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January 25, 2011 - At five thousand dollars a ticket, some business leaders got more than they bargained for when they attended the first day of the Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They were told flying saucers are real, and they had better start thinking about the business implications of extraterrestrial life and technologies. Convened each year by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, the GCF brings together business and political leaders to discuss ways of promoting business competitiveness. For the first time at its annual conference, the GCF held a panel discussing UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Titled "Learning from Outer Space" the panel comprised five speakers who all endorsed the view that extraterrestrial life is real, and has many implications for the world as we know it.
The panel was held on January 23, and was a "main plenary" session meaning all GCF participants were able to attend and hear what the experts had to say about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Up to 1000 participants included business and political elites such as former British and Canadian Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Jean Chretien; Jim Albaugh, President and CEO of Boeing; Andy Bird, chairman of Walt Disney International; Jared Cohen, Director of Google ideas, and many others. The advice they got was that the issue of extraterrestrial life is real, and they better start paying attention to the business implications. Here's how the GCF summarized the panel presentations on its website:
Learning from Outer Space - PanelThe unconventional and highly relevant topic of extraterrestrial life forms was addressed by yesterday's panel discussion "Contact: Learning from Outer Space". Experts Zoaghloul El-Naggar, Stanton Friedman, Michio Kaku, Nick Pope and Jacques Vallee made compelling cases for the existence of living beings elsewhere in the galaxy, drawing upon empirical evidence, religious theology and logical reasoning.Mr. Friedman opened his remarks with a bold statement, "Flying saucers are real!" and this summed up the perspective of the panel members. Mr. Pope explored the potential business implications of outer space, such as the profitability of alien branding or sponsorship.While El-Naggar was also convinced of their existence, he raised the interesting point that it may not be ethical to spend resources trying to contact alien societies when we still face war and poverty in our own society.Mr. Vallee encouraged more academics to analyze the evidence. However, on behalf of his successful Venture Capital fund, he said, "We are not ready to invest in this type of research, but we think that somebody should."Read more: news.exopoliticsinstitute.org
Graphic summary of GCF discussions by Sunni Brown reveals prominence of ET contact and new energy systems.
Crop circles have started appearing in the UK this year. In April, there were a couple simple designs in the early crops, followed by a beautiful May group which included this star (above).
These overlapping arcs, or swallows, appeared on May 22nd (right) at Wexcombe Down, Wiltshire. Just two days later, on May 24th, this design on concentric circles was found at Winterbourne Monkton, Wiltshire (below right). Lucy Pringle photographed just three circles in May but June is already very promising as the peak season approaches.
On June 14th, residents of Everleigh, Wiltshire were treated to a beautiful bisected circle with quadrilateral segments (below).
These are just a few of the circles that have appeared in the UK so far this year. Visit Lucy Pringle's site to see the others and for the latest updates.
I had some time to work on my own stuff Wednesday as I was waiting for a customer to get back with me about quilting options on the quilt I have on my machine. I had the whole day to work on my projects! Yay! That doesn't happen often.so what did I get done?
These are all pictures of my finished green 9-patch UFO "(the first for the month and #28 on my UFO list here)". The little quilt has a classic, timeless feel from the 9-patches, so I quilted it with very traditional hanging diamonds. The binding was finished up while watching movies with the kids. I am really enjoying it and it looks nice in the bathroom!
I finished up Mini-me's dinosaur top also!
I am so excited about this one, if I hadn't already had a quilt on the machine it would be on there and finished up. I ordered the minkee backing on-line after I knew exactly how big the top would be and it is here already. I do need to piece the back before I can quilt it. I will use black to bind the quilt and it is cut and ready to put together. I probably should have used a small black border before the pieced outer border, but I think this will look fine with the black to finish it off.
Spring Stars (# 7 on my UFO list), one of my January UFOs, is bound and washed so is totally finished.
I really like the puckered up look this batting gives when the quilt is washed. This is a bamboo batting and is SO soft! I think I am going to love it for bed quilts. This may be what I put in Mini-me's quilt as it light weight to counter the heaviness of the minkee backing. Plus it will give me a very good idea of how the bamboo stands up to repeated washing and abuse.
I have worked on one other UFO also. This is my Jelly Roll String quilt, UFO #22 on my list. I ordered some bargain fabric on-line a few years ago and this jelly roll was part of it. The colors looked really pretty on my monitor, but when I got them here I wasn't in love with them at all. I gave a string workshop for my local guild back in February and used these as one of the examples. You can read about that here. Since February they have sat around in one of my project drawers until this week. I got the top totally put together with borders. There were only 23 blocks from the jelly roll, but I took the pieces and was able to make three other blocks, two of which are on the front in opposing corners.
This is the back. This also has the third leftover blockI didn't want any part of the UFO hanging around after it was finished. I will load it on the machine with the right-hand edge of fabric at the top. That will insure all the block shows and I don't accidentally cut any of it off.
See the horizontal line running across the fabric from the block? I bought quite a bit of yardage of this fabric from an outlet and it came off the bolt that way - which is probably why it was in the outlet store in the first place. I didn't really care because it has cutting horse weather vanes on it.
I still have to make up the binding for this one, but other than that it is ready to put on the machine when I have a few extra minutes between customer quilts.
Not too bad for a day's work!
REINALDO RIOS LEADS A GROUP OF PARANORMAL RESEARCHERS IN THE FIELD WHICH ALSO INCLUDES UFOS WHICH OPENLY OFFER THEIR SUPPORT AND ENDORSEMENT TO RIHANNA ON THEIR EXPERIENCES WITH UFOS. HIS EXPERIENCE IS KNOWN IN THE UFO WORLD AS CLOSE CONTACT OF THE FIRST TYPE, WHICH IS TO SEE THE FLYING OBJECT DISTANCE. THE MUCH TALKED FAMOUS ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD TYPE WOULD SEE THE CRAFT AND BEINGS, WHERE RIHANNA WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE IN THE FILM.
THE POPULAR SINGER USED TO SIT WITH HIS FATHER EVERY NIGHT TO TRY TO SEE UFOS IN THE SKIES OF HIS NATIVE TOWN, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS. THIS IS AN INDICATION BEYOND CURIOUS THAT THESE BEINGS ARE SUBLIMINALLY WANTING SOMETHING FROM THE PERSON. THE ALIENS DO NOT LET THE WORLD SEE VERY OFTEN, IF YOU COULD BE AN ISOLATED EXPERIENCE, BUT WHEN IT BECOMES A HABIT TO LOOK FOR IS THE INSISTENCE BY SOME, AS HAPPENED TO RIHANNA AND HER FATHER.
ALTHOUGH SHE HUMBLY EXPRESSED ONLY SAW A SHOOTING STAR ONCE, DOES NOT RULE OUT THAT THERE IS SOMETHING MORE UFOLOGIST AND ABOVE ALL THAT DESIRE TO SEE THEM AND LOOK FOR A SIGN THAT SOMETHING EXPECT THESE CREATURES TO HER, OR SHE WILL HAVE A MISSION HIS LIFE RELATED TO THIS ISSUE AND HAS STARTED FROM PUBLICLY EXPRESSING HIS LOVE OF THE SUBJECT AND HIS DEBUT FEATURE FILM BASED ON ALIENS.
