Phenomena magazine may 2015

PUBLISHED BY MAPIT

MAPIT 2015 Brought to you by MAPIT: Est. 1974.

EDITORIAL Ghosts and TV ‘Para‐porn’

Dear readers, first things first, as you may note we have started running a regular and very funny cartoon strip called ‘The Zen of Ben’. For this I would like to thank Mike Oram and John Pickering for their kindness in allowing us to use the delightful character they have created. Also, I would like to welcome our latest mem‐ ber of our team, Lavinia Pallott has joined us as one of our distributors throughout Italy... Right, now the usual rant: in recent years there has been an explosion of information on TV about the supernatural, and to be fair it is a subject that never loses its mysterious appeal. This has come in various guises, but mainly in confrontational and exploitative programmes like Most Haunted, the TV show that was once credited with single‐handedly saving Living TV. I suppose you could call the attraction a form of ‘Para‐porn’ in the way it flaunts the subject for public edification. All of these shows (including the ones using studio audiences and highly paid alleged mediums) make one serious and fundamental mistake; they assume that the departed actually want to be contacted; how do they know that? The fawning approach of some psychics who preface every question to the other side with the words ‘with respect’ fools no one, and what’s more there is no guarantee they can do what they say. However, such is the lure of the unknown that they are well paid for effectively polluting and destroying an area deserving serious research...

Brian Allan Brian Allan: UK Editor.

THIS MONTHS CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Mera, Brian Allan, Paul Mudie, Bret Lueder, Dan Green, Diane Tessman, Sean Casteel, Robert Salas, Lee Speigel, Doug Bolton, Dr. Barry Taff, Ivan Petricevic, Mike Oram, John Pickering, Kevan Manwaring and John Prytz.

Construction & Design: Founder Steve Mera s_mera@yahoo.com

International Distribution: United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, Canada, Russia, Greece, Italy, Spain, India and Brazil.

UK Editor Contact: Brian Allan Paratec7@aol.com 41, Keith Street, Kincardine-on-Forth, Alloa, Clacks, Scotland, FK10 4NB Spanish Editor Contact: Dario Fernandez info@e-nigmas.com.ar

DISCLAIMER Due to MAPIT protocols, personal or group promotion will not be accepted. All submitted articles to Phenomena Magazine must be 'Original Work'. MAPIT are not responsible for arti‐ cles that appear in the magazine which do not belong to the individuals submitting them.

MAPIT do everything in their power to credit individuals work and images. If you are aware of any material featured in Phenomena Magazine that is not credited correctly, then please in‐ form us as soon as possible. The MAPIT Copyright covers only articles wrote by MAPIT investi‐ gators and group logos found throughout the magazine. The views and opinions expressed in any of the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of MAPIT or Phenomena Magazine.

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Contents

CONTENTS

AUTHORS

Page 03: Children of the Gods.

‘Indigo Children’, ‘Crystalline Children’, the ‘Super Psychic Chinese Children’ and the rather disconcertingly named, ‘Children of Aids’. They have apparently caught both the attention and imagination of a relatively large number of people within the New Age and UFO movements and as such are worthy of serious consid‐ eration. Since the author keeps an open mind on all areas of the paranormal he can accept the rationale behind their existence, but as an investigator Brian Allan cannot accept their existence without challenge.

Page 07: The Urantia Book: Part 2.

An experiment conducted by the editors of ‘The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read’, Tim C. Lee‐ dom and Maria Murdy, would appear to support the usage of universal ideas and similar wordings found in the Urantia Book. On pg 467 of the revised Second Edition (2007), Leedom writes, “In 1993 when I started to gather information for The Book, I decided to test the leaders of different religious denominations on their knowledge of Holy Books. The finding were interesting. Bret Lueder reveals...

Page 13: Do we own our own Brains?

In an introduction to one of my earlier features, the editor, Brian Allan, broached the topic of how some‐ times events transcend the nebulous interface between Ufology and Paranormal, bequeathing this area the name ‘High Strangeness’. This high strangeness decided to impact on my life from the earliest of days and could have backed the maxim ‘start as you mean to go on’. Dan Green describes his own profound experiences and also looks at the evidence for High Strangeness cases.

Page 17: Paranormal Warnings of bridge collapse as ‘Mothman’ flies overhead.

If the Silver Bridge collapse of December 1, 1967, is any indication, our aging infrastructure today should have Mothman hovering overhead, UFOs zooming from one potential bridge disaster to another, and para‐ normal activity beeping, popping, and swirling. Yes, perhaps a silly idea, but there are numerous accounts of UFOs near disasters, including the footage taken of them near the 2011 Japanese 9.0 earthquake and subsequent catastrophic tsunami. Diane Tessman looks into these strange connections.

Page 21: America’s Strange and Supernatural History: Proof Positive that we are a Weird Nation.

Words like “strange” and “supernatural” are admittedly relative terms whose true meaning exists in the mind of the beholder. What one person calls strange and supernatural, another might call commonplace or, conversely, too unreal to even contemplate taking seriously. But when reading “America’s Strange and Supernatural History,” a recent offering from Tim Beckley’, it is not so easy to make convenient distinctions between what is real and what is laughably dismissible. Sean Casteel explains...

Page 25: UFO and Paranormal News from around the world.

Each month Phenomena Magazine picks some of the most interesting news items that have appeared throughout the world, such as UFO sightings, Crop Circles, Ghostly encounters, Science and NASA news, Conspiracies, Supernatural occurrences, mysteries, strange creatures and cryptozoology, fortean events and the profound. If you have an interesting news item, then please feel free to send it over to Phenomena Magazine and we would be pleased to include it.

Page 33: Isle of the Dead: Part 1.

Where do we go when we die? This question has haunted humankind for millennia and although no firm proof has come to light there’s no shortage of theories! This article attempts to make a minor foray into this nebula of super‐abundant speculation, on a raid in the spirit of King Arthur’s – as recorded in Taliesin’s poem ‘Preiddu Annwn’ (where the Pendragon wins the fabled Cauldron of Plenty from the Underworld).

Kevan Manwaring looks into the mysterious Isle of the Dead in this first installment of his article.

Page 39: Monster Birds of the America’s.

For most of modern human's existence, say over the past 50,000 to 100,000 years, if we saw something fly under its own power, it was a bird, a bat or an insect, maybe a ‘flying' fish or ‘flying' fox if you want to stretch things a bit. Relatively few of these feature prominently in any culture's mythology. Bats might have an association with vampires, but your average run‐of‐the‐mill garden variety bird is usually taken for granted, unless they are monstrous in size and like humans for dinner. John Prytz explains...

Brian Allan

03 Bret Lueder

11 Dan Green

17 Diane Tessman

23 Sean Casteel

27 Varied Authors

35 Kevan Manwaring

41 John Prytz

45

Also Featured: Latest UFO AND paranormal news from around the World. Book and dvd reviews. Events and Conferences, Astronomical DATA, Advertisements and much more.

02

Authors note I hold no particular views on the subject of the so‐called ‘Indigo Children’, ‘Crystalline Children’, the ‘Super Psychic Chinese Chil‐ dren’ and the rather disconcertingly named, ‘Children of Aids’, but they have apparently caught both the attention and imagination of a relatively large number of people within the New Age and UFO move‐ ments and as such are worthy of serious consideration. Since I keep an open mind on all areas of the paranormal I can accept the rationale behind their existence, but as an investigator I cannot accept their al‐ leged existence without challenge. For this reason, although I shall present the reader with evidence, both pro and con, I have attempted to remain neutral and leave them to decide for themselves whether the occurrence is genuine or only present in the imaginations of the parents of the children and the people who originally popularised the notion. First we will con‐ sider what is perhaps the most widespread example of this recent phenomenon, i.e. the ‘Indigo Children’.

The Indigo Children

Imagine if you will the unnatural emo‐ tional situation faced by any nor‐ mal human mother (or indeed fa‐ ther) of yielding up the satis‐ faction, comfort, joy and fulfilment of parenthood to the rather queasy feeling that their child is not entirely hu‐ man and may, to all intents and purposes, be non‐terrestrial.

Such is one of the more extreme scenarios faced by those who have ac‐ cepted that their offspring belong to the so‐called ‘Indigo Children’, babies that, although born naturally of hu‐ man parents, are credited with being children of the stars.

Their parents are relegated to little more than surrogates charged with their earthly welfare and upbringing until such times as they are able to look after themselves.

The children u n f a i l i n g l y appear to possess exotic talents and abilities, chief among these is the facility to channel infor‐ mation from their real ‘parents’ cou‐ pled to a range of psychic powers includ‐ ing healing and natural telepathy. In some ways they are remi‐ niscent of the unearthly chil‐ dren featured in John Wyndham’s excellent book, ‘The Midwich Cuck‐ oos’ (later adapted for the screen as a series of films begin‐ ning with ‘Village of The Damned’), although so far their mission, if that is what it is, unlike that of the children of Mid‐ wich is apparently benign. It should be made clear that in some cases where these children have been identi‐ fied, the parents seem quick to advertise if not actually exploit the 03

situation. All this may be so, but a word of caution, it may be rea‐ sonable to wonder if, in such cases, the parents are attempting to fit a template of their own design onto the instinctive actions, words and possibly neurological condition of their child. A less extreme interpretation of Indigo Children views them as bricks in a spiritual wall designed to bring about a sea change in human evolution, a claim not uncommon in the New Age paradigm. Their ‘talents’ in this version of the story tend to involve enhanced empathy and often creativity, admittedly two attributes that are badly needed in the self‐centred, hedonistic, divisive and largely compassionless society in which we live. The trouble is if the child is encouraged to accept that they are in some way special, whether they are or not they will quite naturally come to believe it is so, which is something we will return to a little later.

It should be noted that these children are not described as being ‘Indigo’ because they are coloured blue, but rather because they were named ‘Indigos’ by Nancy Ann Tappe, a ‘synesthete’ and psychic, who first coined the term in her 1982 book, ‘Understanding Your Life Through Colour’.

Chief among her claims was that she could discern the aura, (or nebulous cocoon of ‘life energy’, roughly analogous to the elec‐ tromagnetic field that is emitted by any functioning electrical device), that alleg‐ edly surrounds each and every one of us.

The condition of synesthesia is a relatively harmless neurological dysfunction causing the sufferer to ‘see’ or perceive sounds as colours and vice versa, in effect the inter‐ nal ‘wiring’ of the brain is not 100% cor‐ rect. A similar phenomenon was regularly reported, particularly in the 1960’s, by users of psychoactive substances like LSD, who regularly described ‘seeing the sounds’ and ‘listening to the pretty col‐ ours’ while under the effects of the drug.

According to Ms Tappe, she began to no‐ tice a preponderance of children possess‐ ing indigo auras during the late 1970’s and currently estimates that approximately 60% people aged between 14 and 25 are indigo. More significant is her remarkable assertion that 97% of pre‐teen children are also Indigo.

It is a well to consider at this point that claims of individuals who are (or were) here on earth to assist in a spiritual revolu‐ tion are not new and many iconic and

Children of the Gods: By Brian Allan

inspirational figures such as Christ, Moham‐ med, Abraham, Buddha, Osiris, Tammuz and many other spiritual leaders were sent to save the human race from its own fail‐ ings. All of them, according to the era and society they arrived in, were able to convert huge numbers of people to their cause and indeed the majority still command disciples and believers numbering in their tens of millions. It has to be noted that there still are a number of people who claim to be messiahs and with varying degrees of suc‐ cess attempt to lead their bands of follow‐ ers to ‘salvation’.

Sadly, many of them appear to be cult lead‐ ers more interested in manipulating their flock for their own ends. Cults aside, this all sounds rather like a variant on Prof. Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of ‘Morphogenetic Fields’ using the by now almost standard example of ‘The Hundredth Monkey Syn‐ drome’, a concept which, broadly speaking, means that the more people who come to accept a new idea or practise, the more people are likely to display the same prac‐ tise whether they consciously learn it or not. In other words, according Prof. Shel‐ drake an invisible field of ‘information en‐ ergy’ surrounds us, that in the right condi‐ tions percolates into us almost by a type of osmosis, or more correctly we inadvertently receive it like organic radio or TV sets.

As the numbers grow, the theory goes, we assimilate the knowledge/information with increasing speed until a ‘tipping point’ is reached and we as a race become as one, a gigantic gestalt being. If this is true then we may not necessarily benefit from such a ‘gift’, because it may serve agendas that are not in the best interests of the human race; like mind control. One is also tempted to draw comparisons with the concept of ‘memes’, or the proposition that certain good ideas, particularly ones that have a direct benefit on the individual and society in general, actually perpetuate themselves, almost as if they had sentience. This of course is a difficult type of logic to follow; it is rather like saying that a thermostat has intelligence because it performs a mechani‐ cal function in response to an increase or decrease in temperature, a conclusion that is tenuous at best.

Although the concept of these supposedly unique children was invented by Ms Tappe, it became elevated to a place of promi‐ nence in the New Age psyche in the book, ‘The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived’, written in 1998 by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll. The source of the subject mat‐ ter of this work was channelled from an entity called ‘Kyron’, evidently one of the so ‐called ‘Ascended Masters’. According to Carroll and Tober, a married couple, when talking about their book in the wider com‐ munity they tend not to mention the source of the information it contains, as, not

surprisingly, they do not believe the po‐ tential audience and market for the book outside the New Age community would readily accept its validity.

Among the many traits associated with these children is a tendency to antisocial behaviour unless they are mixing with their peers, and as a result their schooling is problematic. Added to this is their rejec‐ tion of authority and an elevated sense of self‐importance, another two factors that are less than conducive to conventional education. A less sympathetic and more pragmatic interpretation of these traits views the children as suffering from Atten‐ tion Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and/or Autism. In most of these instances the conditions are treated using a range of drugs, but chiefly ‘Ritalin’, which is a type of amphetamine. However, a more con‐ spiratorial mind may interpret this situa‐ tion as the deliberate use of a ‘chemical cosh’ to subdue their development and prevent them developing their full poten‐ tial, whatever that may be.

Undoubtedly the way many of these youngsters behave can be highly disrup‐ tive within a household and a cause of extreme frustration to their parents. One wonders how those who are convinced of their children ‘specialness’ and encourage in what they do still manage to maintain a degree of control over them. Or perhaps ADHD, OCD and Autism are subtly differ‐ ent from the tantrums and traumas exhib‐ ited by these Indigo Children. It has been suggested that parents who decide their child is Indigo may actually cause them harm by failing to recognise the previously mentioned conditions, but perhaps more cautiously this is connected to the insidi‐ ous methods used to prevent their devel‐ opment and eventual flowering. As hinted at earlier is it possible that we are actually creating a new breed of evolved being 04

because we want it to happen? Are the desires of those parents who choose to see their offspring as special and different actually bringing this about in some man‐ ner by causing the child to become what they imagine they should be and if so is it within the gift of humanity to think these beings into existence? If this is the case then surely it would be much simpler in the first place to excise evil and injustice from society by simply wishing it away?

But perhaps not, maybe this is an oversim‐ plification and there needs to be another agency involved.

Another issue to be addressed is the ad‐ mitted fact that, as with the observations of Ms Tappe, there has indeed in recent years been a rapid increase in children diagnosed with ADHD etc, but this has been attributed to many factors including the increasing level of toxins that surround us plus the large number of synthetic in‐ gredients in the food that we eat. Or, is it possible that the change in diet has actu‐ ally altered the genetic code of some chil‐ dren for the better, are we witnessing a new and benign genesis of the human race?

It has also been suggested that the Indigo’s tend to have poor sleep patterns and often stay awake for hours on end, only suc‐ cumbing when they are literally out on their feet and, as already mentioned, they apparently possess paranormal abilities and heightened awareness. This should come as no real surprise, because there is at least one valid reason for it; the longer the brain is deprived of sleep, the greater the build up of serotonin, which is one of several powerful neurotransmitters medi‐ ated by sleep. It may be the reason why ghosts, phantoms and ET’s are most often seen at night when levels are at their high‐ est. Perhaps the neurology of Indigo’s is ‘retuned’ by elevated levels of serotonin permitting them access to impressions

Children of the Gods: By Brian Allan

denied to the rest of us. This link leads us to yet another example of this phenomenon, the so‐called ‘Crystalline Children’.

The Clouded Crystal

Another manifestation of the desire to rise above our current level of human existence is the claimed appearance of another sub‐ group within the human species, that of the ‘Crystalline Children’, who display most and possibly more of the attributes ascribed to the Indigo’s. This information arrives, once again, from the dubious and entirely unveri‐ fiable source of the ‘Ascended Masters’, and as previously mentioned with the In‐ digo’s they are not entirely comfortable in the presence of any but their peers. Among their alleged talents is the ability see be‐ yond the three (and possibly four assuming that time is a dimension) dimensions that govern our physical existence. They are, according to what is known about them, evidently attuned with the frequencies of light and it is hinted that they are, or will be, almost godlike in their abilities and bring with them truths that have become either lost or distorted beyond recognition over millions of years of human evolution.

Their DNA is in some way reprogrammed and in effect ‘blueprinted’, so that it is ex‐ actly as our progenitors intended. Their purpose is to re‐harmonise the human race so that it resonates with ‘The One’, another reference to the gestalt that may, or may

not, represent Cosmic Consciousness, in other words a reinterpretation of the Eastern mantra that ‘all is one’ and the ancient Alchemical and Mystery School teaching of ‘as above, so below’. In truth, these ostensibly ‘new’ belief systems are little more than retreads of aeons old wisdom and teachings and may be (more cynically) merely a moneymaking platform for the new gurus. All of this assumes that we are the product, not of natural selec‐ tion, but of a deliberate and sustained act designed to produce the human race, whether this is through the direct inter‐ vention of some Creator God or otherwise is a moot point. Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with this concept, it’s just that as we have seen it is far from new.

