Available now is my new book, The Pyramids and the Pentagon: The Government’s Top Secret Pursuit of Mystical Relics, Ancient Astronauts, and Lost Civilizations, which focuses on what the official world knows – or suspects – about a whole range of mysteries of the fog-shrouded past. They are mysteries that cover such issues as the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Atlantis-related beliefs of Edgar Cayce, the nature of Noah’s Ark, a possible Face on Mars-Egypt connection, and much more of a so-called “ancient astronauts” nature. And there’s another, equally weird saga I cover in my book…

In terms of key and integral world events, 1947 was a year of profoundly deep and significant proportions. United States President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, which paved the way for the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first, priceless collection of what have famously become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls was found in caves at Qumran, an ancient and historic site on the West Bank. At the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, a collection of fruit-flies made history when they became the first living creatures to reach the fringes of space, after being blasted into the skies above aboard a captured German World War Two-era V-2 rocket.

The age of the Flying Saucer was famously ushered in, after an American pilot – Kenneth Arnold – witnessed nine strange-looking aircraft flying close to Mount Rainier, Washington State. And, many UFO researchers believe, an alien spacecraft crashed on harsh, remote desert land outside of the small New Mexican town of Roswell. Singular, unconnected events in a world constantly in a state of change, development, and wonder, or integral parts of a greater, and very old, puzzle guided by the mysterious hands of destiny, fate and grand design?

Most people would probably say the former. But, sometimes, the majority are wrong, devastatingly so, even.

Close to 1,000 in number the Dead Sea Scrolls – as they have become popularly and famously known – represent a veritable treasure-trove of early written material from almost every book of the Old Testament, chiefly dating from around 150 BC to 70 BC. Their amazing discovery dates back to February 1947, when, along with his young cousin, a certain Muhammad edh-Dhib, then only a teenager, stumbled across a series of caves at Qumran, on the northwest side of the Dead Sea – which borders Jordan to the East, and Israel to the West. Upon exploring one particular cave, edh-Dhib was amazed to find within it a number of ancient texts, carefully and faithfully recorded on aged parchment.

edh-Dhib excitedly scooped up the items and, with his cousin in-tow, raced back home to his family’s Bedouin camp to show them his discovery. It didn’t take long before word got around that something unusual had been unearthed. In fact, matters began to spiral with extraordinary speed when talk of the scrolls began to heat up in and around Bethlehem – particularly so when yet more scrolls were found in the area, collectively at no less than eleven caves, and throughout a period of time that extended right up until to 1956.

Those immediate times after edh-Dhib’s discovery were distinctly wild and turbulent ones. The Syrian Orthodox Church expressed its firm interest in seeing the scrolls, as did representatives of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Interested parties in the Vatican secretly negotiated to buy up some of the scrolls, others – in the field of biblical archaeology – scrambled to see them and examine them, and some scholars called for the scrolls to be placed under official control and oversight – lest they might be spread far and wide, possibly even becoming catastrophically lost or destroyed. Fortunately, this latter scenario did not happen.

What did happen, due to circumstances provoked by the turbulent Arab-Israeli War of 1948, was that the scrolls were hastily transported to Lebanon for safe-keeping. Six years later, they were up for sale – and were ultimately sold for $250,000 and transferred to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, the scrolls ended up at the Shrine of the Brook – an arm of the Jerusalem-based Israel Museum – where they continue to reside to this very day. There is, however, yet another story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is one filled with, and fueled by, dark conspiracy and involves none other than the CIA.

While extraordinary findings were being made at Qumran, historic events were unfolding in the United States. Back in late 1944, one William J. Donovan – who was the founder of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), arguably the earliest incarnation of what eventually became the CIA – mused upon the idea of establishing the ultimate intelligence-gathering agency.

It was designed to act as the nation’s focal point for securing and analyzing data relevant and vital to U.S. national security and the defense of the nation. The ambitious idea was of great interest to the president of the day, Franklin D. Roosevelt. With the battle still on to defeat the hordes of Adolf Hitler, Italy, and Japan, however, survival was the primary name of the game.

The result, it was not until July 26, 1947, two years after world peace had been restored that this ultimate secret agency finally came into being, when Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, Harry S. Truman, passed the National Security Act. The Central Intelligence Agency was duly born.

The very idea that the newly-created CIA might have played an integral, albeit deeply clandestine, role in the saga of the Dead Sea Scrolls sounds manifestly bizarre in the extreme. But, in this particular case, the old adage about truth being far stranger than fiction really does apply, as my book, The Pyramids and the Pentagon makes very clear…

There are many mysteries that riddle aspects of the known world, serving today as veritable holdovers from a past that we, despite our best efforts, have yet to fully understand. Some of these mysteries are so strange, in fact, that they have caused a variety of different speculative theories to emerge about human origins, incorporating such things as extraterrestrial visitors, preexisting advanced societies, and possible “doomsday events” that may have wiped out life over large portions of the ancient world.

In recent news, the discovery of a 6,000 year old pre-farming settlement in north Clare, along the Irish coast, has let to much excitement among archaeologists, who have described the find as “one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland.” Due to its age, the location predates nearby settlements by at least several hundred years. Though renowned for its age, there could nonetheless be other mysteries underlying this ancient site which point to a variety of other unique potentials; these relate not only to mysteries of the Emerald Isle, but also of other areas throughout the ancient world.

