When you think of prime real estate, maybe you think about a beautiful piece of property covered in wildflowers and decorated with summer gardens and babbling brooks. Others might envision a desert villa with stucco roofs and adobe walls warmed by the midday sun.

Still there are others who would imagine a secluded island where the secrets of a scandalous celebrity’s lifestyle might play out to the wildest imaginings of gossip hounds and paparazzi photographers sneaking around in paddle boats.

If island realty is what you had in mind also, then news regarding the latest piece of US government property to enter the “for sale” market may be a little more than you’d be willing to bargain for. Plum Island, a mysterious locale which became home to an animal disease lab during the Cold War, is now for sale; but before bidding can start it seems the strange property, even with its already legendary status, is bound for more controversy.

In the last few decades, anthrax and other highly dangerous diseases have been studied at Plum Island. However, the island’s close proximity to New York City had begun to cause concern after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, especially since the place housed potential for a massive bio-terrorist threat. Therefore, it was announced recently that officials now plan to sell the island, with some activists hoping to utilize its potential ecological value as a future preserve.

And yet, in spite of the strange and mysterious government associations the island bears, perhaps the strangest story in recent times dealt with an odd occurrence which, presumably, came as a surprise even to those who work there. In a particularly Fortean turn of events transpiring back in January, the discovery of a decomposing “mutant” body on the island’s southwest shore caused quite a stir for several days. Reported at the WPIX news website, the following description of the corpse was provided:

The body was described as that of a white male about 6-feet tall with a large build and “very long” fingers. According to authorities, there were no obvious signs of trauma.

Speculation involving the island’s odd history only fueled reports of the “mutant” discovered there, with little, if any, information about the body made available after the initial reports that received press attention. Was there truly anything inhuman about the body that was discovered, and was any kind of foul play involved? Furthermore, did the stranger’s death have anything to do with the kind of testing that had taken place on the island in laboratories for the last thirty years? Having been referenced already in novels and films, perhaps some of Plum Island’s intrigue will disappear with the removal of US government facilities being housed there… or maybe the place does in fact house secrets so odd and esoteric that its haunting reputation will precede it for several more decades to come.

Mysterious Island: For Sale? is a post from: Mysterious Universe

Around this time each year, as if according to some serendipitous schedule, whispers of governmental disclosure begin making the rounds.

Maybe it’s just the excitement that comes with Spring (which, from my dark bunker several miles below the Earth’s surface here in the US where I write these posts, feels more like Summer). Or maybe it’s just that, following US Congressional primary elections, folks start looking for something else to talk about.

Whatever it is that causes this strange phenomenon, it has returned on cue this year to spread further speculation as to whether the world powers plan on admitting what they know about aliens visiting Earth; or if nothing else, the truth about all the information they’ve lacked for decades, outside that supplied by the UFO community.One example was emailed to me only hours ago, proclaiming that US President Barack Obama will soon be dishing the inside scoop on UFOs once and for all. The email described how Obama and his administration are planning “a bold step forward in helping our planet become an interplanetary culture” that is more open and accepting of alien life. Nonetheless, every time people start asking me if I think Obama will be “the one” to reveal clandestine knowledge of UFO activity in and around Earth, I rather grimly offer that, for the time being, having food on the table is the top priority, hence I’m glad he and other world leaders seem more preoccupied with global economic problems. Come on, UFO researchers and unusual aerial phenomenologists will be of no use to anybody without their daily bread… can’t solve the Earth’s mysteries on an empty stomach!

Whether or not Obama is making any effort to address the issue of interplanetary visitations to Earth (which, based on the sentiments above, some would argue he shouldn’t), in Russia one man’s alleged alien abduction may be posing a national security threat. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a leader in a southern portion of Russia called Kalmykia, made a public claim on an area television program that he had had an encounter with a UFO which resulted in his subsequent abduction. In response to the strange claim, an MP has asked Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to investigate, over concerns that Ilyumzhinov might have given away state secrets to aliens which may pose security threats to the Russian people. In his defence, Mr. Ilyumzhinov, a former businessman, is described as being a bit “eccentric.”

