UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It was around 11:00 p.m. on September 26, 1994, when a small, twin-tailed aircraft crash-landed onto the lengthy runway at Boscombe Down; it is situated in the English county of Wiltshire and only 6.2 miles from none other than Stonehenge. At around the time of the incident, a number of aviation enthusiasts were listening in on air-band radios and were aware that something untoward had taken place. The following day, several of those same enthusiasts drove to the installation – which is near to the A303 road and not at all far from the famous Stonehenge – and were apprehended by local police who had set up road-blocks to keep away prying eyes. Before being ushered away, however, a number of people succeeded in catching sight of a disabled aircraft. It was situated at the end of the runway and, aside from its twin-tail fins, was completely covered over by tarpaulins. Air Force Monthly magazine was soon on the trail of the truth. In the November 1994 issue of the magazine, investigative writers noted that in the wake of the crash both a Boeing 757 and a C-5 Galaxy arrived at Boscombe Down. The story continued that the secret plane was loaded aboard the Galaxy and flown to “Air Force plant 42 at Palmdale, California.” Air Force Monthly suggested that the aircraft “…was a TR-3A, the existence of which the U.S. Government has yet to officially acknowledge.” The subsonic, stealth TR-3A – also referred to as the Black Manta – remains an enigma, since its existence has never been officially confirmed. Now, let’s take a look at the connection between Stonehenge and the Men in Black.

Only hours after briefly seeing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England on December 25, 1985, Sandra Green – who was driving home, in the early hours, after a late night Christmas Eve party in the English city of Bath – had a bizarre dream. In it, three Men in Black warned Sandra to keep her nose out of UFOs. They were – as they usually are – cadaverous “slightly dead”-looking MIB. As for the warning, it was one of those “or else”-type threats that the MIB are so skilled at making. The dream was so graphic it led Sandra to believe that the MIB had the ability to literally get inside her dreams, manipulate those very same dreams, and issue a bone-chilling warning – one which she has still not forgotten. Sandra shared the story with me on the evening of September 9, 2014 – the facts of the affair still firmly fixed in her mind and her memory after close to thirty years. And, I have to say, it wasn’t just the facts that were fixed in Sandra’s mind: it was cold fear, too. Even across a transatlantic telephone call I could sense that all was not well. I messaged Sandra a few days later, in an effort to clarify a couple of things she mentioned to me. She did not reply. She still hasn’t. A sign of something? I hoped not.

Nick Redfern at legendary Stonehenge

Just twenty-four miles from Stonehenge is another enticing location filled with ancient, standing stones: the village of Avebury. It was at Avebury, one night in the early 1960s, that something very weird happened – and, for the person, terrifying. The witness to this particularly weird case was a middle-aged lady who had lived in the small village of Avebury, England all of her adult life and who was fascinated by archaeological history. She would often stroll among Avebury’s famous stones at night, marveling at their creation and musing upon their history. It was on the night in question that she had been out walking at around 10:30 p.m. when she was both startled and amazed to see a small ball of light, perhaps two-feet in diameter, gliding slowly through the stones – a definitive UFO. Transfixed and rooted to the spot, she watched as it closed in on her at a height of about twelve feet. The ball then stopped fifteen feet or so from her, and small amounts of what looked like liquid metal slowly and silently dripped from it to the ground. Then, in an instant, the ball exploded in a bright, white flash. For a moment she was blinded by its intensity and instinctively fell to her knees. When her eyes cleared, however, she was faced with a horrific sight. The ball of light had gone, but on the ground in front of her was what she could only describe as a monstrous, writhing worm. The woman did not wait to see what might have happened next.

One of the mystery-filled stones of Avebury, Wiltshire, England

(Nick Redfern)

Now, let’s leave the Earth behind and head off to Mars, so to speak. September 24, 2015, was the date when the United Kingdom’s Express newspaper splashed a feature titled: “Has Stonehenge been found on Mars? Ancient ‘alien’ stone circle discovered on Red Planet.” It’s hardly surprising the story caught the attention of many people. “Mr. Enigma,” the person who revealed the mystery at his YouTube channel, said that what could be seen in one of NASA’s very own photos was “…a perfectly circular platform with a strange cluster of stones emerging from it.” He added: “I know the formation is not an exact match, nor am I saying it is, indeed, a Stonehenge set up. I am just saying there is something strange about this area and it looks very much like the mysterious ancient stone circle of Stonehenge. Could the builders of Stonehenge have visited Mars and did they build the same thing there? Or did we have visitors who taught us how to build these things and do the same for long-lost beings on Mars as well? Or is this just another face on Mars illusion?”