During the site’s recent excavation, the team who had been overseeing the operation described finding “a mysterious black layer of organic material” that covered much of the settlement and surrounding area. Upon reading this, I was a bit surprised, since it immediately bore a strong resemblance to stories of strange discoveries at ancient locations in the Middle East. More specifically, I’m reminded of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, located in modern day Pakistan, where among the oddities found during the excavations of these sites were similar strange scatterings of dust or some other substance, along with small lumps of blackened, melted clay scattering the streets.

Strangest of all, there are even reports that these two Mideast locations have displayed higher-than-average background radiation at the respective excavations sites, lending to theories that range from a supernovae or other variety of ancient cosmic bombardment, to the possibility of meteorite blast sites. According to some researchers, the potential for some kind of nuclear technology that may have existed on Earth in ancient times has also been put forth to explain the curious destruction of these ancient cities.

While the latter of these theories is quite difficult to quantify, it should also be noted that another theory regarding many ancient disasters in the Mideast involves the frequent flooding of the Indus River Valley; under such circumstances, it has been posited that a tremendous flood might have contributed to the downfall of ancient Middle Eastern metropolises like Mohenjo-Daro. And incidentally, the official suspected reasons for the destruction of the recently discovered Irish settlement at Fanore Beach, north Clare, is believed to have involved a prehistoric tsunami.

Noteworthy also is the fact that cultures such as that of Mehrgarh, which preceded Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro by a few thousand years, had appeared by approximately 6000 BCE (predating the Irish settlement mentioned earlier by about 2000 years). Mohenjo-daro and Harappa appeared nearly 3500 years later, along the modern regions known as Punjab and the Sindh provinces. While no direct parallels exist for dates of the destruction between the separate Irish and Mideast settlements described here, it is interesting to consider the peculiar similarities between the theories of their demise; while conventional investigations have proposed that flooding may likely have been the cause in both instances, conclusive data does not exist to support this. What does exist is a remarkable similarity between reports of odd substances and other anomalies found in both regions.

In fact, Russian munitions expert Alexander Gorbovsky, along with other proponents of some variety of nuclear event that may have occurred long ago, have written about what was believed to constitute a “layer of radioactive ash” that covered the city sites of Harrappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Could there be any link between such stories, and the layer of silt found within the excavation along the settlement at north Clare?

As reported in the Irish Examiner Online, the strange black substance found at the site has not, in fact, been identified yet as silt:

The substance, which is two or three inches deep, disintegrates when it comes in contact with air. A large slab of the material has remained intact on an ancient settlement, indicating that a large amount of it was laid down at once, possibly as the result of a tsunami.

“We have found a mysterious layer of black organic material on the site and it is just under that level that we have found all the oldest archeology,” said Mr Lynch.

“We have not been able to identify exactly what this black layer is yet but, as it happens, it is this layer which helped to protect the ancient settlement that we are currently excavating.

I first heard of the Missouri Mystery Mound at least ten to fifteen years ago on a now-defunct website. The website claimed the Mound was the Hall of Records, although it didn’t specifically say whose hall of records. The Atlanteans? The great mound building cultures of North America? Egyptian? Mayan? Or some race of peoples lost to time? I’m from Missouri, and if an ancient civilization’s hall of records sat under the soil of my state, I needed to know. Trouble is, I couldn’t find the man who said he had discovered it.

Until now.

I tracked down and interviewed Charles Teague, and found the answers to my questions were stranger than I’d ever hoped.

Teague grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and always had an interest in North American archeology; but it wasn’t until one night in the early 1990s listening to radio host Art Bell interview an American Indian shaman, that this interest became almost an obsession.

“(The shaman) was telling this story about how this Indian who had come to him while he was doing some exploring,” Teague said. “This Indian took him to this place back in the back woods to a hall of records under a mountain.”

The shaman told Bell this Indian guide showed him temples and 10,000-year-old artifacts under that mountain, but he didn’t know the location.

“They blindfolded him until they got there, then when he left so he couldn’t get back to it,” Teague said. “But he knew approximately where it was.”

At the time Teague was enrolled in a course on reverse speech technology and recorded this program to see if he could use reverse speech to find this hall of records. He was amazed at what he found.

“It’s just too weird for normal people to understand,” Teague said. “I recorded it, and said hell if this S.O.B. really went to a hall of records in Middle America, in reverse his mind was going to tell me where he went.”

After three hours of listening to that part of the program over and over in reverse, he pulled out words, some intriguing, others curious.

“He said ‘near the fault in America in the forest in the mountains’,” Teague said. “I said it was in the New Madrid fault. It couldn’t be anywhere else.” The New Madrid fault line runs through Mark Twain National Forest, which overlaps the Ozark Mountain range.

Then he caught words like “cactus,” “lake,” and “lizard,” which didn’t mean much. “I said, ‘Jesus, what’s the damn lizard?’ It didn’t make sense,” he said. “Most of it didn’t make sense. But here I was, 100 to 200 miles from it.”

Teague looked over maps, but got only headaches. “I was screwed, so I left it alone for a while.”

It wasn’t until he attended a presentation on historical American peacemakers that the Mound crept back into his thoughts. One peacemaker in particular caught his attention. Colonel George Morgan, who brokered a peace agreement between the revolutionaries and the American Indians during the War for Independence.

“After the Revolutionary War, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson gave him the job of mapping out the Spanish territories from the Mississippi River and Ohio Valley and all that,” Teague said. “He went to southeast Missouri and founded the city of New Madrid. Then he went back to New Jersey, built a fabulous estate, and lived like a millionaire the rest of his life.”

