The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
05-01-2014
I Assume "They" Were Not Policing Its Delicious Cargo
I Assume "They" Were Not Policing Its Delicious Cargo
The events of Japan Airlines flight 1628 are immortalized as one of the most compelling UFO close-encounter cases of all time.
There are several contributing factors that validate the latter, including, but not limited to: the fact that the report was made by Captain Kenju Teraushi, a former Japanese fighter-pilot with over twenty-nine years of flight experience (at the time of the event), as well as his copilot and flight engineer; the dialogue between the crew and the FAA flight control tower was recorded for the entire duration of the event; the latter dialogue confirmed that military radar picked up additional traffic (aka the presence of another aircraft) in the immediate vicinity of JAL flight 1628; and even the alleged intervention by the CIA whom confiscated the aforementioned radar evidence.
So what happened?
(Note: Part of what makes this encounter so significant is the vast amount of detail, testimony, data, etc. associated with it. Because there is such a wealth of information, I will only summarize the important parts of the encounter from two sources: a fantastically detailed case report by UFOevidence.org which I highly recommend reading for a full understanding of the details in this encounter [including the dialogue between JAL 1628 and the Traffic Control Tower], as well as a personal interview with John Callahan which can be found at the end of the article).
On November 17th, after a stop in Iceland, Captain Kenju Terauchi and his crew of two others (copilot and were flying over Alaska carrying a cargo of wine. Just after around 5pm, Terauchi first noticed the presence of additional traffic in his vicinity: a group of lights below and to the left of his heading at the time. Terauchi’s first thought was that these lights belonged to special military jets on a mission, which made sense because Alaska, being so close to Russia, was patrolled by aircraft of the United States Air Force (this thought was further reinforced by the fact that there were two military bases in the area: Eielson and Elmendorf). Terauchi ignored the additional aircraft as such and proceeded to the specified air route (called Talkeetna) as per the request of the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center (AARTCC). However, he wouldn’t be ignoring these lights much longer because a couple minutes after making the course change, Terauchi realized that those lights had not changed course; they were flying along with JAL1628.
As Captain Terauchi and his crew progressed, the lights remained to the bottom left of their airplane until something suddenly appeared directly in front of JAL1628′s cockpit. “Traffic in front of us” was Terauchi’s response, according to the recorded communications between the cockpit and AARTCC. According to Terauchi’s description (taken from his post-encounter written testimony): “It was about seven or so minutes since we began paying attention to the lights (when), most unexpectedly, two spaceships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face.” Terauchi goes on to speculate about a variety of the “spaceships” characteristics including the crafts’ use of “jets” to maneuver/maintain balance and the ability of one or both of those ships to not only fly level with, but also maintain the speed of Terauchi’s jumbo jet (despite having just made such a radical, high-speed maneuver from the left of the jumbo jet to the immediate front of it).
Shortly thereafter, a conversation ensued between Captain Terauchi and the AARTCC regarding the unknown traffic in the immediate vicinity of JAL1628. It began with Terauchi asking the flight controllers whether or not they had any traffic on radar ahead of JAL1628. When the AARTCC replied that they in fact did not have any additional traffic on radar, they proceeded to ask Terauchi to describe what he was seeing. They asked about the altitude of the traffic (which was reported as matching that of JAL1628) and whether it was military or civilian (Terauchi was unsure, but reported seeing white and yellow navigation lights and strobe lights).
Following this conversation, the two aircraft remained with JAL1628 and changed formation from one on top of the other, to one in front of the other, still at a consistent distance of about a mile. During this time, Terauchi requested that his copilot retrieve his Alpha 7,000 camera with ASA 100 film from behind his seat. After taking out the camera, Terauchi attempted to take pictures of the aircraft but failed. He claimed that the auto-focus did not function correctly and after switching to manual focus, the shutter apparently would not close and, after their plane began to vibrate, Terauchi put the camera away in an effort to concentrate on observing the lights. Around this time the s nearby Elmendorf Regional Operational Control Center (ROCC) to see if they had picked up the alleged additional traffic around JAL 1628.
During the few minutes it took for the ROCC to respond, the lights directly in front of JAL 1628 darted away from the jet toward a “flat pale white light”, which Terauchi would later claim to be part of a much larger mother-ship (featured in the above illustration); the lights previously in front of his plane were alleged to be returning to this mother-ship. Minutes later the ROCC would report that they were not picking up any additional traffic either. Despite the latter, Terauchi decided that he would estimate the distance the lights had moved away from the plane, input that relative area into the plane’s weather radar, and check to see if the objects showed up. Sure enough, right there on the plane’s radar was a large, round object (or an elongated, “stream-like” dot according to the flight engineer). Either way, the radar target was green meaning it was a weaker target, whereas a red target is almost always another aircraft (again, visit the UFOevidence.org article to see additional information on the radar data including the primary and transponder returns).
The AARTCC had radioed JAL 1628 to see if the crew still had visual contact of the unidentified traffic. Not only did they have visual contact, but they had radar contact as well. The AARTCC then indicated that they had picked up a signature trailing about five miles behind the plane. The crew corrected that the traffic was at 11 o’clock, around eight miles away and at the same level as the plane. After a solid amount of dialogue between the AARTCC and the ROCC, the latter identified a signal on the ground radar that was at the 10 o’clock direction of JAL 1628, at the same altitude about seven to eight miles away. In other words, the ROCC had confirmed that there was in fact additional traffic exactly where Terauchi said it was.
After this confirmation, there was communication between the AARTCC and the ROCC about the unknown target on radar, including how the target was unknown to the AARTCC and how Terauchi could empirically describe the aircraft but could otherwise not identify it as any known aircraft. During this dialogue, the ROCC lost the unknown target on radar. Apparently the explanation for this is that the unknown craft changed it’s position after being identified from radar; it shifted from being in front and slightly above JAL 1628, to the left and below (all the while maintaining a distance of seven to eight miles from JAL 1628).
The sky was getting darker and Terauchi began losing visibility of the objects (plural because despite the singular target on radar, “two small spaceships” were accompanying the larger target, or “mothership” as Terauchi referred to it, for the duration of the encounter) because they were on the darker side of the sky, while Terauchi was on the lighter side (again refer to the UFOevidence link above for more detail). Visibility of the objects remained low until two bright lights suddenly appeared to the north which Terauchi estimated to be “four to five mountains away” above the Alaska pipeline.
At this time JAL 1628 was about thirty miles outside of Eielson air force base and with the bright city lights illuminating the sky, Terauchi looked back The crew requested permission for an immediate, forty-five degree course change. The course change was granted, they executed it, and the ship was alleged to still be following them.
Terauchi then requested a descent to which he was again granted permission. All the while, the gigantic space ship was maintaining its position and this prompted the crew to request a direct flight path to Talkeetna, which was also granted. Still, the ship stayed steadily behind them. Eventually, the AARTCC routed a United Airlines passenger plane to JAL 1628′s position to verify what was happening. In the time it took the United plane to get there, however, the gigantic space ship had fallen back, allowing JAL 1628 to move significantly ahead. When the two planes were about twelve miles apart, the spaceship had allegedly disappeared and aside from a number of primary hits on their radar, the United plane saw nothing except for JAL 1628. Terauchi and his crew then continued on to their destination and so ended the encounter.
Terauchi made the news with his narrative and an FAA investigation by John Callahan and others was underway. The investigation was interrupted by a third party, however, and the evidence was allegedly confiscated. All of this and more of the entire case is very well explained in the following personal interview with John Callahan:
After reading (and watching) all of the above, hopefully it is apparent why this encounter over Alaska was one of the most significant UFO cases in history.
John Callahan presented the above witness testimony at the Citizen’s Hearing, the most recent attempt at coaxing disclosure. Unfortunately, Callahan’s time was limited and he didn’t have a whole lot of time to explain everything, but it was still one of the most compelling cases to be presented. As such I think this case deserves more attention because the current accepted explanation that Terauchi’s story could not be verified is a poor one. There is just too much detail and information to this case for it to remain unexplained.
Long time viewers of channel 5 know name Steve Sprasia, he was a reporter for Newscenter 5 for 16 years until me moved to North Carolina. Before that he was a local radio reporter, that's when he became part of the story of the Bridgewater Triangle. The spring of 1979 proved to be the most active period of documented UFO sightings in the history of the Bridgewater Triangle region. A number of news outlets and law enforcement agencies were flooded with reports of large, low flying UFOs. During that time, former WHDH reporters Jerry Lopes and Steve Sprasia claim to have witnessed what is arguably the most famous UFO sighting to occur within the Bridgewater Triangle.
“Jerry and I worked at WHDL Radio and we were heading to the Raynhamdog track and we got onto 106, I noticed a really bright light over the tree line, and the light was coming closer and closer and getting bigger and bigger, and I remember saying to Jerry, what is that over there? So we pulled his vehicle over and all a sudden the stars blotted out in the shape of an arrow as this thing passed overhead. Ironically, being a baseball fan, it looked like a baseball home plate and there were a series of lights on it. It was very, very wide, perhaps the width of now we'd say five, 747's wing to wing. It looked like it had a cord or something hanging off of it and sparks were coming off of it. I almost felt like I could throw a rock at the thing, it seemed that close to me. This was pretty much the shape of and it this thing passed overhead, like this.
For me, what first attracted me was this—this light that kind of came into our field of vision, just like that, and as this thing passed overhead it just kept coming and coming and coming, and the light kept getting bigger and bigger. I’m an air force veteran, I’ve been in the air force for four and a half years, I’ve been around a number of different planes, and I said to Steve, that's not one much ours, and it just hovered there for a minute, looked like it was over a field, next thing you know it just took off. We continued off to the dog track and most of the conversation that evening was, what did we see?
Up to that point, I had been 100% skeptic, I thought anybody who ever saw these things, they were either crazy or publicity hounds, or there was just something wrong with them in their head altogether. What I didn't realize at the time was that a lot more people had seen it than just Jerry and I. Interestingly over the course of the next week, there were a series of spottings, different sightings. It was reported in the papers, on the radio station, and at that point Steve and I decided to come forward and say, you know, hey, we actually saw something. A couple days later, an article appears in the Brockton enterprise, and not only does it have interviews with Jerry and I, but quite a number of other folks in and around the Randolph area who had seen it, but they had the staff artists take all of our recollections and put together a drawing, an artists rendition, which looked pretty much like this.” . . .
Terrified airline pilot DUCKS as he sees UFO heading straight to cockpit
T Terrified airline pilot ducked to avoid a UFO he feared was going to smash into his plane at 34,000ft.
The captain of the packed Airbus A320 spotted the silver object heading straight for the cockpit as his plane flew above Berkshire.
He was looking out of the left window a split second before the bizarre incident.
A safety report said: “As he turned to look ahead, he perceived an object travelling towards them at what appeared to be the same level, slightly above the flight deck windscreen.
“Having very little time to focus, he was under the apprehension that they were on a collision course with no time to react.
“His immediate reaction was to duck to the right and reach over to alert the first officer; there was no time to talk to alert him.”
The stunned captain blurted out: “Did you see that?”
But his bemused deputy had not seen the UFO and replied: “See what?”
The pilot’s behaviour made him fear there was a fault with their plane.
“The first officer turned and looked at him thinking some was wrong with the aircraft,” the report revealed.
He told experts he saw a flying object shaped like a cigar or rugby ball, .happened 20 miles west of Heathrow Airport, according to a report published last week.
The pilot was subjected to a powerful impression of immediate danger caused by his perception of an object closing rapidly on his ”
But investigators, who did not reveal which airline was involved, failed to find any unidentified aircraft in the area at the time.
They added: “It wasn’t possible to trace the object or determine the likely cause of the sighting.”
The Bentwaters UFO Incident: Captain Lori Rehfeldt Describes Astounding UFO Activity| VIDEO
By csetiweb YouTube 12-9-13
Captain Lori Rehfeldt was stationed at the 81st Security Police Squadron at RAF Bentwaters in England during the UFO events that occurred in December 1980. She and a colleague were Sea. They also saw it silently explode, split into three parts, and speed across the runway; then it went straight up and disappeared. . . .
Will Obama's new advisor persuade him to release UFO files?
Podesta, 64, was a White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton and has been Obama's outside advisor since the 2008 presidential election. He also advised former Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton during her last year in office.
Podesta is the founder and chair of the Center for Equitable Growth Center think-tank created this fall and chair of the Center for American Progress he founded a decade ago.
He will now formally join the White House inner circle for a year as Obama struggles to salvage his unexpectedly difficult second term. Apart from climate change and executive issues, Podesta will also handle Obama's troubled healthcare program.
There is one further fact you might not know about him. Podesta repeatedly urged the US government to declassify at least some 25 year old UFO files which could give scientists a clue as to the real nature of a few unexplained airborne signtings. In 2010, he wrote a foreword to Leslie Kean's "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record".
"I'm skeptical about many things, including the notion that government always knows best, and that the people can't be trusted with the truth. The time to pull the curtain back on this subject is long overdue. Presenting the facts, the book includes statements from only the most credible sources, those in a position to know, about a fascinating phenomenon, the nature of which is yet to be determined," Podesta wrote.
Obama, whose approval rating fell 5% in October to below 50%, may well onsider releasing UFO files as a nice way to prop up his sagging popularity.
Are Multiple Dimensions or Multiiverses Real? TED Talk
Is the Possibility of a Multiverse Real? Brian Greene gives an incredible talk about multiverses and multidimension and how we may be living in a time unlike any other in the universe. This may go a long way to explain the UFO phenomena. Is there more than one universe? In this visually rich, action-packed talk, Brian Greene shows how the unanswered questions of physics (starting with a big one: What caused the Big Bang?) have led to the theory that our own universe is just one of many in the "multiverse." Brian Greene is perhaps the best-known proponent of superstring theory, the idea that minuscule strands of energy vibrating in a higher dimensional space-time create every particle and force in the universe. Multiuniverse, Multiple Dimensions, Universe
"What's Really Going On at Area 51?" asks President Obama | VIDEO
Editor's Note–During the Kennedy Center Honors over the weekend, hosted by president Obama at the White House, one of the honorees happened to be no other then Shirley MacClaine (others included, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana and Billy Joel); the Pres took the opportunity to poke some fun in saying:
"Now, when you first become president, one of the questions that people ask you is: 'What's really going on in Area 51? ' When I wanted to know, I'd call Shirley MacLaine," he said to laughter. "I think I just became the first President to ever publicly mention Area 51. How's that, Shirley?"–FW
About the Book:The New York Times best-selling author of Physics of the Impossible, Physics of the Future and Hyperspace tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain. For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist. The Future of the Mind gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics. One day we might have a "smart pill" that can enhance our cognition; be able to upload our brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; net"; control computers and robots with our mind; push the very limits of immortality; and perhaps even send our consciousness across the universe.
Dr. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. He even presents a radically new way to think about "consciousness" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness.
With Dr. Kaku's deep understanding of modern science and keen eye for future developments, The Future of the Mind is a scientific tour de force--an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience.
Tremonton UFOs: "They Were Large, Disc-Shaped Things That Were Brightly Lighted"
Delbert Newhouse and the Utah Movie
By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 12-7-13
There are two things that have happened recently that impact this blog. First is a statement, again, by someone who should actually know better, that there is no evidence that UFOs are alien craft. He asks, demands really, just one example of a solid case for the UFO. Ignoring the fact that the debunkers have worked wonders in marginalizing UFO reports by throwing all sorts of ridiculous explanations for the sightings out there, some of which are contradictory, there are some very good cases that have multiple chains of evidence and some very good research attached to them. Any t fit the facts will do, just so long as they can claim the sighting is explained in the mundane.
The second point is that, for some reason, there has been an on-going dialogue into the July 1952 UFO sighing near Tremonton, Utah. This is the tale of a Navy warrant officer who filmed a formation of bright objects over the tiny Utah town. The film was studied for months by a number of different organizations but in January 1953, the objects were identified as birds by the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel. (For a lengthy analysis of the motivations of the Robertson Panel see Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-Ups, 155 - 174)
Is the thing about this movie. Almost everyone talks about what is shown on the film but few mention what the witnesses observed. In 1976, when I interviewed Delbert Newhouse, the Navy photographer, he told me that he and his wife, Norma, saw the objects at close range. He said they were large, disc-shaped things that were brightly lighted. By the time he got the car stopped, dug his camera out of the trunk and put film into it, the objects had moved off so that they looked like bright blobs of white on a bright blue background. It was then that he began filming the formation or cluster or mass, which was now much farther away.
Sure, you could say that in 1976 he had heard more than twenty years of comments about the film, had been interviewed repeatedly and his story certainly could have changed. Ed Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book when the film was shot in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects wrote:
After I got out of the Air Force I met Newhouse and talked to him for two hours [in 1954, I believe]. I’ve talked to many people who have reported UFOs, but few impressed me as much as Newhouse. I learned that when he and his family first saw the UFOs they were close to the car, much closer than when he took the movie. To use Newhouse’s own words, “If they had been the size of a B-29 they would have been at 10,000 feet altitude.” And the Navy man and his family had taken a good look at the objects – they looked like “two pie pans, one inverted on the top of the other!” He didn’t just think the UFO’s were disk-shaped; he knew that they were; he had plainly seen them. I asked him why he hadn’t told this to the intelligence officer who interrogated him. He said that he had. Then I remember that I’d sent the intelligence officer a list of questions I wanted Newhouse to answer. The question “What did the UFO’s look like?” wasn’t one of them because when you have a picture of something you don’t normally ask what it looks like. Why the intelligence officer didn’t pass this information along to us I’ll never know.
So, it’s clear from the beginning that Newhouse was telling those interested that he had seen the objects up close. He said, from the beginning, that the objects were disc shaped. I don’t think anyone, in those early days, thought to get statements from the wife and the kids. They had the “important” information from a naval officer and were satisfied with that. And even with that, the Air Force didn’t bother to complete the investigation, failing to ask basic questions or seemingly failed to ask them, and according to Ruppelt, didn’t bother to pass along some of the answers.
In the months that followed, the Air Force analyzed the film and when they finished, they had no solution. Ruppelt wrote about that, saying, “All they had to say was ‘We don’t know what they are but they aren’t airplanes or balloons, and we don’t think they are birds.’”
When the Air Force finished, the Navy took over, and they weren’t as restricted in their praise as the Air Force. The Navy experts made a frame by frame examination that took over a thousand man hours. The Navy concluded that the objects were internally lights spheres that were not reflecting sunlight. They also estimated the speed of the objects at 3,780 miles an hour which ruled out aircraft of the time and birds of any time. They had no explanation for what was seen on the film. But, as I say, never let an independent analysis stand when you can throw cold water on it. Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who never met a UFO sighting he liked and who wasn’t above providing explanations as quickly as he could regardless of the facts, claimed that it had been proven the film showed birds. Such was not the case, except to those with closed minds but Menzel made the claim anyway.
Dr. R. M. L. Baker made an independent study of the film in 1955. He agreed with the Air Force that the film didn’t show aircraft or balloons, and he didn’t think it was some sort of airborne debris or radar chaff either. In disagreement with Menzel, he found the bird explanation “unsatisfactory.”
Given what we know about the University of Colorado UFO study led by Edward U. Condon we could guess what they would conclude about this film. I won’t mention what we now know about the reasons for the study or the directions Condon and his team had been given by the Air Force (see the Hippler Letter March 21, 2007; June 5, 2013) but that certainly influenced their conclusions.
William Hartmann conducted the analysis for the Condon committee. He provided a quick history of the investigations and did mention that during Baker’s investigation Newhouse provided “…substantially the same account, with the additional information: ‘When he got out [of the car], he observed the objects (twelve to fourteen of them) to be directly overhead and milling about. He described them as ‘gun metal colored objects, shaped like two saucers, one inverted of top of the other.’…” (Which sort of reinforces the idea that Newhouse had not radically altered his tale over time.)
Hartmann then made his own analysis, finally concluding, “These observations give strong evidence that the Tremonton films do show birds… and I now regard the objects as so identified.”
But this comes only after Hartmann rejected the statements by Newhouse seeing the objects at close range. He wrote, “The strongest negative argument was stated later by the witness that the objects were seen to subtend an angle of about 0.5 degrees and were then seen as gun metal colored and shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim, but the photographs and circumstances indicate that this observation could not have been meaningful.”
Or, in other words, the statements of Newhouse were unimportant and I suspect the reason being that if they were accepted, then the bird explanation was eliminated. Birds are not shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim.
To add to all this, Baker, in 1969, at a symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that while Hartmann’s analysis might be appealing “[The] motion [of the objects] is not what one would expect from a flock of soaring birds; there are erratic brightness fluctuations, but there is no indication of periodic decreases in brightness due to turning with the wind or flapping. No cumulus clouds are shown on the film that might betray the presence of thermal updraft… The motion pictures I have taken of birds at various distances have no similarity to the Utah film.”
Here’s where we are. This is a case of multiple chains of evidence. First is the eyewitness testimony that has been virtually ignored. It is clear from what Ruppelt and others say that some parts of the Project Blue Book file on the case have disappeared. But that doesn’t change the fact that Newhouse and his wife saw the UFOs and what they had to say about it is an important part of the report. Hartmann rejected it almost out of hand.
The second chain of evidence, which is independent of the first, is the film. It provides something that can be taken into the lab and analyzed in various ways. It seems to me that those without a bias (or in the case of the Air Force who leaned toward finding any explanation which now suggests they were arguing against their own interest) couldn’t positively identify the objects. Those who know that there is no alien visitation however, found what they believed to be the solution. The film showed birds.
Here’s the point, finally. Those who know that there is no alien visitation claim that there is no evidence to the contrary. I say the Tremonton, Utah film is evidence of something unusual flying through the atmosphere and if evaluated from a neutral position is not explained by birds. I will freely concede that eliminating the accepted explanation does not lead directly to the extraterrestrial; I will also note that we do have some evidence of an unusual event. I will further note that if Newhouse’s description is accurate then there is no terrestrial explanation for the sighting. Give it an unbiased reading, look at everything through a neutral prism, and you have something that suggests there could be alien visitation. It is, therefore, some of the evidence that many claim does not exist.
The Oz Factor Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 7
The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 7
Legacy From The Stars By Dolores Cannon. (1996) Ozark Mountain Publishers.
Book Review by Morley Legg
Dolores Cannon suggests in the opening chapter that we largely fear aliens because they are an 'unknown' and we fear what we don't understand. She states that we are all aliens because none of us originated on earth, and that because of reincarnation we have lived on other planets, other dimensions. She has learned much of this from her subjects and this has led to a philosophy which is scattered through her ten books. Such material does not draw the average scientific mind to make any inquiries. A pity indeed when she argues her case well.