The Crystalline Variant on this theme seems to rely on the idea that we are in fact, each and every one of us, a tiny frag‐ ment of the whole, a miniscule version of the entire entity and these children will cause us to reunite into the totality (gestalt again?) that surrounds us. It also relies on the nature and understanding of the DNA that makes us what we are and how, as it alters, allows us a means of interdimensional access to higher commu‐ nication. It stops short of actually saying, although heavily implies, that we might eventually communicate with our creator (s) on some exotic level of existence.

What it does not say is whether the DNA

05

of the animals who also live on the Earth might also evolve into higher states of consciousness, particularly certain species of aquatic mammals like whales and dol‐ phins that already appear to have a well‐ developed degree of communication, intel‐ ligence and awareness. We should not lose sight of the fact that this information alleg‐ edly derives from already advanced crea‐ tures currently existing without form within a light matrix. While the advent of crystalline children may be a little too much to fully accept, perhaps we can more easily understand another strand of emerging super‐humanity, the super psy‐ chic children of China and the children who cannot become ill.

Reprogramming the Helix

Although perhaps the most interesting of all these alleged ‘new humans’ are the children who do not become ill, we should first look briefly at the so‐called ‘Super Psychic Children of China’. According the evidence, such as it is, they were first noted circa 1984, the same era as that of the emergence of the Indigo Children.

Evidently the Chinese government identi‐ fied one such child who scored way off the scale during a standard psi experiment designed to measure paranormal abilities.

Following this discovery and the attention it drew, other parents started noticing odd ‘talents’ in their own children until the numbers spiralled into the many hundreds.

Children of the Gods: By Brian Allan

Every test devised to test them revealed telepathic and precognitive abilities that went well above chance and in most cases the children tested scored 100% irrespec‐ tive of how the test was conducted.

Another of their claimed talents is the curi‐ ous ability to read without using their eyes, in other words they were able to ‘read’ words and colours using other parts of their anatomy such as their fingers, ears, and patches of skin on their arms and chests.

Although a remarkable discovery, if true, and in spite of the exited announcements it is not entirely unique, as, over the years, this particular aptitude has been noted among various people. One in particular was Mollie Fancher, a woman who lived in America in the late 19th century. Although blind and crippled due to a childhood acci‐ dent, she exhibited the capability of select‐ ing by touch alone various colours of thread used in embroidery from a box located above her bed. Although not a Roman Catholic she also occasionally exhibited traditional signs of the stigmata, which drew some considerable comment.

She also displayed manifestations of multi‐ ple personality disorder where she exhib‐ ited at least two distinct personalities be‐ side her own. In addition she was reputedly both psychic and to some extent telepathic, this raises the question that she may have been a precursor of the superchild revolu‐ tion. It certainly gives reason to question whether many people who have been con‐ signed to psychiatric care were in fact only demonstrating aspects of their superhuman potential and not signs of mental illness. It is strange that depending on the mores and customs of individual societies, some of them regard the mentally disturbed to be some way ‘gifted’ and worthy of venera‐ tion, considering them to be communing with the gods. Is this perhaps yet another example of the involuntary recognition of a coming super race caused by genetic infor‐ mation bleed‐through from the pre‐existing programme? If this is the case the strange talents shown by Mollie and many others over the years may well have been slight defects in the timing of the inbuilt genetic clock determining our elevation to another level of existence. The next group we con‐ sider holds the prospect of near immortality for the human race; they are the ‘Children of AIDS’.

The Children of AIDS

This truly remarkable evolutionary develop‐ ment first came to light, again at around the same time as the other two groups, in the late 1970’s early 1980’s, when a child was born that already was infected with the deadly condition of Acquired Immune Defi‐ ciency Syndrome, now known simply as AIDS. As is now known, this condition ren‐ ders the patient unable to fight off ordinary

infections that in normal people the im‐ mune system deals with automatically by destroying any invading foreign organism.

The child was tested at six months old and was indeed still infected as it was a year later, then something remarkable hap‐ pened. The child, a boy, was left until he was six years old and tested again when, miraculously, he was AIDS free. Naturally the tests were repeated and proved iden‐ tical; there was no trace of AIDS whatso‐ ever, or indeed of HIV, which is the pre‐ cursor of full blown AIDS.

Following this remarkable development the boy was taken to UCLA where he was exposed to a series of tests to examine his DNA for any abnormalities; these tests revealed that the child did not have nor‐ mal, standard, human DNA. Although this is an extremely complex subject I have attempted to explain it in terms that are accessible, this is slightly daunting but vital because of what may be happening to us. In the normal, human, genetic code there is a set of instructions defining what we are, among these are units comprising three nucleotides representing one amino acid, they are called ‘codons’.

We as human beings possess sixty four of these codons, of which only twenty‐three are used, twenty are turned on and the other three act as start (initiation) and stop (termination) switches controlling the rest, rather like the digital switching arrangements used in a computer, this is an analogy that works well and is some‐ thing that we will return to shortly. The unused ‘codons’ have always been as‐ sumed to be part and parcel of our so‐ called ‘Junk DNA’, something that we no longer require in our evolutionary proc‐ ess, although this was apparently not the case with this child, he had twenty four of these codons switched on. Following this discovery they tested his DNA to see just how resistant to disease it actually was

06

and the results were truly breathtaking.

The scientists exposed his blood cells to a progressively stronger dose of AIDS and it was not until the dosage was in the order of thousands of times stronger that his blood cells were damaged. The same ex‐ periment was tried using a range of other diseases including various forms of cancer and his blood did not react or succumb to any of them, he appeared to be immune to all diseases. Following this discovery a clandestine programme was instituted to examine blood cells from a wide range of children from all ethnic groups and social classes and much to the surprise of the scientists they found that the altered DNA was not by any means unique to one child, the numbers ran into tens of thousands, something was definitely happening, something wonderful yet at the same time frightening. The question then was how and why? The implication here is that as with the indigo’s, the greater the number the more quickly the change spreads. The method by which this occurs is, however, highly speculative, as is the evidence itself, unless of course ‘they’, the faceless, ruling ‘ubermensch’, really are behind a mon‐ strous cover‐up and, for a variety of rea‐ sons both political and economic, are de‐ nying this information to the general pub‐ lic. It is certain that the multinational manufacturers in the pharmaceutical in‐ dustry would be less than pleased to see their highly lucrative market vanish almost overnight and as such would go to any lengths to stop this happening.

According to what knowledge there is, whether suppressed or not, the mecha‐ nism behind the change seems to be largely internal, all that is required, appar‐ ently, is a strong enough desire to make the change to one’s DNA and it will hap‐ pen; the use of meditation techniques seem to be an advantage though. In fact what this sounds like is a variant on Chaos Magic, where a wish or desire becomes a

Children of the Gods: By Brian Allan

reality at the quantum level and providing this has been done correctly, manifests a physical change in the real world. On other level there is a clear reference to the power of positive thinking where a person who is ill is encouraged to think in a positive man‐ ner, which does seem to have an effect on the speed of recovery.

What is not clear is how the original and initial change was made, for unless there was a series of lucky accidents, then the first people to display these genetic peculi‐ arities had to be given outside help, unless our own DNA carried the message as part of its internal programming. While consid‐ ering this it is important to realise that the information controlling our genes and how they function is not entirely stored in the genetic code. The additional information is contained, rather like computer sub‐ routines, in regulatory sequences, inter‐ genetic segments and areas devoted to the structure of chromosomes, which brings us back to the link with computers.

As previously mentioned the codons and additional elements in the gene pattern that switch the rest of the DNA on and off act like timers in a standard digital com‐ puter or programmable logic controller, no matter how clever or fleeting, they are either on or off with no halfway position, the only way to improve on this situation in computers is to use ‘dual‐core’ processors so that they can multi‐task more easily. This is a development from the original method of using separate sub‐processors to deal with the more mundane tasks like number crunching. Staying with the computer anal‐ ogy there is, however, another method currently under development and that is in the esoteric field of ‘quantum computing’.

This near magical infant science relies on the fact that the state of any subatomic particle cannot be predicted at any given time and they exist in an infinite number of states. It is this bizarre property that even‐ tually will lead to a type of computer that will operate in a number of states at any one time and as such can carry out a near limitless number of functions simultane‐ ously. The components used in the process‐ ing are still electronic, but they are now operating in applications that their inven‐ tors could not have imagined.

As we have seen, the method by with these electronic devices function has many paral‐ lels with the science of genetics and pro‐ vides a good comparison. Both rely on pro‐ gramming to function and both are capable of being reprogrammed to produce differ‐ ent effects. The difference is, so far, that unlike the application of computers, any alterations to the genetic code have, in the main, been confined to what amounts to tinkering around the edges of its vast po‐ tential. The restraints on development have in the main been ethical and/or religious

where the very thought of tinkering with the human genome is likened to interfer‐ ing with Gods work, which, in fundamen‐ talist circles is absolute anathema irre‐ spective of how beneficial it might be.

While there is undoubtedly an official ban on some aspects of this research, it would be interesting to discover what work is currently conducted under the cloak of ‘black projects’. Although these develop‐ ments fall well short of explaining the incredible complexity of inducing changes in specific elements of the genetic code to permit evolutionary leaps; nevertheless it is allegedly occurring at an ever‐increasing rate. One can only ponder and speculate on what might occur of more of these codons were switched on; we can only hope that we are ready for the change and recognise it when it happens.

Conclusion

Is this all feasible or is it not? As we have seen, the youngsters called Indigo Chil‐ dren and/or Crystal Children are indeed an enigma. Are they a natural progression in human development triggered through some predetermined change in the hu‐ man genome, or are they the inadvertent result of the increasingly toxic environ‐ ment in which we live? Is this some form of corroboration of the Gaia hypothesis showing that the planet on which we live is indeed to some extent sentient and is attempting to alter us; it’s children, in order to save itself. Or are the Indigo’s and all the rest no more than a fantasy created by over imaginative and over protective parents determined to believe that their children are not in some way ‘damaged’, but reject it by submerging themselves in the fantasy that they are instead ‘gifted’. The purpose of these supposed evolved beings is nothing less than the redemption of the human race, a noble cause that no one would argue with, except that, as we have seen, this is really nothing new, only the packaging is different. ‘The Space Brothers’, ‘The Coun‐ cil of Nine’ ‘The Ascended Masters’, ‘The Secret Chiefs’ and now ‘gifted children’, be they indigo, crystal, psychic or ‘reprogrammed’, there is no difference.

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A more cynical view is they this situation is entirely artificial and man made, another symptom of the frantic and dizzy society in which we live. It is strange that as our re‐ jection of organised religion gains momen‐ tum, we still apparently need something to cling to and so we invent one. We have seen this in the past with the advent of Ufology, which was perhaps at its zenith from the 1950’s until the late 1980’s. From personal experience I have seen this amply demonstrated during public meetings and conferences devoted to the study of strange phenomena be it UFO’s, hauntings or whatever.

The intense, almost devout, look on the faces in the audience, they had the look and feel of a church congregation. The need to make sense of the world, but in a manner that best appealed to those at‐ tending and instead of a God it was an extraterrestrial, which, I suppose, is what precisely what God is. A being that lives outwith the constraints of time and space, that is both omniscient and omnipotent, although, sadly, God seems equally elusive.

If these children are the next step, then we are truly favoured that the process has begun and we may yet rise out of the mire that traps us. Ultimately in matters not whether the message comes via Ascended Masters, Space Brothers or Indigo Chil‐ dren, if the message is valid then it has to emerge one way or another.

We must hope that they do not regard us as inferior and take steps to cleanse our memory from the face of the planet, to remove all trace of us from the gene pool, if this process can self‐start then we must hope that the next stage, whatever that might be, continues to improve us as a species and we achieve the destiny pre‐ written for us in the coding of our DNA. There are indeed interesting times ahead.

Sources

The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, by Fr Herbert Thurston SJ.

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Celebrating 50 years of ‘The Thing’ August 29th, The Old Bell Hotel, Warminster, UK Ross Hemsworth & Kevin Goodman Author of ‘Cradle of Contact’ will be hosting the event.

Speakers include: Mike Oram - Author of ‘Does it rain in other Dimension’?

Malcolm Robinson - UFO and Paranormal Investigative Researcher.

Win Keech - Crop Circle & UFO Videographer.

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A Valuable Addition to the Lexicon of the World’s Spiritual Traditions? Or, More Savvy Mind Control from the Architects of Society? Part 2

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The Urantia Book: Part 2 ‐ By Bret Lueder

The SDA’s, among other offshoot sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW’s), have their roots in the Second Adventist Movement which separated from Adventism in the 1870’s. Adventism, going back in time—the idea that the Sabbath was to be on Satur‐ day, same as the Jews—sprang out of the Millerite Movement of the early‐to‐mid 1800’s, which itself began when William L. Miller of northern New York State split from the philosophy of British Israelism, whose modern roots can be traced back to 1794 in a publication titled, A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times by Richard Brothers in England. This is the philosophy that the original inhabitants of the British Isles were really members of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel and related to the House of David, and is today represented by the Brit‐ ish‐Israel World Federation (BIWF, The Zi‐ onists). More on this later.

Miller began claiming to have his own vi‐ sions that the Second Coming of Christ would happen between the years 1843 and 1844. When this did not happen, “The Great Disappointment” sent disheartened Millerites reeling for another philosophy eventually giving birth to the SDA’s and other breakaway groups circa 1876 in the USA. Both Sadler and his brother‐in‐law Wilfred Custer Kellogg (who Gardner names as the “anonymous receiver” of The Urantia Papers) were both one‐time Adventists, says Gardner. This is significant, he argues, because the UB contains several Adventist doctrines such as Jesus being the Archangel Michael, the denial of there being a “Hell” or the idea of “soul sleep”—where an indi‐ vidual can be awoken from a death slum‐ ber, among many other items. The idea that Sadler borrowed ideology from the Advent‐ ists for the UB is only buttressed by the fact that Adventist founders themselves were thought to be plagiarists of earlier works.

Gardner accuses Sadler (in an entire chap‐ ter and appendix combined!) of not only lifting teachings from the seminary where he taught in Chicago to put into the UB (similarities in the dating and origins of Biblical texts, for example) but also SDA co‐ founder Ellen White’s work Patriarchs and Prophets (1890) is seemingly paralleled in the UB, who herself Gardner relays, via The White Lie by Walter T. Rea (1982), had “a bad problem with plagiarism.”

Two articles, one from the New York Times dated, November 6, 1982, titled, “Seventh‐ Day Adventists Face Change and Dissent;” http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/06/ us/7th‐day‐adventists‐face‐change‐and‐ dissent.html and one from Time Magazine dated August 2, 1982 titled, “The Church of Liberal Borrowings: Plagiarism and Fraud Charges Rock the Seventh‐day Adventists;” http://adventistalert.com/aawwn/eight/ two‐js.htm chronicle over one hundred SDA ministers willfully or forcefully resigning because of the information.

Says Gardner, “The UB doctrines are a strange blend of Seventh‐Day Adventists opinions and Adventist heresies, just what one would expect from the subconscious mind of a man who had abandoned his [Sadler’s] earlier Adventists beliefs. The Adventists doctrines in the UB are also precisely those fundamental beliefs that an ex‐Adventist would find hard to dis‐ card, beliefs that would be favorably re‐ ceived by three other ex‐Adventist rela‐ tives on the Contact Commission, the two Sadlers and Wilfred’s wife.”

Researcher Alex Constantine has come to the same conclusion as Gardner about the Kellogg family being involved with the 12

origins of the UB in an article from his blog, Alex Constantine’s Blacklist, titled, “The Urantia Book is a Skull and Bones Spin‐ Off.”. http:// aconstantineblack‐ list.blogspot.com/2008/12/urantia‐cult‐is‐ skull‐bones‐spin‐off.html I still don’t think that the combining of Gardner’s and Con‐ stantine’s information definitively proves anything, even though the pattern that was being uncovered appeared suspicious.

Despite this, the book has its defenders.

“We’re not told what the other members of the Kellogg family thought of Wilfred Kellogg’s channeling,” said anonymous UB supporter “Diane” who, while rebutting an

The Urantia Book: Part 2 ‐ By Bret Lueder

article by Brian Salter from 2004 at the website, www.questionsquestions.com (which is no longer available online), takes a verbal shot at Constantine. “But that’s, apparently, not important. In some peo‐ ple’s eyes [referring to Constantine], appar‐ ently, the mere involvement of a Kellogg in the founding of Urantia, any Kellogg, is sufficient to brand Urantia an insidious evil, tainting everything it touches.” http:// activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/ agent‐baiting‐guilt‐by‐association‐and‐ religious‐bigotry‐2/

Together, Gardner and Constantine do pro‐ vide some interesting evidence. I think a jury would be split. It is compelling, how‐ ever, and worthy of further study in my view when you consider that when discuss‐ ing or describing these kinds of universal truths any writer is bound to word things similarly to other religious doctrines, espe‐ cially when there are so many throughout history all explaining the same things. That does appear to be reasonable.

An experiment conducted by the editors of The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read, Tim C. Leedom and Maria Murdy, would appear to support the usage of uni‐ versal ideas and similar wordings found in the UB.

