Bizarre Creatures, Extraordinary Animals & The Government Involvement

 By Dr. Rita Louise -  

Author, Nick Redfern, joins Dr. Rita Louise on Just Energy Radio where he delves into secret and classified government documents and reveals the bizarre creatures hidden away in their archives.

DIAMOND SHAPED OBECT HOVERS OVER POULTNEY VERMONT

 

    

Publisher's Note: I found this sighting report on the MUFON website and thought it was credible even though the eyewitness did not provide photographic or video evidence. The witness according it the submission attends or teaches college in Poultney, Vermont. The detailed sighting report was very thorough and credible. Note these are some of the most latest MUFON sightings. Enjoy Dirk

MUFON Case Number: 52642

Date Submitted: December 6, 2013

Date of Event: November 25, 2013

Location: Poultney, VT, USA

Click here to enlarge top photo.

Photo description:  Typical diamond-shaped UFO. Stock UFO Digest photo.

Here is the information the witnessed included in his/her report:

I was walking toward a building on campus and as I got closer (sky no longer covered by trees) I noticed a light gray diamond-shaped object hovering near but far above the building I was heading toward. A side of it was sort of shimmering as the sunlight hit it and this caught my attention. At first, it was not moving -- it was hovering in one place in the sky. I did not think of anything it could be when I first saw it, but I knew it looked strange, I had never seen such a thing in the sky (especially in that location) ever before, and I knew it was not an airplane because planes do not simply stay in one location in the sky and are not diamond-shaped.

Map courtesy of Google Maps

The diamond-shaped object continued to hover in the same location in the sky for about 5-10 minutes, but I cant say an exact time. After observing it for some time, it suddenly disappeared. I then heard a loud almost "waving" noise. Its difficult to describe -- when I took notes on what I saw that day, I wrote "a little like the sound of an airplane flying, but different" ...the noise was slightly similar to the sounds that I would hear airplanes in New York City make, but it had more of a "wave" to it, for lack of a better word. The object reappeared across the sky (to my right) and it was moving very quickly. I watched until it moved too far away for me to see it.

While viewing the object in the sky, I was confused, of course. I also found it strange that no one else was looking to the sky... 

If you would like to post a sighting to MUFON or would like to join...Click here!

 Extra information about the article: 

I was walking toward a building on campus and as I got closer (sky no longer covered by trees) I noticed a light gray diamond-shaped object hovering

Topic UFO Video Special / UFO Webcast Series - 40 Episode's

Carlos Esquerda from the Alcione Association joins Rick to discuss Hercolubus, a planet so called by the sages of antiquity, which is a gigantic world, 5 to 6 times larger than Jupiter.  In the past, it put an end to the Atlantean civilization and it is approaching Earth again.

Mac's UFO News: Topic UFO Video Special / UFO Webcast Series - 40 Episode's wwwmacsufonews.blogspot.com

Huge UFO Mothership Cloaked As A Star? The Evidence

(Before It's News)

Is this a HUGE mothership UFO cloaked as a star as claimed by videographer Third Phase Of Moon? If not, what is this? Is is merely CGI or something else entirely? Vince Pounds shares that he has captured imagery of what he claims to be a UFO mothership instead of a star…is he right? Here’s the evidence…

New interesting video footage of a triangular shaped UFO recorded near the ISS in beginning of December 2013.

<style type="text/css">.youtube_sc iframe.yp{display:none;}</style><object width="560" height="340" class="yp" title="YouTube video player"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/umt4ARsX-gM?version=3&hl=en_US"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/umt4ARsX-gM?version=3&hl=en_US" width="560" height="340" class="yp" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always"></object>

Why the Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life is Important?

On Wednesday, something remarkable happened at Capitol Hill. In a special hearing, lawmakers of the House Science Committee discussed the search for extraterrestrial life with three experts for 2 hours. The question and answer session focused around efforts to find everything from alien microbes under rocks on Mars to full-blown seti efforts to seek out transmitting extraterrestrial intelligence.

Naturally, some of the questioning was naive and sometimes needlessly lighthearted. In response to the Republican-led House panel, a Democratic opposition group even seized the opportunity to mock the occasion. The hearing was significant; maybe not to the immediate day-to-day running of a nation or the lawmakers who saw it as an entertaining sideshow, but the three scientists invited to talk were dead serious about the opportunities and implications such a high-profile hearing can bring.

“In our Milky Way galaxy there are 100 billion stars and we now believe, in our universe, we have 100 billion galaxies,” said Sara Seager, Professor of Physics and of Planetary Science at M.I.T., at the hearing titled Astrobiology: The Search for Biosignatures in Our Solar System and Beyond. “So if you just do the math, the chances that there’s a planet like Earth out there with life on it is very high.”

Seager was joined by Mary Voytek, Senior Scientist for Astrobiology in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters, and Steven J. Dick, Baruch S. Blumberg Chair of Astrobiology, Library of Congress. All discussed their motivations for studying astrobiology and how it inspires youngsters to pursue a career in science. They even outlined the key risks to the future of our species, identifying overpopulation, asteroid impacts and energy shortages as the key factors.

NASA is currently looking for biosignatures that could be indicative of the spawning of basic forms of life beyond Earth. The most high-profile current mission, the Curiosity rover, is not directly looking for life however, it’s seeking out the habitable potential of Mars. Directly hunting down alien biology isn’t the purpose of the Mars Program, so the U.S. space agency has directed its astrobiology mission toward looking for evidence of past and present habitability of the Red Planet.

But other projects are under way, not to seek out how habitable Martian rocks are (or were), but to look out for tell tail narrow-band radio signals, for example, that could only be transmitted by an intelligent civilization. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), however, is not a government-funded effort. This wasn’t always the case; seti used to be a NASA-headed project, a point underscored by Dick’s testimony.

“Almost exactly twenty years ago, in the same session that saw the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider, the 103rd Congress terminated the NASA Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program,” he said. Now, the alien hunting component of seti Institute is a privately-funded project, but its facilities are used extensively by other government funded projects . Dick went on to request that NASA funding be reallocated to the endeavor — the search for alien life, after all, inspires the public and should be considered — but in this time of austerity and shrinking government budgets, that’s probably not going to happen.

Of course, the slightest mention of “alien life” inspires visions marauding aliens hellbent on probing humans, a popular Hollywood storyline that Seager was keen to dampen.

“We’re not looking for UFOs or little green people, what we’re looking for are planets like Earth that orbit stars other than the sun,” Seager told the Washington Post shortly after the meeting.

As if to underline the popular viewpoint whenever “extraterrestrial” is mentioned, during the hearing Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) asked the experts: “Do you think there’s life out there? (laughter) And are they studying us and what do they think of New York City?” The question was followed by more laughter.

At best, the laughter is due to ignorance of the efforts that are under way to discover our place in the universe. At worst, it’s a middle finger at science from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. Or perhaps Rep. Hall is just a funny guy. Regardless, the attitudes by government officials toward one of the noblest scientific endeavors humanity has ever undertaken is saddening — though not unexpected.

Even more frustrating was the response of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who issued a news release mocking House meeting.

“No wonder the American people think this Republican Congress is from another planet — they’re more interested in life in space than Americans’ lives,” said the DCCC’s Emily Bittner. “Saying this Republican Congress has misplaced priorities is an understatement of galactic proportions.” (Emphasis added.)

And there it is: Discussing the search for extraterrestrial life is a waste of time considering all the other far more pressing concerns a government should be focusing on. In the rush to score political points, the DCCC neglected to consider the scientific, philosophical and historic implications of our desire to understand the nature of life itself and whether life is possible somewhere else in the Universe. That’s not to say that the Republican-dominated committee has a better grasp of this, but this is just one example of the partisan one-upmanship that plagues governments, stymieing some of the most fundamental of scientific pursuits. There will always be more immediate problems for governments to focus on, but that doesn’t mean governments can’t spend a tiny amount of time and resources on inspirational pursuits.

Space science enriches civilization in ways in which may not fully comprehend. The technological spinoffs, for example, are a tangible reminder that advancing our scientific know-how can invigorate developments such as satellite technology, materials science, medical breakthroughs and the miniaturization of computing (to name just a few). On a wider scale, these advances invigorate education, skills, employment and the economy. These things are a direct consequence of our nature to explore and push the envelope.

Technology is one thing, but I would argue that even more than that, developing an understanding as to our place in the Universe is key to the survival of our species. And at the root of this knowledge is the appreciation that we may not be the only life in the Universe. Currently, there is absolutely zero direct evidence of life anywhere else in our galactic neighborhood, intelligent or otherwise. This is a fundamental problem, particularly if you are applying for taxpayer funds for the search for hypothetical extraterrestrial biology, but it has only been a few decades since we even thought to look. In a galaxy that is nearly as ancient as the 13.75 billion year old Universe, we are barely a blip on the biological radar, we stand little chance of finding alien life within the next political cycle.

While we fester, argue, live and die on this small life-giving globe, far grander mechanisms are at play. We occupy a tiny part of interstellar space, orbiting an “average” star that is embedded in an “average” galaxy in a not-so special part of the Universe. Despite the fact that the Copernican Principal seems to govern our existence, we are here, having evolved from a primordial soup of organic chemistry into what appears to be (at least from our perspective) an intelligent race that questions how we are even here and whether there are other civilizations out there asking the same things.

In this modern era, we are becoming less dependent on myth and religion to provide us with answers. Science has given us a skill set that can tackle some of the most complex questions we can think to ask. We build powerful particle colliders to peel back the very nature of matter; we are unraveling life’s genetic code in the hope of developing novel therapies to prolong and enrich life; we are developing a mastery of computing where machines have changed the way we communicate and live. But above all, we explore.

A component of our urge to explore is the search for life beyond Earth and if we find the answer, it will transform the way we view the Universe and it will transform how we view life itself.

So as I watched the House Science Committee ask disappointing questions to a trio of accomplished astrobiology experts and the political bullshit it inspired, I realized that as a whole, we are a myopic species that is more concerned with petty point scoring, closed off to the awesome opportunities that are out there for us to explore.

But there is hope. Humanity is at a crossroads in the urge to explore and the technology to help us do so. I just hope we take the opportunity and politics follows the scientists’ and, by extension, the public’s lead.

“One of the most appealing characteristics of astrobiology is that the discipline forces us to ask questions that put in perspective our place in the universe: What are life, consciousness, and intelligence in a universal context, and what are the metaphysical assumptions that underlie our understanding of these concepts? Is there a general theory of living systems, a universal biology as there is a universal physics? What are culture and civilization? What is our place in the 13.8 billion year unfolding of cosmic evolution? Some of these questions bearing on consciousness and intelligence are beyond the scope of the current NASA astrobiology program, but they are nevertheless an important part of the search for life in the universe.” — Steven J. Dick

IAN O'NEILL - Discovery

Perhaps Even Send Our Consciousness Across The Universe." *Sounds Familiar?

Ever Seen Birds That Looked Like “Two Pie Pans, One Inverted On The Top Of The Other"?

Tremonton UFOs: "They Were Large, Disc-Shaped Things That Were Brightly Lighted"

Delbert Newhouse and the Utah Movie

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 12-7-13

      There are two things that have happened recently that impact this blog. First is a statement, again, by someone who should actually know better, that there is no evidence that UFOs are alien craft. He asks, demands really, just one example of a solid case for the UFO.
Ignoring the fact that the debunkers have worked wonders in marginalizing UFO
reports by throwing all sorts of ridiculous explanations for the sightings out there, some of which are contradictory, there are some very good cases that have multiple chains of evidence and some very good research attached to them. Any t fit the facts will do, just so long as they can claim the sighting is explained in the mundane.

