Returning guest Scott Alan Roberts joins us for more examinations of ancient myth, religious legends and the reptilian symbology behind them. 

New material from Nick Redfern is also featured leading us into surviving Megafauna in Australia before we look at another John Keel classic and late night encounters with the Succubus.

Scott Alan Roberts

Scott Roberts

Intrepid Magazine

Paradigm Symposium 2013

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• Is our universe merely one of billions? Evidence of the existence of ‘multiverse’ revealed for the first time by cosmic map
• Finally! Independent Testing Of Rossi’s E-Cat Cold Fusion Device: Maybe The World Will Change After All
• Humans With Amplified Intelligence Could Be More Powerful Than AI
• My Very Own Hyper Dimensional Resonator

Plus+ Extension

The extension of the show is exclusive to Plus+ Members. To learn the benefits of joining, click HERE.

• MEGALANIA PRISCA: DRAGON OF THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

• Summoning a Succubus – My Story
• SuccuSummon – The Secret Art of Attracting a Succubus and Incubus Lover

Music

• Dark Sky – In Brackets via Indie Shuffle
• Charles Murdoch – No Lungs via Auditory Collective
• Koreless – Last Remnants via Stoney Roads
• Daft Punk – Horizon (Japan-only bonus track) via ZacGK
• Sivey – Rendez-vous via Waxhole
• Physical illusion – Flow (Sinestetik remix) (Contraband)
• Twos – Going Home via Bad Panda
• Quickie Mart – SPECTACLE via repeatbutton

They are one of the most enduring mysteries and natural wonders of the United States, and their mysterious presence has long inspired fantastic tales about ghosts that haunt the steep slopes of the Linville Gorge Wilderness. But these curious natural phenomenon–whatever their real cause–may hold the key to understanding some UFO sightings, or may even bear promise in the study of innovative new kinds of energy. They are the Brown Mountain Lights, and their intrigue has outlasted many who have come and gone over the last century, seeking to find the root of their strange presence. 

Following my recent appearance on the Mysterious Universe podcast, I’ve been very happy to see that there appears to be as much interest in discussion about the Brown Mountain Lights as ever, with many emails, stories, and comments coming in from the listenership. One MU listener, a gentleman named Tom, had been eager to share his fascination with me about the phenomenon, which until hearing our discussion on the podcast, he had never heard of before. “I had never heard about the Brown Mountain lights,” he explained, “and have been researching them since you mentioned it. I am obsessed.”

In honesty, I share Tom’s enthusiasm, and find that it’s hard not to become obsessed with the lingering mystery of the lights… which is the very reason why I have logged so many hours studying them, and the terrain over which they appear.

The ongoing interest people have expressed in the lights and their as-yet-undiscovered cause has prompted me to continue trying to provide educational information that seeks to address their presence from a rational, scientific perspective, which includes audio podcasts like this one, as well as videos documenting my research which can be viewed here.

Of the unique items I have recently come across, also worth noting here is the photo above, which was apparently taken in the late 1950s or early ’60s by photographer Bruce Roberts, and was featured in his wife Nancy’s book The Illustrated Guide to Ghosts in 1974 (the image, as well as Nancy’s account of the lights, had appeared in print years earlier, hence the presumed age of the photo. What I find particularly unique about this photo is that it appears to depict the lights hovering above the horizon, which would suggest that these illuminations had indeed been airborne. However, I should point out that we aren’t certain as to what the conditions may have been at the time this photo was taken, such as the exact location where Roberts took the photo, or the elevation in relation to Brown Mountain. The orientation strongly suggests, however, that the image was taken from a gravel pull off at mile marker 20 off of Highway 181, which passess Brown Mountain on its route between the towns of Morganton and Linville.

Similar photos of what are presumed to be the lights can be viewed here, featuring the photography of Brown Mountain Lights researchers Bill Fox and Bob Ashmore. Bill and Bob have been coming to North Carolina for years to study the lights, and attenpt to photograph them. One of my all time favorite images of an odd, spherical light hovering over Table Rock, a large prominent mountain in the Linville Gorge, can be seen below, courtesy of Bill Fox’s archives:

This image is similar to what is, arguably, the best photo of an aerial illumination over the Linville Gorge, taken in 2001 by photographer Charles Braswell. The image was featured in the Charlotte Observer, and can be viewed by clicking here. Perhaps the most important element that photographs like these present is the fact that aerial illuminations of unexplained origin do seem to account for some instances where the lights are reported. However, most conventional attempts at explaining the lights omit completely these kinds of reports, as well as the photos that seem to provide evidence of consistent, and strange-looking illuminations in the area.