On pg 467 of the revised Second Edition (2007), Leedom writes, “In 1993 when I started to gather information for The Book, I decided to test the leaders of different religious denominations on their knowledge of Holy Books. The informal test was very simple. I took 50 sayings from various holy texts of the world religions. Included in this ‘pop’ quiz were scriptures from Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Tao‐ ism, Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, and Na‐ tive American books of wisdom. The chal‐ lenge of these men of God was this: 1. Iden‐ tify the sayings that come from your

religion and, 2. Tell me where these Holy Scriptures come from? The ministers, priests, preachers, reverends, clerics, monks and rabbis failed miserably in both sections. The highest score was 56% on both sections; most scores were less than 50%!” Still, Gardner, Constantine and others will argue that with so many simi‐ larities in wordings and thought between various passages of the UB and the afore‐ mentioned books that there has got to be some sort of underhandedness afoot. And I can see this side of the coin as well. You know the old saying, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s….”

Adding to the controversy—as if it needed more—at least in terms of a possible mo‐ tive to create a religious philosophy for a mass mind‐control experiment, occult scholar Jordan Maxwell offers some possi‐ bly pertinent work. In an interview with him at the Bay Area UFO Expo in 2007 in Santa Clara, California, USA, included within the Esoteric Guide to the Bay Area UFO Expo Volume II DVD set of interviews with event speakers, Maxwell outlined a social/political framework which has given rise to many religious movements that appear to stem from a common source. It is my view that within this framework is a potential for a possible link between the origins of the SDA’s, the JW’s and the UB through British Israelism.

Here’s the background: Maxwell ex‐ plained that many of the religious and political movements coming out of that era were off‐shoots of the original phi‐ losophy of the British Israelists, today’s modern Zionists. He pieced together infor‐ mation from several sources, among which is The Watchtower Magazine, pub‐ lished monthly by the JW’s since 1879.

Back then it was called, The Zion’s Watch Tower and Charles Taze Russell, who had a falling out with Miller in the Second Adventist movement, started his own break‐away study group known as the International Bible Study Association which later became the JW’s. It was the JW’s which Maxwell discovered first as having ties to British Israelism. But he soon realized that everything connected to the Adventist movement was also con‐ nected to British Israelism, including the SDA’s.

In this scenario, Taze Russell can be seen as merely leading another break‐away group coming out of the Second Adventist movement, of which Sadler and company were also a part until they broke away to start The Urantia Papers. With this in mind, does it not at least appear possible that if the SDA’s have a common root in British Israelism, that the newly‐created spiritual philosophy by former SDA mem‐ bers would not, at least to some degree, contain a philosophical thread back to the 13

original root, British Iraelism? And Zionists are known to have plans of world domina‐ tion. They were the “zi” in “Nazi.” This is no coincidence argues Maxwell. “They have no idea in the world that it is all fi‐ nanced out of Europe,” described Max‐ well.“The Seventh‐day Adventists, the Christadelphians, the World Wide Church of God, Herbet W Armstrong, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism; it’s all based on the British‐Israel World Federation’s con‐ cepts and ideas. They’re just branches com‐ ing up.”

While Maxwell did not specifically name the UB as one such organization, it would appear that the UB does fit the pattern he has outlined in my interview, although this is pure speculation at this point. Maybe passages from the UB are similar to other past religious texts coming up after the 1800’s because they stem from a single source—the British Israelist philosophy represented by today’s BIWF? Maxwell could not be reached for comment by the time of publication. There is obviously still work to be done to flesh out the possible connections within the framework laid out

by Maxwell. However, while I wait to con‐ nect with him, I found that Montauk Pro‐ ject survivor, mentalist and author Stewart Swerdlow generally agrees with Maxwell but feels that the common root goes back even further than the 1794 English origins of modern British Israelism.

“You have to go back further than Britain,” described Swerd‐ low in a recent Skype interview from his home in St. Joseph, MI, USA. “Yes, yes, there’s a religious connection with all of them: Islam, Judaism, Christi‐ anity, all of them because they all have their origins in Sumer and ancient Egypt. Egypt got it’s religion from Sumer. So you go back to the Reptilian, sacrifi‐ cial, blood religion that was manifest in Sumer, and then extrapolate it back out to the rest of the world. So in that way, yes, there is a connection with all those religions, but it is way before [Britain]. You have to remember that the British royal family members are de‐ scendants of those Sumerians and Reptilian religion. So in that way there is a connection [with the UB].”

The Urantia Book: Part 2 ‐ By Bret Lueder

Even if the plagiarism claims are ever proved to be 100% true, the question of whether or not there was plagiarism in the UB might be a moot one if there really was Divine inspiration coming through it. “Well there is no ‘Urantia code,” quipped Byron Belitsos, author of ‘The Adventure of Being Human’ and other books revolving around the UB, during a recent E‐mail exchange.

“Yeah there’s inspiration and Holy Spirit coming through the editors [of the UB].

The UB tells you, right up front, that its teachings are a blend of superhuman reve‐ lation with expressions from hundreds of human sources.

In fact, a total of about 1,000 such hu‐ manly‐originated concepts were used to create its first three parts of the text, and another 2,000 for creating Part IV, which purports to be the angelic record of the life and teachings of Jesus. To date, research‐ ers have discovered several hundred books published as late as 1940 that contain such source material. The celestial authors fur‐ ther state that their mandate was to give preference to the highest existing human concepts relevant to the subjects being presented. They were to resort to pure revelation only when the idea they were trying to convey had no adequate previous expression by humans. In this sense, the UB is a hybrid of human and Divine ideas; a unique co‐creation. And I wouldn’t call that plagiarism.”

It sounds like the description of a modern DJ who borrows sound samples from other artists to mix them into something new and unique. Yet, there is a fine line in the music industry between copyright infringe‐ ment of personal intellectual property and unique artistic creativity. Could this possi‐ bly be the case with the creation of the All of this anti‐UB information was compel‐ ling, so I had to ask Banton directly: Does it matter if the UB story was constructed using various plagiarizations, if it was chan‐ neled by a deceptive being or a hoax made up by Zionist conspiracists? “No,” said Ban‐ ton flatly. “But every single question I ever had has been answered by this revelation. I can only sum it up as a revelation. And there is no way I can prove the power or validity of this book by speaking about it.

This book is like a spiritual experience. You have to experience it for yourself. You have to get a copy, read it… and feel it. And once you’ve felt it, you’ll know exactly where I’m coming from.”

What I think Banton has going for him, and others like him who have a strong faith in the information within the UB and have been inspired by it, is the idea that there is some kind of Divine inspiration coming through the book in some way, maybe simi‐ lar to The Bible Code in The Torah. It is claimed by solid scholarship, although

disputed (See below) that there are at least four authors to the Torah and that it was edited and merged over time. Yet there is still Divine influence supposedly remaining intact in the form of a code despite this.

This is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

For the opposite take, that even if The Torah was written over time, it still somehow contains Divine inspirations…

http://www.thejewishweek.com/ f e a t u r e s / s t r e e t _ t o r a h who_wrote_torah_committed_theology_ age_skepticism 14

UB? Who could say for sure? www.urantia.org, www.patobanton.com, www.jordanmaxwell.com/blog, www.expansions.com, www.evolving‐ souls.org

Upcoming Events

Yes, coming up in 2015, it's the 25th…

Glastonbury Syposium: Investigating Signs of our Times.

An annual three‐day conference of mysteries, truth and new frontiers, truth issues, earth mysteries, crop circles, new physics, con‐ spiracies, UFOs, metaphysics, spirituality, consciousness studies, sacred geometry, astrology, music and more. Friday‐Sunday, 24th‐26th July 2015. Town Hall, Glastonbury, UK. Online booking starts in January 2015 It's one of Britain's longest established and most acclaimed 'alternative' conferences. For further information visit: www.glastonburysymposium.co.uk

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The friendly meeting‐place for free‐thinking people. Based in St. Anne’s‐on‐the‐Sea, Lancashire, UK. Entrance only £3, which includes refreshments.

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Cornwall UFO Research Group presents their 19th Annual UFO Conference on Saturday 10th October 2015. Venue: Truro College (Lecture Theatre), Fal Building, Col‐ lege Road, Truro, Cornwall TR1 3XX. For further information nearer the time visit: www.cornwall‐ufo.co.uk

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In an introduction to one of my earlier fea‐ tures, the editor, Brian Allan, broached the topic of how sometimes events transcend the nebulous interface between Ufology and Paranormal, bequeathing this area the name ‘High Strangeness’. This high strange‐ ness decided to impact on my life from the earliest of days and could have backed the maxim ‘start as you mean to go on’. I was born in 1956 a breach birth and thus en‐ tered into this world feet first in topsy turvy fashion, my first encounter with synchronicity recognized at the tender, naïve age of seven when I sat in the silhouetted stalls to watch the very beautiful Ursula Andress rise from the foam like Aphrodite in the voted ‘most favourite’ James Bond movie of all time, Dr No in 1963. Ursula was the personification of female and/or young woman in her bikini clad role of Honey Ryder.

Like many millions, I may have been mes‐ merised. I met up with Ursula on screen only a few years later in the Hammer Films version of ‘She’, Ayesha, who must be obeyed…an even more beautiful personifi‐ cation of female. The movie was an adapta‐ tion from the first Ayesha book by the pos‐ sibly mystical Rider Haggard, with 83 million copies sold in 1965 one of the best selling books of all time. Yes, Rider Haggard. Along with Ursula/Ayesha, here was Ryder‐Rider again. My flirtation with synchronicity, if not Ursula, was born, but on reflection I feel She had triggered something deep in my psyche….the search for the Ultimate Woman. Not bad for a ten year old. Many years later, I must wonder if I did find Her, and not only did she own my heart, but my brain as well. I will try to explain.

The following years were pretty mundane living in the small fishing village of South Shields (now home to one of the most alarming poltergeist cases in the UK) in a tiny corner of the North East of England – I must have gone a little shy on Ayesha. My mother referred to herself as a spiritualist medium, and for company would easily persuade me to accompany her on regular jaunts to the nearby spiritualist church in the town. With a dawning of an early scien‐ tific mind, I was happy enough to go, after all even at 14 you can’t consider contact

with the dead as passé. She would often recount the tale of how, just before my birth, she had a vision of an angelic figure she would interpret as being no less than Jesus, presenting her with a string of pearls, but alas, one was missing on the broken link.

As I was born in June that has the pearl as its stone, maybe that was the simple solu‐

tion to the imagery. After numerous visits over a short period in which my fascina‐ tion began to wane, I was told the familiar sort of messages many people hear and usually hope to hear. They are gifted, special, should be a healer and have a spiritual task to fulfil. I wonder how much of this information had been innocently plucked from the recipient’s brain in in‐ stances of short range telepathy? Tell me something that will occur in the future and I still suspect that the plucking brain has taken from the listeners fixed DNA blueprint in that timeless realm that tran‐ scends our illusion of Time‐Space.

As a teenager I did the natural and ex‐ pected thing – rebel against all forms of authority and therefore science, believing anything remotely paranormal to be ex‐ actly that. I did enjoy, in a strange sense, a vision that I had in which I was awake in bed but couldn’t move. My head was gen‐ tly turned to the left for me by a presence and when I tried to shout out in fear noth‐ ing came out. Directly in alignment with my bedroom curtains, I was forced to watch them open as a triple legged long tall table appeared, upon which stood a vase containing dead or withered flowers.

As I watched, the flowers suddenly came into bloom as if reincarnating –maybe they were rein‐carnations!

17

The vision faded and my limbs could func‐ tion again.

Oh well, this was, I guess, ‘Night Terrors’, caused by increased brain activity, confu‐ sional arousal and partial awakening from non REM, or non‐dream sleep. An explana‐ tion of feelings of a strange presence are also attempted in Michael Persinger’s ex‐ periments with his ‘God Helmet’ appara‐ tus. I also had experi‐ enced the state of going into epileptic seizure at 10 when my tonsils had poisoned to such a point that I was slowly choking to death as my windpipe was shrinking and the lack of oxygen would hurl me into unconscious‐ ness.

It’s a condition called peritonitis. This was hur‐ riedly remedied by the emergency removal of the nasty tonsil, but at least I can say I have experienced the state of aura – the immi‐ nence of the fit approaching. It is weird and most likely mystical. Once, epilepsy was known as a sacred disease as during the state of convulsion communication was being made with the Gods. Maybe it threw me up a neurological circuit to join the one that may have followed the deliv‐ ery of breach birth, another condition that can affect the brain owing to oxygen.

Maybe not, either.

From ages 10‐20 I had read every worth‐ while esoteric book, I think the first being Adamski’s kind‐of‐silly‐when‐you‐get‐older but still iconic ‘Flying Saucers Have Landed’, brought into class by our English teacher Mr Roberts who was fascinated by George’s pix of Ufo’s or chicken incubators, but struggling to get my head around the more scientific investigations of physicist Jacques Vallee on the subject in his ‘Anatomy of a Phenomenon’. At the tender age of 10, a difficult one to read, that one, with its contents of physics, but I wasn’t giving up, and I’ll explain why. As that ten year old, my interest in dinosaurs had been challenged overnight when the front page of our local newspaper read, one night in 1967, ‘Flying Saucers over Tyne Dock’.

Yes, here was my first introduction to the pesky phenomenon that simply will not

Do we own our own Brains?: By Dan Green

leave popular culture, me or dinosaurs alone. Tyne Dock was a part of my town I had never ventured, it may as well have been Australia, as I’d never have worked out the right bus to get there, but one night some UFO’s hung over a block of flats there long enough for residents to look out and up from their windows to witness three stationary bright lights early in the morning before the trio decided to whiz off at an alarming pace. One family in particular were so concerned that they contacted the friendly persuasive Ministry of Defence who assured them that what the had seen was a solitary weather balloon that had blown over from Aughton, Liverpool. I’ve since seen that document with my own eyes.

The poor chap who was afforded this reply went on to be stuck with the nickname ‘Ronnie Rocket’ for his pains. Our alien weather balloon saga didn’t end above Ronnie’s flat, though. For that entire week the town of South Shields were host to a UFO ‘flap’, one of the better sightings being the many gathering of early morning work‐ ers awaiting the 5am first ferry of the day, all upon the launch witnessing numerous ‘flying crosses’ in the sky. The local newspa‐ per ‘The Gazette’ continued to carry a num‐ ber of interesting sightings and reports from townsfolk as it certainly did look as if something was going on in their airspace that week. Naturally I was out there too hoping to spot my quota. I didn’t, just an initial convincing false alarm with low flying seagulls, but it was jolly exciting and full of inspiring hope despite staying out late at night in bloody freezing weather.

In the meantime my interest in all things alternative had taken some time out to be scared like never before, back in the silhou‐ etted cinema stalls this time to watch the biggest movie of 1974 ‘The Exorcist’. Could humans really be possessed by demons?

Like mostly all of the audience I went home to sleep with the light on for weeks, but it was the nearby Coal board mine and their late night detonations responsible for my bed involuntary shaking from time to time!

As an adult, having learned and accepted the utterly fascinating phenomenon of Mul‐ tiple Personality Disorder, I guess demonic possession gets the elbow, unless of course you can be that unlucky to have MPD and still get possessed. As touched upon in the movie script, the cry of ‘epilepsy’ can be a very convincing ‘possessor’, there are over 40 different types of the seizure and proba‐ bly undiscovered more. Could ‘alien abduc‐ tion’ starting with a bright light and then confusion be some sort of a new epilepsy fashioned from current belief systems and the peregrinations of the Collective Uncon‐ scious?

Back to 1975 and having been impressed by another good‐at‐the‐time‐but‐silly‐when‐ older book, Adamski’s buddy George Hunt

Williamson’s saucer effort ‘Other Tongues, Other Flesh’, I had copied a logo from out of his pages, the emblem of the ‘Knights of the Solar Cross’. After meditating on it for weeks and trying to relate to it in any way, one late night I had a response. At the time I was sleeping on the floor in a bedroom upstairs – I think I was trying to be disci‐ plined – which meant that I had a great panoramic view through my bay window.

Laying there awake, I noticed a golden ex‐ plosion in the sky above the St. Michael’s church which was in direct line with my house in the not too far distance.

Excitedly running to the window, I watched how this golden orb wobbled itself off to the left and out of vision. This was a re‐ sponse from my Solar Cross brethren I was convinced. Sceptics will say it was probably a flare. I’m however quietly confident now that it was an appropriately presented ar‐ chetypical response to my meditations and as an adult I seem to have had this happen on other occasions such as the time I was having my photo taken alongside the unique place name of the village Jerusalem in Lincolnshire when a UFO bright light de‐ cided to appear above me in the pic, and better still, when I was researching my hy‐ pothesis that the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene was demised by a dagger. What would appear on a pic of me sitting upon the steps of the remains of the 13c Knights Templar’ Temple Bruer preceptory, also in Lincolnshire, but a dagger‐type object, plus token splodgey ectoplasm type stuff further to my right!

Was I somehow and subconsciously pro‐ jecting these images onto film? I remind you all of the controversial Ted Serios and his ‘mind over molecules’ career , the Chi‐ cago bellhop who produced ‘ though‐ tographs’ on Polaroid film during the six‐ ties, his claims strengthened by the support of a Denver based psychiatrist arguing the unproven reality of Ted’s feats. After grow‐ ing up a lot and having an extended crash course in the oral teachings of Kalachakra Vajrayana whilst staying at A Tibetan Mon‐ astery and Centre in Scotland, I remained a natural born loner who wouldn’t join any Group, Order or Cult or even work with any 18

individual. I had no interest in drugs or alcohol. My Path was a lonely one, and branched out into an investigation into the psychological realm of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung – and creepy Crowley’s ‐ archetypes.

