There have been so many theories – logical, evidence-based, conspiracy and otherwise – about the strange disappearances which have come to be known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident that it’s becoming almost mandatory that when another one pops up, the first question to ask is, “Have we heard this one before?” The latest one comes from a large news agency in Russia and has to do with a mysterious yet well-known condition among indigenous people known as “polar hysteria.” Have you heard this before?

“Once I was visiting my daughter, who taught at the largest university in the Arctic Circle – the Murmansk Arctic State University, where they told me about a strange disease. The disease manifests itself in the fact that people are temporarily disconnected from the real perception of the environment – they hear voices, sounds, see angels or beautiful female faces, and at the same time repeat movements. There is evidence of a sudden departure to the north of entire camps of northern peoples, leaving burning centers and crying babies.”

Vasily Mekhonoshin, who describes himself as a researcher but doesn’t say what his specialty is (we’ll assume for this article that it’s the Dyatlov incident), wrote a letter to the editorial board of the Russian news agency ura.ru describing his theory about the sudden and yet unexplained deaths of Igor Dyatlov and seven other skier/hikers in February 1959 in the northern Ural Mountains of the former Soviet Union. He calls it “meryachka” which is the word used by the Pormors – descendants of settlers from Novgorod. The Saamis (formerly known as Laplanders) call it Emerik while the Yakuts (who live in the Republic of Sakha) call it the “shaman’s navy” (this sounds more like a mistranslation by Google). North American Inuits call it pibloktoq and the American Psychiatric Association calls it Arctic or Polar Hysteria. So, why does Vasily Mekhonoshin call it the cause of the demise of the Dyatlov group?

“Witnesses noted that people covered by the “meryachka” tend to move north, become insensitive to pain and cold, some tear their clothes on, and if someone tries to stop them, they become aggressive and resist with inhuman force. The condition can last a long time, at the end convulsions and sobs can be observed, and then deep sleep. A person comes to himself unexpectedly and does not remember any of this.”

Hmm. That sounds like some of the strange behavior indicated by the state of the campsite. Mekhonoshin surmises that the cold and sensory deprivation experienced by the hikers had put them in this zombie state of polar hysteria, causing them to leave camp in a violent disarray, tear off their clothes and move to the northeast before waking up confused, partially naked and unable to return – ultimately freezing to death.

Are there any holes in Mekhonoshin ‘s polar hysteria theory? The condition was unknown outside of northern indigenous cultures until Western explorers encountered them. After studying people showing the strange symptoms, scientists tended toward polar hysteria being an Arctic cultural disorder caused by the lack of sun, extreme cold, isolation and the desolated state of northern villages. Further, they saw it more in women than men (hence the term ‘hysteria’) and attributed that to more women being left alone while the men left to hunt, fish or explore.

Polar hysteria?

If that’s the case, the Dyatlov group is disqualified on a number of counts. The hikers were mostly men and not indigenous but Russian university students living in dorms, not isolated villages. They were also exposed to the extreme cold for a relatively short period, not the mind-numbing months of arctic winters. Finally, psychologists suggest that there are few observed victim of polar hysteria and most of the early accounts are by male explorers of female natives. Finally, the cultures practiced shamanism and unfamiliar ceremonies that may have confused outsiders. In other words, there’s plenty of doubt that ‘polar hysteria’ is a real condition.

That diagnosis won’t stop people like Vasily Mekhonoshin and other trying to solve the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Incident. He gets credit for one thing … I haven’t heard that one before.

As anyone who has researched UFOs knows, the United States frequently tests new aerospace technologies on its own soil much to the fear and confusion of citizens below. The history of the American government’s experimental aircraft testing is a long and sordid one, involving all manner of misinformation, misdirection, and seeming misanthropy. 

Over the last few years, evidence keeps stacking up that may suggest the military industrial complex is up to its old tricks once again, but insane-sounding, gravity-bending, electromagnetically-propelled aircraft aren’t the only things the Pentagon may or may not be testing over America’s skies. According to an exclusive report published in The Guardian this week, the Pentagon is currently flying experimental high-altitude balloons over several American states as a means of conducting wide-area persistent surveillance. Are spy satellites not enough?

