It’s time for another edition of “Fiction or fact?” Today’s subject: Atlantis, Plato’s creation that has spawned more interest, arguments, explorations and movies than any other mythical city. While the needle has often crept away from “fiction,” it returns to it as more investigation yields less evidence. Which way will the needle move as we look at the latest theory that Atlantis lies not in the Atlantic but in a Spanish swamp?

“It is unique, nowhere in our world is there anything resembling this, and the structures match exactly Plato’s dimensions with no deviation. It is absolutely spot on.”

“It,” according to maritime historian Tim Akers of the Merlin Burrows private satellite imaging company, is Doñana National Park, a swampy preserve in Andalusia in southern Spain, where new images taken of the area show what Akers and others claim are the remains of an ancient city that clearly resemble the layout of Atlantis as described by Plato. Using the images, they’ve identified evidence of a massive harbor wall Plato estimated to be 5.5 miles long that collapsed under the pressure of the water that flooded Atlantis into mythological extinction. Those images are  shown in his interview with The Daily Mail (see them here).

“We filmed clear evidence and collected samples that were analyzed scientifically in a laboratory in Modena, Italy, which is used to study ancient Roman finds.”

Google map location of Donana National Park

The images also led Akers and Merlin Burrows archeologists to spots where they took samples from the wall area which the report from the Modena Materials Analysis Laboratory claimed to find evidence that …

“The harbour wall seems to have had a coating that prevented barnacle growth, like modern Teflon. That requires highly advanced construction technologies and knowledge of chemistry.”

Samples from remains of pillars showed more …

“These structures contain binders, like calcite. The presence of mica, potassium, and other trace minerals show proof of artificial mixing of materials, so the samples we have tested are made from an ancient, prehistoric concrete.”

The minerals and the design led them to claim that …

“…we’re talking about a civilisation with very advanced technology.”

But is this enough proof to say with confidence that this is Atlantis? Ingenio seems to think so. Ingenio Films is a film and documentary company that has partnered with Merlin Burrows to produce “Atlantica” which its PR team excitedly describes:

“ATLANTICA” is the first in the ATLANTICA series, and in this two hour film, we document and identify every single item that Plato described, using years of research, and extraordinary technologies. The focus of this first installation in the Atlantica Series is to identify, beyond any doubt, that this discovery is indeed ATLANTIS!! In our complex discovery of Atlantis, we have involved every available science and technique along the way, in order to show the FACTS, for which our team has included a multi disciplinary set of experts, sciences, technologies, and academia.”

They claim the film will show “the Temple of Poseidon, the vast Harbor Front cities of Poseida, the massive Harbor Wall, the Inland Sea, and most importantly… the CONCENTRIC ISLANDS themselves!!”

Looking for Atlantis in Doñana National Park

Those are bold claims about the Doñana National Park wetlands and a 100-mile surrounding area stretching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean which others have also claimed could be the location of Atlantis – albeit without Ingenio’s enthusiasm and confidence. Akers is a bit more reserved:

“We only present the facts and try not to delve into speculation. What is unique in our presentation is all of this material has never been seen before.”

Atlantis: fact or fiction? When this new documentary is finally released, which way will the needle move?

It’s a serious claim to make, the worst year to be alive. There’s been some pretty bad years. Yet, Harvard University historians have determined that year 536 was the worst it’s ever been, with cataclysms so serious and world-changing it sent all of Europe into what was later called the dark ages. Although the term “dark ages” is not used officially to describe the early middle ages anymore, it’s an incredibly fitting term for the hundred year period which began in 536, considering that it all started with a mysterious “fog” that plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into complete darkness for 18 months.

According to New Scientist, the cause of this fog has been a mystery for historians and archaeologists until now. By examining ice cores, blocks of ice from permanently frozen glaciers that keep a historical record of particulates in the air, Medieval historian Michael McCormick, chair of the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine have identified the catalyst for the 18-month-long night: a big ol’ volcano.  The eruption of a massive volcano in Iceland spewed volcanic ash into the atmosphere so thick that it completely blotted out the sun, caused catastrophic crop failure, and dropped the global temperature to its record low in 2,300 years. And that was just the beginning.

Like this, but way bigger.

Byzantine historian Procopius wrote at the time:

“For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.”

Really old writing always sounds unduly severe, but in this case it’s warranted. In 536, after daylight itself was dead, temperatures fell 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius globally. The Irish chronicles recorded a complete failure of bread from 536 to 539. That summer, it snowed in China.

It didn’t get any better for a very long time either. Two more eruptions followed in 540 and 547. During that time, in 541, the bubonic plague hit Roman-controlled Egypt and quickly burned its way across the eastern Roman Empire, killing between one third and one half of the population and quickening the empire’s collapse.