The countdown clock to ultimate UFO disclosure probably isn’t getting any closer to midnight… at least on behalf of actions our governing bodies may be planning to take. Therefore, perhaps direct intervention from aliens may be the alternative, fulfilling prophetic visions of flying saucers landing on the Whitehouse Lawn and shaking hands with world leaders and Washingtonians. Should such an event ever transpire, let’s just hope the aliens prove to be friendly!

Disclosure on the Horizon: World Powers vs Priorities is a post from: Mysterious Universe

Some think it’s impossible… but others say it’s inevitable. As far out as something like time travel might appear, perhaps the inherent inevitability would be, rather than its existence, the expectation that some would go so far as to claim that they are living proof, having traveled to the past on missions overseen by future Earth societies.

For as long as sci-fi pulp magazines have published the adventures of space wanderers and time travelers, fringe weirdos have engaged in a healthy doses of claims of this sort of thing themselves. Historically, such instances often deal with UFO abductees claiming to have ridden on advanced craft capable of warping both space and time, having interacted with aliens who depict future cataclysms here on Earth by unsavory political endeavors in our future. In at least one incident, Andrew Carlssin, a man accused of Wall Street insider-trading, skipped town after claiming his information came from knowledge of future events, which he garnered from his “home” era: the year 2256!

The notion of time travel also began to overlap with various theories surrounding the alleged (and infamous) “Philadelphia Experiment,” asserted through a series of correspondences by a shady character calling himself Carlos Allende. But arguably, one of the more popular “controversies” to have arisen in recent times pertaining to time travelers from the future deals with the story of a man calling himself “John Titor.” Popularized by the late night radio program Coast to Coast AM, Titor became a controversial figure after posting information about himself on various Internet message forums years ago, detailing a bizarre story about traveling to our time from the future and meeting his immediate family members, as well as his own youthful alternate-self.

If you hadn’t guessed already, what is the number one thing these wild claims always tend to lack? Indeed, it is far more seldom than professed time traveling abilities that those who make such assertions present evidence with their claims. And yet, from time to time strange bits of evidence, such as odd photographs depicting out-of-place events, do appear that have caused historians and scholars to wonder.

Recently, a couple of photographs from the early 1940s taken in British Columbia, Canada, have been making the rounds. In particular, the popular website Forgetomori has done some nice write-ups about a “hipster” seen at the re-opening of a bridge. In the image below, can you spot the individual who simply doesn’t appear to belong with the rest of the crowd?

Take a second look at the man on the right side of the page… he’s wearing dark sunglasses and a sweater with a printed shirt underneath that just doesn’t seem to fit the setting or circumstances. Might this decade-dodging individual fit in better alongside the college-aged youth of today? Is this real proof of time travelers lurking around throughout history?

Mori, the blogger at the site in question, offers a different perspective:

Even taking this photo for granted, as depicting an authentic scene, a real man with his curious glasses and outfit in Canada 70 years ago, there’s nothing that can be seen that is actually out of place or time. He looks different from other people, but it has already been suggested that he’s using welding goggles and a glove.

“This,” he concludes, “is not much of a proof of time travel, and more like evidence of the cyclic nature of fashion. These days, even a beggar can be mistaken for a trendy fashion model.” Even for the 1940s, let alone today, I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that welding goggles were the accessory of any fashion models I recall ever seeing! But to be fair, maybe this wouldn’t be the case for a time traveler… what if he was merely visiting from a future where the breakdown in the ozone layer causes Earth to be bombarded with radiation so dangerous that welding goggles must be worn by everyone during daylight hours?

Nah… weighing the options, I’m 98.7 % certain this character was just a hipster; a slightly eccentric young observer who never would have guessed that his presence the day this photograph was taken might fuel such bizarre speculation about his origins more than half a century later. Regardless of the truth surrounding his presence in the photo above, it’s always fun to speculate about such things, right? After all, with physicists drawing nearer each day to understanding the science behind such things as time travel, we may be closer than we realize to unraveling this long-pondered mystery of space and the cosmos.

