What is it about the artistic mind that seems to allow the more remote and esoteric aspects of existence to shimmer through the cracks in our reality? Far more often than not, it seems that individuals who are gifted in the arts claim to be more spiritual and—to put it bluntly—psychically attuned.

Countless numbers of individuals have claimed to be both progenitors of the arts, in addition to being at least mildly “in touch” with spiritual essences that are not immediately made available to the average person. But is this really a gift that many artists seem to have, or is it just the result of the creative aspects underlying the minds of such personalities taking charge, and thus creating the sometimes-convincing impression of being gifted with special abilities?

While there are indeed studies that are well known already linking musical abilities with increased success in various other cognitive activities, a different kind of study was recently brought to my attention by good friend Thomas Cameron, a martial arts instructor and colleague of mine based out of Chicago. Tom had begun a recent correspondence with me by posing similar questions, and then began to posit theories regarding level of artistic or musical ability in relation to extra-sensory gifts. Then he mentioned a study that seemed, at least peripherally, to lend some justification to why, precisely, this might be. The process of the study, according to Cameron, was as follows:

Several tracts of garbled speech were recorded one over the top of the other, with one single track of speech containing brief non sequitur phrases. The recording was then played to a wide variety of people to see if there was any one group of people that had greater acuity at discerning the non sequitur phrases from the other gibberish. The study’s results showed that those people who have had musical training or had musical skill were able to not only make out that the phrases existed, but were able to accurately discern what the phrases actually said. I can’t help but think this study may be in some way impactful with regard to those people with psychic gifts who “hear” information from unseen sources. Perhaps in the same way that those who had musical skill were able to differentiate between legitimate phrases and garbled noise, psychics are able to differentiate between coherent information and “psychic white noise”.

But in an even more literal sense than that which Cameron relates here, it seems that those who fared best in the study described above were musicians; in other words, they had apparently been best equipped physically for the task of making out the phrases amidst garbled gibberish. This reminds me a bit of some of psychic Robert Cracknell’s determinations about his own abilities, as well as those possessed by others claiming to be psychic; in essence, Cracknell has argued that much of what constitutes “psychic” ability stems from a general physical sensitivity a minority of individuals may possess naturally or have developed over time. In terms of the latter case, it seems to be a generally accepted theme among psychic studies that virtually anybody should be capable of learning to harness such talents, in the event that they choose to go about it rightly. And of course, many of the processes underlying the attainment of presumed “psychic” abilities involve the use of such things as frequent meditation and other esoteric practices. Not to generalize here, but again, we find the processes used for obtaining psychic abilities are most often spiritual in nature, and thus things that, arguably, more artists, musicians, and generally creative people will gravitate toward.

In the end, perhaps it’s really just a case of which came first: the psychic chicken, or the cosmic egg itself, which holds the answer to riddles such as psychic phenomenon in the first place. Without one, we may not be able to fully understand the other; much the same, whether people with innate psychic abilities gravitate toward the arts, or study of the arts themselves are the impetus behind such clandestine talents, we may not be capable of discerning… for now, at least.

In the summer of 1984, six highly trained cosmonauts claimed to have had an unbelievable encounter with a group of gargantuan “celestial beings” of unknown origin in the star filled expanse above our world. Were these colossal beings the result of a mass delusion, a sign of something miraculous, or the heralds of unimaginable doom?

Scores of UFOs and other unidentified airborne objects have been spied by astronauts and their ilk since the earliest days of manned spaceflight. Major Gordon Cooper, Dr. Edgar Mitchell and dozens of other NASA and Russian space explorers harbor no doubt that the Earth is being visited and observed by non-human intelligences with access to technology far in advance of our own, but as fascinating as this phenomenon surely is, the bulk of these sightings pale before a bizarre series of encounters allegedly reported by cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 in July of 1984.

AVERTING THE APOCALYPSE

Since the dawn of the atomic age, the threat of global annihilation has hung over the collective heads of the human race like a radioactive Sword of Damocles.

Mercifully, the bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union never manifested in the hellfire of nuclear holocaust that once seemed so inevitable, but for those of us who remember living under that horrific cloud of atomic anxiety a serious question remains: “Did we managed to dodge this apocalyptic bullet by chance or was there some kind of divine intervention?”

The series of events that occurred on the Salyut 7 do not answer this question, but, rather, compel us to consider the possibility that there are “others” in this universe that, in the most dire of times, manifest in ways that force us to question the very foundation of our beliefs as well as our place in the cosmos.

SALYUT 7 SPACE STATION SIGHTINGS

The Salyut 7 — which translates as “Salute 7” — was a low Earth orbit space station that was launched on April 19, 1982. The Salyut 7 represented the Soviet space program’s change from “monolithic” to more “modular” space stations and was first manned in May of 1982.

The station was ostensibly designed to conduct scientific experiments, but in July of 1984, the Salyut 7 would serve as the site of arguably the strangest close encounter in the relatively brief history of manned space exploration.

THE FIRST SIGHTING:

Although the “official” chronicling of this event is fraught with chronological inconsistencies, but, by the best estimations, the first reported sighting of these so-called “celestial beings” — which would also come to be known as “space angels” — occurred on July 12, 1984.

Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov and cardiologist Oleg Atkov were on their astonishing 155^th day aboard the Salyut 7, conducting “medical experiments,” when the trio noticed what they described as an “brilliant orange cloud” surrounding the station.

The Salyut 7 had been plagued by a steady stream of system failures and the men aboard the craft were understandably concerned that the glow might represent a life threatening fire. Fearing the worst, the cosmonauts rushed to the portholes only to find themselves blinded by an eerily intense luminescence the poured in through the circular apertures.

After their vision adjusted to the light, the curious cosmonauts radioed ground control that the station was bathed in an anomalous, self illuminated mist. The men returned to the portholes, shielding their eyes from the radiance, and that’s when they spied something so incredible that it would forever alter their perception of reality.

According to reports published in newspapers across the globe — including, allegedly, the Washington Post — the three Russian explorers saw colossal, winged, humanoid entities hovering just outside the station in the vacuum of space.

The faces of these beings were said to resemble those of humans with “peaceful expressions” and the Soviet scientists even claimed that the creatures noticed them and offered distinctly beatific smiles.

This quote was published in the later newspaper reports, although it’s difficult to discern which cosmonaut it was credited to, though some have suggested it may have been Solovyov:

“What we saw were seven giant figures in the form of humans, but with wings and mist-like halos as in the classic depiction of angels.”

The cosmonauts went on to described these mist haloed beings as being nearly 80-feet in height with a wingspan comparable to that of a 747 jet; although, it should be noted, that there’s no indication in the public record of how these men of science came to these proportional estimations. The men observed the soaring seraphim for approximately 10-minutes before they vanished; leaving the isolated and surely perplexed comrades to ponder what it was that they had seen and try to gather the courage to report it to their superiors below.

