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Researchers seek to alter impact of haunting memories E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles October 21st, 2004 Kathleen Logue was waiting at a traffic light when two men smashed her car's side window, hopped in, pointed a gun at her head and ordered her to drive. For hours, Logue fought off her attackers' attempts to rape her, and finally she escaped. But for years afterward, she was tormented by memories of that terrifying day. So years later, after a speeding bicycle messenger knocked the Boston paralegal onto the pavement in front of oncoming traffic, Logue jumped at a chance to try something that might prevent her from being haunted by her latest ordeal. "I didn't want to suffer years and years of cold sweats and nightmares and not being able to function again," Logue said. "I was prone to it because I had suffered post-traumatic stress from being carjacked. I didn't want to go through that again." Logue volunteered for an experiment designed to test whether taking a pill immediately after a terrorizing experience might reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study is part of a promising but controversial field of research seeking to alter, or possibly erase, the impact of painful memories — a concept dubbed "therapeutic forgetting" by some and taken to science fiction extremes in films such as this summer's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Proponents say it could lead to pills that prevent or treat PTSD in soldiers coping with the horrors of battle, torture victims recovering from brutalization, survivors who fled the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and other victims of severe, psychologically devastating experiences. "Some memories can be very disruptive. They come back to you when you don't want to have them — in a daydream or nightmare or flashbacks — and are usually accompanied by very painful emotions," said Roger Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who is studying the approach. "This could relieve a lot of that suffering." Dangerous territory Skeptics, however, argue that tinkering with memories treads into dangerous territory because memories are part of the very essence of a person's identity, as well as crucial threads in the fabric of society that help humanity avoid the mistakes of the past. "All of us can think of traumatic events in our lives that were horrible at the time but made us who we are. I'm not sure we'd want to wipe those memories out," said Rebecca Dresser, a medical ethicist at Washington University in St. Louis who serves on the President's Council on Bioethics, which condemned the research last year. "We don't have an omniscient view of what's best for the world." Some fear that anything designed for those severely disabled by psychic damage will eventually end up being used far more casually — to, perhaps, forget a bad date or a lousy day at work. "You can easily imagine a scenario of 'I was embarrassed at my boss's party last night, and I want to take something to forget it so I can have more confidence when I go into the office tomorrow,' " said David Magnus, co-director of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics. "It's not hard to imagine that it will end up being used much more broadly."   So far, only a handful of small studies have been conducted in people in the United States and France, most testing a drug called propranolol, which blocks the action of stress hormones that etch memories in the brain. The results suggest drugs may be able to prevent traumatic memories from being stored with such disturbing intensity in the first place, or perhaps deaden effects of old memories if taken shortly after they have been reawakened. The results have been promising enough that researchers are planning larger studies in several countries, including the United States, Canada, France and Israel, testing propranolol and other drugs, including the active components of marijuana. "You always have the ability to misuse science," said Joseph LeDoux, a New York University memory researcher planning one of the studies. "But this isn't going to be radical surgery on memory. All we'd like to do is help people have better control of memories they want or prevent intrusive memories from coming into their minds when they don't want them." Science-fiction fodder The ability to manipulate memory has long been the stuff of science fiction, inspiring fears of government mind control and films such as the 1962 classic "The Manchurian Candidate." No one is anywhere near having the power to extract the memory of a love affair as depicted in "Eternal Sunshine." But scientists have started taking the first tentative steps toward developing treatments based on new insights into why emotionally charged events — whether it be President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Sept. 11 or a first kiss — create such indelible memories. "Whatever is being learned at the time of emotional arousal is learned much more strongly," said James McGaugh, of the University of California at Irvine. McGaugh demonstrated that strong emotions — fear, love, hate, panic — trigger stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which activate a part of the brain called the amygdala, creating unusually vivid, emotionally charged memories. "Any strong emotion will have that effect. It could be winning a Nobel Prize. It could be a very faint whisper in the ear, 'I love you,' at the right time." Propranolol, a beta-blocker widely used for heart patients, blocks the action of stress hormones on the amygdala, which led researchers to start testing whether it could prevent PTSD. The study Logue was in, along with a similar one in France, found that people who took propranolol immediately after a traffic accident or some other traumatic experience had fewer physical symptoms of PTSD months later. "I really think it helped," said Logue, 35. "It helped not bring back my earlier bout with post-traumatic stress and made it easier to cope with this new incident. I look both ways before I cross a one-way street now, but I'm not in a panic." So far, the research has suggested only that the emotional effects of memories may be blunted, not that the memories themselves are erased. "I think it's an unfortunate misconception that it's blotting out memories," said Charles Marmar, of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who helped conduct the French study. "What it does is help people manage the memories so they can tolerate them." But other researchers are trying to go further, possibly deadening or even obliterating any effects of old memories. "People had thought that once a memory was stored or consolidated, it stays that way. People thought, it's there for life — it's fixed," said Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. "We showed that wasn't the case." Laboratory rats trained to fear a tone lost that fear when scientists injected into their brains a drug that blocked formation of proteins necessary for memory storage while the animals were prompted to re-experience fear and store the memory again. "When you activate a memory, it comes back up in a dynamic state and has to be restabilized using the same mechanisms that stored it in the first place. You can interfere with that," Nader said. Ethical questions But some ethicists question this whole line of research. "Our experiences and our memories in a lot of ways define us and define who we are," Magnus said. "And so that's a scary step to go down. We should be very careful about going down a path that could lead to a serious alteration of the core essence of our identities." Beyond the personal impact, ethicists also worry about the societal implications. "Consider the case of a person who has suffered or witnessed atrocities that occasion unbearable memories: for example, those with firsthand experience of the Holocaust," the President's Council on Bioethics wrote. "The life of that individual might well be served by dulling such bitter memories, but such a humanitarian intervention, if widely practiced, would seem deeply troubling: Would the community as a whole — would the human race — be served by such a mass numbing of this terrible but indispensable memory?" The researchers acknowledge the prickly ethical questions but argue that the research should go forward because of its potential to alleviate suffering. "I approach it from a medical standpoint — that PTSD is as much a medical disorder as a broken leg," Pitman said. "I don't say they don't have legitimate concerns, but it's hard to argue we shouldn't pursue this just   The lost continent of Atlantis to be found in near future 09/29/2004 18:46 Results of a previous research conducted in the area not far from Cyprus were classified as secret immediately Several large international expeditions set off for different parts of the world last year to find vestiges of legendary Atlantis, which is still considered the exciting mysteries in the history of human civilization. According to the legend, the continent was flooded ten thousand years before Christ. Scientists still find ancient maps showing now-defunct islands and continents. British researcher Colin Wilson believes that the mystery of the lost continent will be unveiled very soon. The scientist decided to take part in the epoch-making event and joined another expedition devoted to Atlantis. Colin Wilson was inspired with recent explorations of mysterious and fathomless depth of the Mediterranean Sea - the cradle of the European civilization. Explorers pay major attention to the part of the seafloor south off Cyprus, spreading to the coast of Syria. Scientists determined that the territory had been flooded, when the waters of the Atlantic Ocean broke through the dam between Gibraltar and North Africa and rushed into the Mediterranean lowland. A monstrous flood destroyed populated and fertile lands. Vestiges of fantastic ancient civilizations can be found on Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Corsica - the remains of the erstwhile Mediterranean lowland. Scientists believe that the area was populated with several nations, who shared their rich knowledge with ancient Egyptians, whose priests passed the legend of Atlantis across generations. The destruction of the whole civilization was ascribed to gods' anger, who decided to punish Atlanteans for their moral degradation and sinful lifestyle. The story about the destroyed super-civilization exists for over 2,000 years, after it was first told by Plato, the Greek historian and philosopher. US Congressman Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book about Atlanteans in the 19th century. The congressman wrote in his work that they used to be first humans, who invented gun-powder, paper, studied astronomy and learned how to smelt metals. Egypt, Donnelly wrote, was their colony, where they tried to civilize wild tribes. Ignatius Donnelly thinks that the Great Sphinx of Egypt is a lot older that people think it is - it was built by those, who survived the cataclysm. It was proved as a result of scientific researches that the erosion of the sphinx's stone had been caused with hard rains, not with sand storms. It is supposed that the sphinx was built about 7,000 years B.C. The mysterious Greek island of Santorini, situated not far from Crete, attracted a lot of attention in the 1960s. An enormous volcanic eruption destroyed the civilization that used to exist on the island, and Santorini turned to a huge sea crater. Archaeologists and historians added the island on their lists of 'candidacies' for the title of the lost continent, although it did not fit Plato's description. The events described in the legend of Atlantis took place a lot earlier than the destructive eruption and earthquake rocked the island. Some scientists think that the Mediterranean Sea is rather young - it was supposedly formed after the end of the ice age, when the global warming commenced. Waters started changing continents' outlines, leading to monstrous floods. A low mountainous chain used to separate the Mediterranean lowland from the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantis might have been the cradle of early Mideastern civilizations too. Colin Wilson believes that scientists will soon obtain sensational information about the flooded country. Specialists plan to photograph the bottom of the sea, where they expect to find ancient buildings. The results of the previous research conducted in the area were classified as secret immediately. This may bring up a question of which country may own the territory of Atlantis with priceless treasures and archaeological findings. Syria and Lebanon have already set forth their claims for a part of the lost continent. Turkey has recently evinced interest too. Naval forces of several states will most likely watch and control the route of the research vessel. The US Navy has reportedly scanned the areas of the seafloor, where the ancient city is presumably situated.   Close Encounters... (August 20, 1993) full-size Filiberto Caponi Close Encounter 1993 This is the account of the repeated encounter between a humanoid being and a 23 years old Italian from Pretare d'Arquata, who took a series of 6 Polaroid pictures of the being. The alleged series of encounters starts in Pretare d'Arquata, a small sector in the province of Ascoli Piceno, at the top of the Monte Vettore, a few kilometres after one leaves the road to Salaria. They show, in sequence, a being in a various positions, seated, nearly erected, in seemingly painful physical conditions although this may be only an anthropomorphic impression. The being seems to have small dimensions, rather sturdy, with the skin that in some instantaneous ones appears burnished and thick and in last photograph, completely red, moisted, with the aspect of a badly wounded skin. The photos were published in the weekly magazine "Visto" n. 43 on 28 October 1993, and then produced on TV during the program "I Fatti Vostri" ("Your facts") on Friday, November 5, 1993, hosted by Giancarlo Magalli. (click on image for full size) May 24, 1993 The first photo showed a small shadow, as Caponi stated. The effect of the mysterious combustion of the two first pictures, altering the zone where the being was, resulted in this. May 24, 1993. The first investigation was headed by the CUN and comprized several inspections, interviews of Caponi and its relatives and the answers to their questions to other indirect witnesses. At the end of the investigation, they had a detailed report on the case but drew no firm conclusion whatsoever.     At the same time, other investigators approached Caponi and obtained from him similar statements, substantially coinciding with those published by the CUN. Some of them gave their interpretation of the events, such as Massimo Fratini Maximum from the CETI, in Rome, who stated that he has always been convinced by the sincerity of the witness. "In the course of our inquiry and during last the three years, we have had to reconsider, step by step, all the vicissitude, to reconstruct all the details, meeting Filiberto Caponi several more times and trying to collect other testimonies." "We are not still in a position to give the conclusions - today - but we are approaching the possible truth of what happened in the outskirts of Pretare d'Arquata (Marches), on the Monte Vettore, starting in May 1993." Caponi's photograph remain disturbing to this day. There were however some contradictions and omissions who emerged when investigations started to put more pressure on Caponi. Yet there seems to be no way to differentiate if these contradictions and omissions are simply caused by the confusion between investigators, and the stress put on Caponi who was literally sieged by Italian and foreign journalists as his photographs were just published in a weekly Magazine in Milan. Essentially, the story told by Filiberto Caponi was quite consistent over time, chronologically always consistent, but some parts of his story was slightly at odds with the photographs themselves. This prompted the chief investigator of the CUN, Roberto Pinotti, to insist that he needs to look at the photographic material in good conditions, first to elucidate some points, and also because CUN thought that the witness should have the right to manage his material. Indeed, in an unprecedented and utterly unexplainable manner, the magistracy of Ascoli Piceno had seized and confiscated the photographs from Caponi, and started a judicial procedure against Caponi under the never heard of motive that his photograph might disturb the civil peace. Because of this confiscation, CUN could only analyze them visually but not instrumentally. Caponi told to CUN's Roberto Pinotti, Gianfranco Lollino and Massimo Angelucci, and Fabio Della Balda of the CROVNI of Saint Marino about his first encounter; "I first thought it was a small cat complaining, trapped in a plastic bag." "It was the evening of 9 May 1993. As usually I re-entered from a ride on my motorbike and I was closing the garage, just near the country, when I heard I complain, different from those typical of usual animals. I was also thinking that it may be a drunk coming down from the same road making noises. Then, in an angle of a house, I saw a "white [palleta,]" it seemed to me that the strange complain came from it. Smiling, as I thought I had found an abandoned cat, wrapped in a plastic bag, I stretched a hand to touch it, but on reflection I stopped because it occurred to me that it might scratch me. So I limited myself give the bag a little kick to see if it would come out on itself. And I was terrified, because the "old plastic bag" jumped on, showing that it had a head, arms and legs. It raised from the ground, and went to the wall that I have shown to you before. Anyway, it was quite fast, it had wrapped legs and it carried something that tripped, it looked like a bag that it had on the back, but it was not skin. I only saw the skin of its head and from its small arms which it did not use and not move." An interesting point regarding this first encounter, it that Caponi suffered from an inexplicable cutaneous blackening on the right foot, the foot that he used to touch the entity. The blackening disappeared after three days. (click on image for full size) May 24, 1993 The second picture, also damaged, but the being is more distinguishable, although partly covered with "something." The arrow indicates where the head is. Caponi thought that he was the victim of some confusion, but he has been very frightened so he decided to reopen the garage and to rest a little moment on his motorbike and think about it, and to calm his nerves listening to the radio.     "I thought to myself that what I saw may not have existed, that I have been tired, that it must have been some animal..." However, back home, his mother noticed that something was wrong, as the boy was very pale. She managed to get her son tell what happened, and, with his father, he decided to return on location of the encounter in order to find some trace of the "animal." On the wall, behind which the being disappeared, the father found a "medical gauze covered with blood" but he did not take it home because it was disgusting and instead he put it under an old washing machine in the courtyard, planning to go to Ascoli Piceno in order to have it analyzed. In the night, Caponi still heard the strange complain, went down again to the road, but he saw nothing this time. "Nothing, just nothing, it was impossible," explained Caponi. "...and my father was there so that I could show him, and I have said to him 'I have heard it, but I do not know where it is' and he told me to go up in my room because from there we could see better. We stayed up there for roughly an hour, then my father was tired and went to bed again. Just at that moment 'the thing' reappeared... I called my father and so he has been able to see it too, for a moment, while it went away under that arch, in the blink of an eye, and my father looked at me as if he wanted to say 'so you were not joking!'... anyway he told me to go to bed, because it was late (3 in the morning)." The next morning, Filiberto's sister went to control the gauze, but it had disappeared. "It must have been a dog that smelled the odor of the blood," says Filiberto. "However it has been at that time that I decided to lend a camera from my brother-in-law. I put it right on the bedside table. For a week then I waited there (indicates the night place) thinking that perhaps the being would come again and that I could photograph it." 15 days went by and nothing happened, so Caponi decided to forget all about it, when one evening: "It was approximately the two o'clock in the night and I heard the strange scream again. I sent up, I took the camera (a Polaroid 660) and opened the door, - while I felt that something was walking in the alley. I saw it arrive, from far away enough, to not fast, nearly walking. I took a first photo, the Polaroid ejects it, and I take it away, ready to take an other photo. In the light of the flash it had stopped, as if it had noticed the light, maybe but it must have been deaf... because I have made some noise when I opened the door, and it continued to come in my direction. It had stopped and turned around only when I took the photo. I have thought 'I will race with it, take a photo and run after it, this is a unique opportunity' and what I did, I went towards it, advancing a few meters, I photographed it again, and then I escaped screaming 'I have photographed it!', without watching where I went, so I ended against a wall. My father woke up and asked me what had happened. The photos developed under the eyes of my relatives: on the first one only a dark shadow was visible, but on the second, the head and the hanging arms wrapped with something, were visible. I looked at it intensively. I explained that when I have taken the second photo it had slightly turned its head towards me, without turning its body at all. My father felt it was quite a hair riser. My mother said 'My god, what is he?' And then I had calmed down and I told them 'a lot of it in the photos, let's put them in a secured place, let's not have everyone see them' and we decided to put them in a wooden box, in order to study them with calm on the next day." (click on image for full size) August 11, 1993 The first picture where the small being is clearly seen, at least as for the head, a hand, and some dark clothing on its back and whitish cover on its lower body. "I found the cover of the box curved, blackened underneath, filled with smoke. I ask what can have happened . Then I opened it I feel a smell of burnt similar to burned plastic's odor. The photo was burned around and where the being was shown, it was swollen and ruined... I detach the second photo and the image was also swollen, only in surface, it was not destroyed."     