As a child of nature, and a female admiring male, I wondered if I could experiment being one with the male force in nature.

Only one way to find out would be to try.

You have to become something in order to understand it. Having read about the liai‐ son with Ogilvy Crombie, a 73 year old chap in Edinburgh who was surprised one day by the unexpected appearance of the god Pan and his fairy folk appearing along‐ side him and further adventures with the Findhorn community in Scotland – they found a horn alright, two in fact‐ I, too, was inspired to see if I could befriend the goat god, saturating myself in thoughts, poetry, drawings, pan pipe music, forestry and literature concerning his presence. In my second stage of experimenting with arche‐ types, the first being that of the ‘UFO’ its seems, I again eventually met with success and archetypical Greek god Pan.

The first time still remains quite fresh in my memory, it was August 10th 1981. To some purely Dreamland and therefore inconsequential, to others an inner plane with meaning, I was led in the sequence by a figure who’s voice I could only hear with‐ out fully seeing the person. ‘So you want to see faeries,’ it said pointing me in a di‐ rection ahead. I was in some sort of floral garden with rocks and shrubs along a path As I followed where I had been shown I began to feel an overwhelming force which I will try and explain by saying it felt like trying to push through a sea of treacle! I had never felt such a force or feeling ever before although I now encounter it, this ‘panic’, every time I reach an exact spot up the ascension on Glastonbury Tor. Ap‐ proaching an alcove, I found myself being forced to the ground by this invisible force and then a stone pedestal appeared in front of me at a distance of approximately ten yards, upon it a huge and open book.

The figure of the god Pan appeared behind pedestal and book. I remember nothing else, other than ‘knowing’ that some con‐ versation did take place. Thus began an intense archetypical interlude that lasted seven years until my interest in the god began to wane and with it the interaction, but not after a number of inner plane en‐ counters some too ludicrous to mention!

During these years I discovered that photo‐ graphs I had taken in innocence of natural landscapes had starting to pick up subtle images, the camera apparently being able to capture on film images too sensitive for the human eye. Strange creature‐like fig‐ ures that for all the world met with the archetypes of faeries would often show

Do we own our own Brains?: By Dan Green

and be seen to move from photo to photo.

When I showed the pic’s to people, some would see the figures without a problem, some would need time and others would see nothing. It’s no fun showing seemingly ordinary photos to people that highlight elfin type figures who can’t see them – they think you’re barmy for a start! But now I know about the neurological condition called scotoma, whereby some people CAN see certain content in a picture whilst oth‐ ers simply can’t – their brain won’t let them! Much of it has to do with ‘programming’ in the brain ie you only see what you expect to see, and also from which brain lobe the viewer may satisfacto‐ rily normally reside in. When I was 18 I spontaneously decided that I would start writing with my left hand instead of my trusty right, and found that I could do it with equal ease. What I probably didn’t know I was doing was that by changing to my left I would enforce functioning in my opposite and right brain lobe wherein re‐ sides the faculty of intuitiveness and an open door to mysticism – I was making a neurological shift.

Later, I worked with a lovely fellow from Surrey called Vernon Harrison , a retired photographer from the Royal College, who in turn worked for the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, who could see what I was indicating in the photos. He confirmed the negatives were genuine and offered to come and take his own pictures of my elves and faeries in the obliging wood in which they appeared. If he picked them upon his film and they would move whilst retaining their identity from snap to snap, he would declare that I was photographing dimensional denizens.

Vernon taught me to rotate pictures 360 degrees and if the figures still remained you could rule out illusion. He sent his fairly balanced report to the ASSAP asking for funding to conduct his experiment and, surprising him, he heard nothing more!

The fairy theme continued when years later in 1989 I was visited by Joe Cooper from Leeds, author of ‘The Case of the Cottingley Fairies’, the pair of us brought together by a common interest in such things and insti‐ gated by author Colin Wilson, who in one of his own books had suggested we all have seven ‘selves’ or levels of ourselves. Often by quirk we may communicate with an‐ other level of our selves, mistakenly think‐ ing it to be our ‘Guardian Angel’ or some other otherworldly entity, nevertheless valuable information and advice can be transmitted as it originates from deep within our own Collective Unconscious. Joe had a dilemma.

For years he had been pestering Elsie and Frances, the two sisters who had taken the world by storm in 1917 by producing their own fairy pix alongside a beck in Cottingley,

Yorkshire. Joe was adamant that one day he would get them to confess that the pic’s were faked, but both lasses stood 19

firm. Giving up, and within weeks of his life’s work now supporting the girls being published in a book, the girls fell out and

Do we own our own Brains?: By Dan Green

Elsie revealed how they had produced them. What was Joe to do? Keep the disclo‐ sure to himself and have the book go ahead? Or cash in on the scoop but lose the book deal? How could I have advised? In the end the book did survive and a compro‐ mise reached – three of the four photos were faked, but the fourth was genuine!

The case for Mind projecting onto film was still alive!

Another interesting personality I mingled with was with Alex Sanders, self proclaimed ‘King of the Witches’ living in Bexhill, Sus‐ sex, and a big media celebrity, almost pop star status, during the sixties. Aware of his outrageous claims and me settling for him being the natural successor to Crowley, from 1982‐85 I decided to check out this rascal to see what made him tick. True to his reputation he was a rascal I kept at arms length. Alex, it seemed, was being made to diversify out from his better known witch‐ craft only activities. He was 69 at the time – although claiming he was 59– on his pen‐ sion and was being chased by six covens he reckoned were out to get him for having upset them! Poor Alex was now being both‐ ered by Ufo’s who wouldn’t leave him alone and wasn’t best pleased telling me that a car he had been travelling in had a disc shaped object tail it as close as the car bumper. To his displeasure, much of his channelling was now bringing through extra ‐terrestrials. Had he, too, underdone a sub‐ conscious change in archetypal conscious‐ ness that best suited the transient form of the Unknown?

Many other ‘psychic’ experiences have found their way to me, more than I could ever recount here, but older and wiser, yet still forever learning, I am a big boy now and will chance to relay that I did find the Ultimate Woman. She is, my friends, planet earth, and here I suspect hides the mecha‐ nism behind all genuine manifestations we label paranormal. For what it is worth, here is my understanding. First and foremost, this is a sexual planet, and we are here for procreation, not to ask questions. We live on a planet upon which we do not realise or understand its hidden aspects of natural law. We live and die using only a percent‐ age of our brain, unaware of its full poten‐ tial, and consequently know so little about own potential. Put both avenues of igno‐ rance together and we should really con‐ cede that we know next to nothing, despite having built up a two millennium civilisation based on our own ignorance and rules.

There is some criteria for stating perhaps we have got everything about everything wrong, knowing so little, and we divert this void by trying to concentrate only on the study of what we call ‘paranormal’, to claim this aspect of life is the only one that eludes our understanding. Perhaps one day physics – itself a rapidly changing newly born baby,

with each new discovery of a particle the previous books go out the window – will discover that consciousness exists every‐ where. That the Gaia Theory is absolutely correct, and not only is the planet a self regulating body but it also thinks thoughts, it has a brain. It is a body and functions like our microcosmic version.

‘God’ did make us in its own image.

Allowing for Theosophical thought, and in turn the ancient wisdom of the Vedas, perhaps one day in a far away elevated place, having shed our ego and human form, we will learn that as individuals our designation had been to function as cells in a body, with corresponding responsibili‐ ties. The complexity and versatility of the human central nervous system remains poorly understood. Sensory information is constantly transmitted to the brain from peripheral receptors. From Earth’s own Language, the Lost Mother Tongue, ‘Peripheral’, means a surrounding region, from Greek ‘pherein’, meaning ‘to carry’.

The prefix ‘Peri’, in astronomical terms means ‘near’. ‘Peripheral’ contains the words ‘ripheral’ pronounced ‘referral’. A ‘referral’ meaning ‘to direct for informa‐ tion’, comes from the Latin ‘referre’, meaning ‘to carry back’.

phonetic ‘trance’, the state in which we have become – and information that we can never hope to understand has been exchanged and stored in that portion of our brain that we live, die and never use.

But the planet uses it, to ensure that bio‐ logical functions are carried out to main‐ tain what is necessary for the body that is our earth. Biologist, British Military Intelli‐ gence Officer and paranormal author Ivan T. Sanderson came close, his often un‐ known books ‘Invisible Residents’ and ‘Uninvited Visitors’ announcing UFO’s as being plasma cells, Ivan even having se‐ cured some photos to show as much. Our UFO encounters, in all shapes and sizes, are a cellular transference vital to planet earth. Such a thought will be demoralizing to our egos who would rather not be aware of our true purpose here on the planet, the reality of this adding to the fact that we have no real idea of what we are or what we are doing whilst in existence here.

If we could expand our consciousness and use full capacity of our brains then we might have the understanding, but the reason why we can’t use our full brain capacity is because we don’t own our own brains; the owner of that is the living,

We are not in control of a genuine UFO encounter, we may think we can have UFO’s appear in response to our efforts but it is the UFO that is in control of the meaningful encounter. In our role as cells in a body we have been brought into con‐ tact with the strategic cell in the body that the UFO actually is, hence the many dif‐ fering shapes, and when we meet there is a unconscious conveying or transference that occurs – transference containing the

breathing conscious planet itself. In fact, ALL psychic activity is the handiwork of her domain, and it’s not important to her that we understand it. We are part of her Mind, our consciousness borrowed from it in the same way that we may casually borrow a book from a library. Any further attempt at explanations beyond this, with what brain capacity you or I are using, renders a com‐ mentary impossible for one so small in an ever expanding universe...

20

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With the battle over the budget, funds be‐ ing severely cut, and no new monies allot‐ ted for anything, one has to wonder about America’s aging infrastructure. Electric power grids are needlessly convoluted at this point, over‐worked, and in need of repair and updating. Interstate highways which are now old enough to require con‐ siderable maintenance are in poor shape and growing worse. Risky overpasses and entrance/exits ramps often need repair.

However, bridges and tunnels offer the most dramatic potential for disaster when their aging components finally collapse, having had little or no comprehensive re‐ pair their entire lifetimes.

If the Silver Bridge col‐ lapse of December 1, 1967, is any indication, our aging infrastructure today should have Moth‐ man hovering overhead, UFOs zooming from one potential bridge disaster to another, and paranor‐ mal activity beeping, pop‐ ping, and swirling. Yes, perhaps a silly idea, but there are numerous ac‐ counts of UFOs near dis‐ asters, including the foot‐ age taken of them near the 2011 Japanese 9.0 earthquake and subse‐ quent catastrophic tsu‐ nami.

Mothman was so prevalent in the year be‐ fore the Silver Bridge collapsed, that he established his identity at that point to the paranormal investigative world. Silver Bridge was for Mothman, like the first mega ‐hit for a celebrity singer.

Super‐natural happenings and UFO sight‐ ings also abounded near Silver Bridge in that year before the collapse, which killed 46 people. That collapse unfolded like a disaster film with cars which seconds be‐ fore had been crawling along in Christmas rush hour traffic, now hung on fragments of the bridge before plunging, filled with pas‐ sengers, into the frigid Ohio River.

In 1975, John Keel wrote ”Mothman Prophecies,” which documented the para‐ normal events experienced by various peo‐ ple around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, leading up to the bridge collapse. Point Pleasant had also had an abundance of UFO

sightings during that time. After the de‐ mise of the bridge, the super‐natural events and UFO activity lessened and soon were nearly non‐existent, according to Keel’s research. Mothman himself (could he actually be Mothwoman?), was reported to be a huge, semi‐human winged creature with glowing red eyes, sighted in and around Point Pleasant in 1966 and 1967. Between 6.5 and 7 feet tall, with a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, this shadowy creature was said to fly great distances at speeds up to 100 miles per hour. Even though I respect John Keel’s work and consider him one of my favorite Fortean writers, I might be a bit skeptical

if I had not had paranormal events in and around my house, UFO sightings near my house, and, yes, a Mothman sighting, right before the Skyway Bridge plunged into Tampa Bay on May 9, 1980, as I got ready for another day of teaching school.

Strange things had been happening at and near my house, since 1979; they eased off after the Skyway disaster in 1980.

The most spectacular UFO sighting of my life thus far, at least which I remember consciously, was over a small park at the end of the street on which I lived. I lived one block from Tampa Bay and the dual‐ bridge Sunshine Skyway could be seen from this park. It was a summer night in 1979, when my daughter and I walked our dog Bailey to the park. I was a field inves‐ tigator for MUFON and APRO at the time, and so the two huge glowing white orbs which were hanging in the dark sky over Tampa Bay, were absolutely thrilling! We took the dog home, and raced back to the 23

park. A small group of people had gathered to watch the orbs, which had not moved.

Unlike weather balloons, there was abso‐ lutely no drifting in the breeze. Perhaps this was rocket fuel from a military test at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa? Then this phenomenon should have slowly disap‐ peared. Instead, as I looked down for just a second, one of the two dazzling white orbs, just disappeared. Not a trace of it was left. Oddly, it was the one with which I felt I was in communication, or trying to establish communication.

The other orb stayed there, not budging an inch, until I gave up and went home at 2:30 a.m. I had to teach school in the morning but I have kicked myself ever since, for leaving.

No weather balloon, rocket fuel debris, heli‐ copter, or Chinese lan‐ tern hoax, would have stayed stationery for all those hours. In the year before 35 people in cars and a Greyhound Bus, plunged off one span of the Skyway Bridge when the Summit Venture barge hit it, my small house one block from Tampa Bay, which I shared with my parents and daughter, was full of paranormal activity.

The walls beeped. The television beeped, at first at set intervals, and then randomly.

Lamps beeped. Ok, maybe the house was on the path of some kind of waves from MacDill Air Force Base, so I took a cassette recorder on batteries, about half a block away from the house, and it beeped too.

My daughter and I recorded “the beeps” but when we re‐played the tapes, the beeps were always gone.

1979 was also my time of awakening as a UFO abductee and subsequent cosmic citizen. In 1980, I underwent hypnosis with Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle and remembered a UFO encounter when I was a child in Iowa, in which I met Tibus, my lifelong (as it turns out), guide. After the Skyway fell down, and after I embraced my own UFO connec‐ tion, the beeps eased off and then stopped entirely. Back to the morning of the Sky‐ way disaster: May 9, 1980, at 7:33 in the morning, I was hurriedly getting myself and my daughter ready for school, when our

Paranormal Warnings of bridge collapse as ‘Mothman’ flies overhead: By Diane Tessman

smoke alarm started to beep. Of course I raced around to check for fire, and then realized it was not the fire warning, but also not the “battery low” signal. It sounded exactly like Morse Code, but I don’t know Morse Code. My dad was trying to get his brain to remember what he knew of Morse Code, when we heard on the television news that a barge had just rammed into the Skyway Bridge at approximately 7:35 a.m.

The smoke alarm had stopped. And it never did that again. Was this a desperate call for help from the energy‐bodies of those who had just left their physical form? The Sky‐ way Bridge was/is a tall structure and to plunge off it, there would be a few seconds of falling, falling, falling in sheer panic, through the air in your vehicle. Or, had whatever been beeping at me all those months, finally arrived at the awaited hour, and madly sent its message?

It was several months after the Skyway disaster that a memory struck me: I had been outdoors by myself in the summer of 1979, and the stars had suddenly been blot‐ ted out by something very large and dark, but outlined in blood red. It had whooshed over, giving me the impression of a giant wingspan or a giant cape, all spread out. It swooped low overhead, going faster than a large bird would fly (and too big for a large bird anyway!), and then the stars re‐ emerged.

Mothman, I presume?

Note: The original account of this and many paranormal happenings which I have ex‐ perienced are in the book that started it all, The Transformation by Diane Tessman, available from me in “e” form.

www.earthchangepredictions.com www.amazon.com/The‐UFO‐Agenda‐ebook/dp/B00DUEPPJ4

The Silver Bridge was an eyebar‐chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, over the Ohio River. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge col‐ lapsed while it was full of rush‐hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. Two of the victims were never found. Investigation of the wreckage pointed to the cause of the collapse being the failure of a single eyebar in a suspension chain, due to a small defect 0.1 inch (2.5 mm) deep. Analysis showed that the bridge was carrying much heavier loads than it had originally been designed for and had been poorly maintained...

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IMPORTANT NOTICE! It is fair to say, in this day and age, that the disconnect between mainstream media “reality” and what is really going on is getting to the point where many people in society are not being told the full story—about almost everything and anything. In geopolitics, we see media organisations such as Al Jazeera willing to totally fabricate events and broadcast them via BBC, CNN, ABC and other licen‐ sees. In what is needlessly called “alternative health”, we see the might of trans‐ national drug companies steering government health policies as well as affecting personal sovereignty in the form of forced vaccinations, freedom of choice in the treatment of serious disease, and the right to be able to purchase health prod‐ ucts of our choosing.

In explorations of “fringe sciences”, including subjects such as the Expanding Earth theory or the Electric Universe theory, we see the unexplained anomalies regarding energy, gravity, electricity and biology, being ignored, suppressed or ridiculed. I believe that it is in the open‐minded exploration of such anomalies, that we actually further our scientific understanding of our universe. In discus‐ sion of consciousness and the paranormal, we again see mainstream media re‐ porting distorted versions of events, misreporting factual data, not reporting it at all, and again, outright ridicule (snigger factor).