By their own admission, the cosmonauts were themselves reluctant to accept the existence of the oddly angelic beings which they had seen, and concluded that they were more likely suffering from some form of mass delusion brought on by their extended space travel than an actual encounter with alien — or perhaps even divine — entities. Their self induced denial would be put to the test 11-days later when additional cosmonauts arrived at the station and the celestial beings returned.

SVETLANA MAKES HISTORY:

On the evening of July 17, 1984, at 5:41 pm., the Soyuz T-12 spacecraft launched from the LC31 pad of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is located in the isolated backwaters of Kazakhstan, approximately 124-miles east of the Aral Sea.

The Soyuz T-12 carried with it Crew Commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Flight Engineer Svetlana Savitskaya and Research Cosmonaut Igor Volk. Hours later the craft docked with the Salyut 7.

The mission had been hastily thrown together just a month following an announcement made by NASA in November of 1983, stating that astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan would become the first woman to ever perform a spacewalk. The trio of cosmonauts had been tasked with an ostensibly simple mission — make sure that Savitskaya would become the first woman to execute a spacewalk; thus beating the Americans to the punch.

Savitskaya had already ascended into the ranks of Soviet sanctioned idols in 1982, when she became the second woman to ever officially go into space — although there remains speculation that she was actually the third and that the first perished in orbit — and the powers that be in the Soviet space program wanted very much to post yet another victory their space race against the U.S.

Much to the chagrin of NASA, the Soviets made good on their plan to upstage the U.S. when, on July 25, 1984, Savitskaya engaged in an almost 4-hour EVA (Extra-vehicular activity), officially making her the first woman ever to do so.

As auspicious as this occasion was in both the annals of human space exploration and women’s history, in the long run it would not be this incredible accomplishment that this journey would be known for, but a decidedly more ethereal series of events.

THE SECOND SIGHTING:

According to published reports, just days after the Soviet cosmonauts were safely nestled aboard the Salyut 7, the peculiar, orange glow once again enveloped the station and this time all six of the space travelers were said to have witnessed these gigantic, winged, ghostly beings keeping pace with the station, which they once again dutifully reported to an ever more alarmed ground control team below.

As the six cosmonauts stared out of the portholes one can only imagine that they must have been overwhelmed by sensations of awe, wonder and perhaps a touch of fear. After all these men and woman were highly trained pilots, scientists and even doctors who after years of knowing where they stood on the evolutionary scale were now confronted with enormous, humanoid creatures soaring unprotected in the dark vacuum of space; creatures that seemed not merely alien, but supernatural in origin. According to news accounts, one of the (again unnamed) cosmonauts was quoted as stating:

“They were glowing and we were truly overwhelmed. There was a great orange light, and through it, we could see the figures of seven angels. They were smiling as though they shared a glorious secret, but within a few minutes, they were gone, and we never saw them again.”

After the space angels disappeared a second time, Kizim, Solovyov and Atkov could no longer dismiss the phenomenon as a communal hallucination brought on by the pressure of a long mission in orbit. They now shared this encounter with three new witnesses, all of whom — one might expect — were just as perplexed and frightened as the first set on cosmonauts days earlier. This left both the explorers and the crew at mission control to ponder the question…

WHAT DID THESE COSMONAUTS WITNESS?

Within days Dzhanibekov, Savitskaya and Volk returned to Earth via the Soyuz T-12, but Kizim, Solovyov and Atkov remained in orbit aboard the Salyut 7 for a record setting 237 days.

Upon their return, each of the cosmonauts were subjected to a battery of physical and psychological examinations to try and see if there might be a medical explanation for this potentially heavenly phenomenon, but — according to all accounts — they passed both with flying colors.

If one is to believe the testimony as it’s been presented, then the medical diagnosis leaves only one of two viable conclusions. The first is that six cosmonauts — in two separate instances — were willing to seriously jeopardize their careers, reputations and even their very lives (not to mention opened a Pandora’s Box of questions regarding their psychological well being) all for the sake of a “prank.”

The second conclusion is, quite simply, that they saw “angels,” or at the very least anomalous astronautic entities that bear a very distinct resemblance to what many of the followers of the Abrahamic traditions would consider to be divine messengers. Of course, there are more than a few who stand firmly by the proposition that these otherwise level headed men and woman fell prey to nothing more than a…

MASS HALLUCINATION:

The evidence for mass hallucinations is dubious at best. While episodes of mass hysteria have been chronicled throughout the ages — most of which having to do with a perceived physical ailments or more social phenomena that extend over substantial periods of time — there is very little to suggest that individuals are privy to simultaneous and shared hallucinations.

While there have been reports of individual cosmonauts and astronauts who have seen some decidedly surreal (and occasionally Godly) things from their spacecraft — a phenomenon which NASA researchers have attributed to pressure, temperature fluctuations and oxygen shortage — there’s nothing in the medical record to suggest that these experiences are in any way contagious. In short, barring some kind of heretofore undiagnosed psychic phenomenon, there’s simply no known way to share a delusion as specific as the one that the cosmonauts of the Salyut 7 are believed to have succumbed to.

The current psychological certainty that thoughts are not infectious, combined with the fact that we are dealing with a group of scientists and seasoned space explorers who, by necessity, are not prone to panic or flights of fancy, makes it all but inconceivable that a mass hallucination is the culprit in this case.

So, if for the sake of argument, we agree that we’re not dealing with what is tantamount to a figment of the cosmonauts’ collective imaginations, then we’ve got to at least consider the possibility that we may be contending with authentic entities of either biological or spiritual origin. Perhaps we should cut to the chase and consider the most obvious — and in some ways most disturbing — option. That these creatures are angels and that they might just be…

HERALDS OF THE APOCALYPSE:

I know that for some it might seem like a stretch jumping from what most people would consider to be a benignly heartwarming encounter with celestial beings to the end of the world as we know it, but as a former altar boy and parochial school student there is one thing I know all too well; and that is that when seven angels show up trouble is not far behind.

In my more seasoned years I’ve found a great deal of comfort in eastern philosophies and both Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but as a child I was trapped like a fly in the web of Roman Catholicism. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for the teachings of the Abrahamic religions and feel that a tremendous amount of truth lies within their venerated tomes, but there is an overwhelming dire vibe that comes from many of these ancient records and perhaps the most celebrated of these is the Holy Bible’s “Book of Revelations.”

Anyone familiar with Jewish or Christian traditions is probably aware of the fact that the number seven is considered by many to be a sacred number, which represents rectitude and sanctity. The number seven also plays a significant role in the so-called “end of days.”

Note this passage from Revelations 15:1 in which seven angels are said to bear seven trumpets, the sound of which is said to signify the coming of the Apocalypse. They were also said to have “bowls” containing the plagues which would sow the seeds of mankind’s ultimate extinction:

“I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues — last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.”