"MY FATHER MADE ME SIT IN THE FRONT DOOR EVERY NIGHT TO GO SEE UFOS. I SAW NONE PASS BUT NEVER SAW A SHOOTING STAR ONCE SAID, 'YES! DAD COME TO WATCH THIS, '"PUBLIC EXPRESSIONS OF THE ARTIST.
RIHANNA, WHO WILL FIGHT AGAINST ALIENS IN THE NEW FILM 'BATTLESHIP', ADMITTED THAT HIS ROLE HAS MADE HIM EVEN MORE TO ADMIRE THOSE WHO FIGHT TO DEFEND THEIR COUNTRY.
"GRAPHIC - SINGER RIHANNA"
"I DO NOT DOUBT THAT IT WAS THE ALIENS WHO DROVE RIHANNA TO THE MOVIES THAT SHE MAY BE A SPOKESMAN FOR GREAT THINGS, THESE INFLUENTIAL BEINGS OFTEN CHOOSE TO TAKE THEIR MESSAGES THAT ARE AMONG US," SAYS REINALDO RIOS.
INDICATES REINALDO RIOS DO NOT BE SURPRISED TO RECEIVE MANY ATTACKS AGAINST THEM ON THEIR EXPERIENCES WITH UFOS AND THAT ALL WHO ARE ACTIVE IN THIS ENVIRONMENT OR WHO HAVE EXPRESSED SOME AFFINITY TO THE SUBJECT ARE ATTACKED STRONGLY, BUT DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED BUT MUCH TO DO ESPECIALLY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF ALIEN LIFE AND WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE, AND NOW HER TURN TO FIND OR DEFINE THAT IT OUGHT TO DO. ONE PARCEL WOULD FAVOR THEM OR UFO PORT, WHICH REINALDO RIOS IS POOR AND COULD NOT HAVE THEM.
"A GOOD SIGN OF GRATITUDE TO THESE PEOPLE WHO NO DOUBT TOOK RIHANNA TO THE BIG SCREEN, THEN I WOULD RECOMMEND CREATING A SCHOOL OF PARAPSYCHOLOGY, A GREAT MUSEUM UFOS, A UFO PORT, OR EVEN A STATUE OF AN ALIEN AS A VIEWPOINT IN >ONE OF THE COASTS OF HIS NATIVE PEOPLE "EXPRESSED REINALDO RIOS.
THE RESEARCHER VOLUNTEERS TO ORIENT OR INVITE HER TO A SEARCH OF ITS OUTWARD ALIEN. ESPECIALLY NOT DROP THE BAD VIBES, ASK THE ALIENS IN THE NAME OF GOD TO PROTECT AND HELP.
BY REINALDO RIOS
Richard Lawerance Dicusses ET Contacts and Communications UFO, ET Disclosure
Coast to Coast AM
5th October 2010
British paranormal expert Richard Lawrence discussed ET contacts and communications, UFO disclosure, and ancient reports of UFOs. He spoke about various contactees such as George Adamski, and George King, who founded the Aetherius Society and channeled messages from benevolent ET beings or "Space Masters." One of themes that runs across the various communications from ETs is the importance of spirituality throughout the universe, Lawrence noted.
King spoke about intelligences from within our solar system and multi-dimensional existences, while 1950s contactee Dan Fry said the beings he interacted with were from the past, specifically the civilization of Atlantis. In King's book, The Nine Freedoms, he shares ET information about humankind's evolution-- one of the first evolutionary steps is bravery, to think outside of the standard conditioning, and another step is to become oriented toward service-to-others, rather than service-to-self.
Ancient Sanskrit texts refer to vimanas-- flying celestial vehicles, which could "cause the entire sky to blaze." Some of these writings specifically describe the propulsion systems, he added. A UFO incident that took place in 1180 AD in Japan concerned a shiny aerial object that changed directions, vanished, and reappeared. It was referred to as a "flying earthenware vessel, so the [term] 'flying saucer' was actually coined back in the 12th century," Lawrence mused, adding that Alexander the Great and Columbus were also said to have UFO sightings.KEywords: British Paranomral investigator ufo's aliens Et's Extra terrestrials history Richard Lawerance government disclosure first contact communications flying saucers secret cover up embargo benevolent ET beings space masters brothers sisters humanity sightings
Note: All parts of the radio show are avaliable in this player!
Coast to Coast AM live
A 600ft jellyfish pattern has appeared in a barley field in Kingstone Coombes, Oxfordshire, in what is one of the most intriguing crop circles ever seen in Britain.
The vast pattern appeared in the field last week and experts are claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.
Karen Alexander, a crop circle expert, said: "We have seen butterfly and bird patterns in the past, but this is the first jellyfish crop circle in the world.
"It is absolutely huge - roughly three times the size of most crop patterns and extremely interesting. People have been aghast at the size of it. It is a complete monster.
"We are looking into the meaning of it, but at present it just seems to have appeared out of nowhere."
Crop circle theorists known as 'croppies' - believe the patterns are created by UFOs during nocturnal visits, or caused by natural phenomena such as unusual forms of lightning striking the earth.
But it has been proven the patterns can be easily created artists.
Last year a crop circle described as the most complex ever to seen in Britain was discovered in a barley field in Wiltshire.
The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, was a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.
Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: "The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point.
"The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment.
"Starting at the centre and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi."
When the subject of UFOs is high on the minds of radio broadcasters who deal with that and other unusual topics on a regular basis, we rather expect a reasonable treatment of the issue. Hosts from the distant past whose shows were popular in the USA, such as Long John Nebel, Frank Edwards, Jerry Williams and Larry Glick were familiar enough with UFO incidents to discuss the cases with integrity, not ridicule.
I remember, for example, when young Australian pilot Frederick Valentich mysteriously disappeared during a solo evening UFO encounter over open waters years ago. If you don't know about this case, be sure to look it up via a reliable web source, because this chilling encounter involves the pilot's final words in a radio transmission and the unexplained metallic scraping sounds heard just before he and his craft seemingly dropped out of existence. Within days of this internationally headlined incident, I was fortunate to hear the late talk show host Larry Glick of WBZ in Boston interviewing an Australian journalist who remained close to the story. Glick, always open to humor on his show, handled this important conversation with the sobriety and concern it deserved.
These days, except for the occasional Peter Jennings, or even George Noory or Art Bell, how many broadcasters can even mouth the term, "UFO" without either making a joke or offering some almost apologetic comment for bringing the subject up? Recently, I became familiar with yet another instance where a broadcast journalist whose UFO reporting gained high audience interest was nonetheless told by management not to do any more UFO reporting -- and this sort of thing happens frequently in the United States (in fact, you may recall the well-publicized Texas UFO sightings of a few days ago and the newspaper reporter who lost her job after writing about them -- of course, there was no connection between the two events...wink...wink).
In consideration of this, it truly is a pleasure to find those rare national talk show hosts who generally tackle politics and anything but UFOs who, nonetheless, are willing to give the subject a fair shake. That's why I think back fondly to 1994, when Mutual Broadcasting's Jim Bohannon executed a fair and informative interview with veteran UFO researcher and former NICAP assistant director Richard Hall. After I wrote and thanked Bohannon for that good show, he kindly surprised me with an autographed photo (see) and thanked me for some information I included.
