The news that there are no hotel rooms available for miles around Area 51 hasn’t deterred the millions who have sworn in Facebook commitment blood that they will storm it on September 20th. Those planning a Burning Man-style campout have no doubt heard that Lil Nas X has offered to perform there, and more music is planned. Now all they need is some food and adult beverages for themselves and any aliens they may liberate during the storming – not to mention to share with any soldiers who don’t shoot them first.

“We can’t confirm if there are aliens at Area 51. But, if they do show up, they deserve the best meats on Earth. If not, Arby’s will still be there serving the planet’s best meats to everyone else attending this historic event.”

Jim Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer for Arby’s, announced via Twitter that the “We have the meats” people will be sending their ‘Arby’s Roadside Meathouse’ to Area 51 on September 20th to feed the storming masses (hopefully before they get shot) from a “secret menu” developed especially for the event. While some reports suggest that the sandwiches will be free, that hasn’t been confirmed – although it seems likely that aliens will certainly eat free – providing there’s anything left if two million people show up.

You shouldn’t storm on an empty stomach

For the adult beverages, Anheuser-Busch announced a “Screw it. Free Bud Light to any alien that makes it out” promotion offering free Area 51 Special Edition Bud Light in a specially-designed can for any aliens liberated who have a taste for “a light bodied space lager with a fresh taste, a crisp, clean finish, and a smooth drinkability.” It’s a safe bet that there will be some additional cans/cases/truckloads for sale for the hot stormers who might need to cool down while cooler heads prevail (although getting drunk won’t help that).

For those who aren’t fans of country rapper Lil Nas X, Matty Roberts – the infamous college student who came up with the Storm Area 51 idea – is trying to make amends by repainting the event as an EDM festival and is recruiting artists from the electronic dance music world to perform there. He says he’s also been contacted by indie rock bands and other performers, but hasn’t named names nor announced a schedule yet.

Play Freebird!

Finally, if you have a conflict on that date or fear being shot or not getting an Arby’s sandwich or Bud Light but still want to experience the thrill of the storming, you can stay home and play the ‘official’ Storm Area 51 video game from Keemstar.

“Can you survive the break in, find the helpless alien captives and get them safely to their UFO to pilot them out of Area 51 and show the world what the government has been hiding all these years? Find and explore hidden back routes and enter the legendary Area 51, avoid the guards using classic stealth mechanics, locate the captured aliens and escort them to their mothership! Utilise the other runners as human cover or provide the ultimate sacrifice so that others might succeed!”

Add your own fast food, beer and gunshots and it’s just like being there – although reviews of the early access version are “mostly negative” at Steam. Then again, maybe “mostly negative” WILL be just like being there.

If there’s one thing for certain about the Storm Area 51 event, there’s money to be made and plenty of non-aliens lining up to get their piece.

The PR people at To the Stars Academy sure know how to keep their name in the headlines, even if they’re only good at rehashing worn out, unsubstantiated claims or repackaging previously reported incidents. Now that the buzz of the first season of Unidentified has died down, the company which claims itself to be at “the forefront of socializing the UFO conversation through entertainment media in the public” has now revived a decades-old claim about possessing and studying alleged exotic metamaterials. 

While many similar claims have been made in the past about what appear to be the exact same samples, I can’t help but notice that some of the language in their press release and accompanying social media posts sounds oddly familiar to descriptions of other recent strange developments loosely related with TTSA and the Navy’s ongoing UFO “revelations” or whatever you want to call them.

The latest press release claims that TTSA is now in the possession of “multiple pieces of metamaterials and an archive of initial analysis and research” of their properties. Accompanying that announcement are statements by Steve Justice, current director of TTSA’s Aerospace Division and the former director of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works.” In the press release, Justice claims that while the claims surrounding these materials still cannot be substantiated, these metamaterials could completely revolutionize science as we know it – if they are ever able to be manufactured:

The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application. They’ve been collected from sources with varying levels of chain-of-custody documentation, so we are focusing on verifiable facts and working to develop independent scientific proof of the materials’ properties and attributes. In some cases, the manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available, but the material has been in documented possession since the mid-1990’s. We currently have multiple material samples being analyzed by contracted laboratories and have plans to extend the scope of this study. TTSA will also seek to engage the potential partners who have expressed interest in helping accelerate ADAM [Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials] research and development. 

If the claims associated with these assets can be validated and substantiated, then we can initiate work to transition them from being a technology to commercial and military capabilities. As noted in our October 2017 TTSA kickoff webcast, technologies that would allow us to engineer the spacetime metric would bring capabilities that would fundamentally alter civilization, with revolutionary changes to transportation, communication, and computation.

While many hopeful ufologists and believers take this press release to be evidence of extraterrestrial technologies, note that Justice never mentions anything about aliens or advanced civilizations. Instead he says merely that “the structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application” (emphasis added). The fact that Justice states these samples are “not from any known existing military or commercial application” leaves open the possibility that they could be from a highly classified program not yet made public outside of highly compartmentalized special access programs. 