Wanton Leap: Time Travel for Hipsters? is a post from: Mysterious Universe

According to a recent statement by Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist at the Vatican, “The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences.” Using his powers of evil to shape shift, disappear, speak in different foreign languages, “or even appear to be sympathetic,” Father Amorth says the Prince of Darkness works constantly to undermine his holy efforts, but still claims to be “a man who is happy in his work.”

An interview the priest gave to news source La Repubblica was recently picked up by European news sources like The Telegraph, in which Amorth describes William Peter Blaty’s 1973 film The Exorcist as a “substantially exact” representation of demonic possession, though a few circumstances pertaining to exorcisms he has performed in the past may actually be more startling than those witnessed on film.

Revised in January 1998, Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications is a document of the Catholic Church that details the age-old rite of exorcism. The following is an excerpt from an early version of this document, revised in 1614:

I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, that you tell me by some sign your name, and the day and hour of your departure. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions.

Serving under circumstances similar to these himself, arguably one of the stranger facets of possession Amorth cites details how victims vomit various strange things during the rite of exorcism, including rose petals, shards of glass and “pieces of iron as long as a finger.” Amorth, who is eighty five years old, claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms in his lifetime. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church today more often will only condone exorcisms in extreme circumstances and after special investigation into the matter, since more often it is assumed that the victim suffers from some manifestation of psychosis or other mental disorder.

Amorth holds true to his creed regardless, certain that evil forces act on us in this world. “The exorcist has one principal duty,” he cryptically states. “To free human beings from the fear of the Devil.”

The Devil in Disguise: Demonic Dealings at the Vatican? is a post from: Mysterious Universe

A good friend of mine, Javier Ortega, recently featured an article at his website Ghost Theory that discusses fakery going on in the world of televised paranormal reality dramas.

The show in question in Javier’s article, Paranormal State, has come under scrutiny based on a letter from a former client of the team featured on the program, who asserts that one individual “play acted at being psychic” on camera. “He was given every bit of information regarding our case,” the letter reads, “and the identity of the ghost of the past-previous owner of our home who died 28 years before we bought our Gold Beach, Oregon home.”

I have heard a variety of stories along these lines that allege fakery on the set of such television programs, but this certainly doesn’t mean that all shows dealing with supernatural themes are bogus. But how is one expected to know the difference?

Just earlier this week, my colleagues with the L.E.M.U.R. team and I were featured on a new National Geographic program called Paranatural which, I’m proud to say, was by far one of the best presentations we’ve been a part of in the eight years I’ve worked with them. The name National Geographic, both in the television industry and elsewhere, is recognized for being associated with a high quality product that strives never to be overtly credulous. That said, I can attest to the professionalism exhibited by the film crew I worked with; the most we were ever given so far as instruction from our producers (who were genuinely interested in the subject matter, and have maintained contact with us since the initial shoot) was “make it look good for the camera.” I don’t feel in any way that this led to any false impressions being construed to the viewing audience, and overall, I was very happy with the shoot.

So one must ask, why would one program adhere to a stricter regiment of accuracy and honest integrity, while others may not? I think the answer is pretty simple: television, no matter what the content, is always meant to be entertainment.

I know from being involved in regular, very involved research of the supernatural for the last decade that seldom, if ever, do first hand encounters and experiences with unseen forces or otherwise strange phenomena occur. Still, I’ve been lucky enough to have brushes in my life with things I’d deem strange, but my relative lack of interaction with strange phenomena has instilled in me a far more skeptical approach to studying the natural world. This, however, is not a bad thing, in my opinion.

If anything, taking a more skeptical approach to my pursuit of the unexplained has allowed me to rationalize the oddities of this world enough that I feel more justified when I do encounter something truly inexplicable. One might even say that by keeping my hopes down, so to speak, I’m all the more amazed when something credible pops up!