The repeated battering by forces outside our control hastened the crumbling of the already-pretty-sickly empires of antiquity and essentially shut down the economy of Europe, paving the way for the period of regal kings, magical princesses, and gallant knights. Just kidding, it was brutal and bloody war, plague, tyranny, and feudalism that followed.

Eighteen months of this nonsense.

Even that nightmare took a long time to start after the sun killing volcano. According to McCormick and Mayewski, the ice cores showed that Europe didn’t dig itself out of stagnation until over a century later. Lead particulates found in the ice core beginning in the year 640 signals the beginning of silver mining, which due to the lack of gold, had become the standard currency.

Honestly, all of those years sound pretty horrible. I guess it’s the complete lack of sun and the knowledge of imminent starvation that really pushes 536 over the top. Just remember this next time you crack your phone or your car battery dies: at least some angry Viking volcano hasn’t stolen the sun. Yet.

For a number of decades, people have claimed that they have been taken aboard unusual flying craft–often against their will–and examined in alien environments by strange beings.

Known to those who study unexplained aerial phenomena as UFO or alien abduction, the earliest UFO literature was essentially void of any references to such captures or kidnappings. However, beginning in the 1960s popular books on the subject, namely John G. Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, began to chronicle the claims of those like Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who alleged they were taken aboard a flying saucer and examined by aliens while returning late one night from a vacation at Niagara Falls.

Other books that followed expanded on the narrative of abductions, producing similar reports to that of the Hills–some of which dated prior to their own 1961 encounter–and before long a shift in the focus of the UFO community at large was well apparent. Conferences that once showcased Air Force veterans like Major Donald Keyhoe, advocating the release of UFO information by the government, and civilian researchers and scientists like J. Allen Hynek seeking trace evidence of landed saucers, were replaced by those now taking up the case of the abductees: Harvard psychologist Dr. John Mack and artist-turned investigator/hypnotist Budd Hopkins, as well as those like Whitley Strieber, a successful novelist who eventually came forward with his own abduction experiences… both to fanfare, and attacks from critics.

Then, with the coming of the new millennium, the focus of the UFO community seemed to shift once again, this time moving gradually away from the abduction phenomenon, in favor of more “nuts and bolts” approaches to studying odd things in the skies.

What caused the shift? Has the widespread accessibility to information sources (and, perhaps more importantly, opposing viewpoints) led to fewer budding researchers following what could be deemed more credulous lines of thought, despite interest that persists in a UFO phenomenon? Could it also be that the once popular abduction literature–after decades of being sustained on even less physical evidence than that which exists in support of UFOs themselves–finally began to collapse inward, under the weight of broader scientific scrutiny?

Perhaps it’s a combination of factors that have caused the shift away from alien abductions that once held the hearts of so many in the UFO community. In a sense, UFO reporting in the last few decades has taken a postmodern approach, in the sense that old ideas once taken for granted are now more thoroughly questioned. Some of the better books on the UFO subject to arrive in recent years have focused almost exclusively on science, historical analysis, and sometimes just bare-bones journalism: Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record comes to mind, as well as my friend David Marler’s Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation and John B. Alexander Ph.D.’s UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities all come to mind in this regard. From the more skeptical side of the equation, Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims by Robert Sheaffer takes a look at famous cases, and calls into question how and why caution should be employed by UFO advocates. Occasionally, groups from one camp may criticize the other (or hit back in defending their positions) although, in my opinion, perspectives from both sides of the fence are helpful, and necessary, in an effort toward looking at the phenomenon objectively.

Of course, one thing that the reader of any of the aforementioned books will notice is that there is very little (if any, in some cases) to be said about alleged alien abductions in such modern examples of UFO literature. We could speculate all day on the reasons for this “shift,” as I’ve called it, although a more interesting line of inquiry, in my opinion, has to do with its origins in the first place: where did the idea of alien abductions come from? Or at very least (and so as not to presuppose that all such claims are to be ruled out of hand, however unlikely they seem), are there cultural predecessors in myth and fiction that might give us an idea about some of the influences behind the strange rise, and sudden fall, of what became a fringe movement within an already controversial subject like UFOs?

As several researchers have outlined already over the years, the general features of the alien abduction motif are all common in much earlier literature, including fairy folklore of the British Isles, as well as other mythology from around the world (the works of Jacques Vallee come to mind here, as do those of Jerome Clarke, among others). Cultural groups since time immemorial have spoken of gods and spirit folk who occasionally carry humans away from the mortal realm, sometimes accompanied by periods of missing time–a trope that has been present in alien abductions as early as the Betty and Barney Hill encounter.