Writing for The War Zone, I previously reported on a series of strange patents patented assigned to the Navy which concern new forms of energy production and incredibly advanced hybrid craft which are claimed to travel at incredibly high speeds and maneuver with disregard for their own inertia equally well through air, water, or the vacuum of space thanks to a radical new form of electromagnetic propulsion. Despite the claims made in those patents, I’ve yet to speak with one physicist who believes the underlying mechanism for that type of quantum physics-bending electromagnetic propulsion is possible.

Still, in a 2019 aeronautics conference presentation describing one of those patents, the inventor Salvatore Pais claimed that these new Navy patents represent “a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that their “military and commercial value is considerable.” Notice the curious similarities with the language of Justice’s statements in the press release.

Even more curious is the Harold Puthoff connection. Harold Puthoff has traveled among the hard sciences and the fringe sciences for years, making somewhat out-there claims at times. Puthoff isn’t mentioned anywhere in this latest press release, but is acknowledged in several of Pais’ publications and Navy patents. Puthoff now sits on the TTSA board, is listed as a co-founder, and is the Vice President of TTSA’s Science and Technology division. Puthoff has for years published theoretical research into so-called “Space Time Metric Engineering,” the same type of physics-bending propulsion described in the Navy’s advanced aerospace patents – patents the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise claims are already operable.

In a presentation given in 2018 at a Conference for the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), Puthoff says that while he’d “love to talk about really fancy materials,” he can’t do so because “they’re classified.” However, Puthoff adds that there are plenty of examples of such metamaterials “provided even in the public domain.” A sample of one such material he’s studied, Puthoff claims, is an “excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation.” 

Images of two of the Navy’s patented aerospace craft.

Again, the language Puthoff used in that speech to describe the properties of these materials echoes the language of the Navy’s strange electromagnetic propulsion patents, and during the same presentation Puthoff claims the objects observed in the alleged Navy sightings behaved “as if the craft didn’t have any inertial mass” – the exact language used to describe the abilities of the “hybrid aerospace-underwater vehicle” patented by the Navy. Is this proof of any connection between TTSA’s research and the Navy’s patents? There are only so many words for describing these types of theoretical propulsion methods and alleged aeronautical abilities after all, so it’s likely a coincidence. Still, the Puthoff connection between the patents and these alleged metamaterials is odd. 

What’s odder still is why someone like Steve Justice would now throw his name into the ring with fringe scientists or even pseudoscientists who for decades have made what some would describe as dubious, unfounded claims about alien metamaterials. Justice never goes so far as to say that these materials are in fact legitimate or extraterrestrial in origin, though, only that TTSA has received them and will study them.

I’m also drawn to Justice’s statement that the “manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available.” Could this be why the Navy suddenly decided to patent such radical-sounding technologies and appeal them so forcefully with the U.S. Patent Office? I’ve been toying with an idea lately and it’s still nothing but a flight of the imagination, so take it for what it is.

Imagine that the U.S. government has indeed been researching electromagnetic propulsion methods, advanced metamaterials, and hybrid craft for years and has encouraged the extraterrestrial hypothesis in order to keep these projects a secret. What if they were finally ready to go public with these new advances, but the new administration elected in 2016 decided to keep it under wraps in order to continue kowtowing to the fossil fuel industries? Could that be why Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and others decided to form TTSA to take these technologies into the private sector or as a means of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the public? Could that be why the Navy made their curious patents available to the public? Just a thought.

Returning to TTSA and this latest press release, be sure to take into account how the “Invest Now” button is now permanently anchored to the TTSA website’s masthead, so as usual, take everything they say with a shaker of salt or two. Until they cough up anything more than a cable TV program and social media buzz, there is no way of knowing if they are any better than any other charlatans who have for years made unfounded claims of exotic technologies for profit.

For the last several years I’ve been tracking and reporting on the mystery boom phenomenon, collecting hundreds of reports in the process. While reports have tapered off somewhat in the last few months, one of our MU readers reached out to me this week to share her personal experience encountering one of these unidentified sonic phenomena.

Melissa Hinegardner of Roodhouse, Illinois contacted me and told me that on Thursday, July 18 at around 12:58 pm local time, multiple people from several counties reported a loud boom. Hinegardner says people in several cities throughout Greene County all experienced the same phenomenon: an ear-splitting boom which shook the earth below their feet. Hinegardner told me that the noise was powerful enough to shake her home:

I thought one of the kids fell into the wall or something hit the front door. The house shook a little. It scared the kids and they jumped up onto the couch. When I saw the kids were fine I went on with my day. Then I got a text from my dad a few blocks away and realized it was something bigger.