Bohannon's evening radio talk show -- which I have not heard in years (no longer available in my area, thanks to conglomerate radio coming to town and putting the "R" in the ruination of broadcasting's fine art), though I'm aware that it continues -- succeeded radio's coveted "Larry King Show" when King left for higher stakes in TV. Vietnam veteran Bohannon turned out a great show during the years when I listened nightly, and I've no reason to believe his evening sessions are less enjoyable and informative now. Unheard, but not forgotten!
In the play, "My Fair Lady" Professor Henry Higgins asks, why can't a woman be more like a man? My own question would be, why can't more talk show hosts be like Jim Bohannon?
INTRODUCTION
Here is a very interesting report of a landed UFO and a close encounter with alien beings. Although it occurred over 50 years ago, it has only recently been made public.
The report was sent to me by a good friend who is a MUFON State Director. He is in a favorable position, as many feel comfortable relating their experiences to him, and not worrying about their privacy being invaded.
The events of this case began on an October day, 1958, in Hunter, New York. It was just before the official start of deer season, and the eyewitness and two of his hunting buddies were getting ready for the season by visiting Hunter.
JOURNEY TO DEVIL'S CANYON
His friends let our witness out between Blackhead and Roundtop Mountains so he could hunt for some bobcat. At this point, he made a pile of stones as a marker to find his way back through the thick woods. He then began his journey into an area called the "Devil's Canyon."
He walked about one hundred yard toward the canyon, when he came to a clearing in the woods. At the very edge of the clearing he was surprised to see something in the middle of the canyon ahead of him. From a distance, his first thought it was a building of some sort.
He wondered to himself, "Why would anyone put a structure in the middle of nowhere?"
FLYING SAUCER, ALIENS
Once he got a better look at the object, he was shocked to see it was a landed flying saucer. The bottom was flat, with a slight curve on the edges. The object was about 8 feet above the ground. He could see a couple of landing legs of a sort.
Even though he was in awe at what he had seen, he was not prepared for what he saw next; two, very lean beings that were not from this world. They stood at one end of the UFO, and were apparently communicating with each other.
He was too far away from them to hear any of what they were saying, but from their facial expressions he could tell the conversation was quite emotionless.
He also noted that the craft was producing a low hum, and had dull-colored lights spanning the middle. These lights were various colors; orange, blue, green, and more, all seeming to merge as one.
He also could see a small cupola to one side of the top section. He estimated that it was 2 ft. high X 3 ft. wide. The UFO was approximately 12 ft. tall. He watched the unknown object and two beings for about 10-15 minutes.
THIRD ALIEN EMERGES
Then he heard a sound which was followed by the opening of a walkway coming directly from the center of the flying saucer. When it was fully let out, a third being walked down the ramp and directly toward the other two beings. They all began to discuss something, and the being that came down the walkway pointed directly at him.
At this point, he was terrified as one of the beings remained, but the other two begin to come to his location; one to his left, the other to his right. Just in case they accosted him, he pulled out his 8mm Mauser, and put it on 1/2 safe.
He began to back out of his hiding place, returning to a culvert on the side of the road, and hid until he was certain he was not in danger of any kind. Before long, his two buddies picked him up at the designated spot. Did he have story to tell?
UFO experts are expecting a "huge surge" in visits from ET this year.
Ministry of Defence specialists reckon a massive increase in UFO sightings in the last few weeks suggests aliens are trying to get in touch with us.
And they predict there could be at least one "close encounter" a day over the next 12 months.
The news comes after these amazing drawings, left, were revealed to the Daily Star. They were made by children who claimed a UFO landed in their school playground.
The children also reported seeing a "scrawny man with rugby ball eyes". They had never seen pictures or watched images on television of aliens, yet their drawings were all spookily alike.
Nick Pope, who used to run the UFO project at the Ministry of Defence, says he is bombarded with images and videos of UFOs every week.
In the past month he has seen figures almost double as thousands of Brits report sightings across the country.
So far this year the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) has logged nine reports. Nick has also received reports of 14 incidents since the start of the year.
And he said: "2009 is shaping up to be a record-breaking year. I have noticed a dramatic upsurge of reports since the beginning of the year.
"If I continue to receive reports at the current rate I'll get one a day, which is likely to exceed the combined total of MoD and BUFORA, most remarkable given that I don't actively solicit reports."
The school sighting took place in Zimbabwe in 1994.
About 60 children reported seeing three silver balls in the sky before one of them landed. One of the pupils described the object as "silver and the ring around it was red... lights along the edge".
Another said he saw strange beings with "astonished eyes".
None of the teachers saw the "landing" as they were all in a meeting at the time.
Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of Brits (78%) admit they believe we are not alone in the universe.
A survey by onepoll.com also showed 17% of Brits have seen strange lights in the sky. They also believe the ETs have a tall, thin body with long limbs.
The extraterrestrial theory is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are most excellent explained as organism extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from extra planets. The idea sounds easy to recent day humans, but it a comparatively new idea that originated out of the saucer sightings and close encounters of the 1940s-1960s. Thousands of UFO sightings have been reported in the previous 50 years, and one of the up-and-coming themes in these proceedings is the Men in Black. The Men in Black are men, or aliens, clothed in black suits that have been reported to annoy or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them calm about what they have seen. In the majority cases, the men maintain to be government agents, but it is often optional that they may be aliens themselves.
People who have reported an encounter by means of the Men in Black often explain them as men of small build with a deeply bronzed and dark skin texture. According to the accounts, Men in Black always seem to have full information on the person they contact, as if the person had been under observation for a long epoch of time. They have been described as apparent puzzled by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using out-of-date slang. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described do not exist or have been departed for some time. Another important trait of the Men in Black is wide grin and disturbing giggles.
The occurrence has been often reported since the 1950s and 1960s, but some researchers, including John Keel and others, have suggested similarities flanked by the Men in Black information and previous demonic accounts. Keel suggests that the beings are a modern-day demonstration of the same phenomenon that was earlier interpret as the fiend, or encounter with fairies. The term "the black man" has been used for centuries in orientation to the Devil. In history, the Black Man was often reported as gathering with the accused and having sexual contact with them. Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is another folk name for The Devil that is used in the local myths of New England and pre-Civil War America.
During the middle Ages, the black man was not a person with African skin, but rather a man tinted black and dressed in black. In contemporary times, another occurrence known as the Grinning Man has turn out to be linked with the Men in Black, and a variety of reports of telepathic action. These creatures are better and characterized by a wide grinning face. In most cases, people describe a strange feeling of not being able to focus in on the Grinning Man. It has been optional that the grin is an effort by the aliens to be conventional to society and keep humans emotion safe, but in all reports the shape is described as tremendously creepy. In the Half-Life series of first-person firearm video games, there is a strange nature named G-Man that parallels some of the Men in Black metaphors.
"UFO/ET disclosure is a topic that is being bandied about like a fat blunt at a tea party. Some sites have a series of VIDEOS POSTED, proclaiming that disclosure has already begun. These videos have military men, scientists, or political figures admitting to the existence of the ET presence on Earth. If you agree with this line of thinking then you would also agree that subliminal"/"indirect" disclosure began in the 1950s when sci-fi B-movies flooded theater screens in response to the many UFO sightings that were taking place at the time.