The second point is that, for some reason, there has been an on-going dialogue into the July 1952 UFO sighing near Tremonton, Utah. This is the tale of a Navy warrant officer who filmed a formation of bright objects over the tiny Utah town. The film was studied for months by a number of different organizations but in January 1953, the objects were identified as birds by the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel. (For a lengthy analysis of the motivations of the Robertson Panel see Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-Ups, 155 - 174)

Is the thing about this movie. Almost everyone talks about what is shown on the film but few mention what the witnesses observed. In 1976, when I interviewed Delbert Newhouse, the Navy photographer, he told me that he and his wife, Norma, saw the objects at close range. He said they were large, disc-shaped things that were brightly lighted. By the time he got the car stopped, dug his camera out of the trunk and put film into it, the objects had moved off so that they looked like bright blobs of white on a bright blue background. It was then that he began filming the formation or cluster or mass, which was now much farther away.

Sure, you could say that in 1976 he had heard more than twenty years of comments about the film, had been interviewed repeatedly and his story certainly could have changed. Ed Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book when the film was shot in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects wrote:

After I got out of the Air Force I met Newhouse and talked to him for two hours [in 1954, I believe]. I’ve talked to many people who have reported UFOs, but few impressed me as much as Newhouse. I learned that when he and his family first saw the UFOs they were close to the car, much closer than when he took the movie. To use Newhouse’s own words, “If they had been the size of a B-29 they would have been at 10,000 feet altitude.” And the Navy man and his family had taken a good look at the objects – they looked like “two pie pans, one inverted on the top of the other!” He didn’t just think the UFO’s were disk-shaped; he knew that they were; he had plainly seen them. I asked him why he hadn’t told this to the intelligence officer who interrogated him. He said that he had. Then I remember that I’d sent the intelligence officer a list of questions I wanted Newhouse to answer. The question “What did the UFO’s look like?” wasn’t one of them because when you have a picture of something you don’t normally ask what it looks like. Why the intelligence officer didn’t pass this information along to
us I’ll never know.

So, it’s clear from the beginning that Newhouse was telling those interested that he had seen the objects up close. He said, from the beginning, that the objects were disc shaped. I don’t think anyone, in those early days, thought to get statements from the wife and the kids. They had the “important” information from a naval officer and were satisfied with that. And even with that, the Air Force didn’t bother to complete the investigation, failing to ask basic questions or seemingly failed to ask them, and according to Ruppelt, didn’t bother to pass along some of the answers.

In the months that followed, the Air Force analyzed the film and when they finished, they had no solution. Ruppelt wrote about that, saying, “All they had to say was ‘We don’t know what they are but they aren’t airplanes or balloons, and we don’t think they are birds.’”

When the Air Force finished, the Navy took over, and they weren’t as restricted in their praise as the Air Force. The Navy experts made a frame by frame examination that took over a thousand man hours.
The Navy concluded that the objects were internally lights spheres that were not reflecting sunlight. They also estimated the speed of the objects at 3,780 miles an hour which ruled out aircraft of the time and birds of any time. They had no explanation for what was seen on the film.
But, as I say, never let an independent analysis stand when you can throw cold water on it. Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who never met a UFO sighting he liked and who wasn’t above providing explanations as quickly as he could regardless of the facts, claimed that it had been proven the film showed birds. Such was not the case, except to those with closed minds but Menzel made the claim anyway.

Dr. R. M. L. Baker made an independent study of the film in 1955. He agreed with the Air Force that the film didn’t show aircraft or balloons, and he didn’t think it was some sort of airborne debris or radar chaff either. In disagreement with Menzel, he found the bird explanation “unsatisfactory.”

Given what we know about the University of Colorado UFO study led by Edward U. Condon we could guess what they would conclude about this film. I won’t mention what we now know about the reasons for the study or the directions Condon and his team had been given by the Air Force (see the Hippler Letter March 21, 2007; June 5, 2013) but that certainly influenced their conclusions.

William Hartmann conducted the analysis for the Condon committee. He provided a quick history of the investigations and did mention that during Baker’s investigation Newhouse provided “…substantially the same account, with the additional information:
‘When he got out [of the car], he observed the objects (twelve to fourteen of them) to be directly overhead and milling about. He described them as ‘gun metal colored objects, shaped like two saucers, one inverted of top of the other.’…” (Which sort of reinforces the idea that Newhouse had not radically altered his tale over time.)

Hartmann then made his own analysis, finally concluding, “These observations give strong evidence that the Tremonton films do show birds… and I now regard the objects as so identified.”

But this comes only after Hartmann rejected the statements by Newhouse seeing the objects at close range.
He wrote, “The strongest negative argument was stated later by the witness that the objects were seen to subtend an angle of about 0.5 degrees and were then seen as gun metal colored and shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim, but the photographs and circumstances indicate that this observation could not have been meaningful.”

Or, in other words, the statements of Newhouse were unimportant and I suspect the reason being that if they were accepted, then the bird explanation was eliminated. Birds are not shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim.

To add to all this, Baker, in 1969, at a symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that while Hartmann’s analysis might be appealing “[The] motion [of the objects] is not what one would expect from a flock of soaring birds; there are erratic brightness fluctuations, but there is no indication of periodic decreases in brightness due to turning with the wind or flapping. No cumulus clouds are shown on the film that might betray the presence of thermal updraft… The motion pictures I have taken of birds at various distances have no similarity to the Utah film.”

Here’s where we are. This is a case of multiple chains of evidence. First is the eyewitness testimony that has been virtually ignored. It is clear from what Ruppelt and others say that some parts of the Project Blue Book file on the case have disappeared. But that doesn’t change the fact that Newhouse and his wife saw the UFOs and what they had to say about it is an important part of the report. Hartmann rejected it almost out of hand.

The second chain of evidence, which is independent of the first, is the film. It provides something that can be taken into the lab and analyzed in various ways. It seems to me that those without a bias (or in the case of the Air Force who leaned toward finding any explanation which now suggests they were arguing against their own interest) couldn’t positively identify the objects.
Those who know that there is no alien visitation however, found what they believed to be the solution. The film showed birds.

Here’s the point, finally. Those who know that there is no alien visitation claim that there is no evidence to the contrary. I say the Tremonton, Utah film is evidence of something unusual flying through the atmosphere and if evaluated from a neutral position is not explained by birds. I will freely concede that eliminating the accepted explanation does not lead directly to the extraterrestrial; I will also note that we do have some evidence of an unusual event. I will further note that if Newhouse’s description is accurate then there is no terrestrial explanation for the sighting. Give it an unbiased reading, look at everything through a neutral prism, and you have something that suggests there could be alien visitation. It is, therefore, some of the evidence that many claim does not exist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49k1EQdoMeU&feature=player_detailpage

A spaceman came travelling, Chris de Burgh www.youtube.com Chris De Burgh.

Inside Secret Government Warehouses

This incredible full length video explains a lot.

Alien body parts… powerful religious artifacts… UFO wreckage… what exactly is hidden behind heavily guarded doors?

Among the findings: A high-level informant who describes huge underground tunnels beneath military installations, victims of unauthorized government experimentation, and a former US Air Force pilot ordered to shoot down a UFO in England.

With input from world renowned theoretical physicists, Vatican officials, anthropologists and experts on Area 51, they explore the darkest corners of the places where the world’s secrets hide.

UFO Sightings and Unknown - www.ufo.robdasha.com Among the findings: A high-level informant who describes huge underground tunnels beneath military i...

Radio-beam device can disable car and boat engines from 50m

16 October 2013 | By Jason Ford

Une firme britannique teste un prototype d'émetteur d'impulsions EM capable de stopper à distance un moteur de voiture ou de bateau. Pour l'instant la machine est efficace jusqu'à 50 m. Dix-sept pays et 5 agences gouvernementales britanniques sont intéressées.

E2V has developed a non-lethal weapon that can disable the engines of motor vehicles and small boats at a distance of up to 50m in under three seconds.

Dubbed RF Safe-Stop, the unit, which weighs approximately 350kg, has so far been integrated into Nissan Nevara and Toyota Land Cruisers and is designed to temporarily disable a vehicle’s electronic systems and bring it to a halt. Such non-lethal systems are said to be particularly suited to stopping vehicles suspected as being used as car bombs.

Andy Wood, product manager at e2v, told The Engineer that RF Safe-Stop can be fitted also into ground, fixed base installations, rib-type boats and that there are ‘blueprint’ ideas to integrate it into a helicopter.

Read more:  http://www.theengineer.co.uk/military-and-defence/news/radio-beam-device-can-disable-car-and-boat-engines-from-50m/1017308.article#ixzz2myUgqh71

Such non-lethal systems generate intense RF (radio frequency) pulses and Wood euphemistically said these pulses ‘confuse’ a vehicle’s electronics, rendering them temporarily inoperable.

RF Safe-Stop works differently on different vehicles although the principle of coupling electromagnetic waves into the target’s wiring looms remain the same.

‘At the weight of frequencies we’re taking about - L and S-Band - the wiring loom of, say a metre…is almost the perfect aerial,’ said Wood.

The electromagnetic blast travels through the wiring loom as a series of pulses, arriving at the vehicle’s engine management system or immobiliser to halt it.

‘Basically the ECU (engine control unit) or immobiliser…once affected, will try and reset. As long as you keep it ‘confused’ the engine won’t restart.’

The RF generator is driven by a solid state modulator designed and built at Chelmsford-based e2v and Wood explained that a UPS unit has been added to systems designed for use on vehicles.

‘What we’re assuming at the moment is if, for instance, you had a fully charged set of batteries you’d get about two hours of operation, use about a 10 per cent RF energy burst from it …So [with] two hours stand-by, you get 12 minutes of RF operation,’ he said.

‘If you’ve got it on a vehicle, or a boat…you could be trickle charging that all the time. Unless you exceed the 10 per cent duty cycle with something like a 100A (amp) alternator at 24V you should…not run out of power.’

Operators of RF Safe-Stop won’t need specialist training as e2v is aiming for a system that that allows the user to do nothing more complicated than push a red button when the target is in range.

‘So long as he’s got a green light on his display he knows he can push the red button and typically, in one operation, get a five second burst,’ said Wood. ‘Normally, the effect happens in three seconds. You should be pretty certain that with one shot you’re going stop whatever engine it is you’re trying to stop. Then you repeat as and when - if you see the person in the vehicle is trying to restart it you just give it another shot and demobilise the vehicle again.’

The company recently demonstrated RF Safe-Stop at DSEi and Wood said the technology has stimulated interest from 17 nations and five UK government bodies.

Wood believes orders for the system will be taken in the coming weeks, adding that e2v’s dedicated applications team can tailor RF Safe-Stop according to requirements.

New video footage of a bright UFO light recorded in the night sky above California on 7th December 2013.

Witness said:
I walked out of my house and witnessed a large glowing red/orange object above me that traveled south to south west with no erratic movements.