Is it possible that seven angels appeared before these emissaries of the U.S.S.R. as a warning of what would come if both they and the U.S.A. did not tone down their heated rhetoric before the Cold War turned thermonuclear hot?

Or, even more grimly, was it a sign that it was already too late and that events had been sent into motion that could not be undone; events that may still be unfolding at this very day?

While I must admit that I’m not convinced that the “Book of Revelations” is anything more than a metaphorical warning for sinners to mend their ways before it’s too late, if there’s even a chance that it’s the simple truth, then I hope the former option is the correct one and that the angels were showing themselves in an attempt to avert, rather than proclaim, global disaster.

And for those who might suggest that these peacefully smiling angels could not possibly have nefarious intentions I would only state that, according to scripture, the purpose of the Apocalypse is not to cause evil, but to eliminate it from the Earth… and what angel would not be happy about that?

Okay, now that we’ve discussed just a few of the theological implications of the existence of outer space angels, let’s consider a somewhat more plausible hypothesis, which is that these celestial beings are…

ANCIENT ALIENS:

Thanks to the History Channel’s hit series “Ancient Aliens,” there’s been a worldwide revival of Zecharia Sitchin and, famed author of “Chariots of the Gods,” Erich Von Dänike’s theories regarding extraterrestrial ambassadors who supposedly visited Earth thousands of years ago and profoundly affected the evolution of the human race and civilization itself.

According to these two authors, ancient aliens were not looked upon as otherworldly explorers by these primitive peoples — who would have no frame of reference for such a thing — but (understandably) were worshiped by our ancestors as nothing less than gods. Von Dänike’s theories applied not only to primitive religious traditions, but to every major theology on the planet, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Stories of angels serving as messengers of God are present in the written testaments of all three major monotheistic religions — not to mention Hinuism — and represent one of the most commonly utilized methods for the divine to communicate with Earthlings in ancient times. Von Dänike and their acolytes are convinced that these beings were not of heavenly, but extraterrestrial, origin.

If we are to entertain this possibility, even for the sake of discussion, then we must consider the prospect that the six cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 might have seen not God’s messengers, but corporeal manifestations of these unique alien creatures, which have communicated with mankind since the dawn of history.

Granted, there’s no more evidence to support this “biological” theory, than there is to support the more “theological” supposition, but it’s intriguing to contemplate nonetheless. Of course, leaving behind both the metaphysical and the extraterrestrial, we are forced to wonder if this is all one, big…

COSMIC RUMOR:

One of the major problems in investigating the authenticity in a case such as this lies in the fact that there is no filter that separates the proverbial “wheat” of what may be a legitimate anomalous sighting from the “chaff” of reports from such dubious sources as the Weekly World News.

Who can blame academics or respectable researchers for turning a blind eye to events like those that puportedly took place on the Salyut 7, when stories of the cosmonauts unusual sightings lay side by side with obvious tripe about the Hubble telescope photographing a colossal white city in the depths of space that must be (eye rolls please) the first picture of Heaven?

Conspiracy theories have circulated for years concerning the Hubble Telescope snapping angelic images in the NGC-3532 star cluster that have been shared with only the highest echelons of the U.S., Soviet and French governments as well as Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, who had speculated that these “beings of light” might not be heaven sent. According to these reports the spectacular photos are allegedly being kept under wraps due to the fact that knowledge of the angel’s existence may well through the citizens of Earth into a global tizzy… or so these rumors claim.

This lack of distinction between the work of serious academic  researchers and the ramblings of religious zealots is one that also plagues some cryptozoologists, whose investigations into such intriguing phenomena as the Mokele Mbembe and other relic dinosaurs are often co-opted by creationists looking to confirm their own beliefs by reinterpreting native eyewitness accounts to suit their own theological agendas.

While, as stated above, I have nothing but respect for anyone’s personal beliefs, when one is striving to make a legitimate scientific inquiry into events as surreal as those that took place aboard the Salyut 7, then one must take great pains to separate the facts from faith. This is virtually impossible in today’s online climate.

Another fact which bears scrutiny is a news report regarding Vladimir Solovyov’s tour of British schools, which appeared in the Derby Evening Telegraph on January 23, 1997. While visiting Brackensdale and Reigate Junior Schools, Solovyov was asked about whether or not he had ever encountered any alien beings. Here is an excerpt from the Telegraph’s article:

“If you believe the Washington Post Mr Solovev has already come face-to-face with beings from another planet and seven angels who surrounded his craft on a mission in 1984. He added: ‘I could not believe they put that in such a serious paper… I’ve never seen any aliens but I am sure we are not alone in the universe.’”

On the surface Solovyov’s comments seem to put to rest this controversy once and for all, but things are rarely as clear cut as that. To begin with, following his career as a cosmonaut, Solovyov became the Mir flight director before temporarily retiring on February 18, 1994, only to return to lead the Russian section of the International Space Station.

One has to ask the serious question of whether or not a man in Solovyov’s position would be sabotaging his own career and reputation by confirming such a bizarre event. The answer, of course, is that the mass media would become extremely derisive on anyone claiming to have had an encounter with massive space angels and a man of Solovyov’s stature could ill afford to be made a fool of.

Of course, the alternative is that it’s all just pop culture drivel, but who would take the time to make something like this up and what would be the point? And if the original sources used in this story were dubious to begin with then why would this account have been printed in such prestigious publications as the Washington Post or the 1985, New Year’s Edition of the popular Sunday supplement Parade Magazine? Proof? No. Bit it is food for thought.

CONCLUSION

While scores of notable historical events captured headlines during the penultimate act of the Cold War, the strange sightings hailing from the Salyut 7 barely made a ripple in the vast sea of information that the media reported regarding U.S./Soviet relations in the 1980s, and when they did so they would come hot on the heels of a momentous event in the record of manned astronautics — Savitskaya’s space walk.

Although rumor has it that their sighting was immediately classified as a state secret, the tale of the cosmonauts’ run-in with these strange seraphim did eventually make the international news, which is astonishing considering how well the Soviet secrets machine managed to maintain all but total silence regarding other odd events, such as the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959.

Nevertheless, in the decades that have followed the initial event, this account has taken on a life of its own and has continued to spread with a dogged persistence. Is this due to the fact that the truth has a way of lingering even in the face of conventional logic and fanatical skeptics? Or is it the human fascination with the unknown, particularly the idea of divine intervention, that keeps this legend alive?

In the end the only people who will ever know the whole story of what took place in orbit around the Salyut 7 that July day in 1984, are the men and woman who were aboard the vessel.

While there’s a chance that this whole story in nothing more than wildly exaggerated hearsay, there’s also a minute possibility that celestial beings showed themselves to a group of humans who represented a nation that was among the most dangerous of the 20^th Century.

Mayhap this was an an effort to get the U.S.S.R to change their ways… or perhaps the arrival of these entities indicates that it is already too late.

The woman came into the church off the streets of Nassau in the Bahamas. The parishioners knew of her, but they had never seen her in this church, a charismatic Church of God.