Later, CUN investigators tried to determine if the ruined photos were explicitly attacked, and considered the possibility that the film may have been the Polaroid for a long time and maybe expired. But the hypothesis of a normal deterioration due to expiration revealed not valid, because the following photos were made with the same film and were not ruined at all. The only possible explanation that remained was that of a chemical interaction between the photos and an old past due battery conserved in the wooden box where the images were stored, which is what Caponi also proposed. The problem is that all the material, including the wooden box, have been delivered to the Police officers of the station of Arquata of the Tronto, subsequently to their first publication in a magazine. Moreover it must be emphasized that Caponi had circulated the photos (reproduced in dias) among roman newspapers and press agencies. Back on May 24, 1993. The news by now had been diffused, in because Caponi told about it in confidence to a friend: "I have made a big mistake, the day when I went at a friend who is a carpenter and told him all about it. He had sworn to me that he would not tell a word about it, but one evening he had drunk a glass too much and three days later the whole country knew the story and the "Messagero di Ascoli Piceno" newspaper telephoned, and a few days later they published the burnt photos." "The story still diffused more, even if many did not believe it and created popular legends about me or people hunting in the country. One evening I went to the circle and encountered the friend who had spilled the story out; in spite of that I have made peace with him, and we were walking outside with two others. And then all of us heard 'the scream,' coming from behind the gate of a house which is shown in the published photos. We decide to go check it out and I begin to climb up, while a friend remains a little behind, an the other progress in order, and when we get close to the direction of the complain, it stops immediately. We return to the bar and some sort of expedition gets organized, with others, in all 15 to 20 people, some of them with knives - everyone excited - torches and photographic cameras. One them has a hunting dog. We all go back the gate. We here the complain and the dog heads on and leaves us, crosses the gate and begins to bark, nearly as if fighting, and there are more and more screaming. Then the dog 'jumps down the road', throwing itself from a wall, falls on his back, stands up on his legs again and flees to hide in a corner. The other people present begin to look at me speechless. But, when I propose to locate the source of the sound in order to discover what it is they all say no. However from that moment, people in the area begun to believe me a little and I get interviewed from a journalist of 'Stop' magazine, but when he sees the burnt photos he does not think opportune to acquire them." Over time, the feeling that something strange and interesting is really happening spreads in the small country. And then on August 8, Pretare is the location of a new unusual phenomenon: many hens in the country die mysteriously, some enduring amputations of limbs or of the head, but without signs of blood or bites. They have been recovered all piled up. The fact remains stunning, because it is difficult to imagine that a predator, such as a fox or a vixen, can do so much damages in one night. So far Caponi had had two encounters with the being. But on August 11, 1993, when Caponi was somewhere outside on a bench, watching shooting stars: "It was five o'clock in the morning and all at once, in front of the door of my laboratory, I saw again that white pack, moving; at the start I thought that it was my cat, but then, looking with more attention, I understood that it was 'it' again, seated, and watching around. Then I went into the house, took the Polaroid camera, and looked at it through the Window. It was still here, so I went down and made one photo of it. In the light of flash the being turns its head, raises, tilts its back, turns and runs away. Then I said to myself that I have photographed it just right, and I hoped the photo does not get ruined like the others, and I decides not to say anything not even to my parents and I held it in the drawer." The being shown on this picture is apparently still wrapped in its "external protecting covering", and partially covered with gauzes or whitish wraps. Filiberto describes its covering: "it may be pants, in a strange way, and the being had some sort of leather on the shoulders, with some bandage." Nine days passed, and on August 20, another encounter gave Caponi the opportunity two take two new pictures, still using the same Polaroid, in spite of the allegation by the "Visto" weekly magazine that the pictures were made with a professional camera. "No, it was always with the Polaroid, I literally lived with it, while a friend of mine lend me another one, I declined, I gave it back to him without having ever used it. I open the window and I see it seated to the center of the courtyard. I come down and I make one first photo of it. It made the usual movement, turns the head slowly and I take a second picture, moving to the side. At this point it escaped. They are not successful to dirgli nothing, I would have intentional. The being had always appeared with gauze around the legs, and something similar to leather on its back, but this time it did not wear its covering anymore, but appeared with two tubes on the thorax that seemed to slightly move under its skin, like from air or liquid pressure, or some fluid, I don't know, maybe for its respiration. The small tubes both moved rhythmically. And an other important thing: I was convinced that the body was wet, it drained water, it dripped. But not much. From its head, water passed beside the eyes like some sweat. I want to emphasize that that evening my sister had also heard the noises, on the small terrace of our house, where my father had two drums in which he put water for watering the flowers. We have thought that perhaps it had gone to bathe itself. The drums were supposed to be full, but instead one was half empty. Maybe during the night, it had "undressed", dipped in a drum, washed, and jumped from the terrace, producing the noise of a jump in water that my sister heard. They came down, to see if it had left its coveralls, but there was nothing. Except a small hole, under the house, not wider than 25-30 centimetres, that opens on a bulwark. I have illuminated it with a torch, but I have not been able to see correctly within it." An other particular thing, maybe of great importance emerges then, when the enquirers ask Caponi greater details about the physical aspect of the creature and the color of its skin. One assumes that its epiderm, as it appears in the two photos of the seated humanoid, is really in "coveralls" that joins perfectly to the body and wraps it completely. The difference, in the photos handed by Caponi between the humanoid with and without its kind of "protection" appears clearly from the last picture, in which the being is half seated half erected and seems to be "naked." A month passed, and the next encounter was on September 20, 1993. "Every night I waited, by now. I still did not sleep more. So, towards at about 3 o'clock in the morning, I see it under the house. 'Stavolta, I say to myself, before photographing I call someone. I woke up my grandmother, that sleeps in the room besides, but she was not able to see it from her window, although it was just under. It was standing. Then we came down and my grandmother finally saw it in all its splendor - she was frightened because she thought that she was seeing some sort of malignant entity - and she started to scream, while I tried to calm her, I approached and photographed it." Then a scene already wintessed repeated: the being bent, turned the head a little bit, and looked at Caponi. The grandmother, Perla Antonia, told about this experience, explained how frightened she was that the being may hurt her grandson: "Filiberto, let's go away from here, because I am frightened now. But by now I run after it up to the arch, in the country, under the rainy night, I was all wet, in the middle of the grass I have lost it from sight." Other important details emerge from the questions of investigators: "The being made noise when moving, its dorsal structure is rather grip, but its sides seems wide, which is practically the contrary of the way we are made. It seems built to run, the arms are not used, remember how he raced to the nearby door with leaps like those of an ostrich. Its dimensions? It is very small, not more than 70 centimetres, the way it had its feet on the ground, it seems that it weighs the double than it really weighs. It has two nostrils for the nose, but no ears." (click on image for full size) August 20, 1993 The strange creature photographed in front of Caponi's workshop. In summary, there has been five encounters by Filiberto Caponi with the strange creature. in the first one, of 9 May have not photographed it). On the May 24, he took two photos, on the August 11, one photo, where the being is within the dark covering. on August 20 he took two photo of the seated being and on September 2, he took the last picture in which the creature is seen with stretched legs and seemingly covered in a bloody substance, in front of Caponi's workshop.   In the interview published by the CUN investigators, Caponi meticulously described the physical aspect of the being. "The head is spherical with two frontal eyes going to the sides; they are fixed and, seen at close range, they are similar to the eyes of a fly, honeycombed, with many black points, that appear polished, almost as if they were made of plastic." The eyes were ovals, Caponi still explained, and they were not closed, the face "did not show any movement, except that the mouth opened and closed with regularity, the mouth is wets sign of a sure salivation and hard gums, I have seen no teeth, no tongue." During the encounter there has always been a discreet street lighting system and the shadow projected from the small body could be correctly distinguished. The head "was turning regularly, but it did not seem only to watch me, more as if by curiosity or alarm". The mouth seen from the side, "has a vague shape of a beak and reminds of a turtle's mouth. The rough skin looks scratchy, while the skin visible on the head is completely smooth, but has spots. The head and the chest have spots of white and yellow colour." Continuing with the limbs, "the legs are thin, and have muscles, like thos of a well developped calf. Three fingers can be distinguished in the hands, but the being does not move them, and it also does not move the arms, they are frail and contracting muscular fibre is distinguished in the movements, even though imperceptible, because the hands appear atrophied and almost did not move, and the fingers were hardly noticed, except when there was a move of the shoulders." A particularly interesting feature described by Caponi are the two small "tubes" that were on the thorax of the creature: "The tubes come out of the skin and enter again in the skin but they seem to be something else, which is no part of its body, more an addition to it. The tubes moved, only a little, while the belly seems immovable, as if it did not breathe." Filiberto described the legs to the investigators: "they were its more strong and powerful parts, considering the way in which it run. It has two fingers on its feet, one slightly longer than the other, perhaps a thumb. And finally there are three bumps noticeable on its back, the one on the neck being the largest. It had never emitted any understandable sound. Its screams were composed of two 'exact and precise lines' alternating in a regular lament. It seemed however interested in the light: in the last photo I have taken it was looking at a streetlamp, it seemed to have an astonishment reaction to the flash, I have almost thought that it tried to pose for the photos. One last thing, I have also thought to capture it, but then I have understood that it was an absurd idea." The interview by CUN investigators was concluded by some bitter comments from Caponi: "What worries me is that these facts are not considered with the importance it deserves, it is only discussed in tabloid newspapers. But it is also true that nobody was really interested. with few exceptions. As for the presumed ufologists that contacted me repeatedly, few trusted me." "If someone thinks I hoxed it, I will challenge that. Or you can make your own investigations and draw your conclusions." Filiberto Caponi has been considered open, frank and available by the CUN investigators, but he also stayed quite on his guard probably because of the pressures he experienced from every part, and because of the strong tensions caused by all that within his family. In his testimony there were contradictions just regarding the number of the photos in its possession and about their release in public, through newspapers and the television. He could have had legitimately ask for financial profits with their publications. Unfortunately, also because he was adviced against that, Filiberto did not manage his stunning and delicate material. Therefore, later on, because of the fuss created by his claims of his encounters, Caponi has been formally accused by the Police officers and interrogated in the context of an amazing penal procedure under the charge of "having spread false or exaggerated news to disturb the public order" and his photographic material was confiscated, as evidence to hold against him in a lawsuit. In May of 1994 the court published a decree about the suit that innocented him completely. There was never a judicial procedure instructed on such bases: its consequences was only that it contributed to spread the story even wider. (click on image for full size) September 20, 1993 The last picture of the being. Remember that Polaroid photos cannot be taken in fast succession. "The last encounter has happened just here behind. Before, it was a little more outside in the country. Here, this is the last photo that I have released.".-Caponi The judicial provision has been taken shortly after French, German and Japanese news media had relayed the information, and it prevented all the investigations. Italian ufologist still do not understand the reason for this lawsuit. After the apparition of Filiberto Caponi on the Italien TV in the "Maurizio Costanzo show" in July 2001, and articles that appeared on the ufological magazine UFO Notiziario, the Caponi case was debated again, and discordant opinion were issued, with no serious new argument given.     To sum up, there is no conclusion and there probably never will be one: skeptics state it must be a fraud because alien beings do not visit the Earth and a fraud is much more plausible anyway, and many ufologists simply say that through many interviews and investigation, no evidence of fraud has been found. TIM GOOD: "I devoted six chapters to these extraordinary colourful Polaroid photographs taken by Filiberto Caponi in Italy. It’s a long complicated story, but we have these 6 photographs which he took between May and October of 1993. I’ve spent time in Italy on several occasions with Caponi and his family and I’m satisfied that he’s telling the truth. I met his grandmother, and this was the most compelling witness in a way for me, because she had actually witnessed him, her grandson, taking the last photograph close up. Then, of course, the problem is that Caponi is an artisan and he works in terracotta as well as being a fine painter. So the obvious conclusion that the sceptics come to is that he fabricated this creature. First of all, I commissioned a Law Society checked expert witness Professor Roger Green who specializes in examining imagery for the police in forensic analysis. And he determined, in his opinion – having studied examples of Caponi’s sculptures, terracotta work, and paintings – that the creature didn’t represent something that Caponi would have produced, were he to have fabricated it. But of course, that is just a legal opinion. We cannot prove the case, we cannot produce the creature – and it’s very frustrating." SOURCES: This article was compiled from various ufology articles in Italian mostly from Italian-speaking web sites. This is the reason for the English being broken, yet the gist of the account remains. (BJ) I am highly interested in obtaining more information. The case has obviously been discussed, documented and investigated a lot in Italy, whereas ufologists from other countries did not seem to know much about it, except for English writer Tim Good. REFERENCES: "Unearthly Disclosure", book by Tim Good, with a foreword by Lord Hill-Norton.     Tesla Crop Circle 27-Jun-2004 Click to Enlarge It's been a fairly dull crop circle season in the U.K. this year— until now. A new circle has arrived that appears to be a diagram for an electrical transistor designed 100 years ago by Nikola Tesla. This little-known engineer is credited with inventing, among other things, the radio, a/c electricity and fluorescent lights. The Western Daily Press says, "But why one of his early diagrams should be recreated in a wheat field near Alton Barnes, the global capital of crop circles, remained a mystery…" Michael Soper, of Contact International, says, "I'm very interested in this one. It's almost as if this is the last piece of a jigsaw which we haven't been able to put together yet, and we're doing it backwards. Tesla is the one major inventor the establishment hasn't recognized, and as a result his work and his impact has remained counter-establishment. This clearly shows coils, connectors and a box with the wires curling out and around it. I've been trying to think about what this means, but it has to be a message. Perhaps there's more to the things Tesla came up with than we've previously realized and they are trying to point us in the right direction. It has far too many features to be done by people in that short amount of time—how was it done overnight on the shortest night of the year." Some people don't know about these miracles in the fields— show them by sending out our very special crop circle postcards—we're the only place you can get them in the U.S.!   Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog' An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog. The Iranian daily Etemaad says the creature is believed to have grown from larva to an adult frog inside her body. While it is unclear how this could have happened, the paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal. It has been speculated that the woman, who has not been named, unknowingly picked up the larva while she was swimming in a dirty pool. The woman, from the south-eastern city of Iranshahr, is a mother of two children. The "so-called frog", as the newspaper puts it, has yet to undergo precise genetic and anatomic tests. But it quotes clinical biology expert Dr Aminifard as saying: "The similarities are in appearance, the shape of the fingers and the size and shape of the tongue." Medical history recounts stories of people who believed they had frogs - or even lizards or snakes - living and growing in their bodies. One of the most famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina Geisslerin, known as "the toad-vomiting woman" of Germany. When she died in 1662 doctors are said to have performed an autopsy, but found no evidence animals had ever lived inside her body. BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. Bigfoot Spotted in the Yukon, Hiding in Sumatra 21-Jun-2004 In the Yukon village of Teslin, Bigfoot has been seen at a construction site near the airport. Conservation Officer Dave Bakica says the two people who saw it "claim they thought it was a person standing beside the road, but couldn't tell from all the dust. By the time they turned around to look back they said this person was completely covered in hair and took just two strides to get across the whole Alaska highway." And one Bigfoot researcher is determined to bring back photographs of a Yeti from Sumatra. Tests by experts at Cambridge University and in Australia have confirmed that a footprint and hairs previously brought back from Sumatra by explorer Adam Davies do not belong to any known species. Now he plans to return to the island to bring back photographic evidence that the Yeti exists. Tales of the orang-pendek, "little man of the forest," are part of the folklore of Sumatra, Indonesia. The creature is reported to be about 5 feet tall, chocolate brown or orange and able to walk upright. Davies says, "We know it exists, and a few people have reported seeing it recently. Now we want to take photos of it. We are going back for about a month, and we will spend all that time in the jungle with a team of trackers concentrating on three or four spots where there have been sightings. We hope to pick up a trail, try to pick out some areas of elevation in the jungle and then fan out and observe the jungle silently. The rainforest is being chopped down. We hope that if we can get pictures, we will be able to help preserve the rainforest from illegal logging." The hairs his team brought back in 2001 were examined by expert Hans Brunner in Australia, who concluded that the DNA matched no known animal. His findings were confirmed by primatologist David Chivers. Davies says, "The footprints I have looked at are unique. It has something in common with apes, gibbons and humans, but it is different." Marion Sheldon and Gus Jules were driving down a highway in the Yukon when they saw a Bigfoot and reported it to Officer Bakica. When he got to the location, it had disappeared into the bush. He searched for tracks but thinks they may have been washed away by the rain. Sheldon and Jules say they don't want to talk about the experience until they have consulted with local Teslin Tlingit elders. Bigfoot is part of many Native American traditions. Another Bigfoot sighting took place in British Columbia on May 17, when a resident said that while driving his car, he saw what looked a father and son near the side of the road, getting a drink of water. Bigfoot's world has almost ended—will ours end too, in 2009? A mysterious author using the pen name of Peter Lorie tells us that's what the Bible says. To learn more, click here and here. Strange Lights Over Ramstein Air Force Base 26-Apr-2004 Click to Enlarge On the night of January 22, 2004 a bizarre phenomenon appeared over Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Witnesses observed a row of seven white lights directly over the base, beginning at approximately 9pm and lasting until they faded with the dawn. The lights became more faint when clouds passed, meaning that they originated in the sky rather than on the ground. According to weather forecaster Staff Sgt. Shawn Burke, who took the photograph accompanying this story, the passing clouds were at 20,000 feet that night. At first, the lights were round, but later became elongated. Sgt. Burke took the picture when the lights were in the elongated mode. He also reports in the Feb. 6, 2004 Kaiserslautern American that the there were communications disruptions during the phenomenon. In his building, both his cellular phone and internet connection failed. The disruption seemed to become worse when the lights brightened. According to Spaceweather.com, there was auroral activity that night, but auroras are not normally associated with stationary lights that persist for hours. Sgt. Burke writes in the Kaiserslautern American, "I have seen aurora borealis activity before--and what I saw was not that." Ramstein air traffic control stated that nothing unusual was observed on radar. US Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn Burke. Why do some people see UFOs while others don't--are they just lucky? Dr. Richard Wiseman can show you how to BECOME lucky, if you aren't right now.   Traces of aliens on the Earth