My intention here is not to assert that there is anything “paranormal” about the cause behind the Brown Mountain Lights, although by definition, they are a variety of phenomenon which, albeit a natural one, seems to be produced by means that are complicated enough to have escaped scientific explanation until the present day. Thus, the reason for their endurance as a mystery is clear, and the challenge they present in terms of studying and documenting their cause also remains nearly unparalleled.

This week marks the official release of my new book: Monster Files: A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and  Extraordinary Animals! Published by New Page Books, Monster Files takes a long and winding trip into dark and foreboding territory. It is territory where the strange and the monstrous dwell. It’s a place filled with bizarre creatures, nightmarish beasts, and terrible things of the woods, skies, and oceans. And it’s filled with something else, too: (a) agents and employees of government; and (b) secret files filled with astounding tales of creatures of types that should not exist, but which just might.

For absolutely decades, rumors, tales and legends have surfaced to the effect that government agencies – all around the world and since at least the early to mid 1800s onwards – have been secretly collecting and carefully studying data on bizarre beasts, extraordinary animals, and strange creatures.

Lake monsters, psychic dogs and cats, sea serpents, flying monsters, werewolves, the Abominable Snowman, and the United States’ huge, hair-covered man-beast known as Bigfoot: each and every one of them has attracted official, classified interest at one time or another, and sometimes for decades, no less. Not only that, those very same rumors, tales and legends have provoked numerous controversial and astounding questions, including…

Does the Pentagon’s top brass, deep in a secure underground bunker, secretly have one or more dead Bigfoot on ice? And, if so, has a study and autopsy of these unique corpses shown the creatures to simply be apes of a type that zoology has yet to officially categorize? Or, are they something far weirder? Might they possibly, and incredibly, even be beastly entities linked to the many and varied intricacies that lie behind the UFO phenomenon?

What bizarre truths are the militaries of the United States and the United Kingdom hiding from us about long-necked lake monsters, such as the famous Nessie of Scotland’s Loch Ness? Are they really surviving example of prehistoric creatures that we are assured became extinct millions of years ago? Or could they, in a very curious and convoluted fashion, be the curious and top secret creations of government itself?

How on earth can there be a link between the clandestine and controversial operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and those dark and diabolical denizens of the Himalayas known as the Abominable Snowmen? Does the CIA secretly know that this immense and legendary creature – also referred to as the Yeti – really does exist in those wild, icy mountains? Or does officialdom’s interest in the hairy thing revolve around matters that have far less to do with the world of monster hunting and far more to do with top secret espionage of a type that dates back to the very height of the Cold War?

Why does an old and faded British Government file exist on sightings of Godzilla-sized monsters of the seas? Is Britain’s Royal Navy sitting on amazing classified evidence suggesting that such leviathan-like creatures really are among us and are not just the stuff of sea-faring legend?

What do the Russians know about both extra-sensory perception and life after death in animals? Has the Kremlin, incredibly, discovered that animals have souls and that bodily death is not the end of life as we, and just about every other living thing on the planet too, knows it? Did the United States Army, at the height of the Cold War, try and use psychic dogs in covert military missions against the former Soviet Union?

Are presumed-extinct animals, known to officialdom, still roaming around the forests of Australia, creatures that range from a gigantic marauding lizard to one of the strangest marsupials that ever existed?

And what is the top secret connection between the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and large, savage cats prowling around the foggy and mysterious wilds of southwest England? How could there even be a connection, in the first place, between the highest echelons of Britain’s Royal Family and exotic felines that the government of the United Kingdom assures both its citizens and the media alike are nothing more than the results of mistaken identity and folklore rolled into one controversial brew?

These are just a few of the many amazing issues that are rumored to have secretly tasked and worried the finest minds of the CIA, the FBI, the British Royal Navy, the Australian Government, the state-sponsored scientists of the former Soviet Union, and the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. For years, agencies of government have taken an astonishingly deep interest in those legendary creatures that mainstream science and zoology assure us do not, and simply cannot, exist – but that just might be doing exactly that, after all.

Monsters are not myths, fantasy, legend or folklore. In their own very odd and unique ways, they are all too terrifyingly real. And the governments of our world secretly know it, too. But they don’t want you to know the monstrous truth.

