Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Even simple questions are hard to answer these days. Here a tougher one, courtesy of the strange year we’re barely halfway through. Did 2020 cause the Earth’s magnetic poles to shift ten times faster than experts were predicting … or is the shifting of the poles causing the problems of 2020? Whichever ever it is, it’s probably not good. Want to go back to the chicken and the egg and try again?

“We have incomplete knowledge of our magnetic field before 400 years ago. Since these rapid changes represent some of the more extreme behavior of the liquid core, they could give important information about the behavior of Earth’s deep interior.”

In a press release from Leeds University, Dr Chris Davies, an Associate Professor from the School of Earth and Environment, and Professor Catherine Constable, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, in California, explain the technique they used in their new study, published this week in Nature Communications, to both fill in the gaps of the last 400 years and attempt to figure out what’s been going on with the Earth’s magnetic field over the past 100,000 years. Unlike past researchers, they had the benefit of new historical data on time variations in the Earth’s magnetic field and the most sophisticated software ever for modeling the planet’s field generation process.

“Since these rapid changes represent some of the more extreme behavior of the liquid core they could give important information about the behavior of Earth’s deep interior.”

If Sir Ringo Starr were part of this team, at this point he would join in with a chorus of “It Don’t Come Easy.” The direction and movements of the Earth’s magnetic field start in the planet’s liquid core. Just as the liquid core sloshes and swirls, so does the surface magnetic field – with areas moving independently rather than in unison like a hard outer shell. While satellites can show this movement today, historical movements were seen using geological records of actions like lava flows and sedimentary changes. Davies and Constable felt modeling based on time variations would be more accurate. To prove it, they took field shifts shown in the models and tried to match them up to known anomalies.

“The clearest example of this in their study is a sharp change in the geomagnetic field direction of roughly 2.5 degrees per year 39,000 years ago. This shift was associated with a locally weak field strength, in a confined spatial region just off the west coast of Central America, and followed the global Laschamp excursion – a short reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field.”

It was here last week!

Armed with correlations like this, they felt confident in their statement that the magnetic field is changing much faster than the accepted one degree per year. In fact, it’s shifting up to 10 times faster. We already know that the magnetic poles are moving, with the magnetic north pole now somewhere in Siberia, while the magnetic south pole is off the coast of Antarctica somewhere outside of the Antarctic Circle. What is the end result of all of this magnetic pole and field shifting at such a fast rate? A common word in the study is “flux.”

“Flux” is also a good word to describe the year 2020. Are these fluxes related? As expected, the model doesn’t look at this. Should it? Would it make any difference if we knew the answer?

One thing we can agree on … 2020 has been one fluxed up year.

As the title of this article makes clear, it deals with some very strange extraterrestrial entities. The weirdest account I have on file – and that falls into this particular category – comes from Houston, Texas. The witness (or “victim” might be a more accurate description) was a woman named Marilyn. She told me of her encounter with a “Gray”-type alien back in the winter of 1977. Her account of alien abduction was very much like so many others that have become staple parts of Ufology: she was subjected to medical experiments and blood was removed from her. What sets Marilyn’s story apart from many others, however, is the fact that while Marilyn was on a cold, metal table on-board a UFO, one of the Grays took out of a box and placed onto her stomach. To her horror it was something that looked like a large spider, but with far more more legs than normal for a spider. It was like something out of a horror movie: the thing crawled up her body, onto her face, and inserted one its spindly legs into her right nostril. For a moment there was a flash of pain. Then, nothing, except that Marilyn suddenly found herself back in her car that she had been abducted from, hours earlier. Now, let’s move onto another creature.

Over at Gaia.com, there is the following: “By far the most striking aspect of the Mantis alien is its physical kinship with the praying mantis, the carnivorous and bipedal insect of its namesake. Many report these beings as 6-7 feet tall, with long, thin torsos. Their necks, arms and hands have additional joints. Their heads are insect-like and triangular, with large, slanted eyes of deep brown to black….By far the most striking aspect of the Mantis alien is its physical kinship with the praying mantis, the carnivorous and bipedal insect of its namesake. Many report these beings as 6-7 feet tall, with long, thin torsos. Their necks, arms and hands have additional joints. Their heads are insect-like and triangular, with large, slanted eyes of deep brown to black.” Now, it’s time to make a trip to New Mexico.