The Guardian came across documents filed with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) that grant a “Special Temporary Authorization” for “high altitude MESH networking tests over South Dakota to provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.” 

MESH networking is a type of communications network in which each node can communicate directly with each other node in a non-hierarchical manner. In the case of these high-altitude balloons, it would seem that each balloon can communicate with other balloons using their own network, thus needing FCC approval for the use of the airwaves.

Google and other tech firms have been testing MESH network balloons for years as a means of bringing high-speed internet to rural areas.

The balloons fly high up in the stratosphere (up to 65,000ft or 19,000m) and carry sophisticated radar systems that can track multiple vehicles or individuals simultaneously over a 25-mile wide area. According to the FCC filings, the balloons also carry wide-area nine-camera systems known as Gorgon Stare which can record panoramic views of entire cities. The balloons were launched from rural South Dakota and will float over Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri until September 2019.

The Gorgon Stare system has been previously deployed on drones over battlefield areas.

Many observers have pointed out just how terrifying and dystopian such an experiment is. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, shared his organization’s fears over the new experimental surveillance project with The Guardian:

We do not think that American cities should be subject to wide-area surveillance in which every vehicle could be tracked wherever they go. Even in tests, they’re still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who’s driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer’s clinic. We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it’s disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less.

This latest development only adds to what fellow MU contributor Nick Redfern calls “the growing phenomenon of drones and surveillance.” As our skies become increasingly filled with autonomous aircraft tracking our every movement and communication, we’re losing more and more of the freedom that we once shared as private citizens. Just wait until Facebook and Elon Musk get their technological tendrils directly into your brain and connect it to the Pentagon balloons’ MESH network. 

Welcome to the Panopticon.

On July 22, 2019, a NASA-operated aircraft made a long, low-altitude survey of areas struck by the recent California earthquakes. Flight tracking website FlightAware.com tracked the path of the McDonnell Douglas DC-8-70, registered to NASA under the call sign NASA817, and images of the aircraft’s flight path show it to have clearly zig-zagged directly over the San Andreas fault. Is NASA worried that The Big One is coming? 

The aircraft flew well below 1,000 feet for large portions of its flight, frightening and confusing southern California residents below. “It was scary, a little bit. You didn’t know if was going to land,” said CBSNLA anchorwoman Jasmine Viel after she saw the aircraft during her commute. “Everyone kind of stopped in their cars, looking up. It was big and loud.”

NASA’s DC-8 science aircraft

After receiving several calls about a plane flaying dangerously low overhead, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department assured the public via Twitter that the plane belonged to NASA and posed no threat. NASA has yet to respond inquiries asking why the plane was flying so low over densely populated areas.

The recent wave of earthquakes in California revealed that scientists are still working to understand the complex interactions of seismic forces and structures underneath America’s west coast. For years, many have predicted that “The Big One” is imminent, an earthquake that will destroy much of what we know today as California and create a tsunami that could send cities crashing into the waves. Is this why NASA were flying a DC-8 precariously low over California?

While some of the more conspiratorial and sensational YouTube channels and blogs are covering this flight as proof of some sort of impending doomsday, the fact is that NASA operates many of the most advanced scientific aircraft and instruments the U.S. government possesses, so of course they would want to study the aftereffects of recent earthquakes in order to assess future or even current risks. On NASA’s Airborne Science website, the space agency writes that the DC-8 “provides a unique set of NASA supported aircraft that benefit the earth science community” and “carry the sensors that provide data to support and augment NASA spaceborne missions.”

The aircraft has previously been used to study radiation and chemical gases in the atmosphere.

Still, it’s odd that NASA has yet to comment on the activities of NASA817 over Southern California. Let’s say, very hypothetically, that NASA came across evidence suggesting The Big One is coming and coming soon. Would they tell the public and most certainly create panic, chaos, and pandemonium?