Something about that story bothered Teague, so he read a biography on Morgan. It only offered more questions. “He was a land speculator,” Teague said. “How did he become a millionaire? He didn’t get it from his family. He didn’t get it from the Continental Congress. I figured he must have gotten from the Indians.”

A picture of the Morgan coat of arms in the biography gave him a clue. “I looked at it and said, ‘damn, this ain’t right.’ I noticed in the lower left hand corner there was one box that didn’t make any damn sense. It was offset squares with Xs with something going through the middle. I started looking at it and thought, ‘son of a bitch. This was a grid map.’”

He saw hills, and a river. “I thought, ‘if this was a grid map, this was for one reason and one reason only – for his family. The only thing this could be is the location to where he got his fortune.’ I figured this must be the Hall of Records.”

After spending days pouring over topographical maps at the University of Memphis, he found a spot in hilly region of Mark Twain National Forest near a lake. Forest, fault, mountain, lake. But the hard part of his journey was just beginning.

“Finding something on a grid map and going into the forest and trying to find something are totally different,” he said.

Teague, his wife, and daughter drove to from Tennessee to Missouri and searched a small section of Mark Twain National Forest. “In 100 degrees we went into the backwoods and walked around to find it. We spent most of the day going back in the swamps and we found nothing.” After one fruitless day, they went home. But Teague wasn’t finished.

“I got my brother and a friend of mine and we made another trip up there.”

It took two more trips with his brother and local American Indians, but Teague believes he found it.

“We found a circular path, and as we were walking back along this long gulley, and my brother said, ‘hey look up at that rock formation, it looks like a lizard.’ Damn. That’s what I was looking for. A lizard.”

The ascended the hill and found caves – caves with ancient carvings, one Teague calls The Wall. He was certain he found the location of the Hall of Records. “The main thing was the Wall with the giant skull carved into it,” Teague said. “It has all the esoteric carving in it. An ancient god, (the planet) Saturn. There was an entrance there too, but we didn’t open it, or we’d be dead. Whoever’s watching it was there.”

As the group walked back to their vehicle, two truckloads of men cut them off from the front, and rear. “Everybody was carrying all kinds of guns,” Teague said. “They stopped and looked at us and wanted to know what we were doing. We said we had a Cherokee.” The men allowed Teague’s group to leave, but he got an impression as to who they were. “It’s meth labs and drugs. What else could it be? I don’t think they’re smart enough to know what’s going on back there.”

They didn’t scare off Teague. Much later, after attending a UFO convention in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, he detoured into the Mark Twain National Forest to take a friend to the Mound. “I took him there and showed him around,” he said. “He wouldn’t go now.”

As Teague showed his friend some of the anomalous stone works of the Mound, two men appeared from nowhere and invited them to follow them to explore a nearby cave. Teague agreed, but when the men left, Teague and his friend walked to their vehicle and drove away. He knew if he went to that cave, they would have killed him. “The thing about the Wall. I thought something was important about it. Whatever the Wall is they protect it for some reason. I think that’s where the entrance is.”

Teague says carved depictions of an ape, an elephant, and lion show an African influence at the site, but a carving of a humanoid reptilian points to something from other stars. “It’s a reptilian god. It’s the god they worship,” he said. “You’ve got lions, apes, dragons, aliens, you can’t make heads or tails of this place.”

But the reptilian isn’t the only extraterrestrial carving Teague found. He claims an aerial photograph of the Mound shows a gray alien pointing to a star is carved into the landscape. “That was a cave entrance,” he said. “If you go into that cave you’ll find out the secret of the star where (he) came from. The Corps of Engineers built a new road and the cave is no longer there. I think the other entrance is at the Shaft.”

The Shaft is a vertical stone well shrouded by trees. Once Teague went down into the Shaft fifteen feet, but it was blocked with debris. Unfortunately, the Shaft is no longer accessible. “The next time we went up, they’d built a block over it. Somebody knew we were back there.”

Fearing for his safety, he hasn’t been back. “Before my last trip I’d sent an email to the Army Corps of Engineers and told them of the giant skull and Wall and asked what they knew about it,” Teague said. The man he contacted seemed interested in Teague’s news – too interested. “He said, ‘this thing’s great. Get your family and all your friends and take us up through the forest and take us to this Wall. I said, ‘sure.’ I’ll never go back there again. I know exactly what was planned. I could see the headline now. ‘UFO cult comes into the backwoods of Missouri and commits suicide.’ You could see where that was going.”

Although Teague believes the man he contacted at the Army Corps of Engineers knows of the site, he stops short of claiming it is a government cover up. “Hell, if I know about it, somebody knows about it. I don’t think it’s the government,” he said. “I think the people in the backwoods have been protecting this place since people have been there. I think it may be a pagan cult from long ago.”

That cult may have ancient Christian roots. Teague has found symbols of an elephant, owl, a ram, and a man, in aerial photographs. “There’s a bearded man inside the ram’s head, like a king. It has to do with a lamb and a king and it would make him a shepherd king. The owl is the sign of wisdom,” he said.

Teague is convinced the bearded man is King David. “David, the shepherd king, allowed the Arc of the Covenant to be taken to Ethiopia. In ancient times they took it on a boat in Ethiopia, around the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River, and buried it in the Hall of Records in the Missouri Mystery Mound. “I believe the Arc of the Covenant is buried at the Missouri Mystery Mound. That’s my theory. In antiquity someone carved out the mounds because that’s where the Arc of the Covenant was to be taken.”