Local radio station WLDS reported the incident on Facebook, writing that “a loud boom and shake was felt at 1PM this afternoon across the listening area from as far south as Carrollton and Greenfield to the north near Virginia and as far west as Winchester.” The station contacted local sheriff’s deputies and seismological surveys but found no explanation. However, a few days later the same station reported that it may have found an explanation for the incident:

BOOM! Report: WLDS/WEAI News received a return call a few minutes ago from Scott Air Force Base in St. Louis. They have confirmed that an F-35 Lightning II Fighter Jet was in the area at the approximate time of the boom. Sergeant Chris Ostomo could not confirm or deny if the pilot was attempting to reach Mach 1 speeds or not.

Facebook users have been debating whether or not it would be possible for a single aircraft to generate a sonic boom powerful enough to be heard for over 50 miles. Some anecdotal and scientific evidence supports the theory that certain atmospheric conditions can enable sound waves to propagate over greater distances than usual, but this is still a little understood meteorological phenomenon.

Far away from Greene County, Illinois, residents of Tempe, Arizona have been rattled, both literally and figuratively, by a series of powerful booms that have rocked homes in the middle of the night. Local news station FOX 10 reports that the booms have been accompanied by flashes of light, leading some to suspect that illegal explosives might be at the root of these unexplained sonic phenomena.

Neither the Tempe Police nor the Salt River Project utilities company know what’s behind the booms and/or flashes of light. “It doesn’t sound like it’s just some kids blowing up fireworks. It sounds like it’s meant to scare people. It’s in the middle of the night,” one resident told FOX 10. Other worried Tempe locals have compared the noises to the sound of a bomb. 

That comparison is worrisome given that last year a man was arrested for detonating homemade explosives, and in one case dangerously near an elementary school. Could a copycat be at work in Tempe?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

My new book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin, is a study of how and why the Russians – for decades – sought to take control of the UFO scene and create hysteria and paranoia in the West. And we were doing the same to them, too. The Russians certainly deserved it. As they do too now, for their outrageous meddling over the last few years. But, does such manipulation of the UFO scene still go on? Yes, it does. Certainly, the vast majority of the programs designed to use the UFO subject as a tool of manipulation took place during the height of the Cold War; that much is abundantly clear. It should be noted, though, that while the available data is limited, we can say that UFOs – or, rather, the mystique and the legend that surrounds them – are still of interest to the intelligence services of several nations.

In a strange way, the evidence for this has a link to the saga of none other than the ultimate 21^st century whistle-blower, Edward Snowden. If, prior to 2013, someone were to ask you for your thoughts on Edward Snowden, you would almost certainly reply: “Who? Huh?” His family, friends, and work colleagues aside, Snowden was unknown. Just about completely. That all changed – and it changed radically – in the summer of 2013. That was when the shocking story of the National Security Agency’s top secret programs of widespread surveillance came tumbling out into the public domain. It created shock-waves that are still reverberating to this day.

As Snowden revealed, and unbeknownst to just about everyone (the National Security Agency aside, of course), the NSA had the potential to not just spy on foreign nations but on U.S. citizens too. Landlines, cell-phones, email, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype: they had all been penetrated, very often with the witting help of some of those same companies. The data collection process was so mind-boggling and huge that it would likely have had even George Orwell himself shaking his head in disbelief; except for just one thing: Orwell’s 1984 was fiction. This was all too real.

The responses to Snowden’s revelations were interesting and thought-provoking. For some people, Snowden is the definitive American hero. For others, however, he is a man who has massively jeopardized U.S. national security, and placed our troops and agents in deep danger. There were even calls not for just his lifelong incarceration, but for his execution too, as the ultimate traitor. For many people, however, Snowden falls somewhere between both camps. And then there’s the matter of UFOs. Or, at least, the lore surrounding it. The story of Edward Snowden would never have soared to the levels that it did had it not been for the research of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Having secured Snowden’s trust, Greenwald was able to secure an astonishing amount of highly classified material on the NSA’s surveillance programs. One of Snowden’s lesser-known revelations revolved around a PowerPoint presentation produced by the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, which is the nation’s equivalent of its, ahem, big brother, the United States’ NSA. The presentation was titled“How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive and Destroy Reputations.” Interestingly, the PowerPoint production – which, in part, provides ways and means to shatter the characters of people under surveillance – contained three photographs of alleged UFOs.

Mark Pilkington, a writer on, and an investigator of, the UFO subject has a particular interest in how government agencies have used the UFO controversy to their advantages. His 2010 book, Mirage Men, is subtitled: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs. That will give you a very good idea as to where Pilkington is coming from in relation to UFOs. Journalist David Clarke asked Pilkington what he thought of all this. Pilkington said to Clarke: “We don’t know why there are UFOs in this [PowerPoint] presentation. But the fact that the saucer photos appear within the context of influencing and manipulating online communities is highly suggestive.” You can see the full story of this in Clarke’s book, How UFOs Conquered the World.

