If you’ve heard of the Black Eyed Children, then you’ll also know they are both creepy and not quite human. Hence the name, of course. There are some things about the BEC that you may not know. First, there’s the matter of mind-control. “Martin,” who lives just outside of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, had an encounter with the BEC in March 2011, and who I was able to interview personally just a few weeks after his experience. Martin was at home when he had just about the worst encounter possible. Around 8:30 p.m., there was that knock on the door, the kind of which so many witnesses to the BEC have now experienced, but surely wished they hadn’t. Martin didn’t even bother looking through the spy-hole: he assumed it was his immediate neighbor, Rex, who took in any packages that might have been left on Martin’s doorstep while he was away. Sadly for Martin, as he opened the door, he instantly realized it was not Rex.

Martin got the shock of his life when he was confronted by a boy and a girl – both around eleven or twelve years of age and with large, black, eerie-looking eyes. The girl was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black top, while the boy had the almost-ubiquitous black hoodie. Both looked sickly and scrawny and is if they needed a hearty meal in them. Little did Martin know that this was exactly what they were there for. Hardly a fan of the supernatural, Martin had never heard of the BEC phenomenon and could only stand and stare at their curious faces, assuming at first that this was some kind of joke. But, the Black-Eyed Children were certainly not laughing. They stood together, hand in hand, looking at Martin with expressions on their faces that were, paradoxically, lacking in emotion but which also gave off airs of highly charged malevolence.

(Nick Redfern)

Kids to keep away from

Echoing Brian Bethel’s famous encounter back in the 1990s, Martin said that when the girl said they were homeless and needed something to eat, it all seemed very much like a ruse – as if they had spoken the words time and time again. It was like a carefully-crafted scheme on their part. Most disturbing of all, for a few moments Martin felt transfixed – almost hypnotized – by those large, black eyes. Indeed, he told me that he could not understand why he did not quickly shut the door at the sight of those terrible eyes. Martin could only say that it was if he was somehow being prevented from shutting the door on the pair. Finally, though, he was able to get rid of the pair and slammed the door. One might be justified in saying Martin had been placed in a state of full-blown mind-control.

Now, onto the matter of Shape-Shifting. “Anna” is a resident of none other than Point Pleasant, West Virginia – the infamous locale where, in 1966, the notorious, blazing-eyed Mothman first surfaced, and which was made legendary in John Keel’s classic book, The Mothman Prophecies. As Anna revealed to me when I was at Point Pleasant in 2014 – to speak at the annual Mothman Festival – back in October 2012 she had a strange and frightening encounter with a pair of Black-Eyed Children, late one Saturday night. Anna, a shift-worker at a local factory, was spending her night relaxing and watching television, after a hard day of work. Sometime around 11:10 p.m., there was a knock at the door. Do I need to tell you who had just arrived?

(Nick Redfern)

Beware of the BEC

Anna warily went to the door, and peered through the spy-hole. She couldn’t fail to see the two boys, standing next to each other, and both wearing the familiar black hoodies. She shouted through the door, asking what they wanted. When she got no answer, Anna put the chain on the door and opened it. When Anna saw the boys, she was frozen with terror: both had the ubiquitous black eyes, and both had skin the color of milk. “We need food,” said one, in an almost robotic fashion, while looking at his feet. Things got worse: the “children” mutated into something terrible. As Anna continued to stare at them – locked into a state of terror – something almost unimaginable happened: an eerie green glow surrounded the boys and, in seconds, they were replaced by a pair of what Anna described as large, upright lizards. The monstrous pair stood around eight feet tall and had long, protruding jaws filled with razor-sharp teeth. They did nothing but stand there, for around twenty seconds or so, after which, Anna explained, the outside porch was enveloped in blackness and they vanished from view. Her first thought was to call the local police. But, she felt – almost certainly correctly – that filing such an incident with law-enforcement officials would very likely cause her even more problems. Instead, she quickly packed a bag, carefully opened the door, raced to her car, and spent the next three days staying at her mother’s place, just over the Ohio River. It was the end of a shocking and unforgettable incident. If you, too, get a late-night knock at the door, be very, very careful.

(Nick Redfern)

Black-Eyed Children at the land of Mothman?

“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.”
‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley

The opening paragraph of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ introduces the Central London Hatchery where fetuses are engineered and nurtured in artificial wombs. Published in 1932, the fictional dystopian world has crept slowly towards reality. This week, it took a big leap with the announcement that scientists in China have developed an artificial womb to contain a fetus and an AI robotic nanny to monitor and care for it. How did that novel end?

Is this the new nursery?

“The in vitro embryo culture online monitoring system developed in this paper can track and record the morphological characteristics of the development process without affecting the embryo development, and provide a basis for the evaluation of embryo development and the optimization of the in vitro culture system.”