But who carved the Mound? Teague thinks the identity is carved into the landscape of the Mound itself, the gray alien pointing to a star. “Not only did they built it and carve it 20,000 years ago, they go back and re-carve it over and over again,” he said. “Carve mountains and valleys? We couldn’t do that. It’s not natural; it’s alien formed. I’m convinced at that.”

However, the photographs of the Wall, depictions of peoples, animals, and beings carved into the stone of the Mound modern archeology would say are impossible, haven’t attracted the attention of academics.

“To me this is the most sacred mythological site in America that nobody knows about. There’s some sort of energy there that keeps it quiet,” he said. “You’d think there’d be archeologists all over the damn country wanting to investigate the place, but nobody wants to go up there and look at it.”

And they probably never will, even if they ask Teague. He doesn’t plan to go back. “This place is so fantastic, and I am not even seeing anything but the McDonald’s sign. We’re not even seeing the inside of McDonald’s, the inside of the mountain. Good lord. But if I went back in there, I’d be killed,” Teague said. “If you go up there you’d better go with a big-assed guns. You’d better be armed.”

Located within California’s Mojave Desert, Death Valley is a most apt name for a place that resembles the rugged surface of some far away, battle-scarred planet and which holds the dubious honor of being home to the highest recorded temperature in the western world. An incredible 136° Fahrenheit, it was recorded on July 10, 1913, in the very appropriately named Furnace Creek.

It is somewhat ironic that, although Death Valley got its memorable moniker during the famous Gold Rush of 1849, only one death among all the prospectors eager to seek out gold was actually reported during that turbulent period. And although the name may be relatively new, the history of the area is most definitely not. For more than a thousand years the Timbisha Native Americans have lived in the harsh environs of Death Valley. And, in times both past and present, so have a whole range of things undeniably weird.

One of the strangest of all sagas relative to the mysteries of Death Valley erupted in the summer of 1947, the very same period in which the era of the Flying Saucer took the entire world by storm. In early August of that year, Howard E. Hill, of Los Angeles, spoke before the city’s Transportation Club and told a sensational story.

It was an extravagant tale that described the work of a certain Dr. F. Bruce Russell, a retired Cincinnati, Ohio physician, who claimed to have discovered, in 1931, a series of complex tunnels deep below Death Valley. Well, you may justifiably ask, so what?

[The images used in this post are used for illustration purposes only and are obviously photoshopped (except for the giant skull in the wheelbarrow, I took that one myself back in 1849) - MU]

After all, caves, caverns and underground grottos exist all around the world. They most certainly do. But, there was something very special and unique about these particular tunnels beneath Death Valley. According to the story told to Hill by Russell, the caves contained the skeletons of several gigantic men, each in the region of around nine feet in height, which Russell stumbled upon with a colleague, Dr. Daniel S. Bovee, who Russell had worked with on archaeological excavations in Mexico several years earlier.

And “stumbled upon” is highly apt terminology. Russell reportedly fell headlong into one of the caves when the surface soil gave way beneath him as he was in the middle of busily sinking a shaft for a mining claim. In Hill’s own words, spoken before the amazed and hushed audience of the Transportation Club, he said:

“These giants are clothed in garments consisting of a medium length jacket and trousers extending slightly below the knees. The texture of the material is said to resemble gray dyed sheepskin, but obviously it was taken from an animal unknown today.”

Upping the weird stakes even further, Hill said that while deep underground Russell and Bovee apparently came across what they described as a “ritual hall,” in which were found unspecified devices adorned with markings “similar to those now used by the Masonic order.” More bizarrely, the long-dead remains of both tigers and elephants – or, as was later suggested, and which was certainly far more plausible, the remnants of ancient saber-tooth tigers and mammoths – were also found strewn across the floor of the huge hall.

As for this fantastic, below-surface realm, we’re not talking about just a few, measly tunnels either. Hill revealed that then current estimates suggested there were at least thirty-two of them, and they ran for an amazing 180 square miles, covering whole swathes of Death Valley and certain parts of southern Nevada.

As for the era in which the bodies originated, while no explanation was given as to how Russell had come up with such a figure, he estimated they extended back an incredible 80,000 years, if not even longer, Hill told the crowd.

Hardly surprisingly, the local media of the day loudly cited the comments of certain, unnamed “professional archaeologists” who openly scoffed at such a story, assuring anyone and everyone who would listen that the tale simply had to be that and nothing else at all: a tall story of April Fools’ Day proportions.

Rather incredibly, but some might say predictably, no-one in the professional world of archeology would even dare take up the challenge to see the incredible evidence for his or herself – possibly fearful of being viewed as gullible and lacking in credibility.

The result: it was left up to Howard E. Hill to continue to speak on behalf of Dr. Russell – which he certainly did, until the story died a mysterious death, and Hill, Russell and Bovee mysteriously vanished into the shadows (or, perhaps, into the depths of those old caves), never, ever to return….

The Christian Bible is, by and large, one of the most famous books in all of known history. It consists of a set of scriptures comprised of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, having been compiled from various other collected works spanning the centuries. The oldest original Christian Bibles still existing today were produced in the Greek language, and represent manuscripts that date back to the 4th century. In addition to those precepts and teachings that form the basis for Christian teachings, each of these relic texts also discuss historic events pertaining to the people that lived throughout the Middle East and other regions in ancient times.