Imagine the scene: It’s late on a chilled, winter’s night and the witching-hour is looming perilously close. Your high-pressure job takes you out of town on a regular basis, and right now – after a hard week spent on the road – you just want to get home to your wife and the comfort of your own bed. But before you can do both, you are forced to concentrate on driving through the winding, tree-shrouded roads of large, ancient woodland. Your eyes are tired, the light is poor, and mysterious shadows dominate your field of view. And, little do you know it, but there’s something else on the road, too. It’s something terribly monstrous, as you are just about to find out.

As you negotiate a sharp bend – a bend you have traveled on probably hundreds of occasions and one which is particularly dense with tree cover – you slow down and turn on your high beams to help illuminate the blackness that beckons. Suddenly, your eyes become hypnotized by something incredible on the right-side of the road.

You hit the brakes hard and you sit, astonished and wide of mouth, never giving even a single thought to the possibility that another vehicle may slam into you from behind. Your mind is utterly elsewhere. And it’s not surprising.

Glaring at you in menacing fashion, and sporting what appears to be a pair of large, glowing, yellow eyes, is a huge black cat. No, it’s not just someone’s spoiled, overfed pet. Rather, it’s just about the closest thing you can think of to a fully grown, menacing puma.

Its penetrating eyes bore into yours, it changes its stance to one of attack, and – while gripping the steering-wheel and holding your breath, as if your very life depended on it – you try and prepare for the absolute, very worst. Fortunately, the worst does not come.

Without warning, the beast’s head quickly turns. It races across the road, into the safety and camouflage of the trees, and is gone. You sit there, for a few minutes, trying desperately to get your breath back, and fighting off the rising panic that threatens to overwhelm you. Finally, the shaking in your hands begins to fade, as does the adrenalin-driven dizziness that hit you when overwhelming fear set in.

It’s then you realize the potentially life-threatening fact that your car sits in the middle of a dark road late at night. That practically no-one is likely to be out, at this hour, on this very stretch is probably the only thing that has saved you from becoming the victim of a very nasty, and potentially fatal, accident.

You floor the accelerator, race home, and relate the details of the amazing experience to your wife – who you have roused from her slumber, an action prompted by a high degree of both excitement and fear.

She listens carefully, and after having done so, the two of you come to a stark and sensational realization: you are one of the ever-growing number of people in the British Isles who has had a close encounter with a large, exotic and predatory cat of a type that simply should not exist in Britain, and which the government says are merely the stuff of nightmare, mistaken identity, and hoaxing.

But, now, you know better – much better, in fact. Although, given the gut-wrenching experience you have just suffered, you earnestly wish you did not.

The story above is not fiction. It occurred in 1977 to a man named Jimmy Freeman. And the forest in question is no normal forest. It’s an area that has been a veritable hotbed of supernatural strangeness for centuries. Never mind just big cats, the forest can claim to be the domain of a strange Bigfoot-like creature known as the Shug-Monkey. Sightings of ghostly entities abound.

Fiery-eyed devil-dogs – provoking distinct imagery of The Hound of the Baskervilles variety – roam the woods. And, in December 1980, this very same locale was the setting for Britain’s most infamous of all UFO encounters. Its name is Rendlesham Forest, a 1,500 hectare area of picturesque and wooded proportions that is located on coastal heath land in the county of Suffolk, England – clearly a place of supreme strangeness!

Hey Mr Tambourine Man, are you from this world or not? Yes, step right up and join me on the Magical MysteryTour! To your left you’ll see the selling of souls, and to your right you’ll notice the devil in disguise. Music and song have long been vehicles for the bizarre tales of this world; conveying supernatural stories that just wouldn’t be the same without a six string accompaniment. Here’s just a taste; a brief selection of songs that have the supernatural at their core.

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

Warren Zevon’s song about Norway’s greatest son, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner is about a Norwegian mercenary who fought in the Nigerian civil war in 1960. As the song goes, we are told of the betrayal of Roland at the hands of fellow mercenary, Van Owen, contracted by the CIA, who shoots Roland in the back of the head decapitating him. In the years that follow, Roland wanders the Earth as a headless phantom, an apparition who eventually finds Van Owen in Mombasa, whereupon he exacts his bloody revenge… apparently. No, there isn’t a hint of truth to this tale. This fantastic song comes from Zevon’s collaboration with an ex-mercenary whom he met in a bar. Hell of a story though, wouldn’t you say?