The stone circle (pictured) was spotted on an apparently raised hummock in images of the Martian surface captured by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

It was in the late-1970s when the FBI released into the public domain its UFO files. And, it was thanks to the provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Around 1,700 pages of documentation were made freely available. Today, all of those documents (and, now, more) can be accessed at the Bureau’s website, The Vault. Here’s the specific link. Contained within those files is one document that has largely been ignored or overlooked. Maybe, even, forgotten. It’s important, though, and dates from the latter part of 1957. Its title: “Reports of Flying Disks Foreign Miscellaneous.” It was prepared by a Legal Attaché at Havana, Cuba. And, almost inevitably, it wasn’t long before the story reached the media of Cuba. The FBI recorded the following: “The Havana daily newspaper ‘Diario de la Marina,’ November 12, 1957, carried a dispatch datelined November 11, 1957, at Pinar del Rio, Cuba, reporting that two witnesses who had just arrived in that town from the Matahambre Mines in Pinar del Rio Province, claimed that they had seen a flying disc in the shape of a man’s hat hovering over the general area of Matahmbre for several minutes. They claimed that this disc was larger than ordinary airplanes normally seen in that area and that it was completely silent in its flight. They said that it disappeared at a very high speed toward the sea. There was no further descriptive information furnished in this newspaper article. It is noted that Matahambre is located 90 miles west of Havana.”

Of course, as anyone with a knowledge of the UFO phenomenon will know, Flying Saucers were all over the place in the 1950s. This case is slightly different, however. A copy of the document was forwarded onto none other than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As for the reason, it was because some CIA analysts were concerned that what had been seen was not a UFO but a U-2 spy-plane of the CIA, whose pilot was taking photos of Cuba. It was in 1955 – specifically in July of that year – that the legendary U-2 spy-plane flew at the Nevada Test and Training Range at Area 51’s huge runway at Groom Lake, thus cementing the range’s undeniable role in aviation history.

Richard M. Bissell, Jr., was a Central Intelligence Agency officer who, from 1961 to 1962, held down the job of the first co-director of the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates much of the United States’ satellite-based surveillance technology. Back in the early 1950s, and before his NRO career began in earnest, Bissell astutely realized that there was a deeply pressing need to keep careful watch on what the Soviets were doing, specifically in terms of constructing new military bases, atomic facilities, and aircraft that might pose distinct, serious threats to the security of the United States. So, a top secret plan was initiated to develop a fleet of aircraft – reconnaissance planes designed to fly very fast and extremely high – that could secretly spy on the Soviets, by penetrating their airspace and securing high-resolution photography of whatever it was that the Reds were up to. The aircraft was the aforementioned Lockheed U-2 and the operation was code-named Project Aquatone.

So, what does this have to do with UFOs? Well, let’s see. We have to turn our attention to a CIA paper written by Gerald Haines and titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” When, in 1997, Haines’ report became public, the media took a great deal of interest in its contents. For example, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper ran an article with the title of “US hid spy plane projects behind UFO hysteria.” In part, it stated: “Mr Haines, a historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, based his article on a review of CIA documents from the late 1940s to 1990. He described how the air force sought to deflect attention from development of its high-altitude experimental aircraft, the U-2 and SR-71. Early U-2s were silver and reflected the sun’s rays and often appeared as fiery objects to people below, Mr Haines said. They were later painted black. Air force investigators, ‘aware of the secret U-2 flights, tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.’ By 1956 the air force internally had clear explanations for 96 per cent of UFO sightings, Mr Haines wrote, referring to the experimental aircraft. ‘They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.'”

SR-71

Not only did the report state that 96 per cent of UFO sightings had been solved; it also stated that a significant number of incidents could be applied to sightings of spy-planes, such as the U-2. When the report was released, some Ufologists scoffed. It has to be said, though, we know for sure that the CIA was informed of the UFO sighting over Cuba in 1957. Not only that: in the Project Aquatone files there is a brief reference to the newspaper story I mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. That would suggest the CIA really did, at times, use the UFO subject as a means to camouflage the activities of its high-flying spy-planes.

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