Dolores Cannon seems to have fined-tuned her hypnosis technique to activate subjects to tune into scenarios which are taken to be past or future lives. Some scenes may seem a bit like Star Trek, a bit too bland and easy flowing to be true. She admits to some editing of taped sessions. Although Dolores constantly interrupts with questions to clarify and draw out details, we feel she makes honest attempts to make sense of it all. Initially I had misgivings about reviewing it, but her three volumes on Nostradamus (reviewed in the Journal of Alternative Realities, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1997) was impressive enough to justify a closer look at this one. She claims to have been practising hypnotic regressions for twenty years. In the mid-1990s she was invited to speak at a Conscious Living Expo where she gave demonstrations. Two people whose judgement I respected listened to her and have remained open in their praise of her maturity and rationality.
In the United States in 1987 she was asked to investigate UFO cases with her methods. This book opens up the subject of alien involvement in human life when none was originally expected. Around a dozen cases are presented where people are regressed and tell of their experiences as they live in other worlds, sometimes as beings quite alien to humans.
This can be bewildering, enraging or comforting, depending on the rigidity of your points of view. The overall picture she offers is that we appear to have a soul, a core of energy that can become conscious, that carries on after death and sometimes gets caught in karmic cycles. The experiences of these people suggest that earth is not our only home and that we have lived countless lives in unusual environments and times. She claims that past life therapy can dissolve problems that have carried over from past lives, that sometimes a repetitive pattern has been set up through a series of lives. Her gift for inducing hypnosis often has the client quickly voicing surprise at new perceptions and animatedly telling of scenes and happenings. Many people experiencing them came to feel they provided a therapeutic release.
Case 2) Terry, a Roman Catholic is regressed to find himself as an old man in the desert about the time of the birth of Christ. He describes angelic beings who answer questions concerning 'watchers' who descend from the skies.
Case 5) Chris felt linked to Nostradamus after reading Dolores Cannon's books on the prophet and expected to make contact with him, but in his first regression he went straight into a life on a scorched planet that had two suns. He battled with alternating waves of energy that induced spells of trembling. His companions were greys. He gave descriptions of passing through a doorway as if passing from one dimension to another.
Case 6) Steve, described as a "control orientated personality", breaks through to the realisation that he is a space craft, his intelligence is bonded to it to do reconnaissance work in a war. In a following regression he provided much detail of his life as a saxophone player in the twenties. In another he is on a small moon that has pyramids, and describes himself as a monkey-like being encased in a membrane.
Case 7) Mona, in her thirties, begins by being shocked by a spinning sensation. She also feels she is the mind-power grafted into the controls of a spaceship
Case 9) Fred, a student with severe stomach disorders revisited his existence as a membrane in the early formation of earth, where he filtered and cleaned earth's atmosphere into air.
Case 10) Jack was regressed by a novice hypnotist who ran into difficulties and who then called Dolores to take over. Jack was regressed to the life of a creature who could transfer his consciousness to animals and birds. In another regression he gave details about other creatures on a spaceship where he was a creature with pointed ears.
Case 12) Pam explores the idea of occupants in UFOs being time travellers from our future and opens up the possibility of us having some access to the past and the future. Pam found herself in an elaborate underground tunnel that, with the aid of a crystal pyramid, stored knowledge and acted as a materialisation chamber for beings visiting earth.
To the scientifically orientated these books must seem like regression into fantasies and superstition. However, the spontaneous quality of the perceptions are remarkable. They do support some of the recent theories of alien intervention. The people taking part seem mentally healthy and hold responsible places in society. Of course a sceptic would say, "Surely she must lead them into these fantasies." However, at times she shows how, when she deliberately tries to lead a subject into a rational explanation, each subject resists and insists their version is correct. Dolores Cannon seems to have the intuition to ask non-leading questions that draw out this steady flow of ideas and information that can be either true or symbolic of much that is worthy of further study. Particularly interesting are the accounts of entities bonded into the controls of space craft – reported here from regressions made many years before Colonel Phillip Corso's claims of this in his 1997 book The Day After Roswell. Before closing a session she often brings the person out of their past life and, while they are still hypnotised, back to the present day. She then asks if there is any message in that other life that can help them overcome difficulties in their current one. This is where we realise what a good psychologist she is. She encourages listening to what the subconscious suggests because, she claims, no therapy can be accomplished without it. The subconscious has no sense of time and doesn't realise it is now inhabiting a different body, and once it agrees to work with the therapist, amazing changes can occur in the subject's life that would be impossible through psychoanalysis and therapy alone.
She believes more attempts should be made to study history through the lens of past life therapy in order to recover "lost knowledge". This is a book that attunes us to the possibility of new ways to gain behind-the-scenes-glimpses into the way the universe works.
Underground Bases & Tunnels - What is the Government Trying To Hide? By Richard Sauder. (1995) Illinois, USA, Adventures Unlimited Press. Book review by Simon Harvey-Wilson
Dr Richard Sauder does not claim to be a UFO researcher, but he has certainly done ufology a service by publishing this book. The UFO literature contains numerous rumours of secret underground bases that are run by aliens and/or the US government. Using the document search skills that he probably developed in doing his political science doctorate, Sauder has attempted to sort fact from fiction in this field by hunting down all sorts of government, military or industry references to tunnel digging and underground facilities. To do this he has ferreted through mining company documents, industry conference proceedings, patent applications, as well as scientific, government and military feasibility studies. What he has discovered is a wealth of documentation which strongly suggest that the United States military-industrial complex has for many years had the capacity to create enormously deep, complex, and well equipped underground facilities for almost any purpose.
Not all underground bases are military ones. For example the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is reported to cooperate with the Pentagon in administering about fifty secret underground posts which are "equipped to function as an emergency White House" (p.43). Most of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the leading aerospace companies have their own underground facilities (pp.63 & 68). There are also several Federal Relocation Centres within a 450km radius of Washington as part of the nuclear war Continuity Of Government (GOG) plan (p.51).
Although Sauder repeatedly states that he cannot prove how many of these facilities actually exist, the implication that at least some of them do is obvious. The advantages of deep underground bases are that they may be nuclear and sabotage proof, highly secure, and, because they are effectively invisible – especially to satellite surveillance – your enemies and/or the public are unaware of their size, probable cost, and location. Some critics have objected to claims that such bases exist by saying that it would be impossible to conceal the rubble produced in digging them and anyway, surely all the logistical support and personnel for such bases would be impossible to conceal. Sauder points out that all the necessary technology exists to equip such bases with their own power, water, cooling and possibly access by high speed underground trains.
For example, as long ago as 26th September 1972 a patent was issued to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for a nuclear powered tunnelling machine that was "designed to convert the rock that it excavates into a molten liquid, which fills cracks in the rocks, bonds to the walls of the tunnel, and leaves behind a smooth, vitreous lining" (illustration 39). The patent application lists seven inventors, all from Los Alamos in New Mexico. Sauder also points out that the US Patent Office does not issue patents unless it is reasonably convinced that the invention described does actually work. This does not prove that such devices are in operation, but this sort of documentation certainly makes one think.
Another very interesting illustration contains a map which shows how the US Environmental Protection Agency "tracks the migration of atomic particles from the Nevada Test Site into the animals and humans of the surrounding environment." The map "shows the location of about 40 families who are brought into the EPA twice a year for whole-body analysis. Part of their examination takes place in the reclining chair pictured in the photograph. The machinery which hangs from the ceiling performs a whole-body scan of the subject" (illustration 45).
There is a similarity between this scenario and reports by UFO abductees who likewise describe being given full-body scans for some, as yet, unknown purpose. This and other illustrations suggest that the purpose of some animal mutilations could be to monitor the biological distribution of something that aliens and/or covert sections of the US government are interested in.
Underground Bases and Tunnels has fifty pages of illustrations of interest to serious UFO researchers, showing, among other things, the layouts of various types of underground facilities and TBMs (tunnel boring machines). Back to ASPR/UFORUM Home Page (More Journals and UFO info.)
At the outset I do not hesitate to say that in my opinion, Alien Basehas joined a small group of books that will come to be regarded as pivotal and classic works in shaping our understanding of the phenomenon of alien contact. I believe it will eventually be seen as authoritative and substantial in its field as Good's Beyond Top Secret now is. Timothy Good's greatest contribution in this book is to force the reader to face a substantial body of data that has, in many cases, been routinely ignored and ridiculed by many UFO researchers and groups in recent decades and kept from the public at large.
Good tackles head-on the disturbing direction that main-stream ufology has taken in the last two decades by the almost institutionalised rejection of reports involving contact with humanoid beings to the point where 'alien contact' in ufology and in the public perception equates only to an 'abduction' by a stereotype 'Grey'.
The cases covered in Alien Base are anything but the standard abduction scenario. Good has amassed ufology's largest collection of reports where the witness has encountered – and often interacted with – beings of apparent extraterrestrial origin, sometimes living incognito among us. A handful of intriguing cases also suggest that one or more alien groups have humans living with and working with them. Many of the book's reports are published here for the first time and the cumulative weight of their evidence is impressive. The author does not shy away from the famous 'contactee' cases of the fifties and sixties but succeeds in integrating their stories as part of a larger continuum of alien contact, not apart from it. In the process it quickly becomes clear that such claims are not as rare as many people have assumed. This is not to say that Good accepts that all the contactee claims are genuine – far from it. But he makes a strong case that perhaps in some instances, what began as a genuine encounter was then perpetuated, for any number of reasons, by deception and fraud.
Case in point perhaps – George Adamski. Alien Base, to the inevitable dismay of some readers I'm sure, devotes a long section to Adamski's story. Much of this material will be familiar to any well-read researcher, but some will not be and is therefore worth approaching with an open mind. The original or early aspects of this case are stronger than many are willing to give it credit for and while I personally remain unconvinced, Good gives some good reasons why the case should not be rejected out of hand or tossed into the too-hard basket. Not least of these are the apparently credible stories of other people with impressive parallels to Adamski's claimed experiences.
As well as Daniel Fry and Howard Menger, the book goes into considerable detail about the Paul Villa case and devotes more than half its colour illustrations to some of his photos, making it clear that here are cases that still cry out for solid investigation.
Despite the time that has elapsed, definitive treatments of these cases have yet to be written. Although not without its faults and biases, Kal Korff's devastating exposé of the Billy Meier case (Spaceships of the Pleiades)is a recent example of what an intensive investigation can achieve and what remains to be done with the classic contactees. Some readers may feel more comfortable with other stories that Good examines in detail, such as the little-known Carroll Watts and Bruno Ghibaudi cases with their impressive photographic support or with the fantastic but compelling 'Joelle' and Ludwig Pallmann cases. Alien Base however makes a contribution beyond the mere compiling of reports. By including some of the very early encounters (the 1920 Albert Coe case is the earliest, with a good sampling of cases from the thirties and forties, including my own research of the 1940 Wartena case) the book repudiates for example the continuing simplistic attempts by some to dismiss all genuine UFO sightings as man-made military craft.
The careful reader will note certain recurring themes throughout the encounters reported, regardless of the circumstances, the time period or the witness. Notably, these include the pervasiveness of the basic human form throughout the cosmos, that earth has always had alien monitoring and intervention, that intelligent life on earth was 'seeded' from other worlds, that man destroyed his civilisation thousands of years ago and a variety of environmental concerns. Implicit in all this is the unavoidable conclusion that earth is being visited by many races, far more than the conventional half-dozen or dozen races normally allowed for in the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis). A strong case could be made for at least a score or more based just on the better documented and more believable cases printed in this book. My criticisms of Alien Base are minor. Interspersed throughout the text are a number of conventional UFO reports, perhaps to introduce variety and perhaps sometimes to strengthen the book's premise that our planet is being used as a base by extraterrestrials. While they are usually interesting and substantial sightings that deserve recording, in my opinion they lengthen the text unnecessarily and their omission could have served either to reduce the size of the book or to allow more contact cases to be included. Surely there would have been more value in including for example the Reverend Gill case – a multi-witnessed sighting of humanoids atop a craft – rather than yet another daylight disk report. In particular I would also have liked more space spent on the information communicated in the 1976 Dr Leopoldo Diaz case, a totally credible witness. A chronological listing of all the cases would have been both helpful and interesting and would make comparisons easier and trends more obvious. Those in the UFO community inclined to reject out-of-hand the type of reports found in this book will undoubtedly be less charitable toward this book and may feel that I have been over-generous in my assessment of its value. For the rest of us however, Alien Base is a reminder that whatever our individual assumptions and biases lead us to do with such accounts, these too are an integral part of ufology.
References Good, Timothy (1996) Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. Korff, Karl K. (1995) Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story.
From Atlantis to the Sphinx - Recovering the Lost Wisdom of the Ancient World By Colin Wilson. (1997) Virgin Publishers. Book review by Morley Legg
Colin Wilson's lucid unfolding of the main veins in human history arouses inklings that something vital has been lost and it begs recapturing. We do, however, become aware of patterns in our more recent history. Mankind works hard to consolidate a succession of plateaus of interpreting nature, and each plateau hardens into a belief to which the tribe or group strictly adheres. Belief systems certainly become stabilisers, at least for a time. But then bitter struggles arise as new concepts make a play for dominance.
Over the last three hundred years, for instance, constant battles went on to bring about belief adjustments in religious concepts as scholars, aided by science, were continually having to update theories about our origins, pushing them back to six thousand, ten thousand, and eventually even to three million years. And today the plates of knowledge are shifting again and continue to threaten jarring upheavals, as the more open minded realise and expect.
An article by Colin Wilson in a 1997 English newspaper showed him to be a knowledgeable ufologist. In this book UFOs or aliens don't get a mention. In one respect we can be grateful in that their absence gives us a clean slate to do our own thinking as to where, and whether they may have intervened in our ancient past. He unearths many theories to account for the 'sudden' enlarging of the human brain: "Between half a million years ago and modern times, the human brain expanded by one third, and most of the growth has been in the cerebrum, the top half of the brain, with which we think." Among the theories aired to account for this is that of the meteorite which exploded over the Indian Ocean about 700,000 years ago, reversing the poles. Did this cause the mutation for the brain to expand and intelligence to grow? The development of language, religion, sexual attitudes, and the discovery of 'hunting magic' could also have boosted growth. Wilson reasons that it takes a drastic change or a challenge to get man to use his thinking, otherwise he only copies the notions of his day and remains at that level for a hundred thousand years. He mentions that the shark hasn't changed much in 150 million years.
He stresses that humans today feel quite separate from one another. Telepathy is rare enough to be considered a myth. He is not the only scholar to feel that Cro-Magnon man had group consciousness, an instinctive 'lunar knowledge', quite different from our current 'solar knowledge' which we store in universities and books. Some primitive people still seem to possess this group consciousness, and their shamans may possess links to Cro-Magnon man's hunting magic. There is a disturbing account of a shaman in the Gilbert Islands using sorcery to draw a school of porpoises to beach themselves for slaughter.
Drawing on the works of many respected researchers Wilson nudges us to the idea that Atlantis now lies in Antarctica under the ice. Professor Charles Hapgood (author of Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings) believes the Piri Re'is map (dated 1513), that shows Antarctica as it appeared before it was covered by ice, appears to be a genuine copy of ancient maps. In 1959 he delved into the United States Library of Congress and found many ancient maps, someshowing Antarctica mapped as if free of ice. Hapgood believes a world-wide maritime civilisation existed at this time. Many serious researchers support the idea that this could be the Atlantean civilisation that was devastated by a sudden shifting of the earth's crust, and that many survivors from this catastrophe moved to India, South America and Egypt. Convention now has it, by the way, that Antarctica's warm period began about thirteen thousand years ago and ended six thousand years ago.
This leads to those fascinating estimates and questions arising from recent research on the pyramids. Why did the Egyptians build the Sphinx in 10,500 BC, and the pyramids eight thousand years later – with shafts aimed with gun barrel accuracy at Orion? "[T]he only time the positions of the three pyramids on the ground reflect the positions of the three stars of Orion's belt is 10,500 BC, when Orion is at its closest to the southern horizon in the 'precessional cycle', which takes 25,920 years."
Diverse points of interest are included. When Hapgood retired (and no longer cared much about what his sceptical colleagues thought) he published Voices of Spirit, a book on experiments to search back through history with a trance medium to contact scholarly figures. He believed that the next step in man's evolution will be in the realm of the psychic and paranormal. He tried contacting Nostradamas and others (as Dolores Cannon has recently done) with a view to finding clues as to who we are and what we are doing here. Also, the most fascinating clue as to how the stones of the pyramids were put into place has been left by an eccentric American, Ed Leedskalnin who, an engineer claims, lifted huge blocks of coral on his own to build a dwelling (p.263).
Books like this help us to realise that an interest in ancient history, UFOs and the paranormal, often indicates a feeling that mainstream science and religion have not yet provided us with satisfactory explanations as to our place and purpose on earth. We are left hoping that melting ice, or the current drilling into Antarctica's ice, will one day bring forth revelations.
The essence of Wilson's book is that a former civilisation shared an instinctive-intuitive knowledge that to us would appear quite alien; and that it would require a shock of some kind before we could begin to remember or catch a glimpse of this 'Atlantean sense of reality'.
References Hapgood, Charles H. (1992) Voices of Spirit. Hapgood, Charles H. (1979) Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings.
Alien Dawn -- An Investigation into the Contact Experience By Colin Wilson. (1998) London, Virgin Publishing. Book review by Michael Jordan
A good mate of mine, a psychologist, with whom I've enjoyed a long friendship, recently returned to live and work in Cornwall, not far from the home of well known and highly regarded writer, Colin Wilson. Although we shared a number of common interests, this did not extend to my passion for ufology. By unspoken but mutual consent I resolved not to talk about UFOs and he to refrain from mentioning his love of yacht racing and sailing. By way of closure to my subject, he added, "When Colin Wilson writes about UFOs, I might have to take the subject seriously."
Last year fellow committee member, Morley Legg, sent me a cutting from the pages of a well-known British Sunday newspaper in which large headlines trumpeted, "It's Official – Colin Wilson Says They Are Here". The 'they' of course referred to aliens and was in response to the publication of Wilson's Alien Dawn. For my part I couldn't wait to see how he would assimilate the results of his prolific past research into the paranormal, consciousness, evolution, astronomy and cosmology, to name but a few of his pet subjects, with ufology, the boundaries of which seem limitless and encompass all of these fields and more.
A chance meeting with Harvard psychiatrist and author of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, more or less led to Colin Wilson being thrust on his mission, from a previously sceptical launching pad. A journey of discovery in an attempt to find out more about what Dr Allen Hynek termed, "the greatest mystery of our time."
Typically, Wilson's approach to the writing of Alien Dawn is in the manner his countless readers throughout the world have come to expect. His source material comes not only from a study of literally hundreds of texts and manuscripts that can shed any light on the subject, but above all from having the right contacts. This is a major reason why this book includes a more comprehensive examination of the whole UFO phenomenon than probably any other that I have read. Colin Wilson's years of research into allied subjects means that he numbers amongst his friends and contacts, such people as John Mack, Budd Hopkins, Jacques Vallee, Linda Moulton Howe, Stanislav Grof, David Jacobs, the late Andrija Puharich and many other researchers of this ilk. These are people who are recognised by ufologists around the world as making original and major contributions to the field. Alien Dawn draws (often through direct contact with the author) on the theories of such thinkers.
It is Wilson's ability to synthesise material from a wide range of sources, in seemingly effortless fashion and weave it into a seamless tapestry of possibilities, that makes this book so provocative. His compendium of related aspects range from studies of mythic entities, bizarre synchronicities, ancient folklore and mysticism, to a study of the so-called abduction experience.
The result should satisfy both relative newcomers to the field and seasoned travellers in this domain. For the uninitiated, many well known cases and personalities are discussed in order to familiarise them with the concept of high strangeness, but usually within a theoretical context which challenges previously held assumptions. What crystallises as we explore the phenomenon through Wilson's speculation, is that this is so much more than information to be considered from a purely materialistic point of view. So very much more! He makes it abundantly clear that what we are dealing with here, defies explanation in terms of our present knowledge and conventional logic.
In the first half of Alien Dawn, Colin Wilson's focus on mythology and the paranormal is an attempt to establish that the UFO phenomenon is too complex and diverse to be explained in everyday terms; seemingly defying categorisation. He is never apologetic, even in the discussion of material which "raises the bar of credulity" (to use his term) "so high that it is important to remind the reader that it is not quite as insane and unprecedented as it sounds" (p.210). He challenges the sceptics such as the late Carl Sagan and John Spencer, to come up with a view that is consistent with the facts, even going so far as to term Sagan a disinformation specialist and accusing him of going to extremes in distorting data on the Mars anomalies and the abduction phenomenon.
What then are some of Wilson's conclusions? He repeatedly reminds us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we view ourselves, and that the vision of universal energy, and of the mind's power to enter into creative interaction with it, is an accurate perception of underlying reality. In other words, "that the mind – without knowing it consciously – has some sort of control over the material universe" (p.301). He believes that UFOs are unknown forms of energy and that their purpose is, "not simply to remind us that the material world is not the only reality, but to draw us by a kind of suction into consciousness of another kind of reality" (p.295). Their purpose would seem to be to act as a deconditioning agent, attempting to distance us from our unquestioning acceptance of consensus reality and drawing us into accepting consciousness of another kind of reality. Finally he leaves no doubt that, "a UFO encounter can cause a basic change in awareness" (p.304) and speculates that if it is indeed a "control phenomenon", then it is likely to increase its impact on human consciousness as a result of Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic 'induction'.
References
Mack, John. (1994) Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1988) A New Science of Life. Cult Encounter --International Story of Exit Counselling By Helen & Rick Larsen. (1997) Australia, RCS Books. Book Review by Morley Legg
"Life as a counter-cultist is rather like trying to put out a raging forest fire with a garden hose." Rick Larsen.
Subtitled "An exposé of cult techniques and an explosion of the myths that surround deprogramming", this sincere book warns how easy it is to get mind-trapped if one strays too far from convention, and how difficult it is to return to one's accustomed values more anchored in reality. A glance at the cover could give the impression of a US Bible-belt publication, but it was a pleasant surprise to find that Helen and Rick Larsen live in a Perth suburb in Western Australia.
Helen's interest in the New Age obviously grew out of a genuine care and concern for humanity. She became intrigued by Extra-Terrestrial Earth Mission (ETEM) which was based in Sedona, Arizona. It was founded by John, a 'walk in' (an extraterrestrial that had entered John's body). An ETEM group had formed in Perth and Helen felt drawn to go to Sedona, USA, for a conference in June 1992. Her husband Rick consented in spite of a growing reluctance.
Helen and Rick take turns in giving their account of developments mostly a chapter at a time, sometimes a paragraph at a time when developments quicken. They reveal much about their background; their honesty is moving. Both were raised in devout Catholic homes. Rick's experiences as a pupil at Christian Brothers College makes compelling reading. Others drawn into the tug of war also have their say.