While the stories that constitute many Biblical accounts do pertain to real historical events, debate among scholars has diminished the merit and accuracy of such things as the Exodus from Egypt, as described in the Torah, as well as the classic descriptions of a migration to the “Promised Land.” Beyond these culturally-themed stories, there are also a number of events and accounts related throughout the Bible–especially contained within the Old Testament–which according to scholarly interpretation are quite obviously myths and fables, aimed at construing morals and other virtues in the Judeo Christian tradition. And yet, despite their largely mythic status, there remain a number of aspects where the incredible stories related within parts of the Christian Bible seem to have counterparts that exist also in reality; could these point to a deeper meaning that could be gleaned from within some of the stories and circumstances in the Bible, and perhaps in other ancient documents as well?

The legend of Noah’s Ark and the great flood recount circumstances that seem far too incredible to be real or accurate in the literal sense. And yet, despite their incredible nature, it has long been recognized that a host of foundational “flood myths” exist not only in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also among the Hindu puranic mythologies, particularly the story of Manu, as well as the story of Utnapishtim, survivor of a tremendous flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Deucalion in Greek mythology details similar circumstances, and legends among the Quiché and Mayas also involve the presence of a flood myth.

But with specific relevance to the biblical story of Noah, or even the less-specific notion that someone had survived a “Great Flood” in ancient times byf constructing a large sailing vessel, there is the peculiar story of the so-called “Ararat Anomaly.” This object, according to proponents of a literal interpretation of biblical accounts, points to the physical existence of Noah’s Ark encased within ice at a high altitude near the summit of Mount Ararat, Turkey.

The “anomaly” rests along the edge of what photographs seem to indicate being a steep, downward slope near the northwest corner of Ararat’s Western Plateau. A U.S. Air Force aerial reconnaissance mission managed to film the object–whatever it may actually be–for the first time in 1949, although earlier accounts describe various encounters with what had been described as “a large boat” that existed somewhere on the mountain. The photographs remained classified for a number of years, due to the fact that the former Soviet border with Turkey runs directly through Ararat, designating the area where the anomaly existed as “an area of military interest.” Various aircraft and satellite photographs of the anomaly remained secret up until 1992 due to their classified status.

While there has been dispute as to what, exactly, the object may be, many profess that it appears to be a large, wooden structure believed to be roughly the size of a small aircraft carrier. More recent expeditions to the mountain have returned with even more captivating tales that involved large amounts of frozen or fossilized wood, fossil evidence of marine life, and even a large, “unusual” cave that bore wooden walls (the various attempts at locating a physical resting place for Noah’s Ark can be examined here). To date, it remains an item of question with regard to whether the object is indeed man made, and whether it does actually resemble a boat large enough to match biblical accounts of Noah’s Ark.
Similar biblical mysteries that exist today involve searches for the Ark of the Covenant, which according to journalist Graham Hancock and others, may rest in a treasury maintained by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (unfortunately, the church will not allow access to the Ark, although similar claims are expressed by other religious denominations in Africa and other locales as well.  But perhaps no alleged religious relic is more curious or well-known as the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the literal burial shroud of Jesus Christ. Due to the controversy that surrounds the shroud to this day, we need not delve into it’s sordid history here; however, the debate surrounding its authenticity provides a bit of interesting cultural commentary. Many adherents to Christian teachings view the Turin Shroud as proof not only that Christ existed, but that his divinity is without question also, while skeptics have stated time and time again the various ways Leonardo DaVinci, among others, may have contributed to the centuries-old controversy. However, the typical problem that arises from any such mysterious and controversial religious relic nearly always seems to be the same: those wishing to prove or disprove the nature of any such claims will most often begin with their own stated belief, adhering to it as a precept that will inevitably color their own perception of the mystery. Without question, there are dozens of ways that a scientist might be able to replicate the image on the shroud, many of which, no doubt, haven’t even been thought of yet. These methods cannot confirm, however, that the image on the Shroud was made in an identical fashion (at least they haven’t yet). Furthermore, the fact that the processes used to render the image are still inconclusive cannot be used any better as “evidence” than the Shroud did actually wrap the body of Jesus Christ, who subsequently underwent a miraculous resurrection.

One day, in all likelihood, we will come to a far greater understanding of such mysteries as the Shroud of Turin. But for now, their remaining status as unexplained phenomena may not negate their potential significance. For some, they will continue to provide an avenue for contemplation and critical thinking; others will draw appreciation for life and its mysteries from their study, which may yield new depths of perception within the spiritual realm. For me, they are purely and utterly fascinating, and while I remain somewhat agnostic to their potential identities (though not to mean a literal religious agnosticism here), their existence points toward possibilities that have kept me guessing about the nature of faith, science, reason and religion… and perhaps to some degree what role we as humans play in the grand scheme of things.

So-called Psychic-Questing books, like The Green Stone by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, and Andy Collins’ books on the subject, such as The Black Alchemist and The Second Coming, have long fascinated me. But, it’s Keatman and Phillips’ sequel to The Green Stone – namely, The Eye of Fire – that particularly intrigues me, chiefly because of the terrifying tale it tells of a certain Ranton Abbey…

Known more correctly as the Augustinian Priory – Ranton Abbey, situated in the English county of Staffordshire - was founded by Robert Fitz-Noel during the reign of Henry Plantagenet, with the construction having been completed by 1150. In the early 19th century, the property became part of the estate of the Ansons of Shugborough, latterly the Earls of Lichfield. Today, the abbey is, unfortunately, in ruins, having been ravaged and destroyed during the Second World War, while occupied by Dutch soldiers. And, with that said: Onto the story.

While much of The Eye of Fire is far beyond the scope of this article, the data I wish to impart relates to a July 1982 trip to the abbey that the team of investigators in the book embarked upon, as part of their quest to locate the Eye of Fire of the book’s title. Basically, the relevant parts of Philips and Keatman’s saga reveal how, in the 19th Century, one of the characters in the book, named Mary Heath, created a diabolical and monstrous “Guardian” at the abbey, whose role was to protect an ancient artifact, one that plays a vital role in the story.