But simply admitting that something exists doesn't contribute to any positive change. We can, for instance, admit that organized crime undermines society, but this admission doesn't rid the streets of the negative influences of these organizations. The same goes with formally admitting the existence of UFOs. The admission doesn't "change" anything. It only underscores what most people are already aware of, that UFOs are real. Being aware that Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world's heroin doesn't do a thing at helping heroin addicts kick their habits.
When disclosure is talked about it should be done in the context of admission, recognition, and "contact". Without this last ingredient in the equation, it's all for naught. And this "uncloaking" is what's in store for 2011, or so it's said. The year will be pivotal in many respects.
Aside from disclosure, 2011 is said to be a year of further Earth changes and adjustments that will challenge us and, in some cases, usher some of us off the planet. The best advice is to "roll with the punches" because there will be very little we can do about what will be coming our way. Additional challenges will come from dark cabals with the sole intention of diverting our attention away from progressing spiritually and instead focus on survival and continued 3D existence. They wallow in the current paradigm and wish to keep it intact, with perhaps less people in it. I refer the reader to the "NEW PARADIGM HANDBOOKS" for clarification.
This is the principal reason why ET disclosure must occur. As much as we'd like to think that we have control over our lives, in reality we have very little control. We are the chips on the table, not the player. These past two years should have woken some sleepers up. Some were roused awake only to find themselves without a roof over their heads, others without a job, and still others with mounting debt and vanishing dreams. Unless there is intervention, we will be corralled and subjected to further injustices from those who believe we are their property to do with as they wish.
The dark magicians have saved their darkest rituals for last, and 2011 will be the year that they play these out, or attempt to. Those in the know realize why these desperate actions must occur in the coming weeks and months; those who are not will be further outraged when these events take place, but they will refuse to believe that these damaging events were deliberately orchestrated.
Without disclosure we will be at the mercy of those who will play the endgame for all its worth, in a further attempt to blind us from realizing who we really are as sovereign beings. So far they've done a good job, considering that the majority of us are still blissfully snoring. But with this new year we are stepping into the third act, and though they may know that the game is lost, they will not go down without a fight.
What will the world look like in 2012? Will INDONESIA be around after 2011, and will QUEENSLAND be left permanently under water? Will satellites be burned out of the skies rendering all those electronic gadgets worthless, at least temporarily?
2011 will be a year of harsh realities, it will be a year where the deluded are exposed and manipulators banished from the world stage. It will be a year for new beginnings and restructuring, a year of germinating growth for a new era.
A recent article in the Guardian.co.uk had the title "Earth must prepare for close encounter with aliens, say scientists". The article goes on not to detail elements from the cultural fringe, but to describe a publication on the subject from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This interesting publication addresses the subject of extraterrestrial life from a variety of perspectives, including religion. In considering the implications of extraterrestrial life for theology, the paper includes a contribution by Ted Peters with the following abstract:
This paper asks about the future of religion: (i) Will confirmation of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) cause terrestrial religion to collapse? 'No' is the answer based upon a summary of the 'Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey'. Then the paper examines four specific challenges to traditional doctrinal belief likely to be raised at the detection of ETI: (ii) What is the scope of God's creation? (iii) What can we expect regarding the moral character of ETI? (iv) Is one earthly incarnation in Jesus Christ enough for the entire cosmos, or should we expect multiple incarnations on multiple planets? (v) Will contact with more advanced ETI diminish human dignity? More than probable contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence will expand the Bible's vision so that all of creation-including the 13.7 billion year history of the universe replete with all of God's creatures-will be seen as the gift of a loving and gracious God.There are several interesting facets to this paper, including Peters's survey of representatives from various religious traditions who state that they would not be upset by the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but they believe their tradition would be threatened. Beyond this, Peters's paper brings together several strands of thought to formulate an "astrotheology" that takes us beyond the reactions against this found many times in evangelicalism, at least in the countercult in response to the UFO phenomenon.
Following the relatively recent post on the pilots of the 1897 Airship Wave, Cabinet of Wonders once again reflects on Air Kraken Day (declared March 17 by the steampunk nexus Brass Goggles) by noting the fact and fiction accounts of strange non-avian creatures in the sky.
In the most recent essay, Cabinet of Wonders discusses recent sightings of jellyfish-like UFOs, while in the previous essay last March, historical and fictional cases get their due, including Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Horror of the Heights."
Other stories of air monsters don't have the popular exposure of those most famous "air monsters" (extraterrestrials and their flying saucers), but they do persist under the radar (so to speak). Thunderbirds are probably the most famous, but pterodactyls also get some attention. I was more familiar with the various hoaxed/art photos of late 19th century slain pterodactyls, kickstarted by an 1890 account of a dragon killed in Arizona. Over a century later, airplane passengers claim to have photographed dragons over Tibet.
But only recently learned that there are ties between the hunt for pterodactyls and creationism. Though it shouldn't have surprised me since I've seen creationists invoke the Loch Ness Monster and other sea serpents, and the Creation Museum is chock full of dinosaurs.
And lets not forget that in the early days of flying saucers, sky animals were suggested as a possible explanation. As were intelligent bees from Mars.
"Hey," yelled James Gilliland, pointing at the horizon. "There's something hovering there, just above the mountain."
There was a flurry of excitement and several UFO watchers hurried over to look. Gilliland pointed at a small prick of light.
"And it's flashing us!" he yelled.
About thirty of us were gathered at Gilliland's "Sattva Sanctuary," at the foot of Mt. Adams, in hopes of seeing something out there. We'd come to Trout Lake, high in the mountains of Southwest Washington, from Portland, Minnesota, California, Florida, and Canada to look for some sign that maybe we're not alone, and that our little blue-green planet might be worth a visit after all.
Many of those gathered at the Sanctuary were already convinced and only needed evidence. Others were less sure, but couldn't resist Gilliland's claims of seeing UFOs night after night--thousands of them over the past seven years.
Before we came outside for the sky watch, Gilliland had primed us with videos: A collage of jerking, grainy white dots against a dark screen, allegedly zigzagging across the sky, landing, morphing, and so on. The dots trailed across the black background, while Gilliland and his friends yelled like kids at the racetrack.
"Holy shit, man!"
"Boy, he really turned on the afterburners!"
Like frat boys at a strip club.
"Whoa, check it out, man!"
"Aw, yeah baby!"
The audience was impressed.
"That's the cheapest camera you can buy," Gilliland told us, bragging, "and we've totally outgunned NASA and SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Totally outgunned them!"
The standards for peer review in ufology aren't as high as, say, astrophysics, but the videos were proof enough for most people at the sky watch. I could feel myself getting caught up in the excitement because in spite of myself--and in of spite the lack of actual evidence--I've always liked the idea of UFOs, the idea that our planet isn't the only spot in the universe where matter can look at itself and laugh and make art. The idea that we're not alone is so alluring and ridiculous and terrifying that my heart jumped when Gilliland said something was hovering over the mountain.
Squinting, I watched for the small white light to flash us. Every once in a while, it seemed to get brighter, then darker, and the colors changed a little. But on the whole it appeared to be doing what most scientists call "twinkling."