Rick gives his first impressions of ETEM. Helen tells of her contacts in Perth, and of settling in at Sedona and meeting the twenty-two female and seven male participants, and the leaders Zavi (John) and Ziva (Ellen). She is taught how to resist 'dark forces' (family and friends) who would try to break the true message of Zavi or the 'Visionary Interdimensional Masters'. She writes, "I am still not clear what the trigger, offered by Earth Mission, was for me but bells rang, the earth moved. I was 'IN'." Helen returns renamed Xanthe.
Back in Perth a period develops when they no longer risk sharing their thoughts and we understand perfectly the tactics they are using against each other. Six months after returning from Sedona the real drama begins when in December 1992, after twenty-four years of marriage in which they had a daughter and two sons, Rick farewells Helen at the Perth Airport. She is on her way to join the Melbourne ETEM group. Rick agrees to let her go but desperately wants to find a way to bring 'the old' Helen back.
Because of the stress and bouts of depression he is granted leave from his teaching post. Through the advice given by the husband of another ETEM member he contacts Joe Szimhart and Patrick Ryan, US 'exit counsellors'. They reveal a wealth of information concerning the patterns of destructive cults, patterns that can be recognised, understood and combated. There is mention of the Moonies, Heaven's Gate, Waco, and New Age movements familiar to many.
Pat and Joe arrive in Perth and then, with the aid of his son and friends, all go to Melbourne for an 'Intervention'. The enormous costs dawn on us: phone calls, flight costs, hotel bookings, hired cars, an intervention venue, a TV compatible with US videos – all resting on the timing of plans that are full of 'what ifs'. Would Xanthe agree to meet or listen? A maze of interesting fronts and cover stories are invented before they can even think of talking Helen out of ETEM. At times touches of humour add surprising depth to the drama.
Helen's brother Paul phones Helen to say he is coming to Melbourne on business to possibly buy a fish farm and arranges to meet her. The nervousness of the six interventionists, when so much is at stake, escalates. The time arrives when Helen, expecting her lone brother, is greeted by her son, then her brother and his wife with Rick and two Americans. Helen remains for a while but refuses to watch the video and returns to her ETEM group. Each of the six interventionists express their thoughts and feelings of the time. Helen has to contend with her own rising feelings and the views of the others in ETEM.
The book unearths the powerful mental war that goes on, not just between Helen and Rick or Helen and ETEM, but in each individual as to what is the right thing to do. In the chapter 'The Dark Night of the Soul' Helen battles with Xanthe.
Much praise is heaped on Pat and Joe. After the first failed intervention they attended another case involving a near tragedy in a different cult. This ended in the wife being hospitalised through " 'listening' to tapes which were repetitive, suggestive and hypnotic in nature." It would be a pity to dismiss this book as just a battle between one family and an obscure cult. Those with a healthy interest in the New Age should welcome the Larsen's warnings. They give an invaluable, blow by blow account of the age old battle between captive minds and free minds. At times we sense striking parallels to being trapped in a disastrous marriage, or in drug addiction. The 'cult' develops a new and exclusive set of rules that promises benefits far beyond the norm, but which traditionally degenerates into dogma-armed extremes. But then, of course, are any of us really free when we are all so moulded by the society we are born into? Consider the difference in our attitudes if we had grown up in a time or country markedly different from our own.
The studies of authors and academics are presented to reveal the negativity in cults. Steven Hassan: "Destructive cults commonly induce trances in their members through lengthy indoctrination sessions. Repetition and forced attention are very conducive to the induction of a trance .... 'loaded language' of words and expressions .... governs how one thinks" (Hassan, p.90). From Michael A. West of the University of Sheffield: "Over-meditation can be dangerous .... prolonged meditation may cease to have beneficial effects and become detrimental" (West, p.143). Professor Graham Reed: "Channelled 'messages' are at a low level of inventiveness." Australia's Dr Margaret Singer, Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of California, stressed that cult victims tend to be "unaffiliated, altruistic and trusting."
Helen eventually consented to watching Dr Singer's video on mind control, and took part in lengthy discussions. Interesting indeed were the alarming physical reactions Helen and Rick experienced just before, during, and after her decision to leave ETEM. Helen: "Initially when I came out of the cult I felt numb. It seemed that I had no feelings about anything at all. My dream of a heavenlyearth populated by perfect, loving beings had been absolutelyshattered." Helen's chapter 'Recovery' is packed with insights that are healing in themselves.
Surely, however, the core of a cult can be close to a legitimate truth. Is it not the negativity of people who, once involved, become virus-like and 'capture' this truth, or this experience, and use it to ensnare others, like a predator in wait by a waterhole? Much of the New Age has become unashamedly commercial; thankfully many use care and knowledge wisely and beneficially; some take on a darker aspect depending largely on who runs them, and what the core belief or policy is. We should remember that religions, throughout history, have been infiltrated by those who have used the blind belief of followers to prey on the innocent and trusting.
The authors are full of praise for the two exit councillors. All of those taking part in the intervention warmed to Joe and Pat as genuine and likeable. Details are given of their escape from cults. Joe was in Elizabeth Clare Prophet's 'Church Universal and Triumphant' (CUT). Once free he took part in about one hundred and thirty intervention situations and became "familiar with Eastern based, Bible based and New Age cults in particular." In 1980 Pat graduated from the Maharishi International University. He reported that with its guards and repressive discipline it was totally unlike the TM (Trancendental Meditation) many are familiar with. He suffered a breakdown and feels he was lucky to escape and eventually recover his health.
After Helen's safe return to Perth, Rick wanders through a local New Age Expo looking at the stalls, as many of us probably did. His devastating comments may jar us or have us chuckling, but we fully understand his point of view. Our Space Brothers are not here to save us, however much our times cry out for change. The New Age will not save us, not at least until its followers are more aware of the pattern of pitfalls that are now well-researched.
The general impression of cults is that they are small groups that become dedicated to breaking away from wider society in order to toe a line of belief that ensures a 'superior' realisation of reality. Trends of this nature often stem from channelled material, or from people who have 'inner dialogues' that motivate them to seek followers with similar isolationist views. One realises in retrospect that preoccupation with repetition or trance indoctrination etc is not only used by individuals and small cults. Dictatorships and totalitarian societies have become masters of it. Is not our whole Western civilisation way ahead with the very same tactics? Think of the never ending torrent of advertising, and the resulting consumerism no matter what the risk to the planet. This may have become the norm, but when massive wealth from these obsessions and addictions goes to a controlling elite, then surely high levels of indoctrination are at work. How can we get out of that?
Somehow the quiet touches of humour move us to take the Larsens' message very seriously. We speculate on how close we can become to being ensnared in shaky beliefs, in paradigms unseen. Their warnings to those involved in anything cult-like not to get in out of their depth is like a touch on the arm that restores a sense of balance and direction.
References Hassan, Steven. (1990) Combating Cult Mind Control. Reed, Graham. The Psychology of Channelling. Singer, Margaret Thaler. (1995) Cults in Our Midst (a video on mind control). West, Michael A. (editor) The Psychology of Meditation.
Rick Larsen provides free assistance to people in trouble with cults. He can be contacted atPO Box 90, North Beach, Western Australia 6020. His book is available to Society members at half price ($10).
Robot Warriors --The Top Secret History of the Pilotless Plane By Hugh McDaid & David Oliver. (1997) ISBN 0 75281 024 3 Book review by Simon Harvey-Wilson
This is a coffee table sized book of interest to those who have ever suspected that some UFO sightings were advanced military craft built here on planet earth, even if their design might have been based on observations or reverse engineering of alien craft. The authors however make no such speculations. Robot Warriors is a straightforward history of what the United States Air Force apparently calls UAVs (uninhabited or unmanned aerial vehicles). The closest it gets to discussing extraterrestrial craft is on the inside cover where it is claimed that the technology of today's UAVs is "so close to the cutting edge of science that they might just as well have been built by aliens." The book's forward is by Admiral Barton Strong, Head of Cruise Missiles and Unmanned Aircraft for the United States Department of Defence. Its introduction is by General Kenneth Israel, Director of DARO, Defence Airborne Reconnaissance Office, also for the US Department of Defence.
The book's cover photo is a very flying saucer-like picture of the Lockheed Martin Boeing 'DarkStar' which seems to epitomise the new generation of stealthy hi-tech surveillance UAVs. Robot Warriors is packed with colour photos of weird looking craft, some so small they look like toy models, while others clearly resemble various shaped UFOs. I found one of the last chapters the most interesting because the authors discuss future trends and technical developments in space and air power. It is here that we see an increasing convergence of futuristic aircraft and UFO design. One cannot say whether this is the result of reverse engineering of alien craft, or perhaps because the universal laws of physics oblige both human and alien aerodynamic engineers to follow the same lines of thought and design parameters. Nevertheless the points of technical similarity are interesting and should be obvious to UFO enthusiasts. The authors suggest that in future unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be carried aboard and launched from larger aircraft, somewhat like flying aircraft-carriers or mother-ships. Directed energy weapons will become commonplace, as will improved stealth capabilities. UCAVs will be developed that can fly at hypersonic speeds (more than Mach 5), but which can also loiter in reconnaissance mode at between fifty and one hundred thousand feet. Increased UCAV manoeuvrability will be necessary. Without pilots, such craft will be free to reach acceleration speeds well beyond the tolerance limits of even the toughest humans. Symmetrical designs will enable UAV to accelerate immediately out of harm's way in any direction. And speaking of futuristic aircraft design in general, the authors also claim that developments in human-machine interaction and lightweight materials will be important. While this makes it sound as if the authors of Robot Warriorsgot many of their ideas from reading UFO books, there are also many other suggestion that do not seem relevant to the debate about whether some UFOs are of human or alien construction. Nevertheless this is an interesting, informative, colourful book for those UFO readers with a technical interest in futuristic aircraft design.
The Oz Factor Contact Through Human Consciousness? -PART 5
The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 5
Flying Saucers & Sonic Booms
By Simon Harvey-Wilson
One of the most puzzling technical questions about UFOs is why they do not appear to make a sonic boom when they break the sound barrier. A sonic boom is caused when any normal flying object, even a meteor, starts to move faster than the speed of sound. The speed of sound varies with altitude, humidity, temperature and pressure. At sea level under normal conditions the speed of sound is 1,220 kilometres per hour (760mph), but because the earth's atmosphere gets thinner the higher you fly, at 10,000 metres above the ground it is only 1,080 kilometres per hour. Something is therefore said to be breaking the sound barrier or flying at supersonic speed, when it flies above the speed of sound for the prevailing conditions. An aircraft flying at that speed is said to be flying at Mach 1. Saying that a jet fighter is capable of flying at Mach 3 means that it can fly at three times the speed of sound (about 3,240 k /h). With advancing technology aircraft designers are now starting to talk about 'hypersonic' flight speeds which refers to speeds above five times the speed of sound or Mach 5 (about 5,400 k/h).
Sound and air pressure are both transmitted through the atmosphere by air molecules bumping into each other like rows of billiard balls. As a subsonic craft, doing less than the speed of sound, moves through the air it sets up a field of air pressure that informs the air in front of it to get out of the way. This forewarning travels ahead of the aircraft at the speed of sound. But once the craft itself reaches the speed of sound, it catches up with its own air pressure bow wave. This creates a shock wave of sound and pressure shaped like a large sideways cone that moves parallel to the ground with the plane at its apex. The lower part of this conical shock front leaves a swathe of noise and air pressure that moves along the ground behind the aircraft. This sonic boom causes windows to rattle or break and makes a loud disturbing noise.
The legal ramifications of the extensive noise and repeated window damage that would be left in its wake is the major reason that the world's only supersonic passenger aircraft, the Concorde, is generally restricted to flying across the Atlantic on the London–New York route. There are no windows beneath to worry about. While over built-up areas, Concorde has to fly subsonic which makes flying on it rather pointless. This sonic boom problem is one reason no modern supersonic replacement has been built for Concorde. With the enormous growth in modern air travel, any aerospace company that builds a supersonic passenger plane that does not make a sonic boom will probably make buckets of money. It is interesting to speculate as to why this has not yet been done given that UFOs are reported to have been flying around silently at supersonic speeds for at least fifty years.
In an article on UFO propulsion theories, nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman writes that: "Substantial research, much of it classified, has been done showing that a magneto-aerodynamic (MAD) system would be capable of solving all the problems of high speed flight by controlling lift, drag, heating and sonic boom production – all electromagnetically rather than mechanically or chemically. The system would be symmetric, highly manoeuvrable, relatively silent, would often have a surrounding glow, and would be capable of sudden starts and stops." Unfortunately he then tells us that research on MAD propulsion systems is classified because they have some relevance to the flight aerodynamics of ballistic missiles.
In his book Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis the late Paul R. Hill, who spent his working life as a rocket scientist at NASA's Langley Research Centre in the USA, devotes two detailed chapters to an analysis of why UFOs can break the sound barrier without making a sonic boom or overheating. Hill points out that with regard to sonic booms, in supersonic flight the air ahead of an aircraft does not know that the craft is coming whereas in subsonic flight it does. In other words, once the speed of forewarning the air in front of the plane becomes slower than the actual speed of the aircraft, you have a problem. The solution is simple. If you are flying faster than the speed of sound, you have to transmit the information that you are coming to the air ahead of the craft at a speed that is also faster than the speed of sound. This gives the air time to get out of the way, thus helping prevent a noisy shock wave. How can this achieved?
Hill claims that UFOs radiate a force field a short distance ahead of the craft that is capable of repelling air molecules. This force field travels at the speed of light and is therefore easily able to stay ahead of the craft even at hypersonic speeds. By giving the air sufficient prior warning to get out of the way, no bow shock wave is created no matter how fast the UFO is flying. Hill even points out that rain, small bugs, dust and sand particles would be repelled by this field and would flow around the craft instead of hitting it. The UFO would not even need windscreen wipers he claims. However that is not the complete solution. The shape and length of a plane affects what sort of shock wave it creates as it breaks the sound barrier. Some long planes make two sonic booms, one from the front and one from the back. This distinctive double bang is well known to those watching NASA's Space Shuttle as it prepares to land after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Coupled with this is the problem of aerodynamic drag and the overheating of a craft as a result of being buffeted by the atmosphere as it increases speed. The outside surfaces of the Space Shuttle for example "reach a blinding-white heat, of the order of 1,300 degrees centigrade" on re-entering the earth's atmosphere (Hill, p.208). To attempt to counteract these problems, most supersonic aircraft are long and thin with sharp points at the front, yet the average UFO is saucer shaped, which would seem to be a highly unsuitable shape to minimise overheating and aerodynamic drag.
To solve these additional problems Paul Hill produces pages of calculations to show that in addition to putting a repulsive force field facing its direction of travel, UFOs would need to put another repulsive field at the back. To put it simply, any air that meets the UFO in supersonic flight would be repelled sideways from the front, sucked along the sides and then pushed away from the back. This has the amazing result of enabling the UFO to fly with no wind resistance, no turbulence, and no sonic boom. It also gives the UFO's propulsion system a higher level of energy efficiency and helps explain why these craft come in so many unaerodynamic shapes.
The last benefit of UFO airflow-control force fields that Paul Hill discusses is of "aerodynamic heating" (p.208). Hill's calculations suggest that by diverting the atmosphere from the front of the moving craft, allowing it to flow along the sides and then pushing it away from the back, no thermal energy is imparted to the UFO's surface. Not only does this prevent the UFO from heating up, but Hill suspects that the opposite may be the case. He claims that air repelled from the front of the UFO will experience "a big pressure drop" causing it to expand and drop in temperature as it goes along the sides of the craft (p.326). "The temperature gets so low that even with boundary-layer friction the air at the UFO surface is below ambient atmospheric temperature …. Under these circumstances, the UFO is cooled at various flight speeds, not heated. This would be true at any speed for which the UFO can maintain the high field strengths needed." (p.326) There have been a few UFO close encounters where evidence suggests that the UFO somehow significantly cooled the surrounding area. I recall a case where a witness who had seen strange lights at night while returning home from driving in the country, was unsure whether he had had a close encounter or not. What he did know was that a water bottle that had been in his vehicle was frozen solid when he got home later that night. This was very puzzling because the weather was warm, so what he wondered had frozen the water in the bottle? Paul Hill's calculations about aerodynamic heating and cooling may have provided an answer. "In a surprise fallout it was found by this theory that if a UFO left such an air-control mechanism turned on while hovering low over water, air temperatures near the machine could get cold enough to create ice" (p.327). If these well informed calculations about UFO aerodynamics are currently available in the public domain from a NASA scientist, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that the United States military has known about the matter for years and has probably had time to conduct the appropriate experiments and test fly various prototypes of their own versions of this technology. If this is the case, one wonders for how much longer air travellers are going to have to endure the tedium, cost and inconvenience of travel by outdated subsonic passenger jets.
References Friedman, Stanton T. (1980) UFO Propulsion Theories. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. Ronald D. Story (editor), pp.281-284.
Hill, Paul R. (1995) Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis. Scott, Andrew. (1990) Acoustics. The Guinness Encyclopedia, p.31
Western Australian SightingsWith Overseas Observations Compiled by Brian Richards
It seems that the enigmatic flying triangles won't go away. They continue to be seen in many parts of the world often flying very low, silently, and at speeds that would stall a conventional aircraft. Lights are often observed at each point and beneath the craft. Sometimes a beam of light from the triangle scans the sky above, or the ground below. Witnesses have been filled with mixed emotions. Are these alien craft keeping one step ahead of our own technology, or at least appearing to? Such claims were made when alluding to the great airship flap across the United States from November 1896 to April 1897, when scores of intelligently controlled 'dirigibles', more often than not flying against the wind, caused much concern and fiery debate fuelled by the popular press of the day.
If the flying triangles of today are our own secret advanced technology, then the secret is out. Flying such test aircraft over heavily populated areas would risk a mishap. The repercussions from such an accident would be hard to contemplate. No such incident has yet been reported. If these craft are so safe as to be accident proof, then a really advanced propulsion system is being operated – so advanced in fact that further manufacture of conventional aircraft should be stopped immediately. This cutting edge technology must be introduced now for the benefit of all. But don't hold your breath! Peru is in the throes of a UFO flap. Hundreds of reports are coming in from all over the country and UFO buffs everywhere are trying to secure the videos which show numerous flying objects. Thanks to Mike Farrell, director of Project GUFONE '99 for the following reports which are just a few of the many compiled:
Wednesday 3rd March 1999. For forty minutes, five glowing discs flew over Lima, the capital city of Peru. Two OVNIs (objeto volante no identificado: the Spanish acronym for UFOs) flew off by themselves and performed manoeuvres whilst the remaining three darted away to the east. Home videos taken of the overflight were broadcast on Canal (Channel) 2 Television Frequencia Latina following the incident.
Tuesday 2nd March 1999, 6.30pm. Two OVNIs flew over Pucallpa in the Amazon, 600km north-east of Lima. "Plenty of witnesses saw them cleave through the cloudy sky", Alfredo Mendiola reported. "They were bright enough to shine through the mists. In the sector of the city, they appeared as a bright dot. Others reported seeing the light change colour from white to yellow, red and blue." Home videos were aired on the local TV station in Pucallpa. "The video showed an object in the form of a spinning and humming top with a surrounding light (aura) and clear brown colour tones. Another showed a cone with a point coming to a rise. A helicopter of the Policia Aeria tried to chase the OVNIs, but the pilots lost radio contact with the ground, which seems impossible because they have high frequency radios."
Towards the end of February in Andacolla in the Neuquen district south of Lima, residents watched glowing UFOs "that moved in a zigzag. We watched them cross the sky with lights in the front. There was also another OVNI like a great luminosity that pulsated as well." In Lindera, 440km south of Arequipa near Peru's border with Chile, local residents were astonished to find several crop circles in a field of wheat. The crop circles were described as 'tripods' (three circles joined by straight lines). There were sections of the circles where the grain was squashed flat but not broken.
Six UFOs Seen By Hundreds Near Monterrey, Mexico. Sunday 28th February 1999. Canal (Channel) 12 of the city of Monterrey, (924km north of Mexico city) in Coafiuila state, aired home video of six UFOs flying over the La husteca section of the city, heading for Las Pampas mountain. Hundreds reported the overflight which lasted several minutes. The video showed six luminous triangular objects flying westward in formation, with the camcorder focus set on 'zoom'. (Thanks to Marco Reinoso Ballesteros y Guillermo Alarcon for this report).
Flying objects of the unidentified kind remain a fascinating area of study, but such studies remain forever shallow because of the very elusive nature of the objects. UFO experts there are not, but UFO case study experts there are. What is generating much interest at this time are the accounts/experiences of ordinary people, or personal contact experiences (PCEs). Brave individuals are coming forward without fear or favour, and recounting extraordinary stories of personal interaction with unknown life-forms or 'energies'. The events are often recalled without hypnosis and invoke fear and loathing, love and adoration, confusion – a whole range of emotions. To get regular reports of such accounts, e-mail 'Citizens Against UFO Secrecy' in the USA at: CAUSupdate@caus.org or go to their website: http://caus.org/feedback.htm
WA SIGHTINGS UPDATE
There are no earth-shattering sightings to report, but there are some interesting ones. Accounts are down on previous years, but February 1999 appears to have been a busy month. I was diving on the Pandora (1791) wreck in far-north Queensland for the four weeks, so thanks to Mike Jordan for dealing with the all-hours phone calls and compiling February's report.
26th February 1999, 8.10am. Jeremy phoned from Albany to say that he was travelling to Mt Barker on the previous night with his brother, when at about 9.15pm they saw a white light with smaller white lights appearing to move around it up and down like a yoyo. The sighting lasted from ten to fifteen seconds.
21st February 1999, 8.45pm. Eric of Mirrabooka reported seeing a bright flash of white light with a blue afterglow, followed by another such display. He said they were like sheet lightning, but there was a clear sky and no clouds anywhere. There were four other witnesses with him.
19th February 1999, 9.45pm. A man (a farmer) rang, but did not leave his name. (Judith took the call because I was at a meeting). He said that, as he was returning to York, he saw a strange white and red light which came closer and he saw it pick up another car. He would not give details to Judith but said he would ring me in the morning. He did not call.
16th February 1999, 3.10pm. Phillip of Booragoon said he and his wife had seen two white lights moving across the sky about 7.55pm.
15th February 1999, 8.15pm. Tania of Rockingham phoned to say she and two other witnesses had seen two white lights moving at the same time (not parallel), travelling south at about 8pm. She said they were not planes, and had no coloured lights and no noise. Larger than stars, they moved in different directions across the sky.
13th February 1999, 7.20pm. Colin of Wilson (not Colin Wilson!) said that he and his wife were lying on their trampoline looking at the stars, when a bright light approached and then turned on its side revealing a huge box-shaped or "it could have been a triangular shaped craft." It then shot up into the sky at great speed. He said he was a sceptic and didn't believe in UFOs, but was now re-thinking his situation.