Lillian Wolff, of Kansas City, Missouri, and her husband ministered this church in the mid-1960s. Their daughter Terry Byrd, also of Kansas City, grew up in that church. “It was wonderful to live down there,” she said. “There are different cultures. Voodoo and things like that. It was very strange. The people are wonderful.”

But darkness grew over the Wolff family the day the woman appeared. Lillian remembers the woman well, although she hasn’t seen her for more than forty years.

“She was black, I would say she was in her mid to late thirties,” Lillian said. “I don’t recall her ever being in church before.”

Terry was about ten years old that day; a day burned into her memory. “Her name was Naomi,” Terry said. “She had been a dancer and a hooker.”

Naomi, seemingly in a daze, had slipped into the back of the church and silently dropped into a pew.

“This lady was sitting in the congregation kind of normally as people do in church,” Lillian said. Then the woman changed. “During the service she began to act very strangely and making some kind of unusual noises. If I recall they were kind of grunting type noises.”

As the pastor stood at the pulpit preaching, Naomi began to speak. “She said very bad things you would never hear in a church,” Terry said. “He would be preaching and she would call him a liar. He would go on preaching.”

That is until Naomi rose from her pew and sank to the floor. The pastor stopped, and the congregation turned toward this strange woman.

“She kind of slithered her way down the aisle,” Lillian said. “By that I mean she got down and kind of crawled until she got in front of the altar. And then my husband came down from the platform.”

He knew something was wrong. “He recognized there was a demon in her,” Lillian said.

As Naomi crawled, lizard-like, toward the alter, she came closer and closer to the front row where Terry sat. “It was a lady but it was a wicked voice that came out of her,” Terry said. “A kind of fighting; off and on, good against bad.

Naomi’s face contorted as she fought whatever was inside her. Lillian said ugly crawled across the face of this attractive woman spewing hate.

“It’s hard to describe what the sound was. It was very eerie; it wasn’t a woman’s voice that was coming out. It was very scary,” Terry said. “The elders of the church came and prayed. They were really praying.”

The pastor laid hands on Naomi’s forehead, “and prayed in the name of Jesus that this ugly demon spirit would come out of her,” Lillian said. “It must have come out of her because she kind of relaxed.”

Terry’s young eyes were fused to the scene before her. “He cast out the demons and they left,” she said. “You could tell that after a long time the spirit that was inside of her came out and the woman wasn’t even the same lady. It was like 180 degrees the turn that this lady made.”

Naomi stood from the spot of her exorcism, turned and walked toward the back of the church, then sat down.

“After that moment she became a Christian until her death, but it was freaky. Freaky freaky,” Terry said. “I’ve remembered it all my life. I can close my eyes and see it all again.”

The Wolffs moved from the Bahamas to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1968 to minister the Calvary Temple Church, and evil came calling again.

The church sits on St. John Avenue, the old building once the Belmont Theater during the era of neighborhood movie theaters. Terry’s daughter Julie Honeycutt said as a six-year-old, she was fascinated traveling to that church. “It was culture shock,” she said. “So many strange things happened around that church I couldn’t tell you. Prostitutes walking by. There was a bar next door and two bars across the street. It wasn’t odd that people would walk in intoxicated.”

One day still haunts Julie’s life. “My grandfather. He had performed an exorcism in the middle of the service,” Julie said. “It’s something that’s affected my life a lot.”

Like that day in the Bahamas, a woman strange to the congregation walked into the church. Like the woman from all those years ago, she was attractive, in her thirties, with long black hair. “She wasn’t uncommonly beautiful but she had a striking appearance,” Lillian said. “I think she had been a go-go dancer.”

Much like Naomi, this woman sat in the back, left her seat during the service and made her way down the aisle, voices spewing forth, evil voices, voices not her own. Deep, hissing spewed from this woman’s mouth, repeating ‘we’re going to kill her and you can’t stop us.’ “That’s what she was saying as she was coming down the aisles, over and over,” Lillian said.

Terry sat in a pew with her husband as this woman walked by. “I’m an adult at this point,” Terry said. “This person started behaving weirdly. Good and evil fighting. It was like in a movie.”

As this woman walked on shaking legs, the pastor asked the congregation to gather around the woman and pray, pray for her to be rid of her demon. People rose from their seats and surrounded this howling, spitting woman. “We prayed for her,” Lillian said. “These demons came out of her.”

As the howls and rising chant of prayer filled the sanctuary, the pastor challenged the devil himself. “My father was saying, ‘Satan, come out of this person and come into me,’” Terry said.

Julie can still hear those words. “‘Come into me.’ That’s what he said. ‘If you want to pick on somebody, pick on somebody of my size. Come into me,’” Julie said. Although she was young, the memory is crisp. “(Before the exorcism) I remember him saying, ‘have your mind on God, and if you don’t think you can do that, leave the sanctuary,’” Julie said. “They were afraid of (the demon) going into other people. I think back now, not that anything bad happened in my life, but I should have just left.”

Julie escaped unscathed. Her grandfather wasn’t as lucky.

“Within months it’s like his life went downhill,” Julie said. “At the time, we didn’t think of (the exorcism).”

The change in the pastor began slowly. “One incident was while he was preaching, he thought he could walk along the back of a pew,” Julie said. “You know how small that is. He ended up falling and hurting himself.” Then it escalated. Terry and Julie are convinced the demon accepted the pastor’s invitation. “I think to this day it’s what happened to my father,” Terry said. “I believe with my whole heart that when he cast those demons out of that lady, they went into him. He’s not the same man I grew up with.”

Soon after the exorcism, Terry’s father changed from a solid family man and Holy Roller preacher, into someone the family no longer recognized.

“He started in with a woman in the church who had been in my wedding and my sister’s wedding,” Terry said. “He slept with a married woman. I understand preachers are human, but for a loving father to change and be with a lady my age? No, that’s sick.”

Julie grew up with this changed man, and still can’t believe the severe shift in his life. “He lost the pulpit,” Julie said. “He was a very angry person. Just a complete personality change after that. On my twenty-first birthday he was at a bar buying me drinks.”

As the grandchildren grew, and great-grandchildren born, the man left his wife and disappeared from their lives. “He kind of dropped us, but we kind dropped him too,” Julie said. “I was very, very close to my grandparents. Contact is gone; there is none. It is sad. Any of us are going to open up a newspaper and he’ll be dead. That’s where we’ll find out he’s dead.”

But his legacy of exorcisms will stay with the family always.

“I had nightmares,” said Julie, who still sleeps with covers up to her neck. “My husband is amazed. We’ll watch ‘The Exorcist’ and he’s cringing and I’m like, hey, you haven’t seen it in real life. You might see a movie and think it’s not real. It is.”

Joseph Smith, Jr., born on December 23, 1805, was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, more commonly known as Mormonism – which has been thrust into the limelight to a significant degree recently as a result of Mitt Romney, one of the Republican Party’s nominees for President of the United States of America, being a supporter of this particular faith.

