“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” These were among the many memorable quips from the late Arthur C. Clarke, whose visionary scientific mind bordered the uncanny with his ability to foresee future technological trends and developments.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Clarke was certainly among those “distinguished but elderly scientist” types who were willing to place more bets in the possible camp than the cautious and careful realms of conventional thinking. Clarke, after all, was often willing to look where no other scientists of his day were willing to go, regularly dabbling with a cautious interest in fringe subjects as chronicled on his television series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. 

Clarke’s fascination with the mysterious cosmos was perhaps most evident with his views on alien life. “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe,” Clarke said, “and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.” As a science fiction writer, many of his works dealt with ideas pertaining to alien life on other worlds. In his short story “The Star,” he tells of a scientific mission to a distant world, where the evidence of civilization discovered there is one that is long gone.

The story is told from the perspective of the mission’s chief astrophysicist, who also happens to be a Jesuit flirting with a crisis of faith. After he and his group conclude their study of the remains of an ancient world consumed by a supernova, he says to himself: “There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?”

The blend and, often, contrasts between themes of deism and alien life were common in Clarke’s writing. Another common feature in his science fiction had been his apparent knack for predicting future innovations and discoveries. In his 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke predicts not only asteroid impact early warning systems the likes of which are being developed today, but also the discovery of an alien spacecraft under circumstances that bear an eerie similarity to one recent–and controversial–astronomical discovery.

Rendezvous with Rama begins in the year 2077, as an asteroid impact occurs in northern Italy which prompts the creation of a system capable of detecting such threats in advance. While Clarke’s threat detection system doesn’t come along until 2077, it bears a remarkable similarity to the present-day Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a robotic survey and early-warning system in development at the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. ATLAS is designed to detect near-Earth objects in advance of a potential impact with Earth by as much as several weeks and targets smaller objects which previously might have been missed by astronomical surveys.

The “prediction” of an asteroid early detection system isn’t the only unique coincidence in Clarke’s novel. Rather, Clarke’s introduction of this early warning system allows for the discovery of a distant object outside the orbit of Jupiter, which is spotted half a century after the Italian asteroid impact. Initially mistaken for being a distant asteroid, the object, dubbed “31/439”, is later revealed to be an alien spacecraft. Probes are then sent to observe the object, which is given the name “Rama” after the famous hero of Hindu mythology, which is revealed to be a featureless cylindrical object nearly 35 miles long.

Artist’s rendering of the interior of Clarke’s “Rama” spacecraft

(public domain).

If the description above sounds familiar, you aren’t alone: the mysterious space rock 1I/2017 U1, or ‘Oumuamua as it is more popularly known, was almost named Rama instead, due to the remarkable similarities between the circumstances surrounding its discovery, and the plot line of Clarke’s novel. (This was only one of several remarkable coincidences that appear in Clarke’s writing, and an online search will reveal other cases where themes in the famous futurist’s writing apparently “predicted” future innovations.)

While the similarities between Rendezvous with Rama and the real-life discovery of ‘Oumuamua are interesting, to say the least, there may be more to be gleaned from the comparison.

In a recent interview with Haaretz that we touched on here at MU, the chair of Harvard University’s Astronomy Department Avi Loeb, defending his controversial speculations about “light sail” technologies that might be propelling ‘Oumumua through our solar system, said that “As soon as we leave the solar system, I believe we will see a great deal of traffic out there.”

“Possibly we’ll get a message that says, ‘Welcome to the interstellar club.’ Or we’ll discover multiple dead civilizations — that is, we’ll find their remains.” Again, Loeb’s comments bear similarities to things Clarke had written about in stories like The Star decades ago; perhaps he’s a fan of the late futurist, too.

So much has been written of what is arguably Clarke’s most famous work, 2001: A Space Odyssey, that it hardly requires additional mention here. Nonetheless, it would be worthwhile to point out that Clarke’s fictional scenario about the influences of alien life on humankind over time, and the idea that humans might be “invited” further out for play in the great intergalactic forest as our technological capabilities progress, is also thought-provoking in light of current discoveries.

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible,” Clarke once said, “is to go beyond them into the impossible.” This may be the best summary of Clarke’s approach, both toward the eventuality of human contact with alien life, and the future in general. Thus, it may be why he saw more success than many of his contemporaries: his remarkable vision of the future was one that saw beyond what was possible in his day, and likely well in advance of what is possible even in the present day.

There was once a children’s book called If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. It was spellbinding little tale about what happens when a mouse shakes you down for your baked goods and you give in. Spoiler alert: he takes you for everything you’ve got. Well, it might be time to update that story, a 21st century reboot if you will. The book could be called something like If You Give A Nerd A Particle Accelerator. It’s a working title.

I’ve been fascinated with CERN and the large hadron collider for years. It’s one of those perfect, real-life-science-fiction endeavors that is just so cool and so terrifying to a lot of people. It’s understandable. There’s a lot of wires and buttons and pipes and tunnels. All of which are intimidating by themselves. Add to that the search for something called the “god particle” and the idea of creating mini black holes, it start’s to look like something that just shouldn’t be. But it is, and we’re still here, seemingly unaffected—unless you buy the idea that we jumped universes the minute they switched it on, explaining why everything feels like it’s gone sideways and the proof is in the Berenstain Bears. If so, you’re right and I’m sorry.

Seemingly not content with the level of fear and fear-mongering they’ve caused, CERN is now looking for funding to build an even bigger, even badder particle collider to sit next to the LHC outside Geneva, Switzerland. The plan for the “Future Circular Collider” (which sounds like what mad scientists call things, but probably just refers to a circular collider that will be built in the future) was unveiled Tuesday, and officials at CERN hope that the 22 member states commit to providing the estimated 21 billion euros that would see the machine completed and operational by the late 2050’s.