What does it mean to be a tree? It might seem like a silly question, but a mysterious phenomenon that allows the stumps of some trees to thrive–even in the absence of any new growth–is challenging our ideas about how communities of plants live and interact with each other.

By definition, trees are perennial plant organisms, meaning that they renew their growth over time. Consisting of a tall trunk from which numerous secondary stems, or “branches” protrude, each branch possesses a number of leaves that provide food for the plant by collecting energy from sunlight and carbon dioxide, which, combined with water absorbed through the roots of the tree, produces sugars in the form of glucose.

These processes are well understood, which is why it might seem odd to ask a question like “what it means to be a tree.” However, a recent study by a team of researchers in New Zealand has observed a tree stump that remains alive, despite having none of the ordinary facilities required for sustaining itself: effectively making it a “zombie” tree, in a sense.

This unique plant is able to survive sans leaves in a photosynthetically inactive state with a little help from its friends nearby: that is, it is engaged in exchanges of water, minerals, carbon, and even microorganisms necessary to survive with other plants. In this “community” root system (something known to botanists as conspecifics), even a tree without leaves can thrive.

The arrangement, rather than being likened to a “zombie” tree, might be more closely likened to a natural, botanical form of “life support” for the plant in question.

The tree stump in question “displayed greatly reduced, inverted daily sap flow patterns compared with intact kauri trees,” as stated in the paper’s abstract. Despite being a trunkless tree, the first clue as to its unconventional survival had been sap flow variations in the kauri stump, which seemed to mirror those of its surrounding neighbors.

The researchers found that rainfall and other sources of water introduced to the surrounding trees “were very rapidly and inversely mirrored in the living stump’s water status.”

“Such intimate hydrological coupling suggests a ‘communal physiology’ among (conspecific) trees with far-reaching implications for our understanding of forest functioning, particularly under water shortage,” the authors wrote.

Example of a living stump

(credit: Wikimedia Commons).

These “living stumps,” as they are appropriately called, aren’t a new phenomenon. The earliest record of a living stump dates back to the 1830s, although science articles didn’t begin to regularly appear on the subject until 1959, with the publication of

F.H. Bormann and B.F. Graham Jr.’s “The occurrence of natural root grafting in eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.), and its ecological implications“. The article appeared in the journal Ecology, and several other articles that examined the phenomenon of “living stumps” were published in the years that followed.

The new paper, titled “Hydraulic Coupling of a Leafless Kauri Tree Remnant to Conspecific Hosts,” was co-authored by M.K.-F. Bader and S. Leuzinger of the Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand at Auckland University of Technology. The study can be read online here.

For three years Richard Freeman worked as Head of Reptiles at Twycross Zoo, England and, today, is the Zoological Director of one of the world’s premier cryptozoological investigation groups: namely, the Center for Fortean Zoology. And while Freeman has a passion for all aspects of cryptozoolgy, it is the dragon that fascinates him most of all. “I started my career as a zoologist – so I had a grounded training,” says Freeman. “But cryptozoology was my passion. Now, I have had a particular passion – an obsession, I suppose – for years with dragons. But there was something that always puzzled me: no-one had ever thought, for more than a hundred years, to publish a definitive, non-fiction book on the subject. And as I am a qualified zoologist, I thought: why not me?”

Why not, indeed? In fact, that is precisely what Freeman did in his book, Dragons: More Than A Myth? I asked Freeman about his theories and discoveries with regard to dragons. He replied: “Well, that’s a bit difficult to answer because there are several things going on. It’s important to note that I’ve traveled the world pursuing these creatures – the Gambia, Mongolia, Thailand, and right here in England with some of the old legends from past centuries. And of one thing I can be certain: there isn’t just one answer to the question of what dragons are or what they may be.” Freeman continued: “There are many creatures that have become linked to the lore and legend of what today we perceive and view as dragons, and some of these creatures are distinctly different to each other. But that should not take away from the fact that dragons are a real phenomenon.”

On this latter point, Freeman elaborates: “I am absolutely certain, having reviewed many ancient reports of dragon activity, that many sightings – perhaps two or three hundred years ago and probably further back – were genuine encounters, but where the witnesses were seeing what I believe to have been huge snakes, giant crocodiles, and the Australian ‘monster lizard’ Megalania.”  Freeman makes a noteworthy, and thought-provoking, point: “Any mention of dragons always conjures up images of fire-breathing monsters, and there are definitely reports that fall into that group. But, when you look into many of the earliest, ancient legends, you find that the dragon is more often associated with water. So, I have a theory that some of the better lake monster accounts from centuries ago may well have influenced dragon tales.”

On this point, he adds: “Personally, I also believe that some classic tales of dragons in England in Medieval times, and tales of beasts such as the Lambton Worm, probably have their origins in lake monster accounts, giant eels, etc., that have then mutated into tales of dragons on the loose. But the important point is that this shouldn’t detract from the fact that people did see something.”