The fact of the matter is that people want to know more about who we are as spiritual beings, about the role of consciousness in determining how we experi‐ ence life, and the role our inherent beliefs have on how we live and treat other people. I believe that the vast majority of people on this planet want to live in peace and harmony with each other, and I also believe that there are forces at work, including the military‐intelligence‐industrial complex, that desire and profit from manufactured conflict. We live in an era where a growing number of people are stepping up to blow the whistle on illegal and suppressed informa‐ tion. Information they believe is in everyone’s interests to be made public. Un‐ fortunately, despite the assurances of protection to whistleblowers from world leaders, we actually see the opposite—the suppression and persecution of such people.

And finally, we live on a planet where the way in which we live is dramatically affecting the entire ecosystem. Meas‐ urable levels of chemicals are found in the air over the entire planet—in the groundwater of every continent, and in the oceans everywhere. Why is it noble to focus on CO2 and energy sav‐ ing, while ignoring the death, disease and destruction of our habitat and life forms, including our own? I have cre‐ ated the Alternative News Project (ANP), not as a vehicle to fight the current mainstream manufactured reality, but instead to provide a vehicle for like‐minded, independent thinkers, to help create something new. Some‐ thing better. Instead of endless searches on the Internet, we will bring you the news, every day, right across the spectrum of hundreds of non‐ mainstream news Topics. We have called it a Project, as it is not just about information—it is about the building of a global community through the distri‐ bution of information. The ANP is the first time that independent thinkers of the world (i.e. you) have a centralised location not only to see more of what is going on in your world than ever before, but where you also have the opportunity to send alternative news and information from anywhere across the globe. You are the real key to our project, because by receiving informa‐ tion you can inform others and by con‐ tributing your knowledge to us, we can broaden our scope of services around the globe. As such, the ANP is designed to be a community‐based interactive news and information project by the people for the people.

Welcome aboard the ANP, and thanks for being part of the adventure.

Duncan Roads and the ANP team

http://alternativenewsproject.org/ index.php?referrer=phenomena 26

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Words like “strange” and “supernatural” are admittedly relative terms whose true meaning exists in the mind of the beholder. What one person calls strange and supernatural, another might call commonplace or, conversely, too unreal to even contemplate taking seriously. But when reading “America’s Strange and Supernatural History,” a recent offering from Tim Beckley’s always‐cutting‐edge publishing house, Inner Light/Global Communications, it is not so easy to make convenient distinctions between what is real and what is laughably dismissible. The book consists primarily of historically documented facts as reported at the time, facts which, although not deliberately concealed, have nonetheless been omitted from the average history classes one takes while growing up in this country...

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America’s Strange and Supernatural History ‐ Proof Positive that we are a Weird Nation: By Sean Casteel

For example, do any of you recall being taught that there were instances of canni‐ balism in Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas? Historians have long acknowledged the truth of what is eerily called the “Starving Time,” the harsh winter of 1609, and the horrors the colonists were subject to in their struggle to survive. In May 2013, a team of archeolo‐ gists announced that they had excavated a trash pit at the Jamestown colony site in Virginia and discovered physical evidence that erased any lingering doubt: the skull and skeleton of a 14‐year‐old girl were un‐ earthed that bore cut marks indicating that her flesh and brain had been removed, clearly to feed the starving people, accord‐ ing to a forensic anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution.

The colonists found themselves in such dire straits due to extreme drought in the region coupled with the fact that their relations with the neighboring Native‐Americans had deteriorated to the point that the local natives were unwilling to help them. A sup‐ ply ship the colonists had been counting on was lost at sea and most of the settlers did not have even rudimentary farming skills.

George Percy, the president of Jamestown during the “Starving Time,” wrote a letter in 1625 in which he described how, after they had eaten horses, dogs, rats and other ver‐ min, they were forced to dig up the corpses of their own dead and use them for food.

The colonists were rescued in May of 1610 when settlers who had been marooned in Bermuda arrived to find 60 skeletally thin survivors.

“America’s Strange and Supernatural His‐ tory” also includes the tale of prospector Alferd Packer, who confessed to eating some of his fellow gold‐seekers after the group became snowbound in the Rocky Mountains in 1874. Packer had been born “Alfred,” the familiar spelling, but after receiving a tattoo that misspelled his name as “Alferd,” he decided it was easier to change his name than the tattoo. He was initially sentenced to death for his crimes, but his sentence was commuted to 40 years and he was later freed. He died in 1907 at age 65 of “senility, trouble and worry.”

The bulk of the first section of “America’s Strange and Supernatural History” is writ‐ ten by Tim R. Swartz, a veteran journalist in the field of UFO and paranormal research.

He covers a great deal of territory, such as the discovery by archeologists of the skele‐ tal remains of apparent giants throughout the United States.

For example, in 1833, at an army outpost on Lompock Ranchero in California, soldiers digging a foundation for a powder magazine found a stone coffin containing the skeleton of a man who in life would have stood over

12 feet tall. The local Native‐American medicine man said the bones were that of an “Allegewi,” a race of giants who had occupied the land before the Indians. The Allegewi were fierce creatures who would raid the Indian villages to carry off women and children to eat until the various local tribes finally united and wiped the Al‐ legewi out in a bloody war. Having ex‐ plained the skeleton’s origins, the medi‐ cine man then demanded that the giant’s bones, which were believed to still con‐ tain the spirit of great strength and cun‐ ning, be turned over to the village. The bones were eventually reburied in a se‐ cret location and have yet to be rediscov‐ ered today.

Swartz also recounts numerous stories of “sky falls,” some dating from the 1800s, in which everything from flakes of venison and mutton to mysterious rocks to living alligators have descended from above with no explanation. According to another chapter written by Swartz, there have been several instances where people have become mysteriously sickened by appar‐ ently poisonous fumes that defy chemical analysis and seem at times to be related to UFO appearances in the same general 28

areas. One such incident happened in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1986, caus‐ ing the evacuation of 10,000 workers and students. One public health official said at the time that the source of the fumes may never be identified.

“The Mad Gasser of Mattoon” also rates a chapter in this book on uniquely American weirdness. The “Gasser,” one learns, was not an escaped Nazi or a crazed ape‐man, as some early reports had suggested, but was instead a vengeful grocer’s son named Farley Llewellyn, who was angry that his community of Mattoon, Illinois, seemed to think less highly of him than he felt was warranted. Farley had majored in chemis‐ try at the University of Illinois and had built a full‐scale chemistry laboratory on his family’s property. Only days prior to the first “Mad Gasser” attack, one neighbor recalls hearing the sound of an explosion coming from Farley’s lab.

Beginning in September, 1944, the local “Mattoon Daily Journal‐Gazette” reported on the recurrent attacks of an “Anesthetic Prowler” who would subdue his victims by spraying them with an unknown form of gas. One woman said she had been asleep

America’s Strange and Supernatural History ‐ Proof Positive that we are a Weird Nation: By Sean Casteel

at home when she awakened to a “sweet, sickening odor.” The odor grew stronger and she realized that her legs and lower body were paralyzed. She became fright‐ ened and screamed to her sister for help.

Her sister came into the bedroom and also noticed the odor. The woman told her sister of the strange sensation she was feeling and said she was unable to move from her bed. A neighbor later confirmed seeing someone lurking outside the woman’s bed‐ room window in the early hours of the morning.

The gas attacks persisted for some time, motivated by some inner need to torment the townspeople, though Scott Maruna, who has written a book on the Gasser, be‐ lieves that Farley’s ultimate aim was proba‐ bly to blow up the entire town of Mattoon.

The police could never conclusively prove that Farley was the culprit, but, after the last gasser attack, his family had him com‐ mitted to a state mental institution, where he lived for the remainder of his life. After his book was published, Maruna received correspondence from people claiming that similar “gasser” sprees had taken place in their cities as well, from Virginia in the early 1930s to Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Ohio in subsequent years.

Swartz concludes the chapter by noting that, after the Mattoon incidents had run their course, the phenomenon was given little to no media coverage. Since the Mattoon spree had never been completely understood or explained, it was sometimes blamed on “hysteria,” which at the time was quite a shameful term, and the entire Mattoon community had been subjected to ridicule in the national news media. Other communities that later suffered similar attacks were understandably hesitant to publicize them.

In a chapter called “An Unnatural History of Indiana,” Swartz chronicles some of the stories of “high strangeness” in the Hoosier State, to include lake monsters, Bigfoot sightings, anomalous big cats, UFOs and more. A creature called a “Loup‐garou” was said to haunt the early French settlers of Vincennes, Indiana, taking various frighten‐ ing forms as it shape‐shifted its way through their nightmares. It was said that a person might become a Loup‐garou by breaking Lent seven years in a row. He would thus become condemned to roam each night through the fields and forests as an enraged animal. During the day, he would return to his human form, though he was continually morose and sickly and fear‐ ful to speak of his predicament lest some worse fate befall him.

The first half of “America’s Strange and Supernatural History” is rounded out by chapters from Timothy Green Beckley, Wm. Michael Mott and Olav Phillips. Beckley, along with Circe, his longtime female friend,

returned to Sleepy Hollow, New York, home of the famous “Headless Horse‐ man” legends. Beckley writes in his usual lighthearted, humorous way of doing the “tourist” thing with Circe, enjoying the local food and libations. But his attitude shifts to one of measured sobriety as he recalls that this same part of New York was the scene of frequent sightings of huge, triangle‐shaped UFOs, seen by thou‐ sands, in the early to mid‐1980s. Beckley and Circe crossed the state line into Con‐ necticut, where giant jack ‘o’ lanterns are said to have harassed locals shopping at a farmers’ market.

The pair purchased a copy of Washington Irving’s book on the Sleepy Hollow legend at a local souvenir stand and Beckley quotes it thusly: “A drowsy, dreamy influ‐ ence seems to hang over the land and to pervade the very atmosphere. The place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are subject to strange sights and hear voices and music in the air.”

Contributor Olav Phillips discusses whether the ancient Lemurians, a Pacific Ocean race similar to the fabled At‐ lanteans to the east, erected the mysteri‐ ous walls found in the eastern part of the San Francisco Bay area. The walls stretch for some 50 miles, all the way to San Jose, and are six feet high. “To say that is a massive engineering project,” Phillips writes, “is somewhat of a misnomer,” adding that the walls would have taken a huge labor force decades to construct and involved the use of considerable re‐ sources – and all for some unknown pur‐ pose, something beyond simple celestial alignment or ritual structures. Phillips’ theories on what the East Bay walls are really all about makes for a story of Ameri‐ can strangeness you won’t likely find any‐ where else.

One may not often think of Mississippi as 29

rife with the paranormal, but researcher and writer Wm. Michael Mott is here to tell you different. Over the years, he has collected many interesting anecdotes from the area, including stories passed down to him from his parents, grandparents and even great‐grandparents. “While many of these accounts,” Mott writes, “seem at first glance to be more or less ‘standard’ types of UFO and strange creature ac‐ counts, they actually vary in very distinc‐ tive ways which place them more in line with historical accounts of phenomena of a supernatural nature. Some are strangely reminiscent of Marian apparitions, angelic visitations and demonic manifestations from the Middle Ages up through the pre‐ sent day.”

We all know America is strange and has always had its share of the supernatural to mystify and enthrall, but reading “America’s Strange and Supernatural His‐ tory” will amplify that perception to an ear ‐shattering degree, perhaps even to what is called in audio circles “the threshold of pain.” But that’s not all the book has to offer. A previos article dealt with the sec‐ ond half of the book, called “Prophecies of the Presidents,” which cranks the weird‐ ness up to the level of our Chief Execu‐ tives, whose documented struggles with paranormal and occult mysteries will raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded of political cynics. Check it out in last months edition of Phenomena Magazine...

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May 4 - Full Moon. The Moon will be located on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun and its face will be will be fully illuminated. This phase occurs at 03:42 UTC. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Full Flower Moon because this was the time of year when spring flowers appeared in abundance. This moon has also been known as the Full Corn Planting Moon and the Milk Moon.

May 5, 6 - Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower. The Eta Aquarids is an above average shower, capable of producing up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak. Most of the activity is seen in the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, the rate can reach about 30 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust particles left behind by comet Halley, which has known and observed since ancient times. The shower runs annually from April 19 to May 28. It peaks this year on the night of May 5 and the morning of the May 6. The nearly full moon will be a big problem this year blocking out all but the brightest meteors. If you are patient, you should still be able to catch a few good ones. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Aquarius, but can appear anywhere in the sky.

May 7 - Mercury at Greatest Eastern Elongation. The planet Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation of 21.2 degrees from the Sun. This is the best time to view Mercury since it will be at its highest point above the horizon in the evening sky. Look for the planet low in the western sky just after sunset.

May 18 - New Moon. The Moon will located on the same side of the Earth as the Sun and will not be visible in the night sky. This phase occurs at 04:13 UTC. This is the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters because there is no moonlight to interfere.

May 23 - Saturn at Opposition. The ringed planet will be at its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun. It will be brighter than any other time of the year and will be visible all night long. This is the best time to view and photograph Saturn and its moons. A medium-sized or larger telescope will allow you to see Saturn's rings and a few of its brightest moons...

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DVD Review

Movie & Documentary Reviews

Phenomena Magazine regularly reviews DVDs from producers and distributers and we provide a review of the material by promoting and advertising them within our magazine. If you would like to have a DVD reviewed and advertised, simply contact Phenomena Magazine via our website or send your DVD direct to Phenomena Magazine Head Office.

Title: Village of The Damned Director: John Carpenter Main cast: Kirstie Alley, Mark Hamill, Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski Price: £12.99 (DVD) or £14.99 (Blu‐Ray)

This 1995 reworking of John Wyndam’s all time Sci‐Fi classic, The Midwich Cuckoos, is relocated to the USA, but the basic and highly effective premise is exactly the same, (as with the original 1960’s British made film, the village is called Midwich). Ten women suddenly find themselves pregnant and nine months later simultaneously give birth.

At first sight the children, although remarkably similar (but bit strange) in appearance, appear otherwise normal if a little remote and unfriendly, but this soon changes as they begin to display a spectacular range of strange, telepathic powers and abilities. It is obvious that they, despite their appearance, are not human and the local doctor and a government agent team up with the villagers to try and stop what has in effect become an orchestrated reign of terror.

As one would expect the special effects are much better than the original and given the director is none other than John Carpenter, the action is relentless, nail biting and effective. Highly recommended.

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Book Reviews Phenomena Magazine regularly receive books from publishers and authors and we provide a review of the material by promoting and advertising them within our magazine. If you would like to have your book reviewed and advertised, simply contact Phenomena Magazine via our website or send your book direct to Phenomena Magazine Head Office.

Title: Alien Encounters and the Paranormal: The Scottish Experience Author: Andrew Hennessey Publisher: Self published via Amazon ISBN: 9781507774236 Price: £9.99

This spectacularly well referenced work promotes the increasingly popular concept that Ufology and the paranormal may be two sides of the same coin. In other words not all UFOs are either super‐secret military ‘black projects’ or nuts and bolts machines that originate in other solar systems and there are many similarities between UFO related incidents and more conventional ideas about the paranormal. The author Andrew Hennessey, who is a vastly experienced investigator, makes his extremely plausible and per‐ suasive case that whatever it is that sometime makes contact with us is more likely to originate in some alternate dimension rather that the galaxy next door. He does this by drawing on his own extensive database of cases that he has personally investigated and images he has taken of many of the phenomena discussed in these pages.

The book uses the clever literary device of using chapter section headings in the form of questions that were asked of him during a radio interview, then providing detailed answers to make his point. Just about every form of non‐terrestrial, non‐human contact is covered here including actual sightings and other forms of interaction, including cattle mutilation plus, as one might expect, actual abduction. Incidentally his views on ‘exopolitics’ and his own alto‐ gether more credible creation ‘xenopolitics’ are especially revealing. One thing that does come out strongly is the possibility that some areas of Scotland, especially around Gorebridge which is close to Edinburgh, could easily be defined as ‘window areas’ similar to claims made about the notorious Skinwalker Ranch in the USA. One of the chapters which is entitled ‘Dark and Dangerous Entities’ should be required reading for anyone who chooses to investigate this singular phenomenon for there can be very real danger, both physical and spiritual, inherent in this pastime. Another particularly effective aspect of the book is an absolutely splendid Glossary of the places, people and terminology used and this is almost worth the purchase price on its own. Unreservedly and thoroughly recommended as an incisive and considered overview of a fascinating and sometimes infuriating subject.

Title: Necropolis: City of the Dead Author: Mark Davis Publisher: Amberley ISBN: 978‐1‐4456‐3485‐2 Price: £15.99

In Victorian Bradford, when death came, there was only one real place to be buried. For the rich and poor alike the newly laid out Undercliffe Cemetery, designed by William Gay, was the fashionable place to be seen in death. The cemetery, which was conceived by the Bradford Cemetery Co., was provision‐ ally registered in 1849 as a consequence of the intense overcrowding at St Peters parish graveyard, where human bones were seen to be protruding from the graves. The first burial at Undercliffe took place in March 1854, although the official opening did not occur until five months later in August. The grand opening ceremony was officiated by the Bishop of Ripon, who consecrated the western side of the cemetery for the Anglicans.

The eastern side remained available for the burial of Nonconformists. In life, as in death, status was observed, and the ability to pay determined the location of a grave. In 2015, the cemetery remains as a testament to the lives of the people that forged this city. It is a place where history is quite literally written in granite and stone. The grand mausoleums and tombs are fit for kings and queens. Some of these monuments are now of special architectural and historic interest, and Undercliffe has been placed on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens alongside other famous cemeteries such as Highgate. Ne‐ cropolis: City of the Dead explores one of the greatest achievements in Victorian funerary design and accomplishment, and some of the lives that until now have remained lost in the wilderness of time.