“And now we shall smash….the future!”

That’s a lot of time, and a lot of money, but CERN believes it will be worth it. The FCC would consist of a 100 kilometer-long circular tunnel for smashing things together, which is four times larger than the tunnel at the Large Hadron Collider. Not only would the size of the thing be greatly increased, but the energy output as well. Frédérick Bordry, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, says:

“The FCC’s ultimate goal is to provide a 100-kilometre superconducting proton accelerator ring, with an energy of up to 100 TeV, meaning an order of magnitude more powerful than the LHC”

According to CERN’s website, the proposal would provide “tantalizingly more powerful particle colliders that can inaugurate the post-LHC era in high-energy physics.” Whenever physicists start using the word “tantalizing,” that’s a red flag.

The first phase of the FCC project would be the construction of the tunnel and an electron-positron collider that could be operational by 2040 at a cost of 9 billion euros. The second phase would be the “superconducting proton accelerator ring” in the same tunnel, which would require another 15 billion euros and an extra ten years of construction.

These machines just look like the sort of serious business I’ll never be a part of.

Credit: CERN

What will they use it for? The technical answer, I believe, is “blowing stuff up.” Extremely small stuff, but it’s the same basic premise. CERN says that they can’t predict what discoveries the FCC could produce, but CERN Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen gives a much less snarky explanation of the potential benefits to humanity:

“Proton colliders have been the tool-of-choice for generations to venture new physics at the smallest scale. A large proton collider would present a leap forward in this exploration and decisively extend the physics programme beyond results provided by the LHC and a possible electron-positron collider.”

So, blowing stuff up then. Got it. Excuse me, I have a children’s book to write.

It’s significant to note that the matter of a secret facility of Area 51-like proportions popped up in another setting, but also in 1962. As well as being the year in which Marilyn Monroe died, 1962 also saw the release of a novel that, two years later, was turned into a bug-bucks movie. The title: Seven Days in May. It’s an absorbing, thought-provoking story that tells of an attempted military coup to take control of the U.S. Government. Its authors were Charles W. Bailey II (who died in 2012 at the age of eighty-two) and Fletcher Knebel who, in 1960, interestingly, wrote a chapter on JFK for a book titled Candidate 1960.

The novel was so well-received, and became such a huge-selling book, that it wasn’t long at all before Hollywood was knocking on the doors of the publisher. And, it wasn’t long after that – specifically in February 1964 – that the movie version of the Bailey-Knebel book hit cinemas all across the world. Interestingly, the screenplay for the movie was written by Rod Serling, of The Twilight Zone fame. Serling was also a significant figure in the field of antiwar activism – to the extent that several intelligence agencies had files on Serling, including the FBI.

Seven Days in May starred a number of major movie-stars of that era, including Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Fredric March, Martin Balsam, and Edmond O’Brien. In the story, Lancaster’s character of General James Mattoon Scott secretly initiates a plan to take over the elected U.S. Government (run by President Jordan Lyman and played by March) by force. General Scott sees President Lyman’s plans to enter into a nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union as weak and ineffectual and a danger to U.S. national security and to the American people.

It’s only when Kirk Douglas’ character of Colonel “Jiggs” Casey stumbles on strands of the plan that things slowly start to unravel. To his horror, Casey comes to realize that what begins as a wild suspicion is an all-too-real fact: the government is about to be toppled in favor of a new, military-driven government. When Casey speaks with the president and his closest aid Paul Girard (actor Martin Balsam), their response is filled with nothing but skepticism. At least, at first. It’s only when Casey shares all that he has found out, and the president begins to realize what is secretly going on right under his nose, that steps are taken to try and stop the coup and have the conspirators arrested as traitors. So, a race begins. It’s a race which will decide the very future of the United States.

Unbeknownst to just about everyone outside of the planned coup – including the president and his entire team – a top secret facility has been established out in the desert outside of El Paso, Texas. It’s the headquarters of the organization which wishes to overthrow the White House – an organization we come to learn is known as ECOMCON, or Emergency Communications Control. Senator Raymond Clark (Edmund O’Brien) is ordered to find the base. At first, Clark is doubtful that such a secret installation could have been constructed without any kind of Congressional oversight or funding. That is, until he sees it for himself. Clark learns it’s code-name is “Site Y.” As the story progresses, we see a mysterious death, mounting conspiracies, and intrigue and mystery, and we learn more about that Area 51-style secret base known as Site Y. And, finally, there is a confrontation between President Lyman and General Scott, a confrontation which brings the country back from the brink of a military dictatorship.

The document concerning Marilyn Monroe’s knowledge of a “secret air base” was allegedly written in 1962. That was the same year in which the Knebel-Bailey novel, Seven Days in May, was released and became a best-seller – and which had at its heart a classified installation that is practically impenetrable and which not even the president knows about. And, in 1964, in the movie spin-off, we are further exposed to the world of an Area 51-like base. In view of all this, one has to wonder if there had been a leak of data back in the early 1960s – a leak which reached the ears and eyes of a world-famous actress and a couple of enterprising writers, and which was focused on a clandestine facility that, for all intents and purposes, operated outside of the elected government.

We may never know for sure if such a leak did occur – and/or if a 1960s-era equivalent of Edward Snowden decided to blow the whistle on a real Site Y – but, there can be no doubt that while Site Y is fiction, it eerily mirrors what we know of Area 51: both have notable code-names. Both installations are buried deep in desert environments. Most people in government have no idea what goes on there. Not even the government can figure out where it gets its funding from. And, access to the base is almost impossible, unless one has the required clearance levels and a need-to-know.