02/28/2004 19:07

If aliens visited the Earth, their traces would be unusual, preternatural and having no scientific explanation. There have been plenty of such artifacts. In 1959 joint Soviet-Chinese paleontologist expedition led by Dr Chzhou Minchen found a weird footprint in the Gobi desert. This footprint appeared in Gobi millions of years ago when dinosaurs were among the living species. Paleontologists are unable to give other explanations except for extraterrestrial visitor's version, to this footprint. In Libyan desert mysterious glassy formations - tektites - were found. Radioactive isotopes were detected in the tektites. They prove that the tektites came into being as a result of strong radioactive emanation not earlier than one million years ago. The Earth was formed not millions, but billions of years ago, and tektites appeared on the formed planet. There were many attempts to give the explanation to these mysterious formations. There was a version that they appeared after comet collided with the Earth, but no version was able to explain many peculiar features of tektites, such as their concentration on some areas of the surface of the Earth. Recently during aerial photography in the Andes in Naska plateau weird sings made of light stones has been found. There was a version that it was some solar calendar. Some of its lines were allegedly supposed to sparkle under sunrays in the days of equinox. However, the signs configuration could be could be seen from very big altitude. They looked like indicators for landing. Could they be put for those whose visit Incs were expecting? Scientists saw unusual phenomena in Odessa catacombs. They found bones of fossilized ostriches, camels and hyenas in the burrow which was a cave in ancient times. The bones were processed one million year ago with some metal tools. There> Latest News Traces of aliens on the Earth NASA makes public the documents on UFO: truth about tragedy in Keksburg Girl from St Petersburg is child prodigy in Japanese Ukrainian inventor created engine using air as fuel Antarctica mesmerizes scientists was no contemporary human being one million years ago, the Stone Age had not even started at that time. What kind of metal tools could it be? There are round and square holes and grooves in the bones, some of the bones are polished. Steel rectangle 67ÃÆ’Â£67ÃÆ’Â£47 millimeters in size and 785 grams in weight was found in by Austrian physician Mr. Gurlt in the layer of coal the tertiary period. This item was made by human beings. High in the Andes, in the kingdom of ancient Inks, there is Titikaka lake. There are remains of the seashore around this lake - algae remains, shells and ruins of the sea-port. How could a bay be raised to the mountains to become a lake? Geologists have no common opinion on this. Some of them think this happened several hundred thousands years ago. There hardly were creatures capable of constructing sea-port at that time. Interestingly, ruins of giant constructions and well-preserved Sun Gates covered with hieroglyphs were found near the sea-port remains. Scientists became interested in the hieroglyphs and managed to decode them. They were an astronomic calendar of high precision, however the year in this calendar had 290 days - ten months of 24 days and two months of 25 days. Obviously, there was extraterrestrial calendar on the Sun Gates. Many mysteries are connected with the legendary state of ancient Incs. Spanish conquerors were amazed with the principles of Incs" society: no private property, contempt to wealth, mandatory work for everybody. Could aliens from some planet plant these features to Incs? Balls of perfect geometry curved from granite were found in South America. The balls were located at the tops of correct polygons. It is hard to imagine that people knew Geometry several thousand years ago. Source: Anomalia

Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Andrey Nesterov)

Related links: PRAVDA.Ru Extraterrestrial visitor in Russian province PRAVDA.Ru Mysteries of lost civilizations PRAVDA.Ru Aliens among us?! PRAVDA.Ru Chilean alien twin

Mystery object baffles space station crew

US and Russian space officials say the crew on board the International Space Station has reported an unidentified object outside the orbiting craft. A NASA representative in Russia says American astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague, Alexander Kaleri, last week observed what they described as a 20 centimetre long strip of soft material which was floating in space.