Still, everyone was enthusiastic. Mt. Adams was descending into darkness, and the night air was cold. So far there had been a few satellites and airplanes, but this "flashing" was our best prospect yet. We waited for it to power up and shoot across the sky at 11,000 mph. But it kept moving slowly, like a little star.
I went over to look through a ten-inch telescope that had been set up. Through it, the object looked like a slightly bigger star.
"That is not a star," said David, a big man with a wild mane of hair and some wild ideas about spontaneous human combustion. "That is a UFO masquerading as a star. It looks like a star, but I assure you, that's a UFO."
THE NUTTY NORTHWEST
The Pacific Northwest has long been a place of extraterrestrial interest and has been the locale for some seminal events in UFO history. One of the first and (allegedly) most authentic UFO photos was taken by a farmer in McMinnville. In the 1970s, Marshall Applewhite, the future leader of "Heaven's Gate," passed through Waldport, Oregon and convinced 20 people to sell all their possessions and follow him into space. They went to Colorado instead.
But the most famous of these events took place on June 24, 1947, when Pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying over the Cascades and saw a chain of nine "peculiar looking aircraft" flying "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." He timed them going between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams in 102 seconds--more than twice the speed of sound and faster than any known aircraft. That same day there were a rash of sightings over Oregon and Washington. And just 10 days earlier, a man in New Mexico had stumbled across some odd wreckage on his ranch outside Roswell.
Arnold's sighting inaugurated the era of the flying saucer and, since then, UFOs have sunk deep roots into our culture. Despite the best scientific efforts to dismiss them as swamp gas, ball lightning, mass hallucinations, or wishful thinking, the idea is too powerful. According to the Mutual UFO Network, over 70,000 sightings are reported worldwide every year. (China alone has 400,000 subscribers to the Journal of UFO Research.)
What's more interesting is that not all those interested in alien crafts are flaming nutcases. In 1998, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, led a panel of international scientists that concluded UFOs needed further official study. In 1999, the French Government commissioned a study called "UFOs and Defense: What must we be prepared for?" which said the physical reality of unknown aircraft under the control of intelligent beings is "quasi-certain." And most recently, a group led by ufologist Steven Greer (called "The Disclosure Project") claimed to have 450 ex-military and industrial officials hankering to tell Congress about their covert dealings with UFOs and the little gray men who drive them.
A MIGRANE, OR ALIENS?
Outside at the Sanctuary, it was getting colder and getting late. A few people had gotten excited by what was clearly a satellite. But otherwise it had been quiet, and we'd seen nothing but a sky full of endless suns.
A guy named Mike came over and introduced himself. He looked around and confided that he thought James Gilliland's twinkling light was Venus.
"Yeah," I said, "and James says ETs from the Pleiades have a base under the mountain."
"That's true," said Mike, and after a furtive pause, he went on. "The only other person in contact with the Pleiadians is this guy named Billy Meier." He started telling me about Meier, a one-armed Swiss guy who rode his moped out to take photos of the Pleiadian ships. But Mike's rambling got more frantic as he talked about ancient cuneiform references to UFOs, and how Venus wasn't an original planet, but had come into orbit around 8,000 B.C., and how it caused all kinds of havoc on earth, just when Moses was crossing the Red Sea.
"and this crap about Moses banging his stick and parting the sea, that's bullshit, because all hell was breaking loose everywhere. It's been fully documented"
Mike was so excited by these revelations he sputtered out of control. After about ten minutes, getting abducted started to look pretty good.
This must have registered because, as abruptly as he started, Mike stopped and said, "Well, I'm just a guest here," and walked off.
The night was getting long and the end of Mike's speech seemed like a good cue to leave. But just then, Gilliland pointed straight up. He was getting the pressure in his head that meant the aliens were near.
He pointed at a stationary light flashing at odd intervals. It was as bright as the stars around it, but would disappear completely and reappear in the same place.
An unidentified flashing object.
That would be the closest encounter of any kind for the night.
THE INTERDIMENSIONAL MIND
James Gilliland was once a successful California real estate salesman, deep in the material world, with few mystical inclinations. But that changed one day when he went body surfing and got swallowed by a sneaker wave.
In the time before he woke up puking on the beach, Gilliland says he shot through a dark tunnel to meet what he calls, "the source." It gave him a choice: go on or come back. He chose the latter, but when he returned he found he had changed. He didn't really care about real estate any more; he'd become a spiritual seeker.
"It blew me wide open," Gilliland says of his near-death experience. "It shifted me up into what I call the inter-dimensional mind."
It also shifted him up to Santa Cruz, where he opened a meditation center and lived for six years until he started to have visions of a place surrounded by mountains. In 1986, he happened to come to Trout Lake, Washington. When he saw Mt. Adams he knew instantly that it was the place of his dreams.
Gilliland bought some land and started the Sattva Sanctuary, which he thought was going to be a retreat for spiritual healing. For eight years that's what it was, until one day while meditating in his home, he heard a voice in his head that said it was coming "from a ship."
When Gilliland quit his meditation, his sister ran inside shouting about a UFO hovering over the house.
INTERSTELLAR ENVIRO-MARXISTS
The theories Gilliland's developed since then are intricate and hard to follow--a blend of science fiction and new age, but with a message underneath that is deeply humanistic.
"It's real simple," Gilliland says with an air of nonchalance. "Basically, their message is to stop warring on each other and to stop warring on the planet to be kind to each other and the planet, because we're headed for major environmental collapse.
"And they've also expressed deep concern about the leadership of the planet. They've made it very clear: You're being led by the oil industry and the war industry."
Who exactly are these interstellar enviro-Marxists? According to Gilliland, the base under Mt. Adams is used by a consortium of benevolent ETs. The ones he's been in touch with come from the Pleiades. Others come from Andromeda, Orion, Sirius, and Arcturus. The more malevolent ETs (like the "grays" and "reptoids") use a porthole near Mt. Hood.
For many years, as Gilliland tells it, the earth was under quarantine as a hostile, backward place. But since we started poking our nose into space and detonating nuclear weapons, there's been increasing interstellar concern over what we might do to ourselves and others. You see, he explains, Earth was colonized a long time ago by beings from the Vega system and then abandoned after a war between Atlantis and Lemuria. We are the descendents of the survivors.
There comes a point when talking to Gilliland--usually early on--that a part of one's brain hits a wall. It might be when he mentions the light beings, or the hollow earth, or the chem-trails streaming out behind airplanes to poison us. Wherever it is, it's the point at which the plausible ends, while his theories go on, becoming ever more elaborate and inter-linked, like pieces of an intricate puzzle.
This is the self-enclosed labyrinth of UFO subculture.
To enter it you have to step over a certain line, then another and another until the pieces start falling into place. It's a place where there is no boundary between the possible, the probable, and the true, and no attempt to sort out which is which.
Most of the aliens around Mt. Adams may be illegal Mexican farm workers, but there is something odd about the mountain. Because on the Yakima Reservation just north of the mountain, people have been reporting strange lights in the sky for at least a hundred years. And since 1972, electrical engineer Dave Akers has been conducting a more hard-nosed investigation into the "nocturnal lights." That was the year Fire Control supervisor Bill Vogel asked the scientifically-minded Center for UFO Studies to look into the lights. Akers has been doing the field work ever since.