Shortly after UFOs assumed their place in the cultural landscape by the end of the 1940s, claims of encounters with “Space Brothers” and other friendly visitors from nearby planets that are now well-known to be uninhabited (or simply uninhabitable) began to appear. These alleged encounters are very different from the claims of the abductees, however: most of the “friendly” aliens of this period were suspiciously humanlike in appearance, and any earthling setting foot inside one of their flying saucers did so of his or her own volition.

Not so with the abductees, among whose claims we find such terrors as paralysis and levitation in the methods extraterrestrials employ to bring their human captives on board (as many modern chroniclers of the phenomenon will note, certain similarities exist here with the sensations experienced by sufferers of sleep paralysis, a phenomenon that was not as widely recognized by the general public only decades ago).

It is also noteworthy that the first known appearance of the alien abduction idea in a print publication occurred yearsbefore any allegedly “true” abduction reports had been publicized. One of the cover stories of the October 1953 issue of Man to Man, a men’s pulp magazine known for its adventure stories (and occasionally, speculative science articles) had been the sensational piece, “Are Flying Saucers Kidnapping Humans?” This was featured alongside the appetizing feature article, “WHY PEOPLE MUTILATE THEMSELVES” (all the sorts of pertinent things readers of adventure magazines in the 1950s wanted to know, I suppose).

See, I wasn’t kidding… and what’s the deal with the walrus?

Even the earliest alien abductions on record occurred after the publication of the aforementioned article; the strange case of Antonio Villas Boas, for instance, allegedly took place in 1957, but wasn’t written about until much later. And on a similar note, researcher Peter Rogerson has said that he feels the Vilas Boas case may raise a few red flags, since a story with details that were similar to Vilas Boas’s account had been printed in the November 1957 issue of the Brazilian periodical O Cruzeiro (this would have placed the publication date after the date Villas Boas would later allege that his encounter took place, although he didn’t publicly discuss it until well after the article was published. Hence, it is possible that if his story was a fabrication, the “later” article could nonetheless have been its inspiration).

Books like Ann Druffel and Scott Rogo’s The Tujunga Canyon Contacts actually did outline a series of alleged abductions said to have occurred in 1953; however, as with the Antonio Villas Boas affair, the account wasn’t written about until 1980 (I should note that Whitley Streiber’s book Communion also outlines experiences from his childhood, although these likely would have placed them between the late 1950s and early 1960s). Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the aforementioned article does, in fact, predate virtually all of the modern alien abduction claims.

Add to this the countless science fiction magazines from even earlier in the twentieth century that featured humans being captured, strapped down, and examined with scientific equipment from fictional alien worlds on their covers, and it becomes hard to avoid the fact that the alien abduction meme had already been firmly planted (or maybe we should say “implanted” in this case) in the public mind by the time stories of “real” abductions began to appear in books and magazines.

Alien beings are often (but not always) likened to insects in their behavior and appearance.

Although my general tone here may sound completely dismissive toward the alien abduction meme, it is not my intention to say that all people who claim to have had odd experiences–in particular, those with unusual aerial vehicles, or even their occupants–are liars, frauds, or simply wrong (and frankly, I maintain a certain disdain for those who do resort to ad hominem attacks and accusations fraud, hoaxes, or monetary incentives in order to get their points across in any case).

As I’ve noted before in the past, I have met Travis Walton on a number of occasions, and find him to be a delightful person in general (as anyone who has met him would attest). Walton is a kind, friendly person, and on many occasions when we’ve talked, the conversation has had to do with anything but UFOs or abductions. He often gives talks about his experience, where he notes the way its depiction in Hollywood was sensationalized.

He wrote a book about his experience, and in addition to selling it at events he attends, he is sometimes paid to give his lectures. Strangely, the fact that Travis profits in any way from his experiences have sometimes been used as a case against his claims, with doubtful types calling foul and complaining that “it’s all just a way of making money!” To the contrary, Walton is not a full time “UFO celebrity,” and has had to work for a living like anyone else over the years. Frankly, if I had experienced what Walton says happened to him back in November 1975, I would have written a book about it, too. In short, the complaints that people like Travis Walton do what they do “for the money” is an old–and inaccurate–stereotype, that is all-too-often launched against UFO advocates as a way of delegitimizing their claims (as an author of at least a few books on the more nuts and bolts side of the UFO equation, I can say I speak from a degree of experience in this regard, as there are far more profitable ways to make a living!).