‘Though this book does not reveal much information pertaining to the paranormal, it certainly makes up for with its amazing photography and historical data. A wonderfully illustrated and photographic masterpiece. Well worth the purchase’. (Phenomena Magazine).

Title: Multidimensional Traveler Author: Khartika Goe Book Details: Paperback, 272 pages Publisher: New Page Books ISBN‐13: 978‐1601633552 Price: $14.72

San Francisco, CA (January 1, 2015) –– Featuring the breathtaking accounts of the out of body travels of a young woman, including startling photographs, The Multidimensional Traveler: Finding Togetherness, or How I Learned to Break the Rules of Physics and Sojourn Across Dimensions and Time is an introduction to worlds beyond physical limitations. The author, Khartika Goe, wrote about her extraordinary adventures and the wisdom that she gained while relaying her personal knowledge of multidimensional realities to her beloved grandfather before his passing. For readers, The Multidimensional Traveler is a rewarding process of spiri‐ tual learning, with each chapter building on the previous one with increasingly advanced information about multidimensional travel.

As they move through the chapters, readers will be on a spiritual quest to acquire the tools and the deep understanding to achieve multidimensional experiences for themselves. The book offers the exciting freedom to: Discover multidimensional abilities and use them to their greatest potential. Connect with the force of togetherness to attain true knowledge of the universe. Embark on amazing multidimensional ventures, with the assistance of end‐of‐ chapter instructional guides. Learn of the true history of planet Earth. While guiding readers to discover their spiritual and subtle energy awareness, and expand extra‐sensory abilities, Goe describes riveting examples of her adventures through time and space A portal to limitless possibilities, The Multidimen‐ sional Traveler lights the path to what lies beyond our physical bodies. The author has captured dimensional beings and planes of existence on film, which has been used by prominent esoteric authors and researchers. Currently, Goe is exploring how different brain frequencies serve as gateways to other di‐ mensions. About the Author: A graduate of UCLA and Columbia University, Khartika Goe has evolved from a rigorous academic background into writing about the unknown and the mysteries of the universe. Her groundbreaking recent article, “Adventures in Alternative Realities,” was published in 16 lan‐ guages in more 30 countries by Nexus magazine. Goe is an independent psychologist specifically devoted to assisting children and the elderly.

‘I have come across a number of books on the subject of ‘out of body’ experiences, astral projection / travel and remote viewing. Though I do find such sub‐ jects fascinating, they often produce little evidence. However, I do believe there is definitely something to it. After all, why would the U.S. military spend millions on such PSI remote viewing programs? The author manages to easily guide you through a process that may just result in you having such an experi‐ ence. Several years back the Discovery Channel released a number of audio tapes that helped guide you through an ‘out of body’ experience. I was informed at the time that they were extremely successful after many listeners reported having such experiences. Whatever the mechanism to induce such experiences, it is a subject still regularly debated within parapsychological circles. If you are interested and what to learn more about this fascinating subject, then this is certainly the book for you. Very well written and rightly deserves a place on your bookshelf’ ‐ Phenomena Magazine

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UFO AND PARANORMAL NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

PHENOMENA ISSUE 73

NEWS ITEMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

MAY 2015

mummified native child from the southwestern United States. The fact had ROSWELL SLIDES DEBACLE: been classified by leading researchers as a “smoking gun” regarding the fact that “aliens” had reached Earth. Tony Braglia, one of the “leading research‐ “THE PUBLIC DESERVES A FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING”.

ers” who analyzed the body, admitted that “a serious error of identifica‐ tion” had occurred, and apologized to the Native American community: “I must offer my sincere and deep apologies to the Native American Commu‐ nity of the Southwestern United States. One of their children, a child who died a century ago, was turned into a spectacle. Whoever he was, he de‐ served great respect and dignity,” he remarked. He added that a series of “extraordinary coincidences” were involved in this case. According to The Mirror, Maussán said the affair is “far from over”. When asked whether the “alien” was a dead child, he replied: “This may be true. But there are too many anomalies pointing toward the unlikely chance of its being human.”

The Event Jaime Maussán, UFO researcher and journalist, was accompanied by U.S. and Canadian experts on the subject. At 7:30 p.m. on the dot, attendees listened to the conversation directed by Maussán, who summoned each of his guests, one by one, to substantiate his cosmic spectacle called 'Be Witness: The Change of History'. Accompanied by experts James J. Hurtak, Paul T. Hellyer, Thomas J. Carey, Donald R. Schmitt, Edgar Mitchell and doctors José de Jesús Zalce Benítez, Luis Antonio De Alba and Richard Dolan, they gradually wove the elements of the extraterrestrial phenomenon since 1945 and their con‐ nection to the Roswell incident in the New Mexico desert, where a crashed UFO was discovered.

For the farce that was presented in Mexico City on May 5the 2015, we now have the apology of Donald R. Schmitt. We have the apology of Anthony Braga‐ lia, although his was not to the general public but to Native Americans of the Southwest. And we have the indirect admission from Richard Dolan that he may have made a mistake. We still do not have a definitive comment from Tom Carey, Jaime Maussan, or Adam Dew who are still formulating a response. Today, Dolan declared, “. . . the matter of the slides is CLOSED.” I guess he and the rest of the group responsible for this want us all to now join hands and move on.

Yet again, more fakes hit the international media

By Robert Salas I think it is worth another look because there very well could be another motive for what transpired. When the photos were first presented to some of the principles, they concluded that the Rays, the original owners of the photos, were friends of Dwight D. Eisenhower. How‐ ever, there has been no evidence pre‐ sented to support that. Months before May 5, Tom Carey and others were making the very tenuous connections between the age of the photos, the relationship with Eisenhower and the Roswell incident of 1947. Somehow, all of the players in this comedy bought‐in to that conjecture, even though to my knowledge there is no evidence there are any such connections. Anyone who seriously studied the photos for any length of time would have noticed the placard in the glass case and that some‐ thing was written there. Months before the event researchers such as David Rudiak, Kevin Randle and Robert Hast‐ ings were making the point that even though the age of the photos could be accurately determined, there was noth‐ ing to connect them with the Roswell incident or prove they were of extrater‐ restrial entities. I also made this point and my suspicions about the integrity of Jaime Maussan prior to the event.

Weeks before the May 5 event, at least one respected researcher, Frank War‐ ren, requested to see a high resolution photo and offered to try and determine what was written on the placard. Nu‐ merous times this request was denied.

When a high‐resolution photo was finally released (after the event) he was quickly able to read the placard using “off the shelf” de‐blur software.

Multiple sources have now confirmed it stated this was the mummified remains of a child. One has to seriously question whether or not due diligence was fol‐ lowed in the process of validating the photos prior to the event by the event organizers and other participants.

And, if due diligence was not done, we are led to what other factors may have motivated the fact they all went for‐ ward with the event in the knowledge that nothing of value would be pre‐ sented. Some of the participants claim that no money was made from this.

However, if that is the case why were high prices charged for attendance and why was it streamed world‐wide for $20 a pop? Certainly the organizers were entitled to recoup their expenses, but are they entitled if they promoted a sham? A recent news article from Mex‐ ico states that there were over 7,000 people in attendance at the event and another 2,500,000 paid the $20 to view the live stream! That is well over $50 million! If these figures are accurate this is not an insignificant amount of money.

Notwithstanding what is being claimed about intent and purpose, the prospect of that amount of money would be a significant motive for the promotion and eventually going ahead with this shameful event. Before heeding the call to put this behind us I think the public deserves a financial accounting.

Mexico: Maussán’s Alleged “Alien Truth” is Refuted MEXICO – Less than a week after having gathered seven thousand followers at the National Auditorium, a renowned British physician has refuted Jaime Maussán, ascertaining the provenance of one of his main items of evidence adduced during the event: the “alien” photograph, was pure theatre. The host of the Tercer Milenio television show confirmed that the corpse corre‐ sponded to one of the alleged aliens that crashed in Roswell, U.S.A. in 1947.

Pure Theatre British daily 'The Mirror' published an article refuting the UFO researcher, stating that the image presented on May 5th was the photograph of a

35

“This will be a historic night awaited by so many of us, and we have the evi‐ dence to influence popular opinion regarding the extraterrestrial phenome‐ non. There are thousands and millions of galaxies, and we continue to be‐ lieve that we are the only ones and the most intelligent, but this is not so,” said the host. The researcher of this phenomenon said the key to the para‐ digm shift is found in two slides, showing two extraterrestrials. And no one does anything… “They are proof of extraordinary life, and the dream of flying among the stars will soon be achieved. We are not holding this meeting for money or fame, but to share knowledge for the betterment of mankind,” he remarked. Jaime Maussán’s studies and statements, presented last Tuesday night, in regard to the evidence of two slides showing extraterrestrial images were backed by the invited experts. Up to now, no one was demanded to have their money refunded. Source: http://www.vanguardia.com.mx

A new TV show that’s got the world of paranormal research talking...

Don Philips, a well known paranormal researcher throughout the UK has teamed up with internationally recognised parapsychologist Steve Mera in an attempt to bring something completely new to the world of paranormal TV shows. In this explosive documentary series, science meets paranormal re‐ search head on. Find out more or follow the progress on the Paradox Files Facebook page...

UFO AND PARANORMAL NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

UFOs Confront Soldiers During War, Says Ex-Air Force Intelligence Officer

The public rarely hears about interactions between military personnel and unexplained aircraft ‐‐ especially during wartime. As time goes on, however, UFO stories stuck behind red tape begin to see the light of day.

The Vietnam War saw its share of UFO activity in the 1960s.

During World War II, also in Germany, Allied aircraft pilots often reported mysteri‐ ous glowing, fast‐moving, circular lights, which were dubbed 'Foo Fighters'. The New York Times reported it as "military slang for flying saucers."

Filer ‐‐ who documents his sightings and other UFO news at the National UFO Center site ‐‐ was one of several military eyewitnesses to something extraordinary in the sky over England. It was 1962, and he was the navigator on a refuelling tanker. "We were out over the North Sea when London Control called and asked if we would be willing to intercept an unidentified that was over Oxford and the Stonehenge area.

We had just finished up our refueling mission, so we said sure, and they cleared all the traffic around us and gave us top priority as we descended towards the UFO. All they really had was a very large radar return, but it was much bigger than a normal aircraft." Filer (pictured at right) recalled how his radar scope indicated the UFO was as big as the huge Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland that he and his crew often used as a regular navigation point. "The 'thing' was at 1,000 feet and we were descending from 32,000 feet. We picked up this huge radar return while we were still about 30 miles out. It was dark out and when we got much closer to the object, we saw lights around it, outlining the shape of a cylinder, like a cruise ship. It then just quickly rose and went up into space. "We were pretty sure we'd just seen a UFO."

Filer also told HuffPost that he has heard from air traffic controllers who claimed they were told to "always divert aircraft away from UFOs and deny that it existed. I think they want this whole situation to go away, and I think [the policy] is coming from the National Security Council ‐‐ they're at the highest level. It sounds funny, but presidents don't always know what their National Security Council is doing."

NASA asks for the public's help to identify mysterious bright spots on Ceres

By Lee Speigel ‐ Huffington Post One close encounter, in 1968, involved the crew of an American patrol boat that reported two glowing circular craft following them in the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam. The crew aboard a second patrol boat later reported seeing the UFOs over the first boat and a flash of light, followed by an explosion that completely destroyed the boat. These Vietnam reports included close observation of the unknown aerial craft which appeared to house pilots (see recreation image at the top of this story). Wartime UFO stories are recreated in the premiere episode of the second season of History's "Hangar 1: The UFO Files." The accounts are drawn from tens of thousands of UFO cases in the archives of the Mutual UFO Network, the world's largest UFO investigation group. "The military was interested in [UFOs] because they had capabilities far above anything that we had, and they wanted to find out what the technology was and, frankly, who they belonged to," according to former Air Force intelligence officer, Capt.

George Filer. While in Vietnam, Filer ‐‐ who had a top secret clearance ‐‐ gave daily briefings to Gen. George S. Brown, deputy commander for air opera‐ tions in Vietnam. "Frequently, the Vietcong or North Vietnamese would be attacking an outpost and I would explain that, and we would have ground‐air support, particularly at night where we'd go in there with these gun ships, and I would give briefings on all of that," Filer told The Huffington Post.

"Some of the time there would be unidentified craft over the DMZ."

Filer described a typical report that he'd receive and which he included in his briefings to Brown: "You'd have an aircraft flying along doing around 500 knots and a UFO comes alongside and does some barrel rolls around the aircraft and then flies off at three times the speed of one of the fastest jets we have in the Air Force. So, obviously, it has a technology far in advance of anything we have. "I would be told this unofficially. People tell you a lot of things that they don't put in writing or sign their name to. There was always this part of UFOs that, if you got too interested, it could mess up your career.

And this is true today even with commercial pilots. I've also heard from peo‐ ple serving in Afghanistan saying they've seen UFOs, and the Iranian news carries UFO reports pretty regularly." During a 1973 press conference, five years after the patrol boat UFO encounters, Brown ‐‐ as USAF chief of staff ‐‐ was asked about the Air Force's position on UFOs: I don't know whether this story has ever been told or not. They weren't called UFOs. The were called enemy helicopters. And they were only seen at night and they were only seen in certain places. They were seen up around the DMZ in the early sum‐ mer of '68. And this resulted in quite a little battle. And in the course of this an Australian destroyer took a hit and we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves when this had all been sorted out. And this caused some shooting there and there was no enemy at all involved, but we always re‐ acted. Always after dark, the same thing happened up at Pleiku at the High‐ lands in '69. Many stories about battling UFOs have emerged throughout history.

One early account of UFO warfare was supposedly seen by the citizens of Nuremberg, Germany, in 1561. On a morning in April, the Nuremberg Ga‐ zette reportedly described an aerial battle between large "cylindrical shapes from which emerged black, red, orange and blue‐white spheres that darted about... All these elements started to fight one against the other." An artist, Hans Glaser, created a woodcut of the spectacle.

By Doug Bolton ‐ The Independent The Dawn space probe, which was launched in September 2007, took the pictures of Ceres that show the bright spot from almost 29,000 miles away.

The probe is getting closer to being pulled into orbit around the dwarf planet. The pictures show two clear bright spots on the surface of the planet, which is around 590 miles in diameter and made up of rock and ice.

Bright spots had been seen on the sur‐ face of the planet earlier, but only after the Dawn probe took detailed images, could NASA scientists see that there were many bright spots close to each other.

Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Re‐ search in Gottingen, Germany, said: "The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with out camera, but despire its size it is bright that anything else on Ceres." "This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us." Chris Russell, the principal investigator for the Dawn mission, said: "Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano‐like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic inter‐ pretations." NASA has now let the pub‐ lic give their ideas on what the spot could be, launching an online poll on its website.

NASA theorises that the light is due to a reflection of sunlight hitting the surface of the planet, but are unsure what

36

material causes the reflection. 30 per cent of respondents think it is ice, but the winning choice is 'other', with 38 per cent ‐ do they think it could be alien life? Dawn previously visited the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012, tak‐ ing tens of thousands of images, and many more measurements, of the body.

It is currently studying Ceres, the dwarf planet that is one of the largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Can you guess what's creating those unusual bright spots on Ceres? On March 6, NASA's Dawn spacecraft began orbiting Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Even before the spacecraft arrived at the dwarf planet, images revealed mysterious bright spots that captivated scientists and observers alike. Until Dawn gets a closer look over the next few months, it's anyone's guess what those spots could be. So, go ahead! Cast your vote below. ‐ See more at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ dawn/world_ceres/ #sthash.JAr5Lank.dpuf

UFO AND PARANORMAL NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

embarrassment for Jack and his plans to have NASA put men on the moon.

THE MARILYN MONROE CIA MEMO

2. Subject repeatedly called the Attorney General and complained about the way she was being ignored by the President and his brother.

3. Subject threatened to hold a press conference and would tell all.

4. Subject made reference to “bases” in Cuba and knew of the President’s plan to kill Castro.

5. Subject made reference to her “diary of secrets” and what the newspapers would do with such disclosures.

This is a CIA document that appeared sometime in the early 1990s and has been (unwittingly) authenticated by the CIA itself, in that when Dr. Donald R. Burleson, author of 'UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe', filed his appeal of the CIA’s refusal to release transcripts of government wiretaps on Marilyn Mon‐ roe’s telephones, the appeal, which was based largely on the 3 August 1962 document in question, was accepted; ultimately no transcripts were released, but the acceptance‐of‐appeal process did demonstrate that the document is of au‐ thentic CIA provenance. The CIA could have denied the authenticity of the docu‐ ment and could thus have turned the appeal down, but they did not. It is contrary to Agency policy to accept any Freedom of Information Act request or appeal based on documents which the CIA does not acknowledge to be authentic; so, tacitly, they acknowledged that the document is genuine...

Yet another Conspiracy?

By Dr. Barry Taff ‐ Barrytaff.net Not only does the Freedom of Informa‐ tion Act appeal‐acceptance show that the “Marilyn memo” is of authentic CIA provenance– it also proves that the transcripts of wiretaps on Marilyn’s phones do exist. When an appeal is accepted and the requester is told that the matter has gone to the CIA’s Agency Release Panel, that means that a debate is under way as to whether to release existing documents, documents in possession of the Agency. It’s non‐ sense for the CIA to debate with itself over releasing nonexistent documents!

