandigheden. Want terwijl deze man sterft, wordt zijn hersenactiviteit continu gemeten. En daarmee stelt de onverwachte tragedie de artsen in staat om te bestuderen wat er in een stervend brein gebeurt. Hun bevindingen zijn deze week in het blad Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience verschenen en in meerdere opzichten opmerkelijk.

Het onderzoek
In de studie focussen de artsen en onderzoekers zich op de hersenactiviteit die in de laatste 30 seconden voor het stilvallen van het hart en de 30 seconden daarna is gemeten. “Net voor het hart stopte met werken zagen we veranderingen optreden in hersengolven met een specifieke frequentie, de zogenoemde gammagolven,” zo legt hoofdauteur Zemmar aan Scientias.nl uit. “Dit zijn hersengolven met een hoge frequentie die in het dagelijks leven in verband worden gebracht met de hogere cognitieve functies, zoals het ophalen van herinneringen, mediteren en concentreren. Wanneer we met dat soort dingen bezig zijn, zien we de gammagolven toenemen.” En opmerkelijk genoeg zagen de onderzoekers een vergelijkbare toename in gammagolven kort voor het hart van de 87-jarige patiënt stopte met kloppen. “En niet alleen van gammagolven,” benadrukt Zemmar. “Ook van hersengolven met een andere frequentie, zoals delta-, theta-, alpha- en betagolven. Maar de toename van gammagolven sprong wel het meest in het oog.”

Hoewel enige terughoudendheid in de interpretatie van de veranderingen in hersenactiviteit op zijn plaats is, durven Zemmar en collega’s wel enigszins te speculeren over waar het brein zo kort voor het intreden van de dood mee bezig was. “Wat we zien, is dat de gammagolven kort voor- en nadat het hart gestopt is, hetzelfde patroon volgen als in gezonde mensen die herinneringen ophalen of dromen. En hoewel we niet met zekerheid kunnen zeggen wat het brein van de stervende patiënt aan het doen was, lijkt het – als we alle data naast elkaar leggen – zeker niet ondenkbaar dat de hersenen de belangrijke en fijne herinneringen nog eens afspeelden en de patiënt zijn leven dus aan zich voorbij zag schieten.”

Toename hersenactiviteit na de dood
Wat minstens zo interessant is, is dat de elektroden ook nadat het hart van de patiënt stil was gevallen nog hersengolven detecteerden. “Dat is heel verrassend,” stelt Zemmar. “Want je zou denken dat wanneer het hart stopt met het rondpompen van bloed, ook het brein dood is. Het feit dat er na het stilvallen van het hart nog hersengolven werden gedetecteerd, suggereert voorzichtig dat de hersenactiviteit nadat het hart stopt met kloppen mogelijk nog doorgaat,” aldus Zemmar. Maar het is nog veel te vroeg om op basis van deze observaties conclusies te trekken over waar het brein na het stilvallen van het hart nog toe in staat is. “De data zijn slechts afkomstig van één casus en het is op dit moment niet mogelijk om met zekerheid te zeggen dat de waargenomen hersenactiviteit ook echt bewijst dat het brein nog functioneel actief is, in die zin dat de patiënt nog steeds droomt of flashbacks heeft,” onderstreept Zemmar.

Eén casus
Hoewel de observaties bijzonder fascinerend zijn, wil Zemmar graag benadrukken dat de interpretaties ervan vooralsnog echt speculatief zijn. “Daarbij is het belangrijk om nogmaals te vermelden dat het allemaal gebaseerd is op slechts één casus: het brein van één patiënt. En die patiënt had hersenbeschadigingen: bloedingen en zwelling. Die kunnen de hersenactiviteit beïnvloed hebben en dat maakt het interpreteren ervan misschien nog wel lastiger.”

Eerdere dierproeven
Met deze ene, bijzondere casus zijn de data als het om de activiteit in stervende menselijke hersenen gaat, dus dun gezaaid. Maar dat er rond het sterven weleens iets bijzonders kan gebeuren in het brein, is eerder ook al gesuggereerd op basis van dierproeven. “In 2013 is er in de VS een experiment uitgevoerd waarbij wetenschappers ervoor zorgden dat gezonde ratten – terwijl de hersenactiviteit van de dieren gemonitord werd – een hartaanval kregen en overleden,” vertelt Zemmar. En opvallend genoeg zagen de wetenschappers in de hersenen van die ratten kort voor het stoppen van het hart dezelfde veranderingen in gammagolven optreden als nu in het brein van de 87-jarige man zijn waargenomen. “Dat is toch wel verrassend,” vindt Zemmar. “Want ratten en mensen staan evolutionair gezien nogal ver van elkaar vandaan.” Het interpreteren van deze opmerkelijke overeenkomst tussen stervende ratten en mensen is opnieuw lastig. “Maar misschien hebben we hier wel te maken met een oude, biologische respons die door de evolutie van soorten heen geconserveerd is.” In dat scenario zou je denken dat de hersenactiviteit op het moment van sterven een belangrijke functie heeft. Maar ook daar kunnen we enkel naar gissen. “Misschien is de biologische respons er wel op gericht om ons – middels het ophalen van fijne herinneringen – te kalmeren voor we sterven,” speculeert Zemmar. “En misschien is het wel gewoon een mechanisme dat in gang wordt gebracht als we gaan sterven en waarvan we de consequenties op dit moment niet begrijpen.”

Vervolgonderzoek
Voor nu lijkt de ene casus meer vragen op te roepen dan te beantwoorden. Toch voelden Zemmar en collega’s sterk de behoefte om hun observaties met de wereld te delen. “Allereerst omdat de observaties vragen oproepen die niet alleen interessant zijn vanuit wetenschappelijk oogpunt, maar ook van belang zijn voor de samenleving,” vertelt Zemmar. Hij denkt dan bijvoorbeeld aan de observatie dat de hersenactiviteit enige tijd nadat het hart al is gestopt met kloppen, nog doorgang vindt. “Dat zet je als arts aan het denken: want wat is nu het moment waarop je iemand dood kunt verklaren en bijvoorbeeld orgaandonatie in gang kunt zetten?” Daarnaast hoopt Zemmar dat de publicatie ertoe leidt dat meer van deze (toevallig verzamelde) EEG-scans komen bovendrijven. “Wij presenteren de allereerste observaties van een stervend mensenbrein. Pas als we meer van dit soort observaties hebben, kunnen we bepalen of wat wij hebben zien gebeuren een universeel fenomeen is.”

Dat ook die laatste momenten van het leven het verdienen om nader onderzocht te worden, staat voor Zemmar vast. Dergelijke studies kunnen namelijk belangrijke implicaties hebben voor de omgang met en zorg voor stervende mensen én hun geliefden. “Als neurochirurg heb ik regelmatig met overlijdens te maken. En ik weet hoe moeilijk het is voor familieleden om te zien dat hun familielid, waarmee ze soms niet meer kunnen communiceren, stervende is. Als dokter sta je er dan bij en wens je vurig dat je meer zou kunnen doen. Wat zou het fijn zijn als we de familieleden op zo’n moment meer inzicht kunnen geven in wat er in het brein van hun geliefde gebeurt en hen – op basis van nader wetenschappelijk onderzoek – kunnen vertellen dat hun geliefde op dat moment kalm is, omdat zijn of haar brein de mooiste herinneringen die hij of zij bij leven heeft opgedaan nog eens afspeelt.”

Zo werden er ook nadat zijn hart gestopt was nog hersengolven gemeten en zou het zomaar kunnen dat stervende mensen de hoogtepunten uit hun leven echt aan zich voorbij zien schieten.