The representative says it is still unclear what the object was. He says US and Russian experts are studying photos sent by the crew to determine its origin but insist it posed no danger to the station. Russian experts say it could have been a piece of the station's insulation, or a strip used to attach some technical equipment to the outside of the station.

"It is possible that we will never manage to find out what it was," a spokeman for Russian mission control outside Moscow, Valery Lyndin, told Interfax. According to Mr Lyndin, there was a similar incident on the now-scrapped Russian space station Mir. The cosmonauts saw a "shining object" which they filmed but experts who studied these images were "unable to establish what the object was", he said.

-- AFP

Mystery as dead birds rain down

Beijing, China

05 February 2004 11:38

More than 10,000 birds died mysteriously in eastern China's Jiangsu province, dropping like rain from the sky, state media reported on Thursday.

Farmers and other witnesses in Sangongdian village in Taizhou city saw flocks of bramble finch suddenly fall from the sky on Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

Most of the birds were dead when they hit the ground and some were injured, it said. The birds look like sparrows and are small in size.

Officials from the local centre for disease prevention and control rushed to the scene. Samples from the birds were taken to a laboratory in nearby Nanjing city for testing to determine the cause of death.

Experts from the Jiangsu province agriculture department said that because the birds died while in flight, the cause of death may have been contamination in their food, water or environment.

They did not immediately say whether there was any connection with the spreading bird flu outbreak in Asia. China said on Thursday 56,417 birds in the country had been infected with bird flu and 49,236 of them had died.

China, the world's second-largest producer and fifth-largest exporter of chicken meat, has reported five confirmed cases and 18 suspected cases of the avian flu.

The flu has been reported in nine other Asian countries and blamed for 17 deaths, in Vietnam and Thailand. -- Sapa-AFP

 

FURRY LIMB COULD BE YETI'S

Russian scientists say they may have found the remains of an animal that could be behind the yeti legend.

The furry limb, complete with furry padded paw, was found on a Siberian mountainside and is believed to be several thousand years old.


The climber who found it popped it in his bag and took it home for scientists to examine.

After examination the possibility that the limb could have belonged to a beast known as the Abominable Snowman has not been ruled out.

"I turned the limb over and examined the sole of the foot, and I thought it looked unusual," said climber Sergey Sememnov.

"So I decided to bring it back with me," he added.

A Lost City in the Grand Canyon?

August 27, 2003

On April 5, 1909, the Arizona Gazette published an article detailing the discovery of a great underground citadel located in the Grand Canyon. The discovery was purportedly made by G. E Kinkaid (or Kincaid as both spellings are used), while he was traveling down the Colorado River.

The southwest is home to many ancient ruins from cultures such as the Hopi, the Chumash and the Anasazi, but the city described in the Gazette article is clearly different. The article states that the race who once inhabited the cavern were of oriental origin, possibly from Egypt.

Upon entering the cave, Kinkaid describes finding mummies as well as a shrine containing: the idol, or image, of the peoples god, sitting cross-legged, with a Lotus flower or Lily in each hand. The cast of the face is Oriental, and the carving shows a skillful hand, and the entire is remarkably well preserved, as is everything in this cavern. The idol most resembles Buddha.

Kinkaid also finds what he believes to be hieroglyphic writing similar to that found in the peninsula of Yucatan. Two animals are depicted in the pictorial writing. Curiously, one is of prehistoric type.

An idea of the scale of the discovery can be determined by Kinkaid's estimate that upwards of 50,000 people could have once lived in this system of tunnels and caves.

Was the story faked?

So could this article be for real or was it just a late April Fool's joke? Arguments can be made for both cases.

The article mentions two people by name: G. E Kinkaid/Kincaid and Professor S. A. Jordon from the Smithsonian Institution. I searched through records from the Smithsonian from 1900 to 1914 and could find no mention of either individual. Inquiries posed directly to the Smithsonian by other researchers have yielded consistent denials of any records of a G. E. Kinkaid or a professor S. A. Jordan ever having worked for the Smithsonian.

The 1909 article also describes G. E. Kinkaid as the first white child born in Idaho. I followed up on this lead with the Idaho State Historical Society and received the following response:

Regrettably, we find no word of a G E Kincaid in any of the pre-1900 federal, state (Idaho) or local (Idaho) records we consulted.
There appears to be some confusion about Mr. Kincaid's status as the first European American child born in Idaho. That distinction belongs to Eliza Spaulding, the daughter of missionaries Henry Harmon Spaulding and Narcissa Spaulding, who was born at Lapwai, Idaho, in 1837.

It is possible that Kinkaid believed he was the first Caucasian child born in Idaho and he was merely mistaken. It is also possible that further research will reveal additional details of Kinkaid's past, but so far this lead has turned into a dead end.

Could the Story be True?

There are a few points that would seem to indicate that the 1909 article describes a genuine discovery. If the article were a late April Fool's joke or merely a fictitious article created to fill space on an otherwise slow news day, one would assume that the mention of the story would be a one time occurrence.

The article begins: The latest news of the progress of the explorations of what is now regarded by scientists as not only the oldest archaeological discovery in the United States, but one of the most valuable in the world, which was mentioned some time ago in the Gazette Indeed there was a previous story printed in the Gazette about the explorations of G. E. Kincaid. On March 12, 1909 a short, mundane description of Kincaid's journey is given. Only the last sentence, some interesting archaeological discoveries were unearthed..." gives any indication of the fantastic discoveries made on his trip.

It seems unlikely that such a short, straightforward article would have been fabricated to set up a fictional story that would not be printed for another three weeks.

The March 12 article states that Kincaid traveled the entire length of the Colorado River and that he was the second man to make this journey. So what of the first man to make this journey? That honor goes to John Wesley Powell who explored the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon from 1869 to 1872.

In his book Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons, Powell describes his journey through the Grand Canyon. As he is passing through an area known as Marble Canyon, Powell sees in the canyon walls that, great numbers of caves are hollowed out, and carvings are seen which suggest architectural forms, though on a scale so grand that architectural terms belittle them. Powell may be using the term architectural forms to describe the beauty of the natural formations, but the fact that he includes mention of a great number of caves in the same sentence is certainly curious when viewed in the context of the 1909 Gazette article.

Later on, Powell describes a curious discovery:

I walk down the gorge to the left at the foot of the cliff, climb to a bench, and discover a trail deeply worn into the rock. Where it crosses the side gulches in some places steps have been cut. I can see no evidence of its having been traveled for a long time. It was doubtless a path used by the people who inhabited this country anterior to the present Indian races-the people who built the communal houses of which mention has been made.

"I returned to camp about three o'clock and find that some of the men have discovered ruins and many fragments of pottery; also etchings and hieroglyphics on the rocks. Compare Powell's discovery to the entrance described by G. E. Kinkaid":

There are steps leading from this entrance some thirty yards from what was at the time the cavern was inhabited, the level of the river. Both accounts describe stone steps carved into the rocks. The Gazette article also describes Kinkaid's discovery of tablets engraved with hieroglyphics.

Powell also speculates that the creators of the steps he found were a race of people who came before the Indian races. He does not speculate on their origin, but it appears possible that both Powell and Kinkaid are describing discoveries that point to the same culture.

The Smithsonian

The 1909 article clearly states that the Smithsonian is involved with studying and excavating the site. However, the Smithsonian denies that any such discovery ever occurred. This brings up the larger question that if this was a true story, why would the Smithsonian have covered up what certainly would be one of the most significant archeological finds of the twentieth century? Believe it or not, there is precedence for the Smithsonian losing  information about discoveries that are deemed to not fit in with currently accepted dogma about the history of America and its interaction or lack there-of with other ancient civilizations.

In his book, Lost Cities of North & Central America, David Hatcher Childress also covers the 1909 Arizona Gazette article and relates three instances where the Smithsonian has lost or covered up finds that go against orthodox isolationist views.

In the first instance, a story is related from the winter, 1992 issue of The Stonewatch Newsletter that describes stone coffins being discovered in 1892 in Alabama and then sent to the Smithsonian and subsequently lost. The coffins were especially curious because Indians in North America never used coffin burials, as Europeans did. The newsletter concludes by saying, This all seems to be another instance of possible pre-Columbian evidence neglected and lost.

The second example comes from the research of Ivan T. Sanderson who received a letter detailing the discovery of giant human remains beneath the site of an airstrip on the Aleutian island of Shemya during World War II. The remains consisted of leg bones and crania measuring 22 to 24 inches from base to crown. This is astounding when compared to a normal human skull with measurements of only eight inches. Sanderson confirmed the report by contacting another member of the unit who was present during the discovery of the remains. Both contacts indicated that the Smithsonian Institution had collected the bones, yet the Smithsonian has released no data from any such find.

The last example that Childress relates is from a 1970's documentary in which a former Smithsonian security guard describes how he saw relics retrieved from Mount Ararat in Turkey, allegedly from a giant ship. Many people believe that Mount Ararat was the resting place of Noah's Ark as described in the Bible. The guard goes on to say that an expedition was made to this site in 1969, but the artifacts were suppressed and never released to the public.

Further information regarding the Smithsonian's policy in dealing with the discovery of artifacts and information that might contradict an isolationist point of view can be found in an article published by Ross Hamilton at http://greatserpentmound.org/articles/giants3.html. In the article, Ross details many examples of unusually large bones discovered within the burial mounds along the east coast of America. The Smithsonian investigated literally thousands of these mounds and recovered from them bones and artifacts. Unfortunately the more intriguing contents of the mounds have been lost within the Smithsonian keeping them safely out of the hands of researchers who might want to study them using modern techniques.

There does appear to be a pattern of the Smithsonian covering up information that might contradict the prevailing view that Columbus discovered America and that prior to this discovery the only inhabitants of this land were the Native Americans.

RUINS OF THE ONCE FABLED KADATH FOUND IN ANTARCTICA?

A California TV crew missing since November 2002, a video they left behind and a mission by U.S. Navy SEALs are the key elements in a story that claims extensive prehistoric ruins have been found under the ice of Antarctica.

"The U.S. government said it will seek to block the airing of a video found by Navy rescuers in Antarctica that purportedly reveals that a massive archaeological dig is underway two miles (3,200 meters) beneath the ice."

"The AtlantisTV production crew that shot the video is still missing."

"Attorneys for the Beverly Hills-based AtlantisTV stressed that the companys primary concern is for the safety and welfare of the crew. But they stated they will vigorously oppose any attempts to censor material that is clearly in the public interest and public domain. The icy continent of Antarctica, they point out, belongs to no nation. The U.S. has no jurisdiction there."

"That video is the property of AtlantisTV, said a company spokesman, We shot it. It's ours. And as soon as it is rightfully restored to us, were going to air it. End of story."

"Two Navy officers who saw the tape described its contents to National Science Foundation (NSF) researchers upon their return to the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, according to sources at McMurdo Station, the main American base in Antarctica."

"They said it showed spectacular ruins and other things they couldn't go into, an NSF scientist reported. We chalked it up to some kind of subzero-induced delusion until a chopper (helicopter--J.T.) full of Navy SEALs landed and picked them up and took off. Now, were scratching our heads."

"Officials of the U.S. Naval Support Task Force, Antarctica deny the story or the possession of any video shot by the missing AtlantisTV crew."

Science fiction author Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) claimed in several stories that a prehistoric city existed in Antarctica called "Kadath of the Cold Waste."