I asked him: “You mean that the ancients were seeing lake monsters and, having been exposed to dragon legends, believed them to be – or interpreted them as – dragons, too?”

“Exactly,” Freeman replied.

Of course, the biggest question of all was: are there creatures still living today that Freeman believes have helped perpetuate the image of the dragon? He is certain there are: “I would pretty much stake my life on the fact that Megalania still exists – or did until very recently – in the large forests of Australia, and that also roamed New Guinea. This was a huge, killer-beast; a massive monitor lizard that exceeded thirty feet in length. In literal terms, this was a classic dragon-type animal.”

I questioned Freeman about his research into an animal known as the Naga of Thailand that he believes is responsible for some dragon tales. He told me: “There is no excuse for not getting out into the field and doing firsthand investigations; none at all. In fact, it’s vital. I have no time for the armchair theorist. And one of the experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life was traveling to Thailand with the Discovery Channel in 2000, where we chased giant snakes – the Naga – in the caves and tunnels that exist deep below Thailand.

“It’s very easy to see why the inhabitants in times past considered them to be dragons. The Naga is apparently a large snake, a very large one – maybe in the order of literally tens of feet in length, oil-drum-sized bodies, and definitely big enough to take a whole man.” And similar accounts abound elsewhere, too: “There have come reports from the Congo of an animal known as Mokele-mbembe. Again, it has cross-over qualities with dragon legends, but I’m sure that it will be shown in time to be some sort of giant monitor lizard, too.”

But what of the definitive, fire-breathing dragons of legend: does, or did, such a creature exist? Freeman makes a very intriguing observation: “Back in 1979 Peter Dickinson wrote a book that was titled The Flight of Dragons. Dickinson had come up with this idea – an excellent theory, in fact – that real-life dragons did exist and that they were the descendants of dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Dickinson suggested that these animals developed large, expanded stomachs that would fill with hydrogen gas, which would come from a combination of hydrochloric acid found in the juices of the digestive system that would then mix with calcium found in the bones of their prey.

“Then, from there, the hydrogen – a lighter-than-air gas – allowed these creatures to take to the skies and then control their flight by burning off the excess gas in the form of flame. Anyone seeing this would be seeing the closest thing to the image of the dragon that we all know and love. Dickinson’s theory is an excellent one, and may well be a perfect explanation for sightings of real dragons – in times past, and perhaps today, I believe.”

I leave the final word to Freeman: “The dragon has its teeth and claws deep into the collective psyche of mankind, and it’s not about to let go. Our most ancient fear still stalks the earth today. Beware: this is no fairy-tale. When your parents told you that there were no such things as dragons, they lied!”

I said in a June 16, 2017 article for Mysterious Universe – titled The Majestic 12 Documents Are Back – that just like an over-the-hill, bloated rock band that doesn’t know when it’s time to retire and go away forever, the notorious saga of Majestic 12 hit the road and briefly toured again in 2017. Yes, those pesky documents were back once more. Or, rather, an entirely new and controversial set of papers were among us. Thoughts on the documentation were mixed: some researchers suggested the whole thing was someone’s idea of a hoax. Or a satire. Or a psychological experiment. Others concluded that they were the real thing. Me? I went down the path marked “Disinformation.” It’s accurate to say that I still do. That batch of Majestic 12 files, which ran to 47-pages, were provided to Heather Wade. At the time, she was the host of the popular Midnight in the Desertshow. I was on Heather’s show several times and I like her. When she says that she got the documents from what was described as “a trusted source,” I believe her. But, as two years of time have shown, we never learned who Heather’s source  was. And we were never told how that same source got the documents to her, or from where they came. There is no doubt, however, that these papers are not the real thing. They’re from right in the heart of Russia. Let’s get it right: Russia is not our friend.

Let’s expand on the theory that – just perhaps – the Russians were behind all of this. It’s important to note that just because Heather Wade publicized the papers in 2017, it doesn’t mean they were intended for use in a psy-op in that same year. After all, the document purports to be more than thirty years old. That being so, its pages may well have been originally planned for an operation back in the 1980s. Or, in the nineties. Are there any good reasons why the Russians may have been behind all of this? Yes. In the document, the highly talkative survivor from the Aztec, New Mexico UFO crash of 1948 tells us a great deal about matters relative to aliens, to extraterrestrial technology, and to all kinds of matters of a UFO nature. But, the interviewee from the stars does something else, too: it proves to be quite critical of American politics and history.

At one point, the military interviewer tells the alien sitting before him that “we [the human race] have changed,” as a society, and that “Western civilization is now the leader in this world; for freedom and humanity.” The extraterrestrial, is far from being impressed by those words. It hits back hard and directly to the point: “…tell that to the millions of Hebrews your western civilization has destroyed in the past decade, or the millions of Negro families whose sons died to stop the madman Hitler, but who do not have plumbing in their homes.”