11th February 1999, 10.45am. A woman phoned to say that at 1am the previous night she was putting her sewing away, her husband and child were asleep, when an object making a very loud whooshing sound passed very close over her house. She said the sound lasted for a few seconds, it was definitely not a plane or helicopter and left her shaking and unable to sleep for a few hours. I did not catch or recognise the name of her location, but she was north of Perth.
11th February 1999, 10.12am. Richard, a social science graduate, was fishing in a dam nearly 200km north-east of Perth when he and friends saw a blended white and red light stopping and zigzagging for approximately two minutes. The blurred reflections of the light could be seen in the dam.
11th February 1999, 5.05am. Brian D called from his mobile phone from approximately 100km north of New Norcia. He and his family were travelling from the North-West by car. He reported that they saw a white light behaving in an erratic flight pattern before disappearing. Then a large red glowing light was seen in the bush. There was no noise and it was not a plane or helicopter. Brian said they were listening to the ABC Radio and their brief news bulletin reported the sightings of UFOs over WA.
Thursday 21st January 1999, 2–3am.Casuarina, WA. A man, Jason L, reported hearing a humming sound, a low drone. Utensils were rattling in the kitchen. The witness went outside the house and noticed a very bright light to the NNW at about sixty degrees. This object was moving about in a zigzag fashion and appeared to be spinning. Two other star-like objects appeared, one either side of the larger one which allegedly shone a laser-type beam to each of the smaller lights. At this time Jason reported their microwave oven was arcing, the radio and stereo were affected, as was the power supply to the house. Jason also claimed beams were being shone into the house, which he avoided. I suggested this may have been light from the bright stars Regulus or Capella, but this does not account for the erratic aerial manoeuvring, or the humming noise.
Tuesday 12th January 1999, midday. Denmark, WA. A man, Roger C, reported seeing twenty-five or thirty dark objects moving east to west over the sea at twenty-five to thirty degrees. The objects appeared to stop at one stage before moving on. The witness was adamant they were not birds.
Friday 25th December 1998, 9.30pm. Rockingham, WA. Four witnesses were watching Jupiter in close proximity to a new moon. A very bright object appeared about one hand-span (at arm's length) to the left of the moon, flashed three times, then headed south very rapidly.
Monday 21st December 1998, 11.40am.Belmont, WA. Fred H and his daughter had just left Bott's Chemist when they saw a very bright white metallic object moving slowly from SW to NE. It appeared to be very high up and shaped like a round ice-cream container surrounded by a dark aura or haze. The duration of the sighting was six minutes.
Friday 18th December 1998, 10pm. Richard G was looking north from Leederville, WA, and watched three star-like objects in the shape of a triangle move from east to west at about forty-five degrees. The leading light was red and the trailing two were white.
Tuesday 15th–Wed 16th December 1998, 8pm–1am. Mr Brian K of Karrinyup, WA, reported his son's sighting from Busselton, WA. Apparently Chad K and a friend watched six star-like objects in the north-west sky perform unusual aerial manoeuvres, zigzagging and jumping about, for over five hours. What appeared to be the same objects repeated the performance the following night (16th Dec). Chad, who is an amateur astronomer, watched the objects through a telescope. They appeared to be triangular.
Sunday 13th December 1998, 1.05am. Dianella, WA. A man reported seeing a bright white fireball with no tail pass silently overhead from the NNE to the SSW.
Friday 4th December 1998, 9pm. Mullaloo, WA. Shane and two other witnesses reported an unusual 'incident' which started at 9pm and went on for some time. A small red light was seen moving about sideways and up and down over the ocean to the west. It also moved in close towards the beach. A hovering helicopter had a light on the object which itself had revolving red and blue flashing lights and was disc shaped. A jet plane was also seen flying about over the sea. The totally silent object came in over the beach and was in the dunes for about two minutes and simply disappeared.
Friday 4th December 1998, 9.30pm. City Beach, WA. This sighting was reported in the Sunday Times newspaper through UFORUM, witnessed by Caspar F and a girlfriend. A huge mid-grey triangle flew over the witnesses from the north-west, heading south-east before turning east. Underneath the object were about twelve rectangular red lights parallel to the rear edge. The leading part of the craft or apex was illuminated by a very bright whitish yellow light. A low droning sound was heard. The witnesses calculated its height as between 200–300ft. It was travelling so slowly that a conventional aircraft would have been unable to remain airborne.
Friday 4th December 1998, 9.45pm. Safety Bay, Rockingham, WA. Helen S was looking north. Travelling from west to east at about forty-five degrees, were three 'stars' in a triangular formation. No sound was heard. The objects were about a hand-span apart, and the formation "shaped like a Vulcan bomber." There was cloud about, but the witness said the formation flew under the cloud and "just disappeared."
Saturday 14th November 1998. A lady, Pamela of Kiara, near Beechboro, WA, inquired about our group, ASPR/UFORUM. After a while she told how from the age of two, her son, now four, would talk about strange beings with whom he would interact, usually at two or three in the morning. He described them as tall and skinny with big eyes, large hairless heads, thin arms, small mouths and holes for ears and nostrils. They were a greyish blue colour and would regularly take him to 'the airport' where he would be introduced to a little girl with blonde hair. He has suffered nose bleeds, is a high achiever and is never sick. On the 14th November 1998, the family reported an orange light going overhead. The little boy was clearly disturbed by the sighting and kept pointing and staring skywards for a long time afterwards.
At the time of this sightings report going to press, a very unusual story is circulating about an alleged UFO crash in Western Australia. So much interest is being generated by the claim that even our conservative West Australian newspaper ran a feature about it on Saturday 20th March 1999. This report is reproduced in full. You can draw your own conclusions. However, the claim should be treated with suspicion, or at least healthy scepticism until more evidence is forthcoming. One would ask the following questions. How did Margie Parker know of the crashed UFO, or make contact with the aliens? How did they communicate their needs? Would advanced extraterrestrial beings be able to use our welding equipment on their (supposedly) alien alloys, and how would they know of such equipment? Would it not be correct to assume that the aliens would have a contingency plan in place for recovery in the event of such an emergency crash landing, or at the least a homing device? Surely NORAD, possibly Pine Gap, Nurrungar, and /or the Exmouth facility in WA, and a number of other high-tech 'monitoring agencies' would have detected the UFO entering our atmosphere and been aware of its demise. This would have created another Roswell, with the area being cordoned off, swarming with military and recovery teams, and a cover story being issued. Whether this case turns out to be genuine, a hoax, or something else, I hope that the credibility of ufology is not too damaged. Time will tell.
UFO RESCUER HUNTS TWILIGHT ZONE SQUAD Sydney. By Steve Pennells. The truth is out there ... apparently somewhere between Kalgoorlie and the South Australian border. A $50,000 rescue mission has started for three stranded aliens and their 2km-wide spacecraft which allegedly crash-landed on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.
Sydney woman Margie Parker flew to Kalgoorlie this week to organise a team of experts to find the stricken UFO. She claims that the extraterrestrials were off-planet engineers who experienced mechanical problems while flying over WA and had to make an emergency landing in the middle of the Nullarbor, about 160km north of Haig. She will not say how she knows about the spacecraft but says the aliens want help to repair it so they can leave the planet quickly. The extraterrestrials apparently need a welder, water and lifting gear. Ms Parker's plan is to get to the stricken spaceship and have her rescue team help the aliens carry out repair work. Offers of help have flooded in from interstate and overseas. One United States benefactor is offering $32,000.
Ms Parker contacted the UFO National Hotline in Melbourne to set up the rescue. "We put her automatically in our 'fruit-cake' category but she is very insistent," the hotline's Ross Dowe said yesterday. "It is not usual for us to make an expedition like this. I don't think that we have ever been commissioned or paid to look for flying saucers before. No doubt, it will be a real eye-opener if something is really there." Ms Parker has commissioned a team of geologists, including a Perth expert. She was meant to meet him on her arrival at Perth Airport on Wednesday night. She was booked on an evening flight but did not make the meeting. She has reportedly begun setting up a rescue team in Kalgoorlie and has approached air charter companies to fly her to the remote location. Kalgoorlie police also have been asked to help. Kalgoorlie police Sgt John Hall said he had not received any report of stranded aliens. (Article from The West Australian, Sat., 20/3/99, p.3)
ASPR/UFORUM's Western Australian UFO Sightings & Reporting Centre can be reached on (08) 9337 1638
Technology Update By Simon Harvey-Wilson
Implants are small objects thought to have been put into the bodies of UFO abductees by aliens. In the 1997 edition of this journal, Mike Jordan discussed some of the pros and cons of this puzzling subject (Jordan, p.18). The first problem in conducting research into implants is actually finding them in the human body. X-rays have generally been used in this regard. The second problem is trying to work out what the implant is, once it has been found and/or surgically removed. It can be very hard to tell the difference between a small piece of metal that may have lodged in someone's body as a result of military service, a childhood, car or industrial accident, and a device that may have been surgically implanted for a specific reason. The third problem compounds the second. Once you think you have found an implant, and perhaps even worked out what it was designed to do, how can you be sure who put it there? Obviously a device implanted by aliens might be so advanced that modern scientific analysis is unable to determine its function. A very sophisticated device might even be designed to look as if it does one thing, when in fact it does another. Given that some of today's intelligence services probably have numerous sophisticated devices that are unknown to the public, one can see how merely finding, removing and studying a so-called implant is quite a different matter from proving that it was put there by aliens. Just to make things even more confusing, an article in the MUFON UFO Journal entitled 'New Microchip Human Implants Designed to Locate Kidnap Victims' tells us that a company called Gen-Etics, which is based in Milan, has patented a tiny microchip which, once implanted in the body, can be used to locate that person via satellite to within less than one hundred and fifty metres. The device is being marketed in Italy because of that country's serious kidnapping problem. The Sky-Eye chip, as it is called, costs nine thousand US dollars and was originally developed by Israeli intelligence. Made out of "synthetic and organic fibre", it is invisible to x-rays and, by using a small amount of energy from the body, can be tracked using the Global Positioning System. If this report is true, one wonders why alien implants are not also invisible to x-rays. Does this imply that they are probably human inventions, or does their function, whatever it is, require them to be constructed out of metallic compounds? It has often been speculated that alien implants are tracking devices, but this was thought to be unlikely because the only comparable human inventions that we knew about were small metallic implants, mainly used to identify pets, that could only be read with a scanner held less than a metre from the animal. Now that human designed implants can be detected by satellite, should we perhaps speculate that at least some of what were thought to be alien implants are actually manufactured here on earth?
References Johnston, Bruce. (1998, Tuesday, October 6) Microchip implants to foil VIP kidnaps. Electronic Telegraph. International summary, Issue 1229. www.telegraph.co.uk Jordan, Michael (1997) Implants: More red herrings? Journal of Alternative Realities.Vol.5, Issue 1, p.18. New microchip human implants designed to locate kidnap victims. (1998, November) MUFON UFO Journal. No.367, p.7.
Element 114. A short article in the 1996 edition of this journal discussed Bob Lazar's 1989 claim that an alien UFO in the possession of the US government used either element 114 or 115 as its fuel source. It pointed out that in February 1996, scientists in Germany had briefly managed to synthesise one atom of element 112, which had survived for no longer than one thousandth of a second, and speculated that we might not have to wait long before someone managed to create either element 114 or 115 so that we could see whether its properties were as amazing as Lazar had claimed. It now appears that the wait may be almost over. In January 1999 an unofficial report from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna in Russia, claimed that an eighteen member team under the leadership of Dr Yuri Oganessian, assisted by five American physicists from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, had succeeded in creating one atom of element 114 which had survived for the remarkable time of thirty seconds. (Other reports claimed thirty minutes which would be even more remarkable.) To do this they had spent four months bombarding a rare isotope of plutonium with a rare isotope of calcium in the hope that the two would fuse together at least once to create the sought after new element. To confirm these results, other labs in the US and Germany will attempt to duplicate the experiment.
One might think that an element that only takes thirty seconds (or minutes for that matter) to decay would not be of much use to anyone, however it has long been speculated by physicists that somewhere around element 115 there exists an 'island of stability' of fairly stable ultra-heavy elements with properties not previously available from lighter artificial elements. Whether this includes the property of having its strong nuclear force (that normally holds the sub-atomic particles in the atom's nucleus together) extend beyond the edge of the nucleus so that it might be available for amplification is yet to be discovered. Lazar claimed that the substance that he studied while secretly working for the US government was so stable and had such a powerful strong nuclear force that it could be amplified to behave like 'gravity waves' that would distort spacetime enough to enable such a craft to cross the vast distances of space in a relatively short time. We may now be on the verge of discovering if Lazar was telling the truth. However one might speculate that if scientists did discover that this new element, or the next most heavy one, does have the properties claimed by Lazar, they may not be permitted to tell us.
References Browne, Malcom W. (1999, Friday, January 29) US-Russian team may have created ultra-heavy element. New York Times.
Daley, J. P. (1999, February) Evaluation of a gravitational propulsion system. MUFON UFO Journal, No.370, p.10. Harvey-Wilson, Simon. (1996, March) UFO propulsion and element 115. Journal of Alternative Realities. Vol.4, Issue 1, p.14. Seife, Charles (1999, January 30) The heaviest element of them all. New Scientist No.2171, p.14. Loveland, Walter & Seaborg, Glenn. (1991, August 31) The search for the missing elements. New Scientist. No.1784, p.25.
Animal Mutilations & Laser Surgery. For several years now it has been speculated that the sophisticated 'surgery' found to have been inflicted on dead animals in various parts of the US was probably the work of aliens. Two main reasons were put forward for this. Firstly, farmers and ranchers had reported seeing strange lights or craft in the vicinity not long before finding the dead animal(s). Secondly, the precision and nature of the wounds on the animals suggested that they were done in situ with very high-tech laser instruments that were thought to be more advanced that anything possessed by modern medical technology. In retrospect, we should perhaps have known better. In the last chapter of his book Underground Bases and Tunnels (reviewed elsewhere in this journal) Dr Richard Sauder discusses whether the US military might be involved in these animal mutilations. The cause of his suspicion is a United States Air Force Material Command fact sheet that he has reprinted in his book with permission from Phillips Laboratory, Office of Public Affairs, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico (p.122 & illustration 49). Entitled 'LASER MEDICAL PAC', it describes a very compact device being developed in the Phillips Laboratory which, "provides the field paramedic or physician a unique, portable and battery-operated laser capability. The laser is able to cut like a scalpel, as well as coagulate bleeding, and close wounds." Small enough to be attached to the waist, the laser device measures about eighteen by eight by six centimetres, which is about the size of a transistor radio. "Laser energy is delivered to the instrument by a fibre-optic cable, the fibre providing very intense power density at the tip of the instrument. The output wavelength, which ranges from visible to mid-infrared, can be designed to provide different tissue interactions." The device can run for twenty minutes using two 2-volt batteries for the laser, and a 9-volt battery for its electronics. For those interested in the technical details the fact sheet claims that "the light at the end of the fibre is very intense (one kilowatt per square centimetre)." As it is probable that special forces troops operating on behalf of the US government had access to such laser devices for some time before the technical details were made public, UFO researchers should perhaps now look more closely at the possibility that at least some animal mutilations have been being carried out by humans rather than aliens.
Reference Sauder, Richard. (1995) Underground Bases and Tunnels. What is the Government Trying to Hide?(see book review on page 38)
The Oz Factor Contact Through Human Consciousness? -part 4
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The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 4
Uri Geller:On Spoons & 5
By Kym Bidstrup
"Keem, you can do eet. Concentrate. Anyone can do eet!" Uri Geller's accent was as broad as his encouragement. He had hold of my wrist and was willing me to succeed. But in my hands, the cutlery simply would not budge. Moments later, I was witnessing the spellbinding spoon-bender do what has baffled and divided people around the globe. He held the same spoon out from his body and began to stroke it lightly. I had earlier examined the spoon carefully for signs of trickery, I could not have been closer to him, as a young man I had studied sleight of hand for five years, and my then eighteen years as a professional journalist had brought with them a healthy scepticism, but I can only tell you what I saw. Uri furrowed his brow and directed my gaze to just above the bowl, and the spoon suddenly flopped as though molten. He stopped stroking it, and the motion continued effortlessly for a second or so. He then autographed the spoon and presented it to me. I still have it, and I still don't get it.
In order to explain how I came to become friendly with Uri Geller, it's necessary to tell you a little about myself. During the late 1980s, I was stationed in London as the Bureau Chief for Australia's Seven television network. Arranging an interview with Geller was a routine, albeit exciting, assignment. He was cordial and co-operative, proudly showing off his sprawling mansion in the picture postcard village of Sunning-on-Thames in Berkshire, complete with Uri memorabilia and artworks, including priceless original sculptures and drawings by the Spanish surrealist, Salvador Dali. It is just one of the houses he has dotted around the world.
Clearly, Geller did not have to curve any more cutlery if he didn't want to. But it was metal of a different kind that had made his fortune, he said, and there was an Australian connection. Geller told me that for the past ten or so years he had been travelling the world for mega-mining corporations dowsing for minerals. His starting price, he insisted, was in the region of two million dollars – plus royalties (remember, this is the late 1980s!) and he had been extremely successful in finding gold, copper, oil, even diamonds in exotic locations including the Amazon jungle and the Solomon Islands. It had all begun, he said, with the Australian firm, Zanex Limited of Melbourne, and its pioneering CEO, Peter Sterling.
Geller was characteristically forthright about his dowsing success: "When I say very successful, from all the times that I did go and look for oil or diamonds or copper et cetera et cetera and minerals, I failed most of the time! But I am on a much higher success rate than conventional exploration. So chairmen of the board who were daring, hired me on an unconventional way to look for minerals. And literally I found oil and I found gold and that made me millions." Geller said he worked initially from detailed maps, circling places he felt were promising, and then visited the actual location for a more accurate assessment. It was not, he admitted, an exact science: "I could be wrong! But there is nothing that I hide because every contract that I do says that it's a risk, and I don't guarantee. I mean, I'm not a robot. I'm not a machine that I can guarantee things to happen."
I was fascinated by my first meeting with this energetic and enigmatic character, but a busy work schedule left little time to reflect on individual assignments. But within a week I began to have the persistent feeling that I should make contact with Uri Geller again. And soon. I suppressed the notion as some sort of ego reaction at hobnobbing with the rich and famous. That is until it became urgent.
The feeling reached a peak one day at home when I was trying to fix a troublesome bathroom tap. My mind was suddenly flooded with rainbow images and the compelling desire to telephone Uri. Feeling extremely foolish and mentally speculating that I was the victim of a post-hypnotic suggestion, I rang. Uri expressed surprise but said there was obviously some "psychic link" between us that should be explored. When we met again he greeted me jubilantly at the front door and led me to one of his many bathrooms. There he proudly displayed a vivid rainbow shower curtain. It was the curtain, he insisted, that he had been installing at the time of my urgent vision. I admit the possibility of an hypnotic prompt planted at our first meeting, and I see no reason why Geller could not have rushed out and bought something in rainbow colours as a stunt. Two things though. Let's face it, I am an obscure journalist from an obscure country and he is a wealthy world identity with little to gain by impressing me. And secondly, while I told Geller about the rainbow colours, I did not mention where the vision had occurred. I find it significant that we were both in bathrooms when this 'link' was forged.
Our 'connection' was to manifest itself many times over the several years I spent in England. On one occasion, I remember arriving at his huge house to find Uri opening the mail and suddenly being struck by the idea that someone should make a movie about his amazing life. No sooner had I voiced the notion than he handed me a letter from a world-renowned playwright with whom Uri had been negotiating to write a screenplay. It had arrived that very day. Another time Uri invited me to draw a simple diagram and try to transmit it psychically to him. Aware that old music hall magicians had developed a technique of recreating drawings by watching their subjects' hand movements and inverting them, I was careful to cover the sweep of my pen. Within seconds, Uri had produced an almost identical drawing. On another occasion, I watched bewildered as he sucked in his breath and clenched his fists, then moved a large nautical compass out of alignment, first one way, then the other without touching it.
The Uri Geller I came to know was a complex character. On the one hand he was renowned as a single-minded, even ruthless, businessman with the Midas touch. He traveled regularly to Europe and the United States in his capacity as a one-man corporation, a kind of Uri Inc. Among other things, he was an inventor – the Diamontron and Moneytron were particularly successful – an author many times over, psychic dowser and, of course, performer. He even had a Geller board game. Yet he spent unpaid hours poring over the first draft of what was, in retrospect, my pretty awful attempt at a first novel. He generously offered to write a foreword. He devoted many more hours suggesting agents and publishers who might be able to help me with my writing career.
He opened his heart and home to entertain a desperately-ill friend of mine who was recovering from a heart transplant operation, just because I casually mentioned her plight. He was devoted to his wife Hanna and their two children, Natalie and Daniel, and yet I never saw him spend much time with them.
The Geller legacy seems assured though. According to Uri, Daniel has now developed powers far beyond his own at the same age. But the person I saw constantly at Uri's side was Shipi Shtrang, a combination of manager, agent, business adviser, confidante and permanent house guest. He is also Hanna's brother and the man most often cited as Uri's partner-in-deception. Shtrang has been with Geller since the start. As a teenage entrepreneur, it was Shipi who arranged Uri's first performance at a Tel Aviv school hall in 1969. Uri was twenty two, Shipi just fourteen. Both have always denied they are accomplices. In one of our on-camera interviews, Uri made it clear he didn't need outside help to produce what he liked to call "the Geller effect": Question: No chemicals? Geller: Of course not. Q: No mechanical devices? G: Of course not. Q: Sleight of hand? G: No. Q: No assistants? G: No. Everything that has been said about me in the past, of these chemicals and assistants and laser beams and all that, is nonsense. I mean, listen Kym, let's face it, if it was not real don't you think I would have been caught by now, after fifteen years? It's ridiculous. I mean, come on! Q: No trickery whatsoever? G: No. Q: Have you ever used trickery? G: Never. The only time that I used something that you could call trickery is in my book, I reveal it. I have nothing to hide. Q: Uri, a lot of people would say, why don't you just go to a reputable laboratory, sit down, do all their tests and let them decide, let's get this controversy over once and for all. G: Look Kym, I don't want to start pulling out books here, but I have done all that in the past. I've done it! I've sat in Stanford Research Institute, I've sat in Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab., I've been in Kent State University, I've been in the University of London. How long, how many times can I do it?