Interestingly, the “Guardian” is described in the book’s pages in highly ominous tones, and, variously, as: “a complete blackness, seething within itself, shapeless but at the same time having substance;” as “an abomination;” and as a heavy-breathing “great beast.”

The “Guardian,” we come to learn, is a monstrous, protector-style thought-form – or Tulpa - brought into being, and roaming around, and protecting, the ancient abbey and the Eye of Fire. But there’s more: The vile Tulpa was reportedly created by Mary Heath in 1875. How intriguing that an ominous thought-form was created in Ranton in 1875, considering that - only four years later, in 1879 - a horrific, “British Bigfoot”-type beast that became known as Man-Monkey was seen rampaging around the very nearby  Bridge 39 on the Shropshire Union Canal.

It was within the packed pages of Charlotte Sophia Burne’s book of 1883, Shropshire Folklore that the unholy antics of what some have since perceived to be the closest thing that Britain may have to the North American Bigfoot and the Yeti of the Himalayas, were first unleashed upon an unsuspecting general public. According to Burne:

“A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my knowledge. On the 21st of January 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another. He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot’s pace, so that it was ten o’clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal.”

It was then, Burne faithfully recorded, that the man received what was undoubtedly the most terrifying shock of his entire life – before or since, it seems pretty safe to assume: “Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horse’s back. He tried to push it off with his whip, but to his horror the whip went through the thing, and he dropped it on the ground in fright.”

Needless to say, Burne added: “The poor, tired horse broke into a canter, and rushed onwards at full speed with the ghost still clinging to its back. How the creature at length vanished, the man hardly knew.”

But the story was far from over, Burne learned: “He told his tale in the village of Woodseaves, a mile further on, and so effectively frightened the hearers that one man actually stayed with friends there all night, rather than cross the terrible bridge which lay between him and his home.”

Could it be that Mary Heath’s monstrous offspring and the Man-Monkey were one and the very same? Admittedly, this is a highly speculative and controversial question, but, it is a question I simply cannot bring myself to dismiss. Rather, I suspect, it may offer a convincing explanation for at least some of the strange beasts that have passed, and that continue to pass, for the enigmatic British Bigfoot.

Perhaps no brand of weapon on Earth is feared as greatly as that which employs the power of the atom. Our early experiences as a civilization with nuclear weapons in times of conflict not only led to the end of the Second World War, but also to the frightening stalemate between emergent superpowers that persisted for decades afterward.

I must profess, I have been fascinated with atomic weaponry for some time now, both as a student of history, and with regard to how nuclear weapons have various tie-ins to the unexplained, fringe science, and alternative history. For instance, in the latest special issue of New Dawn Magazine, I discussed a subject I’ve featured here on this blog in the past as well: the notion that nuclear events may have occurred on Earth prior to the first test blast at Alamogordo toward the end of WWII. Some evidence even suggests blasts of this sort could have occurred as far back as several thousands of years ago.

And yet, there is at least some evidence that suggests how Planet Earth may not have been alone in this regard. So far as there being evidence of ancient historic nuclear events–a fairly difficult subject to accept at face value to begin with–could it actually be that evidence of this sort of thing may also exist on one of our nearby planetary neighbors?

Earlier this year, Dr. John Brandenburg with Orbital Technologies Corp. went on the record discussing the potential for what he described as a “massive nuclear explosion on Mars,” which curiously, “seems to defy natural explanation.” Granted, while the circumstances that could have allowed such a thing to occur seem to defy rational explanation, this event is still considered to be “natural.” (In fact, the same can be said of scientific interpretations regarding nuclear events believed to have occurred here on Earth long ago, specifically around the Great Lakes area, where evidence of some kind of nuclear event has been discovered, which dates back to Paleoindian times.) The problem with this “natural” interpretation, of course, is that while no scientist wants to commit to the possibility that some intelligence could have been behind such an “event,” finding a plausible alternative explanation becomes damned difficult, just as well.

While a violent solar storm or supernovae appear to be likely candidates, there are alternative views that have been expressed, too. For instance, Joseph P. Farrell, an alternative historian and author of the new book Saucers, Swastikas and Psyops: A History of A Breakaway Civilization: Hidden Aerospace Technologies and Psychological Operations, has put forth his own views on the subject as follows on his website:

Make no mistake, there is evidence here on Earth that natural nuclear reactors formed and operated for a period of time long ago. But these are fission reactors and fission processes would be, to my mind, next to impossible to generate this amount of energy naturally. And fusion processes of this magnitude occurring naturally on a planet… well, that too, does not to my mind compute very easily.

If Brandenburg is correct, that all this is evidence of a gigantic thermonuclear explosion on the red planet aeons ago, then my bet is that it was the product both of technology and deliberate action, in short, it was the occurrence of an act of war.

How likely is it that an ancient nuclear blast might have occurred on Mars, and as a result of some intelligent species? Furthermore, could evidence of such things on Earth be an indication that there might be similar skeletons in the proverbial closet right here in our midst just as well? Or do anomalies of this sort truly have more plausible explanations… however difficult they may seem at the outset?

Senator Barry Goldwater served as a Major-General in the Air Force, as the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 1964 election, and as the Chairman of the U.S. Government’s Senate Intelligence Committee. On March 28, 1975, Goldwater wrote the following, highly thought-provoking words to a UFO researcher named Shlomo Arnon: “The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.”  