It is a terrible fact that black men who fought in the Second World War were, in some cases, treated like second-class citizens. The Smithsonian website says: “There is a historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in the United States. Yet the recent resurgence of explicit racism, including the attack in Charlottesville, has been greeted by many with surprise. But collective amnesia has consequences. When Americans celebrate the country’s victory in WWII, but forget that the U.S. armed forces were segregated, that the Red Cross segregated blood donors or that many black WWII veterans returned to the country only to be denied jobs or housing, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.”

Military Times says: “…90 percent of black troops were forced to serve in labor and supply units, rather than the more prestigious combat units. Except for a few short weeks during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944 when commanders were desperate for manpower, all U.S. soldiers served in strictly segregated units.”

The alien also has something to say about the United States’ approach to Native Americans. It offers these words, from the Majestic 12 documents: “Not surprising, your history shows that the conqueror seldom preserves any history of their victims. I speak of the natives in this land mass; those called Indians; mostly on your eastern and southern borders and in the ribbon of land that connects yours to the southern continent. Navahos? Aztecs? Incas? The Olmec’s and Toltec’s cultures? These were all greater than your own civilization at a time when you were burning witches and killing their cats, which brought a plague that killed millions of your ancestors. Of course, you drove them mad and destroyed them with venereal diseases and smallpox; those you didn’t slaughter for their gold.”

Clearly, whoever put together this particular Majestic 12 document wished to make a point. Moving on, the alien tells the interviewer that “…in a remote part of the nation you call Yugoslavia, we visited and helped the people there to build a very advanced culture over seven thousand years ago.” Just muse upon that: of all the locations on the planet that the aliens could possibly have chosen to land and help humankind, they selected what became a significant communist land: Yugoslavia. The alien also goes on to say that back in 1895 creatures of its kind made contact with none other than the brilliant maverick scientist, Nikola Tesla.

It’s a fact that Tesla – born in Croatia in 1856, and way ahead of his time – did indeed believe he was in contact with extraterrestrials. The Richmond Times, on January 13, 1901, stated: “There are thousands of people living in the world today who do not believe that the planet of Mars is inhabited. There are many others who do, and some of the leaders in science and foremost men in thought and invention are members of this last-named class. Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the wireless telegraphy, is one of these. Astronomers tell us that the planet Mars is several millions of years older than the earth and H. G. Wells, novelist, in one of his fantastic creations, has peopled this planet with a race of strange creatures. One thing, however, stands to reason, and that is this: If Mars is inhabited those inhabitants are far in advance of us as regards sciences, both theoretical and applied. This is what Tesla thinks, and why he is of the opinion has just recently been made known. He is convinced that the Martians are trying to communicate with us.”

The alien in the Majestic 12 document advises the U.S. military that the United States had utterly failed to embrace the incredible technology which Tesla had perfected and that just might have enriched the world for each and every one of us. But, the creature was careful to add that the Russians had, for a number of years, been running a “strong program of research” that was going ahead “inside the Soviet Union.” In other words, the Russians were forging ahead, while we were fucking up.

The words of an alien or the carefully created statements of a Russian operative? I’ll go with the latter. Well into the 21^stcentury, the meddling has clearly not gone away.

With the “Storm Area 51” craze, local businesses near the base are profiting from the extra publicity. One business in particular, the Little A’Le’Inn motel is definitely cashing in on the “storm”. According to their booking calendar (which can be seen here), all thirteen rooms at the UFO-themed motel are booked solid on September 19^th and 20^th when millions of people plan to storm the secretive military base.

The motel is located in the small village of Rachel which is the nearest residential area to Area 51, and it’s a popular spot for tourists interested in aliens and UFOs. The “Storm Area 51” event is scheduled to take place on September 20^th with millions of people planning on attending the event – almost 2 million people claim to be going and 1.4 million people are interested in attending according to the event’s Facebook page.

Little A’Le’Inn

The motel’s website reads, “Come and sit back and watch the fun”. And it will certain be something to see with millions of people pledging to storm the highly secured military base in order to hopefully find evidence of aliens and UFOs.

And it’s not just the Little A’Le’Inn that’s seeing a boost in business as other local motels are also getting busier. One of those businesses is the Sunset View Inn, located 45 minutes from Area 51, and it’s completely booked solid on the dates of the “storm”. “It’s really booming some small little towns in this area,” Pamela Broxson, who is the general manager of the inn, told CTV News.

Area 51 has long been associated with extraterrestrials as many people believe that the US military is hiding evidence of alien technology and maybe even extraterrestrials themselves. The military did, however, issue a very stern warning for those planning on storming the base. They indicated that they are authorized to use deadly force against anyone who attempts to get into the highly secured area.