Lovecraft described its "discovery" in his novel At the Mountains of Madness, written between January and March 1931. Incredibly, one of his passages is a precise description of a scene in the AtlantisTV video.

Lovecraft wrote, "But the salient object of the place was the titanic stone ramp, which, eluding the archways by a sharp turn outward into the open floor, wound spirally up the stupendous cylindrical wall like an inside counterpart of those once climbing outside the monstrous towers or ziggurats of ancient Babylon...The thing was excellently preserved up to the present top of the tower-- a highly remarkable circumstance in view of its exposure-- and its shelter had done much to protect the bizarre and disturbing cosmic sculptures on the walls."

"As we stepped out into the awesome half-daylight of this monstrous cylinder-bottom--fifty million years old, and without doubt the most primally ancient structure ever to meet our eyes--we saw that the ramp-traversed sides stretched dizzily up to a height of fully sixty feet (18 meters)."

"According to the sculptures, the original tower had stood in the centre of an immense circular plaza; and had been perhaps 500 or 600 feet (150 to 180 meters) high, with tiers of horizontal discs near the top and a row of needle-like spires along the upper rim."

"News of the video, which Navy sources said they found in an abandoned supply dump 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Vokstok Station, came on the heels of U.S. attempts to strike passages from Raising Atlantis, the upcoming novel by Thomas Greanias that is the basis for AtlantisTV popular online Atlantis Mapping Project channel."

"Federal officials agreed to allow an uncensored version of Raising Atlantis to go on sale in April (2003) at Amazon.com as an e-book. But they won court approval to block certain portions that might compromise national security from the hardcover edition due in bookstores at years end."

"The novel focuses on a secret US. military expedition that discovers ancient ruins two miles beneath the ice in Antarctica. Recent events in Antarctica have raised questions about whether the story is fiction or a novelization of actual events" during the years 2000 and 2001.

"Sources say the current federal review is focusing on the novels depiction of "Federal Emergency Plan D," which officially doesn't exist, although parts of the plan have become public in the wake of the September 11 (2001) terrorist attacks on America and calls for the activation of a shadow government to operate in secret hideouts outside the national capital" of Washington, D.C. "to ensure the survival of the United States of America and the continuity of government in the event of a global catastrophe or nuclear Armageddon."

(Editors Note: True enough. Immediately after the attacks, the USA's Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA implemented the Continuity of Government or COG Plan, operating out of Mount Weather and Mount Pony in the state of Virginia.)

"It's the specifics of Stage Two and Stage Three (of the COG Plan) detailed in Raising Atlantis that concern federal officials," an AtlantisTV spokesman said.

"Hell, I didn't even know about Stage One and the shadow government until 9-11, let alone Stage Two or Stage Three, said one CIA source on condition of anonymity." (See the Atlantis Mapping Project news release for November 17, 2002, "U.S. discovers spectacular ruins in Antarctica captured on video." Also The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi, Dell Publishing, New York, N.Y., 1997, pages 302 and 303. Merci beaucoup a Robert Fischer pour ces nouvelles.)

(Editor's Comment: Welcome to H.P. Lovecraft Week at UFO Roundup. The Kadath ruins are just a start. Wait till you see what else has been found in recent months.)

UFO FLAP BREAKS OUT IN THE CRIMEA

On Wednesday, April 23, 2003, eyewitness Lenura A. Azizova, 53, "since 1991 a resident of Simferopol," capital of the Crimea (also known as the Krym Autonomous Republic in the Ukraine--J.T.) "stepped out of her house at No. 13 Zapadnaya Street into her yard, and suddenly she noticed a bright flash in the sky and a pulsating light in the middle of the constellation Auriga. The light was very bright, looking like an electric lamp."

"The object, according to Mrs. Azizova, was pulsating constantly with red, violet, yellow and white colors. It was moving in a zigzagging trajectory, up and down through the sky. Definitely neither a satellite nor an airplane. The object was totally soundless. After five minutes of observation, she lost it from sight as the object flew away."

The next day, on Thursday, April 24, 2003, "a disk- shaped UFO was seen hovering over Evpatoriyskoye shosse (highway--J.T.), northwest of Simferopols outskirts, near the turn that leads to the Feliks Dzerzhinskiy collective farm."

On Saturday, April 26, 2003, at 8 p.m., "two residents of Simferopol, Alexei and Aleksandr Zavus, from the yard of their home in the original downtown" of the millenia-old Crimean city, "observed an unusual object in the southwestern part of the sky, not far from the star Sirius."

"Suddenly, the bright white star, brighter than even Sirius, appeared high in the sky after a flash. It was hovering for several seconds, slowly moving, and then suddenly faded away, like an electric lamp being shut off."

On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, a UFO appeared three times over Lenin Square in Simferopol. The sightings were at 8:45, 9:10 and 9:12 p.m.

UFO Roundup correspondent Anton A. Anfalov reported, "While standing in Lenin Square, right in the center of Simferopol, and talking to my friend, Mr. V. Zdorov, about UFOs, aliens, alien implants and underground bases, we noticed several light flashes of a white-silver color and a ruby-red color to the northeast."

"This was definitely neither an airplane nor a satellite, because the flashes were short, stationary, and there was a big time lag of two to five minutes between them. This clearly indicates that the flashes were from a hovering object or an object that vividly demonstrated itself to us in a direct connection to the topic of our talk." (Many thanks to Anton A. Anfalov for these reports.)

SADDAM "SPACE SPEECH" HAS IRAQIS TALKING

As predicted, ousted dictator Saddam Hussein did make a speech to the Iraqi people last week. But there was some question as to whether the speech was made from the moon or from a gigantic disk-shaped UFO orbiting the Earth.

On Monday, May 5, 2003, Australia's Sydney Morning Herald "said it received the 14-minute tape from two men in Baghdad."

"If authentic, it would be the first message from Saddam since Baghdad fell April 9 (2003). The Herald was unable to confirm whether the tired-sounding voice on the tape is Saddam."

According to UFO Roundup's Middle East correspondent Ayesha al-Khatabi, some residents of Baghdad claim to have heard Saddam's 15-minute broadcast over their household radio sets.

"Their impression is that it was a live broadcast," Ayesha reported, "My friend Hiba Rashid says she and her family heard it live. One of her uncles was changing the frequencies on their Grundig radio when he heard Saddam's voice. He called everyone in the house to come and listen. It (the broadcast) was on 1320 on the AM band. Hiba says she recognized Saddam's voice, but there was a lot of static."

"Saddam assured the listeners that he was well, that his sons, Uday and Qusay, were well, and urged Iraqis to resist the occupation. There was no mention of the moon or outer space or aliens."

Last week, Mohammed Daud al-Hayyat reported that the "hot rumor" in Baghdad was that Saddam would shortly make a radio speech "from the moon" in "four or five days." The actual broadcast was made during that time frame. (See UFO Roundup, volume 8, number 18 for May 7, 2003, "Surprise appearance by Saddam startles Iraqis," page 1.)

"U.S. officials are studying an audio tape that is said to be of fallen leader Saddam Hussein speaking from inside Iraq sometime after April 28 (2003)," which was Saddam's sixty-sixth birthday. "U.S. officials don't know whether he is alive."

In other developments in Iraq, a black helicopter made a surprise appearance over al-Zafaraniya, a neighborhood on the south side of Baghdad, last week.

"Zafaraniya is a working-class neighborhood with a wide, well-integrated ethnic mix. Sunni and Shiite Muslims interact and intermarry and live side by side with Christians, Kurds and other minorities. The streets are unpaved and dusty. Stone walls surround dust-colored two- story houses made of concrete and conceal well-tended courtyards with flower gardens."

"People were startled last week when they heard the sound of a helicopter engine right above their rooftops," Ayesha reported, "When they went outside, they saw a black helicopter hovering overhead. A side door opened, and a flood of leaflets came falling out. The wind (rotor turbulence--J.T.) blew the leaflets all over the neighborhood. Few people actually saw a leaflet or read the Arabic message on it. The people have seen many, many Anglo-American helicopters but never before one of the mystery black helicopters."

According to USA Today, "Last week, for instance, a U.S. military helicopter dropped leaflets over the Zafaraniya neighborhood in south Baghdad. Most blew away before anyone could retrieve them. So few people actually saw what they said. But that didn't stop the local rumor mill from churning out theories about the mysterious missive. Soon many Zafaraniya residents had convinced themselves that they were about to be thrown out of their homes by the U.S. military--a striking example of their willingness to assume the worst about American intentions."

"Over cups of thick Turkish coffee, Zafaraniya residents are eager to discuss the U.S. occupation and share their more fanciful theories."

"Among the theories rampant in Baghdad and Zafaraniya--that Saddam was an American agent all along and is now safely in CIA custody. Or, alternatively, that he's still in hiding and preparing to return to power." (See USA Today for Wednesday, May 7, 2003, "Conspiracy theories and rumors about U.S. intentions swirl in Baghdad," page 2A and for Thursday, May 8, 2003, "New audio tape is reported to be of Saddam after the war," page 4A. Many thanks to Ayesha al-Khatabi for the additional information.)

UFO FLOTILLA CAUSES PANIC IN AUSTRALIAS NORTHERN TERRITORY

"A set of mysterious bright lights in the Northern Territory's night sky have residents in the beachside suburb of Nightcliff abuzz with tales of an alien encounter."

"People were out on the road, pointing to the bright lights and yelling it was an alien invasion, mother of three Yvonne Morris said, People were just stunned."

"The Northern Territory News was flooded with calls from people who all say they saw the same thing from their Nightcliff homes--eight bright yellowish-orange lights in perfect formation over the Timor Sea" north of Australia.

"Brad MacDonald, 48, was at the Nightcliff Jetty fishing with family and friends when he saw the lights on Saturday (May 3, 2003) about 9 p.m."

"I've never seen anything like it--it was bloody strange, Mr. MacDonald said."

"But he said he had a strange feeling before he saw the glowing lights. I thought it was odd that because the fish were biting like hell, and then, all of a sudden, the tide went out."

"He described the lights as bright orange, about one kilometer away, and in perfect formation."

"My mate reckons they were weather balloons, but I disagree--they were too perfect. There were forty people at the jetty, and we were all intrigued."

"Mrs. Morris and her four children were sitting on the verandah of their beachfront property when the orange- yellow lights first appeared."

"The eight lights were 45 degrees from each other and appeared to be fairly structured."

"UFO sightings are fairly common in the Northern Territory--no place more so than Wycliff Well, N.T., 1,100 kilometers (660 miles) south of Darwin, where Holiday Park owner Lew Farkas is the local expert on UFOs, having seen them with monotonous regularity over 18 years."

"The closest look I got was one of the spaceships portholes, but I didn't see the alien bloke inside, Mr. Farkas, 54, said last night (Monday, May 5, 2003)."

"He said the formation described by the Nightcliff residents was similar to ones he had seen."

"It sounds like it was a mothership, with the supporting craft on the sides, he said."

Australian "Weather Bureau senior forecaster Pradeep Singh said his bureau did not see anything unusual on its radar." (See the Northern Territory News for May 6, 2003, "Bright lights spark UFO rumours." Many thanks to Diane Harrison and Clinton Dodge of the Australian UFO Research Network--AUFORN--and John Hayes for forwarding this newspaper article.)

UFO SIGHTED IN NIAGARA, NORTH CAROLINA

"A local man and his wife saw what he describes as a UFO Wednesday night," April 30, 2003.

"The unidentified flying object appeared as a bright white light, hovered for a minute, and then flew across the sky with the speed of a meteor, said Fred Lloyd, an assistant golf pro at the Whispering Pines Golf Course."

"The light appeared to him and his wife, Nancy Lee, above the treetops on the right hand side of the road on U.S. (Route) 1 near Niagara, N.C. at about 9 p.m. as the two were coming home from church, Lloyd said. The entire sighting lasted less than two seconds."

"The light was much bigger than a meteor, Lloyd said, and brighter than the moon. When Lloyd and his wife first noticed the UFO, they saw it out of the corner of their eyes, Lloyd said, and it appeared as if there were two or three lights. When they got a better look, then it was just one."

"When the light headed north and disappeared, Lloyd said the sighting left him feeling excited and a little out of sorts."

"It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, he said."

"Lloyd joked about whether people would think he was odd for claiming to have seen a UFO."

"Half the people who know me think I'm credible, and the other half know I'm not, he said, My wife is one of the most credible people in the world."

Prominent American ufologist George Fawcett of Lincolnton, N.C. (population 9,965) is looking into the case. "Fawcett has investigated over 3,000 UFO sightings in 80 different countries over 60 years."