<style type="text/css">.youtube_sc iframe.yp{display:none;}</style><object width="560" height="340" class="yp" title="YouTube video player"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6ZWnrKk0gnA?version=3&hl=en_US"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6ZWnrKk0gnA?version=3&hl=en_US" width="560" height="340" class="yp" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always"></object>

Video: 3 NASA Astronauts Who May Have Seen UFOs

Buzz Aldrin

In a 2005 interview with Science Channel, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin seemed to say he saw an unidentified flying object (UFO) that followed Apollo 11 on its 1969 moon mission and may have contained aliens.

In a recording of the video uploaded to YouTube, Aldrin recalls his experience and his conversation with mission control: “[There was] something out there that was close enough to be observed, and what could it be?

“Mike [Collins] decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that. When it was in one position, it has a series of ellipses. But when you made it real sharp, it was sort of L-shaped. That didn’t tell us very much.

“Obviously the three of us were not going to blurt out, ‘Hey Houston, we’ve got something moving alongside of us and we don’t know what it is; can you tell us what it is? We weren’t about to do that, because we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and who knows what somebody would have demanded? That we turn back because of aliens, or whatever the reason.”

Thinking the object may be the S-IVB rocket stage, the crew asked Houston how far away it was. The S-IVB was 6,000 nautical miles away. “We really didn’t think we were looking at something that far away,” Aldrin told the Science Channel.

He said the crew decided they wouldn’t talk about it anymore until debriefing.

In a posting on the NASA website, astrophysicist David Morrison reported that he spoke with Aldrin after this interview.

Aldrin told Morrison the quotes were taken out of context. Aldrin told Morrison, and also said on Larry King Live in 2007 that what they saw was likely a panel separated from the spacecraft as various stages dropped off—a normal procedure.

Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Mitchell flew in Apollo 14 to the moon in 1971, and is known as the sixth person to walk on the moon. He told WPTV he is certain aliens have been watching us and that the government is aware.

“I don’t know how many or where or how they’re doing it, but they’ve been observing us and here for quite some time. We see these craft all the time,” he said.

“I believe what I’m saying and I cite the evidence that I know,” Mitchell said.

Many websites and blogs interested in extraterrestrial life have cited a transcript said to have been leaked by a NASA employee after the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

The conversation takes place between the Apollo 11 crew, mission control, and an unnamed professor.

The name of the NASA employee is given as Otto Binder, a famous science fiction author, casting doubt on the transcript.

“Apollo 11” is quoted: “These babies are huge … You wouldn’t believe it. I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there … lined up on the far side of the crater edge.

“They’re on the moon watching us.”

Astronaut Neil Armstrong is quoted as saying, “We were warned off.”

When questioned further, Armstrong said, according to the transcript: “I can’t go into details, except to say that their ships were far superior to ours both in size and technology—Boy, were they big … and menacing. … No, there is no question of a space station.”

Morrison again answered a query on the NASA website, stating: “There were no aliens on the moon. Armstrong and other Apollo astronauts saw no evidence of aliens either on the near-side or the far-side of the moon.”

Gordon Cooper

Gordon Cooper was one of the Original Seven NASA astronauts. He piloted the last Project Mercury space mission in 1963.

In 1951, he was flying with the U.S. Air Force in Germany when he saw many UFOs in formation at high altitude. The UFOs were flying higher or faster than human-built aircraft could at the time, he said in an interview with Yolanda Gaskins in 1996 on Paranormal Borderline.

“We couldn’t get anywhere near their altitude,” he said. After filing a report, he explained, “the answer that finally came back months later is they were probably high-flying seed pods, which didn’t sound very logical.”

Then, in 1957, his military film crew recorded footage of a saucer-shaped UFO landing on a dry lake bed. It had three landing legs. They approached it and it took off. The film was sent to his superiors and never mentioned to him again.

He also said friends of his who were commercial pilots have told him they have seen UFOs.

Raffaello D'Andrea: Het verbazende atletische vermogen van quadcopters

In een robotlaboratorium bij TEDGlobal demonstreert Raffaelo D'Andrea zijn vliegende quadcopters: robots die denken zoals atleten. Ze lossen fysische problemen op met algoritmen die hen helpen te leren. In een reeks van slimme demo's toont D'Andrea drones die vangen, balanceren en samen beslissingen nemen. Let vooral op die ik-wil-hem-en-ik-wil-hem-nu demo van Kinect-gestuurde quads.

Roboticist Raffaello D'Andrea explores the possibilities of autonomous technology by collaborating with artists, architects and engineers.

http://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters.HTML

The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 7

Legacy From The Stars
By Dolores Cannon.  (1996)  Ozark Mountain Publishers.

Book Review by Morley Legg 

Dolores Cannon suggests in the opening chapter that we largely fear aliens because they are an 'unknown' and we fear what we don't understand.  She states that we are all aliens because none of us originated on earth, and that because of reincarnation we have lived on other planets, other dimensions.  She has learned much of this from her subjects and this has led to a philosophy which is scattered through her ten books.  Such material does not draw the average scientific mind to make any inquiries.  A pity indeed when she argues her case well.

Dolores Cannon seems to have fined-tuned her hypnosis technique to activate subjects to tune into scenarios which are taken to be past or future lives. 
Some scenes may seem a bit like Star Trek, a bit too bland and easy flowing to be true.  She admits to some editing of taped sessions.  Although Dolores constantly interrupts with questions to clarify and draw out details, we feel she makes honest attempts to make sense of it all. Initially I had misgivings about reviewing it, but her three volumes on Nostradamus (reviewed in the Journal of Alternative Realities, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1997) was impressive enough to justify a closer look at this one.  She claims to have been practising hypnotic regressions for twenty years.  In the mid-1990s she was invited to speak at a Conscious Living Expo where she gave demonstrations.  Two people whose judgement I respected listened to her and have remained open in their praise of her maturity and rationality.

In the United States in 1987 she was asked to investigate UFO cases with her methods.  This book opens up the subject of alien involvement in human life when none was originally expected.  Around a dozen cases are presented where people are regressed and tell of their experiences as they live in other worlds, sometimes as beings quite alien to humans.

This can be bewildering, enraging or comforting, depending on the rigidity of your points of view.  The overall picture she offers is that we appear to have a soul, a core of energy that can become conscious, that carries on after death and sometimes gets caught in karmic cycles.  The experiences of these people suggest that earth is not our only home and that we have lived countless lives
in unusual environments and times.  She claims that past life therapy can
dissolve problems that have carried over from past lives, that sometimes a
repetitive pattern has been set up through a series of lives.  Her gift for inducing hypnosis often has the client quickly voicing surprise at new perceptions and animatedly telling of scenes and happenings.  Many people experiencing them came to feel they provided a therapeutic release.

Case 2)  Terry, a Roman Catholic is regressed to find himself as an old man in the desert about the time of the birth of Christ.  He describes angelic beings who answer questions concerning 'watchers' who descend from the skies.

Case 5)  Chris felt linked to Nostradamus after reading Dolores Cannon's books on the prophet and expected to make contact with him, but in his first regression he went straight into a life on a scorched planet that had two suns.  He battled with alternating waves of energy that induced spells of trembling.  His companions were greys.  He gave descriptions of passing through a doorway as if passing from one dimension to another.

Case 6)  Steve, described as a "control orientated personality", breaks through to the realisation that he is a space craft, his intelligence is bonded to it to do reconnaissance work in a war.  In a following regression he provided much detail of his life as a saxophone player in the twenties.  In another he is on a small moon that has pyramids, and describes himself as a monkey-like being encased in a membrane.

Case 7)  Mona, in her thirties, begins by being shocked by a spinning sensation.  She also feels she is the mind-power grafted into the controls of a spaceship

Case 9)  Fred, a student with severe stomach disorders revisited his existence as a membrane in the early formation of earth, where he filtered and cleaned earth's atmosphere into air.

Case 10)  Jack was regressed by a novice hypnotist who ran into difficulties and who then called Dolores to take over.  Jack was regressed to the life of a creature who could transfer his consciousness to animals and birds. In another regression he gave details about other creatures on a spaceship where he was a creature with pointed ears.

Case 12)  Pam explores the idea of occupants in UFOs being time travellers from our future and opens up the possibility of us having some access to the past and the future.  Pam found herself in an elaborate underground tunnel that, with the aid of a crystal pyramid, stored knowledge and acted as a materialisation chamber for beings visiting earth.

To the scientifically orientated these books must seem like regression into fantasies and superstition.  However, the spontaneous quality of the perceptions are remarkable.  They do support some of the recent theories of alien intervention.  The people taking part seem mentally healthy and hold responsible places in society.  Of course a sceptic would say, "Surely she must lead them into these fantasies."  However, at times she shows how, when she deliberately tries to lead a subject into a rational explanation, each subject resists and insists their version is correct.  Dolores Cannon seems to have the intuition to ask non-leading questions that draw out this steady flow of ideas and information that can be either true or symbolic of much that is worthy of further study.  Particularly interesting are the accounts of entities bonded into the controls of space craft – reported here from regressions made many years before Colonel Phillip Corso's claims of this in his 1997 book The Day After Roswell.
Before closing a session she often brings the person out of their past life and, while they are still hypnotised, back to the present day.  She then asks if there is any message in that other life that can help them overcome difficulties in their current one.  This is where we realise what a good psychologist she is.  She encourages listening to what the subconscious suggests because, she claims, no therapy can be accomplished without it.  The subconscious has no sense of time and doesn't realise it is now inhabiting a different body, and once it agrees to work with the therapist, amazing changes can occur in the subject's life that would be impossible through psychoanalysis and therapy alone.

She believes more attempts should be made to study history through the lens of past life therapy in order to recover "lost knowledge".  This is a book that attunes us to the possibility of new ways to gain behind-the-scenes-glimpses
into the way the universe works.  

Underground Bases & Tunnels - What is the Government Trying To Hide?
By Richard Sauder.  (1995)  Illinois, USA, Adventures Unlimited Press.
Book review by Simon Harvey-Wilson

Dr Richard Sauder does not claim to be a UFO researcher, but he has certainly done ufology a service by publishing this book.  The UFO literature contains numerous rumours of secret underground bases that are run by aliens and/or the US government.  Using the document search skills that he probably developed in doing his political science doctorate, Sauder has attempted to sort fact from fiction in this field by hunting down all sorts of government, military or industry references to tunnel digging and underground facilities.  To do this he has ferreted through mining company documents, industry conference proceedings, patent applications, as well as scientific, government and military feasibility studies.  What he has discovered is a wealth of documentation which strongly suggest that the United States military-industrial complex has for many years had the capacity to create enormously deep, complex, and well equipped underground facilities for almost any purpose.

Not all underground bases are military ones.  For example the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is reported to cooperate with the Pentagon in administering about fifty secret underground posts which are "equipped to function as an emergency White House" (p.43).  Most of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the leading aerospace companies have their own underground facilities (pp.63 & 68).  There are also several Federal Relocation Centres within a 450km radius of Washington as part of the nuclear war Continuity Of Government (GOG) plan (p.51).

Although Sauder repeatedly states that he cannot prove how many of these facilities actually exist, the implication that at least some of them do is obvious.  The advantages of deep underground bases are that they may be nuclear and sabotage proof, highly secure, and, because they are effectively invisible – especially to satellite surveillance – your enemies and/or the public are unaware of their size, probable cost, and location.
Some critics have objected to claims that such bases exist by saying that it would be impossible to conceal the rubble produced in digging them and anyway, surely all the logistical support and personnel for such bases would be impossible to conceal.  Sauder points out that all the necessary technology exists to equip such bases with their own power, water, cooling and possibly access by high speed underground trains.