And even though Broxson is welcoming the guests into the inn, she doesn’t believe that they’ll be successful in getting into the base. “I’ve had guests try to go out there and they’ve come back looking like ghosts because they’ve been drawed upon,” she said, adding, “Guns pulled on them for going past the barrier.”

With the “storm” a little less than two months away, we’ll have to wait and see what exactly will happen on September 20^thand if anyone will actually get past the gates. For those who still plan to go despite the stern warnings – storm with caution.

The jungles of the Amazon are one of the last great wildernesses of the world, and have served as the siren’s call for explorer’s since time unremembered. Many have come here to never return, and just as many have come back with amazing tales of adventure and discovery, and it is a place steeped in legends, intrigue, and the unknown. It is a realm of lost tribes, strange mysteries, and weird beasts that roam the gloom, a place perpetually in a sort of shadow and existing unto itself. One very odd account that comes from these wilds is that of an intrepid explorer who came here looking for mysteries, and would soon get more than he bargained for, embarking on a quest that would include lost, uncontacted tribes and strange powers of the mind.

Loren McIntyre was a seasoned explorer, photojournalist, and writer for such esteemed publications as National Geographic, Time, Life, Smithsonian, GEO, Audubon, and South American Explorer, and was in many ways a sort of real-life Indiana Jones figure, spending much of his life doggedly exploring the forbidding, uncharted, and most impenetrable reaches of the Amazon rainforest of South America. Indeed, it was he who would be the first one to discover the source of the mighty Amazon River, when he made an expedition in search of it in 1971. He would make history when he found that the largest, longest, and most powerful river in the world began with a runoff of snow at a mountain in the Andes called Mismi, some 6,400 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean, which trickled down to pond now called Laguna McIntyre, which in turn emptied into a brook named Carhuasanta, in Peru, after which it began its inexorable growth and meandering journey through some of the most remote wilds on earth. Yet, although this is McIntyre’s most famous discovery it certainly wasn’t his only one, and he would have a very mysterious encounter out in those jungles that he would keep to himself for years.

In 1969, McIntyre embarked on an excursion into the unexplored depths of the Amazon jungle of Brazil. His target was the little-known Mayoruna tribe, also called the Matsés, who were so elusive that they had never been successfully contacted by outsiders and were known as “The Cat People,” due to the arrays of imposing spikes that they wore implanted into their faces. Next to nothing was known about this enigmatic tribe, and they were only ever fleetingly glimpsed. They were like ghosts, and McIntyre had little to go on when he was basically dumped off on the shores of the Amazon River in a place called the Javari valley, on the border between Brazil and Peru, and left to continue on his own, penetrating into dense jungle that no outsider had ever set eyes on in an attempt to find these mysterious people. Little did he know that it would be they who found him.

Loren McIntyre

As the brave, seasoned explorer made his way through mosquito infested jungle he got perhaps too focused on finding the lost tribe, and soon realized that he was hopelessly lost. His journey then turned into aimlessly wandering through the perilous wilderness, and it became obvious that he was not going to be in time for his scheduled pick up at the point where he had been dropped off. He began to resign himself to the fact that he just might end up another mysterious lost explorer, like his childhood idol Percy Fawcett before him, a fellow explorer who had mysteriously vanished while looking for a mythical city he called “Z.” Making this trek more ominous was when at some point McIntyre would stumble across a clearing littered with the bodies of what appeared to be four lumberjacks, half devoured by ants and with arrows sticking from their silent corpses.

This grim discovery had the explorer watching the trees carefully as he aimlessly wandered around half expecting death to come for him at any moment through the shadows, and more sure than ever that he would not see civilization again. It was as he was in this fog of panic and fear that some figures crept out of the forest before him, spikes embedded into their faces, necklaces made of bones, possibly human, around their necks, and looking upon him with a mixture of apprehension and surprise, but not aggressiveness. These were the Mayoruna, and this was the closest any outsider had ever gotten to them. At least any who were still alive.

The frightened explorer immediately and very slowly pulled out some gifts that he had brought in the event that he actually made contact. From his bag he produced some cloth and mirrors, which he dropped before the tribesmen as they looked on with inscrutable expressions on their pierced faces. They stepped closer to accept the gifts, and then seemed to beckon for him to follow them as they began to melt back into the forest. The weary McIntyre stumbled after them, barely able to keep up with their nimble navigation of the jungle, and so would begin the next chapter of his strange adventure.

They arrived at what seemed to be a makeshift camp full of other members of the tribe, and they seemed to show a strange mixture of curiosity and aggression towards him. Upon examining his tennis shoes they went about burning them to ashes, and his watch they found fascinating, but they destroyed that too. Indeed, most of his possessions would be either stolen from him or destroyed, and even his camera, which they oddly showed no interest in, was broken when a monkey descended from the trees to take it from him. Although there was no outright aggression against him, there were some grim reminders that he was very much in danger. He would claim that they possessed trinkets made of human bone and that they drank out of hollowed out skulls. They were also very well armed and never far from their bows, and one tribesman with red face paint, who he called “Red Cheeks,” took to menacing him and scowling at him.