Of course, I can’t prove or disprove what Travis Walton claims. All I can tell you personally is that he is a pleasant individual and that while I am often not convinced as far as many abduction claims go, there are a few elements to his experience that, to me, stand out from the rest. Despite having received plenty of critiques over the years, it remains one of the only multiple-witness UFO encounters of its kind; this alone sets it apart from a broad majority of more credulous abduction claims, let alone the fact that in Walton’s case, an individual (Walton) actually did go missing for several days. This is far more than could be said of the majority of similar incidents.

And as far as similar incidents go, there is really just one that comes to mind, although it is seldom discussed in the United States (or in general). The disappearance of Franck Fontaine near Pontoise, France in November 1979 is a case that bears a few similarities to the Travis Walton situation, and perhaps curiously so. To summarize the situation briefly, Fontaine and a pair of friends were planning a trip to the nearby market to sell clothing on the morning of Monday, November 26, 1979. Shortly after 4 AM, Franck and his friends observed a light that appeared to be larger than the moon passing behind the La Justice Mauve apartment complex where they lived. Franck went in the direction of the object to get a closer look, and when his friends pursued him minutes later, Franck’s truck was found sitting with its interior lights on, surrounded by a curious fog; the light zipped away into the sky, and Franck was nowhere to be seen.

Much like the Walton case, Franck Fontaine remained missing for several days, then purportedly reappeared at the apartment at 4:20 AM on December 3. A media frenzy ensued, during which police, reporters, and UFO investigative groups all became interested; ultimately the three would come forward and admit that the entire affair had been a hoax, and most left it at that, satisfied that the entire affair had been another waste of time, like most similar UFO-related claims.

A point worthy of mention here is that when elements arise during a UFO investigation that would seem to point to a hoax, skeptical investigators tend to rest their case, emphasizing only the facts that support such dismissal (in Walton’s case, the fact that questions remained about various lie detector tests he and the other witnesses had taken, as well as the involvement of the National Enquirer in a possible monetary reward for “proof” of alien contact, come to mind). This is logical, of course, since those making the extraordinary claims are the ones left with the burden of proof, not the skeptics (who are right to question what appear to be extraordinary claims). If a party in question is suspected of a possible hoax, and then they come forward later and admit to it, continuing to pursue the case would appear to make no sense.

Jacques Vallee wrote about the Fontaine case in his 1991 book, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception, a book which presented what may be Vallee at his most skeptical. Colleagues of Vallee in the French UFO research community that had been in touch with Fontaine and his friends had noted inconsistencies in their narrative, albeit not with relevance to the incident so much as their claims that the entire affair had been a hoax. In essence, the group from La Justice Mauve finally claimed to a select few researchers that they were so harrassed by reporters, skeptics, and UFO advocates alike that they simply admitted it was a hoax so they could be left alone.

Vallee goes on to follow this line of inquiry, which leads to a meeting with a French government official who is not named in the book, but of whom Vallee says, “His full name is known to me.” This individual explains to Vallee that the entire affair had actually been orchestrated, as outlined in this exchange which Vallee paraphrases in Revelations (for sake of clarity, Vallee leads off the exchange below, with questions and answers from the unnamed official alternating thereafter):

“What happened to Fontaine?”

“We put him to sleep and he was kept under an altered state of high suggestibility.”

“Were the police and the gendarmerie aware that the operation was a hoax conducted by a higher-level agency?”

“Certainly not. Their behavior under these conditions was one of the things we wanted to observe.”

“What was your own role?”

“My interest in the affair is purely personal. It has no relationship to my position with the French Air Force.”

“Would it be correct to say that you deliberately created a major UFO event to find out if you could rely on the reactions and the investigative abilities of local law enforcement agencies?”

“That would be a fair way to describe it.”

As Vallee notes in Revelations, upon asking whether the official was concerned whether he would publish this exchange, the official told him that “anything you publish will simply be denied.” However, of greater importance here is the fact that Vallee notes the similarities between the Fontaine case and the Walton incident from a few years earlier. “I have met with Travis Walton and with the crew boss, Mike Rogers,” Vallee says, “who had seen the craft and the beam. I am satisfied they are telling the truth as they experienced it, although I am not ready to take the hypnotic data literally, for reasons I have explained in detail in previous works.” (In contrast to Vallee’s latter statement, Walton states on a “Questions and Answers” page on his website that, “I did not recall any experiences under hypnosis that I could not remember before. The hypnosis did help me verbalize my experience in greater detail, without being overwhelmed by anxiety, but did not help me regain any lost memories.”)

“I do not think Fontaine was abducted by extraterrestrials,” Vallee continues later in the chapter. “But I do not think he is lying either. The disappearance of Franck Fontaine is one of the most disturbing episodes in the whole history of UFOs. But it was not a hoax.”