In the quest to storm Area 51 and free the aliens being held there – or at least free the truth about what exactly IS being held there – it appears the aliens are winning. Last week, a video appeared of what the uploader claimed was a UFO speeding across the desert sky near where on September 20th there will either be a storming, a concert, free beer, specially-designed roast beef sandwiches, all of the above or the largest mass jailing in U.S. history. This week, another YouTuber posted more videos of strange glowing objects in the night sky over what he claims is an area near Area 51. Is this a distraction by the military? A clever marketing ploy by the people trying to make a buck on the storming? Are aliens trying to cover up the cover-up? Is this fun or what?

“The UFO’s returned again tonight over Area 51, they were only visible for about 20 seconds. I am sorry for the poor quality, I have focused my camera and set it for low light so the video will be better. I know they will return.”

On July 30th, YouTuber Showdaam posted the second of two videos of what he described as UFOs over Area 51. The July 29th video (see it here) shows what looks like a bright and slow-moving round white light. The July 30th video (see it here) looks like two reddish lights close together. These are visible for a short period and then disappeared. In the audio, Showdaam indicates that there were actually a “few days” between the sightings. Kudos to The Hidden Underbelly 2.0, another YouTube site, which managed to contact Showdaam and find out the videos were actually taken in March 2019. If you’re keeping track, that’s a number of months BEFORE the whole Storm Area 51 hoax/event/extravaganza began.

Sheep Range (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stan_Shebs)

Another thing you might have noticed in these videos is that they’re over houses. Area 51, as the Air Force and local law enforcement in Rachel, Nevada, are warning stormers, is out in the middle of the desert. Rachel has barely 50 residents and no buildings like these. Hidden Underbelly 2.0 found out that the video was taken near the Sheep Mountain Range, which is north of Las Vegas and close to 100 miles south of Rachel. While Showdaam says “I see these phenomena quite often so I will have my DSLR next time to capture a better quality video,” it would be nice if he saw them closer to Area 51 and closer to the time of the Storming.

All of the lights are on the ground in Las Vegas and no one ever looks up from the slots anyway

Still, UFOs are UFOs and “close” counts for something … right? It’s entirely possible that what Showdaam has been seeing are military aircraft – after all, Area 51 IS an Air Force base used for testing new and secret aircraft. He’s also promising live coverage of the Storm Area 51 event on September 20th. We already know he has a nose for UFOs. Maybe he’ll see something there too.

Keep that DSLR handy and pointed ABOVE the Stormers!

In 1903, a man named Oscar Frederickson, of Winnipegosis, Canada wrote a fascinating and extensive report on his knowledge of huge lake monsters in the early decades of the twentieth century, all of which came from witnesses, both first- and second-hand. He began his account like this: “In 1903, I lived with my parents on Red Deer Point, Lake Winnipegosis. Our house was situated about two hundred yards from the shore. About a mile south of our place lived a man by the name of Ferdinand Stark. One day Stark was down by the lake shore when he saw what he thought was a huge creature in the lake. It was moving northward along the shore, a short distance out. Stark wanted someone else to see the strange animal, and as we were his nearest neighbors, he came running along the lake to our place. All the while, he could see the creature moving in the same direction as he was, only going a little slower than he was running.

“Stark arrived at our home very much excited and breathing heavily, and asked my dad and mother to hurry down to the lake to see a strange animal in the water. By the time my parents got down to the lake shore, there was nothing to be seen. Whatever Stark had seen had disappeared. Looking somewhat bewildered, but still visibly excited, Stark began to describe what he had seen. All he could see of the creature was its big back sticking out of the water, and it was very dark or black in color. A number of gulls followed it and kept flying down to it as if they were picking at it. My parents did see quite a number of gulls still flying around.