McIntyre would end up staying with this lost tribe for two months, and during this time made many observations. He noticed that they were constantly on the move, perpetually moving to a new camp, sometimes suddenly and without warning, and they clearly had a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They also seemed to have no concept of individual possessions, freely sharing everything with each other and taking or using whatever they liked without repercussions. Even odder still, he noticed that these people often moved quite bizarrely in sync, knowing what the others would do or acting in precise tandem without speaking to each other. For some time, he pondered this anomaly, but he would soon learn that the explanation was far odder than anything that he had ever guessed at.

One day he was approached by the one he took to be the chief of the tribe, an ancient looking, sinewy and grizzled tree trunk of a man, covered in warty growths that would earn him McIntyre’s nickname “Barnacle.” When the chief approached he spoke to McIntyre, and the explorer found that bizarrely, after weeks of being unable to understand anything any of them had said, he clearly comprehended what Barnacle had to say. This utterly perplexed him, but he soon realized that this chief was not moving his mouth when he spoke, and that he was talking directly into his mind, using a sort of telepathy that McIntyre would later call “beaming,” and which Barnacle called “the other language.”

Barnacle explained that the tribe existed as a sort of hive mind consciousness, and that their thoughts were all linked to each other, although only the tribal elders were proficient at focusing this telepathic power and truly using it to its full potential. Here he learned that there was no real “self” as Westerners would think of it, and that to them the concept of an individual “self” made little sense. The chief also telepathically explained that they were under constant threat from loggers and other outsiders, and that the reason the tribe moved so often was that they were on a spiritual journey to what he called “The Beginning,” or the literal beginning of time, where they hoped to be beyond the reach of the intruding outside world. Indeed, the tribe seemed to have a very strange grasp of how time worked that was rather alien to anything the explorer was familiar with. A 1991 article in The Los Angeles Times about McIntyre’s bizarre experience explains the tribe’s philosophy on time as follows:

The main feature of time, by western definition, is its passage. But for the Mayoruna, time is at once mobile and static. It moved with man, stopped with him, advanced and retreated with him. It is not the implacable judge, condemning man to a tragically brief life. Time is a shelter, an escape into safety and regeneration, a repository whose chief function is not piling up the past, intact yet dead, but rather keeping it alive and available. And, in the face of violent encroachment on their land by white settlers, that past assisted them with an alternative to a menacing present.

The chief invited McIntyre to come along with them on their journey to “The Beginning,” and for the next few weeks he followed them on their mystical quest and engaged in their rituals, often taking psychoactive jungle concoctions that warped his perceptions. He found that if he concentrated he could pick up on a sort of static fuzz that contained the interlinked thoughts of all of the tribe members, through processes he could never hope to fathom. However, he knew at some point he would have to part ways with them and try to leave this land of jungle, telepathy, and time travel behind him to get back to the civilization that was no doubt convinced he had vanished. The only problem was that he had no idea where he was, and on top of this, although he had been invited and was not physically threatened by the Mayoruna in any way, he had no illusions that he was anything other than their prisoner, and wondered what they would do if he tried to flee. However, in the end the decision was made for him, a flood swept through during a torrential rain, and McIntyre would be whisked away as he clung to a balsa raft, emptied into the river and incredibly found the next day by a pilot flying over.

Upon getting back to civilization, McIntyre would keep what had happened to him a secret for years, and it is quite likely that the whole fantastical tale would have died with him in 2003 if it hadn’t been for a Romanian-American writer, director and movie producer, by the name of Petru Popescu. In 1987 Popescu met McIntyre by chance while on a river boat trip up the Amazon River. The two men hit it off, and for some reason McIntyre confided to him about what had happened all of those years ago with the mysterious Mayoruna tribe. It was all rather amazing, and when Popescu asked why he had never told anyone about it, McIntyre said that he didn’t think any one would ever believe him, and he had been worried about maintaining his reputation as a respected explorer, writer, and photographer. He would say of this:

I’m pretty reluctant to voice very much about the beaming experience because I didn’t want my friends to think I’d gone around the bend. ‘What is this? The guy’s hallucinating?’

Popescu would finally manage to convince McIntyre to let him write a book on his adventures, and in 1991 released The Encounter: Amazon Beaming. The explorer would claim that in his dealings with dozens of other tribes in the same region he had never before or since experienced anything like he did during his time with the Mayoruna, and he did not know what became of them. We are left to wonder just how much of this account is true, and if it is just what was going on with these elusive people of the jungle. The tribe itself has sort of disappeared, they have never been formally studied, and since McIntyre passed away in 2003, we are left only with Popescu’s book as a window into this strange tribe and their world and ways. One wonders if they are still out there, or if they managed to make that journey to “The Beginning,” finally at peace and forevermore out of our reach.