For example, as long ago as 26th September 1972 a patent was issued to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for a nuclear powered tunnelling machine that was "designed to convert the rock that it excavates into a molten liquid, which fills cracks in the rocks, bonds to the walls of the tunnel, and leaves behind a smooth, vitreous lining" (illustration 39).  The patent application lists seven inventors, all from Los Alamos in New Mexico.  Sauder also points out that the US Patent Office does not issue patents unless it is reasonably convinced that the invention described does actually work.  This does not prove that such devices are in operation, but this sort of documentation certainly makes one think.

Another very interesting illustration contains a map which shows how the US Environmental Protection Agency "tracks the migration of atomic particles from the Nevada Test Site into the animals and humans of the surrounding environment."  The map "shows the location of about 40 families who are brought into the EPA twice a year for whole-body analysis.  Part of their examination takes place in the reclining chair pictured in the photograph.  The machinery which hangs from the ceiling performs a whole-body scan of the subject" (illustration 45).

There is a similarity between this scenario and reports by UFO abductees who likewise describe being given full-body scans for some, as yet, unknown purpose.  This and other illustrations suggest that the purpose of some animal mutilations could be to monitor the biological distribution of something that aliens and/or covert sections of the US government are interested in.

Underground Bases and Tunnels has fifty pages of illustrations of interest to serious UFO researchers, showing, among other things, the layouts of various types of underground facilities and TBMs (tunnel boring machines). 
  
 Back to ASPR/UFORUM Home Page
(More Journals and UFO info.)

The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? -- PART 6

Alien Base Earth's Encounters with Extraterrestrials
By Timothy Good.  (1998)  London, Century.
Book review © 1998 by Warren P. Aston 

At the outset I do not hesitate to say that in my opinion, Alien Base has joined a small group of books that will come to be regarded as pivotal and classic works in shaping our understanding of the phenomenon of alien contact.  I believe it will eventually be seen as authoritative and substantial in its field as Good's Beyond Top Secret now is.  Timothy Good's greatest contribution in this book is to force the reader to face a substantial body of data that has, in many cases, been routinely ignored and ridiculed by many UFO researchers and groups in recent decades and kept from the public at large.

Good tackles head-on the disturbing direction that main-stream ufology has taken in the last two decades by the almost institutionalised rejection of reports involving contact with humanoid beings to the point where 'alien contact' in ufology and in the public perception equates only to an 'abduction' by a stereotype 'Grey'.

The cases covered in Alien Base are anything but the standard abduction scenario.  Good has amassed ufology's largest collection of reports where the witness has encountered – and often interacted with – beings of apparent extraterrestrial origin, sometimes living incognito among us.  A handful of intriguing cases also suggest that one or more alien groups have humans living with and working with them.  Many of the book's reports are published here for the first time and the cumulative weight of their evidence is impressive.
The author does not shy away from the famous 'contactee' cases of the fifties and sixties but succeeds in integrating their stories as part of a larger continuum of alien contact, not apart from it.  In the process it quickly becomes clear that such claims are not as rare as many people have assumed.  This is not to say that Good accepts that all the contactee claims are genuine – far from it.  But he makes a strong case that perhaps in some instances, what began as a genuine encounter was then perpetuated, for any number of reasons, by deception and fraud.

Case in point perhaps – George Adamski.  Alien Base, to the inevitable dismay of some readers I'm sure, devotes a long section to Adamski's story. 
Much of this material will be familiar to any well-read researcher, but some will not be and is therefore worth approaching with an open mind.  The original or early aspects of this case are stronger than many are willing to give it credit for and while I personally remain unconvinced, Good gives some good reasons why the case should not be rejected out of hand or tossed into the too-hard basket.  Not least of these are the apparently credible stories of other people with impressive parallels to Adamski's claimed experiences.

As well as Daniel Fry and Howard Menger, the book goes into considerable detail about the Paul Villa case and devotes more than half its colour illustrations to some of his photos, making it clear that here are cases that still cry out for solid investigation.

Despite the time that has elapsed, definitive treatments of these cases have yet to be written.  Although not without its faults and biases, Kal Korff's devastating exposé of the Billy Meier case (Spaceships of the Pleiades) is a recent example of what an intensive investigation can achieve and what remains to be done with the classic contactees.  Some readers may feel more comfortable with other stories that Good examines in detail, such as the little-known Carroll Watts and Bruno Ghibaudi cases with their impressive photographic support or with the fantastic but compelling 'Joelle' and Ludwig Pallmann cases.
Alien Base however makes a contribution beyond the mere compiling of reports.  By including some of the very early encounters (the 1920 Albert Coe case is the earliest, with a good sampling of cases from the thirties and forties, including my own research of the 1940 Wartena case) the book repudiates for example the continuing simplistic attempts by some to dismiss all genuine UFO sightings as man-made military craft.

The careful reader will note certain recurring themes throughout the encounters reported, regardless of the circumstances, the time period or the witness.  Notably, these include the pervasiveness of the basic human form throughout the cosmos, that earth has always had alien monitoring and intervention, that intelligent life on earth was 'seeded' from other worlds, that man destroyed his civilisation thousands of years ago and a variety of environmental concerns.  Implicit in all this is the unavoidable conclusion that earth is being visited by many races, far more than the conventional half-dozen or dozen races normally allowed for in the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis). 
A strong case could be made for at least a score or more based just on the better documented and more believable cases printed in this book.
My criticisms of Alien Base are minor.  Interspersed throughout the text are a number of conventional UFO reports, perhaps to introduce variety and perhaps
sometimes to strengthen the book's premise that our planet is being used as a base by extraterrestrials.  While they are usually interesting and substantial sightings that deserve recording, in my opinion they lengthen the text unnecessarily and their omission could have served either to reduce the size of the book or to allow more contact cases to be included.  Surely there would have been more value in including for example the Reverend Gill case – a multi-witnessed sighting of humanoids atop a craft – rather than yet another daylight disk report.  In particular I would also have liked more space spent on the information communicated in the 1976 Dr Leopoldo Diaz case, a totally credible witness.  A chronological listing of all the cases would have been both helpful and interesting and would make comparisons easier and trends more
obvious.
Those in the UFO community inclined to reject out-of-hand the type of reports found in this book will undoubtedly be less charitable toward this book and may feel that I have been over-generous in my assessment of its value. 
For the rest of us however, Alien Base is a reminder that whatever our individual assumptions and biases lead us to do with such accounts, these too are an integral part of ufology.

References
Good, Timothy  (1996)  Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat.
Korff, Karl K.  (1995)  Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story.

From Atlantis to the Sphinx - Recovering the Lost Wisdom of the Ancient World
By Colin Wilson.  (1997)  Virgin Publishers.
Book review by Morley Legg

Colin Wilson's lucid unfolding of the main veins in human history arouses inklings that something vital has been lost and it begs recapturing.  We do, however, become aware of patterns in our more recent history.  Mankind works hard to consolidate a succession of plateaus of interpreting nature, and each plateau hardens into a belief to which the tribe or group strictly adheres. 
Belief systems certainly become stabilisers, at least for a time.  But then bitter struggles arise as new concepts make a play for dominance.

Over the last three hundred years, for instance, constant battles went on to bring about belief adjustments in religious concepts as scholars, aided by science, were continually having to update theories about our origins, pushing them back to six thousand, ten thousand, and eventually even to three million years.  And today the plates of knowledge are shifting again and continue to threaten jarring upheavals, as the more open minded realise and expect.

An article by Colin Wilson in a 1997 English newspaper showed him to be a knowledgeable ufologist.  In this book UFOs or aliens don't get a mention.  In one respect we can be grateful in that their absence gives us a clean slate to do our own thinking as to where, and whether they may have intervened in our ancient past.
He unearths many theories to account for the 'sudden' enlarging of the human brain: "Between half a million years ago and modern times, the human brain expanded by one third, and most of the growth has been in the cerebrum, the top half of the brain, with which we think."  Among the theories aired to account for this is that of the meteorite which exploded over the Indian Ocean about 700,000 years ago, reversing the poles.  Did this cause the mutation for the brain to expand and intelligence to grow?  The development of language, religion, sexual attitudes, and the discovery of 'hunting magic' could also have boosted growth.
Wilson reasons that it takes a drastic change or a challenge to get man to use his thinking, otherwise he only copies the notions of his day and remains at that level for a hundred thousand years.  He mentions that the shark hasn't changed much in 150 million years.

He stresses that humans today feel quite separate from one another.  Telepathy is rare enough to be considered a myth.  He is not the only scholar to feel that Cro-Magnon man had group consciousness, an instinctive 'lunar knowledge', quite different from our current 'solar knowledge' which we store in universities and books.  Some primitive people still seem to possess this group consciousness, and their shamans may possess links to Cro-Magnon man's hunting magic.  There is a disturbing account of a shaman in the Gilbert Islands using sorcery to draw a school of porpoises to beach themselves for slaughter.

Drawing on the works of many respected researchers Wilson nudges us to the idea that Atlantis now lies in Antarctica under the ice.  Professor Charles Hapgood (author of Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings) believes the Piri Re'is map (dated 1513), that shows Antarctica as it appeared before it was covered by ice, appears to be a genuine copy of ancient maps.  In 1959 he delved into the United States Library of Congress and found many ancient maps, someshowing
Antarctica mapped as if free of ice.  Hapgood believes a world-wide maritime civilisation existed at this time.  Many serious researchers support the idea that this could be the Atlantean civilisation that was devastated by a sudden shifting of the earth's crust, and that many survivors from this catastrophe moved to India, South America and Egypt.  Convention now has it, by the way, that Antarctica's warm period began about thirteen thousand years ago and ended six thousand years ago.

This leads to those fascinating estimates and questions arising from recent research on the pyramids.  Why did the Egyptians build the Sphinx in 10,500 BC, and the pyramids eight thousand years later – with shafts aimed with gun barrel accuracy at Orion?  "[T]he only time the positions of the three pyramids on the ground reflect the positions of the three stars of Orion's belt is 10,500 BC, when Orion is at its closest to the southern horizon in the 'precessional cycle', which takes 25,920 years."

Diverse points of interest are included.  When Hapgood retired (and no longer cared much about what his sceptical colleagues thought) he published Voices of Spirit, a book on experiments to search back through history with a trance medium to contact scholarly figures.  He believed that the next step in man's evolution will be in the realm of the psychic and paranormal.  He tried contacting Nostradamas and others (as Dolores Cannon has recently done) with a view to finding clues as to who we are and what we are doing here.  Also, the most fascinating clue as to how the stones of the pyramids were put into place
has been left by an eccentric American, Ed Leedskalnin who, an engineer claims, lifted huge blocks of coral on his own to build a dwelling (p.263).

Books like this help us to realise that an interest in ancient history, UFOs and the paranormal, often indicates a feeling that mainstream science and religion have not yet provided us with satisfactory explanations as to our place and purpose on earth.  We are left hoping that melting ice, or the current drilling into Antarctica's ice, will one day bring forth revelations.

The essence of Wilson's book is that a former civilisation shared an instinctive-intuitive knowledge that to us would appear quite alien; and that it would require a shock of some kind before we could begin to remember or catch a glimpse of this 'Atlantean sense of reality'.

References
Hapgood, Charles H.  (1992)  Voices of Spirit.
Hapgood, Charles H.  (1979)  Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings.