Click here to view the embedded video.

 The Devil Went Down to Georgia

A popular hit from the Charlie Daniel’s Band, the tale of the fiddle playing average Joe besting the devil Himself in a battle of musical prowess. The boy named Johnny saved his soul, and the entire Georgia state, from eternal damnation and won himself a golden fiddle in the process. I do love a success story!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hotel California

Although not technically stated as a song about any form of paranormal entity or phenomenon, The Eagles’ smash hit has had it’s fair share of interpretations. Most disturbingly of which, the idea that this nightmarish hotel that “you may never leave” was in fact a real Church of Satan. This was accompanied by claims that the Desolate One photo-bombed the inside photo of the record cover.

Frankly, it’s a bit of a reach. If anything, I like to think that Hotel California is just a musical rendition of the plot of an un-aired Twilight Zone episode.

Crossroad Blues

Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil. At least, that’s what some people think. The historic blues artist left a legend behind which survives to this day, spurning the belief that the Devil makes deals in exchange for your soul. The song at it’s heart, Crossroad Blues. Here’s the kicker: Johnson makes NO reference to the Devil, him selling his soul nor a freak encounter with the Morning Star.

However, Johnson’s later song, Hellhound on my Trail, added to the mystery, as a song about the Hound of Hell hunting down the blues singer. Johnson doesn’t seem to make a clear statement about his relationship with the Devil until Me and the Devil Blues, which tells the story of a blues singer waking one morning to find that beast has come a-knockin’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s say there’s a row of street lamps you pass every day while going to and from work. They are, being typical, modern street lamps, of the low-pressure sodium-vapor variety, emitting a red glow at start up and, once they’re operating fully, a steady monochrome yellow. The lamps automatically switch on at sundown, via the activation of a light-sensitive cell, or photocell. The cell is triggered again when sunlight returns at dawn, switching the lamps off. Generally, rather than each lamp having its own photocell, a single photocell is used to control a whole group of street lamps.

You’re returning home from work on what has so far been a completely typical evening, the street lamps illuminating your way as you stroll down the footpath. No one else is around. Oddly, the street lamp nearest you suddenly blinks out, turning on again as soon as you’ve passed it. A level-headed person, you attribute the event to coincidence and think no more of it. Three evenings later, however, while passing the same row of lamps, the phenomenon occurs again. On this occasion, three successive lamps are affected, each one blinking out as you approach, only to suddenly blink on again the moment you step away.

What on earth just happened? Did you influence the lamps with the power of your mind? Or is there a mundane explanation for these events?

Known as street lamp Interference (SLI), experiences of this nature are common, with people in many different parts of the world claiming “that they involuntarily, and usually spontaneously, cause street lamps to go out. Generally the effect is intermittent, infrequent and without an immediately discernable sequence of cause and effect.”¹

These are the words of the British paranormal scholar Hilary Evans, who, prior to his death in 2011, was the foremost authority on SLI. (“SLIder” is the term he coined to refer to someone who reports a SLI experience.) In addition to being a pictorial archivist and author of numerous books on the Fortean, he helped found, in 1981, the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP). After receiving numerous reports from people claiming that street lamps respond to their presence in an inexplicable fashion, Evans decided to take on the mystery, collecting hundreds of accounts of SLI through his Street Lamp Interference Data Exchange (SLIDE). The culmination of this research – what turned out to be his final book – is the brief yet highly impressive SLIDERS: The Enigma of Street Light Interference (2010). “SLI… can reasonably be regarded as a phenomenon in its own right,” he argued.² 

Frankly, when I first heard of SLI I considered it largely insignificant and boring, regardless of whether or not the phenomenon had a paranormal basis. I hastily concluded that most, if not all, SLI experiences could be accounted for as a result of people perceiving connections that have no basis in reality. For, as everybody knows, street lamps can and do malfunction from time to time, and people are bound to walk past them at the moment these malfunctions occur. After taking a deeper look at the phenomenon, however, I came to the unavoidable conclusion that we’re dealing with a genuine mystery – and, what’s more, an important and fascinating one. I agree with Evans when he says: “If true… claims [of SLI] carry profound and exciting implications for science and for our knowledge of human potential.”³