As for Joseph Smith, he began to develop a not-insubstantial following after he proclaimed that, beginning in the early 1820s, he had a number of encounters with an angelic entity named Moroni. So the story went, Moroni visited Smith (on some occasions while he, Smith, slept) and directed him to a book – inscribed on a set of golden plates – that supposedly detailed a visit of Jesus Christ to the Americas.

The book, we are told, was buried on a hill near Smith’s home (in Manchester, New York), which was variously referred to as Cumorah Hill and Mormon Hill. The same book was eventually translated and published under the title of the Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was duly born.

How curious that more than 120 years after Smith’s experience, a man named Truman Bethurum underwent a series of astonishingly similar encounters. His 1952 liaisons, however, were with alleged extraterrestrial entities – rather than an angelic one – and occurred atop the similarly-named Mormon Mesa, which is situated in Nevada. Just like Smith, Bethurum’s first encounter began when his sleep was disturbed by the sudden presence of a superior being – or beings, in Bethurum’s case.

In a fashion not unlike the way in which Moroni told Smith that the priceless manuscript that ultimately became the Book of Mormon was “inscribed” on a set of golden plates, so on one occasion Bethurum was also the recipient of (to him, at least) a priceless inscription: the so-called Clarionites “dropped a small flare” near an old power line that skirted the hills northeast of Glendale that was intended for Bethurum’s attention.

On retrieving the flare, Bethurum said that close by was a foot-square package that had a four-word note inscribed on its outside: To Truman From Aura. “Aura” being “Aura Rhanes.” According to Bethurum, she was the “captain” of the huge, gleaming flying saucer in which the aliens arrived.

In addition, an 1893 engraving by Edward Stevenson showing the angel Moroni delivering the plates to Smith atop Mormon Hill displays Moroni bathed in a brightly-glowing aura. Taking into consideration the clear similarities between the experiences of Smith and those of Bethurum and with Edward Stevenson’s brightly-shining image fixed firmly in our minds, one might be inclined to say that Bethurum’s Captain Aura Rhanes truly had an aura that reigned.

But there is a problem: despite the undeniable parallels between each story, Smith was told that his visitor was an angelic being named Moroni. Whereas, Aura Rhanes confidently assured the trusting Bethurum that she was an astronaut from a planet called Clarion. Someone was being highly economical with the truth. Or could there be another answer? Yes.

There is strong evidence that Bethurum most certainly did not meet aliens from a planet called Clarion. Rather, there is a substantial body of data suggesting his encounter was the result of something called Hypnagogia – a term that was coined in the 1800s by a French scholar named Alfred Maury.

However, it has a history that extends long before Maury came on the scene: references to this strange condition can be found in the writings of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle; in the works of the English Elizabethan occultist, astrologer and herbalist Simon Forman; and in the written output of the Italian renaissance mathematician and physician, Gerolamo Cardano.

So, with that said: precisely what is Hypnagogia? Basically, it is a term that describes the stage between wakefulness and sleep – a stage in the sleep process that may be dominated by a wide and infinitely varied body of sensory experiences.

For example, those in hypnagogic states have reported hearing voices ranging from barely-audible whispers to wild screams. Others have heard random snatches of speech – largely nonsensical, but occasionally containing unusual fictional names (not unlike some of those that appear in “close encounter” cases), and others have seen disembodied heads, or what appear to be fully-formed entities in their bedrooms. Humming, roaring, hissing, rushing and buzzing noises are also frequently reported by people experiencing hypnagogia.

Moving on, Truman Bethurum’s initial experience atop Mormon Mesa was initiated after he was groggily awoken by “what I can only describe as mumbling;” which is an absolutely classic facet of Hypnagogia. And, Joseph Smith’s story includes accounts of his visitor appearing to him while he was in the sleep state and, of course, claiming a curious name – again, staple parts of the Hypnagogic state.

Aliens, angels, and a distinctly altered state of sleep-based proportions. To some degree they may all be interconnected. Keep that in mind if, late one night, you awaken groggily from your deep slumber and you see a strange, ethereal being in your room with messages of a profound nature. The entity before you may not be all that it appears to be…

How often do we stop to consider how various aspects of our lives may, in essence, be illusions? Even if we were to suppose that life and all the cosmos are indeed some kind of mirage, we must return to the Cartesian notion that we think, and thus we are. In other words, if we are conscious, we must exist, right?

Nothing, it seems, is ever quite so simple or cut-and-dry as being merely “is” or “isn’t.” Yes, there are indeed times where we must probe a bit deeper in order to understand the hidden aspects of our existence, from which we stand to learn and grow in immeasurable ways. These areas of life from which we stand to gain the most often appear within the context of dualistic principles, stemming from such things as ordinary relationships we have with those around us. But what sorts of things can we hope to learn from realizing the “sacred” nature of such relationships… and how could this relate to the strange and unseen around us?

Let’s start by making a rather bold statement: that perhaps marriage, dating, and even instinctual attractions and sexual desires are all perceptual illusions, stemming from human biology, and the institution of culture in societies. These things are all representative of intangible, pre-material essences that exist in a state of non-locality from which both consciousness and matter extend. David Bohm called this state the implicate order.

Space and Time are also illusory, and this has been proven through experiments that reveal such things as time dilation and other perceptible effects that result from the way that time, gravity, and other forces affect one another. However, we cannot deny that, in fact, a multitude of different kinds of forces in the universe levy an attraction on one another: electricity, magnetism, and the aforementioned (and highly mysterious) gravity are all capable of exerting attractive forces in this way.

And yet, we must also accept that even people exert attractive forces on one another, just as well. The gentle (or sometimes, to the contrary, rather rough and tumble) interplay between the sexes, which are perceived as biological differences between male and female, and are mostly conducive to attraction and mating, may actually just be manifestations of universal dualities or dualistic principles. In the East, this would be called yin and yang. The duality is present elsewhere in a number of cultural institutions, and manifests similarly under such themes as good and evil, night and day, heaven and hell, life and death, and so on. But fundamentally, all are illusory in some way or another, imposed upon us by cultural institutions that have accumulated around our lifestyles as we have progressed as a species since time immemorial.

This is partially why I have touched on ideas in the past that incorporate Jungian archetypes into simple exchanges we have with people we meet and befriend throughout our lives. Last summer, here at Mysterious Universe I wrote an article called Conscious Continuity: Ourselves, Others and Oddities, which discussed some of the ways that archetypal themes seem to crop up in certain relationships I’ve had with individuals over the years (this is perhaps nowhere more apparent than with past lady loves). In that piece from 2011, I wrote that

“From a rather personal perspective, I’ve often likened various past loves that have come and gone to being repeated manifestations of a single sort of greater feminine archetype I’ve encountered, rather than merely being individuals I’ve known over the years. Sometimes, I’ve even encountered strange sorts of synchronicity and other manifestations of a curious nature in this regard: one girl I had known, for instance, took to calling me by a nickname which a previous girlfriend had used for me, with no prior knowledge of that nickname being appended to me in the past. Granted, I’m not literally suggesting that every girl I’ve dated over the years has been the same woman in some surreal, cosmic sense. However, I think that in terms of Jungian psychology, there are from time to time various “manifestations” of things that are familiar to us, shades of which might occasionally pour through the fabric of physical existence between people we know, revealing themselves in startling ways.”