Is it possible that the southwest region of the United States is home to giant-sized insects – living deep underground – that feed upon us, the human race? Such a thing sounds not just unlikely and incredible, but just like the kind of scenario presented in the classic 1954, sci-fi move, Them! It’s a movie in which massive, radioactive ants terrorize and slaughter the people of a small New Mexico town, and threaten to do likewise to not just the rest of the country, but to the entire planet, too. Which brings us to an important question: might truth be stranger than fiction? Yes, just possibly.

Danielle B. is a woman who, for a number of years, lived in the New Mexican town of Aztec – which, just like the far more famous New Mexican town of Roswell, has a crashed UFO legend attached to it. It’s a legend which dates back to March 1948, when, reportedly, a near-intact flying saucer and its crew of diminutive dead pilots were found. But, according to Danielle, she encountered something far stranger at Aztec than deceased extraterrestrial dwarfs and a wrecked flying saucer. It was on one particular day in May 2004 that Danielle decided to spend a few hours hanging out in Aztec’s Hart Canyon – which, curiously enough, is exactly where the alleged UFO is said to have fallen to earth, back in the 1940s. It was also where Danielle had an encounter with something far worse than aliens. On what was a warm and sunny day, Danielle found a place to sit, where she could read a book, and have her snacks and drinks at hand. It was a perfect way to spend a day off work. Or, for a while it was, at least.

All was normal for a couple of hours. That is, until Danielle noticed a small, black helicopter approaching her in the distance. Far more correctly, she assumed that it was a helicopter. Certainly, at a distance that’s what it appeared to be. But it was no normal helicopter: there was no “thud-thud” sound that one associates with the fast-moving blades of a helicopter. And, on top of that, it appeared to be carrying below it a small calf, held tightly in place by thick ropes! Most definitely not the kind of thing you see every day. When the helicopter got close to Hart Canyon, however, Danielle could see that the helicopter was actually nothing of the sort. It was a large, obscene-looking insect of around four meters in length. The presumed rotor-blades of the helicopter were actually the fast-beating wings of the monster-creature. As for those ropes, they were nothing less than powerful-looking black limbs. Danielle could only stare – in a mixture of awe, fascination, fear, and horror – as the huge creature flew overhead, dropped the poor calf on a nearby peak, and then swooped to the ground with frightening speed, pounced on the animal, and viciously tore into it. In less than half an hour the giant insect was done with its feasting and took to the skies. Now, we come to the final, creepy tale.

For twelve years Denise Stoner did back ground investigations for the U.S. military on recruits seeking highly classified clearances for work on nuclear submarines. Prior to retirement, Denise moved to the Naval Air Warfare Center, Training Systems Division, military research facility where she was the training coordinator for several hundred military and civilian employees. In 2018, Denise told me of how one day she was shopping in a Florida store when something very strange happened. In Denise’s own words: “[We] were in the back of the store in a center aisle. There were some areas to my right with stands of items for sale with small aisles between. I looked up the aisle and spotted an elderly man in one of those electric chairs, moving slowly toward me on the other side of the sale case. In front of him was a woman about six- feet tall, wearing shorts just above her knees that were a bright shiny material and pink.”

This is where it gets really strange, as Denise explains: “I looked up to see that her head was very abnormal – shaped just like that of an insectoid [italics mine] and she had placed a white wig on top of it, but the skull was sticking out. I could not believe what I was seeing. Her eyes were huge and black and tipped at an angle, more so than a Gray. ” Denise continued that the woman had “…what appeared to be black eyeliner and drew huge squares above and below the enormous eyes. This did no good at all in hiding what [her eyes] were and made her more than freakish. She had two lines for a nose and from there the whole face dropped down like skin falling to just above the collarbone. There were bright red mandibles at the lower portion. She was staring at me. Between us stood a lady with brown hair to her shoulders. She observed my face and turned to her right to see what I was looking at. [She] immediately looked totally shocked. The very strange thing here was, my husband did not see this at all…”

Frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians rarely make anyone’s favorite animal list (except perhaps for the psychedelic Colorado River toad), but they don’t pop up on the mast-fear lists either (except for the poisonous frogs of the poison dart kind). That may change with the recent discovery of the world’s first venomous amphibian – a limbless creature that resembles a scary cross between a worm and a snake but with teeth that deliver a deadly bite. Are you ready for Attack of the Killer Amphibians?