It’s time we examined some of those claims. Richard M, a professional magician in his thirties who lives in London, England, recalls the moment he became aware of his SLI ability. A teenager at the time, he was taking his dog for a walk when he noticed “that lights were going out when we walked under them and then flickering back on when we had passed.” He continues:

“It didn’t frighten me but I became conscious of it. I remember walking under them trying to make them go out but I couldn’t. The moment I stopped willing it to happen, it would start again – like someone catching me out. I sort of anticipated it for a while and didn’t really tell anyone about it. A few years ago, I noticed it happening again – the first time for a long time. Again, I was with my dog and this time we turned out a number of lights in a car park across the road. I told a close friend when I got home and he came out to watch from the other side of the road. As we walked around the park, they all went out as we passed under them, and then came back on when we had moved away… I seem to recall that both periods coincided with stress, some of it quite intense.”⁴

If SLI involves psychokinesis – or some other form of psi – it figures that the ability would be more inclined to manifest while one is in an abnormal mood or state of consciousness. For, as shown by experiments in parapsychology, our everyday state of consciousness is virtually useless when it comes to psychic functioning. How interesting, then, that the two SLI experiences described by Richard occurred while he was stressed. That a stressed or aroused state of mind encourages SLI ability is suggested by the testimony of a man from Yorkshire, England, referred to as Dan C.

It was early one morning in 1991, when he was nineteen, that Dan’s history of SLI began. He was heading home from his girlfriend’s house, where the two of them had engaged in a steamy “smooching session,” when a street lamp went out as he approached it. At first he attributed the incident to a “dodgy bulb.” However, the lamp did the same thing the following night. When the incident happened a third time, he “started to think something was up.” Further strange incidents with the street lamp followed. Explains Dan: “Over the months, as I returned home from my girlfriend’s house, the light would always do the opposite as to its original state, i.e. if it was off it would turn on and vice versa. After I’d passed the light-post, it would usually revert to its original state…”⁵

As was found to be the case for Richard, Dan discovered that the phenomenon behaved according to its own set of rules, largely resisting his attempts to control it. On one occasion, for example, keen to demonstrate his SLI ability to doubting friends, he made them watch while he approached the street lamp, only to make himself look a fool by failing to duplicate the effect. A number of SLI experiences later, involving not just the one street lamp but several different lamps, Dan became aware of a pattern: the phenomenon generally coincided with his being in a particular state of mind. He describes this as “quite tired, on edge, nervous of my surroundings… and I reckon my adrenaline levels must have been up.” He concludes: “This sort of explains why I couldn’t ‘perform’ in front of my friends, having been in a relaxed situation. I have since shut my friends up as I have shown my ability on more than one occasion.”⁶

There is clearly a connection between sex and SLI. This connection deepens when examined in light of William G. Roll’s recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK) interpretation of poltergeist disturbances. According to the RSPK model, these amazing demonstrations of mind-over-matter – of objects flying around houses and electrical equipment going haywire – occur as a result of sexual and emotional tension on the part of the “focus,” who more often than not is a troubled teenager undergoing puberty. Are the mechanisms at work in poltergeist disturbances the same as those involved in SLI?

That the state of arousal produced by sexual activity plays a role in SLI is nowhere more evident than in the case of Bob Lovely, from Montana, USA. Bob says his SLI ability became especially apparent when, at one point in his life, he was dating a woman who lived across the other side of town from him, to whom he paid frequent evening visits. It was while making these nightly trips that Bob occasionally saw rows of street lamps switch off as he passed them in his car, so that “each lamp I passed would go out as I was passing it.” Most interesting of all, however, is that the phenomenon always occurred on those evenings when he and his girlfriend had had intercourse. “On other evenings some lamps would go out but not like on the ones when our passions had been aroused.”⁷

Whereas some SLIders say they affect only street lamps, other say their ability extends to a whole range of electrical devices, from battery-operated wrist watches to railroad crossings to aircraft navigation equipment. Diana B, an office worker from Texas, USA, belongs to the latter category. Not only do street lamps dim and go out when she approaches them at night, sometimes they also turn on when she approaches them during the day. Regular light bulbs and fluorescent lights also behave oddly in her presence, such as when she goes to a restaurant or enters the home of a friend. There have been occasions, too, when automatic garage doors have suddenly gone haywire on her, opening and closing quickly “in a crazy way.”