Getting back to the various manifestations of what we might call Sacred Duality for the purposes of this piece, such would certainly not remain relegated to the realm of love and dating. Think about professional relationships you’ve had: was there ever a mentor figure, especially one outside of being a direct family member (mother or father) who helped train you for a job position or other aspect of your professional life? Thinking back, have you ever felt at times that the lessons learned from that individual may have extended well beyond merely learning how to perform tasks on the job, and that you learned valuable life’s lessons from that individual? Though what I’ve outlined here seems less “dualistic” or contrasting in nature, it nonetheless exemplifies another aspect of the archetypal substrata that exists within our relationships with others; here, we see “master and student” exemplified, or the process of learning life’s lessons in a deeper capacity.

The idea of archetypes may literally be attributed to any such interaction within our lives, though they often are thought of as being far more esoteric that they perhaps need to be. For instance, they may be likened to being something that borders on ghostly manifestations of repetitive cultural and mythological themes; or like the Jungian school of thought would assert, they exist as primitive mental images inherited from our ancestors that remain available throughout the collective subconsciousness of all humans. However, we need not attribute any sort of magic or other spiritual importance bordering on Soloian “hokey ancient religions” (see what I did there?) to their presence in order to learn from the broader concept.

For all intended principles expressed here, archetypal awareness in our everyday lives may simply be an act of recognizing the deeper embellishments existing beneath the obvious; or in effect, a process of looking for things that aren’t always readily apparent, but which help us grow once they are realized. And yes, while such concepts arrive in many forms, there is indeed a sacred duality that begins to emerge between the more contrasting elements of our existence. By acknowledging this sort of symbolism, and reconciling with the idea of there being a unity between them through philosophical undertakings such as the mind’s meanderings presented here, perhaps we stand to grow and gain from them, and thus even lead happier, more productive lives. And at very least, a mind that can render such things from the ordinary will never succumb to boredom!

For many devout believers among the Judeo-Christian tradition, mankind’s struggles don’t end with our passing from this realm. And to be fair, a number of other cultures and long-practiced religious institutions spanning the centuries have maintained a belief in something that exists beyond our commitments in this physical life, as well. With belief in the afterlife, or even notions like ghosts and haunted sites, we’re given a certain hope that there may be more to life than merely living and dying.

While the notion of something beyond the physical–or to quote Raymond Moody, belief in “Life After Life”–remains a popular theme among the multitudes, there are nonetheless those who would argue that notions of an individual spirit existing beyond the mortal confines of the body is pure rubbish. Thus, it brings a touch of irony in knowing one of the staunchest critics, in recent times, of there being a potential for consciousness persisting after the body dies, has himself now passed from the mortal realm.

Yes, I’m speaking of none other than Christopher Hitchens, the erudite political and philosophical firebrand whose books, including God is Not Great and his recent autobiography Hitch 22: A Memoir illustrated with harsh lucidity the author’s own doubt that there could be more to our existence than what the physical body alone may allow. Of the writer’s passing, I offered the following earlier today:

One of the brightest minds we’ve ever seen, Christopher Hitchens, has come and gone. Ideologically perpendicular to most and intellectually parallel only to the clouds, the man’s genius, and firebrand, were certainly not paralleled by most humans. Whether you loved him, hated him, or merely observed him over the years like so many of us did, it’s a mind like his that so many of us will miss… and though I’m certain there was no heaven waiting for Hitch (he woudn’t have wanted one, at least), his is not a spirit that will be forgotten. If nothing else, I hope he knows the freedom and liberty he admired throughout his life… da mihi libertatem aut da mihi mortem.

But in wishing Hitchens well in the afterlife, we are similarly given opportunity to consider the nature of reality, and of course, the potential for there being an afterlife. A recent article on the notion of religious beliefs and people’s apparent guilt with regard to disbelief was featured at The Guardian, with some of the more heady criticisms presented by the ever-controversial (and tactful) Richard Dawkins, who argues that many, rather than holding belief in a creator or divinity in the great beyond, are instead quite attached to the mere belief in belief itself.

Belief in belief for its own sake is so prevalent that it makes non-believers feel guilty. Odd though it seems, people who can’t accept propositions for which no empirical evidence exists tend to suffer more self-doubt than those who take great leaps of faith into the unknown. And this may help to explain why books denying the existence of God – Dawkins’s one, for example, and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great – shoot straight to the top of the bestseller lists. For even in our overwhelmingly secular society, belief in God is still regarded, even by those who don’t have it, as evidence of a person’s respectability; and guilt-ridden non-believers cannot get enough reassurance that it is perfectly acceptable to be an atheist.

Sure, there may be respectability that “belief” in a God can lend to an individual; this has become curiously the case in the determinations made of American political candidates. But taking this approach, the notion that a God exists, or for that matter, spirits of the dead, can also present troubles for us in equal measure to the assurances they lend. While many of religious predisposition consider the idea of “ghosts” to be relative to demonic forces or evil spirits, the very idea that a soul could indeed exist beyond the physical body is a reassurance, in the sense that it shows us that death is not the ultimate end. If anything, tantamount to notions of a fully conscious, non-physical spirit is the potential for absolute freedom in the truest sense; when we leave the world of the physical, perhaps we know real spiritual mobility, and thus become capable of harnessing the greater truth hidden away within the cosmos… often of a variety that steadily surpasses the conventions of human thinking.

The cluttered box that becomes human ideology, while grasping desperately for freedom and truth, can often become stifling as one is drawn ever more deeply into a narrow-sighted vision (to put it ironically) of what “truth” is supposed to be. Thus, whether we choose to believe in ghosts, gods, devils and demons, or the afterlife, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become so completely stoic in our opinions that we become blinded to the obvious truth that surpasses any human understanding: that we simply cannot know all the answers, and that trying to surmise truth in partiality only leads us into the quicksand of an intellectual black hole. Once we’ve fallen in, it can become a damning process trying to get unstuck.