It should be noted too that Fletcher Knebel – the co-author of Seven days in May – was someone who had a great deal of distrust of government and of the intelligence community. His novels – which included Trespass, Sabotage, and Vanished – are tinged with varying degrees of conspiracy. It’s also a fact that Knebel had a number of unnamed insiders in government who helped to ensure the accuracy of some of the concepts and government protocol presented in his novels. In light of all this, one has to wonder if one of those sources shared certain data with Knebel on Area 51, which he reworked into Site Y.

The world of law enforcement has a large arsenal of techniques, equipment, technology, and training at its disposal to help hunt down criminals and solve the many crimes that plague society. Yet, sometimes leads go cold, evidence is sparse, and not even all of these resources seem to be able to penetrate the murk, leaving a case to go unsolved. In some such instances police and even the FBI can be tempted to look past their usual repertoire of technology, to go out past known science and attempt to harness the powers of the unknown in an attempt to find answers, seeking the help of those with psychic gifts. Who are these people and do their powers really do any good? Welcome to the weird world of police psychic investigators.

One quite well-known supposed psychic who has claimed to have lent his unique set of mysterious skills to the police and FBI is a man named Troy Griffin. According to Griffin, he first became aware of his powers at the age of 12, when he had a vision of his friend in a car accident and the predicted crash happened exactly when and how he had seen it. Fortunately, no one was injured, and the young Griffin became convinced that he had the gift of clairvoyance, intuition and foresight, which he believed he could further hone with practice and use for good.

In later years he says he found he could discern what people were going to say before they said them, or predict certain events down to amazing accuracy, and he also became aware of another gift lurking there in his mind. As well as being able to predict the future, Griffin claims that he developed the ability to talk to the spirits of the dead, and that it is this ability which would end up making him popular among law enforcement, although it started mostly as a freelance hobby. Among his many supposed successes is the case of a missing woman named Lora Hale Costner, whose sister approached Griffin for help. The psychic would then divine “impossible” information that he should not have known about what had happened, saying that she was killed, how it had been done, and that he knew where the body was. When the sister sent this information to authorities they supposedly found the body exactly where he said it would be. Not only that, Griffin was able to point police to the perpetrator, 19-year-old, McKinley Lane Cody, who was found to have killed her after a drug deal gone bad.

This case and others like it apparently got Griffin on the police radar, and he became a sort of unofficial, unpaid psychic investigator for both them and he says the FBI as well, and he has supposedly worked over 100 cases in various countries such as the United States, Germany, Canada and Australia, mostly called in as a last resort when all else fails and the mysterious case has gone ice cold. Griffith says he has some sort of innate ability to look through pictures of missing people, such as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database and get a sort of psychic “hit” just by looking at the person’s eyes, as if that person is somehow calling out to him from beyond the grave. He says he will get further information when these people subsequently appear to him and talk to him in his dreams.

It sounds rather amazing, and to the families of the victims of crimes he has successfully “solved” it is, but he has also raised his fair share of skepticism. One problem is that the law enforcement authorities he claims to have worked with, including the FBI, have remained silent on Griffin’s involvement, neither confirming or denying his assistance. There is also the fact that by Griffin’s own admission he typically has an 18 to 20 percent success rate, which doesn’t sound really all that impressive, although he defends himself by pointing out in an interview with ABC News, “When you look at murder cases and unsolved missing persons, they’re very few percentage that actually get solved.”

Adding to the skepticism is that Griffin has been very close-lipped about exactly which cases he has worked or which ones were successes and why he thinks so, nor has he provided any proof that he really has ever worked with the FBI and police at all, making it all rather murky. Nevertheless, there are many who are confident in his abilities, and he has managed to make quite a living for himself, charging up to $300 dollars an hour as a freelance psychic or also as a spirit medium, although he says his work on crimes and his police and FBI work he does for free. For his part, Griffin says of the skepticism aimed at him:

I don’t take advantage of people that are grieving. Most are referred to me from what I did. I don’t charge them. I’m not coming with false hope either way. I’m not here to tell you yea or nay. I’m here to help. What I say to skeptics is, if you have never been in the people’s shoes that I walk with, don’t judge or put opinion on it until you really know if it’s real or not. The only way you’re going to know is if there’s ever a day that you need somebody like me. Then you’ll know. Before then you’ll probably never believe in me but the people that I help and walk away with closure moving forward. They’re the ones who believed in me. That’s why I continue to do what I do.

Another psychic detective who has claimed to not only have helped on official cases but also given training and lectures on criminal profiling to police officers, the CIA and the FBI, is profiler Deborah Schurman-Kauflin. She is well-known for her incredibly accurate profiles, which she in part credits her psychic abilities, of which she says in an article on Psychology Today:

I trained thousands of police officers, CIA and FBI agents and interviewed 25 serial killers and mass murderers. I was famous for how accurate my profiles tended to be. Many, many times, shrewd detectives told me I was so accurate it was eerie. There was a reason for that, a truth that I kept secret. I kept this secret because telling the truth about this subject is often taboo. The truth is that I am a psychic medium.

From the time I was little, I had spirits around me. I didn’t think it was strange because I thought everyone did. My family was very open to psychic phenomenon, and my mother’s aunt was also a practicing psychic medium. But even though I experienced things firsthand, like knowing people’s secrets, I was very skeptical. It became harder and harder to hide my abilities when working with police because I’d come up with things I had no way of knowing. And more than one shrewd detective outright asked me if I was psychic.