For a man who has been involved in a string of sometimes bitter lawsuits to protect his reputation, Uri could also appear downright cavalier about his image as a jet-setting super-psychic, more interested in show than substance:
Question: If that's all true, why do you insist that you're a showman? It conjures up the image of ... Geller: Well, I am a showman! I am a showman! I was born a showman! I mean, look, everyone who appears on stage is a showman. Don't you think that President Reagan (then US President) is a showman? You think he is a showman and so do other people. But he's also a president. Everyone that can talk to people on the stage and entertain people is a showman. If there are people who are against me because of that it's their problem. There is no law that a person that has certain abilities has to live on a mountain and eat herbs in a cave! Uri certainly didn't live in a cave. But there's some truth in the herbal reference. I don't believe it's generally known that he is a strict vegetarian, telling me on many occasions that it 'amplified' his powers. He is also an exercise devotee. At the time we were seeing each other, he would rise early, jog around the village and surrounds for an hour, enjoy a massive vegetarian breakfast, then adjourn to his exercise cycle for another punishing hour and a half while he opened his mail, dictated anything he might be working on, and answered calls from around the world. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
Throughout history, charismatic figures have been said to influence people, events, the very space around them. An apparently tireless self-publicist, Uri would sometimes amaze me by playing down astonishing reports about himself. I was once present when, furiously pedalling on his exercise bike, he fielded questions from first Time magazine and then Newsweek on a story that was sweeping the US. Allegedly, Uri had given a secret briefing to high government officials in a top security Washington bunker after agreeing to beam 'positive thoughts' to the Russian negotiating team at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The prestigious news agencies wanted to know –understandably – whether an Israeli entertainer was bending Russian minds and American arms policy? Later, I questioned Uri about the story and found him uncommonly coy:
Question: Can you confirm that this meeting took place? Geller: Part of the question, I can say, yes it's true the meeting did take place. Q: And did it take place, as reported, in a sealed room, 'The Vault'? G: Yes, it was because we were worried, or some people were worried that somebody could eavesdrop. It was a de-bugged room and so forth. The rest of the question, I cannot comment who was there.
Subsequent US reports claimed American security chiefs, US arms negotiators and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were all present at the so-called 'psychic briefing'. As for Geller, he would only add that he had performed "sensitive security work" for several international security agencies. He declined to name them or the countries involved, but assured me it had always been "positive and not destructive".
During our talks, Uri also laid to rest one of the greatest myths surrounding his long and controversial career. While he has an enormous and educated interest in the UFO phenomena, he was not visited or controlled by extraterrestrial forces in flying saucers. At least not as far as he was aware. He admitted to embarrassment about the claims in Andrija Puharich's 1974 book Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller. They apparently arose from dreamlike hypnotic sessions during which Geller gave his imagination full rein. His fascination with space and space travel, going back as far as primary school, when he would entertain classmates with vivid sci-fi odysseys, is well-documented. Today, Uri admits there is a slight chance that "some of my energies do have some kind of extraterrestrial connection", but nothing more.
So what are we to make of Uri Geller? I have my own opinion. Many disagree. For millions around the globe the jury is still out. And Uri is wise enough to know that there's longevity – and a tidy living – in mystery: "Remember Kym, I told you in the beginning, that I need a safety device. I don't mind staying controversial. I would rather stay, sort of mystical – is he real or is he not?"
References Puharich, Andrija. (1974) Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller. Geller, Uri & Playfair, Guy Lyon. (1986) The Geller Effect.
My ET Experiences By Tracey Taylor
From a young age strange occurrences became almost routine in my life. Iwould wake up some mornings feeling exhausted and dazed after wild dreams of being taken aboard spaceships where many bizarre things occurred. I was unable to accept that these were anything more than the crazy imaginings and dreams of my overactive mind, as those close to me would often put it. At primary school I had an invisible, giant friend to whom I would talk, and to this day I can vividly remember the warm, large hand that used to guide me around the play-yard, telling me jokes. At night I would sometimes have another visitor, whom I named Father Christmas, who made me feel uneasy and frightened as he entered my room. But by hiding myself deep down under the blankets, too scared to breathe, a strong sensation of calmness and securitywould suddenly come over me. I would then find myself floating in the night sky looking at the millions of shining stars around me.
At the age of five I was playing outside in the street with my friend from next door, when we saw what we presumed to be a plane heading towards us from the distance. It rapidly approached, descending at incredible speed, halting in the sky directly above us. Thinking it was going to hit us, we ducked down low as it descended below the telephone poles, before shooting off in the other direction. Frightened and crying, I ran home to my mother who asked me what had happened. I frantically tried to explain to her about the strange plane. Not understanding the seemingly wild story, she comforted me telling me that it was illegal for a plane to fly so low.
From the moment I could hold a pencil I would draw. It was my passion and my gift. I started attending private art tutoring at the age of nine and began painting still life and landscapes. Spending so much time looking at my subjects, which were usually nature and people, I developed the ability to se auras. I believed this to be a fault in my eyes, until I came across a book on the subject a few years later.
In 1992, at the age of fifteen, I experienced a rapid onset of psychic and intuitive healing abilities, feeling a strong urge to heal people using my hands. However I had never before heard of such a thing, and those around me thought I was just excessively imaginative. With a deep sense of sadness I repressed those abilities for many years. I dealt with the opposition from those around me by continually believing their opinions about my seemingly outrageous imagination.
Unable to express myself freely or communicate to others about what was occurring in my life, I fell into a deep dark crevasse of doubt and confusion. The more I would try to fit in at school and elsewhere, the bigger the tear became within me. I attended a rather hostile public high school in Geraldton, Western Australia, as a very shy girl who tried to keep to herself as much as possible. If I was asked to express my so-called 'ridiculous' point of view about the world, I felt very isolated when I was ridiculed by the other students and sometimes the teachers. My English teacher was mistakenly convinced that I was taking drugs because of the extraordinary short stories and poems I would write for assignments, often telling me in front of the whole class that I must be on something to come up with such crazy tales. It all became too much for me, and by my final year of high school I had changed from a shy, gentle 'A' student, with my own way of thinking, into a rebellious, confused 'D' student who tried to fit in as best as she could with the other students. I denied my inner truth, so that I could feel accepted by others and not to have to put up with the cruel teasing and pranks I had endured since primary school.
In 1996 I was catapulted into the fashion world as a model after winning a competition. Having experienced so much previous invalidation and ridicule,the anxiety and insecurity of who I was inside was now overlaid with the acknowledgment of who I was on the outside. I felt accepted and loved for the way I looked, which was validated by others. Underneath, the secrets in my life were building, and my insecurity growing. I was living a lie and it seemed there was nothing I could do about it. I moved to Sydney to embark on a professional modelling career, which proved to be a constant struggle, emotionally and physically. In the house where my partner and I were living I began to see spirits and other strange looking beings, usually possessing awkward bodies and non-human faces. My dreams were becoming increasingly intense and obscure. Some nights I would not sleep, in fear and anticipation of what was to come. When I did sleep my dreams were bizarre, of undergoing physical examinations, or being in strange looking classrooms. Grey beings with large black eyes would sometimes telepathically teach me to draw and write symbols in the form of holograms. These would often extend from my hands via static-like beams of electric-blue light. I lacked energy, my self confidence suffered greatly and it became almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning because I was so tired. The model agency became increasingly suspicious and displeased because I was constantly calling in sick. I didn't know what to say to them. I could hardly tell them that I was up all night being abducted by little grey men and undergoing strange operations – I'm sure they'd have been really sympathetic! I couldn't even tell my partner what was happening, let alone my new employer.
It became increasingly difficult to cope, I felt devastated and guilty about what was happening. I honestly thought that I was going crazy. My worried boyfriend talked me into seeing a doctor and immediately made an appointment. I tried to explain to the doctor the effects that my horrible dreams were having on me. After less than five minutes he told me I was just depressed, and wrote out a prescription for antidepressants and sleeping tablets. Although I wasn't comfortable about taking the drugs, it was a relief to be able to have a decent night's sleep without such overwhelming dreams, and my experiences seemed oess intense for a short while.
At Christmas in 1996 I travelled home to Western Australia to take a break and visit my family. I was staying at my grandmother's house in Perth when one night I was suddenly overcome by an intense sensation to do some writing before going to sleep. This was unusual for me, but, as there happened to be a pen and paper next to the bed, I decided to go with the feeling. A page of information, over which I felt I had little control, seemed to flow from my hand without my knowing what was being written. The next morning as I read it, I couldn't comprehend how I had used such large words to write something beyond my understanding. To my astonishment and disbelief, contrary to everything I had ever been taught about evolution, there I was reading a paragraph stating that the human race had been created by extraterrestrials! It also contained information about genetic manipulation, with the use of human and extraterrestrial DNA to create another species.
For me this was totally mind boggling and confusing to say the least. I had never read, seen or heard anything about extraterrestrials doing experiments using DNA, let alone that we were created by them. I just couldn't understand how it was possible for me to write information that went against every belief I had. I had heard of channelling, but my knowledge of such things was extremely limited. After trying to convince myself that this must have been a one-off occurrence, I started feeling more strange urges to put pen to paper. More information seemed to flow through me of human-alien interaction, implants, dimensions, spirituality, the raising of consciousness and the creation of humanity. If this wasn't enough, I sometimes found myself involuntarily writing or speaking another language.
In 1997 I signed a contract to work in Japan for three months. It was the first time I had travelled overseas alone and with all that was happening it was quite frightening to leave the security of my family and boyfriend in Australia. However, being alone was really a blessing in disguise, as it gave me the chance to confront my fear of these experiences and open up to them more than ever. My dreams in Japan were the most vivid and frightening that I had had yet, but living on my own allowed me to delve deep into them, mustering up enough courage to ask the beings questions about why this was happening to me. To my amazement I received answers in the form of dreams, writing, and from a voice within my mind. From the answers I received, it seemed that I had chosen to be a part of an evolutionary cycle in the creation of a new and more spiritually advanced species, which will eventually inhabit planet earth. I also received information about the raising of human consciousness and a dimensional shift which is now occurring on earth, assisting us to access other realms more freely and increase our spiritual understanding. At the time this was the most bizarre information I had ever heard and I still did not know what significance it had for me. The answer I kept receiving was, "Be patient, all will be revealed." I kept a diary of my experiences while in Japan, and one morning felt the urge to draw a symbol which I had seen in a dream during which many spaceships were moving around in a starry night sky. Then the stars moved into a configuration of a bird. As I was drawing this, my hand seemed once again to take over and I ended up completing a geometric symbol that was more detailed than the one seen in the dream. Over the next two years other similar drawings and interpretations have been completed, with what feels like hardly any input from my conscious mind. The less I concentrate on what I am doing, the easier the information and symbols seem to come through. This was all totally bizarre and I had no idea why I was doing this or what I was supposed to make of it.
After arriving home from Japan, modelling no longer interested me as a career. I found it was too superficial, as I was now prepared to look more deeply within myself beyond my known reality, having conquered many of my fears about it while I was away. At the end of 1997 my boyfriend and I headed home to Geraldton before moving to Perth. My time in Japan had given me a new understanding of reality. I could no longer deny my experiences, yet I had an even greater fear to overcome. I was gradually integrating the intensity of my experiences, although I had yet to overcome the barrier of what others would think of me if I were to tell them of my findings. New information and personal understandings were being realised daily. Physical evidence of this reality began appearing in the form of strange marks on my body. I could now consciously recall how they got there, and my many previous interactions with alien beings. I found my watch would continuously play up while wearing it, but work perfectly while it was off my body. For the first time I decided to tell my family and boyfriend about the bizarre experiences that had plagued me for so many years. My honesty was confronted with disbelief and the opinion that I was in need of attention, and was using these crazy stories as a way of deflecting responsibility from the 'real' world. My attempts at explaining my situation became more and more hopeless and again I questioned the validity of my experiences and the state of my mental health. The isolation and embarrassment I felt became so hard to bear that I sometimes had thoughts of ending my life. No one could understand what I was going through, and I honestly believed that I was going mad. I decided to visit a psychologist as a last resort to try to find why my mind would play such horrible tricks on me. My questions remained unanswered, the psychologist telling me that I was perfectly sane, and putting my experiences down once again to my creative imagination. I felt unfulfilled and totally devastated, falling into a deep depression of doubt and confusion about myself. While browsing in a bookshop one day, I came across Secrets, Truth & Destiny about the UFO abduction experiences of a Perth lady, Elizabeth Robinson, and the ways in which she coped. I felt a strong urge to buy the book, even though I could not really afford it at the time. For the next two days, I sat glued to it in amazement at how closely the words expressed exactly what I was going through. A spark of hope reignited within me with the realisation that I was not alone after all. Soon after, by an amazing coincidence, I met Elizabeth in a shop. I felt that it was part of some predestined plan to head me in the right direction and give me the guidance I had been searching for. It was such an amazing relief finally to have the chance to speak with someone who understood my experiences.
I was put in contact with Mary Rodwell, who co-directs the Australian Close Encounter Resource Network (ACERN) in Perth. Meeting this wonderful lady has changed my life. Sharing her wisdom and guidance with me has allowed me to open up and accept my experiences, realising that I am far from alone in this. I was invited to an abductee support group which gave me the chance to speak to others who had had similar experiences. I felt so nervous not really knowing what to expect but was delighted to discover that every one of the people at the support group seemed totally normal and sane, with ordinary jobs and otherwise ordinary lives.
Before attending the meeting I had had a dream telling me to place the symbols, that I had been drawing over the past two years, onto transparencies and that they would fit together in different configurations. To my utter disbelief and amazement they did fit together as though they were all connected. These were shown at the support group meeting which seemed to mesmerise those looking at them. They all felt a strong connection with the symbols, as though they had seen them before, some even remembering seeing the symbols during their abductions. One young man had some of his own symbols to show from his interactions with ETs aboard a spacecraft, which were remarkably similar to some of mine. A lady who studies ancient symbols, sacred geometry, and sacred sites also looked at the symbols. I sat there captivated as she was able to recognise and interpret many of the symbols. They apparently exist inside ancient temples and pyramids around the world, many of which are related to different star systems such as Sirius. I was also reminded that the symbols illustrate the link that many people now believe exists between ancient cultures and extraterrestrials.
One of the symbols was similar to a crop-circle that appeared two years prior to the meeting, which triggered the memory that it was exactly that long ago that I had begun writing and drawing the symbols. I was later informed that a lady from France, who studies the phenomenon and assists abductees, was very interested in the drawings. She had been sent copies and had found some connections with designs found in the Aztec pyramids. The fact that they are on transparencies and fit together was also significant. This was a groundbreaking experience for me, as up until then I had no way of validating the symbols as anything more than images from my imagination. The fact that I have never before seen any of the symbols or ever been to any sacred sites made it even more credible for me. During a more recent interaction with the alien beings, I was told to make them into a three dimensional form on a computer, which I am now endeavouring to have done. What the reason for this may be, I have to wait and see. At the abduction support group meeting I met another young lady who writes and sometimes speaks involuntarily in another language. We compared copies of our writing, and found that the only difference was that hers went down the page and mine across. When I turned mine to go downwards I realised that they looked identical. We were both amazed at the bizarre coincidence especially as she told me that she had formerly written across the page until it felt more natural to write downwards. So much was shared by everyone and I have now been guided, learning to trust my experiences beyond the boundaries and limitations of three dimensional reality. It has taken me twenty-two years of enduring events such as visiting outer space in alien craft, feeling paralysed, and watching alien life-forms undertake complicated surgical procedures on me, to realise the connection between my experiences and those of other UFO abductees. Unable to find a logical explanation for these experiences, I realised the need to search beyond the confines of conventional thinking. This has forced me on a journey of gigantic proportions. My life has changed forever since I have realised that I have had a life-long interaction with non-human beings.
Reference Robinson, Elizabeth. (1998) Secrets, Truth & Destiny.
Australian Close Encounter Resource Network (ACERN) directors Mary Rodwell and Elizabeth Robinson can be contacted at PO Box N1083, Perth, Western Australia 6843.
The Oz Factor Contact Through Human Consciousness? -PART 3
The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? -PART 3
Preamble to the Ultimate Debate
By Morley Legg
It is not always easy settling on what is true. For one thing too much truth too quickly can be unsettling indeed when dealing with ufology, but ideas are afloat for the safest way through this. A recent television debate between an historian, three theologian-scientists and the noted atheist zoologist Professor Richard Dawkins highlighted the gulf between the two sides of the ultimate disagreement on whether religion and science are compatible (Compass, February, 1999).
Whereas the religionists believed in God, a purpose in life, and that morality depended on the presence of religion, Richard Dawkins tersely stated that living creatures were made from "the same range of atoms as the rest of the cold dead universe", and that the only thing special about living matter was that its atoms were arranged as digitally coded genes. He said all the information can now be read out of a cell and stored in a computer, and subsequently be available to be read back into other cells, saying that "the modern molecular digital gene is a nail in the coffin of the religious world view." Naturally there were firm, tense disagreements. In the face of his four opponents Dawkins was impressive. He maintained life had no ultimate purpose and that religion was basically "stupefied superstition." It was a debate that encouraged viewers to wonder and think.
Carl Sagan is equally critical of religion. His book The Demon-Haunted World leads us to expect that in a debate on UFOs he would be as cold and abrasive as Dawkins. It is odd that at the close of this millennium divisions are deepening, as if in anticipation of an outcome. But will mainstream science on the one hand, and mainstream religions on the other, be overtaken by a growing mass of people eager for clarification as to whether or not aliens are here? There is a fear that knowing too much too quickly could endanger the world economy. Yet to continually dismiss the implications of the whole picture – sightings, abduction claims, the full range of physical evidence, cattle mutilations etc – by declaring all experiences to be misconceptions or hallucinations seems unwise indeed. There are signs, however, that debates on this matter are a growing probability.
In Britain, in July 1997, a significant televised debate between ufologists and sceptics brought a phone-in response of one hundred thousand calls – with ninety-two percent voting for the ufologists (Strange But True, 1997). The enthusiasm of the audience gave the impression that more would follow. Such debates are of immense importance if the evidence and implications of an alien presence are to reach the wider public. There is another reason why further debates could be inevitable. On August 29th 1998, in England, The Timesnewspaper published a front page report saying that Father Corrado Balducci of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, said it was wrong to assert that reports of encounters with aliens are not credible. "Their existence can no longer be denied, for there is too much evidence for the existence of extraterrestrials and flying saucers", he said. The report indicated that some Vatican officials were taking the matter seriously.
The announcement was further reported in the English UFO Magazine(November–December, 1998, p.65) which commented that because three leading religious figures attended the inaugural meeting of 'Origins' at the White House in the United States, they could have been warned: "You have five years in which to educate your flock to the extraterrestrial concept ..."
These unexpected admissions will fuel divisions, and the question of an alien presence on earth will need resolving. It will take time for whole populations ignorant of the claims to adjust. However, there could be help from an unexpected source. In January 1999, on the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Radio National program Late Night Live, Peter Vardy, a philosopher from the University of London, was speaking about new approaches to aid in arriving at the truth. There was no mention of ufology, but aspects of his talk offered hope for anyone dedicated to uncovering the truth from controversial or suppressed material.
Peter Vardy spoke of new ways to explore the important neglected ground between the idea of absolute truth and the idea that truth is only a social construct – that truth varies with different cultures. Truth, he stressed, was "most dangerous with people who know", and who then use it as a weapon of power to inflict on others, as fundamentalists are inclined to do. Comments were made that whereas imperialism in the Western patriarchal rational approach suppressed or controlled the feminine and the indigenous, control in our modern world had fallen into the hands of science and the owners of the world's media. Many who explore anomalous phenomena have often felt science and the world media were reluctant to give fair representation to disclosures that undermine conventional viewpoints.
Getting to the prime truths behind major controversies – whether they are environmental, nuclear, or alien abduction – is surely of ultimate importance. And this is where the advice of Peter Vardy is interesting. He said it was important for young people to start thinking about meaning, value and what is true, and then to ask, "How do we critique what we have arrived at?" Becoming familiar with the rudiments of arriving at truth, and being practised at facing even our own critique, would be essential for those taking part in debates. Humility was essential; any sign of arrogance suggested truth was becoming elusive. He said if you are making a "realist truth claim" you have to accept the possibility of being wrong.
Vardy said religious and values education (RVE) should not be associated with the church. It was an academic subject open to all beliefs. The aim was not to surrender to education as if it were an indoctrination, but to help young people to probe, to question, to analyse – to think through issues of meaning and value. In Britain, RVE was now mandatory in science and business faculties because it was realised that huge advances in science involved consequences. Students required a grasp of the end result of their endeavours.
Imagine a debate is in progress and we take a side on whether or not aliens exist on earth. How would we cope with being proved wrong? With so much disinformation fed into ufology, 'being wrong' about certain issues or cases is a possibility we should be prepared to admit. As for being wrong about the whole UFO-alien phenomenon, well, we'll have to wait and see. The important thing according to Vardy is to have developed and maintained the truth or the integrity of your seeking, and that integrity should enable you to admit being wrong, in spite of the costs involved.
It is hard for people entrenched in polarities to agree on the possibility of being wrong, and it is not unknown for fundamentalist attitudes to show up in anyone, scientists included, who use their education as if it were an indoctrination. The debate between Richard Dawkins and the theologians suggested some personal work on desires and agendas was required. Peter Vardy's idea of being open to re-examining knowledge, of becoming practised at self critique, could reduce divisions and antagonisms, thereby shifting emphasis from fighting to defend a position, to being open to learn something new.
This may call for a different mind-set. The first essential is to have an adjudicator awake to preconceptions, and proficient at imposing fair standards. This was proved possible with Michael Aspel's handling of the English debate. And then it would be a requirement for each participant to have read and be questioned on literature chosen by the opposing side. For example the sceptics might choose Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, and Curtis Peebles' Watch the Skies for ufologists to study. The ufologists might challenge the sceptics with Jim Marrs' Alien Agenda and Timothy Good's Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat.
It could be argued that Truth, like reality, has different facets; that each individual is like a lens with a certain setting. Usually we remain with our unique focus, but it is known that under certain conditions one's consciousness can move through different settings. Perhaps only then can one appreciate the ranges of difference between the perceptions of theologians, scientists, and abductees. But in this rapidly changing world, exploring these different ways of sensing reality, or realities, should give us the best chance of discovering a way to survive.
Peter Vardy's ideas may be what we need to enjoy more fulfilling debates, and also a way to ward off the influence of selfish genes. But when the question of an alien presence is brought forth for public scrutiny, dare we hope that we will be more satisfied with the truth, even if it leaves us feeling mistaken or vulnerable.
References Dawkins, Richard (1989) The Selfish Gene.
Extraterrestrials and the Vatican. (1998, Novenber-December) UFO Magazine. Good, Timothy (1996) Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. Heart of the Matter. (1999, February 14) Compass. Australian Broadcasting Commission Television. Marrs, Jim (1997) Alien Agenda. Peebles, Curtis. (1994) Watch the Skies. Sagan, Carl. (1995) The Demon-Haunted World. Strange But True. (1997, July) Independent TV, UK. (reviewed in Legg, M. (1998) 'Battle Lines', Journal of Alternative Realities, Volume 6, Issue 1, p.9). Vardy, Peter. (1994) The Puzzle of Ethics. Vardy, Peter. (1995) The Puzzle of God. Vardy, Peter. (1999, January) Late Night Live. Australian Broadcasting Commission, Radio National.