However, those who I call “pseudo skeptics” (i.e. the James Randis of the world) will use things like the recent admission featured in Javier Ortega’s article as fodder for lambasting all research of the unexplained, citing it as evidence of charlatanism which, no doubt, might be traced all the way back to the nineteenth century spiritualists (and earlier). It’s very easy to create a peripheral argument like this, citing one moment of weakness occurring on a television program intended to entertain as “almighty proof” that nothing exists beyond our five senses worthy of wasting time and money on. This is sad, of course, because the most revolutionary research that strives to unravel the mysteries of the universe around us gets prime-time television spots far less often than the rank sensationalism that, in many cases, has less truth and integrity behind it.

Therefore, I simply say, if it’s on TV, take it with a grain of salt and be done with it! Credible news sources around the world provide commentary and insight into strange happenings and fringe science every day, and to be honest, I’d rather read twelve of those for ever one television show you could force me to watch, no matter what the content may be.

Making it Look Good: Television and the Paranormal is a post from: Mysterious Universe

To kill a goat or (even lamer) a hamster by staring the life out of it is crazy, right? The new George Clooney movie “The Men Who Stare At Goats” runs with the insanity angle, but it’s a mere shadow madness compared to the story in Jon Ronson’s‘ 2004 non-fiction book on which the film was very loosely based.

Ronson’s book is a sinister screwball comedy that shows how Jim Channon’s (Jeff Bridges in the movie) new-age,  “Be-All-That-You-Can-Be” reinvention of the military into the 1st Earth Battalion was perverted by guys so bad–Black Ops, PsiOps, CIA–even their tin-foil hats are black.

However, Ronson only reached the low branches of the crazy tree, probably because the air gets too thin near the top to sustain human sanity.  But for some of you (and me) that may sound like fun, so here’s a link ladder to take you from goat starers all the way to the place where dogs disintegrate.

Let’s start with Retired Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (the guy who tried to walk through the wall in film and book).  The onetime director of US Army Intelligence and Security Command, Stubblebine retired and joined the board of a ‘remote viewing’ company called PSI-TECH alongside…

Colonel John B. Alexander (another  star of the book).  He spent part of his career as a Commander of Green Berets Special Forces in Vietnam became Director of the Non-lethal Weapons Programs in the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Alexander was also a purported member of the AVIARY, a group of intelligence and Department of Defense officers and scientists with a mandate to discredit any serious research in the UFO field. Each member of the Aviary bears a bird’s name: John Alexander is PENGUIN and …

Harold Puthoff is the OWL.  Puthoff ran the Stanford Research Institute where in the 70s and 80s he directed a CIA/DIA-funded remote viewing program eventually known as STARGATE at SRI International to investigate paranormal abilities, collaborating with Russell Targ in a study of the purported psychic abilities of Uri Geller, Ingo Swann.  During that time he was also a full-blown Scientologist, as was Swann and several other members of the Stargate team.  In 1985, as Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, Puthoff studied space propulsion and energy generation for an anonymous donor and now is CEO of the privately funded EarthTech International working with Zero-point  electromagnetic field working with…

Physicist Eric Davis author of a report on teleportation commissioned by the U.S. Air Force and as an on-site investigator of of strange creatures and other anomalous phenomena at the Skinwalker Ranch near Salt Lake City…

Which he did at the behest of his benefactor, Aerospace billionaire Robert Bigelow who had purchased the ranch for the stated purpose of studying the  creatures, strange objects, floating black triangles, animal mutilations the aforementioned disintegrated dogs that haunt the place…

This paranormal project was only one of many taken up by Bigelow and his National Institute of Discovery Science (1995-2004) which was headed up by none other than John Alexander, with Puthoff and Davis along with several other luminaries in the paranormal or paramilitary/intelligence field on its board, and he is frequently linked to the CIA and his many research projects thought to be cover for Black Ops.

A frequent funder of  UFO research,  in August 2009, Bigelow gave MUFON millions to fund a UFO Rapid Response Team as well as funding 50 scientists to study photographic or other evidence left by UFOs….Oh, no! Does that mean MUFON is now a Black Ops front organization?

If you haven’t already passed out from hypoxia…take a deep breath and read on here and here.