With her we face the same situation as Griffin, as police and FBI tend to shy away from talking about involvement with psychics, but she claims that these agencies most definitely are willing to use such gifts to get answers in times of desperate need. She also says that law enforcement and psychic prowess sort of go hand in hand, and that the police and FBI believe in these powers much more than they let on, of which she has said:

In law enforcement, it is not something that is widely accepted. However, the majority of detectives who I worked with admitted to going to crime scenes and asking deceased victims for help in solving their murders. I even know a homicide lieutenant who used a psychic to locate a body only to say he’d never admit that publicly for fear of ridicule. The interesting thing is that the best police officers are the most intuitive. They get gut feelings about suspects which later prove to be true. Some have prophetic dreams. How often have detectives pursued something “on a hunch?”

The reality is that people use their intuitive skills every day. You know when you meet someone, and your gut tells you that something is wrong even though the person looks normal? Perhaps something tells you not to take a certain route to work, and you later learn by doing so you avoided an accident. I’m sure many of you have stories of where your intuition saved you from something bad. I believe that those in police work have lots of protection from the other side, so it is not surprising that police can be some of the most intuitive people. Though not commonly accepted in police circles, psychic abilities are being used. With time perhaps people can be taught how to better ‘tune in’ to their own abilities and learn to trust their gut instincts. There is more to this world than meets the eye.

Whether they really believe in or rely on this power or not, and whether they want to admit it or not, state and federal law enforcement certainly do turn to psychics on occasion, although perhaps not as much as many may think, and not typically treating this information as some magical solution. In a 1993 survey on the matter it was found that a third of the 50 police departments surveyed admitted to using psychics, although in most cases this information was not treated any differently than tips from other, more ordinary sources. The FBI also uses psychics, although they typically deny it, and one former senior investigator for the FBI has explained that “psychics may be used as a last resort and as an investigative tool with caution,” although this information is not typically admissible in court. One retired Police Commander named Rick Bruno has also said of law enforcement and psychics:

We didn’t necessarily employ psychics. They sort of came out of the walls. Especially when reward money was set up. But we listened to anyone who might add something to the case. We still do. We had five innocent women murdered in cold blood in a clothing store. They were moms and sisters and daughters whose only crime was to be in the store when a monster walked in with a gun.

We had a hundred detectives working on the case. We even asked NASA if they had any available photos of the exterior environment to see if we might catch a glimpse of a getaway car or the murderer running away on foot. We sent cops to Texas and to England to follow up on leads. We were doing everything we could think of to find that son of a bitch. So when someone would call and say they had “a vision” of who the murderer was, or where he might be found, we listened. And we send cops out there to interview them.

It certainly does not help the case of psychic investigators that unfortunately some of the psychics who have helped law enforcement have been exposed as frauds. Before her death one of the most well-known and talked about psychic detectives of all was a woman named Sylvia Browne, who appeared on countless TV programs such as regular appearances on The Montel Williams Show, as well as news outlets, expounding her abilities and the important work she had done for the police and FBI. Indeed, allegedly had many endorsements from some of these officials, such as that of former FBI agent Ted Gunderson, who said of her powers, “I’ve worked with numerous psychics in the past and very few are really on target, but Sylvia Browne is probably one of the most accurate psychics in the country.”

However, despite this, an eye-opening article in a 2015 edition of The Skeptical Inquirer managed to mostly smash this illusion by digging into her past and scouring files requested from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. This research showed that not only had Brown made many misleading and outright false claims as to the extent of her police and FBI dealings, but also that there were no records of her dealing with the FBI at all. The author of the article explains:

There is no documentation released by the FBI to support the claim that Browne conducted any psychic readings for the FBI, either directly or indirectly. Moreover, Gunderson’s name appears nowhere in her FBI file, and the topics in the FBI release do not discuss working with the FBI. Thus, there is no evidence from the records that Browne was involved with the agency. Assuming Browne worked with Gunderson, it appears to have occurred after he retired from the FBI and when he was investigating aliens, “Satanic” child abductions, and numerous other conspiracies.

In addition, further damning evidence against Browne was her big mistakes, such as declaring a missing girl dead when she was later found to be alive, and she seems to have had just as many misses as hits. It was also discovered that not only had she apparently never worked with the FBI before, but her and her organization, the Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research, had actually been investigated by them in the 1980s for “selling securities without a permit,” and “violations of federal law in applying for loans from federally insured financial institutions.” This in no way means that every psychic detective is a charlatan or fraud, but it certainly makes them look bad, and gives fuel to those who would doubt them. It has been pointed out that these people are merely very good at tricking everyone and feeding off of desperation, grief, and a potent desire for any answers at all, throwing out vague clues and relying on confirmation bias to do the rest. Famed skeptic Joe Nickell does not mince words when he says of their supposed abilities:

What people should realize is psychics cannot do what they claim to do. They have been reviewed by mainstream science, and they can’t do it. If they can do it, let’s see that they do it. It could be defined as ‘after-the-fact matching. In other words, the detectives have a missing person. They assume the person might be dead, but they’re looking to find that person. In comes the psychic, often ingratiating himself or herself with the family, forcing the police, pretty much, to have to pay attention to the psychic. The psychic will say things like, ‘I see water. I’m getting the number 7. I see some sort of tall structure,’ and so on. They call these clues.

Is this accurate? Are these and the many other psychics allegedly helping law enforcement merely frauds feeding off of suffering and strife, trying to make a name off of tragedy? Are their abilities really all bogus? Or are there some who under the right circumstances manage to reach out and touch some force that allows them to see into where others cannot? Whatever the case may be, there are many who believe this phenomenon to be genuine, and as long as there is hope that it could pry open cold cases and unsolved cromes there will likely be people in times of desperation that will seek these psychic detectives out, whether they really believe or not.

The discovery of ‘Oumuamua continues to prove itself one of the most fascinating and mysterious astronomy stories of our time. It all began in October 2017 when astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted a strange object passing through our Solar System at a high velocity. The object defied classification and still does, and its origin remains unknown. What is known is that it originated from somewhere outside of our Solar System, making it the first known interstellar object to visit our neck of the cosmic woods.

