Mysterious Universe

Just occasionally a book comes along that I don’t just recommend to people. Sometimes, I tell them they have to get a copy of it, no matter what! And that’s the case with the recently published book, The Black Eyed Children, penned in masterful style by David Weatherly. There can be very few readers of Mysterious Universe who have not at least heard of the phenomenon, but if you haven’t, well, David starts his book with the following, atmospheric words to get you acquainted with the admittedly creepy controversy:

“They just want to come inside. Across the world, there are a growing number of accounts of strange, black eyed children. They appear on doorsteps, at car windows, hotel rooms and even boats. Their skin is pale, their mannerisms odd and they have one consistent request. They want to be invited inside. What exactly is this growing phenomena? Are they demonic entities? Alien hybrids? Perhaps they are some form of spirit seeking passage to another place. Or, are they simply a modern urban legend born of the computer age”

And it’s these questions, and many others, that David addresses at length in his book.

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It’s not often that a news story pops up that I find so fascinating that I must blog about it. Normally, if something piques my interest it’s passed on in a tweet and soon forgotten. However this week I stumbled across a Daily Mail article about the discovery of a WWII Kittyhawk P40 that disappeared 70 years ago. I was so intrigued by this discovery that I thought I should take a look at some other incredible WWII relics.

First the Kittyhawk P40. On the 28th of June 1942, Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping bravely climbed from the cockpit of his crashed fighter and set out into the Western Desert of Egypt to find rescue. Unfortunately that rescue never came and he, and his fighter were lost to an unforgiving landscape. This is until 70 years later, when the P40 emerged from the harsh monotonous terrain. The site has been described as a “time capsule” with much of the aircraft remaining intact. Aviation historian Andy Saunders has said “It’s the aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb.” Check out more of the photos here.

This great find isn’t the first rediscovery of wartime machinery and surely won’t be the last.

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Sometimes, I’m asked – and particularly so at conferences – what’s it like going on an expedition in search of all-things of a supernatural, paranormal, ufological, cryptozoological or Fortean nature? Well, sometimes it goes very much like the following, which gives a good indication of what life is like in the field when pursuing the odd, the eerie and the downright uncanny. It was February 2008, I was on the road with Lance Oliver, of the Texas-based Denton Area Paranormal Society, and we were headed for Lake Ray Roberts, Texas – where something strange and monstrous had reportedly been seen… 

The lake and its surrounding areas are notable: in times past they were the haunt of various Native American Indian tribes, including the Comanche, the Kiowa and the Tonkawa. Before we arrived, Lance told me there had been a number of interesting UFO encounters in the vicinity, and in May 1990 strange roaring and screaming noises of a distinctly animalistic nature were heard in the woods. Not only that, but in the very same time frame nothing less than an approximately eight-foot-tall hairy man-beast was seen late at night by several young guys who were camped on the north side of the lake. Well, of course, with all that going on, we just had to check the place out!

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Well, I was kind of expecting to see a bit of a fanfare this month about the infamous MJ12 documents. Why? Simple: this month marks exactly twenty-five years since they surfaced into the public domain in the pages of Tim Good’s acclaimed book of May 1987: Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up. That there hasn’t seemingly been much in the way of commentary on the 25th anniversary of what are, without doubt, one of the most controversial “things” ever to have surfaced within the ufological arena, suggests a few possibilities…

First, maybe whole swathes of Ufology have simply forgotten about MJ12. Second, perhaps the fact that – for many in Ufology – the documents continue to frustratingly languish in that murky stalemate-driven realm of “genuine, disinformation, or hoax?” has led the research community to focus its attentions on what it sees as far more profitable and likely ways to secure the truth behind the UFO phenomenon. And, third,  maybe people just don’t care anymore about the debate surrounding the papers, their content, the way they surfaced, and the attendant analysis of their content.

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New Mayan calendar discoveries lead us onto a YouTube goose chase as we track down the origins of the “Alien Quarantine” conspiracy.

We then move into encounters with little people, both benign and not so benign, before taking a funky WTF trip aboard a green dragon with the Pink Pearl herself.

Read on for show notes, music and books.

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Greetings, fellow Coppertops! Our weekly sojourn to the very matrix of reality will show us ancient crimes and modern secrets, monstrous things both big and small —some small enough to burst out of your own chest!— and the light at the end of the rabbit tunnel might signal the dawn of a new era. So pay attention, and stop looking at the woman in the red dress.

(10) The last space shuttle is getting moth-balled at the Smithsonian as we speak, and while many Americans woe at their nation’s apparent loss of their foothold in the final frontier, they forget the fact that there’s always been two space programs: the public NASA-directed space program which has suffered numerous set-backs and cuts; and a secret space program maintained by the Military that doesn’t answer to the Congress, which is very much alive and doing well. Extremely well I should say, now that the USAF robotic X-37B space plane continues to break records with its nearly 430-day mission in orbit. The fact that the Air Force has kept mum about the mission objectives and capabilities of this mini-me unmanned version of the iconic shuttle has stirred all sorts of controversy and speculation: is it a spy drone or a weapons platform? And what has it been doing up there all these months exactly?

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Strangely familiar looking Bigfoot photos emerge from Missouri this week along with an interview with the infamous “Bigfoot Killer” Justin Smeja.

After we resist the urge to continue the show entirely in ‘Squatch Speak’ we look at very early attempts at German Rocketry and the occult funding behind them, new huggable robots from the Tokyo design show, and a phantom home invasion.

Read on for show notes, links and music.

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