According to Diana, her ability to affect electrical devices becomes heightened whenever she’s in a state of excitement or high energy. During these times, she can hold a compass in her hands and the needle will start to spin wildly, coming to a rest the moment she puts the compass down. Handheld tape recorders pose a special problem for Diana, either refusing to record when she wants them to or breaking down altogether. “I went through about 10 of them over a period of a couple of months,” she says. “Once it was so bad it even wiped out what was on the tape.”⁸

Interestingly, countless instances of malfunctioning electrical equipment, involving recording devices especially, have been observed in relation to psychics like Uri Geller and Matthew Manning, as well as in connection with poltergeist disturbances, UFO sightings and even crop circles. Who isn’t familiar with the scenario whereby an enthusiastic investigator attempts to record some form of paranormal activity on film or cassette, only to find that his equipment has suddenly and inexplicably broken down, or, more frustrating still, that the tape came out blank? Much to the gratification of skeptics – who fail to comprehend that paranormal events are, by their very nature, as slippers as subatomic particles, resisting all attempts to be pinned down – such occurrences are a matter of course.

In terms of what’s known about the human body by contemporary, orthodox science, Diana’s strange talent shouldn’t exist, and therefore she must be either lying or deluded. But if such is the case, why have so many others come forward with similar claims, most of them perfectly normal human beings? Many of those who contacted Evans to inform him of their SLI experiences had never heard of the phenomenon until coming across his research, previously considering their ability unique or doubting their own sanity. To quote one SLIder: “I couldn’t believe this was a phenomenon that others shared with me. I just thought I was nuts…”⁹

There are indications that SLI has a physical, measurable component, and that even the run-of-the-mill physicist or biologist would be able to make some headway into penetrating the mystery. For instance, some SLIders, including Diana, have a tendency to accumulate (or perhaps generate within the body itself) a high static charge. She explains: “I… can get very charged with static electricity, so much so that sparks actually fly around me and if anyone else is close by the sparks will connect with them.” Similar comments from other SLIders include, “I build up static electricity like crazy,” and “I seem to get more static shocks than other people.”¹⁰

Of course, not all SLIders have issues with static electricity, and while it’s true that someone with a high static charge has the potential to interfere with electrical equipment, they cannot do so from a distance; only by means of contact. That a statically charged person would be able to influence a street lamp mounted high above them is therefore extremely unlikely. And let us not forget that some incidents of SLI occur while the individual is seated in their car, a car being a crude form of Faraday cage, blocking static and non-static electric fields. One needn’t be a scientist to realize that the phenomenon is hard to account for in terms of electromagnetism alone, and must therefore involve some other form of energy – perhaps what the Taoists call “chi,” or what Wilhelm Reich dubbed “orgone.”

Speculation aside, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that at least some incidents of SLI can be attributed to entirely mundane causes, a combination of mechanical and psychological factors. Skeptics of SLI are keen to point out that when the bulbs in sodium-vapor street lamps reach the end of their life they undergo a phenomenon known as “cycling,” switching on and off every few minutes until a technician comes along and replaces the bulb. It can also happen that the bulb becomes slightly dislodged from its socket, so that even a minor vibration – such as that caused by a passing car or a person – is enough to make the lamp blink out for a moment.

Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, England, was asked to give his opinion on SLI for the Daily Mail newspaper. A dedicated member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), he cited “observer bias” as the culprit, stating that “street lamps are going on and off all the time… People only have to walk under a couple of lamps going off to think that they might be the cause.”¹¹

Had Wiseman looked at the evidence properly, he’d realize that observer bias is not the whole story. When we eliminate this and other obvious explanations for SLI, we’re left with an exciting possibility: that the phenomenon is due to psychokinesis. Evans discusses this notion in his book, suggesting that some kind of “force” is at work when a SLIder influences a street lamp. He explains that street lamps are designed in such a way as to be protected from operating at too high a voltage, whereby a cut off switch is triggered the moment the voltage reaches a certain level. The lamp will remain off until reactivated the following evening. A similar scenario occurs when the voltage drops below a certain level. Evans puts forward an intriguing theory: that the “force” at work in SLI operates by affecting the voltage of the current, most likely by causing a surge in voltage that triggers the lamp’s internal cut off switch.