A ringed caecilian, Siphonops annulatus.

Image: Carlos Jared, Butantan Institute

You have to be a herpetologist to know that caecilians are rare tropical amphibians found primarily in the wet jungles of Central America and South America, and occasionally in Africa, and southern Asia. While reaching snakish lengths of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet), they more resemble giant worms but with poisonous glands that would take them off the menu of giant robins or bass. The name caecilian comes from the Latin word caecus, meaning “blind,” and refers to their tiny eyes, which are mostly invisible but sometimes missing completely. Throw in the fact that they live and die in moist jungles and it’s easy to see (unless you’re a caecilian) why little is known of the evolution or traits of this strange creature.

Tell me more!

“You have to jump on it.”

In an interview with The New York Times discussing the release of his study published in the journal iScience, Carlos Jared, a biologist at the Butantan Institute in Brazil, talks about wrestling caecilians (note: good movie scene) deep in the jungle, only to lose them as they wiggle free after covering him with slime. Jared says he’s always careful to avoid the venomous glands while trying not to squeeze or scoop the giant worm-like wigglers to hard or they break in two … and, unlike some worms, neither end lives on. However, he managed recently to get enough so his partner, post-doctoral scholar Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, could hatch some babies and watch them grow. He was particularly interested in the venomous glands.

“This is a very different thing here.”

That’s when Mailho-Fontana saw something unexpected. As the caecilians’ baby teeth formed (caecilians need teeth to catch and eat worms and insects), venomous glands appeared next to them. These had never been seen before in adult caecilians whose mouths are typically full of slime. (Photos here.) The glands are also difficult to get to in adults, so the researchers haven’t yet identified the toxins they secrete, although it appears to be similar to that of venomous snakes and insects. The researchers also haven’t seen the end results of a caecilian biting and killing a prey, although Marta Maria Antoniazzi, a co-author of the study, claims she was bitten by a small one and “It hurt a lot” while taking a long time to heal.

An early drawing of a caecilian guarding her eggs.

“Based on our data we suggest that caecilians developed the ability to actively inoculate toxins through their teeth early in their evolutionary history, probably representing one of the first terrestrial vertebrates having an oral venom system.”

Despite limited data so far, the researchers felt confident to conclude that caecilians could be one of the first land vertebrates to develop a venomous bite. Warning: they also offered no evidence that the bite can result in a psychedelic experience, so don’t go rushing to Brazil with a sack, a bucket of worms and collection of Jefferson Airplane music.

On the other hand, ‘The Bite of the Killer Worm’ definitely has movie possibilities.

An examination of files that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has declassified under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act reveals that, in the Cold War environment of the 1970’s, the Agency spent considerable time researching the existence (or otherwise) of extra-sensory perception and psychic phenomena. Not only that: the DIA was predominantly troubled by one particularly nightmarish and nagging scenario: that the Soviets would succeed in using ESP as a tool of espionage and that the secrets of the Pentagon, the CIA and just about everyone else would be blown wide open for Kremlin and KGB psychic-penetration. Acting on this concern, the DIA (along with the CIA and the U.S. Army) began to seriously address the issue of whether or not the powers of the mind would one day prove superior to – or at the very least, the equal of – conventional tools of espionage and warfare. And it was as a result of its intensive study of Soviet research into psychic phenomena for espionage purposes, that the DIA learned of some of the notable advances made by both Russian and Czechoslovakian scientists whose attention was focused on the links between psychic phenomena and the animal kingdom.