Alien Dawn -- An Investigation into the Contact Experience
By Colin Wilson.  (1998)  London, Virgin Publishing.
Book review by Michael Jordan 

A good mate of mine, a psychologist, with whom I've enjoyed a long friendship, recently returned to live and work in Cornwall, not far from the home of well known and highly regarded writer, Colin Wilson.  Although we shared a number of common interests, this did not extend to my passion for ufology.  By unspoken but mutual consent I resolved not to talk about UFOs and he to refrain from mentioning his love of yacht racing and sailing.  By way of closure to my subject, he added, "When Colin Wilson writes about UFOs, I might have to take the subject seriously."

Last year fellow committee member, Morley Legg, sent me a cutting from the pages of a well-known British Sunday newspaper in which large headlines trumpeted, "It's Official – Colin Wilson Says They Are Here".  The 'they' of course referred to aliens and was in response to the publication of Wilson's Alien Dawn.  For my part I couldn't wait to see how he would assimilate the results of his prolific past research into the paranormal, consciousness, evolution, astronomy and cosmology, to name but a few of his pet subjects, with ufology, the boundaries of which seem limitless and encompass all of these fields and more.

A chance meeting with Harvard psychiatrist and author of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, more or less led to Colin Wilson being thrust on his mission, from a previously sceptical launching pad.  A journey of discovery in an attempt to find out more about what Dr Allen Hynek termed, "the greatest
mystery of our time."

Typically, Wilson's approach to the writing of Alien Dawn is in the manner his countless readers throughout the world have come to expect.  His source material comes not only from a study of literally hundreds of texts and manuscripts that can shed any light on the subject, but above all from having the right contacts.  This is a major reason why this book includes a more comprehensive examination of the whole UFO phenomenon than probably any other that I have read.  Colin Wilson's years of research into allied subjects means that he numbers amongst his friends and contacts, such people as John Mack, Budd Hopkins, Jacques Vallee, Linda Moulton Howe, Stanislav Grof, David Jacobs, the late Andrija Puharich and many other researchers of this ilk.  These are people who are recognised by ufologists around the world as making original and major contributions to the field.  Alien Dawn draws (often through direct contact with the author) on the theories of such thinkers.

It is Wilson's ability to synthesise material from a wide range of sources, in seemingly effortless fashion and weave it into a seamless tapestry of possibilities, that makes this book so provocative.  His compendium of related aspects range from studies of mythic entities, bizarre synchronicities, ancient folklore and mysticism, to a study of the so-called abduction experience.

The result should satisfy both relative newcomers to the field and seasoned travellers in this domain.  For the uninitiated, many well known cases and
personalities are discussed in order to familiarise them with the concept of high strangeness, but usually within a theoretical context which challenges previously held assumptions.  What crystallises as we explore the phenomenon through Wilson's speculation, is that this is so much more than information to be considered from a purely materialistic point of view.  So very much more!  He makes it abundantly clear that what we are dealing with here, defies explanation in terms of our present knowledge and conventional logic.

In the first half of Alien Dawn, Colin Wilson's focus on mythology and the paranormal is an attempt to establish that the UFO phenomenon is too complex and diverse to be explained in everyday terms; seemingly defying  categorisation.  He is never apologetic, even in the discussion of material which "raises the bar of credulity" (to use his term) "so high that it is important to remind the reader that it is not quite as insane and unprecedented as it sounds" (p.210).  He challenges the sceptics such as the late Carl Sagan and John Spencer, to come up with a view that is consistent with the facts, even going so far as to term Sagan a disinformation specialist and accusing him of
going to extremes in distorting data on the Mars anomalies and the abduction phenomenon.

What then are some of Wilson's conclusions?  He repeatedly reminds us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we view ourselves, and that the vision of universal energy, and of the mind's power to enter into creative interaction with it, is an accurate perception of underlying reality.  In other words, "that the mind – without knowing it consciously – has some sort of control over the material universe" (p.301).
He believes that UFOs are unknown forms of energy and that their purpose is, "not simply to remind us that the material world is not the only reality, but to draw us by a kind of suction into consciousness of another kind of reality" (p.295).  Their purpose would seem to be to act as a deconditioning agent, attempting to distance us from our unquestioning acceptance of consensus reality and drawing us into accepting consciousness of another kind of reality.  Finally he leaves no doubt that, "a UFO encounter can cause a basic change in awareness" (p.304) and speculates that if it is indeed a "control phenomenon", then it is likely to increase its impact on human consciousness as a result of Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic 'induction'.

References

Mack, John.  (1994)  Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.

Sheldrake, Rupert.  (1988)  A New Science of Life. 
  
Cult Encounter --International Story of Exit Counselling
By Helen & Rick Larsen.  (1997)  Australia, RCS Books.
Book Review by Morley Legg 

"Life as a counter-cultist is rather like trying to put out a raging forest fire with a garden hose."       Rick Larsen. 

Subtitled "An exposé of cult techniques and an explosion of the myths that surround deprogramming", this sincere book warns how easy it is to get mind-trapped if one strays too far from convention, and how difficult it is to return to one's accustomed values more anchored in reality.  A glance at the cover could give the impression of a US Bible-belt publication, but it was a pleasant surprise to find that Helen and Rick Larsen live in a Perth suburb in Western Australia.

Helen's interest in the New Age obviously grew out of a genuine care and concern for humanity.  She became intrigued by Extra-Terrestrial Earth Mission (ETEM) which was based in Sedona, Arizona.  It was founded by John, a 'walk in' (an extraterrestrial that had entered John's body).  An ETEM group had formed in Perth and Helen felt drawn to go to Sedona, USA, for a conference in June 1992. 
Her husband Rick consented in spite of a growing reluctance.

Helen and Rick take turns in giving their account of developments mostly a chapter at a time, sometimes a paragraph at a time when developments quicken. 
They reveal much about their background; their honesty is moving.  Both were raised in devout Catholic homes.  Rick's experiences as a pupil at Christian Brothers College makes compelling reading.  Others drawn into the tug of war also have their say.

Rick gives his first impressions of ETEM.  Helen tells of her contacts in Perth, and of settling in at Sedona and meeting the twenty-two female and seven male participants, and the leaders Zavi (John) and Ziva (Ellen).  She is taught how to resist 'dark forces' (family and friends) who would try to break the true message of Zavi or the 'Visionary Interdimensional Masters'.  She writes, "I am still not clear what the trigger, offered by Earth Mission, was for me but bells rang, the earth moved.  I was 'IN'."  Helen returns renamed Xanthe.

Back in Perth a period develops when they no longer risk sharing their thoughts and we understand perfectly the tactics they are using against each other.  Six months after returning from Sedona the real drama begins when in December 1992, after twenty-four years of marriage in which they had a daughter and two sons, Rick farewells Helen at the Perth Airport.  She is on her way to join the Melbourne ETEM group.  Rick agrees to let her go but desperately wants to find a way to bring 'the old' Helen back.

Because of the stress and bouts of depression he is granted leave from his teaching post.  Through the advice given by the husband of another ETEM member he contacts Joe Szimhart and Patrick Ryan, US 'exit counsellors'.  They reveal a wealth of information concerning the patterns of destructive cults, patterns that can be recognised, understood and combated.  There is mention of the Moonies, Heaven's Gate, Waco, and New Age movements familiar to many.

Pat and Joe arrive in Perth and then, with the aid of his son and friends, all go to Melbourne for an 'Intervention'.  The enormous costs dawn on us: phone calls, flight costs, hotel bookings, hired cars, an intervention venue, a TV
compatible with US videos – all resting on the timing of plans that are full of 'what ifs'.  Would Xanthe agree to meet or listen?  A maze of interesting fronts and cover stories are invented before they can even think of talking Helen out of ETEM.  At times touches of humour add surprising depth to the drama.

Helen's brother Paul phones Helen to say he is coming to Melbourne on business to possibly buy a fish farm and arranges to meet her.  The nervousness of the six interventionists, when so much is at stake, escalates.  The time arrives when Helen, expecting her lone brother, is greeted by her son, then her brother and his wife with Rick and two Americans.  Helen remains for a while but refuses to watch the video and returns to her ETEM group.  Each of the six interventionists express their thoughts and feelings of the time.  Helen has to contend with her own rising feelings and the views of the others in ETEM.

The book unearths the powerful mental war that goes on, not just between Helen and Rick or Helen and ETEM, but in each individual as to what is the right thing to do.  In the chapter 'The Dark Night of the Soul' Helen battles with Xanthe.

Much praise is heaped on Pat and Joe.  After the first failed intervention they attended another case involving a near tragedy in a different cult.  This ended in the wife being hospitalised through " 'listening' to tapes which were repetitive, suggestive and hypnotic in nature."
It would be a pity to dismiss this book as just a battle between one family and an obscure cult. 
Those with a healthy interest in the New Age should welcome the Larsen's warnings.  They give an invaluable, blow by blow account of the age old battle between captive minds and free minds.  At times we sense striking parallels to being trapped in a disastrous marriage, or in drug addiction.  The 'cult' develops a new and exclusive set of rules that promises benefits far beyond the norm, but which traditionally degenerates into dogma-armed extremes.  But then, of course, are any of us really free when we are all so moulded by the society we are born into?  Consider the difference in our attitudes if we had grown up in a time or country markedly different from our own.

The studies of authors and academics are presented to reveal the negativity in cults.  Steven Hassan: "Destructive cults commonly induce trances in their members through lengthy indoctrination sessions.  Repetition and forced attention are very conducive to the induction of a trance .... 'loaded language' of words and expressions .... governs how one thinks" (Hassan, p.90).  From Michael A. West of the University of Sheffield: "Over-meditation can be dangerous .... prolonged meditation may cease to have beneficial effects and become detrimental" (West, p.143).  Professor Graham Reed: "Channelled 'messages' are at a low level of inventiveness."  Australia's Dr Margaret Singer, Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of California, stressed that cult victims tend to be "unaffiliated, altruistic and trusting."

Helen eventually consented to watching Dr Singer's video on mind control, and took part in lengthy discussions.  Interesting indeed were the alarming physical reactions Helen and Rick experienced just before, during, and after her decision to leave ETEM.  Helen: "Initially when I came out of the cult I felt numb.  It seemed that I had no feelings about anything at all.  My dream of a heavenlyearth populated by perfect, loving beings had been absolutelyshattered."  Helen's chapter 'Recovery' is packed with insights that are healing in themselves.

Surely, however, the core of a cult can be close to a legitimate truth.  Is it not the negativity of people who, once involved, become virus-like and 'capture' this truth, or this experience, and use it to ensnare others, like a predator in wait by a waterhole?
Much of the New Age has become unashamedly commercial; thankfully many use care and knowledge wisely and beneficially; some take on a darker aspect depending largely on who runs them, and what the core belief or policy is.  We should remember that religions, throughout history, have been infiltrated by those who have used the blind belief of followers to prey on the innocent and trusting.

The authors are full of praise for the two exit councillors.  All of those taking part in the intervention warmed to Joe and Pat as genuine and likeable. 
Details are given of their escape from cults.  Joe was in Elizabeth Clare Prophet's 'Church Universal and Triumphant' (CUT).  Once free he took part in about one hundred and thirty intervention situations and became "familiar with Eastern based, Bible based and New Age cults in particular."  In 1980 Pat
graduated from the Maharishi International University.  He reported that with its guards and repressive discipline it was totally unlike the TM (Trancendental Meditation) many are familiar with.  He suffered a breakdown and feels he was lucky to escape and eventually recover his health.