Goldwater later clarified, and expanded on, this by revealing that years earlier none other than U.S. Air Force General Curtis Le May had given him, Goldwater, absolute hell for daring to ask if he could see the USAF’s top secret UFO data  rumored to be stored at Wright-Patterson – which many UFO researchers believe may possibly include preserved alien corpses and recovered extra-terrestrial hardware and technology. Moreover, Le May told Goldwater, in just about the sternest of all tones conceivably possible, not to even think about bringing up this matter with him again – ever.

But, this was not the only time when Goldwater approached officialdom on a matter of some secrecy and relative to an enigma that was of interest to the U.S. Intelligence community. The second such example, however, was linked with a definitive puzzle of biblical proportions: that of Noah’s Ark, an issue that has fascinated and intrigued the CIA for years.

On September 1, 1978, Goldwater wrote a letter to the then-Director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner that began as follows: “You may think this is a screwball request and it may be, but I would like to know if you can do anything about it.” Goldwater went on to ask if “satellite photography” could be searched “to determine whether or not something in the way of an archaeological find might be located near or on top of” Mount Ararat.

Goldwater explained to the CIA director that he had received a letter “from a man in whom I have great confidence, who certainly is no nut, who knows Turkey rather well but who feels that there is reason to believe the Ark may be resting at or near the top of the mount. I assure that I will keep this at any classification you want it kept and if you desire me to go to the devil, I know the way.”

The CIA responded that it had no data on file suggesting the Ark of Noah had been identified or located anywhere on Mt. Ararat, or indeed anywhere else. Goldwater’s comment that he would understand if the Ark issue was of “any classification” that might result in the CIA telling him to “go to the devil,” however, is extremely – and eerily - reminiscent of that earlier experience with General Curtis Le May in the 1960s, in relation to the rumors concerning what may have been hidden deep below Wright-Patterson Air Force Base of a specifically alien nature.

If Goldwater – who had a deep, personal interest in UFOs – had even the slightest inklings or suspicions that official research into Noah’s Ark was somehow a matter of national security, rather than just a subject of religious or archaeological proportions, then this might very possibly explain why he anticipated being told to go to hell by the CIA in 1978, in much the same way that Le May had less than tactfully suggested to him years earlier in relation to rumors of captured UFOs held at Wright-Pat.

And why, precisely, might the CIA’s interest in Noah’s Ark be considered a matter having a bearing upon national security? Much more will be revealed this year…

The ancient Hindu epics are rife with tales of the strange and fantastic. Elements described within consist of elaborate tales of massive wars, superheroes, and gods that walk alongside common mortals. And yet, perhaps no subject hailing from the Sanskrit fables has captured the minds of ancient mystery proponents better than the flying vehicles of ancient India, known today as vimanas.

Vimanas are, without question, mentioned throughout many of the ancient Vedic texts, proving they certainly are not a concept that originates entirely from recent times; but if not sophisticated avionics of the modern variety, what then might they have been? Could it be possible that some elements regarding the vimana mystery–specifically our interpretation of these objects as technologically advanced aircraft that existed in ancient India–could be a result of our own desire to superimpose modern themes and ideas into the framework of the ancient Indian epics?

Before we get to the discussion of flying craft, there are a few things we must look at first with regard to the exact meaning of what a “vimana” is, in order to better unravel why I feel there may be misinterpretation associated with their presence in literature. One thing that we must take into consideration is that “vimana” is a word used to describe a number of things in a variety of different contexts throughout the Vedas. For instance, vimana can translate to mean the innermost sanctuary of a Rama temple (sometimes called an “adytum,” though this word actually has its origins in the Greek, rather than the Sanskrit). A variety of different temples, palaces, shrines, towers, and other structures associated with kings, emperors and divinity were also called “vimanas” in the Vedas, roughly translated to mean “a god’s palace.”

Some scholars assert that from this interpretation of the word, references in the Ramayana to Ravana’s flying palace “Pushpaka” may lend credence to the idea that a vimana is some kind of “floating palace.” From a modern perspective, we might also take this to mean a “flying vehicle,” too… after all, we can’t think of many buildings that float; on the other hand, plenty of different kinds of flying vehicles that exist in modern times come immediately to mind (though interestingly, some of our own modern flying warplanes have been called “fortresses” at various times, too).

The expression “Chariots of the Gods,” popularized by Erich von Daniken, also stems from the Vedas too, in reference to some of the vimana craft described variously as flying carts, seats, or thrones. But again, many of these same descriptions often described the vimanas in question as resembling various kinds of abodes, buildings, palaces, or towers. Some of these were understood to be capable of flying or hovering, and in modern times, their presence has been interpreted by some ancient astronaut proponents as evidence of “space stations” and similar “flying fortresses” that existed in ancient times. While we can’t rule anything out, this may indeed represent a bit of a hypothetical leap to be made; furthermore, here again the modern bias with regard to this interpretation seems rather obvious.

There are still other meanings of the word vimana, however, that should be taken into consideration. In the Vimanavatthu, a token prayer or text used as the inspiration for a Buddhist sermon was once referred to also as a “vimana.” Futhermore, some “vimana” references dealt merely with scientific methods of making precise measurements, as well as a more general meaning that involved medicines used to treat various ailments. But no less, the link between vimanas and aircraft remains a tenet even in the modern Indian languages (sometimes used literally as a term meaning “aircraft”). Vimanapura is also an Indian word synonymous with the Bangalore HAL Airport. What this shows is that, yes, vimana means “flying vehicle,” and certainly, many references within the vedas refer to such things.