The path ‘Oumuamua took through the Solar System.

Almost immediately after its discovery, ‘Oumuamua’s odd behavior and characteristics caused many to speculate that it could be an alien craft or probe sent to explore our Solar System. That speculation grew stronger in November 2018 when astronomers Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a study arguing that ‘Oumuamua’s anomalous acceleration and direction could mean the object isn’t a comet or asteroid, but instead an artificial craft or probe propelled by a “light-sail,” meaning it uses the ‘winds’ of solar radiation to propel it through space.

Of course, those claims attracted controversy, criticism, and outright jeers in some cases. How could two of the most respected astrophysicists in the country claim any possibilitythat an anomalous object in space could be artificial? How dare they! Don’t they know that science is supposed to suppress the imagination as opposed to ignite it? In response to the controversy, one of the paper’s authors sat down for an interview with Israeli news outlet Haaretz to discuss ‘Oumuamua and the resistance to acknowledge any possibility that ‘Oumuamua could be from an extraterrestrial civilization.

I don’t care what people say. It doesn’t matter to me. I say what I think, and if the broad public takes an interest in what I say, that’s a welcome result as far as I’m concerned, but an indirect result. Science isn’t like politics: It is not based on popularity polls.

That’s what professor Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, sat down with Oded Carmeli at Haaretz to share his perspective on the ‘Oumuamua controversy. According to Loeb, he only went public with claims that ‘Oumuamua just might be artificial after lengthy discussions with colleagues. “Scientists of senior status said themselves that this object was peculiar but were apprehensive about making their thoughts public,” Loeb says. “it could be that I’m committing image suicide, if this turns out to be incorrect. On the other hand, if it turns out to be correct, it’s one of the greatest discoveries in human history.”

‘Oumuamua (dot in center) as seen by the Pan-STARRS telescope.

Loeb adds that as a scientist with tenure, he doesn’t understand why so many other stodgy academics in ivory towers are afraid to take risks and imagine possibilities which may at first seem outlandish:

If you’re not ready to find exceptional things, you won’t discover them. Of course, every argument needs to be based on evidence, but if the evidence points to an anomaly, we need to talk about an anomaly. Who cares if this anomaly appeared or did not appear in science-fiction books?

The whole interview is worth a read for anyone interested in astronomy or the search for alien life. In it, Loeb lays out his entire argument for why we must be open to the possibility that ‘Oumuamua is a spacecraft or probe. It’s important to note that Loeb never comes out saying definitively that ‘Oumuamua is an alien craft, only that we must be open to the possibility that it could be based on the available evidence. Still, science has a long history of persecuting those who go against the paradigm or challenge popular opinions. Will Loeb be remembered in the future as a rebellious hero like Galileo, or a crank suffering from wishful thinking?

Although the story of Area 51 didn’t really take off big time until 1989 – which was when Bob Lazar entered the scene in controversial and eyebrows-raising fashion – there were significant indications as far back as 1984 that something very weird and deeply conspiratorial was going down out in the heart of the Nevada Desert. We know this, thanks to a now-declassified U.S. Government document of 1987 on what are referred to in its pages as “military land withdrawals. The title: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session.

Rayburn building

On March 11, 1986, beginning at 9:45 a.m., in room B-352, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable John F. Seiberling made a notable statement on the U.S. Air Force’s plans to prevent American citizens from accessing massive slabs of land that, legally, the Air Force had no right to claim as their own. That land, of course, was – as the government saw things – way too close to Area 51 for comfort. But, before we get to that, let’s take a look at a certain controversy that was going down in 1984. It provides us with a timeline that led directly to the events of March 11, 1986.

In his 1991 book, Alien Liaison, British ufologist Timothy Good wrote: “In early 1984 the U.S. Air Force illegally seized 89,000 acres of public land, known as the Groom Range, in order to further restrict access to Area 51. The decision to control access was made after the consultation with local Bureau of Land Management officials and after USAF Headquarters had conferred with the Air Force Secretariat.”

Groom Range

As a result of this controversial land-grabbing operation, in August 1984 a hearing was held to specifically address this issue. It was held in the U.S. House of Representatives. The debate was between the Honorable John Rittenhouse – who was there to represent the interests of the Air Force – and the Chairman, the Honorable John F. Seiberling. The debate went as follows:

Seiberling: “Is it true that Air Force has already acted to restrict public use of the Groom Range area?”

Rittenhouse: “Yes, sir, it is true. We have asserted the right to control the surface access and egress to the extent of requesting people not to go in and out. We have people posted to the roads and at certain times we do not. We ask their cooperation.”

Seiberling: “Under what legal authority was that done; that right asserted?”

Rittenhouse: “As far as I know, sir, there is none; except decisions were made at a much, much higher level than mine that that be done.”

Seiberling: “There is no higher level than the laws of the United States.”

Rittenhouse: “No, sir, I understand, and we can describe that further if you would like, sir.”

Seiberling: “I would like.”

Rittenhouse: “In closed briefing.”

Seiberling: “Why would that have to be in a closed briefing?”

Rittenhouse: “I can’t discuss it, sir.”

Seiberling: “Shades of Watergate. All I am asking you is under what legal authority this was done. I am not asking you the technical reasons. That certainly is not classified.”

Rittenhouse: “As I stared earlier, originally we had no legal authority but we asserted the right to request people not to enter that area.”

Seiberling: “How?”

Rittenhouse: “We legally did not have that authority.”