The Men in the Black Tinfoil Hats: MU’s Goat Starers Guide is a post from: Mysterious Universe

You don’t have to be Aleister Crowley to figure out that Washington D.C. in general and The U.S. Capitol Building in particular are places steeped to the core in the darkest magic that causes trillions of dollars to disappear from taxpayer pockets only to reappear in the K Street offices of that cult with a name only a snake can say: lobbyists.

Therefore it should come as little surprise that the entire Washington D. C. metropolis is lousy with symbolism betraying its secret society underpinnings from the layout of the streets to the 33rd level Mason who became the first U.S.president, George Washington.

By now most people have heard that DaVinci Code author Dan Brown is about to pocket whatever money we have left after the lobbyists get through with us by publishing The Lost Symbol. Rumor has it, the book  is going to do for George Washington what Brown’s  previous yarn did for the sex life of Christ.

Oh, really? Yes, and according to an awesome post (having nothing to do with the Brown book) up at Vigilant Citizen there is some history behind the George/Jesus comparison and more on the alchemical origins of D.C. symbols and the Founding Father.

“The Capitol is viewed by the average American as the seat of democracy, where big political decisions are taken. Very few recognize the spiritual elements of the architecture and the symbolism of the building which literally makes it a temple of Masonic mysteries. At the center of it all is George Washington, a 33rd degree Freemason being anointed as the “American Christ”. The building of the Capitol involved many notions unknown to the common man yet the builders seemed to give great importance to them: alignment with heavenly bodies, importance of ley lines, occult numerology, spiritual energy, etc. Those things might sound like “crazy New Age stuff” to the average Joe but the Founding Fathers attributed extreme importance to them.”

The post goes on to describe the city layout, the statuary dotting the landscape (and some creepy,  rejected statues, too, like a bare-chested Washington)  and an analysis of the deeply weird The Apotheosis painting in the occulus of Capitol’s rotunda.Oh, and then there’s this don’t-ask-don’t-tell portrait of George and Abe, too, to marvel over.

(And don’t kid yourself, Obama knows all about this secret society stuff.)

But if it’s The Lost Symbol you’re pining to find, Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail fame has Brown’s book covered at The Cryptex.  If you go farther afield in your internet quest  for the book’s secrets do so with extreme caution. Wired.com’s Threat Level blog reports that DaVinci Code Fans are being Targeted by Real International Conspiracy.  BTW, is it just me or does it seem like Dan Brown snags all the decent conspiracies these days?

George Washington, Alchemist in Chief is a post from: Mysterious Universe

In The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort opined, “I think we’re property. I should say we belong to something.” Reasonable people disagree about who owns us: an alien race of reptilians or the even more alien breed known as the Illuminati.

Either way, science has recently confirmed that there is in fact a small group of, well, let’s call them overlords, who own pretty much everything in the world.

In a paper described by LiveScience as “.. the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power,” Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder, physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, use the data crunching tools of physics to analyze financial markets of 48 countries and  extract the “backbone” of each country’s financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country’s market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

“You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense,” Glattfelder said. “From that you’re able to … unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn’t at all important.”

By the physicists’ calculations, The Capital Group Companies are the single most influential controlling shareholder in the world, figuring prominently in the control of capital in 32 of 48 countries considered. Ironically, the company was founded in 1931 by Jonathan Bell Lovelace who came away from the stock market crash almost unscathed because “by 1929 he could see no logical relationship between stock market prices and their underlying values” and got his money out.  His timely insight was apparently lost on the majority of present-day traders  who brought us the latest financial meltdown. Unless, of course, they were really acting on the orders of Mr. Lovelace’s  evil spawn, the reigning New World Order.

So, it seems  Charles Fort theory that we are “owned” like “pigs, geese, and cattle” wasn’t so crackpot after all.  And in his Fortean wisdom, he also guessed the “whyness” behind our indentured fate:  “All this has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon this earth, a cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest of us, or as superior slaves or overseers, directing us in accordance with instructions received — from Somewhere else — in our mysterious usefulness.”

Physicists Shed Light on Illuminati is a post from: Mysterious Universe