But if it is clear that vimanas are indeed mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit texts, and that this term was used, at least on occasion, to describe flying objects, then where is the so-called “controversy” regarding vimanas? In truth, where I think our modern interpretation of such things becomes misleading is when we take “vimana” to mean anything more specific than merely an “ancient flying machine.” In other words, to assert that they were a technological device using highly advanced, anti-gravitic science and engineering that may have involved mercuric engines, etc, is something that, based on my own research, likely stems from constructions or misinterpretations from the earlier part of the last century. The same may not be said entirely of the vimanas themselves however, as one cannot refute their presence in the ancient texts, at least by virtue of their frequent mention, and various descriptions.

And in truth, much of this modern idea of the inner mechanics of vimanas stems from a single manuscript, authored around 1920, called the Vaimanika Shastra. This work is based entirely on information allegedly channeled by the author, Pandit Subbaraya Shastry, and the information contained within has been chalked up by most aeronautics experts in modern times as being pure rubbish, to put it nicely. To illustrate this, the following statement by the late John B. Hare of the Internet Sacred Text Archive discusses the shortcomings in people’s interpretation of the Vaimanika Shastra’s content over the years:

The Vymanika Shastra was first committed to writing between 1918 and 1923, and nobody is claiming that it came from some mysterious antique manuscript. The fact is, there are no manuscripts of this text prior to 1918, and nobody is claiming that there are. So on one level, this is not a hoax. You just have to buy into the assumption that ‘channeling’ works. … there is no exposition of the theory of aviation (let alone antigravity). In plain terms, the VS never directly explains how Vimanas get up in the air. The text is top-heavy with long lists of often bizarre ingredients used to construct various subsystems. … There is nothing here which Jules Verne couldn’t have dreamed up, no mention of exotic elements or advanced construction techniques. The 1923 technical illustration based on the text … are absurdly un-aerodynamic. They look like brutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers. In other words, they look like typical early 20th century fantasy flying machines with an Indian twist.

Thus, in the absence of much of a justifiable link between the ancient flying vimanas and modern avionics (or even anti-gravitics), we are left to attempt to decipher by peering through the proverbial mists of time as to what, exactly, these “vimanas” actually were. Were there mechanical flying ships buzzing around in ancient India, or were these the chariots of the proverbial gods (or aliens)? Or, just perhaps, could some of our own understanding of the vimana mystery even stem from fanciful elaborations of these myths and legends, filtered through cultural windows that project the world of today onto mysteries of the past?

There are a number of ancient city sites throughout the world today, existing in remnants of lost metropolises and societies from the past, that boast curious, history-altering potential that are both incredible and terrifying. It seems very startling, for instance, that places like Mohenjo-daro, a once prosperous ancient city in modern day Pakistan, seems to bear trace evidence of some kind of cataclysmic event in it’s historic past that, even by today’s standards, remains difficult to explain.

Granted, if we are to utilize modern conventions available to us in the present day, a number of the peculiarities about this particular location can (and do) bear remarkable similarity to the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The problem, of course, is to attempt to reconcile with the anomalies of places like Mohenjo-daro by asserting that nuclear explosions–the likes of which have been seen previously only at places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII–could have occurred thousands of years ago.

 While I’m hesitant, as many probably should be, to say there is definitive proof of nuclear weapons being used in ancient or even prehistoric times, I don’t think it can be argued that nuclear events of some variety–perhaps even naturally occurring–did occur in Earth’s distant past. In my latest contribution to the ongoing series of anthologies released by New Page Books, titled Exposed, Uncovered and Declassified: Lost Civilizations and Secrets of the Past, I chose to address this rather touchy subject specifically. This is both due to the fact that the idea of ancient societies with advanced technology has always fascinated me, as well as the fact that I do think that a wealth of information exists that can be directly linked with prehistoric nuclear events.

One interesting example of this is an article that was penned by researchers Richard B. Firestone and William Topping, titled “Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophy in Paleoindian Times.” The article appeared in Mammoth Trumpet Magazine‘s March 2001 issue, and recounted curiously high levels of radiocarbon data gathered from the Great Lakes Region of the United States. According to the authors, “The entire Great Lakes region (and beyond) was subjected to particle bombardment and a catastrophic nuclear irradiation that produced secondary thermal neutrons from cosmic ray interactions.” Indeed, it was a wide scale nuclear event dating back to Paleo-Indian times, and though the authors speculate that a supernovae might have been the cause for the event in question, it remains uncertain exactly what else could account for such an anomaly.

While this event (which I’ll argue does prove that nuclear events, albeit natural ones) could have occurred in our prehistory, places like Harrappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern day Pakistan present a number of problems that aren’t so easily reconciled. In addition to the presence of vitrified stone, the likes of which was discovered after being melted by the intense heat of the atomic weapons used in Japan during WWII, there have also been stories regarding incredible levels of radiation among the bodies of those found at Mohenjo-daro. Russian munitions expert and researcher Alexander Gorbovsky wrote in 1966 that the radioactivity in question was, in fact, as much as fifty times higher than average.

What could possibly account for such strange circumstances at the excavations of ancient city sites and other locations? Can we chalk all such instances up to being random acts of nature… which conveniently appear to have targeted specific metropolises of the ancient world? Must we consider that our ancestors could have indeed harnessed the power of the atom thousands of years before the Manhattan project performed its tests at Alamogordo, or could there be other scenarios (even otherwordly in nature) that are at play here?