Spirit Possession --A Malay Experience By Judy Bryning
After midnight and a seafood banquet on the beach, several of us still sat around the table, animated by talk and laughter. Immersed in the sudden depth of holiday friendships were Malaysians Ghazzali and Unku from London with Pakistani friend Karim, and the only local resident, Ali from Kuala Lumpur. Right out of our idyllic here-and-now context I was absorbed in hearing first-hand accounts of the world of theatre and fashion in London. So I didn't at first look around when Ghaz interrupted with sudden concern. Seeing one of the motel staff running to the beach, he exclaimed "She is possessed!" Possession was just a figure of speech to me, rather than its original and literal meaning. I still didn't take him seriously, but Malaysian-born Ghaz had recognised the signs instantly. The girl who was running like a professional athlete from the fluorescent glare to the blackness of the ocean seemed unimpeded by her long nightgown. Several of the kampong (village) men were in pursuit, but had no chance of catching up with her. Luckily, before she reached the water's edge, someone managed to head her off, and she disappeared up the beach into the night. The appalling screams and howling coming from the blackness were hard to relate to the charming, intelligent eighteen-year-old girl who enjoyed our exchange language lessons in brief interludes when free from the kitchen. More extrovert than any other girl on the staff, her inquiring mind and strength of personality had impressed me at the outset.
By this time every available man from the kampong had joined in the chase. Ma't Nur the local bomoh (village healer) was there, but it was hard to see who was who down near the water. There was much alarm that she could climb and jump from the rocks, killing herself. They explained that if she were allowed to rush into the ocean with "double power" she would swim and swim and only become conscious when the spirit left her. She would then drown from panic and exhaustion. I had thought that the problem would be resolved within the hour. An hour and a half later, the screaming and struggling were continuing. Twice at least she was brought up to the well-lit area and laid on the sand. On one occasion her legs were bound up with a sarong. Her eyes were gleaming, but unseeing. Ghaz cautioned me not to look into them, and to move back. I took this warning very seriously indeed, having once had a very nasty experience from innocently looking into the eye of a Westerner with occult training. It took several men to hold the girl down. One man found blood down the front of his sarong, but no wound on anyone could be found. Next morning I saw that one young boy had little red crescent marks from her nails all over the left side of his chest.
Sometimes she would appear to calm down and said to them "Why are you holding me? I'm not going anywhere." Immediately they released her, she made a wild dash for it. The next time she was captured, the local bomoh was holding her and achieved a dramatic if temporary effect when he pressed behind her ears. As if from a strong sedative, her head dropped to one side and her body sagged. When it seemed that she was calmer, the spirit reasserted itself in a screaming snarl and convulsive kicking and writhing.
At this stage it was established from what she was saying that the possessing spirit was a hantu air laut (ocean spirit). "I don't belong here – I live there", she had claimed, pointing to the sea. The second bomoh to try his abilities was a dark, wizened little man. He sat on his haunches, right arm extended in a rigid gesture. This had no apparent effect, as he was also equipped to deal only with land spirits. Someone went by motor bike to another kampong to bring back an older woman bomoh who could handle sea spirits. The proceedings then continued in a room at the back of the restaurant. A little while later we heard that the girl was responding to treatment. The screaming and superhuman strength of this tiny eighteen year old had lasted two hours. Actually it had started well before midnight, when she was depressed and crying in her room.
At about three in the morning the crisis was over, and we could get some sleep. Next day Ghaz reported that when the girl came to, she had asked why there was sand all over her arms and nightdress, and in her hair. She remembered nothing of the incident. Soon after, her parents arrived to take her back to her kampong. She was very tired and bruised. "How long do you think she will be away?" I asked. "Maybe two days, maybe one week" was the reply. She was absent only for one day, and resumed work the following day. She had been made aware of what happened, and it was accepted by all as an incident without any ominous implications. Emphatic cheerfulness in her response to my anxious enquires contained no trace of shyness over the episode. "Baik, baik" (good), she smiled with positive confidence.
As her cheerful demeanour was resumed, my perplexity began. Two days later Ghaz reported that another possession incident had occurred that morning, and it had been worse in a way. Another girl had been growling like a dog. This time it had not been a hantu air laut (sea spirit), but a hantu darat (land spirit), so the local bomoh had been able to deal with it. These two cases recalled the contagious element in the medieval religious hysteria in convents, notably in the famous 'Devils of Loudun' episode. However, the psychologists' explanation of hysteria seems as incomplete as the terms used by anthropologists — mana meaning supernatural or magical power, and semangat meaning vital force or spirit; labels which leave the underlying questions on possession unanswered. On the other hand, some words do give clues to our understanding. In another originally animistic culture, that of Java, the most common terms for spirit possession are kesurupan(to forget) and ndadi which means not only to trance, but also simply to happen or to become. This illustrates the smooth transition between the unconscious trance state, and the acceptance of it as a happening, as with any event which succeeds another in the phenomenal world.
My grasp of Malay and the girl's English did not permit communication at more than a superficial level. Yet I felt her to be a much stronger personality than the other waitresses, as she approached the guests with assurance, showing interest in their nationality and occupation. Observing my efforts to learn some of the language with a small dictionary, she had taken every chance to join me in an exchange language lesson; how to ask the guests what they would like to eat or drink, etc. Pleasant efficiency characterised her attitude. Essentially she was a typical Malay girl, with all the dignity of her culture, with or without head covering.
Mr Adam, one of the staff, repeated with quiet insistence that her faith had not been strong enough, which was why the spirit had been able to enter. I could not comment on this, but her strength of mind seemed to be an obvious character trait. One incident which had drawn mild disapproval from the small village community was one which would have passed without much reaction in modern Western society. One night she had gone into the town with friends and returned rather late. The extended family/kampong lifestyle did not approve of such completely independent behaviour. I conjectured that such a strong-willed girl could possibly feel the frustration of being in an Islamic culture which allowed less social mobility to women of less sophisticated families. The safety that this restriction afforded to young kampongwomen was generally not resented by more conforming personalities. The stress of waiting for her school exam results could also have contributed a definite anxiety. In the West, we would call her personality type a 'free spirit'. But in the Malay language the term 'free spirit' has a precise meaning – that of a wandering hantu (ghost)! An interesting coincidence.
Here it is appropriate to quote from K. M. Endicott's book An Analysis of Malay Magic, "the most powerful essences are only vaguely defined, while the more clearly defined essences are more vulnerable to the constraint of material boundaries. Free spirits, corresponding to vague anxieties, are much more powerful than semangat, which are bound to the physical bodies from which their clear definition is largely derived." (Endicott, p.132) Vague anxieties could by this definition account for the powerful effects we had witnessed. But also the openness of an inquiring mind could have admitted an uninvited guest inadvertently. Russian-American psychic Olga Worrall, quoted in Realms of Healing by Krippner and Villoldo, states that in a true case of possession, a discarnate spirit "will occupy the body of a person who is easily influenced." Certainly this girl was unusually demonstrative and open to new experiences. Even recalling her extravagant farewell embraces, I was unprepared for the intensity of her welcome, six months later on my return. In the interim I had sent her a photo of herself. As soon as the taxi stopped at the back of the restaurant, she rushed out and dived in on me through the open car door, hugging me wildly. There had been no return of the hantu in the intervening time. She now had a boyfriend, and seemed just as bright, confident and cheerful as before.
There is a lot to be learnt from this encounter. In any Western country, a young girl who exhibited similar violently disruptive behaviour would have been restrained by medical personnel and/or police. Committal to hospital and the administering of strong sedatives would be routine treatment. Dulled and quietened behaviour would have been the result, and a quick return to the community unlikely. The patient would not be made to feel that the episode had been acceptable, although they would certainly not be held responsible. Dismay and embarrassment would be felt in the family concerned. After return from hospital, prolonged counselling would attempt to assist reintegration with the family and the community. This Western approach to handling such a situation contrasts less favourably with the more humane kampong method. I am not suggesting that one type of treatment, developed in a certain culture, can be transferred unmodified to another, just like that.
Each culture produces the corrective mechanisms to cope with the aberrations which occur in that particular culture. So, the age-old way of the bomohin Malaysia, called the dukun in Indonesia, both answer the psychological and spiritual needs of that culture perfectly. In our society, the disturbed behaviour just described which could appear similar, might well include an element of psychosis, or evidence some extreme degenerative condition. But the problem is that in the West, options in treatment are not open to the individual in the initial stage. After such an episode, picking up the pieces will include the pieces which come from an iatrogenic jigsaw set, as well as the individual's own fragmented picture (iatrogenic means caused by medical treatment).
The Malay example above illustrates the problems of a syncretic religious tradition, where an overall and traditional stress is created in attempting to synthesise the indigenous forces of animism with Islam. The earlier skilful integration of this legacy with Hindu tradition and Islam was made over the centuries in Java, but even so, the resulting mix forms a precarious balancing act. This has been forced into the political arena for legitimation in the last twenty years.
Central Java being the bulwark of Javanist tradition, a centralised focus had been formed for those beliefs and that way of thinking to persist. Recently, since the colonial period, there has been politically unrestricted access to a unifying common language, Indonesian. The exclusion of all but the highest class of Indonesians from learning and using Dutch was a device to maintain control by the Dutch colonialists. The Javanese situation had the effect of reinforcing and strengthening the Javanist way of thinking of the masses. In Malaysia on the other hand the English language was freely used by everyone. Also, since the fifteenth century, Malaysia has had a far greater concentration of heterogeneous influence from Chinese and Indian communities.
Despite these differing influences on the outlook of the Malay and the Javanese, the similarity in behaviour, in a predisposition to entering trance states, shows a distinct family likeness. The economic progress of the last twenty years, together with growing Islamic fundamentalism, would have provided a similar cultural overlay for both countries. It could be argued that modernism itself adds to the inherent stresses of a syncretic religion, or any religion for that matter. This interpretation would probably be strongly resisted by adherents of Islam. Dr Paul Stange would contend that an "inner Islamisation" has been achieved in many instances. He warns against simplistic interpretations of the polarities of Javanism and Islam. "Each pole is continually redefined through the process of their interaction" (Stange, p.43). The stormy episode which I witnessed is more easily understood in the light of the dialectic of Islam and indigenous beliefs. To change focus to a Western context, modern orthodox psychology seems unduly limited in its mode of dealing with aberrant social behaviour in comparison with the methods used in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Spirit possession and exorcism was the theme of a Commission convened by the then Bishop of Exeter in the United Kingdom in 1965, and an expanded version of the proceedings was published in 1987. The participating English clerics who were frequently involved with day-to-day cases of exorcism show a similar alignment with the Malays and Javanese in their recognition of paranormal manifestations of social or personal unease and spirit presence. As an addendum to the above, it is worth noting the term used in Java, kesurupan which denotes both trance and forgetting. This implies an ancient awareness which Western cultures have either forgotten or have not considered important to emphasise in this way. From the evidence of UFO abductees, it seems that the connection between trance and complete loss of memory is not simply a socially-sanctioned form of behaviour common to a few remaining animist-based societies. Instead it may be the product of a neuro-physiological mechanism common to human kind. There are others who are able to control and exploit the trance function which we see as a random 'ethnic' aberration. Instead of considering it as such, and treating the experiencer's account as being of doubtful credibility, researchers would do well to study the cultures where the trance phenomenon can still be seen in action, and relay their observations to those directly concerned with testing brain function for more subtle states of consciousness than we have yet been able to determine.
References Endicott, Kirk Michael. (1970) An Analysis of Malay Magic. Oxford University Press, London. Krippner, Stanley & Villoldo, Alberto. (1976) The Realms of Healing. Celestial Arts, California. Perry Michael, (Editor, 1987) Deliverance: Psychic Disturbances and Occult Involvement. SPCK, The Christian Exorcism Study Group, Great Britain. Stange, Paul. (October 1979) Configurations of Javanese Possession Experience in Religious Traditions, Vol.2, No.2, WAIT, Western Australia. Stange, Paul. (1985) Indonesian Religious History, Asian Studies Programme, Murdoch University, Western Australia.
This article is based on one first published in the Proceedings of the Western Australian Intervarsity Barebones Symposium (1992), Postgraduate Student Association, Curtin University of Technology.
The Oz Factor Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 2
The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 2
PINE GAP.
There are two US satellite bases in Australia that are known to the public: the first is called Pine Gap and is located near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, while the second, called Nurrungar, is in South Australia, five hundred kilometres north-west of Adelaide. There exist several conspiracy theories about these bases, especially Pine Gap, that are beyond the scope of this article. However it should be pointed out that UFO researchers who publish conspiracy theories about these bases who have not read the previously mentioned well documented books about them are not doing very much for their credibility. Admittedly these books do not mention UFOs, but they are still important starting points for serious research.
According to Professor Ball the satellites that report down to Pine Gap are Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) ones. SIGINT can be broken up into Communications Intelligence (COMINT), "the interception of foreign communications transmitted by radio or other electromagnetic means", and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) which "consists of information derived from monitoring foreign non-communications electromagnetic radiation". ELINT can further be broken up into Telemetry Intelligence (TELINT) which is "concerned with monitoring of foreign telemetry signals such as those produced in missile tests" and Radar Intelligence (RADINT) "which involves the monitoring of foreign radar emissions." (Ball, 1988, p.2) SIGINT satellites also listen to foreign satellite communications. More details of what all this means are in Ball's book Pine Gap. Processing and analysis of the huge volume of information produced by these satellites are handled by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Because its SIGINT satellites operate as giant vacuum cleaners in the sky, sucking up electromagnetic data, rather than as tracking satellites, it would seem unlikely that Pine Gap has anything to do with tracking UFOs. This does not preclude the possibility that Pine Gap may have some sort of black UFO related mission(s) hidden behind the classified missions already discussed.
Professor Ball is a little vague as to whether Pine Gap also has a Photographic Intelligence (PHOTINT) mission. However an article in The West Australian newspaper (Saturday, 7th September 1996) claimed that Pine Gap "is reportedly one of the earth stations for orbiting US photographic reconnaissance and electronic intelligence satellites." So, do any Pine Gap satellites take photos of UFOs? There is a significant technical difference between taking satellite photographs of fixed ground locations and taking them of small fast moving aerial objects like UFOs. If the Pine Gap satellites do have PHOTINT capability they could probably only take photographs of UFOs if they received appropriate real-time tracking information about their location, unless they had actually landed on the ground. As far as we know, providing trackinginformation is not what Pine Gap does, but it is what Nurrungar does. (A Pine Gap Internet site can be found at www.octa4.net.au/marlinw/)
NURRUNGAR.
The United States satellite station at Nurrungar is a ground station for the US Defence Support Program (DSP) whose geostationary satellites provide the US Air Force Space Command with its first warning of the launch of any nuclear missiles in the event of nuclear war. During the Gulf war they were also used to detect the launching of Iraqi Scud missiles. In other words DSP satellites are designed to detect and track flying objects. To do this they are equipped with 3.63 metre Schmidt infrared telescopes, visible light and ultraviolet sensors, and nuclear detonation detection (NUDET) sensors. The infrared detectors are designed to sense the radiation emitted by nuclear missile booster rockets after they have been launched.
The ultraviolet sensors are designed to detect fluorescing gases around the booster rockets or missile nose cones during their flight. Visible light television cameras on the satellites are also able to transmit pictures to the ground station when necessary. UFO researchers will be interested to note that Professor Ball quotes Philip Klass as an expert on the equipment carried on these satellites. (Ball, 1987, p.22) The NUDET sensors can detect certain nuclear particles, gamma-rays and x-rays from nuclear explosions. (The Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar home-page can be found at www.roxby.net.au/~gumby/JDFN/index.html)
How clearly a satellite that is thirty-six thousand kilometres away can see what is happening down near the ground is highly classified, but one has to assume that DSP satellites, and any more recent versions, have the capability to see things that are as small and fast moving as nuclear missiles, otherwise they would be ineffective. It seems therefore that these satellites would be ideal for tracking UFOs. They wouldn't even need to be told to do it, they would trac k them automatically because of UFOs' resemblance to various missiles. We know that UFOs sometimes radiate very brightly. It is suspected that this is caused by plasma (fluorescing atmospheric gases) surrounding the craft. We also know that UFOs often interfere with radios and televisions which suggests that they do emit some sort of radiation. Given all the different electromagnetic frequencies that DSP satellites can detect, it would probably be safe to assume that they are able to detect and track at least some UFOs and have been doing so for some time. The tracking and film recordings of these craft from such satellites would surely by now have revealed some interesting intelligence. For example, by correlating this tracking data with geographical locations one could perhaps get a better idea of what UFOs are actually doing. A single sighting from a witness on the ground may not tell us very much, but the cumulative data from say ten years of satellite tracking in Australia or anywhere else, including the large proportion of the planet that is covered in water, would present a very different statistical picture.
Some questions to be asked would be, are there more sightings near population centres, do they follow power lines, are they following some sort of grid pattern, do they revisit the same locations at fixed intervals, are they looking at known mineral deposits, or magnetic anomalies, or military bases, or is there no discernible pattern in the sightings? As more data is accumulated, the more revealing and sophisticated such an analysis could become. Different radar signatures for different types of craft could be gathered as well as technical data on acceleration and speed characteristics.
Such tracking data might help us discover whether some UFOs have underground or underwater bases. Unfortunately we must assume that whoever or whatever is operating UFOs isn't stupid. They may have very capable stealth or deception techniques that enable UFOs to pop in and out of view all over the place in a manner that completely befuddles any unfortunate intelligence analyst trying to find a pattern in the sightings.
An example of evasive action taken by aliens can be found in an article called 'Another Astonishing South American Report' by Flying Saucer Review consultant Jane Guma. It describes the case of Orlando Jorge Ferraudi who in August 1965 was taken, fully conscious, into a UFO while fishing by a river on the coast of Brazil. The UFO then set off under water. Using telepathy, an alien explained that this was to avoid radar. After a while they emerged from the sea and flew at a low altitude to the coast of Uruguay, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Africa from where they flew upwards into space. The alien supposedly explained that "We must take these precautions so that we can thus avoid being regarded as invaders or conquerors. We want your people to get used to us slowly, to see us just as like anybody else, because we are not strangers in this part of the Universe." (Guma, p.7) It does however seem strange that the aliens would take such elaborate measures to avoid detection while explaining them to a human so that they eventually get published in a UFO magazine for everyone to read.
Being able to detect and track UFOs in real time would also enable the military to see at once if any of them had crashed. The nearest rapid-deployment recovery team could then be alerted to ensure that any live aliens were apprehended, the UFO debris cleared up, and an appropriate cover story concocted before the media and local authorities got in on the act. By ensuring fast and efficient crash retrieval such a tracking system would contribute to depriving the public of irrefutable evidence of the reality of UFOs, and facilitate the reverse engineering of recovered debris before anyone else got their hands on it.
BLACK PROJECTS.
How likely is it that a satellite station such as Nurrungar is tracking UFOs in addition to its other classified duties? In an article to advertise his book Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny – Insider Account of Alien Contact and Government Cover-Up, retired Staff Sergeant Dan Sherman, who claims to have worked for the National Security Agency as an Intuitive Communicator with aliens, explains how US government extraterrestrial programs are hidden. He claims that behind the usual categories of Secret and Top Secret exist what are called 'Unacknowledged Special Access Programs' (USAPs) otherwise known as 'black' programs. These tightly compartmentalised programs operate on a need-to-know basis. Behind them exist the most highly classified programs which are the extraterrestrial related ones. This ensures that every alien project is carefully camouflaged behind another black project.
This classification system makes good sense and could easily operate at Pine Gap or Nurrungar. Even those personnel with above Top Secret clearances might not know that a few of their colleagues spend some of their time accessing a highly restricted part of the computer system that receives and analyses UFO tracking data. It is a common requirement in such work environments to activate a password controlled screen-saver on your computer terminal every time you get up from your desk.
It might be claimed that, quite apart from stealth technology to prevent satellites from tracking them, UFOs might not emit sufficient electromagnetic radiation to be detected by DSP satellites. However in a detailed technical article in the MUFON UFO Journal called 'Do Our Satellites See UFOs', Ronald S. Regehr addresses this question and concludes that the electromagnetic intensity of at least some UFOs "is certainly detectable by today's technology satellites, thus effectively proving that at last one of our spy satellites could detect UFOs." (Regher, p.18)
While this article has only discussed information about US radar and satellite systems that has almost certainly been superseded by more advanced technology, it must be remembered that an increasing number of other countries are launching sophisticated satellites that may be able to track UFOs as part of their surveillance missions. Such countries include Great Britain, France, Japan and China, with several others in the pipeline. This fact alone may provide some pressure on the United States to come clean about the UFO phenomenon rather than suffer the possible embarrassment of another country releasing such information before they do.
References A Pine Gap Internet site can be found at: http://www.octa4.net.au/marlinw/ Ball, Desmond. (1987) A Base For Debate: The US Satellite Station at Nurrungar. Ball, Desmond. (1988) Pine Gap: Australia and the US Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellite Program. Conway, Graham. (1998, Autumn) The 'Colorado Connection'. Flying Saucer Review, Volume 43/3, pp.20-21. Guma, Jane. (1997, Winter) Another astonishing 10.
Hobbs, David. (no date) An Illustrated Guide To Space Warfare.
Howe, Linda Moulton (1997, August-September) The Roswell Incident: Fragments of evidence. Nexus Vol.4, No.5, pp.73-77.
Regehr, Ronald S. (1994, April) Do our satellites see UFOs? MUFON UFO Journal, No.312, pp.6-9. Richelson, Jeffrey T. & Desmond Ball. (1990) The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries. Sherman, Dan. (1997) Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny – Insider Account of Alien Contact and Government Cover-Up. The Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar home-page: www.roxby.net.au/~gumby/JDFN/index.html
The Oz Factor Entering The Magical Realm by Michael Jordan
The wondrous experiences of Dorothy in the film The Wizard of Oz and Alice in her Wonderland, happened as a result of these two adventurous young ladies being whisked away into a magical realm from whence they eventually returned, unfortunately without a shred of evidence to support their experiences. Prolific writer and researcher in the field of UFOs and related areas, Jenny Randles coined the term the 'Oz Factor', to describe the sensations experienced by those who entered this state. In her 1988 book Abduction, Randles describes the mysterious Oz Factor as, "an induced form of sensory deprivation which seems to alter the state of consciousness of the percipient. It can become visible as a sensation of time standing still, or interfered with, or it manifests as all sound vanishing, a very odd feeling of being isolated from our world into a magic world. It is less easy to describe than recognise, since witnesses often refer to it without having any idea of its significance. This underlines its importance." (Randles, p.57) Ufologists have long been familiar with the reporting of such sensations as a prelude to UFO related experiences including witnesses to so-called abductions. Participants tell of feelings of disassociation and timelessness. The impression created for the individual concerned is one of having temporarily vacated the material world with its distracting sensory input and entered a timeless, silent, dreamlike, mental state, unlike any other previously experienced. Obviously a type of altered state of consciousness.