"It's a complicated problem," says Akers from his Seattle home, "and there are lots of theories. The only thing that I'm convinced of is that they're there, whatever they are." The lights, he says, could be the results of fault line activity or of changes in the water table.
"About 5% of the observation reports are what we would call 'good reports,'" he says. Of those, about 80% are what Akers calls Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (or ALPs; he doesn't use "UFO" because of its alien implications). Another 20% are daylight sightings and a very few are "critter reports" of humanoids and other things.
As for what any of these are, Akers reserves judgement. I asked him about the ET theory.
"I think it's a little too pat, really. I'm not convinced of anything at this point, other than the fact that these things are quite real, and that on occasion they seem to exhibit what you would interpret as intelligent behavior. But extraterrestrials is a bit too much of a leap for me at this time."
In the end, whether you see the UFOs or ALPs comes down to a question of belief. Because even when you see a light in the sky you have to ask what you believe is possible, what you believe is probable and what you believe is true. And most importantly, you have to ask what you want to believe.
That, more than anything, will determine what you will see.
ET PHONE THE COYOTES
Me? I wanted to see UFOs lots of them. Big pulsing red ones. Little darting white ones. Shiny silver disks. Giant black triangles. I wanted to see them shoot us with pulse lasers. I wanted to see Star Wars. I wanted an intergalactic air show. I wanted to see them zoom in, pick up James and zoom off, like he said they had. I wanted to see ET. I wanted to see pasty little grays, glowing white Pleiadians, and lizard-skin reptoids.
I wanted to see V.
I had to go back.
A few weeks after the first sky watch, I went back to the Sanctuary. When I arrived in the late afternoon, it was nearly empty. James was watering some trees and Paul, who works with James, was chopping wood to heavy metal music. A Canadian couple was cooking dinner near their tent. I introduced myself to them and asked what they'd seen. They said they'd come down for the week and had seen UFOs every night. The day before, they'd watched a white-gray ship circle a small airplane.
I walked around the Sanctuary while the Canadians ate dinner and James and Paul finished their yard work. After a while James came and joined me on the viewing platform and filled in the holes in his theories. The talk meandered through the shapes and sizes of the different ships, the agendas of various ET groups, and how humans are destined to join the rest of the universe.
When it finally started to get dark, Paul and the Canadians joined us. The air was warm and full of the sound of crickets and wind in the trees. The sky was clear.
For an hour or so, there wasn't much activity, but at 10:05 (as predicted by James) several lights came from the north and seemed to converge. These looked suspiciously like some of the 8,300 satellites in orbit, but James had the pressure in his head that told him they were UFOs masquerading as satellites.
For an hour or so, we watched similar lights going across the sky. Some flared up in places. Others were steady, but dim, and some a little brighter. A few stayed in one place, flashed intermittently, then disappeared. Some seemed to be going really, really fast (20,000 mph, according to James).
James had his cheap video camera out and recorded a few of these, but they were all a little boring.
"Okay," he said, looking up. "We just need one big zinger so I can go to bed."
We sat quietly in the dim light of the night sky. The Milky Way was as bright as I'd ever seen it--a thick white band of billions of stars.
Then, just before 11 pm, the Canadian woman spotted something. Almost directly above us, two lights were flying south in tandem, with a third, out front. James homed in on the triangle and tracked it across the sky.
"That's one of those Andromedan ships!" said James. "Look how you can see through the middle. That's because it's inter-dimensional."
It might have been that, or it might have been a set of satellites called the NOSS Triplet that fly in formation. Above us, the three lights turned east, then disappeared behind some trees. As soon as they were gone, coyotes started barking all around us.
"You hear that?" asked James. "The coyotes are going crazy. They always do that when the big ships fly over!" He looked at the camera. "No one's got the triangles on tape. This'll really freak the Greer folks out!"
It wasn't going to get any better than that. This was a real coup for the Sanctuary. James decided to call it a night and went back to the house to bed, and soon Paul and the Canadians followed. I went to my car and got a sleeping bag, brought it back to the platform and crawled in.
For a long time I stared up at the sky, until finally, alone under the stars, I drifted off to sleep.
NASA, JPL Scientists Support To Billy Meiers Extraterrestrial Case Poses Problems For Government
According to Michael Horn, U.S. media representative for the Meier case, the scientific support was not only unprecedented but posed unique problems for governmental and media agencies. Consider that you had major scientists like Malin saying, I find the photographs themselves credible, theyre good photographs.
They appear to represent a real phenomenon, while he naturally found it hard to accept that some farmer in Switzerland is on a first name basis with dozens of aliens who come to visit him Similar opinions were expressed by Robert Post of JPL, who said, From a photography standpoint, you couldnt see anything that was fake about the Meier photos. Thats what struck me. And of course Marcel Vogels conclusion that, even with all of the resources of IBM available to him, he couldnt duplicate the metal samples given to Meier by the extraterrestrials.
Horn said that Kinder, who was a skeptic about the Meier case when he began his research, apparently foresaw the likelihood that the various scientific experts could later regret being so candid about their findings. Threats regarding withdrawal of funding could be used to get them to distance themselves from something as controversial as a UFO case. So Kinder, who is also a lawyer, made sure that each expert read and then signed off on their statements before publication in his book, Light Years.
Damage control from the powers that be reportedly took the form of enlisting UFO organizations, like MUFON, to ignore, suppress or actively discredit the Meier case. According to Horn, The fact that they, and almost all other such groups, still steadfastly refuse to discuss, research or take a position on it seems to bear out that theory. And considering the overwhelming scientific corroboration for Meiers information, one has to wonder why these groups waste their time chasing lights in the sky. While its too late for the scientists to disavow their expert opinions in favor of the case, MUFON is not similarly burdened because of their own lack of any such scientific credibility.
Over the years, Meier has received numerous prophecies from the Pleiadians, which he has recorded, and in some instances shared with others to be kept confidential until the specific predictions came to pass. I will list a few of the more amazing and leave it to you to believe or disbelieve.
Prophecy Date: February 28, 1987
Prediction: Warning of the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) by terrorism, the series of worldwide wars that the US would subsequently launch, and military actions involving Russia, China, France, Germany, Spain, England, Scandinavia and many Third World and other countries.
Event: September 11, 2001, the WTC was destroyed; the United States has already attacked Afghanistan and Iraq as of the time of this writing. Prophecy Date: October 19, 1978
Prediction : Meier described existence of Jupiters rings, saying:
They are composed mainly of dust, particles, sulphur ions flung off by volcanoes on Io;
Described Io as the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and smooth, level-surfaced with no water; described Europa as ice-encrusted;
Jupiter said to have 17 actual moons;
Described nature of Jupiters huge funnel-shaped storm.
Event: March 5, 1979, NASAs Voyager 1 probe discovered the rings of Jupiter, that Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system and that Europa is covered in ice-five months after Meier published this information.
Event: September 15, 1998, Cornell University scientists confirmed particulate composition of rings from Jupiters moons (first theorized by astronomers on August 2, 1995). Meiers information is 20 years ahead of Cornells. (While scientists believe that the source of the particulate matter is explosions caused by meteorite strikes on the moons surfaces, Meiers information seems more accurate, i.e., that matter being propelled from volcanoes at speeds up to 2,300 km/hour to heights of 180 km is more likely the true source of most particulate-forming rings.