In a November 20, 1985 Public Hearing for Renewal of Groom Lake Mountain Range Land Withdrawal, at Alamo, Nevada, numerous people had their say in relation to this highly controversial and charged issue. One of the irate locals stated – and whose words have become a part of the official, public record – that: “I’d like to know how the military can hide behind the guise of national security when you have broken all of the rules that’s supposed to ensure this country’s freedom, denying our access, holding us at gunpoint when you feel necessary, not telling people you’re withdrawing it for our own good. You can’t tell me why you’ve broken all the rules? And you say it’s national security.”

Things were destined to become even more controversial a few years later, which was when Bob Lazar surfaced…

One of the weirdest phenomena of the paranormal world is that of what are called Shadow People. The term Shadow People covers a wide range of ghostly phenomena involving mysterious vague specters that seem to lurk just on the periphery of our perceptions for reasons that are unknown, often just appearing to watch or observe. Although descriptions vary, they are typically said to be very tall and thin, all black like a humanoid shadow, generally male in shape and with indistinct features, and often appearing almost 2 dimensional in nature, as if projections that lack any real substance. It’s not uncommon for them to be described as wearing thick cloaks or capes of old fashioned designs, and tall, brimmed hats are often reported as well. Although no facial features are typically noted, some accounts mention glowing eyes. Generally, they are only fleetingly glimpsed, often out of the corner of the eye, seeming to fade or vanish when directly observed, but not always. Although they usually look like a shadowy silhouette of a man, they can also be more amorphous masses, mists, or blobs, sometimes shifting shapes right before a witness’ eyes.

Shadow People are most commonly seen as merely observing, rarely if ever interacting with people or the world around them, and although they don’t seem to do anything to any negative effect they are almost always reported as possessing a malevolent or sinister air about them, emanating a sense of foreboding and dread. They are also known to vanish or flee when detected, and as scary as they are, Shadow People are mostly seen as rather shy and harmless in the grand scheme of things. Yet some encounters can be very intense and terrifying, and among some of the most frightening of these are accounts when these entities appear in homes, often looming over the bed of a sleeping person, who usually wakes to see the demonic looking figure standing there, and finds themselves paralyzed with fear or held in place by some unknown force.

Such weird reports are rather numerous, and share some similarities and common traits in that the witness is faced with a mysterious black figure standing in their room and overcome with a sensation of overwhelming dread, terror, and of being helpless or unable to move. One Reddit account is a good example of this type of report, and comes from a witness who wasn’t even asleep when the paranormal came for him. He says that he had just taken a shower and was settling into bed when things took a turn for the bizarre, which he describes as follows:

One night I stayed up kinda late and decided it was finally time for bed. I took my shower, got ready, turned my nightly podcast on and hopped into bed. Suddenly, I feel like something is watching me. I look up towards the window and I see a large black figure standing there. I’d say somewhere between 6 – 6 1/2 feet tall. He was completely black and I couldn’t see his face. Just a dark shadowy figure. I had a sudden feeling of fear and utter terror, I turned my head away from the window, covered my face and attempted to forget about it. I hardly slept that night.

The next night I walked over to my window and checked to see if I could see the figure again. I didn’t see anything so I turned off the lights and tried again to sleep. Within minutes of me putting my head onto my pillow I felt like I was being watched again. I peeked up over my covers and saw the same figure standing at my glass door and looking at me. This time I just stared back at him for a little bit before getting scared and covering my face again. He had a pretty fair build, wasn’t to big but also wasn’t too skinny. Just fair. Again, he had no face and was looking at me.

This kept happening for the next few nights, each time he appeared closer to me. The next he was at my screen door, then the foot of my bed, then in the middle of my room, and finally looking over me beside my bed. I felt so heavy and fearful. I felt as if I was being pushed into my bed. I could move and all but I just couldn’t shake the heavy feeling. I started to get irritated and yelled out “BE GONE! I DON’T WANT YOU HERE!” I then prayed over and over till I finally fell asleep. The next night he wasn’t there. I have exactly zero idea what it was and that’s probably one of the most strangest things I’ve seen in this house.

It is interesting to note that this encounter happened when the witness was totally awake, making it unlikely that it was all just the result of a bad dream. A similar experience of a witness who would see this phenomenon while awake was reported on Yahoo Answers by an Adam Norton, who relays the strange incidents experienced by his brother-in-law, Victor, of which he says:

He is 48 years old now, and he claims that he has had a dark, hooded figure appear to him, again and again, throughout his entire life. To him, the figure looks like an old, robed, monk. It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t gesture. It just appears, and stares at him. This is not while he’s coming in or out of sleep. This is when he’s wide awake. Obviously, this can be quite startling at times since it’s always unexpected. But he’s not afraid of the figure. He was when he was younger, but over the years it’s just become a part of his life. This is just something he sees at times, and he knows it means him no harm after years of just being watched.

Another tale typical of bedroom Shadow People encounters is told by another witness who says that in the days leading up to her experience she had been plagued by feelings of being watched at night as she lay in her bed, of scarcely glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye, and that there was an anomalous feeling of negativity and coldness emanating from her closet and mirror. She tried to put this out of her mind, thinking that she was just tired and that it was her imagination playing tricks on her, but then one night it would apparently turn out to be anything but. She says:

When I woke up, the figure was RIGHT in front of me, & the first thing I saw was its hand. I didn’t look up at its face or anything, but just from looking at its hand, I could tell that it was dressed in a robe-like outfit, kinda like back in the day when Jesus was alive. I also had the feeling that the figure was very tall. Anyways, when I saw its hand, it was opened, almost like it was telling me to take it. That’s not the creepy part tho. The creepy part started when I had a complete feeling of fear come over me. It was almost like my soul was frightened. Then, (get ready for this) it tried to pick me up!