The wiretap transcripts undeniably do exist, and given what is now known about Marilyn’s death, they must be extraordinarily revealing. The 3 August 1962 CIA document, written only a day before Marilyn Monroe’s death, reveals that some high government officials were in a state of extreme anxiety over the fact that the Kennedy brothers (Jack and Bobby) had been imparting sensitive information to Marilyn, and that she was writing a lot of it down in her little red “diary of secrets.” Of spe‐ cial interest is the CIA document’s men‐ tion of the fact that one of the secrets everyone was afraid Marilyn might have written down had to do with “the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space.” The obvious inference is that JFK had told Marilyn about the Roswell UFO crash and the retrieval, in 1947, of debris and alien bodies. (John Kennedy was notorious for having a difficult time separating his hormonal life from his political career.

It got him into trouble more than once.

Marilyn wasn't the first such instance, nor the last.)

When the Kennedy's started distancing themselves from Marilyn, she grew angry and (mentioning it on the tele‐ phone, unfortunately) started planning to hold a news conference and “tell all.” According to the hypothesis set forth in Dr. Burleson’s book, Attorney General Robert Kennedy then became so fearful that “tell all” meant telling the big secret– the government re‐ trieval and cover‐up of UFO crash de‐ bris and bodies– that he simply could not afford to let her live long enough to hold such a press conference as she was threatening to hold. Dr. Burleson’s book explores the likelihood that had Marilyn indeed told the world the “secret of secrets,” the President would have been indicted for disclosing highly

classified information to an unauthor‐ ized recipient, an offense quite possibly to be construed as treason. The Ken‐ nedy's couldn't risk the potential politi‐ cal disaster, and Marilyn became the victim of their fears. For easier refer‐ ence, here is a transcription of the text of the CIA document: Wiretape of tele‐ phone conversation between reporter Dorothy Kilgallen and her close friend, Howard Rothberg (A); from wiretap of telephone conversation of Marilyn Monroe and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (B). Appraisal of Content: [A portion redacted.]

[An indented block of text is redacted near the bottom of the page, and the document is signed JAMES ANGLETON, who at the time was the Chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA.] The UFO connection becomes all the more compelling with the discovery, described in Burleson’s UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe, of an imprint to the left of the “TOP SECRET” stamp near the top of the document; the imprint, when Burleson enhanced it by com‐ puter imaging techniques, turns out to contain the name of Brigadier General George Shulgen, who was formerly the chief UFO investigation‐coordinator for the U.S. Air Force. (The imprint also refers to General Schulgen’s Intelli‐ gence Collection Memorandum, a document known to have existed.) This imprint or “bleed‐in,” however it came to be on a CIA document about Marilyn Monroe, makes a clear connection between her murder and the question of UFO secrecy, as someone, somewhere at some time, evidently thought it logical to archive the documents together. When all the evidence is considered, the case becomes very strong that government people mur‐ dered Marilyn because of what she knew about the UFO cover‐up.

290 million year old human footprint has researchers scratching their heads.

By Ivan Petricevic ‐ ancient‐code.com Is it possible that we have history all wrong? That the dates that conventional history is giving us regarding mankind are all incorrect? That humans lived on Earth much sooner that science originally thought so? With all of the recent discoveries that are being made, it certainly seems like a possibility. A Possi‐ bility that mainstream scholars seem to have a problem with, since that would mean our history book would need to be rewritten? The origin of man and the fundamentals of religions would change a lot, and that is something that mainstream scholars cannot possibly deal with. At first this footprint might not seem like much, as you can probably come across it anywhere on Earth, but this is no ordinary footprint. You can obviously see the anatomy of it, it resembles a modern‐day human foot, but the thing is, this footprint is fossilized and embedded into a stone that researchers believe is at around 290 million years old. That is a gigantic missing period of time that if proven to be accurate will change a lot of things in society as we know it today. The discovery of the 290 million year old footprint was made in New Mexico by paleontologist Jerry MacDonald in 1987. In the vicinity of this mysterious footprint there are fossilized impressions of birds and other animals. The discovery of the human impression has left MacDonald particularly puzzled and not he or anyone who has seen and studied the impression has not been able to explain how this modern footprint could have been located in the Permian strata, which according to scholars dates from 290 to 248 million years, a time period which occurred long before man or even birds and dino‐ saurs existed on this planet, of course, that is according to modern science and scientific thinking.

1. Rothberg discussed the apparent comeback of subject with Kilgallen and the break up with the Kennedys.

Rothberg told Kilgallen that she was attending Hollywood parties hosted by the “inner circle” among Hollywood’s elite and was becoming the talk of the town again. Rothberg indicated in so many words, that she had secrets to tell, no doubt arising from her trists [sic] with the President and the Attorney General. One such “secret” mentions the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space. Kilgallen re‐ plied that she knew what might be the source of visit. In the mid‐fifties Kil‐ gallen learned of secret effort by US and UK governments to identify the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies, from a British government official. Kil‐ gallen believed the story may have come from the New Mexico story in the late forties. Kilgallen said that if the story is true, it would cause terrible

37

Should we change the way we think and look at things? Or should we ac‐ cept modern‐day scientific thinking which suggests, there is no way that is a human footprint dating back 290 millions of years.

It seems to be an ongoing debate between people who firmly believe that history is wrong, and those who point out that all of these mysterious findings are actually a hoax and have nothing to do with reality. This 290 million year old footprint has been categorized by paleon‐ tologists as problematic as they do not seem to understand the way it got there, and better yet, who left it there. Basically some would say that to prove that this footprint which dates back 290 million years isn't a fake, all we have to do is find something similar to it, and researchers have found numerous unexplainable things that can be connected with this footprint found in New Mexico. Researchers have had mixed feelings about this foot‐ print, and they don't seem to try very hard to debunk it, nor have they ar‐ gued about the authenticity of the footprint. According to most researchers, they comment on the matter saying that ” It just looks like a human foot‐ print”. Well, it doesn't only look like one, it clearly is one.

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Where do we go when we die? This ques‐ tion has haunted humankind for millennia and although no firm proof has come to light there’s no shortage of theories! This article attempts to make a minor foray into this nebula of super‐abundant speculation, on a raid in the spirit of King Arthur’s – as recorded in Taliesin’s poem ‘Preiddu Annwn’ (where the Pendragon wins the fabled Cauldron of Plenty from the Under‐ world). We will focus on two grails here – isles of the dead and islands of the ever‐living – which often overlap like a vesica pisces, and it is perhaps only in that ‘space between’, that mandorla, that such places can ultimately be found: in the liminal cracks of knowledge and in a ‘between’ state of mind.

There’s a plethora of lost islands, as I explore in my book of that name, but here the focus will be on funerary islands. So, in the words of Pope John‐Paul‐George‐and ‐Ringo: ‘turn off your mind, relax and float down stream…’ as we voyage to the isles of the deceased and the deathless.

ILLUS The Island of the Dead’ Böcklin’s fa‐ mous 1880 painting of a funerary islet by Venice.

There are many islands of the dead both actual and mythical, although by their very nature, the former overlap with the latter: they have an otherworldly nature by de‐ sign. They are meant to serve as an inter‐ face between the quick and the dead: a terminal to life’s journey; an entry port to the deadlands. Here we’ll look at a few examples, scattered around the British Isles and beyond; with the awareness that we enter treacherous waters: for where one ends and the other begins is hard to gauge.

Real funerary islands have a mythic atmos‐ phere, and mythical isles of the dead blur into islands of the ever‐living: mortality becomes immortality.

Cintra Pemberton, in Soulfaring says: ‘Islands to the west, lying in the path of the setting sun, figure strongly in Celtic legends and myths, where they are usually seen to be “dwelling places of the blessed dead”.

Rolleston, in his classic Celtic Myths and

Legends describes how the whole of Great Britain itself was perceived as a Land of the Dead to the Classical World:

" According to an unknown writer cited by Plutarch, who died about the year 120 of the present era, and also by Procopius, who wrote in the sixth century A.D., ' the Land of the Dead' is the western extremity of Great Britain, separated from the east‐ ern by an im‐passable wall.

On the northern coast of Gaul, says the legend, is a populace of mariners whose business is to carry the dead across from the continent to their last abode in the island of Britain. The mariners, awakened in the night by the whisperings of some mys‐ terious voice, arise and go down to the shore, where they find ships awaiting them which are not their own, and, in these, invisible beings, under whose weight the vessels sink almost to the gun‐ wales. They go on board, and with a sin‐ gle stroke of the oar, says one text, in one hour, says another, they arrive at their destination, though with their own ves‐ sels, aided by sails, it would have taken them at least a day and a night to reach the coast of Britain. When they come to the other shore the invisible passengers land, and at the same time the unloaded ships are seen to rise above the waves, and a voice is heard announcing the names of the new arrivals, who have just been added to the inhabitants of the Land of the Dead.’ From Celtic Myths and Leg‐ ends, TW Rolleston

Manx fisherman offered this prayer to the sea as the put off from Manannan’s 41

eponymous isle:

Manannan beg Mac y Lir, Little Manannan, son of the sea, Who blessed our island, Bless us and our boat, going out well, Coming back better with both living and dead aboard.

This could have just referred to their catch, but seems to have a psychopompic or pla‐ catory function to. Bardsey Island, off the tip of the Llyn Peninsula, Wales, is reputed to be the Isle of Twenty Thousand Saints.

One of its appellations is Bangor Gadfan, after St Cadfan, who colonised it in 516 CE. His successor, St Lleuddad ab Dingad was visited by an angel who granted him requests.

One of them was that the soul of anyone buried on the island should not go to Hell. This was apparently granted and Bardsey be‐ came a ‘des res’ for the dead!

The 12th Century poet Meilir prayed in his ‘Death‐bed of the Bard’ that he might be buried there. Its Welsh name is Ynys Enlli, the Island in the Currents, hinting at how difficult it is to get there – 3 trips to Bard‐ sey was equivalent of one trip to Rome, in the medieval form of carbon credits, pil‐ grim points, God’s air miles. It lies at the end of a western pilgrim age route like Santiago de Compstella, dotted with water ‐chapels like St Cybbi’s Well, to refresh the thirsty, foot‐sore pilgrims.

Yet some islands are surprisingly close. In Kent, there lies Thanet, literally ‘the dead isle’ (from the latin for death, thanatos).

Bernard Cornwell, in The Winter King, de‐ scribes what John Cowper Powys called the Isle of Slingers (Portland in Dorset) as serv‐ ing the same function, a Dark Age isle of the dead or damned, and to this day its ugly rock‐breaking penal colony atmos‐ phere gives it still the same blighted ambi‐ ence – a gobbet of gritty phlegm at the end of the longest spit in the world, Chesil Beach.

In a nod to her mythic name and fate, the late Princess Diana was said to have been

Isle of the Dead ‐ Part 1: By Kevan Manwaring

laid to rest on an island in a lake at Alt‐ horpe, the Spencer estate near Northamp‐ ton. However, this seems to have been a ruse to throw morbid tourists and potential grave robbers off the scent. She was appar‐ ently laid to rest in the family vault at the nearby church, St John’s, Little Brington.

The watery memorial in Hyde Park was an allusion to this ‘Isle of Diana’, one that was widely accessible to tourists, similarly di‐ verting them from her actual resting place.

The memorial’s flowing design was in‐ tended to ‘reflect Diana’s life’ and symbol‐ ise her ‘quality and open‐ ness’ (www.royalparks.org.uk, accessed 20/0707). Both are modern examples of ‘isles of the dead’, illustrating the mythic power such places have. Such islands are cut‐off from everyday life – we can visit it to pay our respects and then gratefully return.

The burial of royalty on islands, real or oth‐ erwise, is not unprecedented. The burial place of Pictish kings, the Isle of Lismore, off the Benderlock Coast Pennick tells us that Lismore in Gaelic means ‘great garden’, a ‘poetic kenning for the otherworldly garden ‐island of Avalon’. (Pennick, p112) Iona is known as the burial place kings, and title it has some bona fide claim to: 48 kings of Scotland, plus monarchs of France and Nor‐ way, totalling 60 Royal burials. Macduff, referring to Iona, in Shakespeare’s Mac‐ beth, described it as: ‘The sacred store‐ house of his predecessors, and guardians of their bones’.

Pennick describes the Isles of the Blest et al in Celtic Belief as a third way between Heaven and Hell (as in the Bonny Bonny Road of ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ – the way to ‘fair Elfland’):

‘This timeless island paradise lies some‐ where to the west in the ocean. At death, one ‘goes west’. Celtic burial islands pre‐ dominantly lie to the west of the land of the living. Only by means of the ship of the dead can the deceased person be brought there.

Important people were buried by the shore in the ship that carried them across the sea, enabling them to travel onwards in the world of the dead.’

(Pennick, p111)

King Arthur famously goes to the Isle of Avalon to ‘heal me of my grievous wounds’ as immortalised by Tennyson in ‘Morte D’Arthur’ and captured by numerous art‐ ists. The Isle of Scilly, called by some the Fortunate Isles lay claim to not one but two graves of Arthur!

The Viking Ship Burial at Barradoole, Chapel Hill, Isle of Man is a classic example of how this common eschatology – the voyage to the otherworld aboard a boat – crops up again and again in world mythology: Gil‐ gamesh journeys to meet Utnapishtim and his wife (the survivors of the Flood) aboard

a boat, bearing two poles – which dissolve each time he punts, so he needs one for the return journey. This is mirrored in the tradition of two coins placed over the eyes of the deceased, to pay the Ferryman of the dead, Charon, whose lot is to con‐ vey souls recently born into death across the river Styx.

Viking ship burial at Barradoole, Isle of Man. Photograph by author.

At Sutton Hoo we have another famous example – here, an actual ship buried beneath a mound, stacked with grave goods.

ILLUS Sutton Hoo plan.

Two otherworldly rivers are crossed by the shaman of the Salish People from what is now Washington State, NW USA – who use spirit‐canoes to retrieve lost souls in the sbeteda’q ceremony. Using song and sacred paddles – and two paral‐ lel rows of men to act as crew for the two canoes needed for the rescue mission – the medicine man ‘captain’ hazards a journey to the Land of the Dead. This af‐ terlife realm is situated, like so many, in the west. There, everything is reversed:

…the seasons and also the times of the day in the Land of the Dead are exactly opposite to what they are in this world.

When it is midwinter here, it is midsum‐ mer there, and when it is night here, it is daytime there. (Haeberlin)

42

Canoes of the dead in The Painted Cave, Niah National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia.

Discovered in 1958. Photography by Chai Nam Lin.

Similar ‘death‐canoes’ the author visited in the Northern Philippines – made of stone. These were located in caves con‐ nected to an underground river system – which floods abruptly, as it did when the author traversed it, narrowly missed being washed away!

Such places are reminiscent of Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’, the laudanum‐fuelled rev‐ erie which is set in the Otherworldly ana‐ logue, Xanadu: ‘…where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea…’ Coleridge walked on the Mendip hills with his fellow poet Robert Southey, and may have been thinking of Wookey Hole, with its river‐ carved caverns. HG Wells spent some time in Wookey and was inspired by the cav‐ erns while writing his classic The Time Machine – perhaps he imagined the origi‐ nal Mesolithic dwellers as Molochs. The hills above Wookey are littered with Bronze Age round‐barrows – and seem to have been considered, based upon this evidence, as hills of the dead. Coming from the Southwest across an inundated Somerset Levels, the effect would not have been dissimilar to Böcklin’s painting.

Here was the Island of the Dead: the monument‐littered landscape of Britain an open mortuary house.

There is the possibility that these caves, at Wookey, are the entrance to Annwn – rather than Glastonbury Tor – a far more convincing abode for Gwynn ap Nudd, the West Country’s version of Hades or Pluto.

Another source, the Vita Merlini, cites Aquae Sulis (modern day Bath) as the portal to Avalon – not Glastonbury – and with its hot springs caused by a 4km fault in the Earth, echoed by its name (Aquae

Isle of the Dead ‐ Part 1: By Kevan Manwaring

Sulis: ‘waters of the gap’, according to RJ Stewart) there is perhaps some sense in this. Certainly a sea‐faring ship could have made it up the Avon as far as Pulteney Weir (built over a natural shift in the river’s level), where sea‐borne travellers could have alighted to approach the sacred springs – second only to Delphi in the Clas‐ sical World – with their own pythia, seer‐ priestesses, uttering their gnomic prophe‐ cies from their fume‐filled scrying cham‐ bers. A place to glimpse behind the veil.

Author Robert Holdstock charts the un‐ known regions of the ancestors in his haunting novels. In his Merlin Codex it is Jason’s ship the Argo which acts as a funer‐ ary barge – filled with sinister sentience: ‘She will not be my coffin, she will be the vessel that takes me to the grave.’

The stone ship of Barradoole is aligned with both Snaefell – the white peak at Mann’s heart, literally ‘snow mountain’ – and the setting sun. This seems to be a common belief – the soul went west at death, to‐ wards the setting sun – perhaps in the hope it would be reborn. Nigel Pennick, in Celtic Sacred Landscapes, echoes this:

‘West is the direction in which the sun sets beneath the earth, symbolising the end of the life cycle, and the place to which souls must go before being reborn into another life’.

The reliable way the sun sets and is reborn again has reassured those concerned with death since the dawn of human time. It is seen in many cultures of a sign of the soul’s rebirth. Also, on a very practical level, sun=life. Without it, the world descends into darkness, coldness and, eventually, death. The world would not live without the sun, and every night in a small way, and every winter, in a greater way, we are re‐ minded of that fact. With dawn, and with the Winter Solstice, all things are made good again. The night is defeated, for now.