“In 1935, Mr. Cecil Rogers of Mafeking and I made a trip to Grand Rapids on Lake Winnipeg. While there, I called on Mr. Valentine McKay, a resident of Grand Rapids for many years. As we were talking, the conversation drifted to strange animals that had existed at one time. To my surprise, McKay said he had seen some such animal in Lake Winnipegosis.” McKay, very pleased by the fact that Frederickson took his story seriously and did not poke fun at him, prepared a carefully written statement for the monster hunter, which read as follows:

“In September, 1909, I was traveling alone in a canoe from Shoal River on Lake Winnipegosis to Grand Rapids on Lake Winnipeg. At the time I saw this animal I was standing on the lake shore. I had stopped at Graves’ Point to make tea. I was at the edge of the bush getting willows for a campfire, when I heard a rumbling sound like distant thunder. As I looked out on the glassy surface of the calm water, I saw a huge creature propelling itself on the surface of the water about four hundred yards out from shore. A large part must have been submerged, judging by the great disturbance of the water around it.

The creature’s dark skin glistened in the autumn sun, said Frederickson, “and I estimated it was moving at the rate of two to three miles an hour. As I watched it, a member of the body shot up about four feet, vertically, out of the water. This portion seemed to have something to do with the creature’s method of locomotion. The course it was taking was toward Sugar Island or Sleep Rock. I watched it till it went out of sight. The number of gills, hovering around this creature, followed it as far as I could see.”  Frederickson had something notable to say on this particular story: “Mr. McKay said he had described this creature to a geologist by the name of Craig who said it was quite possible that it was a remaining specimen of a prehistoric animal that was once plentiful.”

On the matter of the two men in question – Ferdinand Stark and Valentine McKay – Frederickson made a number of observations and comments: “A great many people will think these two men just made up a story about seeing some strange animal or creature in Lake Winnipegosis. But, it is hardly probable that both men would think up a yarn about the gulls. Stark and McKay never met, as far as I could find out. Stark moved from Winnipegosis about 1904 or 1905, and where he is now, if still living, I have not been able to find out.”

Muskellunge — the type of monster normally seen in Canadian lakes

Frederickson had yet another account to relate on this particular matter of unidentified, large beasts on the loose in the early part of the twentieth century: “In 1934, Captain Sandy Vance lived on Graves’ Point. One day he was over at Sitting Island, which is on the northeast side of the point. He saw what he thought was a huge animal a short distance off shore. Vance said it was the biggest living creature he had ever seen in water. Mr. Vance had been captain on freight tugs for many years on Lake Winnipeg and Lake Winnipegosis. He said he had often seen moose and deer in water, so there is no reason not to believe that he saw some strange living creature. Captain Vance died some years ago. He was well known here.”

And, finally, there is the following, short but intriguing, account from Frederickson: “There are quite a few Natives who have seen some strange thing. They call it ‘the big snake.’ Those of Shoal River claim that a monstrous animal was seen often off Sugar Island and Steep Rock in Dawson Bay during the latter part of the 19^th century.”

Details about the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program (AAWSAP), sometimes also referred to as AATIP, or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, have been trickling out over the last few years, although there are contradictions and misdirections aplenty. 

What we do know is that largely thanks to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the Defense Intelligence Agency at some point was spending dozens of millions of dollars a year in order to study alleged unknown flying objects or aerial phenomena in the name of national security. We also know that Luis Elizondo, the counterintelligence officer and tactical-backpack-sporting star of the History Channel’s somewhat controversial Unidentified series, was involved in some way, although his exact role is still unclear.

Luis Elizondo, who is strangely comfortable on camera and may or may not have been the director of AATIP/AAWSAP.

While many journalists and ufologists have pointed to the program as evidence of the U.S. government’s knowledge of extraterrestrial visitation or other high strangeness, the reality is likely more prosaic. The Defense Intelligence Agency is well aware that like the U.S., other nations are testing advanced new aerospace technologies including space-based weapons and vehicles, hypersonic technologies, radical new forms of stealth techniques, and more. AAWSAP was most likely created to determine where the U.S. stood in the race to test or deploy those technologies and weapons in the field.