The records kept by UFO researchers are replete with cases involving aspects such as the paralysis of the witness, periods of missing time, the silence of the craft observed, its rapid or instantaneous disappearance and often the seeming absurdity of a lack of other witnesses, despite the vast size of the craft and the fact that it is seen in broad daylight. These underlying patterns remain pretty standard and common to the Oz Factor, irrespective of language or location. An early example of its operation is recounted by Jenny Randles:
"It occurred one hot and thundery day in the summer of 1944. World War II raged around the village of Le Verger, near Toulon-sur-Arroux, France, when a thirteen-year-old girl, Madeleine Arnoux, decided to risk the many Germans and resistance fighters in the woods to cycle out and pick berries. In doing so she confronted a strange object in the grass, like a small car but dull grey in colour. She then noticed that small men stood beside it, no more than three feet tall and dressed in brown one-piece suits. Feeling desperately afraid, she tried to run but was paralysed and lost all sense of time (the Oz Factor once more). Then, inexplicably, the object had gone and the hold on her was relaxed. She fled back to her village." (Randles, p.23)
In the same way that reports of hauntings describe how ghosts can suddenly disappear from view, not only do UFOs have the capacity to vanish in mid-air, but to disappear from radar screens as well. In their informative and perceptive book of essays on UFOs, UFOs The Final Answer?, David and Therese Barclay include a chapter by Joseph Dormer in which he recounts the following personal experience recounted by a teacher in Rochdale, England:
"It was late November and I had just got home from college. It was already dusk and, as my mother prepared to pull the curtains, she drew my attention to something she could see in the darkening sky. I looked out through the window and saw this extraordinary craft, just hanging there, low in the sky, motionless and completely silent. It was huge. I mean it must have been about 100 feet long. It was cylinder shaped, but rounded at the ends. There were port holes along its entire length, and I could see figures in silver space suits moving about inside. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I wanted to cry out but could not .... I mean I literally could not speak or move. Neither of us could. It was as if we were paralysed. We just stood there, watching this thing as it began to glide slowly across the sky. Then suddenly it was gone. It did not just move off at tremendous speed, I'm certain of that – it just vanished into thin air. And another strange thing was that we seemed to be watching it for only a few minutes or so, yet when I looked at my watch afterwards, I found that a whole hour had gone by." (Barclay, p.130) The confusion caused by the Oz Factor is well illustrated by a case investigated by university lecturer, Frank Johnson, in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, involving the reported abduction of a family of five, three adults and two children, travelling by car from Reading to the Gloucester area. Following the sighting of what they thought was a bright planet, their car appeared to drive itself, passing the same scenery again and again, including a non-existent brightly lit house (obviously an imposed screen, aimed at blocking out something perhaps a little more alarming). During this whole sequence, time appeared to unravel slowly in classic Oz Factor style. The end of the experience was marked by the appearance of a spinning, brightly lit disc and the stunned participants found their way home, eventually finding out that they had arrived an hour later than expected. It would appear that in many instances, witnesses to a UFO event may experience a momentary amnesia, not realising at the time that a time-lapse had occurred. These lapses are apparently introduced so skilfully, that the experiencer is unaware that even one second has passed. Typically they may recall the sighting of a light or UFO, hear a sound like bees buzzing, or feel a type of numbness overcoming them, only to then find themselves in a different position in their car or journey, from what they would normally expect.
Cars that appear to assume control of themselves in silent gliding motion, passing no other traffic on the road, with their occupants seemingly mesmerised are part of the Oz experience. One classic case involved a couple from Zimbabwe, driving from Harare to Durban. Following the sighting of a strange light in the sky, their car appeared to assume control of itself, seeming to glide just above the surface of the road passing unreal scenery. After covering what seemed to be a large number of kilometres, they were to find that their petrol gauge had not moved, a passage of missing time was unaccounted for and they were not where they should have been in their journey to Durban.
A peculiar silence often seems to be part of the Oz state. Well known abductee, Betty Andreasson gives the following description of an encounter in which alien beings came into her house: "I can see a light, sort of pink right now. And now the light is getting brighter. It's reddish orange, and it's pulsating. I said to the children, 'Be quiet, and quick, get in the living room, and whatever it is will go away.' It seemed like the whole house had a vacuum over it. Like stillness all around ... like stillness." (Fowler, p.15)
The ability to eliminate sound, or else create a mind-set in which the observer believes there is no sound, is another aspect of the Oz Factor. The recurring phenomenon of phantom helicopters that sometimes appear in conjunction with UFOs (since the mid-seventies), may look like helicopters in many respects, but may have parts missing, be entirely black without markings and above all, may be soundless. Ann Druffel comments, "Researchers who have studied these reports are inclined to speculate that the mystery choppers are imperfect 'imitations' of earth craft, it seems as if whatever or whoever constructs them are either deliberately falsifying some part of their appearance in order to bring the craft to witnesses' attention or simply do not care whether their constructions are perfect replicas." (Druffel & Rogo, p.155) It's sometimes difficult for doubters of UFO phenomena to miss the opportunity to explain away the conjunction between the mental experiences of the Oz Factor and the sighting of unknown objects as merely tricks played by the mind, a temporary aberration perhaps. If they are psychic then they can't be scientific they argue. However , if UFOs and related phenomena are merely psychic projections or products of imagination, we are left to explain the physical traces they leave behind. Deep impressions at landing sites, unmistakable radar traces and incisions and scars left on some experiencers, constitute just some of the physical evidence. In his excellent book The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot wrote: "I propose that such phenomena are difficult to categorise because we are trying to hammer them into a picture of reality that is fundamentally incorrect. Given that quantum physics has shown us that mind and matter are inextricably linked, I suggested that UFOs and related phenomena are further evidence of this ultimate lack of division between the psychological and physical worlds. They are indeed a product of the human psyche, but they are quite real. Put another way, they are something the human race has not yet learned to comprehend properly, a phenomenon that is neither subjective nor objective but 'omnijective' – a term I coined to refer to this unusual state of existence (I was unaware at the time that Corbin had already coined the term imaginal to describe the same blurred surface of reality, only in the context of the mystical experience of the Sufis)." (Talbot, p.279)
There is little doubt that the pre-eminent psychologist Carl Jung, when he focused on the subject of UFOs, hoped to explain it in terms of his 'Archetype' hypothesis. However, after evaluating the reports and case studies available, he was forced to conclude, "Unfortunately however, there are good reasonswhy the UFO cannot be disposed of in this simple manner." The problem posed for science is that sightings of UFOs are reported by all sections of society including specialists, whose reputations as observers, in other circumstances, would be considered unimpeachable. In addition the phenomenon is polymorphous and can be perceived in a number of different forms. Another major drawback is the fact that not only are we no closer to solving the intrinsic mystery of their substance since attention was first paid to the subject some sixty years ago, but it has expanded to encompass aspects and enigmas previously thought to be entirely unrelated. It would appear then that the Oz Factor is a state of sensory deprivation in which the mind, separated from normal stimuli, concentrates its focus inwardly. As humans, we are either born with, or rapidly develop the ability to form a screen or barrier which can sometimes protect us from unwanted intrusion. Whether this form of traumatic amnesia, with the brain responding to events so utterly different to our normal cultural experience, or mechanically induced as a direct result of the UFO experience, the net result is to leave the experiencer in a state of amnesia. If we accept that the experience is totally hallucinatory, we are faced with a major paradox. How can any hallucination leave ground and radar traces, cause radiation burns and affect the workings of aircraft and automobile engines?
As you would expect, researchers have put forward a number of theories to explain the occurrence of Oz Factor phenomena in conjunction with some UFO experiences, and the possible reasons for the induction of such a state. There is much agreement on the central notion of an attempt to establish contact through consciousness. How ironic that while SETI desperately searches for signs of technological contact from without, other energies may be trying to contact us through our consciousness!
Could the temporary disassociation from the barriers of time and space experienced, be designed to exploit an opening, some sort of gap in time, through which 'actual' information may slip through to our consciousness? Perhaps contact designed to bring us to our senses about the omnijective, to use Talbot's term, holographic nature of the universe that we inhabit. A kind of awakening from the spell of matter. Interestingly, it is known that some animals enter a type of Oz Factor state, in which they appear drugged, many hours before major earth tremors in their locality. Information about this future event is relayed to them during this state.
Well known French astrophysicist and UFO researcher Dr Jacques Vallee, in connection with the contact theory, writes in Messengers of Deception:
"At close range, the UFO phenomenon acts as a reality transformer, triggering for the witness a series of symbolic displays that are indistinguishable from reality. These displays, which frequently begin with a bewildering series of blinking coloured lights of extraordinary intensity, induce a state of intense confusion for the subjects who are vulnerable to the insertion of new thoughts and new visual experiences."
It is as if the confusion and sudden removal from reality as we know it, provides an avenue for re-framing our total picture and effecting changes in our viewpoint. Vallee continues: "What we see emerging in the UFO phenomenon is not gradual contact but rather gradual control – of our beliefs, expectations, fears, hopes and dreams. We know from behavioural psychology that the best schedule of reinforcement is one that combines periodicity with unpredictability (citing the intense patterns of UFO activity followed by quiet periods when it seems to have gone away entirely). Learning is then slow but continuous, it leads to the highest level of adaptation. And it is irreversible. It is interesting to observe that the pattern of UFO waves has the same structure as a schedule of reinforcement."
The idea of receiving information about the true nature of reality, is a recurring one amongst writers and researchers of this subject. Michael Murphy in The Future of the Body, puts it very succinctly: "Are these 'somethings' – aspects of a greater existence, distorted perhaps by the subject's perceptual filters? Are they first glimpses of a 'larger earth'? To a frog with its simple eye the world is a dim array of greys and blacks. Are we like frogs in our limited sensorium, apprehending just part of the universe that we inhabit? Are we as a species now awakening to the reality of multi-dimensional worlds in which matter undergoes subtle reorganisations in some sort of hyperspace? Is visionary experience analogous to the first breathings of early amphibians? Are we ourselves coming ashore to a 'larger earth'?"
Michael Grosso, writing in Mind at Large, contends that there is a relationship between these different forms of contact with human consciousness, originating from a single source of intelligence which makes use of whatever aperture it can locate to instruct our collective mind and modify our basic ideas of the workings of reality. With a difference of opinion from those researchers who support the concept of contact from alien intelligences, lie those who maintain that UFOs are a type of psychic projection. They contend that as our knowledge and belief system changes so are we creating a psychic window through which those energies can interact. The act or state of contact is a real event, but it reflects traumas submerged in the subject's unconscious. Dr Kenneth Ring argues that UFOsare imaginal (not to be confused with imaginary) experiences: "They are similar not only to the confrontations with the real but mind-created world individuals experience during NDEs, but also to those mythic realities shamans encounter during journeys through the subtler dimensions. They are in short, further evidence that reality is a multi-layered and mind-generated hologram." In The UFO Experience, one of the founding fathers of UFO research, Dr Allan Hynek, had this to say: "It seems to us that rather than being extraterrestrial in any simple sense, UFOs could well be part of the same larger intelligence which has shaped the tapestry of religion and mythology since the dawn of human consciousness."
Does the state of mind described by the term the Oz Factor, then, create the bridge necessary for this type of contact? Can we under the right circumstances attract the imaginal into our three-dimensional world? In response to these questions Michael Talbot writes: "At present we simply do not know, but in a world that is comprised less of solid objects travelling in space and time and more of ghostly holograms of energy sustained by processes that are at least partially connected to human consciousness, such events may not be as impossible as they appear .... the evidence suggests that we are still children when it comes to understanding the true nature of time. And like all children poised on the threshold of adulthood, we should put aside our fears and come to terms with the way the world really is."
References Barclay, David & Therese Marie. (1993) UFOs The Final Answer? Druffel, Ann & Rogo, Scott. (1989) The Tujunga Canyon Contacts. Fowler, Raymond. (1979) The Andreasson Affair. Grosso, Michael. (1989) Private communication with author, February 17, 1999. Hynek, Allen. (1972) The UFO Experience. Jung, Carl. (1958) Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Murphy, Michael. (1993) The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Future Evolution of Human Nature. Randles, Jenny. (1988) Abduction. Ring, Kenneth. (1989) Towards an Imaginal Interpretation of UFO Abductions. ReVision 11, No.4. Talbot, Michael. (1991) The Holographic Universe. Vallee, Jacques. (1979) Messengers of Deception.
Tracking UFOs by Satellite By Simon Harvey-Wilson
For most of the cold war the superpowers' ground and satellite early warning systems would have needed to be able to track UFOs in order to distinguish them from nuclear missiles. It would have been in neither side's interests to start World War III because for example NATO mistook a flight of five UFOs flying westwards from Russia for the first salvo of a nuclear strike against the West.
Detailed information on these early warning systems remains classified despite the end of the cold war. This may be one reason why Western nations have been reluctant to acknowledge the reality of UFOs. If they did admit their existence, the scientific community and those who had swallowed the 'They don't exist' line might demand to see the radar evidence. But how could the Pentagon provide such proof and still keep the extraordinary capabilities of such a surveillance infrastructure secret? Yet without providing such evidence their claims would be no more convincing than those of the UFO community who likewise cannot produce any radar tapes. The worldwide amateur UFO research community probably does not own a single radar set, air traffic control computer, jet fighter, or satellite between them. All such hardware is in the hands of governments who so far have refused to use them to settle the UFO question.
I believe that Western governments would rather that the public knew as little as possible about their tracking systems, firstly for national security reasons and secondly because, once the public knew how extensive and sophisticated they were, they would realise that they were almost certainly capable of proving whether UFOs exist or not within little more than twenty-four hours. Instead we are being asked to believe that such governments have apparently discovered nothing conclusive in this field for fifty years.
Where are these early warning systems, what can they do and where does information about them come from? The first thing to point out is that all the information in this article comes from open sources. Anyone can look it up in the library or on the Internet, provided you know where to look. Writers and scholars who specialise in this subject call it 'Strategic Studies'. My first source is a book called An Illustrated Guide To Space Warfare by David Hobbs, who was a researcher at Aberdeen University's Centre for Defence Studies. Three other sources are The Ties That Bind:Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries by Jeffrey T. Richelson & Desmond Ball; Pine Gap by Des Ball; and A Base For Debate: The US, Satellite Station at Nurrungar also by Des Ball. Professor Desmond Ball has been the head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and Dr Richelson has been a consultant and Senior Fellow at the National Security Archive in the USA. I assume therefore that they know what they are talking about. It should also be emphasised that none of these books mentions UFOs.
But why, you might ask, haven't these writers had their knuckles rapped for releasing classified information? As far as I can gather the answer is because all the information they discuss is derived from open sources and is either out of date or sufficiently vague so as not to be of any threat to national security. Nevertheless, out of date information is still relevant to the UFO debate. If it can be shown that the world's superpowers had the equipment to track and therefore research UFOs thirty or more years ago, then it is most unlikely that today's equipment is any less capable, which suggests that they have been concealing their knowledge of the UFO phenomenon for all that time.
How would you track UFOs if you had an almost unlimited budget? We know that some UFOs can be picked up by radar. There are numerous reports available which attest to that. Most civilian airport radars have a limited range and it is not the job of civilian air traffic controllers to keep a look out for UFOs. Thankfully they devote their time to stopping passenger jets from crashing into each other, and most of us would prefer that they kept doing precisely that. However military radar plays a different role. In theory any nation's air force is supposed to be interested in identifying everything that flies into its air space in case it turns out to be hostile. Despite government protestations to the contrary, this would definitely include UFOs.
BALLISTIC MISSILE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM. The United States BMEWS system is vast, complex, and has a degree of redundancy built into it so that, if one part fails or is damaged, another part can take over. Let us deal with the ground-based systems first. Nuclear weapons can be fired from submarines, from underground silos, from the air, and perhaps even from space. To protect the North American continent, the USA and Canada cooperate in maintaining a huge radar shield over their combined land mass which can detect incoming missiles or craft from any direction. Because land-based missiles from the old USSR would have probably come by the shortest route, which is over the North Pole, this early warning system, now called the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), is especially strong in that direction. The NORAD operations centre is inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs in the Rocky Mountains. NORAD is answerable both to the Canadian Prime Minister and the US President. (More information about NORAD can be found on the Internet at: www.space.com.af.mil/norad/index.htm) To complete the radar shield there are also huge radar beams facing West, South and East from the North American coast, so that nothing that is detectable by radar can fly into Canada or the USA from any direction without tripping this system. This means that any radar-detectable UFO that is seen by the public anywhere within Canada or the USA must fall into one of these four categories.
It must have been detected by the radar system as it flew past the coastline, or in from space, or
It must have somehow got through the system undetected by using stealth, inter-dimensional travel or something of that nature, or
It must have come from an underground or underwater alien base located within Canada or the USA, or
It must be a craft owned by either the US or Canadian government or member of the public such as a well financed inventor.
This may be one reason why Western air forces these days do not seem very interested in UFO reports from the public. They probably already have all the details they need on a tracking computer somewhere.
The US military also has its own missile tracking system separate from its NORAD cooperation with Canada. This system extends into space and around the planet. The US Air Force Space Command runs something called SPACETRACK which provides data on satellites and missiles from its network of sensors around the world, including NASA's tracking systems. SPACETRACK also gets information from the US Navy Space Surveillance System (NAVSPASUR) which operates a line of radar stations running from Georgia to California that transmit a fan-shaped radar beam into space to a height of about fourteen thousand kilometres. This system can detect and calculate the orbital characteristics of any satellite or other object breaking the beam. (Hobbs, p.76)
SPACETRACK is also linked to something called the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) which consists of a world-wide network of 100 centimetre telescopes linked to low-light-level television cameras which are powerful enough to provide real-time pictures of an object as small as a football in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the ground. By now these cameras may be even more sensitive and include infra-red sensors. I assume that this means that, if a UFO or mother-ship is detected by radar somewhere in orbit around the planet, one of the GEODSS telescopes somewhere on the planet can be asked to film it within minutes. There are GEODSS telescopes in New Mexico, South Korea, Hawaii, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Portugal (Hobbs, p.80) and probably several other places. This would suggest that someone within the US military-intelligence community by now has a whole video library of state-of-the-art UFO footage.
To show how coordinated the US military's early warning systems are, it is interesting to read a 19th August 1998 press release from the US Air Force News Service which detailed the retirement of General Howell M. Estes III after thirty-three years in the US Air Force. Before his retirement General Estes simultaneously held three positions. He was the commander in chief of NORAD (CINCNORAD) which meant that he "was responsible for the air sovereignty of the United States and Canada, as well as providing tactical warning and attack assessment." He was also the commander in chief of US Space Command (USCINCSPACE) which meant that "he commanded the unified command spacecontrol and support operations." And finally, he was commander directing of US Air Force Space Command (COMAFSPC). In that job "he directed satellite control, warning, space launch and ballistic missile operations through a worldwide network of support facilities and bases." General Estes it seems had a very responsible position, but the press release neglected to say whether tracking UFOs was also a part of his job brief. His replacement is General Richard B. Myers.
The US early warning system is not limited to the North American continent. They have installations on friendly territory around the planet, occasionally in places one has never heard of. Some of them have remarkable capabilities, for example the Cobra Dane radar system, located on the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, "is sensitive enough to detect a grapefruit-sized metallic object at a distance in excess of 2,200 miles [3,500km]. In its tracking mode it can simultaneously handle up to 200 objects at ranges of up to about 1,250 miles [2,000km]." (Hobbs, p.76) I wonder how many UFOs they have tracked over the last twenty-five years and who got to look at the radar tapes. There is little point in having such marvellous technology if an intelligence analyst somewhere does not get to see the data it produces.
What evidence is there that such US radar systems are actually used to track UFOs? In an article called 'The Roswell Incident: Fragments of Evidence' by Linda Moulton Howe she quotes an anonymous informant's recollections of what his grandfather, who claimed to have been on the Roswell crash retrieval team in 1947, had told him about the military's concern about UFOs entering US airspace. The grandfather claimed they had "recommended to the President that a Space Program be set into motion and that a system of satellites be placed into orbit by 1957, and this satellite system be patched into the DEW Line system (Distant Early Warning radar stations at 70th parallel across North America) which later became NORAD (North America Radar Defence). Grandad stated that it was his opinion that NORAD was formed not only to track possible ICBMs from hostile nations, but as an established detection system for UFO craft." Although this claim does not constitute concrete evidence, it would be very puzzling, if not irresponsible, if the US military was not doing their best to track UFOs. After all, it's not as if they are short of (taxpayers') money.
Further evidence that NORAD may be involved in tracking UFOs is to be found in an article called The 'Colorado Connection' by Graham Conway in Flying Saucer Review. Conway gives several examples of Canadian residents who had rung their local air force base to report seeing a UFO, only to find themselves patched through to someone in NORAD, Colorado who took the details.
SATELLITE SYSTEMS.
So far we have only discussed ground-based tracking systems which are limited by their inability to see beyond the horizon, although over-the-horizon radar can see further. However nothing compares to the view from space. In my opinion using satellites to detect and/or track UFOs would be the most cost-effective method because such systems are already paid for, are already there watching out for nuclear missiles, and are already classified. Any extra work they did would go unnoticed. But their most important advantage is that satellites can see a huge area of the planet at one time.
Most surveillance, communication and weather satellites are 'parked' in what is called geosynchronous or geostationary orbit. This means that the speed at which they naturally orbit the planet matches exactly the speed at which the planet rotates. That means that, when seen through a telescope from the ground, the satellite appears to be stationary. This illusion occurs because the ground that the viewer is standing on is actually moving at the same speed as the satellite. Therefore, if you want your surveillance satellite to monitor a particular area of the planet you just park it in a geostationary orbit above your target area, and it effectively just sits there looking down. One of the disadvantages of this system is that everyone else who can afford it is doing the same thing. The geostationary orbit above the equator is by now so crowded with satellites that they will soon have to install parking meters up there. Another disadvantage is that geostationary orbit is about 36,000 kilometres above the ground which means that getting a clear picture isn't easy. Add that to the fact that the ground beneath the satellite may be covered by clouds, and spends half the day in darkness as the planet revolves, and one begins to see why the spy satellite business is so expensive.
The field of view or 'footprint' of a geostationary surveillance satellite covers an enormous area of the planet. For example a satellite parked over the equator near Singapore would be able to see a circle beneath it that extended from above the Arctic circle in the north to below the Antarctic circle in the south and from a line roughly joining Cairo to Moscow to the west to well past New Zealand to the east. This is a vast area that includes most of Russia, the whole of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Australia. With this kind of coverage one only needs to maintain three such satellites evenly spaced around the equator to be able to view the entire planet except the North and South poles. To function effectively, a surveillance satellite must transmit the data it has recorded to a receiving station on the ground that is in line of sight beneath it, because electromagnetic radiation will only go in straight lines. That is why the receiving stations for any geostationary satellites that are looking at Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, India or China must be on the same side of the planet as those countries. And from a geopolitical perspective, the most suitable place to locate such satellite bases is in Australia.