In Egyptian mythology, Osiris in his boat of a million years travels through the body of Night (Nut) each night, to be reborn re‐ splendent every day (Ra), foreshadowing the perilous journey that the soul must undertake at the point of death – passing gates of trials, of soul‐winnowing – if it is to return to the Source. Psychopompic funeral ballads like ‘The Lyke Wake Dirge’ provide not only sonic portals for exiting souls, but also a clear geography of the Afterlands – the Whinny Muir, the Brig o’ Dread – for the soul to be tested by and to remember… island‐states to pass through, which per‐ haps actual death‐islands provide an earthly analogue for.

On a practical level it makes sense to bury dead on an island – especially plague vic‐ tims, so that any infection can not spread to the mainland. The consecrated parameters

of a cemetery separate it from the mun‐ dane and an island goes one step further.

Water is said to be a barrier of psychic protection, but perhaps such islands pro‐ tect the quick from the dead, preventing the fatal infection of death, a form of quarantine. Few cultures live amongst their dead. The dead are blessed pariahs – cast out from society, from the wheel of life, and yet honoured. They must dwell apart, as though in a kind of leper colony.

We visit in acts of charitable kindness, but are glad to go back to our warm homes, washing our hands with a shudder. Festi‐ vals of the Dead, as in Mexico’s Day of the Dead, and more anaemically, our own mainstream Halloween, bring the dead, the ancestors, back into the temporal world for a brief while. But this is an aber‐ ration – an authorised inversion of the status quo, before the dead are firmly placed back where they belong, out of sight, out of mind. The Isles of the Dead are no place for the living. But some oth‐ erworldly islands have held a perennial appeal to the human imagination, as places of deep beauty, plenty, peace and longevity – the Islands of the Ever‐Living.

References:

Anon, Kalevala, Athlone Press, 1985 / Eliot, TS, The Four Quartets, Faber & Fa‐ ber, 1943 / Haeberlin, Herman K., ‘Trails to the Ghost Lands’, Sacred Hoop #57, 2007 / Holdstock, Robert, The Broken Kings, Gollancz, 2007 / Robert Holdstock, The Iron Grail, Gollancz, 2006 / Mac‐ culloch, JA, ‘The Celtic Elysium’, The Druid’s Voice, #18, 2008 / Pemberton, Cintra, Soulfaring: Celtic Pilgrimage, Then and Now, SPCK 1999 / Pennick, Nigel, Celtic Sacred Landscapes, Thames & Hud‐ son, 1996 / Trubshaw, Bob, Sacred Places: prehistory and popular imagina‐ tion, Heart of Albion Press, 2005.

Edited extract from Lost Islands: inventing Avalon, destroying Eden by Kevan Man‐ waring, published by Heart of Albion 43

Edited extract from Lost Islands: inventing Avalon, destroying Eden by Kevan Manwar‐ ing, published by Heart of Albion Press, 2008 (www.hoap.co.uk) ISBN: 978‐1‐905646‐07‐4 £14.95 Available from all good bookshops.

Kevan Manwaring is a writer and story‐ teller who lives in Stroud. He is the author of over a dozen titles including Lost Islands, The Bardic Handbook, The Way of Awen, Turning the Wheel and The Windsmith Elegy.

Author website:

www.kevanmanwaring.co.uk

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For most of modern human's existence, say over the past 50,000 to 100,000 years, if we saw something fly under its own power it was a bird, a bat or an insect – or maybe a ‘flying' fish or ‘flying' fox if you want to stretch things a bit. Relatively few of these feature prominently in any culture's my‐ thology. Bats might have an association with vampires, but your average run‐of‐the‐ mill garden variety bird is usually taken for granted – unless they are monstrous in size and like humans for dinner.

If there's nearly one thing universal in Native American mythology it's giant birds, monster birds, even the Thunder‐ bird (which has been adopted as a brand name for many products not to mention the name of a TV show with associated spin‐off motion pictures).

Now apart from the ac‐ tual observations of these winged monstrosi‐ ties, there's nothing all that unusual about giant flying creatures in my‐ thology. What sets these ‘birds' apart is that they often like to snack on the natives – as takeaways, not ‘dine in’. Is there any natural terrestrial explanation for birds carrying away humans, like a crow picking up a kernel of corn? Or, might one have to resort to another, more unnatural and per‐ haps extraterrestrial explanation?

Mythological Monster ‘Birds' of the Ameri‐ cas.

Dragons: While primarily connected with the Old World (Europe, the Far East, etc.), dragons have some, albeit lesser well known connections in the New World of the Americas, perhaps a bit more in the guise of serpents, i.e. as in taking on a serpentine appearance. This is most notably so with respect to that famous feathered serpent (sounds more like a bird actually) Quetzal‐ coatl, a central Aztec deity, but noted as well in Mayan culture and that other and mysterious initial Mesoamerican civiliza‐ tion, the Olmecs.

However, we do have the Piasa Bird which is depicted as a dragon in a Native Ameri‐ can Indian mural above the Mississippi

River near modern day Alton, Illinois. It's thought that the originals were done by the Cahokia Indians way before any white settlers arrived in their territory. Their pictographs of animals, birds such as the falcon, bird‐men and serpents (monstrous snakes) were common, as was the Thun‐ derbird icon. According to a local profes‐ sor living in the area in the 1830's, John Russell, the Piasa Bird depicted in the mural was a monstrous bird that inhab‐ ited the area and attacked and ate the

locals that inhabited various Indian vil‐ lages in the area. Apparently it got a taste for human flesh after scavenging human carrion (corpses).

Thunderbirds & Related: These beasties are nearly universal in Native American Indian mythology, and what's more they carry many similar features. They tend to be very large birds that are seen as the personification of thunder (the beating of their wings) and lightning and all things stormy. A sort of Zeus or Thor but with wings, talons, a beak and feathers. The Native Americans believed that the giant Thunderbird could shoot lightning from its eyes. Say what? Even odder is that the Thunderbird often has teeth in its beak.

We've all heard the phrase "rare as hen's teeth" – well that's because modern birds are toothless.

Thunderbirds were also associated with the Great Spirits so common in Indian lore. They were servants of these deities and apparently acted as messenger boys 45

(sorry, messenger birds) – a sort of extra‐ large carrier pigeon – carrying communica‐ tions between these various Great Spirits.

Thunderbirds were associated with the weather as we've seen, and also with wa‐ ter. Now an interesting parallel is that dragons in the Old World are often viewed as go‐betweens between the gods and humanity (again similar to carrier pigeons) and having some control over the weather and the waters was one of their common features as well.

So, this mythological monster bird is common throughout Indian leg‐ ends. Actually in one case there was a Thun‐ derbird that resembled a giant eagle that was large enough and pow‐ erful enough to carry a whale in its claws. Say what again? According to the Makah people of the Northwest Coast, a Thunderbird saved a village from famine by snatching up a whale from the Pacific Ocean and giving it to the com‐ munity to eat, giving the village food that lasted for many weeks. Would this be an American example of a case of manna from Heaven?

Now no bird could actually carry even a small whale in its beak or talons, so there must be another explanation.

I've previously related how the Navajos have associated Ship Rock (or Shiprock) in New Mexico with a legend that says they were flown by a ‘flying rock' (Ship Rock) provided by their Great Spirit to escape their enemies from up north. The Navajos, in other legends, have associated Ship Rock with the presence of ‘Bird Monsters' or cliff monsters that preyed and feed on human Navajo and Zunis flesh. I wonder if that could be a garbled tale of UFO abduc‐ tion. Related are the tales of the Yaqui from around the Sonora region in NW Mexico. Yaqui legends tell of enormous birds around Skeleton Mountain that car‐ ried off men, women and children.

There's a petroglyph at Puerco Pueblo (or village) located in the Petrified Forest Na‐ tional Park of an enormous bird with a human suspended in the air by its beak.

Monster Birds of the Americas: By John Prytz

If we assume the human is of average height, say 5' 6" tall, then the bird, to scale, is roughly 13' 9" tall. That's one very big bird! The petroglyph was carved into stone many, many hundreds of years ago by the ancestors of the Hopis, maybe even by the lost Anasazis.

When it comes to the Thunderbirds, schol‐ ars of mythology strongly suggest that this creature is just the embellishment of the California condor, eagle, or the extinct ‘teratorns’. However, to my way of think‐ ing, one doesn't usually associate birds with thunder and lightning (i.e. storms). Now you may see birds riding the thermals that precede a storm, but you don't tend to see birds out and about in stormy weather – they seek shelter from the elements too.

Yet many tribes like the Lakota Sioux or the Ojibwa of the Great Lakes Region make the connection between these Thunderbirds and lightning in particular. Perhaps the association with something flying and thun‐ der and lightning suggests something a bit more technological!

I mean something that can serve as a mon‐ ster carrier pigeon between the gods, lift huge weights, abduct humans (recorded in many Indian legends) and shoot out light‐ ning bolts doesn't sound like biology to me, rather something artificial. Now perhaps all these legends of abducting and man‐eating giant birds are nothing more than a rogue eagle or condor with too much testoster‐ one in its system who, feeling threatened, attacked a lone Indian and like the fish that got away, the bird just grew and got embel‐ lished, then grew some more and got even more embellished until it reached ridiculous proportions and abilities. Well, maybe.

Real Monster ‘Birds' of the Americas.

Pterosaurs and Pterodactyls: These beasties weren't really birds‐of‐a‐feather, rather just winged and flying (or gliding) reptiles that belonged way back to ‘The Age of Reptiles' – the Mesozoic Era. The largest of these discovered (to date) was Quetzalcoatlus, named obviously after that Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity. Quetza‐baby had a 36 to 40 foot wingspan, and just might have been able to snack on a human. However, pterosaurs and pterodactyls all went kaput by the end of the Mesozoic – Q‐baby made it in fact through to the end of the Creta‐ ceous period, 65 millions of years ago. Alas, that was at least 64 million years before anything resembling humans walked the planet as a food source. While Native Americans were probably aware of the fossils of these flying reptiles, they had nothing to fear from them in terms of being snack‐food.

Terror Birds: Well, these terrors really ex‐ isted in the Americas and for a while were thought to be contemporary with the

earliest humans in the Americas. Though they survived and thrived in mainly South America, some made it across the Isthmus of Panama land bridge into Central and North America about 3 million years ago.

The most recent of them is now thought to have become extinct about 1.8 million years ago, well before humans arrived on the scene.

But even assuming humans and terror birds were contemporary, why the terror?

Well, these crows‐on‐steroids were up to ten feet tall and could gallop after you at velocities up to some 37 miles per hour.

Relatives of these monsters with equally large beaks and talons have been found in Texas and Florida, and presumable bridged the geographical gap in‐between.

So, should the natives have been afraid; very afraid? Well, in this case the top apex predators probably succumbed to being ultimately human prey since the terror birds, along with the rest of the North, Central and South American mega‐fauna went extinct in pretty quick‐smart fashion after humans appeared on the scene.

Now, humans: if contemporary, probably didn't engage in hand‐to‐wing combat with these ungodly raptors, but rather found their eggs as a handy breakfast food supplement to their gatherer nuts‐ and‐berries fare. Alas, no baby terror‐bird hatchlings; ultimately no terror birds. In any event, terror birds were flightless, like the emus, cassowaries, the ostrich and kiwis, not to mention their extinct cousins the moa and dodos. Thus, terror‐birds don't fit our description of birds that fly and pluck humans off the ground and feel us to their young.

Giant Condors & Related: The Andean condor at 11 to 15 kg (24 – 33 pounds) is currently the Guinness Book of Records holder for being the America's largest flying feathered member of the avian clan, at least with respect to a roughly 10 to 12 46

foot wingspan. The California condor at 7 to 14 kg (15 to 31 pounds) comes a very close second with wingspans around ten feet. Then too there was the Pleistocene [Ice Age] teratorns weighing in at 15 kg to 23 kg (33 to 50 pounds), huge raptors re‐ sembling eagles with wingspans 12 to 17 feet across.

Overall the wandering albatross is on a par with the Andean condor for title of ‘king of the wingspan' (up to 11 feet for the great albatrosses), but it isn't a common sight in North America either then or now. There are several North Pacific varieties which reach the western coast of North America, but because these are sea birds, feeding on seafood although scavenging carrion when on land (remote islands) for breeding pur‐ poses. The odds that Native American Indi‐ ans would have noted the albatross as a regular part of their environment wouldn't have been common other than for those living right on the Pacific Ocean.

Now the sixty‐four cent question is, can any one or more of the above account for eyewitness accounts of monster birds ab‐ ducting their comrades in arms? Well any sane person would eliminate dragons and Thunderbirds – they are mythological and therefore don't exist. One cannot witness non‐existence. Pterosaurs and pterodactyls were extinct long before humans were thought up in anyone's philosophy. Terror‐ birds couldn't fly and probably weren't actually contemporary with humans in any event. Condors, while big, aren't big enough. I mean an average human should be large enough to punch a condor's lights right out, and certainly humans are too large to be carried across the condor's threshold.

Condors (Andean or Californian) are actu‐ ally vultures and thus scavengers, feeding primarily on carrion, even though prefer‐ ring large carcases like those of cattle. It has to feed while on the ground, and often

Monster Birds of the Americas: By John Prytz

stuffs itself silly when it does come across a suitable meal that it can't, at least for a while, lift itself off the ground. This is hardly a bird likely to be the source of American Indian human‐abducting mythology, al‐ though the bird certainly features in Native American mythology. However, as the con‐ dor is an endangered species, the bird had and has way more reason to fear the na‐ tives than the other way around.

The extinct teratorns however were con‐ temporary with humans (Amerindians), but while large enough to cause more than sufficient trouble for a human infant, there's evidence to suggest that overall, the humans were probably more the hunters than the hunted when crunch came crunch.

However, even at a weight of fifty pounds and a wingspan of 17 feet, could a teratorn have actually picked up and carried away an adult human, with a weight say at least twice or thrice that of the raptor? Fossil evidence suggests that small mammals, even fish, and carrion were its usual means of sustenance. Since the Native Americans say it's so, at least according to their my‐ thology, you have to ask yourself whether or not a 50 pound bird, who could obviously carry its own weight and probably a bit more through the air, could actually fly with a 100 to 150 pound payload? That's 150 to 200 pounds all up the bird is carrying. Now that's a pretty big ask.

Has anyone seen an owl or an eagle or other flying raptor carry off prey two to three times its own weight? Now it might be one thing for a very large bird to pick you up (especially if you're dead and not struggling) and carry you off while in con‐ tact with the ground, like the terror‐birds, at least for a short way since, after all, you're still very heavy compared to the bird. But it's quite other kettle of fish for a bird to pick you up and actually fly away with you without any leg and ground sup‐ port at all. Flying (flapping wings) is very energy intensive at the best of times (we've all seen birds in gliding mode in order to conserve energy), far less trying to lift up and flap wings with twice or thrice its nor‐ mal body weight to struggle with.

Now we've all seen wildlife documenta‐ ries showing a large carnivorous bird swooping low over the water and then grabbing an unsuspecting fish out of the water with its talons. Now that fish may even be as large and heavy as the bird itself, but the prey can't be that much larger and certainly not twice as large and heavy as the predator. The bird, so close to the water, can not afford to be dragged down by extra unmanageable weight into the water – then it's bye‐bye birdie.

Moving back to the land, raptor birds can and do attack prey much larger than themselves. The bones of these large prey animals have been found in the raptor's nests or lairs. An eagle might attack a deer or fawn. The deer can't really defend itself very well out in the open. But that's not to say that the eagle can actually carry off the deer carcass whole, rather it's going to tear out chunks at a time and carry them take‐away style back to the nest. If not feeding young, it just might dine in on the spot, only flapping away if threatened by the appearance of larger scavengers.

In human terms, a normal average fit human may be able to life twice its body weight but can't hardly be expected to run an obstacle course carrying it. Half a hu‐ man's body weight maybe, but not twice far less thrice Now in more ‘modern' times, there have been a few sightings of giant and other unknown birds – critters that fall within the realm of study called Cryptozoology. Having looked over the ‘modern' (1850 to date) Cryptozoological literature, most sightings prove to be of ordinary birds, though perhaps viewed out of their normal territory and thus 47

somewhat unfamiliar to the viewer. Most unexplained avian species remain unveri‐ fied and usually too small to be the sort of critter we've been looking for.

Sightings of monster birds, while they ex‐ ist, have never yielded up the sort of data that would have confirmed their reality. No dung, no feathers, no carcass, no bones.

Unknown monster birds, if they do still exist, are running out of habitat to hide in; in fact they probably have run out of viable environmental living space. If they haven't been confirmed by now they probably won't ever be. Besides, any unknown North American birds, monster or other‐ wise, would have long since been shot out of the sky by trigger‐happy Americans.

Conclusions: No flying bird that is, or was, contemporary with humans (like the Amer‐ ica Indian) was capable of lifting up and carrying off anything other than perhaps a small infant; certainly not adults. Flying birds are lightweights – they have to be in order to lift themselves up into the air. The largest of the predatory flightless birds (terror‐birds) were probably capable of running down, capturing, and lifting up human adults, but that's not what the legends describe. But to a technologically unsophisticated Native American, living hundreds to thousands of years ago, a UFO abduction event might only have made natural sense to them in a Thunderbird related scenario.

Further Readings about Monster Birds: Allan, Tony; "Beasts of the air" (in); The Mythic Bestiary: The Illustrated Guide to the World's Most Fantastical Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008; pages 14-53. / Bord, Colin & Bord, Janet; "Giant birds and birdmen" (in); Alien Animals: A Worldwide Investigation; Panther Books, London; Revised Edition 1985; pages 109-135.

Clark, Jerome & Coleman, Loren; "Things with wings" (in); Creatures of the Outer Edge.