"Sightings usually happen near military bases or nuclear power plants, Fawcett said."

"Lloyd has no idea what he saw, but be believes it wasn't a meteor or an airplane."

"This, to me, has no explanation, he said, Nothing I know of in the sky can act like that." (See the North Carolina newspaper The Pilot for May 4, 2003, "Couple reports seeing UFO Wednesday night." Many thanks to John Hayes for sending along this newspaper article.)

DAYLIGHT DISC SPOTTED NEAR SAN DIEGO

On Tuesday, May 6, 2003, 2:20 p.m., eyewitness E.G. was driving near the Sycuan Casino in El Cajon, California (population 94,869), on Interstate Highway I-8 about 11 miles (17 kilometers) east of San Diego, when she noticed a strange silvery glimmer in the eastern sky.

E.G. reported, "It looked silver-gray in color and was as big as an airliner. It was a long oval shape. It caught my eye as if the sun had hit a mirror. Then I watched, as I thought it might crash. But it just floated straight behind the cloud. I pulled the car over to wait, but it never showed up again."

E.G. described the object as "a cylindrical UFO with no wings" and "about the size of a Southwest Airlines jetliner." (Email Form Report)

COUPLE AT HOME SIGHT A UFO IN MEDINA, OHIO

On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 10 p.m., Jason Davis was at his home in Medina, Ohio (population 25,139), a small town on Routes 3 and 18 approximately 28 miles (45 kilometers) south of Cleveland, when "my wife yelled downstairs to me to look out the window toward the back of the house."

"It was a generally clear night with the moon almost full and also in the southern sky but almost overhead," he recalled, "There was a light in the sky that seemed to not blink or move or resemble a plane at all from that distance, which was approximately 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 kilometers) away. The light seemed to be coming towards us at about the same speed as a low-flying jet aircraft would."

"I looked at it through binoculars and was surprised at what I saw, so I grabbed the digital camera and tried to get a couple of good pictures. I'm not a pro. I just fired off a couple photos without using the flash or trying to turn on the digital zoom."

"I must admit that the lights had a more defined shape when viewed through the binoculars than the photo, but it is interesting looking. The object never seemed to change speed or direction, and it was in view for about two minutes. It left no trail, but a jet that went by a few minutes later left a very obvious trail in the intense moonlight." (Email Form Report)

MYSTERIOUS GLOWING LIGHT SEEN OVER A LONDON PARK

On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 12:15 a.m., Gene Perry and his girl friend were strolling through Manor Park in London, the UK's capital, when they spotted a "white light turning reddish as it dimmed over a five-second period."

It was "as bright a light as a first-magnitude star," Gene reported, "and was moving from nearly directly above us, slightly north, to the south. I said to my partner, Look, it's a satellite."

"She looked up and saw it, too, and said, I'm getting my glasses."

"I watched it for another ten seconds before it turned dimmer and disappeared. Viewing time in total was 10 to 25 seconds."

"I grew up on American air force bases all around the world and have seen all kinds of aircraft in all kinds of weather and at all angles. This object was brighter than all of the satellites I've ever seen. Weather was clear with no moon. If you held your hand at arms length, the distance (the UFO) traveled was about two inches. It also had a slight curve in its path." (Email Form Report)

THE SPAWN OF CTHULU?

"A new species of jellyfish with a yard-wide (meter- wide) fleshy red bell and a cluster of wrinkled thick arms has been found by scientists nearly a mile (1,200 meters) beneath the cold, dark waters of the Pacific Ocean."

"Marine biologists at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute," near San Francisco, California "discovered 23 of what they call Big Reds in Monterey Bay and the Sea of Cortez" in Mexico "and off Hawaii, Japan and the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, according to the latest online edition of the journal Marine Biology."

"Biologists have used a remote-controlled submarine to get video images of the big jellyfish swimming and have collected tissue samples of the bell and the thick arms of one specimen. From the samples, scientists have concluded that Big Red is a unique species." (See the Duluth, Minn. News-Tribune for May 8, 2003, "Giant jellyfish found in Pacific," page 2A.)

(Editors Comment: First it was ancient ruins in Antarctica. Then it was giant red jellyfish. What's next!? The "terrible three-lobed eye" growing on the floor of the Aegean? Stay tuned.)

From the UFO Files...

1903: ANIMAL MUTILATION CASE IN STAFFORDSHIRE, UK

"We tend to think of animal mutilations as a fairly recent phenomenon. Yet there was a strange series of mutilations one hundred years ago, afflicting the farms around Wyrley, Staffordshire, UK."

"The first of a series of outrages occurred upon the night of Feb. 2, 1903. A valuable horse was ripped."

"Then, at intervals, up to August 27th, there were mutilations of horses, cows and sheep."

"Sixteen animals were slashed in a peculiar manner wherein the shallow wound did not penetrate the gut but let the animal bleed to death."

During the summer, anonymous letters appeared in the local newspapers, accusing one George Edalji of the crimes. He was the son of the Rev. Shapurji Edalji, a Hindu who had converted to Christianity, married an Englishwoman and moved to Wyrley to become a Church of England pastor. Between 1892 and 1895, George attended Rugeley School and, in 1903, was studying to become a lawyer.

During 1895, someone had stolen a large key from the Walsall Grammar School and slipped it under the vicarage door. Young Edalji was accused of burglary by Capt. George A. Anson of the Staffordshire Constabulary, who "openly suggested he be given a stiff prison sentence once he was caught." But George Edalji was never charged in this theft.

"At 6:20 a.m." on August 18, 1903, "a pony was found lying in a pool of blood. After inspecting the pony, which had had its stomach slit open, Inspector Campbell proceeded to arrest George Edalji. By 8 a.m. the police arrived at the vicarage and took away several blood- stained razors, a damp coat and trousers covered with horse hair and stained with blood, and a pair of damp muddy boots belonging to George."

Unfortunately, the evidence against George Edalji was compromised from the beginning. "The razor stains proved only to be rust...Inspector Campbell had placed the clothes in the same box with some of the ponys hide...the scene of the crime had been trampled by local colliery workers and sightseers" and "the police insisted the slashing took place around 8 to 8:30 p.m. the previous evening despite the veterinary surgeons testimony that it had happened about 2:30 a.m."

It became clear that police had the wrong man when yet another horse was mutilated in Wyrley on August 27, 1903, while Edalji was in jail.

"When asked to explain Edaljis guilt after another attack took place while he was in custody, the police said it was the work of his gang, and showed no further interest."

Why the rush to judgement? Well, the Staffordshire Constabulary had received an anonymous letter from the culprit, which stated, "There will be merry times at Wyrley in November when they start on little girls, for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March." The letter was signed Greatorex.

In November 1903, Edalji was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison at the Stafford Assizes. However, "in 1906, for reasons unknown, George Edalji was released after serving only three years of his sentence. He was to remain under police supervision as a discharged convict, but the circumstances were puzzling. Why had he been released prematurely? Had he been pardoned? Had the petition signed by ten thousand people, including hundreds of lawyers protesting at the weakness of the evidence against him, anything to do with it? It was a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes."

The case soon drew the attention of Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
"From their first meeting, Doyle knew Edalji was innocent. In the foyer of the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross (in London- -J.T.) Doyle diagnosed from the manner Edalji read a newspaper that he had a severe case of astigmatic myopia."

In short, Edalji was so nearsighted that he could not have found his way to the barn in the dark, let alone slashed the pony and evaded the police patrols.

Doyles expose, "The Case of Mr. George Edalji" appeared in the Daily Telegraph of London on January 11, 1907. Showing himself to be the equal of his fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes, "Doyle deduced the slasher was familiar with George Edalji and his family, had been a resident of Wyrley from 1892 to 1895, probably had attended Walsall School where the stolen key came from, knew a student there by the name of Greatorex. Also it appeared that the slasher was familiar with animals, all too handy with a knife and foul-mouthed. An inspection of the school rolls at Walsall soon revealed the identity of the slasher."

"Royden Sharp had been expelled from Walsall and had been apprenticed to a butcher before joining the merchant marine in 1895. Prior to his return in 1903, he had served aboard a cattle boat for ten months and had taken with him a large horse lancet, which has but one cutting edge which would not penetrate deeply into an animal."

In response to the public outcry, the British government set up the three-man Gladstone Commission to re-examine the case. "Instead of concerning itself with the innocence of Edalji and the possible guilt of Sharp, the Gladstone Commission spent most of its energies shielding Capt. Ansons incompetence."

No surprise there--one of the commission members, Sir Alfred de Rutzen, was a second cousin of Capt. Anson.

"Royden (Sharp) appeared to feel secure from prosecution in his letters to Doyle, for in one he states, I know from a detective of Scotland Yard that if you write to Gladstone and say you find Edalji is guilty after all, they will make you a lord next year. Is it not better to be a lord than to run the risk of losing kidneys and liver?

Amazingly, Royden Sharp was not arrested, not even after writing this death threat. Had he pulled shit like that in Mississippi, he would have been down on the Parchman prison farm, swinging a brush hook and shuffling along with the rest of the chain gang.

"The fate of Royden Sharp after 1907 seems as elusive as that of his predecessor, Jack the Ripper."

Curiously, after a four-year hiatus, the animal mutilations began again in Staffordshire. Charles Fort wrote, "August 22, 1907--a horse mutilated, near Wyrley. Five nights later (August 27, 1907), two horses, in another field, were slashed so that they died. September 8 (1907)--horse slashed, at Breenwood, Staffordshire. A young butcher, named Morgan, was accused, but he was able to show that he had been in his home at the time."

"For about a month injuries to horses continued to be reported" around Staffordshire. "They had been injured by barbed wires or by nails projecting from fences.

They are all long dead now, all of the principal figures in the drama--George Edalji, Royden Sharp, Capt. George Anson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet, as we saw last year (2002), in Argentina and Uruguay, the mutilation phenomenon is still going strong. (See The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover Publications Inc., New York, N.Y., 1974, pages 878 to 880. Also Fortean Times No. 21 for Spring 1977, "The Edalji Case...Again," pages 8 and 9.)



Steve Wilson Sr. reminds me that there will be a lunar eclipse later this week, the first one in the USA in three years. Barring inclement weather, the lunar eclipse can be seen across North America on Thursday evening, May 15, 2003 and, in western Europe and northwestern Africa, just before dawn on Friday, May 16, 2003.

Here in the USA, readers can watch the eclipse at the following times...

8:13 p.m. Pacific Time (Los Angeles)
9:13 p.m. Mountain Time (Salt Lake City)
10:13 p.m. Central Time (Chicago)
11:13 p.m. Eastern Time (New York City)

For 53 minutes, the Moon will be substantially darker and reddish colored. This would be a good time to aim your telescope at Copernicus crater. Theres supposed to be an underground alien base in the craters north rim. If the blast doors are opened during the eclipse, you might be able to see a tiny lighted area on the slope of Copernicus north rim.

Hey! Maybe that's where Saddam Hussein and his sons are hiding out...

Eclipse or no, we'll be back in seven days with more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you next week!

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2003 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup on their websites or in news groups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

A rare image of what is believed to be a Nazi engineered UFO. Hitler and his scientists were way a head of their time, with human experiments in cloning, robotic implants, and testing new technology in flight and combat it's no wonder that they possed as such a threat to the rest of the world. Could they have received instructions from a supreme race of alien beings, or from travelers of another diemension?

Mars mission agreed

The Russian and US space agencies have agreed to co-operate on a joint unmanned mission to Mars and expand the development of other joint interplanetary probes. "UPDATE" Both probes touched down in January 2004. 

Nasa is planning to launch a Mars probe this summer. The announcement came after talks in Moscow between the heads of the two agencies, Nasa administrator Sean O'Keefe and his Russian counterpart Yuri Koptev, about the International Space Station (ISS).

Heads from the 16-nation group involved in building the ISS are to meet in September to decide on future development of the project.

The issue of greater American funding for the space station was not discussed at the Moscow meeting, but the Russian space agency, Rosaviakosmos, is to receive a greater share of the existing budget.

Russia and the US "have agreed to begin joint exploration of Mars and carry out joint unmanned interplanetary station flight programmes," Sergei Gorbunov, Rosaviakosmos spokesman, said.

"In addition, it was decided that Russia can take part in US space tenders," Mr Gorbunov added.

Funding problems

Nasa is currently reliant on Russia to continue ferrying crews back and forth to the ISS after the agency grounded its entire shuttle fleet following the loss of the Columbia orbiter on 1 February.


The ISS was put in jeopardy by the shuttle disaster
However, the Russian space agency is already hard-pressed financially and although it has been given a budget increase to cover the next six months, it says it will be unable to meet its commitments next year without American help.