Arguably, Vallee’s considerations in relation to the Fontaine case–and that of Travis Walton–are very similar to my own. The trouble with the aforementioned points of interest, of course, is that unique though they are, they still don’t provide the hard evidence we require in order to conclusively prove that there is a tangible element to such cases; they do, however, strongly imply that what could be occurring is far from being anything extraterrestrial in nature.

Of course, the same may be said of the broader UFO phenomenon, too: despite our best efforts over the decades, very little in the way of tangible, physical evidence has been supplied in support of such claims, let alone in a way that might be conducive to the advancement of new ideas. On the other hand, while we’re terribly lacking in physical proof, there is more than enough data that pertains to UFO eyewitness reports to suggest there is something going on here. In that sense, the case for rational inquiry has never been greater: if there is a phenomenon or other element at work here–as many have supposed for decades already–then obviously the most reliable methodologies at our disposal must be employed in order to assess what it is, and to see if there is an underlying purpose or intention behind it.

That much would seem evident, of course, in the event that UFOs represent a real and tangible phenomenon. Obviously, we still have a lot of questions left to be answered here.

• If any readers would like to correspond with me on this, or similar related subjects, I can be reached via email here, or at my website here. 

In his 1991 book, Alien Liaison, Timothy Good related the fascinating account of a man who, from 1956 to 1960, was employed as a radio technician at the Weapons Research Establishment, Salisbury, South Australia. As the man recalled, in either 1958 or 1959, a strange, spherical object was recovered at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex. “It was a sphere about 2 feet 9 inches in diameter. Its color was a mid-grey metallic, somewhat darkened by extreme heat…We tried to cut it, and could not even mark it with hand tools – saws, drills, hammers, chisels – nothing.”

Shortly afterwards, Good was informed, U.S. authorities claimed the material was American space debris, whereupon it was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio – which for many years was the rumored resting place for a host of crashed UFOs, extraterrestrial debris, and dead aliens. “Perhaps this is foolish, “Good’s source told him, “but for many years now I have believed that what we held in those several days was not merely space debris, was perhaps not even some material left by a UFO, but that it was perhaps some form of UFO itself.”

At the time, I was intrigued by this story and dug into it quite deeply. At the time, I was in my mid-twenties and still championing the idea that the UFO phenomenon was extraterrestrial. Certainly, though, by the time thirty loomed, I can say for sure I was far more an adherent of John Keel’s theories and ideas – which took matters far away from all-things extraterrestrial. I should stress that I don’t totally dismiss the ET theory for the UFO phenomenon, but I think it’s the least likely of all the scenarios that have been put forward. But, I digress. Back to the story of the sphere.

As well as contacting Australian authorities, I also spoke with New Zealand’s military authorities. I was pleasantly surprised when those same authorities sent me a package of material on a number of what I call “sphere incidents,” in both New Zealand and Australia, and dating from the 1960s and the 1970s, specifically from 1963 to 1972. All of the spheres, the files revealed, had been claimed by U.S. authorities. All were around two-feet in diameter. The retrieval locations included New South Wales, Western Australia, and Queensland. Whether or not Australian authorities were satisfied with the explanations put forth by the Americans as they sought to explain the discovery of the spheres, was not made clear from a reading of the papers. It was evident, however, that the governments of New Zealand and Australia were involved in the recovery of twelve such spheres in less than ten years.

By far the most interesting piece of evidence made available to me was a 1972 newspaper clipping that referenced an incident on Australian territory in 1963. According to the report, two spheres had been recovered approximately one hundred and fifty miles north of Broken Hill, and the Broken Hill police had arranged to have the objects flown to the National Weapons Research Establishment (NWRE) at Adelaide for examination. Unfortunately for the police, the pilot of the aircraft refused to allow the mystery spheres on board, lest they might explode! Ultimately, the police took the spheres by road. A study of the remains suggested the spheres were neither American nor Russian in origin, but definitely man-made.

This is all very intriguing. I have to say, though, that I think we really need to focus on terrestrial technology, rather than extraterrestrial science. Here’s why: over the years and decades, numerous such spheres from the skies have been found – and all across the planet. They have proved to be wholly terrestrial. And, I don’t see why the near-identical spheres found in New Zealand and Australia should be any different. For example, there is this story from 2012, of just such a sphere that came down in Brazil. It’s clear it was one of ours and not “theirs.” And, another sphere was found in Vietnam in 2016. There is also this story from earlier this year. An online search on “spheres, space debris” will reveal more than a few such cases. All of them have the mark of being the work of us. But not of “them.”

And, you can find more about the New Zealand spheres at this link.