While proof of an afterlife cannot be asserted without any doubt, we also cannot, as humans, assume to be so all-knowing that we can say, with certainty, that there aren’t forces of divinity that supersede all things known in the physical world. We also cannot rule out the possibility that spirits of the dead might linger on after the body ceases to live. Certainly, if there is any afterlife waiting for the likes of Christopher Hitchens, he will with no doubt have a field day unraveling the mysteries on that clandestine other side of the spiritual senses; but rather than representing the greatest of all “gotchas”, perhaps instead it will be an introduction, of sorts, to a new kind of freedom and liberty. Philosophically, this was certainly the quest Hitchens seemed to care most for in his life, and as with any good hope for a life beyond the living should be, it may not only be a new notion of what “truth” is that he discovers. For all we know, it may be that he’ll find that a new definition of freedom itself exists in such a place just as well… and that is something all spirits–living or dead–seem to desire.

When it comes to the matter of government interest in paranormal phenomena, certainly one of the most controversial aspects of the entire issue revolves around the ways and means by which official agencies have exploited – or have tried to exploit – religious iconography as a weapon of war, deception, and manipulation.

So the story goes today, darkly ambitious plans are afoot to unleash upon the entire planet a monstrous and malignant holographic hoax relative to the so-called Second Coming. Known to the wilder elements of conspiracy-theorizing as Project Blue Beam, it is said to be an operation designed to usher in a definitive New World Order-type society, in which the populace – duped into believing by a series of aerial holograms that the final battle between good and evil is taking place in the skies above – will give up their freedoms and allow the NWO to rule them with an iron-fist born out of Old Testament/wrath of God-style teachings. Christ almighty.

Could such an astonishing scenario actually be true? Are there really cold-hearted people, buried deep within the corridors of power, who see the religious teachings and beliefs of the ancients as being viable ways of keeping all of us living in a state of never-ending, Hell-driven terror and martial-law? True or not, we do see prime evidence of official manipulation of religious iconography for military and psychological warfare purposes.

One of the most important, relevant and earliest contributions to this particular debate is an April 14, 1950 publication of the RAND Corporation titled The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare. Written by a RAND employee named Jean M. Hungerford, and prepared for the attention of intelligence personnel within the U.S. Air Force, the 37-page document is an extremely interesting one and delves into some highly unusual areas, one of which has a direct bearing upon the extraordinary data contained within this particular article.

Hungerford stated in part: “Recently a series of religious ‘miracles’ has been reported from Czechoslovakian villages. In one instance the cross on the altar of a parish church was reported to have bowed right and left and finally, symbolically, to the West; the ‘miracle’ so impressed the Czechs that pilgrims began to converge on the village from miles around until Communist officials closed the church and turned the pilgrims away from approaching roads.”

On another occasion, noted Hungerford, the Virgin Mary herself was said to have materialized – in a vision – and to have given a communist a resounding slap that knocked him unconscious! And then there was a story from Western Bohemia that made its way into Hungerford’s report, which asserted locals had seen the Virgin Mary parading along the streets of a small town – with the American flag in her hand, no less – as U.S. troops and tanks followed dutifully behind.

Of course, the overriding message behind these particular visitations of the Marian kind, and the attendant, reported miracles, was acutely clear: God was (a) right behind Uncle Sam; and (b) hardly a noted supporter of communism. Whether or not this was all provoked by some top secret hand of the U.S. Government – of which RAND had no personal awareness – is unknown.

But, as RAND noted in its report to the Air Force, the U.S. Government had carefully, and secretly, monitored Moscow- and Czech-based radio broadcasts that discussed the claimed miracles in great depth. Most notably of all, the Russians and the Czechs exhibited deep, on-air anger and annoyance that the rumors in question were essentially casting a major slur on the entire Soviet Bloc and the communist way of life.

Hungerford noted something else that clearly demonstrated the large-scale extent to which American agents were dutifully monitoring this particular situation: “According to the Foreign Broadcast Information Services’ daily reports of Soviet and Eastern European radio broadcasts, there were nine broadcasts concerning the ‘miracles’ between February 28 and March 19, seven from Czech transmitters and two from Moscow (including a review of a New Times article on the subject).”

Every response and reaction by the Soviets, it appears, was being carefully watched and analyzed by the United States Government.

In closing on this particular matter, Hungerford detailed that the Soviets had their deep suspicions that this was all some sort of religious ruse perpetrated on them by intelligence agents of America. Concerning the report of the Virgin Mary waving the Stars-and-Stripes, a Prague-based radio broadcaster, whose words were transcribed and translated by the CIA, said:

“It is obvious at first sight that this apparition bears the mark made in the United States. These despicable machinations only help to unmask the high clergy as executors of the plans of the imperialist warmongers communicated to them by the Vatican through its agents.”

It is this affair, and, perhaps, this particular RAND-originated document of 1950, that galvanized America to further explore how, and under what particular circumstances, religion could be used as a tool of warfare, psychological manipulation, and control. Expect more, ahem, ”revelations” on this very matter in the near future…

The mind is perhaps the most wonderful, mysterious element to our human existence. Like a disembodied cosmic centrifuge, its workings dictate not only our actions, attitudes, and interaction with others, spreading our intentions and ideas throughout the world around us, but also functions a great deal in terms of shaping our very reality on an individual basis.

From within its many mysterious alcoves, subtle hints at even greater hidden powers that may exist within the mind have can be glimpsed as well. For centuries, psychics and mentalists have claimed to be able to access some of these clandestine abilities; a few individuals even claim to be able close their eyes, focus on a particular event or occurrence in their lives, and manifest aspects of it physically.

This sort of thought-projection can occur in a variety of ways. In the Hindu tradition, the notion of a tulpa involves physical manifestations–even supernatural beings–whose manifestation erupts from the intense, focused meditation of the yogi initiate. However, another attempt at manifesting the thoughts of others had its genesis a little further East during the early part of the twentieth century. In 1910, Tokyo University psychology Professor Tomokichi Fukarai began an odd series of experiments with various women claiming to have clairvoyant abilities, in which attempts were made at recording their mental images directly onto film. The first of these women (barring a series of failed experiments with an earlier subject) was Ikuko Nagao, and the two undertook attempts at developing what Fukarai called nensha, meaning “spirit photography.”

Poor Nagao’s fate would end up turning for the worst, however. Soon after she and the Professor had undertaken their experiments, she began to develop a fever, which would eventually take her life. It was speculated at the time that pressure from the skeptical public, among which were a number of individuals accusing her of being a fraud, may have contributed to her declining health. Nonetheless, with her passage, Tomokichi remained vigilant in his belief that direct transfer of thought onto film could be achieved; within a few months, he had begun to seek other psychics by whom his work might be supplemented. By 1913, he had become acquainted with psychics Sadako Takahashi and Mita Koichi, which resulted in the publication of a book detailing his findings, titled simply Clairvoyance and Thoughtography.

In years since, a number of other alleged “thoughtographers” have come and gone, among them famous mentalist Uri Gellar, who claimed to have procured his unique achievements by pressing the lens of a camera, with cap closed over the aperture, against his forehead and “projecting” the images forth onto the film within the camera (and of course, Gellar’s claims, admittedly rather outrageous, were decried profusely by skeptics).