Now when I say that I was being lifted by this black figure, I don’t mean my physical body. It LITERALLY felt like my soul was being lifted from my body. (But then again, I’m starting to wonder if it was my soul or just my astral body). Anywho, all I remember saying during all of this was “No! No!” but I also had the thought “please don’t take me” running through my mind. It ended up letting me go, & then I woke up again, almost as if I was double-dreaming. Now I’m well aware that astral projection can seem like double-dreaming or lucid dreaming, so I’m starting to wonder if it was just a dream or if I was on the verge of astral projecting. Either way it goes, something was very weird about that night.

There is also the experience of a witness from Ireland who gives her experience on Your Ghost Stories. She claims that she had been haunted by these occurrences for about 4 years, and that they had started rather suddenly, for no discernible reason. It began rather innocuously enough, with the feeling of eyes upon her or of someone being in the room when no one was around, and there was also the odd fact that this bedroom was always noticeably colder than the rest of the house, but it would rapidly escalate from there, and she says of the unfolding bizarreness:

I started waking up in the middle of the night to see a dark figure standing beside my bed, looking at me or sometimes closer up to my face. I couldn’t make out a face just a dark figure. I felt it was male. When this happened, for some reason I would wave my hand in front of its face, for it to go away, as if I’m clearing it or something. It went then. I was never afraid of this, I just thought it was an annoyance that I had been woken up! I usually would fall back to sleep straight away after this. I never thought it was anything more than my imagination, when it first started happening. I used to joke to my friends about it, calling it my hallucinations! I always hoped that it was in my sleep!

Then weird things started to happen. I’d be lying in bed and I’d feel my blankets being pulled from the bottom of the bed. I didn’t look to see what it was or anything, as I was freaked out. Then other times I would feel like somebody was sitting on my bed, like down by my legs. I could actually feel the indent on the bed. It felt kind of like a parent would sit on your bed. It felt so real. Again I didn’t look, as I was so scared, so I would pray really hard and try to go back to sleep. Sometimes when I was lying on my side in bed, I could feel the blankets being taken off me from behind me. It would get cold. Again I’d just pull my blankets back, not look, and try to go back to sleep. Another thing that has happened, on a few occasions, is I’ve felt as if I’m being tucked into the bed, all the way around me! One of my friends thinks if it is a spirit that it’s friendly because of the way they sit on my bed or tuck me in!

Interestingly, whatever this entity was seems to have followed her when she moved away and began living with three roommates. At first there were no further incidents, and she began to feel as though she may have left the strange occurrences behind, but she would soon see that she was wrong. Not only was it back, but it seemed to be becoming more ominous and threatening. The witness goes on to say of this:

Since I’ve been living in my new house (the one I’m sharing) I’ve started to experience kind of the same things. I wake up and see the figure standing beside my bed looking down at me. I shake my hand and it goes away. I go back to sleep again. However, the last time this happened, when I waved my hand it didn’t go away. So I pulled back the curtain (the window is right beside my bed) and it went away then. The next morning when I woke up, my curtain was open. This really freaked me out, as it was kind of like proof that I am awake when I see this thing! This hasn’t happened in a few months now. I’ve moved to a new bedroom, in the same house, and also I have started wearing eye shades when I’m in bed. I haven’t woken up in the middle of the night since then.

Some of these experiences can be quite disturbing and very sinister, with a distinct, hovering sense that these entities mean us harm, despite not actually doing anything to that effect. A very scary account was given by a witness named Matt Cardin on the site Teeming Brain. The experience allegedly happened in 1993, and was so distressful and terrifying that it has stayed with him ever since. He says:

I emerged circa 3 a.m. from a sleep so deep that it was almost a coma, to find myself paralyzed by a dark figure hovering over me at the foot of the bed. When I say I was paralyzed by the figure, that’s precisely accurate: I had the sense that this thing was responsible for the awful state of paralysis that had unaccountably taken hold of me. And yes, I do know, and I think I may even have known then, about the physical paralysis that naturally occurs during REM sleep. In the presence of that dark figure, I was immediately panicked, horrified, positively sickened with terror and dread, in a way and to a degree that I had not only never experienced but had never even conceived. And this horror was a result not only of my paralysis, nor of the figure’s presence and frightening appearance, but of the awful knowledge of its reason for being there, which gripped me suddenly and totally. The thing was a vaguely man-shaped vortex of darkness, and I knew, with a kind of psychological weight that I had never imagined, that it was the anti-me, that it was like my own personal black hole, and that its presence, in fact its very existence, meant my utter annihilation. I actually felt it sucking my entire being into it, like a roaring, devouring hurricane meant for me and me alone.

It is all quite horrific and full of existential dread, and the incident left such an impact on him that Matt has done a great deal of research into the phenomenon. In some instances, more than one Shadow Person are witnessed, such as in the frightening case relayed by a witness and self-proclaimed medium on The Ghost Diaries, who says he began waking up at night to see faces peering at him from the dark, usually two or three of them. This went on for several years, but he claims that he learned to control it with his abilities of mediumship. The witness explains:

Many years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought were people standing over my bed. I quickly reached out my hands as though to protect myself from an intruder. As I blinked a few times, I realized there was nothing standing there. Every night I would see a different face, sometimes two or even three. This happened for years–I would wake up suddenly and open my eyes to see someone staring back at me. It is something I still have not gotten used too.

Around that time this started happening, my mediumship abilities started to grow really strong. I started learning about my gifts as a medium and practiced doing readings on people. It came easy to me and I was able to communicate with spirits on the other side. I would see them hanging around people at the store, see them in cemeteries, and even speak to ghosts that were trapped here. I became pretty amazing with my gift. But one thing always puzzled me, who are the people standing around my bed at night? Who are these spirits that I can see so vividly? I can see them even more clearly than when I am awake doing a reading. I can see the wrinkles in their skin, their eye color, and even the details of their clothing.