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports on the release of a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering by from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology touting the development of an artificial womb-and-nanny combo they claim is already caring for mouse fetuses in their lab. The “long-term embryo culture device” sounds like something out of an old horror movie – a system of clear fluid containers with controllers and oxygen tanks underneath a magnifier which allows the AI nanny and the researchers to watch the embryo grow. (See a drawing here.)

Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology

The technology could eliminate the need for a woman to carry her baby, allowing the fetus to grow more safely and efficiently outside her body, say researchers behind project.

Photo: Shutterstock

The AI nanny collects data and, according to India Times, can even rank the embryos on overall health and potential. Yes, that sounds like it’s right out of ‘Brave New World’.

“(This technology will) not only help further understand the origin of life and embryonic development of humans, but also provide a theoretical basis for solving birth defects and other major reproductive health problems.”

All of this comes from a country with a drastically declining birth rate that hasn’t responded to the end to limits on the number of children a couple can have. this is also a country which has banned surrogate mothers of the human kind. It’s also a country which ignores the laws and ethical agreements of other countries which limit research on human embryos to 14 days before they are destroyed.

Do you need some Soma (the happiness-producing drug of ‘Brave New World’)? Is this the beginning of a real brave new world of artificially ‘hatched’ babies? Are there plans for childhood indoctrination programs, well-defined castes based on intelligence and physical abilities, and training programs specifically designed for each? Does it sound dystopian anymore?

Is this the new day care center?

Think about the trauma being wrought upon many people who send their DNA to be tested and find they were not raised by their real parents/sperm-and-egg-donors, or that their father was a serial sperm donor or their birth mother was a surrogate. Now imagine that person being the product of a “long-term embryo culture device.” If it works, will these children become the norm and the rest become the “savages”?

How did ‘Brave New World’ end?

“The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; the suddenly remembered – everything. “Oh, my God, my God!” He covered his eyes with his hands.”

Are we going to cover our eyes too?

Or is it too late?

Scientists have officially confirmed that there is a second Trojan asteroid accompanying our planet and it is much larger than the first. Additionally, it will continue to share our orbit for at least 4,000 years before traveling away from us.

The asteroid, which has been named 2020 XL5, was initially discovered by astronomers in 2020, but further research needed to be conducted before officially confirming it, which they have just done. It orbits along the same path as our planet. Trojan asteroids are small space rocks that travel along the same stable orbit as a planet as it travels around its host star. Earth already has one previously confirmed Trojan asteroid named 2010 TK7.

2010 TK7 has a green circle around it.

(Via Wikipedia)

After 2020 XL5 was first detected by astronomers with the Pan-STARRS 1 survey telescope in Hawaii, an amateur astronomer named Tony Dunn calculated its trajectory and confirmed that it orbits L4 (this is the 4th Earth-sun Lagrange point which is an area around our planet and sun). Interestingly, the first confirmed Trojan asteroid, 2010 TK7, orbits at L4 as well.

While the researchers at that time did not have conclusive evidence of how 2020 XL5 orbited around our sun, a team that was led by Toni Santana-Ros, who is a researcher at the University of Alicante and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) at the University of Barcelona (IEEC-UB), observed the space object with the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) Telescope in Chile, as well as the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona, and the European Space Agency’s Optical Ground Station in Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

Their extensive analysis of the space rock conclusively confirmed that it was in fact an Earth Trojan asteroid. Furthermore, it is believed that it is a C-type of asteroid which is black in color and contains a high level of carbon. And they are the most common type of asteroid found in our Solar System. 2020 XL5 is quite a bit larger than 2010 TK7. While 2020 XL5 measures 0.73 miles across (1.2 kilometers), the much smaller 2010 TK7 is only 0.25 miles in width (0.4 kilometers).

(Not 2020 XL5 or 2010 TK7)

According to a statement, 2020 XL5 will only be around for about 4,000 years before traveling on its way. So, that means that 2010 TK7 will eventually be left all alone, right? Not necessarily, as there may be even more Earth Trojan asteroids that have yet to be discovered as Santana-Ros told Space.com, “The discovery of 2020 XL5 as an Earth Trojan, confirms that 2010 TK7 is not a rare exception and that there are probably more,” adding, “This encourages us to keep enhancing our survey strategies to find, if exists, the first primordial Earth Trojan.”

Their findings were published in the journal Nature.

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More than 18,000 sherds (also called ostraca), which are jars and vessels that were used to write on approximately 2,000 years ago, were discovered by Egyptologists in ancient Athribis, Egypt. Ancient sherds were a very popular way to write information down by adding ink to a reed or a hollow stick named a calamus.

These sherds that were recently discovered were used to write down lists of names, food purchases, and other bought items. They were also used in schools where children would write down numbers, months, arithmetic problems, the alphabet, and grammar exercises, as well as for a type of punishment where they had to write down the same one or two characters over and over again (an ancient version of writing lines?).

(Not the sherds mentioned in this article.)