Case in point: investigative reporter George Knapp has released another document (PDF download link here) that sheds light on at least some of the activities of AAWSAP. Knapp shared the document “Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities” created by Dr. William Culbreth, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It’s unclear when the document was written, but Knapp writes that Culbreth was “already looking at this challenge a decade ago as part of a classified Pentagon program.”

The Boeing X-51 Waverider hypersonic aircraft.

The document is one of 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) that AASWAP produced and explores various methods that could be used to counter hypersonic objects like next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles and space-based reentry weapons. Infrared systems, LIDAR technologies, seismography, and even infrasound detection methods are discussed in the paper as possible methods of detecting and tracking these next-generation weapons and vehicles that China, Russia, and the United States are currently developing. According to the Silva Record, the document was produced by the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies program and submitted to AASWAP as part of a Pentagon contract Bigelow secured.

One interesting section of the document states that “technology changes in aircraft will generate the need for newer detection and tracking techniques,” and lists five categories of objects capable of hypersonic speeds: space debris, reentry craft, meteors, missiles, and hypersonic aircraft. Apparently, Culbreth’s research even included stranger topics. “We looked at technology people had envisioned, that included chemical rockets, nuclear fission rockets, nuclear fusion rockets, anti-matter and even the possible use of rotating black holes in order to create propulsion systems,” Culbreth told Knapp in an interview. “All of these seemed very blue sky. Right now at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), people are putting, in little bottles, anti-matter, anti-hydrogen. And anti-matter is an extremely dense energy. So, we’re getting there.”

Images of two of the Navy’s patented theoretical hypersonic aircraft.

Ultimately, the document is far from a smoking fun of anything, but adds more context to ongoing revelations surrounding AATIP/AAWSAP and the mysterious objects detected by Navy pilots in now-infamous encounters that have attracted the attention of members the United States congress. Was this shadowy program designed solely to get out ahead of the next generation of aerospace weapons and technologies, or could there be more to the story as many observers suspect?

Futuro houses look like flying saucers with an airplane-style front door and windows. The circular space inside of the houses contain a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and sitting area. Originally, the pre-fabricated plastic houses were created as ski chalets that were so light they could be airlifted to any location. The ones in Wanli, however, have pebble-concrete steps in addition to the flying-saucer-type legs.

Wanli, Taiwan

According to Atlas Obscura, it was Finnish architect Matti Suuronen who designed the houses, but the ones in Wanli apparently weren’t sanctioned by him. So the question of where the houses originated from and when they were built remains a mystery.

In addition to the strange-looking homes, there is no real explanation as to why the town was abandoned in the 1970s, although people suspect that it had something to do with a property development that was built close to the area, as well as the fact that the construction of the houses became much too expensive to complete.

Not only has the town been mysteriously abandoned and has UFO-shaped homes, it also has a reputation for being haunted. There were numerous mysterious accidents and suicides during its construction that suggests that something paranormal is lurking there, according to Insh. Even construction workers who were at the location were scared away due to the alleged ghost sightings. A video taken by Insh (which can be seen here) gives an inside look at the abandoned town.

Unfortunately, many of the UFO-shaped homes are in really poor conditions with the insides crumbling apart, wallpaper torn off the walls, and wrecked furniture from the mist of the salty sea water as well as typhoons that have battered the area. Old yellow-colored newspapers, unmade beds, and rusty old tea kettles litter the dirty floors of many of these homes.

On a positive note, there are a few residents who have cleaned up some of the homes and who are currently living in them. Some developers are interested in the “UFO village” and so far four of the Futuro houses have “vanished” from the site. It’s unclear whether the flying-saucer-themed houses will eventually be demolished, but for now this is one of the most bizarre-looking places on Earth and an interesting spot for UFO enthusiasts who want to check out the location.

Religious texts of the world have always held a deep sense of allure, fascination, and mystery, and mankind has for centuries pored through them trying to glean some meaning to their existence from them, studying their teachings and looking for hidden contexts and interpretations behind what they have to say. It is telling that even thousands of years after they are written we study them and dissect them, scouring their pages for the answers we seek. Yet, in addition to finding meaning in what is written, there are some who look for literal hidden messages embedded in the text in the form of codes that are often claimed to have been put there by God.