So I decided to start asking them directly: “Who are you and what do you want?” Every night I would get the same answer, nothing. I have been trying for years to get an answer out of these spirits and have yet to hear a damn thing. The spirits that startle me almost every night have nothing to say, which is something I can’t seem to comprehend because when I do readings I can’t get the spirits to shut up.

Then I learned to call in my spirit guides and set up my shields before bed. As I got better at this, I was no longer being woken up at night. Every once in a while, one will slip through, but it has happened to me so many times that I just don’t get scared anymore. I get pissed. I have been know to yell a few cuss words, telling the to get the “F” out. It works every time.

It would perhaps be easy to explain such accounts away by saying that this is the result of a phenomenon called sleep paralysis, wherein a person wakes to feel as if they cannot move, often infused with terror, and usually sensing something inhuman in the room with them. It could also be indicative of a state called hypnogajah, which is a realm between sleep and wakefulness during which “waking dreams” can occur, or some other sleeping disorder. This is all mostly written off as having a neurological basis, and that it is more or less all in the head of the one experiencing it, but this does little to explain cases in which the witness was awake at the time, and certainly cannot explain accounts in which more than one person have seen the same entity, of which there are a few. One such report comes from a Reddit poster who says his experience happened to him as a child as he was staying at his uncle’s house. This house apparently had a shadowy black figure that was sometimes said to stare out of the closet of the bedroom, something which his friends had seen and which had disturbed them to the point that they refused to stay over. The witness tells of the series of strange events that followed:

My older brother was babysitting my twin brother and I, and we all played hide and seek, my twin and I went hiding, while my older brother seeked. I ran into my uncles room on the right, and into his closet. I sat down on the floor, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. At the time, I thought it was my twin brother, I remember asking “hiding in here too?”, to which there was no reply. Five minutes pass and I felt cold, so I left the closet THINKING my brother was following me. I went upstairs to the living room and both my brothers were sitting on the couch asking where I hid. They couldn’t believe where I told them because they think that the basement in general is creepy.

Fast forward a few nights, and my older brother was babysitting again, only my twin brother went grocery shopping with my mother and uncle at around 7 pm. We were rough housing and wrestling in his room, and we acted like we wrestled “outside of the ring” and into my uncles room which we considered a backstage. Mid-wrestle, the closet door swung open on it’s own like a blast of wind… My brother and I stopped wrestling, and stared in awe. A tall, dark, shadow man walks out of the closet and my brother books it out of the room leaving me behind. The shadow figure walks towards me, and stops in front of me. I proceed to run out of the room and down the hallway, up the stairs and by then, my uncle, mother and twin brother got home as I started crying on the stairs.

Rent went higher, we moved and that was that, or so I was told from my mother. A few years ago, I get around to asking my uncle if his room was creepy in that house. He told me that yes, his closet would open on it’s own in the middle of the night. He told me that a shadow man would sometimes walk out of his closet and would sometimes stand at the foot of his bed. He also told me that this shadow figure wasn’t evil, and that he had a comforting presence, so he didn’t complain much. The shadow figure only came around once every few weeks. My uncle then told me the house’s grim history and the real reason we moved… My uncles closet, had a cubby hole which lead to underneath the house, and conjoined my brother and uncles closets together which made one long closet. A man was murdered in that house in the 70’s and his body was found in that cubby hole. My mother found out, freaked out and moved us, blamed it on “higher rent”. My uncle knew but vowed never to tell us.

There is also the idea that these frightening figures and sensations experienced during sleep paralysis could be not just a misfiring of the brain or hyper realistic dreans, but rather have a more paranormal origin. Matt Cardin, who as we have seen has had his own encounters with these nighttime intruders, speaks about this at length in a great article called Shadow Visitors: Sleep paralysis and Discarnate Dark Ones, which delves deep into sleep paralysis and the paranormal, and includes an interesting part from a book Louis Proud titled Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences, of which Cardin says:

A week or so ago I finished reading Louis Proud’s fascinating book ‘Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences.’ Published just last year, it argues that sleep paralysis is actually a cousin to spirit mediumship, in that the experience represents an actual visitation by paranormal entities that live constantly among us. Usually we remain in a condition of mutual ignorance — we don’t see these entities, and they don’t see us — but sometimes they become aware of us, and then, if they’re the lower and more craven kind, they latch onto us to feed on our life energy. Sufferers of sleep paralysis thus serve as conduits to the spiritual or daimonic realm in a manner roughly similar to mediums or, in a slightly different context, the teenager that’s typically identified as the focal point for a poltergeist disturbance.

The whole article is rather fascinating and I recommend you read it, but for our purposes here the idea is that these entities are perhaps very real, and are coming between some veil that separates us through the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. It is a pretty weird concept, and it invites speculation on whether they actually cause the sleep paralysis or merely use it as a gateway, as well as the matter of, if these things are real, then what exactly are they and what do they want? If they exist, then some of the theories as to their nature are that they are ghosts or demons, as well as the idea already stated that they are things from some other parallel reality, a different dimension.

As to what they might want, it is impossible to tell, but their generally observing nature suggests that they may be just watchers studying us for inscrutable purposes or even bystanders somehow caught up in the phenomenon themselves, every bit as startled and perplexed as we are. Are these shadow beings lurking out there on the periphery of our reality, peering in at us even as we peer out at them, or the other way around? Or is this really all just the result of hallucinations caused by sleep disorders, trauma, psychological conditions, or sleeplessness? It seems that wherever the answer might lie, it is certainly not something one wants to see looming over them as you sleep.