Mr Gorbunov said the issue of additional US funding was not even broached at the meeting.

Nonetheless, Mr O'Keefe and Mr Koptev have given the green light to a programme to build a US-Russian space probe for the exploration of Mars.

One senior Russian space agency official told Russian news agency Itar-Tass that a similar joint project was started 10 years ago.

Vasily Moroz from the Russian Space Research Centre said the two sides had considered using a US-built probe with a Russian booster rocket and descent module, but that the project was drawn to a halt by funding issues.

The Moscow talks coincided with the deployment of a Soyuz craft to ferry a new crew to the ISS. The existing crew - two Americans and a Russian - had a dramatic re-entry that took their craft more than 400 kilometres (250 miles) beyond its intended landing site.

Portals, and Time Windows are always open to explore.

What are the Triangles?

A Triangular Problem

Sightings of "impossible" craft in the sky are universal. They are also universally ignored. Ignored, at least, by the official channels and sources of power in our society.

This is nothing new -- students of the UFO reality have always known this. Nor is the blanket of denial and disinformation associated with this topic anything unique. I have howled into the wind about this many times, decrying the inability and unwillingness of our mainstream media to discuss an entire range of topics. Yes, this is old news.

As strange as UFOs are, I often think that the silence of official channels is more surreal than the objects themselves. How can it be possible that so many thousands (millions?) of witnesses continue to be ignored?

One subset of the phenomenon, however, has broken through to the mainstream. Perhaps we should say -- ahem -- the fringes of the mainstream. These are the infamous triangular craft. America's mainstream culture, ever rigid and narrow, yet acknowledges from time to time that such things exist. Frankly, it would be hard not to. The reports are simply too many and too clear.

They also come in constantly. Less than a month ago, as I write this, was an interesting -- yet typical -- report. Shortly after midnight on March 2, 2003, a security guard at a gated community in Dallas saw "a single solid black triangle, with no lights of any kind," traveling west for about 8 or 9 seconds. The object was completely silent, and seemed to float across the sky at about 1,200 feet. The witness watched the triangle disappear behind one of the homes, contacted the Dallas Police Department, and was told that no one else had reported the object. This report is available on the web at the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). Indeed, the witness spoke with Peter Davenport, who runs the organization, and was found "to be quite sincere and credible."

Here is another recent report from NUFORC. On January 24, 2003, a man saw a triangular-shaped object while driving at night down a quiet Arkansas road. He slowed down, turned off his radio, and rolled down his car window. He wondered if this was a helicopter. But he heard no sound. Coming to a complete stop, he watched the object hover 10 feet above a telephone pole, and noticed that it had three lights (red, white, and blue), one on each corner. He saw the object for a total of four minutes, "and then it was gone."

Neither of these witnesses described the size of the craft they saw. In fact, the sizes of these triangles have ranged from small to immense. Most are slow-moving and low-flying; occasionally people describe them as boomerang-shaped instead of triangular. The fact that they fly so low, and so slowly, is a problem that demands an explanation, both scientifically and politically. Complicating the matter are the many witnesses who describe exceptional speed and maneuverability relating to these triangles, such as flat pivot turns or incredible acceleration. It is a tricky problem, indeed.

The famous Illinois "cop sighting" in early 2000 of a giant triangular object is the best known case of the flying triangles. In this instance, the object was substantially larger than a jumbo jet, flying at perhaps 500 feet altitude, either silent or extremely quiet, moving slowly, and edged with an array of blinding white lights. All this is certainly extraordinary. But what really makes this case difficult to explain is the object's manner of acceleration. In the words of one officer, it was able to shoot away "in the blink of an eye" with "no sound whatsoever." One moment, it was a few hundred feet away; the next moment, several miles away.

What does that?

If this were an isolated incident, one could write it off as a mistaken observation of some sort. But this is not isolated, and here the problem deepens. For an object possibly identical to this one was seen many times in the early 1980s in the Hudson Valley, just north of New York City. On December 31, 1982, people from several different locations reported such an object. This was no mere New Year's Eve partying, either; the object was filmed with a movie camera. The object was huge, triangular, flew at less than 500 feet, had bright lights, made tight circles in the air, and at one point shone a beam of white light onto a highway. In July 1984, the same or a similar object invaded the air space of the Indian Point Nuclear Facility, disabling the electronic and communication systems while it hovered over a reactor. During the early 1980s, the number of witnesses to such events in the Hudson Valley numbered in the thousands. Indeed, on one occasion, video was shot of a sufficient quality that it was sent to the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Conclusion: something real, all right, but not a conventional aircraft.

Then we have the Belgian cases, which seem to have been part of series of sightings stretching from Britain to Russia from late 1989 to early 1990. On November 29, 1989, a dark triangular object, making a humming noise, hovered over a Belgian police car and shone a brilliant beam of light on it. Many people reported this object; it was seen throughout the winter, then most spectacularly on the night of March 30, 1990. That night, thousands of witnesses saw a low-flying triangular UFO (or UFOs) with bright lights flashing in the center. This object could fly as slow as 30 mph, but it accelerated to incredible speeds. Witnesses were adamant that no plane belonging to any air force could have caught this object. Indeed, that night the Belgian Air Force sent two F-16s to do exactly that. The triangles were captured on several NATO radar stations; the jet pilots could also track the objects on radar, and even see them  at times.

But the F-16s the top interceptors in the world  were completely outclassed by the triangular craft. Not only could it accelerate at incredible speeds, not only could it stop on a dime, but it could change its altitude almost instantly. At one point, for example, radar installations and amazed witnesses observed the triangle to drop about 4,000 feet in one second. That's nearly a mile.

Moreover, this object moved intelligently, at least in the opinion of the Belgian Air Force Chief of Operations, Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer, who stated "There was a logic in the movements of the UFO." Nick Pope, who soon after this manned the "UFO Desk" in Britain's Ministry of Defense, had contacts within the Belgian government who "elicited the conclusion that a structured craft had flown over Belgium that night." They had no idea, they said, of what that object was.

Like the other triangles people have seen, the Belgian object was real enough. The real question is, to whom did it belong?

Ours? Or Theirs?

Many people have suspected this to be a secret American project. Officially, however, there is no type of aircraft with a perfectly triangular planform. The B-2 stealth bomber is an angular and odd looking beast, but it's not a triangle. Nor can it do what the triangles do.

There is good reason to believe that the U.S. has developed a triangle. In August 1989, A former Royal Observer Corps member was working on a North Sea gas rig about 60 miles off the Norfolk coast. This man, named Chris Gibson, has been described as one of the world's experts in aircraft recognition, and competed in international recognition tournaments where a long distance shot of an aircraft would be flashed on a screen for a fraction of a second. At the time of the sighting, he was writing an aircraft recognition manual.

What he saw that day was an matte black aircraft shaped in a perfect isosceles triangle, with the nose angle at 30 degrees, in a refueling operation with a KC-135. Two F-111 fighters accompanied the craft. The triangular craft was slightly bigger than an F-111. Aviation writer Bill Sweetman noted that "no aircraft other than a supersonic vehicle, or a test aircraft for such a vehicle, has ever been built or studied with such a planform."

Generally, people have attributed this sighting to the fabled Aurora, the alleged successor to the world's fastest "official" plane, the SR-71 Blackbird. Of course, the Aurora doesn't officially exist but the rumor mill gives it dimensions that seem to be compatible with what Gibson saw.

But given that the Aurora (or the same aircraft under a different name) exists, it is unlikely that this is the craft that buzzed Belgium in 1989-1990, much less is responsible for the Hudson Valley sightings. The Aurora is said to be hypersonic, meaning that it is faster than Mach 5, and is rumored to move as fast as Mach 8. But, hovering? Changing altitude instantly? There are no accounts of Aurora -- none by aviation writers, anyway  that indicate it can do anything like that.

The Black Manta

There is an aircraft in the land of legends that comes closer to fitting the description of some of these triangle sightings. It is the Black Manta, TR-3, another aircraft that "doesn't exist." All we have, apparently, is the rumor mill, which gives this object the ability to hover silently. There are said to be two very different versions, the TR-3A and the TR-3B. The first is supposed to be about 45 feet long and 15 feet high, with a 65 foot wingspan. The second is said to be a massive 600 feet across.

Bearing in mind that none of this can be confirmed, the most detailed information I could find on this elusive creature of the sky is that, among those who believe it exists, it is said to a tactical reconnaissance aircraft, first operational in the early 1990s. Funding and tasking come from the NRO, NSA, and CIA. The outer coating of the TR-3B is allegedly reactive to electrical radar stimulation and can change reflectiveness, radar absorptiveness, and color. It is therefore exceptionally stealthy. More than this, however, it is said to have indefinite loiter time at high altitudes (as high as 125,000 feet), and the ability to travel as fast as the speed of light. Strap yourself in a Mach 9.

By no means am I an expert on the technology involved here. Those who say they are tell us that the TR-3B has something called a Magnetic Field Disruptor, which is a circular, highly pressurized, mercury-based plasma filled ring surrounding a rotatable crew compartment. The plasma is accelerated to extreme speeds which is said to result in "gravity disruption" and can neutralize the effect of gravity on mass by as much as 89 percent. This is not exactly antigravity, which provides a repulsive force, but for all intents and purposes makes the vehicle extremely light, with obvious correlations in performance, including acceleration in all directions.

This, at least, is the claim from the website of Edgar Fouche. One scientist has told me that the technical details, such as the speed of rotation of plasma) are "not credible." While Fouche's site provides an excellent overview of the Black Manta, much of the information derives from anonymous sources, and it is always possible that details can be wrong even while the big picture remains fundamentally sound.

While recognizing that any discussion of the Black Manta is highly speculative, some of the claims regarding it at least come close to the performance characteristics of the triangular UFOs. Is the craft real? I have no idea. While a few aviation writers acknowledge the possibility that it's real, no one can confirm it, and most appear doubtful. Indeed, there those who even doubt that there is such a plane as the Aurora.

For my part, I find it difficult to deny that the U.S. military has a flying triangle. Knowing the credentials of Chris Gibson, if he saw a matte black isosceles triangle being refueled by a KC-135, I am prepared to believe him. I am also prepared to accept that there are probably other deep-black aircraft out there. The U.S. government has a history of declassifying military technologies at its convenience. By the time the U-2 was public, its successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, was not long in following. We learned of the F-117A stealth fighter in 1988, for instance, only when it was decided to increase production substantially and that it would therefore be impossible to hide any longer.

Chronology Problems

But even the aforementioned candidates don't explain the triangle phenomenon. Even if something as exotic as the Black Manta is real, it is clear that this would only explain sightings since the 1990s.

Or would it? How far back could we push the technology and this aircraft? Could the Black Manta have been responsible for the Belgian sightings of 1989 and 1990? And even if that is so, what does one make of the Hudson Valley sightings, which are earlier still? At what point do we move from the improbable, to the implausible, to the ridiculous?

I wonder whether the TR-3A or TR-3B explain the following sighting:

On this occasion, a clear fall night in Hastings, Minnesota, multiple witnesses saw a triangular craft approach from the east at a high rate of speed. When it was nearly overhead at about 5,000 feet, it "stopped dead in its tracks." The object had a reddish orange light at each of its corners; these lights sometimes turned greenish. It sat motionless and silent for half a minute, then made a slow 180 degree turn, "leaving a vapor trail." It then sat motionless for a few seconds and took off at an amazing speed. It stopped dead at a point about 15 miles away from them. It then lifted straight up "at incredible speed" and was gone.

The object in question certainly seems to have had much in common with the Belgian triangle, except it was seen in mid-October of 1968. As far as I know, this report has not been investigated, but there are quite a few triangle reports on NUFORC that stem from the late 1960s. Most of these reports provide good detail and appear to be truthful. These are available for anyone to read.

At the NUFORC, you can read about 25 reasonably detailed reports of triangular UFOs that were seen from 1967 through 1973, and there are several that are even earlier. This must be the tip of the iceberg: the first of these accounts was posted only in 1998, when the world wide web finally became a convenient tool for these people. We will never know how many 1960s witnesses of triangular craft died before they had the opportunity to post their story, but I'm sure there were a few.

Indeed, British researcher Victor Kean, who started Project Triangle on the world wide web tracked many triangle reports in Britain that took place in the 1990s, but pointed out that his first reliable triangle report dates from September 8, 1960. This was a "triangular-shaped craft with three white apex lights and a red light underneath," seen in Tyneside, Britain and two other locations that evening, all within a 10 mile radius and within 75 minutes of each other. Did someone invent flying triangles in the 1950s?