Billy Eduard Meier who is highly controversial and some even call him a hoaxer. But whats about his knowledge of water on mars back in 1976? Yes you heard right he is the man who beat NASA by 32 years about discovery of water on mars. While NASAs announcement on July 31, 2008 discovery of water on Mars, excited scientists, Meier had already been informed about water on the planet Mars " on July 8, 1976 by aliens.
KENS NOTE: If you are not familiar with Billy Meier or his incredible photographes, you must google Billy Meier UFO .His story is amazing.
KEN PFEIFER MUFON NEW JERSEY
2011 has been so far a very cruel year when it comes to prominent ufologists and Forteans passing away. Budd Hopkins, the famous artist, author and expert on alien abductions, was just the last one in a long list. Open Minds published his obituarylast week as well as a second piece by me that included the posting of an exclusive video interview with Hopkinsdone by Italian journalist and ufologist Maurizio Baiata. In this article I want to pay tribute to all the other researchers who passed away this year both here and abroad. Unfortunately for me, I knew personally every single one of themsome better than othersbut their varied contributions to the field ought to be remembered.
ION HOBANA 1931-2011, DEAN OF RUMANIAN UFOLOGY
Ion Hobana in Bucharest. image credit: Cristina Aldea
Ion Hobana, the dean of Rumanian ufology, was a gentleman and a scholar. He passed away in Bucharest last February 22, but I didnt learn of his death until I attended the World UFO Symposium in the Republic of San Marino in April, where he used to be a regular speaker and where he was eulogized by his friend Cristina Aldea. I met Hobana at a couple of symposiums in San Marino a few years ago and he was a very agreeable and competent researcher and author.
UFOs Form Behind The Iron Curtain book cover
Hobana was by far Rumanias best known UFO researcher and writer and a well known cultural figure in his country where he served as General Secretary of the Writers Union for many years. He was best known in the West for his book, co-authored with the Belgian writer Julien Weverbergh, "UFOs From Behind The Iron Curtain", published originally in 1974 and translated to many foreign languages, including English. This book was a key contribution to the field because it was the first one to provide a comprehensive overview of ufology in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and of course Rumania. UFO data from all these countries was very scarce during the Cold War and so Habanas book, which showed the similarity of the phenomenon despite the political and cultural differences, became an instant classic. In the 1990s he published other UFO books in Rumania, including "Enigmas in the Sky From History" and "The Mystery of Roswell After Fifty Years". Hobana was also the president of the Association for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Rumanian acronym ASFAN, a pioneering ufological organization in his country.
Hobana was far more than just a UFO writer. He was an internationally recognized expert in the history of science-fiction and the famous 19th century French novelist Jules Verne. His university thesis in 1958 was on the history of science-fiction and he was also the author of numerous books and papers on that subject. Hobana translated many sci-fi authors to Rumanian since he was a polyglot familiar with many languages. He received many awards for all his cultural activities, including the Grand Prize from the Polish Ministry of Culture & Arts in 1973 and the World SF Award in Brighton in 1984. He will be remembered fondly by all those who knew him not just as an outstanding researcher but a kind man with a deep culture.
JORGE ANFRUNS 1944-2011, PIONEER CHILEAN UFOLOGIST
Jorge Anfruns in Santiago in 1985 image credit: Sergio Moreno/Huneeus Collection
Jorge Anfruns Dumont, a true pioneer of Chilean ufology, passed away July 1 in Santiago at the Thorax Hospital, following a long illness. The funeral service was held July 2 at the Air Force Chapel in a ceremony attended by many prominent Chilean ufologists. Anfruns will be remembered particularly for reviving the role of the ufologist in Chilean society in the late 1980s. There had been some researchers and groups in the 1960s, but by the 70sa period of major political upheaval following the military coup in 1973it had all died out. Sure, there were still UFO sightings and these were covered by the press on a routine basis but no one was conducting ufological research. There were also contactees and when there was an important UFO case in Chile or abroad, the media didnt have anybody to turn to except these contactees. This is the point where Jorge Anfruns entered the scene: he was a publicist, the son of a journalist of "El Mercurio", Chiles most prestigious newspaper, and so he understood well the culture of the media. He quickly became Chiles first known ufologist, someone who could comment on the subject neither as a skeptic nor from a mystical perspective.
Ovnis Extraterrestres book cover
I knew Jorge Anfruns very well since we worked together in Santiago in the period of 1985 to 1990. I was visiting Chile then often, where I would stay at my parents apartment in Santiago for a couple of months, and I was looking for someone who could sponsor my UFO lecture and slide show. Anfruns offered to do it and, with his knowledge of the field and his extensive media connections, the lectures in Santiago were a big success both in public attendance and media coverage. I appointed him MUFONs Foreign Representative in Chile and he later launched his own franchise, Mufon-Chile, which compiled the "First Catalog of UFO Sightings" in the country. Anfruns was the author of four books, of which the first one published in 1992, "OVNIS Extraterrestres y Otros en Chile" UFOs Extraterrestrials and Others in Chile, was the most important one since it was the first UFO book published in Chile in decades, providing an overview of UFO cases in the country. Anfruns also produced a Spanish version of the documentary film "UFOs Are Real," showing it throughout Chile and even at army bases. It was in the course of these travels, later expanded to Argentina, that he collected many unpublished UFO cases. He also organized the first UFO Symposium in Chile at the Carrera-Hilton Hotel in downtown Santiago in 1987.
In early 1998, Anfruns was the first Chilean ufologist to correspond with then Minister of Defense, Raul Troncoso, about the creation of the Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena CEFAA, confirming this agency had been formed with "the goal of collecting, studying, analyzing and classifying information related to strange phenomena with the purpose of determining if the security of aerial operations in the country are in risk," as well as "to begin forming a data base with information in the public domain." Jorge Anfruns will be remembered for his many contributions to Chilean ufology, but probably his main legacy was to establish the role of the civilian ufologist in Chilean society.
WILLIAM CORLISS 1926-2011, GREAT SCIENTIFIC FORTEAN
William Corliss lecturing at FortFest in the early 90s. image Credit: Antonio Huneeus
William Roger Corliss, a physicist and prolific author on scientific anomalies, passed away in Maryland on July 8. He was born in 1926 in Stanford, Connecticut, serving in the Navy during World War II and, later as a physicist, was Director of Advanced Programs in the Nuclear Division at Martins in the 1960s. According to the obituary published in the "Baltimore Sun", "he became a prolific writer, authoring 57 books on atomic energy, space propulsion, scientific satellites, teleoperations, wind tunnels, and scientific anomalies in all fields of science." It was this last category, carried on independently through The Sourcebook Project in Glen Arm, Maryland, that made him a very important Fortean.
The website of The Sourcebook Projectdescribes the "Catalog of Anomalies" in the following way: "The Sourcebooks, Handbooks and Catalogs are compiled from 40,000 articles from the scientific literature, the results of a 25-year search through more than 12,000 volumes of scientific journals, including the complete files of Nature, Science, Icarus, Weather, etc. The Sourcebook Project is compiling an objective, unsensationalized catalog of anomalous phenomena." Corliss was undoubtedly influenced and inspired by the writings of Charles Fort 1874-1932, the great compiler of all kinds of strange occurrences including early reports of UFOs now referred as Fortean phenomena. But while Fort pursued this with a unique literary flavor and philosophical approach, Corliss was a methodical scientist bent on classifying all the different types of anomalies.