Egyptologists from Tübingen, Germany, have been in Athribis since 2003 and were part of a 15-year research project that began in 2005 and was funded by the German Research Foundation. Their focus was to unearth a temple that was built by Ptolemy XII who was Cleopatra VII’s father. The temple was constructed approximately 2,000 years ago for the lion goddess Repit and her consort Min. In the year 380 AD, the structure was turned into a nunnery.

Beginning in 2018, the researchers began excavating an area to the west of the temple where there are buildings with several stories, vaults, and staircases. The remaining part of the site is full of rubble and that’s where they uncovered thousands of sherds. The excavations were led by Professor Christian Leitz from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen, with help from Mohamed Abdelbadia and his team from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The writing on the sherds was analyzed by a team of international experts who mostly came from Germany and France.

The majority of the sherds (about 80%) contained an administrative script known as Demotic that was commonly used during the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. This script was created from Hieratic after the year 600 BC. The second most common script found on the sherds was Greek. The team did find some Hieratic inscriptions, along with some hieroglyphics, Coptic script, and Arabic script.

Ancient Greek sherds from 482 BC.

(Via Wikipedia)

Furthermore, they found pictorial ostraca as described by Professor Leitz, “These sherds show various figurative representations, including animals such as scorpions and swallows, humans, gods from the nearby temple, even geometric figures.”

The fact that so many sherds were uncovered is extremely rare. In fact, such a massive amount has only been found one other time in Egypt, specifically in the workers’ settlement of Deir el-Medina, close to the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. These sherds will certainly provide experts with a better understanding of how life was lived around 2,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Excavations are still being conducted, so they may find even more interesting objects.

Pictures of the sherds can be viewed here.

A UFO investigator in Brazil has come forward with a startling revelation – official documents from the Brazilian government detailing UFO encounters with indigenous people between 2013 and 2016, videos of their testimonies, videos of UFOs and evidence of possible alien contact … some which was violent and possibly fatal.

“The investigation by Rony Vernet, engineer and researcher of unidentified aerial phenomena, culminated in the release of more than 120 pages of official documents by the Brazilian government and more than 20 minutes of videos, including the affected indigenous people testimonials as well as a UAP footage filmed by Paula Colares, who was doing her doctoral research in anthropology in the tribe.”

The UFOs reportedly shot beams of light at the people on the ground.

Rony Vernet is an electronics and computer engineer, UAP researcher and the founder of UAP Brazil, where he first revealed the fruits of his Freedom of Information request to the Brazilian government for what were UAP encounters beginning in 2013 by members of the Kampa do Amônia Indigenous Tribe living in the Apiwtxa Village in the sparsely populated, rainforest covered state of Acre in northwestern Brazil on the Peruvian border. While the initial UFO sightings were just that, the documents (read them here) revealed the first violent contact occurred on on July 24, 2014, when a UAP reportedly “descended into the village and fired light beams at the indigenous people.” In an interview with The Daily Star, Vernet shared more from the documents.

“People jumped scared out of the house, which led to one of the women, three months pregnant, to lose the child. According to the people who witnessed the fact, the light – in the colours green and red – is very strong, fast and silent and approaches the house without anyone noticing, with the light low and then increases its bright.”

Vernet says the villagers asked for help from the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), which contacted the Federal Police and the Armed Forces. Meanwhile, the UAP sightings continued into 2015, prompting an investigation to be opened by the Federal Public Ministry after University College London researcher and anthropologist Carolina Comandulli also witnessed one of the UAPs. Coincidentally, the sightings in Apiwtxa village ended in 2015. However, the violent contacts picked up a year later.

“This time in the Kampa and Isolados do Envira indigenous tribe, when a light phenomenon descended and was received with shotgun fire by an indigenous person who then received a beam of light and had to be hospitalized.”

A news account, translated on the UAP Brazil website, says the villagers Indians thought it was a drone at first, but changed their minds when “it burned the beaks of all the lanterns and emitted strong electrical discharges.” Indigenous professor Airton Silva de Oliveira interviews the witness, who told him the UAP “turned on red, blue and green lights” and had an odor of burning tires.

What was the origin of these UAPs?

In addition to the testimonies in the more than 120 pages of official documents, the cache also included more than 20 minutes of videos filmed by Paula Colares (watch them here), who was doing her doctoral research in anthropology with the tribe. The videos are available for viewing on the UAP Brazil website, as are the government documents, which Rony Vernet translated into English.

Federal Police Testimonials - Part 1

Federal Police Testimonials - Part 2

UAP footage obtained by the Federal Police

Kudos are in order for Rony Vernet, whose dogged efforts paid off with the release of the documents and videos, and who later spent countless hours translating them to English. Kudos also go to the researchers who interviewed the indigenous villagers and recorded their experiences, and to Paula Colares who recorded the UAPs.

There’s still one batch of kudos left – for the person(s) who identify what these Brazilian villagers saw.