After Helen's safe return to Perth, Rick wanders through a local New Age Expo looking at the stalls, as many of us probably did.  His devastating comments may jar us or have us chuckling, but we fully understand his point of view.  Our Space Brothers are not here to save us, however much our times cry out for change.  The New Age will not save us, not at least until its followers are more aware of the pattern of pitfalls that are now well-researched.

The general impression of cults is that they are small groups that become dedicated to breaking away from wider society in order to toe a line of belief that ensures a 'superior' realisation of reality.  Trends of this nature often stem from channelled material, or from people who have 'inner dialogues' that motivate them to seek followers with similar isolationist views.
One realises in retrospect that preoccupation with repetition or trance indoctrination etc is not only used by individuals and small cults. 
Dictatorships and totalitarian societies have become masters of it.  Is not our whole Western civilisation way ahead with the very same tactics?  Think of the never ending torrent of advertising, and the resulting consumerism no matter what the risk to the planet.  This may have become the norm, but when massive wealth from these obsessions and addictions goes to a controlling elite, then surely high levels of indoctrination are at work.  How can we get out of that?

Somehow the quiet touches of humour move us to take the Larsens' message very seriously.  We speculate on how close we can become to being ensnared in shaky beliefs, in paradigms unseen.  Their warnings to those involved in anything cult-like not to get in out of their depth is like a touch on the arm that restores a sense of balance and direction.

References
Hassan, Steven.  (1990)  Combating Cult Mind Control.
Reed, Graham.  The Psychology of Channelling.
Singer, Margaret Thaler.  (1995) Cults in Our Midst (a video on mind
control).
West, Michael A. (editor)  The Psychology of Meditation.

Rick Larsen provides free assistance to people in trouble with cults.  He can be contacted at PO Box 90, North Beach, Western Australia 6020.  His book is available to Society members at half price ($10).

Robot Warriors --The Top Secret History of the Pilotless Plane
By Hugh McDaid & David Oliver.  (1997)  ISBN 0 75281 024 3
Book review by Simon Harvey-Wilson

This is a coffee table sized book of interest to those who have ever suspected that some UFO sightings were advanced military craft built here on planet earth, even if their design might have been based on observations or reverse engineering of alien craft.  The authors however make no such speculations.  Robot Warriors is a straightforward history of what the United States Air Force apparently calls UAVs (uninhabited or unmanned aerial vehicles).  The closest it gets to discussing extraterrestrial craft is on the inside cover where it is claimed that the technology of today's UAVs is "so close to the cutting edge of science that they might just as well have been built by aliens."  The book's forward is by Admiral Barton Strong, Head of Cruise Missiles and Unmanned Aircraft for the United States Department of Defence.  Its introduction is by General Kenneth Israel, Director of DARO, Defence Airborne Reconnaissance Office, also for the US Department of Defence.

The book's cover photo is a very flying saucer-like picture of the Lockheed Martin Boeing 'DarkStar' which seems to epitomise the new generation of stealthy hi-tech surveillance UAVs.
Robot Warriors is packed with colour photos of weird looking craft, some so small they look like toy models, while others clearly resemble various shaped UFOs.  I found one of the last chapters the most interesting because the authors discuss future trends and technical developments in space and air power.  It is here that we see an increasing convergence of futuristic aircraft and UFO design.  One cannot say whether this is the result of reverse engineering of alien craft, or perhaps because the universal laws of physics oblige both human and alien aerodynamic engineers to follow the same lines of thought and design parameters.  Nevertheless the points of technical similarity are interesting and should be obvious to UFO enthusiasts.
The authors suggest that in future unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be carried aboard and launched from larger aircraft, somewhat like flying aircraft-carriers or mother-ships.  Directed energy weapons will become commonplace, as will improved stealth capabilities.  UCAVs will be developed that can fly at hypersonic speeds (more than Mach 5), but which can also loiter in reconnaissance mode at between fifty and one hundred thousand feet.  Increased UCAV manoeuvrability will be necessary.  Without pilots, such craft will be free to reach acceleration speeds well beyond the tolerance limits of even the toughest humans.
Symmetrical designs will enable UAV to accelerate immediately out of harm's way in any direction.  And speaking of futuristic aircraft design in general, the authors also claim that developments in human-machine interaction and lightweight materials will be important.  While this makes it sound as if the authors of Robot Warriors got many of their ideas from reading UFO books, there are also many other suggestion that do not seem relevant to the debate about whether some UFOs are of human or alien construction.  Nevertheless this is an interesting, informative, colourful book for those UFO readers with a technical interest in futuristic aircraft design.  

The Oz Factor … Contact Through Human Consciousness? - PART 5

Flying Saucers & Sonic Booms

By Simon Harvey-Wilson

One of the most puzzling technical questions about UFOs is why they do not appear to make a sonic boom when they break the sound barrier.  A sonic boom is caused when any normal flying object, even a meteor, starts to move faster than the speed of sound.  The speed of sound varies with altitude, humidity, temperature and pressure.  At sea level under normal conditions the speed of sound is 1,220 kilometres per hour (760mph), but because the earth's atmosphere gets thinner the higher you fly, at 10,000 metres above the ground it is only 1,080 kilometres per hour.  Something is therefore said to be breaking the sound barrier or flying at supersonic speed, when it flies above the speed of sound for the prevailing conditions.  An aircraft flying at that speed is said to be flying at Mach 1.  Saying that a jet fighter is capable of flying at Mach 3 means that it can fly at three times the speed of sound (about 3,240 k /h). 
With advancing technology aircraft designers are now starting to talk about 'hypersonic' flight speeds which refers to speeds above five times the speed of sound or Mach 5 (about 5,400 k/h).

Sound and air pressure are both transmitted through the atmosphere by air
molecules bumping into each other like rows of billiard balls.  As a subsonic craft, doing less than the speed of sound, moves through the air it sets up a field of air pressure that informs the air in front of it to get out of the way.  This forewarning travels ahead of the aircraft at the speed of sound.  But once the craft itself reaches the speed of sound, it catches up with its own air pressure bow wave.  This creates a shock wave of sound and pressure shaped like a large sideways cone that moves parallel to the ground with the plane at its apex.  The lower part of this conical shock front leaves a swathe of noise and air pressure that moves along the ground behind the aircraft.  This sonic boom
causes windows to rattle or break and makes a loud disturbing noise.

The legal ramifications of the extensive noise and repeated window damage that would be left in its wake is the major reason that the world's only supersonic passenger aircraft, the Concorde, is generally restricted to flying
across the Atlantic on the London–New York route.  There are no windows beneath to worry about.  While over built-up areas, Concorde has to fly subsonic which makes flying on it rather pointless.  This sonic boom problem is one reason no modern supersonic replacement has been built for Concorde.
With the enormous growth in modern air travel, any aerospace company that builds a supersonic passenger plane that does not make a sonic boom will probably make buckets of money.  It is interesting to speculate as to why this has not yet been done given that UFOs are reported to have been flying around silently at supersonic speeds for at least fifty years.

In an article on UFO propulsion theories, nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman writes that: "Substantial research, much of it classified, has been done showing that a magneto-aerodynamic (MAD) system would be capable of solving all the problems of high speed flight by controlling lift, drag, heating and sonic boom production – all electromagnetically rather than mechanically or chemically.  The system would be symmetric, highly manoeuvrable, relatively silent, would often have a surrounding glow, and would be capable of sudden starts and stops."  Unfortunately he then tells us that research on MAD propulsion systems is classified because they have some relevance to the flight aerodynamics of ballistic missiles.

In his book Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis the late Paul R. Hill, who spent his working life as a rocket scientist at NASA's Langley Research Centre in the USA, devotes two detailed chapters to an analysis of why UFOs can break the sound barrier without making a sonic boom or overheating.
Hill points out that with regard to sonic booms, in supersonic flight the air ahead of an aircraft does not know that the craft is coming whereas in subsonic flight it does.  In other words, once the speed of forewarning the air in front of the plane becomes slower than the actual speed of the aircraft, you have a problem.  The solution is simple.  If you are flying faster than the speed of sound, you have to transmit the information that you are coming to the air ahead of the craft at a speed that is also faster than the speed of sound.  This gives the air time to get out of the way, thus helping prevent a noisy shock wave.  How can this achieved?

Hill claims that UFOs radiate a force field a short distance ahead of the craft that is capable of repelling air molecules.  This force field travels at the speed of light and is therefore easily able to stay ahead of the craft even at hypersonic speeds.  By giving the air sufficient prior warning to get out of the way, no bow shock wave is created no matter how fast the UFO is flying.  Hill even points out that rain, small bugs, dust and sand particles would be repelled by this field and would flow around the craft instead of hitting it.  The UFO would not even need windscreen wipers he claims.
However that is not the complete solution.  The shape and length of a plane affects what sort of shock wave it creates as it breaks the sound barrier.  Some long planes make two sonic booms, one from the front and one from the back.  This distinctive double bang is well known to those watching NASA's Space Shuttle as it prepares to land after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.  Coupled with this is the problem of aerodynamic drag and the overheating of a craft as a result of being buffeted by the atmosphere as it increases speed.  The outside surfaces of the Space Shuttle for example "reach a blinding-white heat, of the order of 1,300 degrees centigrade" on re-entering the earth's atmosphere (Hill, p.208).  To attempt to counteract these problems, most supersonic aircraft are long and thin with sharp points at the front, yet the average UFO is saucer shaped, which would seem to be a highly unsuitable shape to minimise overheating and aerodynamic drag.

To solve these additional problems Paul Hill produces pages of calculations to show that in addition to putting a repulsive force field facing its direction of travel, UFOs would need to put another repulsive field at the back.  To put it simply, any air that meets the UFO in supersonic flight would be repelled sideways from the front, sucked along the sides and then pushed away from  the back.  This has the amazing result of enabling the UFO to fly with no wind resistance, no turbulence, and no sonic boom.  It also gives the UFO's propulsion system a higher level of energy efficiency and helps explain why these craft come in so many unaerodynamic shapes.

The last benefit of UFO airflow-control force fields that Paul Hill discusses is of "aerodynamic heating" (p.208).  Hill's calculations suggest that by diverting the atmosphere from the front of the moving craft, allowing it to flow along the sides and then pushing it away from the back, no thermal energy is imparted to the UFO's surface.  Not only does this prevent the UFO from heating up, but Hill suspects that the opposite may be the case.  He claims that air repelled from the front of the UFO will experience "a big pressure drop" causing it to expand and drop in temperature as it goes along the sides of the craft (p.326).  "The temperature gets so low that even with boundary-layer friction the air at the UFO surface is below ambient atmospheric temperature …. Under these circumstances, the UFO is cooled at various flight speeds, not heated. 
This would be true at any speed for which the UFO can maintain the high field
strengths needed." (p.326) There have been a few UFO close encounters where
evidence suggests that the UFO somehow significantly cooled the surrounding area.  I recall a case where a witness who had seen strange lights at night while returning home from driving in the country, was unsure whether he had had a close encounter or not.  What he did know was that a water bottle that had been in his vehicle was frozen solid when he got home later that night.  This was very puzzling because the weather was warm, so what he wondered had frozen
the water in the bottle?  Paul Hill's calculations about aerodynamic heating and
cooling may have provided an answer.  "In a surprise fallout it was found by
this theory that if a UFO left such an air-control mechanism turned on while
hovering low over water, air temperatures near the machine could get cold enough to create ice" (p.327).
If these well informed calculations about UFO aerodynamics are currently available in the public domain from a NASA scientist, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that the United States military has known about the matter for years and has probably had time to conduct the appropriate experiments and test fly various prototypes of their own versions of this technology.  If this is the case, one wonders for how much longer air travellers are going to have to endure the tedium, cost and inconvenience of travel by outdated subsonic passenger jets.