Is it indeed possible to project “images” that stem solely from within the mind onto the photographic medium? If so, how exactly might this occur? One theory put forth by researcher John Joe McFadden of the University of Surrey, UK, deals with the idea that consciousness itself may in fact exist within an electromagnetic field produced by the brain. Sense traditional film cameras work by allowing light through an aperture onto photosensitive paper, and light is one portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the notion that electromagnetism may have something to do with such claims–especially in terms of conscious thought projections being focused and imprinted onto film–might at least garner some consideration, though speculation along these lines still does little to explain exactly how it might occur.

Back in late 2010, probably the most controversial book I have ever written was published: Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife. The book told the story of an officially-funded think-tank – the Collins Elite – that concluded rather than coming from outer space, UFOs are – literally – the deceitful and deceptive tools of Satan. Controversial? Of course! 

But perhaps the most controversial aspect of the book was that which suggested certain elements of officialdom have contemplated using religious charades – possibly even in the form of elaborate, aerial holograms – to influence the mindset and religious-based belief-systems of the populace.

This is made all the more interesting by the fact that in the wake of the publication of Final Events I secured a copy of an April 14, 1950 RAND publication titled The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare, written by Jean M. Hungerford, for the attention of the U.S. Air Force. The 37-page document is an extremely interesting one and delves into some highly unusual areas – one of which may have a bearing upon the data contained in Final Events.

Indeed, one particular aspect of the document states:

“Recently a series of religious ‘miracles’ has been reported from Czechoslovakian villages. In one instance the cross on the alter of a parish church was reported to have bowed right and left and finally, symbolically, to the West; the ‘miracle’ so impressed the Czechs that pilgrims began to converge on the village from miles around until Communist officials closed the church and turned the pilgrims away from approaching roads. In another instance, the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared in a vision and to have struck unconscious a local Communist. Finally, a report from Western Bohemia even stated that the Virgin Mary had been seen waving an American flag and followed by American tanks and troops [Note from Nick Redfern: Italics mine for emphasis]”

The RAND report continues: “The number of broadcasts from Moscow and Czech radios which have appeared since the reported ‘miracles’ would indicate that the Communists were considerably annoyed at the interest they provoked. According to the Foreign Broadcast Information Services’ daily reports of Soviet and Eastern European radio broadcasts, there were nine broadcasts concerning the ‘miracles’ between February 28 and March 19, seven from Czech transmitters and two from Moscow (including a review of a New Times article on the subject).”

On this particular matter, the author of the secret RAND report added: “The ‘miracle of the cross’ has been denounced as ‘an outrageous swindle’ engineered by the parish priest ‘with the aid of a steel wire, a coil spring, and rubber bands’; the fraud was inspired by the Vatican as part of its plot to undermine the new regime. It was explained to newspapermen at a press conference, and on March 10 all Czech motion picture houses were instructed to show a newsreel of it. A Prague Sunday newspaper featured a story with pictures to show how the trick was performed.”

And, in closing, noted Jean M. Hungerford: “As for the report of the Virgin Mary’s appearance waving the American flag, a Prague broadcast to Europe says: ‘It is obvious at first sight that this apparition bears the mark made in the United States. These despicable machinations only help to unmask the high clergy as executors of the plans of the imperialist warmongers communicated to them by the Vatican through its agents.’”

Are we seeing here a very early incarnation of a Collins Elite-type program designed to try and influence whole swathes of people with faked religious-themed motifs? Or was the author of the Prague-based story merely attacking those people and nations viewed as hostile? Stay tuned, as there is much more to come on this…

Have you ever seen someone you thought you knew, maybe from a short distance, and you thought for certain that you were seeing a friend? The hair, the height, the way they walked, and even the clothes they wore… all these things seemed to match the person you thought you were seeing… until that is, you get close enough to realize that it was actually somebody else who merely looked like the friend or acquaintance y0u thought you’d seen.

This kind of phenomenon has lent itself to a variety of interpretations of what might be called doppleganger phenomenon, as well as philosophical notions of what exactly consciousness is, and how we use it to relate to others around us. Often, it seems that there is something fundamentally deeper about the nature of the human experience, and that rather than just being physical bodies moving around and interacting with one another on a day-to-day basis, there indeed might be more to the proverbial pie than just the aroma we’re able to catch from time to time… especially when it comes to strange phenomena.

For instance, from a rather personal perspective, I’ve often likened various past loves that have come and gone to being repeated manifestations of a single sort of greater feminine archetype I’ve encountered, rather than merely being individuals I’ve known over the years. Sometimes, I’ve even encountered strange sorts of synchronicity and other manifestations of a curious nature in this regard: one girl I had known, for instance, took to calling me by a nickname which a previous girlfriend had used for me, with no prior knowledge of that nickname being appended to me in the past. Granted, I’m not literally suggesting that every girl I’ve dated over the years has been the same woman in some surreal, cosmic sense. However, I think that in terms of Jungian psychology, there are from time to time various “manifestations” of things that are familiar to us, shades of which might occasionally pour through the fabric of physical existence between people we know, revealing themselves in startling ways.

I bring up Carl Jung here since it was he who first supposed that all people might be interconnected by a greater “collective subconsciousness”, as he called it. This sort of thing, viewed from the perspective of being a phenomenological manifestation of our inner selves that all people share, is a bold and difficult thing to accept scientifically; nonetheless, Jung used this hypothesis for the justification of random coincidences that seemed to have much deeper symbolic meaning (often related to him by his patients), in addition to a possible way to explain various psychic phenomenon, or even more complex notions that are typically relegated to the realms of religious spirituality, such as past lives and reincarnation.

Indeed, I do often feel that I catch “shades” of people I know or have known in others I meet. In terms of evolution, this literally could come from the limitations of diversity that exist, in actuality, within our own genetic makeup. In other words, physical notions of individuality may exist only within the given confines of a number of random physical traits which do tend to pop up continually from person to person. Hence, we’re brought back to the notion of “dopplegangers” from earlier; if indeed there are a variety of traits–though perhaps somewhat limited in scope and number–which represent all the potential genetic differences that can occur in a human being, it stands to reason based on probability that those sequences might randomly produce, on occasion, two individuals that bear remarkable similar traits (hence, we think we see someone we know, when in reality, they merely looked a whole lot like that person we thought we were seeing).

But taking this a step further, what if these same sorts of limitations on variety could occur in other ways, perhaps even those that are non-physical? What if there could be predetermined elements about human existence that, in addition to governing how we physically look, might also dictate certain aspects of who we are spiritually, how we perceive the world around us, and in some capacity that is yet-to-be-understood, perhaps even tie us one another subconsciously? Given this criteria, perhaps there is far more to the notion of dopplegangers, or even the sense of “knowing” aspects of a person as if by psychic means. We could all just be running in peculiar little spiritual circles, meeting one another again and again in a bizarre, cosmic interplay that has been occurring since time immemorial… and which will continue on in the same fashion.