In a now-declassified September 1975 document, Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research, the DIA reveals its findings on animals and psychic phenomena in the former Soviet block countries. Interestingly, the Defense Intelligence Agency learned that Soviet research into the world of psychic powers in animals began decades previously and focused on attempts to determine the validity of mind-to-mind contact between human beings and dogs. One section of the document is titled Telepathy in Animals. Soviet research on telepathy in animals in the 1920s and 1930s was devoted largely to proving that telepathy between man and animals did indeed exist. The DIA continued: “[Vladimir] Bekhterev’s original objective was to demonstrate that telepathy between man and animals was mediated by some form of electromagnetic radiation (FMR), but by 1937, he and other Soviet parapsychologists had concluded that no known form of EMR was the carrier of thought transmission. The EMR theory of information transfer is still unresolved by the Soviets, but is still the major basis underlying much of their research.”

Three decades after Bekheterev’s original research, the Soviets were still working hard to make advances in this intriguing area: “In 1962 B.S. Kazhinskiy advanced the theory that animals are capable of visual and aural perception and reflex understanding of the behavior of other animals or humans. He postulated that this ability resulted from the capacity of one animal to detect (via its nervous system), analyze, and synthesize signal-stimuli given off by another animal. According to Kazhinskiy, the signals were transmitted in the form of a ‘bioradiational sight ray’ and analyzed by the percipient animal as a result of its Pavlovian conditioning. The term ‘bioradiational rays’ is still used by some Soviet and Czech parapsychologists to refer to focusing and concentration of biological energy by the brain and the optical neural channels.

If Kazhinskiv’s research into visual and aural perception was, and still is, considered valid, then it offers the possibility that the entire animal kingdom of our planet may somehow have the ability to utilize highly-advanced mental tools that, largely, elude human beings. The 1975 DIA paper then turns its attention to then-contemporary research undertaken by the Soviets: “Present day Soviet and Czech parapsychology research with animals is devoted almost exclusively to investigation of sources of biological energy involved in physiological processes, the interactions of such energy with external fields, and the effects of externally generated fields on animal physiology. Reference to telepathy in the sense of communications by transmission of total, conceptual, mental formulations is seldom made.”

Believing that they were on the verge of a major breakthrough, the Soviets channeled much of their effort into a project that was being undertaken at a major Russian university: “A significant advance toward identification of the EMR source of biological energy transfer was gained from recent research conducted at the University of Novosibirsk. Scientists there investigated the release of energy during cell division and during cellular damage and repair resulting from viral infection or toxic chemicals. In over 5000 experiments with cell cultures and animal organs it was shown that damaged cells radiated some form of energy and that the energy released was capable of causing damage in adjacent control preparations of organs or cells. Further investigation revealed that a uniform pattern, code, or rhythm of radiation was emitted by normal cells. This pattern was disturbed when cellular damage occurred, becoming quite irregular. It was also found that the patterns were transmitted from experimental to control preparations only when the cells or organs were cultured in quartz containers. Since quartz transmits ultraviolet (UV) radiation and standard laboratory glassware does not, the Soviets concluded that UV radiation mediated cellular information transfer. The researchers subsequently correlated given irregularities of emission with specific diseases and are now attempting to develop techniques for diagnosis and therapy by monitoring and altering cellular radiation codes.”

The DIA also learned that two decades of research undertaken in Czechoslovakia had led to some startling results pertaining to ‘energy transfer’ between biological tissue samples: “Czechoslovakian research on energy transfer between animal muscle preparations from animals to man, and from man to man, has also demonstrated EMR as the vehicle of biological energy transfer. In experiments conducted between 1948 and 1968 at the Okres Institute of Public Health, Kutna Hora, Czechoslovakia, Dr. Jiri Bradna demonstrated contactless transfer (myotransfer) of stimuli between frog neuromuscular preparations. Bradna placed identical preparations side by side; stimulation of one preparation with electric pulses at frequencies between 10 and 30 pulses per second caused contraction and a recorded electromyographic response in the other. In other experiments, stimulation of muscle preparations influenced the oscillations of a pendulum and increased the muscle tension of a human subject. Bradna obtained objective proof that energy in the very high frequency (vhf) range mediated the stimulus transmission. He also demonstrated that myotransfer could be blocked with ferrous metal filters and aluminum, could be deformed with magnets, ferrites and other conductors, could be reflected and transmitted over waveguides, and shielded with grids. Bradna concluded that primary perceptual and informational pathways between animals are based on metabolic processes at the macromolecular level and that the magnitude of energy transfer depends on muscular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy release.”