References
Friedman, Stanton T.  (1980)  UFO Propulsion Theories.  The Encyclopedia of UFOs.  Ronald D. Story (editor),  pp.281-284.

Hill, Paul R.  (1995)  Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis.
Scott, Andrew.  (1990)  Acoustics.  The Guinness Encyclopedia,  p.31 

Western Australian Sightings With Overseas Observations
Compiled by Brian Richards

It seems that the enigmatic flying triangles won't go away.  They continue to be seen in many parts of the world often flying very low, silently, and at speeds that would stall a conventional aircraft.  Lights are often observed at each point and beneath the craft.  Sometimes a beam of light from the triangle scans the sky above, or the ground below.  Witnesses have been filled with mixed emotions.  Are these alien craft keeping one step ahead of our own technology, or at least appearing to?  Such claims were made when alluding to the great airship flap across the United States from November 1896 to April 1897, when
scores of intelligently controlled 'dirigibles', more often than not flying against the wind, caused much concern and fiery debate fuelled by the popular press of the day.

If the flying triangles of today are our own secret advanced technology, then the secret is out.  Flying such test aircraft over heavily populated areas would
risk a mishap.  The repercussions from such an accident would be hard to contemplate.  No such incident has yet been reported.  If these craft are so safe as to be accident proof, then a really advanced propulsion system is being operated – so advanced in fact that further manufacture of conventional aircraft should be stopped immediately.  This cutting edge technology must be introduced now for the benefit of all.  But don't hold your breath!
Peru is in the throes of a UFO flap.  Hundreds of reports are coming in from all over the country and UFO buffs everywhere are trying to secure the videos which show numerous flying objects.  Thanks to Mike Farrell, director of Project GUFONE '99 for the following reports which are just a few of the many compiled:

Wednesday 3rd March 1999.  For forty minutes, five glowing discs flew over Lima, the capital city of Peru.  Two OVNIs (objeto volante no identificado: the Spanish acronym for UFOs) flew off by themselves and performed manoeuvres whilst the remaining three darted away to the east.  Home videos taken of the overflight were broadcast on Canal (Channel) 2 Television Frequencia Latina following the incident.

Tuesday 2nd March 1999, 6.30pm.  Two OVNIs flew over Pucallpa in the Amazon, 600km north-east of Lima.  "Plenty of witnesses saw them cleave through the cloudy sky", Alfredo Mendiola reported.  "They were bright enough to shine through the mists.  In the sector of the city, they appeared as a bright dot.  Others reported seeing the light change colour from white to yellow, red and blue."
Home videos were aired on the local TV station in Pucallpa.  "The video showed an object in the form of a spinning and humming top with a surrounding light (aura) and clear brown colour tones. 
Another showed a cone with a point coming to a rise.  A helicopter of the Policia Aeria tried to chase the OVNIs, but the pilots lost radio contact with the ground, which seems impossible because they have high frequency radios."

Towards the end of February in Andacolla in the Neuquen district south of Lima, residents watched glowing UFOs "that moved in a zigzag.  We watched them cross the sky with lights in the front.  There was also another OVNI like a great luminosity that pulsated as well."  In Lindera, 440km south of Arequipa near Peru's border with Chile, local residents were astonished to find several crop circles in a field of wheat.  The crop circles were described as 'tripods' (three circles joined by straight lines).  There were sections of the circles where the grain was squashed flat but not broken.

Six UFOs Seen By Hundreds Near Monterrey, Mexico. 
Sunday 28th February 1999.  Canal (Channel) 12 of the city of Monterrey, (924km north of Mexico city) in Coafiuila state, aired home video of six UFOs flying over the La husteca section of the city, heading for Las Pampas mountain.  Hundreds reported the overflight which lasted several minutes.  The video showed six luminous triangular objects flying westward in formation, with the camcorder focus set on 'zoom'.  (Thanks to Marco Reinoso Ballesteros y Guillermo Alarcon for this report).

Flying objects of the unidentified kind remain a fascinating area of study, but such studies remain forever shallow because of the very elusive nature of the objects.  UFO experts there are not, but UFO case study experts there are. 
What is generating much interest at this time are the accounts/experiences of ordinary people, or personal contact experiences (PCEs).  Brave individuals are
coming forward without fear or favour, and recounting extraordinary stories of personal interaction with unknown life-forms or 'energies'.  The events are often recalled without hypnosis and invoke fear and loathing, love and adoration, confusion – a whole range of emotions.  To get regular reports of such accounts, e-mail 'Citizens Against UFO Secrecy' in the USA at: CAUSupdate@caus.org  or go to their website:  http://caus.org/feedback.htm

WA SIGHTINGS UPDATE

There are no earth-shattering sightings to report, but there are some interesting ones.  Accounts are down on previous years, but February 1999 appears to have been a busy month.  I was diving on the Pandora (1791) wreck in far-north Queensland for the four weeks, so thanks to Mike Jordan for dealing with the all-hours phone calls and compiling February's report.

26th February 1999, 8.10am.  Jeremy phoned from Albany to say that he was travelling to Mt Barker on the previous night with his brother, when at about 9.15pm they saw a white light with smaller white lights appearing to move around it up and down like a yoyo.  The sighting lasted from ten to fifteen seconds.

21st February 1999, 8.45pm.  Eric of Mirrabooka reported seeing a bright flash of white light with a blue afterglow, followed by another such display.  He said they were like sheet lightning, but there was a clear sky and no clouds anywhere.  There were four other witnesses with him.

19th February 1999, 9.45pm.  A man (a farmer) rang, but did not leave his name.  (Judith took the call because I was at a meeting).  He said that, as he was returning to York, he saw a strange white and red light which came closer and he saw it pick up another car.  He would not give details to Judith but said he would ring me in the morning.  He did not call.

16th February 1999, 3.10pm.  Phillip of Booragoon said he and his wife had seen two white lights moving across the sky about 7.55pm.

15th February 1999, 8.15pm.  Tania of Rockingham phoned to say she and two other witnesses had seen two white lights moving at the same time (not parallel), travelling south at about 8pm.  She said they were not planes, and had no coloured lights and no noise.  Larger than stars, they moved in different directions across the sky.

13th February 1999, 7.20pm.  Colin of Wilson (not Colin Wilson!) said that he and his wife were lying on their trampoline looking at the stars, when a bright light approached and then turned on its side revealing a huge box-shaped or "it could have been a triangular shaped craft."  It then shot up into the sky at great speed.  He said he was a sceptic and didn't believe in UFOs, but was now re-thinking his situation.

11th February 1999, 10.45am.  A woman phoned to say that at 1am the previous night she was putting her sewing away, her husband and child were asleep, when an object making a very loud whooshing sound passed very close over her house.  She said the sound lasted for a few seconds, it was definitely not a plane or helicopter and left her shaking and unable to sleep for a few hours.  I did not catch or recognise the name of her location, but she was north of Perth.

11th February 1999, 10.12am.  Richard, a social science graduate, was fishing in a dam nearly 200km north-east of Perth when he and friends saw a blended white and red light stopping and zigzagging for approximately two minutes.  The blurred reflections of the light could be seen in the dam.

11th February 1999, 5.05am.  Brian D called from his mobile phone from approximately 100km north of New Norcia.  He and his family were travelling from the North-West by car.  He reported that they saw a white light behaving in an erratic flight pattern before disappearing.  Then a large red glowing light was seen in the bush.  There was no noise and it was not a plane or helicopter.  Brian said they were listening to the ABC Radio and their brief news bulletin reported the sightings of UFOs over WA.

Thursday 21st January 1999, 2–3am.  Casuarina, WA.  A man, Jason L, reported hearing a humming sound, a low drone.  Utensils were rattling in the kitchen.  The witness went outside the house and noticed a very bright light to the NNW at about sixty degrees.  This object was moving about in a zigzag fashion and appeared to be spinning.  Two other star-like objects appeared, one either side of the larger one which allegedly shone a laser-type beam to each of the smaller lights.  At this time Jason reported their microwave oven was arcing, the radio and stereo were affected, as was the power supply to the house.  Jason also claimed beams were being shone into the house, which he avoided.  I suggested this may have been light from the bright stars Regulus or Capella, but this does not account for the erratic aerial manoeuvring, or the humming noise.

Tuesday 12th January 1999, midday.  Denmark, WA.  A man, Roger C, reported seeing twenty-five or thirty dark objects moving east to west over the sea at twenty-five to thirty degrees.  The objects appeared to stop at one stage before moving on.  The witness was adamant they were not birds.

Friday 25th December 1998, 9.30pm.  Rockingham, WA.  Four witnesses were watching Jupiter in close proximity to a new moon.  A very bright object appeared about one hand-span (at arm's length) to the left of the moon, flashed three times, then headed south very rapidly.

Monday 21st December 1998, 11.40am.  Belmont, WA.  Fred H and his daughter had just left Bott's Chemist when they saw a very bright white metallic object moving slowly from SW to NE.  It appeared to be very high up and shaped like a round ice-cream container surrounded by a dark aura or haze.  The duration of the sighting was six minutes.

Friday 18th December 1998, 10pm.  Richard G was looking north from Leederville, WA, and watched three star-like objects in the shape of a triangle move from east to west at about forty-five degrees.  The leading light was red and the trailing two were white.

Tuesday 15th–Wed 16th December 1998, 8pm–1am.  Mr Brian K of Karrinyup, WA, reported his son's sighting from Busselton, WA.  Apparently Chad K and a friend watched six star-like objects in the north-west sky perform unusual aerial manoeuvres, zigzagging and jumping about, for over five hours.  What appeared to be the same objects repeated the performance the following night (16th Dec).  Chad, who is an amateur astronomer,  watched the objects through a telescope.  They appeared to be triangular.

Sunday 13th December 1998, 1.05am.  Dianella, WA.  A man reported seeing a bright white fireball with no tail pass silently overhead from the NNE to the SSW.

Friday 4th December 1998, 9pm.  Mullaloo, WA.  Shane and two other witnesses reported an unusual 'incident' which started at 9pm and went on for some time.  A small red light was seen moving about sideways and up and down over the ocean to the west.  It also moved in close towards the beach.  A hovering helicopter had a light on the object which itself had revolving red and blue flashing lights and was disc shaped.  A jet plane was also seen flying about over the sea.  The totally silent object came in over the beach and was in the dunes for about two minutes and simply disappeared.

Friday 4th December 1998, 9.30pm.  City Beach, WA.  This sighting was reported in the Sunday Times newspaper through UFORUM, witnessed by Caspar F and a girlfriend.  A huge mid-grey triangle flew over the witnesses from the north-west, heading south-east before turning east.  Underneath the object were about twelve rectangular red lights parallel to the rear edge.  The leading part of the craft or apex was illuminated by a very bright whitish yellow light.  A low droning sound was heard.  The witnesses calculated its height as between 200–300ft.  It was travelling so slowly that a conventional aircraft would have been unable to remain airborne.