The idea that there are secret codes and information hidden within the Bible is nothing new, and has been going on in some form for centuries. In as early as the 13th century rabbi Bachya ben Asher had been finding messages hidden in the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, and in later years there were various attempts to decipher hidden messages within the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, notably by the famed inventor Isaac Newton. In the 1940s and 50s it gained some attention through the work of Rabbi H.M.D. Weissmandel, who believed that there was secret information hidden within the Torah, that could be gleaned through the use of “skip codes,” which are basically a type of encoded series of letters in manuscripts which are separated by a particular number of other letters that can be strung together to spell out words. This basic premise would be picked up by other researchers and mathematicians, who also became convinced that there were secret encrypted codes buried within the Torah and the Old Testament, with the idea emerging that these were actual messages from God and could even tell the future, and the means for figuring it all out began to evolve.

The main method developed over the years for deciphering these supposed codes in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament is called the Equidistant Letter Sequence method, or ELS. The way it supposedly works is basically the same as the “skip codes,” in that letters in a sequence will be separated by a certain number of spaces within the text. If one knows the precise number of spaces to skip in any given passages, they can supposedly take those separated letters and isolate them to link them together to form new words and messages that have been hidden there. It is sort of like a sophisticated word search, and words are often put together in arrays, lining up horizontally, vertically, or diagonally within texts to form these mysterious messages.

Although some variant of this basic technique has been around for centuries, it remained rather obscure until the 1980s, when mathematicians Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, looked into these codes and did a formal study of them in 1985, which came to be known as the “Great Rabbis Experiment.” They would go on to claim that they had derived various biographical information and birth and death dates concerning various rabbis encoded into the Old Testament centuries before any of them had even been born, and also insisted that their findings were beyond explainable by random statistical chance. Rips would declare in the study, “the only conclusion that can be drawn from the scientific research regarding the Torah codes is that they exist and that they are not a mere coincidence.” The study would go on to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Statistical Science, but of course the idea of prophetic messages from God hidden in the bible was bound to generate plenty of skepticism and controversy, and it did.

More experiments would be carried out by other researchers, such as those conducted in 1997 by Harold Gans, former Senior Cryptologic Mathematician for the United States National Security Agency, who was skeptical at first but also found that there was indeed information encoded within the Bible that was beyond the scope of mere coincidence or random chance. However, the one who would truly popularize the notion of Bible Codes and launch them into the public consciousness was an American journalist and author named Michael Drosnin, who in 1997 released a book on the matter called The Bible Code, which would take the world by storm and become a massive, smash hit best seller.

Drosnin had become interested in the concept of Bible codes after speaking with one of the authors of the paper, Eliyahu Rips, in Israel in 1992. He became rather obsessed with the idea of these encrypted codes from God, and spent a large amount of time pouring through the pages of the Old Testament looking for such messages, which he believed could be used to predict the future. He would claim to have found a veritable treasure trove of such hidden information, the most well-known of these being his prediction of the imminent assassination of Israeli politician, statesman and general Yitzhak Rabin, which he warned Israeli officials of, yet they did not act on it and Rabin would be assassinated in 1995. Drosnin claimed to have found information on many assassinations in the Bible, including those of Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Anwar el-Sadat, and others.

These aren’t even the weirdest of Drosnin’s claims and information and predictions from the Bible codes. Drosnin was convinced that the Hebrew Bible could be used to tell the future that he insisted that Israel was using Bible codes to gain an advantage over their enemies, notably during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He also claimed that he had found predictions buried in this ancient text on Thomas Edison and his discoveries concerning electricity and the light bulb, Newton’s work on the principles of gravity, the Nazi Holocaust, the Pearl Harbor attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf war, and even a failed prediction of World War III breaking out in 1996, another wrong one about a cataclysmic earthquake that would wipe out Los Angeles in the year 2010, as well as some mysterious world-ending apocalypse that was supposed to occur between 1998 and 2006. Among many others. To make it all even more bizarre, Drosnin claimed to not even believe in God, and instead theorized that these messages had all been implanted into the Bible by aliens from outer space.