Of particular interest to the DIA was the research of Dr. Bradna that had a bearing on human behaviour and on the potential for altering or influencing that behavior: “Bradna has reported successful application of myotransfer in physiotherapy. It has been found to be effective for both individuals and groups. In the latter case, the summation of stimuli has been shown to enhance the neuromuscular responses of individuals within the group. Bradna feels that such stimuli influence the herd of animals and may also be a factor in altering human behavior under conditions of isolation or overcrowding.” It is quite clear from examining the now-declassified files of the DIA that Soviet scientists postulated numerous theories to try and explain extra-sensory perception and psychic phenomena in animals. According to the DIA, a Doctor Y.A. Kholodov had: “…investigated the effects of a constant magnetic field (CMF) on rabbits. Whole-body exposures to fields between 30 and 2000 oersteds resulted in nonspecific exchanges in the electroencephalogram but no other directly measurable physiological responses. Kholodov showed that weak magnetic as well as other externally generated radiation fields have a direct effect on nerve tissue, and for this reason he feels that natural and artificial fields in man’s environment may have an influence on health and behavior via the nervous system and the hypothalamus. Kholodov’s research is representative of current Soviet efforts to explain paranormal phenomena on the basis of known physical and biological parameters.”

Conversely, another Soviet scientist, A.S. Presman, felt that biological energy and information exchange between living organisms was the result of electromagnetic field (EMF) interactions between individuals or between the individual and the environment.: “Presman and other Soviet scientists have recorded EMF’s from man, frogs, and insects of various species at ranges from several centimeters to several meters from the body surface. The frequencies of the EMF’s were found to correspond to various biorhythms of organs, rhythms of movement and acoustic signals and bioelectric rhythms. Presman thinks that in groups of animals, electromagnetic oscillations are synchronized by frequency matching and that the cumulative intensity may grow in proportion to the square of the number of individuals. Such cumulative emission is also thought to be possible as the result of synchronization of the emissions of many cells in animals in a highly excited state. Presman, like Kholodov, feels that the effects of sub-threshold stimuli are mediated through the hypothalamic region of the midbrain. The hypothalamus regulates diverse physiological processes in the organism (pulse, body temperature, oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide liberation, urine volume, urine nitrogen concentration, etc.) and these are the functions most commonly disturbed by changes in EMF’ s.

Presman also speculated on the reason for the apparent widespread telepathic abilities in animals versus the lack of such abilities in human beings: “Presman believes that electromagnetic signaling is universal between animals, but not between humans who may have lost the capability for such communication as a result of evolution and the development of verbal and artificial communication channels. He does not rule out the possibility that ‘spontaneous telepathy’ may occasionally occur, but regards such occurrences as rare cases of atavism. Consequently, he regards man as the least suitable animal for studying electromagnetic communication. The DIA also noted that, by 1975, Soviet research into ESP in animals had been modified and now encompassed a whole new range of disciplines and terminology: “It is important that the increased degree of sophistication which has occurred in Soviet ESP or telepathy research since 1960 be understood. At present the terms “ESP” and “telepathy” are seldom used. It is possible that the newer terms ‘biocommunication’ and ‘psychotronics’ will vanish in the near future only to be replaced by conventional high-energy physics terminology, or term such as ‘interpersonal subconscious reactions’ or ‘mention’ forces. In any event, the classical ESP experiments with animals are no longer of interest in the USSR. The typical Vasilev experimentation from 1920 to 1955 has been replaced with sophisticated research protocols which study complex interactions between man, animals and plants.”

Does such research still secretly go on in Russia? Maybe, that’s a question that, one day, will be answered.

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