Friday 4th December 1998, 9.45pm.  Safety Bay, Rockingham, WA.  Helen S was looking north.  Travelling from west to east at about forty-five degrees, were three 'stars' in a triangular formation.  No sound was heard.  The objects were about a hand-span apart, and the formation "shaped like a Vulcan bomber."  There was cloud about, but the witness said the formation flew under the cloud and "just disappeared."

Saturday 14th November 1998.  A lady, Pamela of Kiara, near Beechboro, WA, inquired about our group, ASPR/UFORUM.  After a while she told how from the age of two, her son, now four, would talk about strange beings with whom he would interact, usually at two or three in the morning.  He described them as tall and skinny with big eyes, large hairless heads, thin arms, small mouths and holes for ears and nostrils.  They were a greyish blue colour and would regularly take him to 'the airport' where he would be introduced to a little girl with blonde hair.  He has suffered nose bleeds, is a high achiever and is never sick.  On the 14th November 1998, the family reported an orange light going overhead.  The little boy was clearly disturbed by the sighting and kept pointing and staring skywards for a long time afterwards.

At the time of this sightings report going to press, a very unusual story is circulating about an alleged UFO crash in Western Australia.  So much interest is being generated by the claim that even our conservative West Australian newspaper ran a feature about it on Saturday 20th March 1999. 
This report is reproduced in full.  You can draw your own conclusions.  However, the claim should be treated with suspicion, or at least healthy scepticism until more evidence is forthcoming.  One would ask the following questions.  How did Margie Parker know of the crashed UFO, or make contact with the aliens?  How did they communicate their needs?  Would advanced extraterrestrial beings be able to use our welding equipment on their (supposedly) alien alloys, and how would they know of such equipment?  Would it not be correct to assume that the aliens would have a contingency plan in place for recovery in the event of such an emergency crash landing, or at the least a homing device?
Surely NORAD, possibly Pine Gap, Nurrungar, and /or the Exmouth facility in WA, and a number of other high-tech 'monitoring agencies' would have detected the UFO entering our atmosphere and been aware of its demise.  This would have created another Roswell, with the area being cordoned off, swarming with military and recovery teams, and a cover story being issued.  Whether this case turns out to be genuine, a hoax, or something else, I hope that the credibility of ufology is not too damaged.  Time will tell. 

UFO RESCUER HUNTS TWILIGHT ZONE SQUAD
Sydney.  By Steve Pennells.
The truth is out there ... apparently somewhere between Kalgoorlie and the South Australian border.  A $50,000 rescue mission has started for three stranded aliens and their 2km-wide spacecraft which allegedly crash-landed on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.

Sydney woman Margie Parker flew to Kalgoorlie this week to organise a team
of experts to find the stricken UFO.  She claims that the extraterrestrials were
off-planet engineers who experienced mechanical problems while flying over WA and had to make an emergency landing in the middle of the Nullarbor, about 160km north of Haig.
She will not say how she knows about the spacecraft but says the aliens want help to repair it so they can leave the planet quickly.  The extraterrestrials apparently need a welder, water and lifting gear.  Ms Parker's plan is to get to the stricken spaceship and have her rescue team help the aliens carry out repair work.  Offers of help have flooded in from interstate and overseas.  One United States benefactor is offering $32,000.

Ms Parker contacted the UFO National Hotline in Melbourne to set up the rescue.  "We put her automatically in our 'fruit-cake' category but she is very insistent," the hotline's Ross Dowe said yesterday.  "It is not usual for us to make an expedition like this.  I don't think that we have ever been commissioned or paid to look for flying saucers before.  No doubt, it will be a real eye-opener if something is really there."
Ms Parker has commissioned a team of geologists, including a Perth expert.  She was meant to meet him on her arrival at Perth Airport on Wednesday night.  She was booked on an evening flight but did not make the meeting.  She has reportedly begun setting up a rescue team in Kalgoorlie and has approached air charter companies to fly her to the remote location.  Kalgoorlie police also have been asked to help.  Kalgoorlie police Sgt John Hall said he had not received any report of stranded aliens.
(Article from The West Australian, Sat., 20/3/99, p.3)

ASPR/UFORUM's Western Australian UFO Sightings
& Reporting Centre can be reached on (08) 9337 1638 

Technology Update
By Simon Harvey-Wilson

Implants are small objects thought to have been put into the bodies of UFO abductees by aliens.  In the 1997 edition of this journal, Mike Jordan discussed some of the pros and cons of this puzzling subject (Jordan, p.18).  The first problem in conducting research into implants is actually finding them in the human body.  X-rays have generally been used in this regard.  The second problem is trying to work out what the implant is, once it has been found and/or surgically removed.  It can be very hard to tell the difference between a small piece of metal that may have lodged in someone's body as a result of military service, a childhood, car or industrial accident, and a device that may have been surgically implanted for a specific reason.
The third problem compounds the second.  Once you think you have found an implant, and perhaps even worked out what it was designed to do, how can you be sure who put it there?  Obviously a device implanted by aliens might be so advanced that modern scientific analysis is unable to determine its function.  A very sophisticated device might even be designed to look as if it does one thing, when in fact it does another.  Given that some of today's intelligence services probably have numerous sophisticated devices that are unknown to the public, one can see how merely finding, removing and studying a so-called implant is quite a different matter from proving that it was put there by aliens.
Just to make things even more confusing, an article in the MUFON UFO Journal entitled 'New Microchip Human Implants Designed to Locate Kidnap Victims' tells us that a company called Gen-Etics, which is based in Milan, has patented a tiny microchip which, once implanted in the body, can be used to locate that person via satellite to within less than one hundred and fifty metres.  The device is being marketed in Italy because of that country's serious kidnapping problem.  The Sky-Eye chip, as it is called, costs nine thousand US dollars and was originally developed by Israeli intelligence.  Made out of "synthetic and organic fibre", it is invisible to x-rays and, by using a small amount of energy from the body, can be tracked using the Global Positioning System.
If this report is true, one wonders why alien implants are not also invisible to x-rays.  Does this imply that they are probably human inventions, or does their function, whatever it is, require them to be constructed out of metallic compounds?  It has often been speculated that alien implants are tracking devices, but this was thought to be unlikely because the only comparable human inventions that we knew about were small metallic implants, mainly used to identify pets, that could only be read with a scanner held less than a metre from the animal.  Now that human designed implants can be detected by satellite, should we perhaps speculate that at least some of what were thought to be alien implants are actually manufactured here on earth?

References
Johnston, Bruce.  (1998, Tuesday, October 6)  Microchip implants to foil VIP kidnaps.  Electronic Telegraph.  International summary, Issue 1229.  www.telegraph.co.uk
Jordan, Michael  (1997)  Implants: More red herrings?  Journal of Alternative Realities.  Vol.5, Issue 1, p.18.
New microchip human implants designed to locate kidnap victims.  (1998, November)  MUFON UFO Journal.  No.367, p.7. 

Element 114.   A short article in the 1996 edition of this journal discussed Bob Lazar's 1989 claim that an alien UFO in the possession of the US government used either element 114 or 115 as its fuel source.  It pointed out that in February 1996, scientists in Germany had briefly managed to synthesise one atom of element 112, which had survived for no longer than one thousandth of a second, and speculated that we might not have to wait long before someone managed to create either element 114 or 115 so that we could see whether its properties were as amazing as Lazar had claimed.
It now appears that the wait may be almost over.  In January 1999 an unofficial report from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna in Russia, claimed that an eighteen member team under the leadership of Dr Yuri Oganessian, assisted by five American physicists from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, had succeeded in creating one atom of element 114 which had survived for the remarkable time of thirty seconds.  (Other reports claimed thirty minutes which would be even more remarkable.)  To do this they had spent four months bombarding a rare isotope of plutonium with a rare isotope of calcium in the hope that the two would fuse together at least once to create the sought after new element.  To confirm these results, other labs in the US and Germany will attempt to duplicate the experiment.

One might think that an element that only takes thirty seconds (or minutes for that matter) to decay would not be of much use to anyone, however it has long been speculated by physicists that somewhere around element 115 there exists an 'island of stability' of fairly stable ultra-heavy elements with properties not previously available from lighter artificial elements.  Whether this includes the property of having its strong nuclear force (that normally holds the sub-atomic particles in the atom's nucleus together) extend beyond the edge of the nucleus so that it might be available for amplification is yet to be discovered.  Lazar claimed that the substance that he studied while secretly working for the US government was so stable and had such a powerful strong nuclear force that it could be amplified to behave like 'gravity waves' that would distort spacetime enough to enable such a craft to cross the vast distances of space in a relatively short time.
We may now be on the verge of discovering if Lazar was telling the truth.  However one might speculate that if scientists did discover that this new element, or the next most heavy one, does have the properties claimed by Lazar, they may not be permitted to tell us.

References
Browne, Malcom W.  (1999, Friday, January 29)  US-Russian team may have created ultra-heavy element.  New York Times.

Daley, J. P.  (1999, February)  Evaluation of a gravitational propulsion system.  MUFON UFO Journal, No.370, p.10.
Harvey-Wilson, Simon.  (1996, March)  UFO propulsion and element 115.  Journal of Alternative Realities.  Vol.4, Issue 1, p.14.
Seife, Charles  (1999, January 30)  The heaviest element of them all.  New Scientist  No.2171, p.14.
Loveland, Walter & Seaborg, Glenn.  (1991, August 31)  The search for the missing elements.  New Scientist.  No.1784, p.25.

Animal Mutilations & Laser Surgery.
For several years now it has been speculated that the sophisticated 'surgery' found to have been inflicted on dead animals in various parts of the US was probably the work of aliens.  Two main reasons were put forward for this.  Firstly, farmers and ranchers had reported seeing strange lights or craft in the vicinity not long before finding the dead animal(s).  Secondly, the precision and nature of the wounds on the animals suggested that they were done in situ with very high-tech laser instruments that were thought to be more advanced that anything possessed by modern medical technology.  In retrospect, we should perhaps have known better.
In the last chapter of his book Underground Bases and Tunnels (reviewed elsewhere in this journal) Dr Richard Sauder discusses whether the US military might be involved in these animal mutilations.  The cause of his suspicion is a United States Air Force Material Command fact sheet that he has reprinted in his book with permission from Phillips Laboratory, Office of Public Affairs, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico (p.122 & illustration 49).  Entitled 'LASER MEDICAL PAC', it describes a very compact device being developed in the Phillips Laboratory which, "provides the field paramedic or physician a unique, portable and battery-operated laser capability.  The laser is able to cut like a scalpel, as well as coagulate bleeding, and close wounds."  Small enough to be attached to the waist, the laser device measures about eighteen by eight by six centimetres, which is about the size of a transistor radio.  "Laser energy is delivered to the instrument by a fibre-optic cable, the fibre providing very intense power density at the tip of the instrument.  The output wavelength, which ranges from visible to mid-infrared, can be designed to provide different tissue interactions."  The device can run for twenty minutes using two 2-volt batteries for the laser, and a 9-volt battery for its electronics.  For those interested in the technical details the fact sheet claims that "the light at the end of the fibre is very intense (one kilowatt per square centimetre)."
As it is probable that special forces troops operating on behalf of the US government had access to such laser devices for some time before the technical details were made public, UFO researchers should perhaps now look more closely at the possibility that at least some animal mutilations have been being carried out by humans rather than aliens.

Reference
Sauder, Richard.  (1995)  Underground Bases and Tunnels. What is the Government Trying to Hide? (see book review on page 38)