His books and reports are thus divided in different categories: Biological Anomalies, Ancient Structures and Archaeological Anomalies, Geophysical Anomalies Earthquakes, Unidentified Sounds, Rare Halos, Nocturnal Lights, etc., Geological Anomalies, Astronomical Anomalies, etc. They are a fantastic yet sober resource of raw data for anybody wishing to pursue Fortean research. Arthur C. Clarke put it best when he described Corliss as "Forts latter-day and much more scientific successor," adding that "unlike Fort, Corliss selected his material almost exclusively from scientific journals like "Nature" and "Science", not newspapers, so it has already been subjected to a filtering process which would have removed most hoaxes and reports from obvious cranks. Nevertheless, there is much that is quite baffling in some of these reports from highly reputable sources."
I remember meeting William Corliss a couple of times at the FortFest in the Washington, DC area nowadays held in Baltimore, where he was a frequent speaker. Despite his impressive amount of knowledge and data, he was an unassuming man who didnt promote himself or made exaggerated claims. He will be greatly missed by all serious researchers.
HILARY EVANS 1929-2011, IMPORTANT ENGLISH SCHOLAR AND AUTHOR
Hillary and Mary Evans image credit: Clas Svahns
Hilary Evans, a well known English researcher and author of many UFO and paranormal books, died July 27 at a London community hospital, where he was being treated for several complications. Together with his wife Mary, who passed away last year, Hilary founded in 1964 the Mary Evans Picture Library MEPL, a huge data bank of old images from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries including many on the history of the paranormal and UFOs which are used in many books and documentaries. This allowed the Evans to pursue their love of books and conduct their own research. Hilarys personal huge UFO library was donated to the Archives of UFO Research in Sweden and you can find a personal tribute to his friend in Clas Svahns blog here. There were also obituaries published in two major British newspapers, the "Guardian"and "The Telegraph".
Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors book cover
Hilary Evans was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire in 1929, the son of a vicar who moved to India when he was a small child. He studied English in Kings College, Cambridge, followed by a Masters at Birmingham, and worked in the advertising industry as a copywriter in the 1950s. His interest in the paranormal goes back to the 1960s, when he joined the Society for Psychical Research, the British UFO Research Association BUFORA and the Folklore Society, co-founding in 1981 the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena. Using the extensive MEPL image bank, Evans published two beautiful illustrated UFO history books, "UFOs The Greatest Mystery" in 1979, and "From Other Worlds Aliens, Abduction and UFOs" in 1998. Also important are his two comprehensive studies", Visions * Apparitions * Alien Visitors A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma" 1984 and "Gods * Spirits * Cosmic Guardians Encounters with Non-Human Beings" 1987, which are not picture books although they include a picture section but historical and philosophical studies of the different types of encounters with entities, compiled from a wide variety of sources including religion, folklore, history, the paranormal and ufology.
According to the "Guardian", "his later books included "Outbreak" 2009, which examined cases of mass hysteria, and "Sliders" 2010, which covered street-light interference, the belief by some people that they turn off street lights as they pass by them." I met Hilary Evans in 1987 at the MUFON International UFO Symposium at the American University in Washington, DC, where he was representing England and I Chile, and saw him again at a couple of other conferences I also dealt with MEPL a few times obtaining pictures for my UFO Calendar and other projects. I didnt know him well, but what I remember was that he was a soft-spoken, true scholar. He was probably skeptic by American standards, but his type of skepticism was very European, not antagonistic or debunking, but very intellectual, looking for the big picture, trying to integrate psychological and sociological trends with the paranormal, not to "explain" it but to better understand these types of phenomena. "Typically," wrote "The Telegraph", "his approach was neither that of the passionate conspiracist nor the ruthless debunker. Rather, he adopted an open-minded, scholarly tone." He is survived by his daughter Valentine and other family members.
BOB GIRARD, BOOKSELLER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Bob Girard at his office in upstate New York in 1987. image credit: Clas Svahns
Bookseller Bob Girard passed away August 12 in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Long before there was Amazon, Abe Books, Ebay and all the other online outlets, his Arcturus Book Service, created in Scotia, upstate New York, in 1980 provided an invaluable service for anybody researching ufology, Forteana and the paranormal. There are a few books in these fields published by major houses, but a lot of material is self-published or put out by very small publishers, which you wont find in bookstores. Nowadays you can find just about anything online, but that was not the case in the pre or early internet days. Thats why Bob Girards Arcturus developed such a loyal clientele all over the world. He moved his business first to Georgia and eventually to Port Saint Lucie, Florida.
Arcturus Books Catalogue
Bob was far more than just a bookseller. He was deeply knowledgeable of ufology and Forteana and wrote caustic reviews of most of the books he sold in his monthly or bimonthly "Arcturus Books Catalogue", which he used to mail to his clients. His reviews were widely read because of their unique, no-hold-barred style. You knew Bob was an honest person in that he gave badsometimes awfulreviews to half the book he sold. He cared more for the integrity of the field than the almighty buck. To give you a couple of examples, here is what Girard had to say about Billy Meiers "Talmud of Jmmanuel": "an embarrassment, in which Billy Meier's recording of a mysterious Aramaic scripture complete with Christ as a Pleiadian is fanatically forced to fit a former fundamentalist's deep need to reconcile UFOs and Christ." That was comparatively soft to what he had to say about other books. There were some books he approved of course, always encapsulating his opinions and conclusions in his own unique style. Here is what he had to say, for instance, about Kay Wilsons "The Alien Jigsaw":
All right, all you wannabes who simply "long" to be taken onto a spaceship so that you can get to know all you can about extraterrestrials and their worlds, "read this book before you "go. You might find out in this book-the most clearly and bluntly-worded description we have yet seen of what it's "really" like on that examination table-that, A it hurts a lot, B it can be pretty gross, C you have utterly no control of the situation, D you're being used at will-"their" will, E you can't trust yourself once you've been abducted and you can't trust reality any longer, and F no human knows enough about what's happening here to be of any help to you if you have trouble coping with the totality of your predicament.
Bob Girard had a rough side to his personality and could be often rude with his own clients but his wife Monica Williams, a researcher from Guayaquil, Ecuador, was exactly the opposite, she was always nice and polite, and so they made a good team. Besides, once you got accustomed to Bobs gruffy side, you got to like him just the way he was. I met him many times, he used to have a big table full of books at the MUFON Symposium, the X-Conference and a few other events, where he would usually complaint he wasnt selling enough to cover his expenses. He was always threatening to get rid of Arcturus for years, but he kept going up to the very end. You can find a couple of additional perspectives on this unusual man in Loren Colemans CryptoMundoand in Clas Svahns blogwho visited him in Scotia in 1987.
All the individuals profiled, Ion Hobana, Jorge Anfruns, William Corliss, Hilary Evans and Bob Girard, made their own, unique contribution to the ufological and/or Fortean fields, and they all should be remembered for what they did and for their true dedication and love of these subjects. Now that they are "on the other side" they may learn things they missed in this world.
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