If one feels that reports from that long ago are inherently unreliable and need to be discarded, what does one make of the large number of triangle reports from between 1973 and the early 1980s? That is, prior to the Hudson Valley wave?

Reports that go so far back pose a serious problem of explanation. There are several factors to consider. First is technology. Granted that the black world of the military has always been substantially ahead of most civilian technology, still, we can do a reality check by observing the development of leading edge aircraft during those years. For example, the first flight of the F-15 Eagle took place in July 1972. It was the first USAF fighter to have a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1:1, meaning it could accelerate going straight up. The first F-16 prototype flew at Edwards AFB in January 1974. The Rockwell B-1 bomber first flew in December 1974. The Apache helicopter prototype first flew in September 1975. These machines are all impressive, but none are anything like the reported triangles.

It is also important to realize that it was only by the mid-1970s that "fly-by-wire" (e.g. very advanced computer technology enabling an aircraft to make many adjustments per second) was becoming practical enough to allow for unconventional planforms such as the flying wing. Previously, the flying wing design (and by extension the triangle) had been inherently unstable.

Other problems arise when we look at the history of American defense spending. For instance, the USAF budget in 1980 was about billion. Starting in 1981, with the advent of the Reagan presidency, it began a dramatic rise, peaking in 1985 at .4 billion. This is an extraordinary development, and while we can acknowledge that there was always a supply of secret money for special projects, we can also recognize that there was much more of it starting in the early 1980s. Presumably this translated into greater operational possibilities for leading edge technology. In other words, while it would still have been possible to fund expensive, secret, and exotic aircraft prior to 1980, it would have been easier to do this after 1980.

Thus, when you examine the history of triangle sightings, track what is known of the development of advanced aircraft, and study the trends in defense spending, it becomes difficult to credit many of these reports as secret technology.

Difficult, but not perhaps impossible. After all, how many years ahead of our most advanced open and public technology are these triangles? It's hard to be certain, but it doesn't seem to be a stretch to anticipate similar capabilities in the public realm within the next twenty years.

Political Problems

But to acknowledge that some group in the secret caverns of the military-industrial complex made this type of breakthrough opens up a new series of questions.

Let us return to the Belgian case, for instance. Belgian Air Force Colonel De Brouwer speculated that if these objects were B-2 or F-117 stealth aircraft (the only known American aircraft that might remotely fit the description), then the USAF had made no requests for this type of mission, as it would be required to do. He also added the obvious fact that the triangles did not "in any way" match the characteristics of either U.S. aircraft.

Still, the Belgian government asked the U.S. government whether or not, in effect, these triangles were American. The U.S. Air Force informed the Belgian Air Force and Ministry of Defense that "no USAF stealth aircraft were operating" during the period in question. Now, this could be seen as merely a carefully worded statement. No "stealth" aircraft -- might this allow the overflight of an aircraft that is not, technically speaking, stealth? After all, the triangle over Belgium was tracked at least some of the time on radar. As far as this statement is concerned, it could simply mean that a non-stealth but highly advanced U.S. aircraft was responsible.

If so, then we have a disturbing conclusion regarding how the U.S. Air Force treats its NATO allies. With the advent of Gulf War II, this may not surprise too many people. But in 1990, there was still a Soviet Union, and the vestige of a cold war. At the least, it seems neither polite nor intelligent to treat your NATO allies in such a manner.

Nevertheless, it strains credulity to see this as American technology. Then again, the entire UFO phenomenon strains credulity. That is, until you go through report after impossible report, recognizing that the impossible is here and living quite well in this demented world of ours, thank you very much.

The NIDS Hypothesis - Big Black Deltas

For now, that will have to do regarding the chronological problems posed by the triangles. There are still a few possibilities to consider. The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), based in Las Vegas, Nevada, has recently been looking into the matter of what it has termed Big Black Deltas (BBDs). These are essentially the large triangles. [10]

In 2002 an anonymous aircraft researcher submitted a paper to NIDS ("Big Black Deltas (BBDs): DoD, Not ET"). He argued that these objects are lighter-than-air (LTA) craft, or rigid dirigibles, most likely powered by "electrokinetic" drive, operated by the U.S. military. In other words, U.S. Defense Department airships that serve as large transport vessels, able to carry huge payloads at high or low altitudes, at speeds several times faster than surface ships. The author of the paper theorized that they have existed since the early to mid-1980s.

He theorized that these objects are quiet because LTA vehicles can make use of the "unconventional" electrokinetic system. They would need no propellers or jets, instead using aerostatic, lift gas, like a balloon. All you might hear is a slight humming from high voltage control equipment and an occasional coronal discharge in the older BBDs.

The NIDS author also discussed why the BBDs can accelerate so quickly. I have to confess that my science breaks down at this point, but the explanation is not especially detailed, either. The author argued that the LTA would not require a power supply, as its energy source could be fed remotely by a "ground based power system sending power to the electrokinetic platform by either a tether wire or by microwave link." The maximum transmission distance would be about 62 miles. The thrust to mass ratio of such a craft would be far superior to that of a jet fighter, "between 1.7 to 1 up to 3 to 1 if lightly loaded," which would enable it to accelerate very quickly, including up.

The author discussed other features of the BBDs, such as the ability to turn without banking or its occasionally intense lights. He concluded that "with a number of military mission profiles for such a craft and the technologies to build it having been well developed for nearly a century would any defense department NOT build it?"

This hypothesis seems primarily designed to address the Millstadt, Illinois sighting of early 2000. As a result, we are obliged to ask, if this object was ours, where was microwave transmitter? This object surely was not tethered, and its acceleration wasn't just high, it was very, very high. Not everyone believes the power source concept described in this anonymous paper is valid. One of my correspondents pointed out to me that while beamed microwave power has been done, it requires a line of sight and what is called rectenna, an array of dipoles which is dangerous to anything that gets in its path, such as birds. I am not aware, for instance, of reports of dead birds accompanying sightings of BBDs. Finally, it doesn't help that this paper is from an anonymous source. We know nothing of this persons actual credentials or motives.

NIDS has also plotted several hundred sightings of the BBDs (all from the 1990s) on a map of the United States, trying to see a pattern. In addition to using its own substantial database, NIDS obtained two other substantial sources of data, from MUFON and UFO researcher Larry Hatch. NIDS suggested that many of the BBD sightings occurred along corridors between bases of the U.S. Air Mobility Command (AMC) and Air Force Material Command (AFMC) . These two commands control the logistics of American troop and equipment deployment. NIDS hypothesized, therefore, that the Air Force is flying these objects between AFMC and AMC bases. [11]

This may be just as NIDS suggests. But although it says the similarities among the various databases are "striking," I found the experience of reading these maps a little like deciphering a Rorschach test. There does seem to be a concentration of sightings along such "corridors," but I can't help wondering if there is another explanation here, and that this is a case where one could find all sorts of patterns to fit other hypotheses.

NIDS did fine work and worded its conclusions carefully. It is to be commended for this. But it must be noted that (a) its study includes only reports from the 1990s (b) only includes reports of the large triangles and (c) is restricted geographically to the United States.

There are such things as rigid dirigibles. An inventor name Michael K. Walden demonstrated a fully solar-powered, remotely-controlled, LTA vehicle, to the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy at Nellis AFB in 1977. They seemed to have been rather excited by this, but never picked up the contract. [12]

I have already said that the long history of triangle reports poses serious problems of explanation. But so does the geography. Researchers commonly write as though the triangles are a North American and Western European phenomenon. This seems to be true in the main, but I suspect it is mainly due to more active reporting in those areas. In any case, it is not entirely true. Russia, for example, has had many triangle reports, several that occurred during the Belgian flap.

An especially interesting one occurred near Moscow on March 12, 1990. Several groups of UFOs were seen, some of which were spheres and discs, and some of which appeared to be huge triangular-shaped craft. Many local people spent the night on their rooftops watching these silent objects dart through the sky. In fact, during the spring of 1990, it appears that Russia had more, and more spectacular, UFO cases than did Belgium. The CIA retained several accounts of this wave from the Soviet-Russian media, although CIA reports themselves, assuming they exist, have yet to be released.

Thus, while the NIDS explanation of Big Black Deltas may shed some light, the hypothesis is far from proved, and at best is only a partial solution to the mystery of the triangles. Are we to assume that some covert American group was flying triangles (along with other UFOs) throughout Russia during the decline phase of the Soviet Union?

A Shadow Government?

There is perhaps one last terrestrial explanation, but it isn't a pretty one. Could there be an ultra-black group behind the triangles, one that is so far removed from ordinary channels that the American military establishment has lost control of it? Could such a secret group exist?

Our national security apparatus has many layers of classification (including above top secret) and extreme compartmentalization. There is no question that the American military possesses Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAP) funded by countless billions of secret dollars. Congress provides no effective oversight of these programs, judging by the history of the few secret programs of which we know. A great deal can get swallowed up by our National Security State and we must recognize the possibility that the flying triangles are one of those things.

It is at this point that an analysis of the flying triangles merges with the UFO phenomenon itself. In the first place, the flight capabilities of the triangles appear to match those of the more traditional flying saucers. There are hundreds of known military encounters with UFOs. Most of these are cases do not show overt hostility, but neither are they especially congenial. Judging by the behaviors of both the American aircraft and of these objects, the UFOs do not appear to be under the command of the U.S. military. This can also be said of at least some of the triangles, such as the one that violated the air space over the Indian Point Nuclear Facility in 1984.

For many years people have been hanging around the outskirts of Area 51, watching all the fun things that fly around there. Bob Lazar and his friends were there in the late 1980s, filming bizarre craft that could hover and dart. In December 1990, Gary Schultz, a chemical physicist, was with a large group of people when they saw, in his words: "a huge, glowing saucer, which was pulsating a brilliant orange-red and flying slowly over the Jumbled Hills - and it was being followed by a military helicopter about a quarter mile behind." The object disappeared behind the hills and into the Nellis Air Force Range, while the helicopter eventually landed at a facility atop Bald Mountain.

There are many such accounts. Is this evidence that the U.S. military is testing field propulsion, e.g. antigravity, flying saucers? Possibly. We may have come very close to such a revelation in the very curious October 1, 1990 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, large portions of which concerned deep-black technology programs, cryptic references to not-fully-understood exotic technology, and reports of black quiet triangles.

Would the other shoe drop? Would someone seriously mention the "U" word? The magazine came perilously close to doing so. One wonders whether someone else urgently desired to hush all this up. It is worth mentioning that Phillip J. Klass, a long-time UFO debunker, was a leading figure with the publication. Neither the staff of AW&ST, nor those of Jane's Defense Weekly, have followed up in a serious way on this.

Presumably they are still terrified of the UFO topic. Or perhaps there something more involved, a quid pro quo? Whatever the answer, they are the watchdogs that never barked.

Compare their silence to the fine work of journalist George Knapp. Here is a man who obtained many solid leads out of Area 51, several of which indicated efforts to understand and duplicate alien technology. He spoke to members of Congress who were blocked in their attempts to get answers. But no mainstream publication has followed up on his leads.

Conclusion

We are facing a situation in which we know that some triangles are ours (as the 1989 sighting by Chris Gibson demonstrates), some triangles are big, some are small, some do not appear to be "ours." If there is a single terrestrial explanation for this, it would have to be a shadow group, most likely among people deeply immersed in the world of black defense technology who developed their own agenda independent of any formally established government.

One person with whom I write, and whose judgement I have come to trust, tells me he is "ninety-five percent" sure that somewhere along the line the U.S. military and scientific minds in the secret world have indeed developed operational field propulsion. In other words, defeated the problem of gravity and are thus responsible for at least many of the triangles. Another person, someone in whom I place high esteem and credibility, tells me he thinks it's unlikely this is so.

While this is difficult to sort out, I am still left with a nagging question: if the American National Security State somewhere along the line invented some version of the Flying Triangle, why is there no evidence that it has ever been used in our recent wars? Would it not have been useful during the Gulf War of 1991? Or now?

There are, of course, answers to this question. It may have been used secretly and no one has found out. Or, the military planners may have believed that it was unnecessary for victory and hence still more valuable as something secret. Still, it seems odd.

I think it's likely that there are secret, terrestrial, triangles out there. But it also looks to me that some, and perhaps most, of the triangles are "not ours," that is, alien of some sort. In my own view, since I think this is true of the UFO phenomenon in general, it is not especially difficult to see it as true of the triangles.

What we can say for now is that there is no explanation yet offered to the public that brings all these triangles down to earth. There is a large body of evidence that continues to elude conventional explanation. The triangles do not all appear to be "ours."