“If Aliens Really Are Visiting Us, Why Don’t They Just Land On The White House Lawn?”
‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ Or: How the CIA Learned to Worry About UFOs and Love Hollywood
By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers 12-1-13
The first UFO movie to feature a human-looking extraterrestrial came in 1951 with The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which the enlightened alien Klaatu and his indestructible robot Gort land their flying saucer in Washington D.C. Their mission: to warn of the dangers atomic weaponry poses not only to humanity, but to the denizens of other worlds in the universe.
The movie opens with Klaatu’s flying saucer being tracked on radar at high altitude before it lands on the President's Park Ellipse in the nation’s Capitol. Not quite the White House lawn, but close enough, and hence the popular question: “If aliens really are visiting us, why don’t they just land on the White House Lawn?” The obvious response is that aliens are unlikely to model their diplomatic strategies on Hollywood entertainment.
No sooner has Klaatu’s craft touched down than it is encircled by US soldiers with itchy trigger fingers. As he steps out of his craft, Klaatu announces: “We have come to visit you in peace and with good will.” But the military doesn’t buy it, and, when the alien reaches into his flight-suit and produces a peculiar-looking device, a jittery soldier presumes it to be a weapon and opens fire on poor Klaatu, wounding him and destroying the object he was holding. In response to this act of aggression, Gort, Klaatu’s humanoid robot, emits a powerful beam from his visor which he uses to systematically disintegrate any and all military hardware on the scene – much to the horror of the military and civilian onlookers. Gort continues his defensive actions until Klaatu utters the now iconic phrase: “Klaatu Barada Nikto!” at which point the robot ceases its attack and returns to its formerly placid state. Klaatu then explains to the military that the destroyed object was intended as a gift for the US President – a viewing device through which he could have glimpsed the wonders of life on other planets.
After Klaatu is taken into custody, the military attempts to unlock the secrets of his craft (which is still ‘parked’ just a stone’s throw from the White House). But these efforts prove futile as the metal skin of the alien saucer is utterly impregnable, withstanding cutting torches and even diamond drills. Soon enough, Klaatu escapes from his captivity and decides to lodge at a boarding house under an alias: “Mr. Carpenter.” It is at the boarding house that Klaatu befriends Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), a World War II widow, and her son Bobby (Billy Gray), both of whom are – initially, at least – oblivious to his extraterrestrial nature.
When Klaatu asks Bobby who is the greatest person on Earth, the young science fanatic tells him it’s the leading American scientist professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), who happens to live in D.C. This leads to a meeting between Klaatu and Barnhardt in which the former tells the latter that the people of the other planets are deeply concerned about our recent development of atomic power and its destructive potential both on Earth and on other planets.
Klaatu tells Barnhardt that if his anti-nuke message goes unheeded “planet Earth will be eliminated.” This promps the professor to arrange a meeting of scientists at Klaatu’s ship; however, in order that the scientists take Klaatu seriously, Barnhardt suggests that the alien first give a demonstration of his power. Thus, Klaatu arranges for a thirty-minute worldwide power black-out, essentially bringing planet Earth to a standstill.
When the blackout ends and the military finally catch up with Klaatu, he is shot and fatally wounded. Gort takes Klaatu’s corpse back to the saucer where Helen (now fully aware of Klaatu’s alien nature) watches as the alien is brought back from the dead through the use of advanced technology. Klaatu’s revival is only temporary, however, as even his science cannot truly conquer death; this power, he tells Helen, is reserved solely for the “Almighty Spirit.”
In the film’s closing scene, Klaatu steps out of his saucer and addresses the scientists that Barnhardt has assembled at the scene in what is today regarded as one of the silver screen’s most memorable speeches:
“I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure... It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”
CIA involvement? The depiction in The Day the Earth Stood Still of a human-looking extraterrestrial warning against the use of nuclear weaponry came two years before controversial contactee George Adamski claimed to have received his own anti-nuke message from the human-like alien, Orthon. Throughout the 1950s, and in every decade since, UFO experiencers claimed to have received similar eco-pacifist messages from human-like alien beings. While it is very tempting to conclude that the experiencers were simply taking their cue from Hollywood fiction, it is important to remember that The Day the Earth Stood Still contained factually accurate UFOlogical detail, some of which was, in all likelihood, inserted by the US government.
Consider, for example, the testimony of Linda Moulton Howe. The Emmy award-winning filmmaker and journalist claims that, while conducting research for a UFO documentary in 1983, she was told by Air Force Intelligence officers that The Day the Earth Stood Still was “inspired by the CIA,” and was “one of the first government tests of public reaction [to an alien landing].”
Screenwriter Edmund H. North
It is notable that the screenwriter of The Day the Earth Stood Still –Edmund H. North – was a Major in the Army Signal Corps prior to being selected by 20th Century Fox to pen the script. During his time in the Corps, North had been in charge of training and educational documentaries, and later established himself as a Hollywood scribe of patriotic war films including Sink the Bismark! (1960) and Submarine X-1 (1968), as well as Patton (1970), for which he received an Oscar – all of which raises the possibility that he maintained an official or quasi-official role in the government’s cinematic propaganda campaigns throughout his career.
More significantly, 20th Century Fox production chief Darryl Zanuck – the man responsible for overseeing the production of The Day the Earth Stood Still – was himself in charge of an Army Signal Corps documentary unit during the Second World War and was, at the time of the movie’s production, a board member of the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE), which was established by the CIA in 1949. As a star member of the NCFE, Zanuck regularly rubbed shoulders with the organisation’s executive committee, which included future CIA Director Allen Dulles and future US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1951 – when the The Day the Earth Stood Still was being written, produced and released – the President of the NCFE was General Charles Douglas (C.D.) Jackson, who served as Deputy Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during WWII, and would later be appointed as special advisor to President Eisenhower on Psychological Warfare. He was, in the words of historian Frances Stoner Saunders, “one of the most influential covert strategists in America.” Jackson referred to Darryl Zanuck as being among a group of Hollywood “friends” – including Jack Warner and Walt Disney – on whom the government could rely “to insert in their scripts and in their action the right ideas with the proper subtlety.”
With this in mind, and in light of what USAF intelligence officers allegedly asserted to Linda Moulton Howe about The Day the Earth Stood Still being a CIA test of public reaction to open ET contact, a memo from Darryl Zanuck to the movie’s producer, Julian Blaustein (also a veteran of the Army Signal Corps) and screenwriter Edmund North makes for fascinating reading. In the memo, dated August 10, 1950, Zanuck stresses that that every effort should be made to “compel the audience to completely accept [emphasis in original] this story as something that could possibly happen in the not too distant future.” Zanuck placed particular emphasis on the now iconic scene in which the alien Klaatu lands his flying saucer in Washington, D.C. before emerging to address the public. Zanuck advised Blaustein and North to “treat it as realistically as you possibly can,” even suggesting that the scene play out documentary style: “You should suddenly hear radio programs being interrupted with startling flash announcements from Washington, New York, Los Angeles, etc. The whole nation is ‘listening in.’ This should be dramatized like the opening of a documentary film.” The audience must “‘accept’ our entire project,” said Zanuck.
The script for The Day the Earth Stood Still was finally locked and approved by Darryl Zanuck on February 21, 1951. Virtually all of his script suggestions were followed. As a final thought on the movie in the context of propaganda and persuasion, the reader might find some significance in the following statement made by Zanuck in 1943 during his time in the Signal Corps: “If you have something worthwhile to say, dress it up in the glittering robes of entertainment and you will find a ready market… without entertainment, no propaganda film is worth a dime.”
Further circumstantial evidence for government collusion in the production of The Day the Earth Stood Still comes from Paul Davids, the writer/producer of the 1994 Showtime TV movie, Roswell. According to Davids, Robert Wise was a firm believer in ET visitation and his belief was based on authoritative information provided to him by possible government insiders.
“He [Wise] met with me in his office in Beverly Hills,” Davids told me during a 2013 interview. “He told me he absolutely did believe that the saucers were real and that some of them were extraterrestrial. He believed it not because he had seen one, but because of all the information that had come to him while he was making The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Wise told Davids that scientists and engineers from Washington had taken him aside during filming and talked to him about UFOs. “What they told him convinced him that the government took this really seriously, that some of these craft were visitors from space.”
UFO technology
Klaatu's Flying Saucer
Precisely what these scientists and engineers from Washington told Wise about UFOs is unknown, but it’s fair to say that The Day the Earth Stood Still boasts a remarkable degree of UFOlogical verisimilitude. In earlier movies, UFOs were clunky-looking contraptions, as with The Flying Saucer of 1950, in which the eponymous craft is little more than a circular plane on wheels – it even has a cockpit resembling that of a military aircraft. The sleek, domed saucer shape typically described in witness reports and in government documentation since 1947 was not realized onscreen until 1951 in The Day the Earth Stood Still. More notably, the subtle, uniform glow given off by Wise’s saucer calls to mind the appearance of ionized air – a common effect recalled by UFO witnesses around the world and thought to be the product of electromagnetic propulsion systems.
Klaatu’s concern about our use of nuclear weapons even has precedent in official government documentation (classified at the time) describing UFO incursions in restricted airspace over US nuclear bases. On January 31, 1949, the FBI issued a memo on UFOs, entitled “Protection of Vital Installations.” The classified document was sent to the Army’s G-2, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. It reveals that a meeting between these authorities had recently taken place concerning UFOs, and states that “the matter of ‘Unidentified Aircraft’ or ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,’ otherwise known as ‘Flying Discs,’ ‘Flying Saucers,’ and ‘Balls of Fire,’ is considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces.” The FBI document catalogues a list of incursions by unknown objects into restricted airspace surrounding the Atomic Energy Commission’s highly sensitive research installation at Los Alamos, New Mexico, throughout December 1948 and into early 1949. Stunningly, the memo goes on to explain that “the unidentified phenomena travel at the rate of speed estimated at a minimum of three miles per second and a maximum of twelve miles per second, or a mean calculated speed of seven and one-half miles per second, or 27,000 miles per hour.” Even more eye-popping are the memo’s statements that “on two separate occasions a definite vertical change in path was indicated,” and that the appearance of the objects was “round in a point of light with a definite area to the light’s source.”
Another real-life parallel in the movie is the impenetrable metal of Klaatu’s craft, in which we see shades of Roswell. Dozens of first and second hand witnesses have testified that debris recovered from the Roswell crash in July of 1947 was uncuttable, untearable, unburnable and undentable – essentially indestructible. Additionally, the shrill sound emitted by Klaatu’s flying saucer also has been a common feature in UFO close encounter reports from the 1940s to present day, with witnesses often associating high-pitch whirring, humming, or hissing sounds with UFOs.
The appearance and glow of Klaatu’ saucer; its impenetrable metal skin, and the high-pitched noise it emits; UFOs exhibiting an interest in our nuclear capabilities… such details could easily have been slipped in at the behest of the CIA during the screenwriting phase through the Agency’s high-level asset Darryl Zanuck by way of his fellow Army Signal Corps propagandists – screenwriter Edmund North and Producer Julian Blaustein. And details could have been fine-tuned during the filming stage by on-set advice from Wise’s Washington scientists. Frustratingly, due to the CIA’s longstanding unwritten motto: “Nothing on paper,” it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
One of the most interesting details in The Day the Earth Stood Still is that Klaatu – an alien – is entirely human in appearance. Here again we find striking UFOlogical parallels.
Aliens among us In the mid-1960s, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a Cosmic Top Secret Study of the UFO problem, titled The Assessment – sort of a NATO version of the US Air Force’s 1948 Estimate of the Situation. But while the USAF study merely concluded that some UFOs were likely “interplanetary” in origin, The Assessment went many steps further – this according to the testimony of Robert Dean, a retired US Army Command Sergeant Major who was assigned to NATO’s SHAPE headquarters in Brussels during the mid-1960s.
Dean claims that, while stationed at SHAPE in 1964, he had limited access to The Assessment, and its conclusions were shocking. Dean asserts that “part of the study stated that [NATO] had come to the conclusion that we had four different civilizations – cultures, intelligences – that were present here on Earth and that were visiting us and interacting with us.” Particularly interesting, says Dean, was that one of the alien groups was identical in appearance to humans; or rather, we were identical to them. This was of grave concern to NATO leadership.
Delivering a public lecture at the Civic Theater in Leeds, England, in 1994, Dean stated that some of the human-looking ETs were so similar to us that “they could sit next to you in an airplane or in a restaurant in a coat and tie or a dress and you would never know. They could be sitting next to you in a theater like this.” Dean noted that “this was a matter of great concern to the admirals and generals at SHAPE Headquarters in Paris. Some of the discussions which went on in the War Room were kind of frightening and some of them were rather amusing. One officer said: ‘My God, man, do you realize that these [aliens] could be walking up and down the corridors of SHAPE Headquarters and we wouldn’t even know who the hell they were?’”
In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu effortlessly infiltrates human society, walking among us unnoticed, casually but keenly observing our curious ways. While many UFO movies have explored the idea of hostile alien infiltration of our society, only a handful have looked at the flipside of the coin – and this despite numerous cases in the UFO literature of seemingly benevolent, human-looking aliens walking freely among us.
A typical report along these lines dates back to 1954 when, on December 9, a farmer in Linha da Vista in Brazil observed on his land three men and their landed craft, which was enveloped in a haze. Two of the men were outside of the craft inspecting their surroundings, while the third was visible inside it. The craft made a noise “like a sewing machine.”
Shocked at the sight before him, the farmer dropped his pitchfork. One of the men then approached, picked it up, examined it, and handed it back to the farmer. The two beings on the ground then joined the third in their craft, motioning the farmer not to come too close. The craft then took off. Hardly the stuff of Hollywood nightmares. The beings in this case wore “brown coveralls, ending with shoes which had no heels.” They were “of average height, had broad shoulders, long hair, very white skin and slanted eyes.”
These blonde, white-skinned ‘Nordic’ UFO occupants – and variants thereof – have been reported in every decade since the 1920s, and on every continent (for literally hundreds of raw witness reports of human-like aliens beings, see the 1969 book The Humanoids, edited by Charles Bowen).
Klaatu as Christ The one aspect of The Day the Earth Stood Still that dates it UFOlogically and reminds us of its firm roots in Hays-code-era Hollywood is its subtle allusions to Christianity. Klaatu’s reference to “The Almighty Spirit” is a clear nod to God and was intended by the film’s writers to be understood in a Christian context. It is no accident, for example, that Klaatu is given the alias of “Carpenter” – Christ’s worldly occupation as described in scripture. Nor is it coincidence that Klaatu – a man with otherworldly powers who preaches peace to the masses – is killed only to be resurrected before rising into the sky (in a flying saucer). But the film’s Christian allegory is ironic, given that, in many contact cases, UFO occupants have spoken about a divine power in secular and distinctly non-Christian terms, speaking of God not as a supreme (male) ‘being’, but instead espousing the notion of a universal life force or all-pervasive cosmic energy.
For us, what you call God is a form of absolute energy,” the Argentinean contactee Orlando Jorge Ferraudi claimed to have been told by a human-like UFO occupant in August 1956, “and as to death, it is only a change in molecular structure, a change of state.” In a UFO contact case from Campitello in Italy, in July, 1968, a human-like being with slightly feline features allegedly told car salesman Walter Marino Rizzi that “God is everywhere; in us, plants, stones, grass, and nature – everything that exists,” and added that when his own people die of natural causes, it is as a result of “exhaustion of cosmic energy.” In these terms, alien ‘faith’ would seem to have more in common with the Eastern philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism than with Christianity.
Legacy In 1995, The Day the Earth Stood Still was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” – and rightfully so, for its influence cannot be understated. This was not an obscure B-movie catering solely to frisky teens at the drive-in; this was a major motion picture event – a high quality studio product that had the enthusiastic backing of one of the most influential figures in Hollywood (Darryl Zanuck) and that was seen by millions of cinemagoers the world over. One of those cinemagoers was Ronald Reagan. Himself no stranger to the movie business, Reagan starred in numerous B-movies between the late-1930s and mid-1960s. He was also an avid movie-watcher, and no motion picture struck quite such a chord with the future Commander in Chief as The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Famously, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 1987, President Ronald Reagan said:
“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside of this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?”
It is a matter of public record that Reagan was himself a UFO witness, which he would repeat publicly on multiple occasions throughout his Presidency – may have been directly inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. According to Presidential UFO researcher Grant Cameron, “World peace and aliens were never far from Reagan’s mind. He used to walk around the White House asking people if they had seen the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, uttering the phrase ‘Klaatu barada nikto.’” Just as the character of Helen had uttered the alien phrase in the nick of time and saved the world, Reagan planned to do the same, says Cameron.
Cameron even posits the notion that Reagan’s fascination with The Day the Earth Stood Still may actually have led to the end of the Cold War: “In 1989, inspired by Klaatu’s words, ‘There must be security for all, or no one is secure,’ Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and asked his friend Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall.’ Gorbachev removed the wall which separated the two Germanys, and there has been peace between the West and the Eastern bloc countries ever since.”
But Reagan is not the only President to have been inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. On March 21, 2012, while in Maljamar, New Mexico, President Barack Obama paraphrased Klaatu’s immortal line: “We have come to isit you in peace and with good will.” Addressing a crowd of reporters, Obama declared: “It was as a wonderful trip... we landed in Roswell. I announced to people when I landed that ‘I come in peace.’” It was a cheap tactic to elicit some laughs and to associate a real, historical UFO incident with Hollywood fiction. Perhaps someone should have pointed out to the President that The Day the Earth Stood Still was a poor choice in this regard, standing, as it arguably does, as one of the most UFOlogically accurate movies in history.
As most people in the UFO community will be aware, Jesse Marcel Jr died in August. Jesse had been 10 in 1947, when his father, the intelligence officer at the military base at Roswell, woke him to show him pieces he said had come from the crash of a flying saucer. Whatever one believes crashed, with Jesse Jr’s passing, the last witness with a direct and undisputed link to the Roswell story is gone. The time is right, therefore, to ask what many ufologists might regard as a heretical question – is it time to give up on Roswell?
Any police officer will tell you that your best chance of solving a crime comes very early in the investigation, often within 48 hours. Witnesses can easily be located and their memories are fresh. The crime scene is uncontaminated and evidence can be quickly secured and analysed. As I know from my government work, UFO investigations are similar, in that if you don’t solve a case quickly, your chances of doing so diminish rapidly, for pretty much the same reasons as I cited in relation to police investigations.
Once a police investigation has run for a certain time, with no successful outcome, the situation is reviewed. Resources are finite, new crime reports are coming in all the time and officers ask whether it’s worth continuing to investigate a case that seems unlikely to be solved, or whether resources might better be targeted at the new investigations. That’s not to say that the unsolved cases are closed; rather, they’re put on hold, until some new witness comes forward, a new piece of evidence emerges, or some new scientific technique (e.g. DNA testing) is developed which allows old cases to be successfully revisited. Is it time for the UFO community to do the same in relation to Roswell? I think the answer is yes, for two reasons.
The first reason is the obvious one. If it’s unlikely that a UFO incident that took place over 65 years ago is suddenly going to be solved, why waste the time and resources on it anymore? Imagine what might be achieved if the effort currently put into solving Roswell was focused on more recent cases, or onto more general UFO-related projects such as trend analysis of past cases, looking for patterns that have previously been missed, that might tell us something genuinely new and useful about the phenomenon.
The second reason is rather more subtle, but perhaps no less important. What message does it send politicians and the mainstream media if ufology’s so-called “Best Case” happened over 65 years ago? I suggest it sends the message that ufology is stuck in the past, looking at something that is as much history as mystery. Has nothing more interesting happened since 1947?
In Neuro-linguistic programming (and in the business community) there’s a saying that “If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else”. Similarly, there’s the military concept of “reinforcing failure”, which is something to be avoided. And yet, I ask myself, isn’t this precisely what ufologists are doing with their endless attempts to investigate and re-investigate something that happened long before most of us were born?
Nobody can (or should) stop anyone investigating Roswell if that’s what they want to do. But those who do so should go in with their eyes open, realise they’re unlikely to succeed, and consider whether they might better target their efforts elsewhere.
Put bluntly, if we haven’t solved Roswell by now, the chances are that we never will. Continuing the police analogy, Roswell has become the ufological equivalent of the hunt for Jimmy Hoffa or the search for the identity of Jack the Ripper. It’s hugely interesting from a historical perspective, and there are lots of TV shows about it, but you don’t see cops working the case.
Another relevant point here is that the case has so polarised views in the UFO community that it’s become little more than the battleground for an ugly skeptic versus believer dogfight. Many people on both sides of the belief spectrum regard the case as already having been conclusively proven, either as an alien spacecraft, or as Project Mogul. And when a serious, mainstream journalist – Annie Jacobsen – tackles the subject, what do we get? A story about a Soviet plot to cause mass hysteria in America with a remote-controlled circular craft and grotesque children who are the result of experiments from Nazi scientists. And we mustn’t forget the alien autopsy fiasco, or “Anonymous”, the supposed CIA whistleblower whose ‘deathbed testimony’ about Roswell and UFOs is ufological buzzword bingo at its cheesiest. Roswell has come a long way, but it’s a dead end, part pop culture, part parody.
s time to realise that the Holy Grail is illusory and that some sacred cows should be slaughtered before they become mad and infect the rest of the herd.
The UFO community should face the facts. Roswell is dead. It’s time to move on.
Nick Pope is a former employee of the UK Ministry of Defense. From 1991 to 1994 he ran the British Government's UFO project and has recently been involved in a five-year program to declassify and release the entire archive of these UFO files. Nick Pope held a number of other fascinating posts in the course of his 21-year government career, which culminated in his serving as an acting Deputy Director in the Directorate of Defense Security. He now works as a broadcaster and journalist, covering subjects including space, fringe science, defense and intelligence.
Nick's next article will be published on January 1, 2014!
Paranormal Witness, Season 3Episode 20, The Rendlesham Files
Paranormal Witness, Season 3 Episode 20, The Rendlesham Files Synopsis/Description: Paranormal Witness, Season 3 Episode 20, The Rendlesham Files Several senior American airmen, including a lieutenant colonel, describe seeing what they believe were UFOs near a nuclear weapons base in Suffolk, England, in the third-season finale.
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The government of Brazil has openly acknowledged the topic since the 1950's and has released a number of UFO files from their investigations. From 1969 up until 1972 Brazil had an official UFO research organization called The System for the Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (SIOANI). It'd investigation were open to the public, and they would often work with civilian UFO researchers. However, when the US closed their UFO investigation program, Project Blue Book, the Brazilians soon followed their lead and closed SOIANI in 1972.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.