Considering that you are still here reading this and that there has been no World War III or extinction level event you can see that this was all incredibly hit or miss, and Drosnin gained an intense amount of criticism for his work, including none other than the very mathematicians who had supposedly established these codes in the first place, Rips and Doron Witztum. They were quick to distance themselves from Drosnin’s work, despite the fact that it was ostensibly based on their own, because they thought he was overzealous with his predictions and warping their findings. They basically saw him as a crackpot, and although they stood by the existence of these codes they did not believe that these codes could be used to spontaneously predict the future, instead saying that the codes only worked when looking back through the past in hindsight, when the searchers specifically knew what they were looking for. They would say of Drosnin’s work:

It is literally impossible to make future predictions based on codes. Mr. Drosnin’s book does have some examples of codes that are statistically significant, and some that aren’t, and the problem is that any layman reading that book will have no way of making a distinction. I don’t think the code makes predictions. I think it reveals probabilities. so I can’t say what will happen in the next five years. Also it is not a crystal ball – you can’t just ask the Bible to tell you about tomorrow or next year. You can only find what you know how to look for – you must have some idea of what you’re looking for.

Other criticism quickly followed as well, with many experts decrying the methods used to come up with these predictions. The sticking point for most was suspicions that the Bible codes were inherently hogwash to begin with. The criticisms are numerous, the main one being that this is simply finding patterns in randomness, and that anyone can find any kind of message they want if they stare at some text and pick it apart for long enough. Drosnin could have just been seeing what he wanted to see. Drosnin responded to this by challenging others to find the same kinds of codes using his system in Moby Dick, which was actually taken up by mathematician Brendan McKay, who also found the same kind of patterns in randomness within it. Nevertheless, Drosnin stuck by his assertion that only the Bible held the true codes.

Another criticism is that there is also the fact that the Hebrew Bible is not necessarily in the same words and form that it was centuries ago, and has gone through a great number of revisions and versions, so how is it that these spacing of words would reveal the same coded messages now as they supposedly did back then? Drosnin was further accused of mistranslating Hebrew words to fit his own needs and twisting meanings to seem more mysterious. And how does that work if people make predictions and messages out of English translations of a book that was originally worded in Hebrew? Wouldn’t that essentially destroy the code if it is using ELS methods? Then of course there is the fact that many of Drosnin’s predictions were just plain wrong. Throw in talk of space aliens and it is understandable that there should be some skepticism towards his work and Bible codes in general. Nevertheless, Drosnin would amazingly write two more books on the matter, called The Bible Code II: The Countdown, (2002) and The Bible Code III: Saving the World (2010), all of which are littered with wrong predictions to the point that one critic lamented, “If you are laying bets based on Drosnin, you had better be willing to bet on all possible outcomes.”

Despite skepticism and backlash, there are many proponents who think there is something to it all. Drosnin’s work has taken on a life of its own, and other books have followed as well, with many of them going on to be best sellers. For instance, there is Cracking the Bible Code, by psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, in which it is claims that there is infinite knowledge contained within the codes and that “All that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is included in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.” There is also more recently the 2014 best seller by Timothy Smith called The Chamberlain Key, described as “the Da Vinci Code on steroids, but it’s true.” In addition to these books there are many people who have continued on with this work on Bible codes, claiming to have found countless messages and predictions, ranging from a U.S. war with China to the revelation to Elvis Presley’s death, to the Roswell UFO crash, and all manner of truly outlandish conspiracy theories. It is clear that although these codes are now largely dismissed by scientists they are still very much going strong and the debate and controversy surrounding them are not over. So what is going on here? Random chance, misguided grasping for answers, or messages from God or even aliens? The debate goes on.