“To perform this feat,” he speculates, “SLI would have to be an electro-dynamic force, somehow generated within or through the human biological system, and somehow externalised into the neighbouring environment, where it will act on any appliance which happens to be vulnerable.”¹²

Footnotes

1. Hilary Evans, The SLI Effect: Street Lamp Interference – A Provisional Assessment, Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, 1993.
2. Hilary Evans, “SLIders: The Mystery of Street Lamp Interference,” Fortean Times, April 2011.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Hilary Evans, The SLI Effect.
8. Hilary Evans, “SLIders: The Mystery of Street Lamp Interference.”
9. Hilary Evans, The SLI Effect.
10. Ibid.
11. David Derbyshire, “‘Electricity Woman with Amazing Powers’ Causes Lights to Flicker When She Gets Stressed,” Mail Online, 2 February 2008.
12. Hilary Evans, The SLI Effect.

If you’ve undergone experiences similar to the ones described in this article, or have ever been targeted by lightning, the author would like to hear from you via louisproud(at)gmail(dot)com. 

This article appears in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 2 – Paranormal Realities & the Unexplained. Click here to obtain your copy.  

Did a German secret society resort to human sacrifice to stem the tide of the First World War in Germany’s favour? Was the builder of a house that became known as The Round House a member of this order? Were human remains found, and were the outlines of a giant Wodan, the supreme god of Nordic mythology, carefully hidden in the landscape around this enigmatic edifice? Was the area surrounding the house witness to bizarre rituals? A shadowy group of investigators claims so.

Read Part 1.

Around the 1900’s, the exact date or year is shrouded in uncertainty, wealthy estate owner Frank Van Vloten suddenly starts with a series of extensive landscape and garden projects on his estate. The labourers who work for him do not understand why, as almost everything they are ordered to do to makes no sense from an agricultural point of view. On the surface, there seems to be no logical plan behind the work. ‘But there was work, and therefore food on the table’, is the consensus among the labourers.

The working group investigating the mysteries that swirl around the house is set on the trail of looking at the landscape surrounding the Round House instead of delving through what archives remain, by a chance discovery. They find what they see as a clue in the files of a former SS affiliated archaeologist. Before World War II, the archaeologist had done some excavation work at the Mythstee. This is a spot in the vicinity of the Round House, since long rumoured to have been an ancient Germanic place of worship.

The former SS affiliated archaeologist, Frans Christiaan Bursch (1903-1981), seen above in the comfort of his study in the 1930′s, has a chequered past, to say the least. During the Second World War, from 1940 to 1945, Bursch became a member of the N.S.B., a Dutch pro-Nazi organisation. 1943 finds him at the Ukraine, involved in excavations with the use of slave labour. Notwithstanding his N.S.B. membership and his affiliation to Heinrich Himmler’s occult research institute Ahnenerbe, he escapes any consequences after the end of the war in 1945. Until his death in 1981, he is a teacher in classical languages. Bursch, as might be expected from someone who had the dark overlord as his master, saw ancient German ruins and remains everywhere. In how far Bursch was working on a theory involving a giant pictogram and a geoglyph in the vicinity of the Mythstee, is hard to say. His remaining archive offers no further clue, and his post-war book makes no mention of it.

The Mythstee, another source points out, is a place of evil. He recounts vague rumours that ghosts and other strange creatures were frequently seen there. “Dark and bloody rituals said to have been conducted at the Mythstee and for a long time there were those that claimed that the famous Varus Battle took place there, and not somewhere in Germany. Wild German hordes whipped into frenzy by their druids sacrificed the vanquished Romans on the earthen walls of the Mythstee. This was the cause that the Pan-Germanic movement had a more than usual interest in that particular spot, as it was also placed on a ‘Heilige Lijn’, the German equivalent of a ley-line. This line allegedly was restored in 1891 by the Alldeutscher Verein. That was the motive for the construction of the Round House and its inhabitant, Frank van Vloten, was placed there under orders of the Pangermanic movement.” Modern archaeology though has established that the Mythstee is a curious, but natural formation.

What the working group finds in the files of the deceased archaeologist on the Mythstee is a depiction of the Giant of Cerne Abbas. Wondering about the presence of this seemingly unrelated image in that file, the question arises: would it be possible that the landscape surrounding The Round House might have hidden a similar figure?

In the light of this theory, the extensive work done on the estate begins to make sense. The landscaping, the planting or removing or relocation of bushes, the digging of certain ditches and paths and the creation of artificial hills all serve to create, in deepest secret, a giant figure of Wodan, only to be seen from the sky, with the Round House in its centre. For that is Wodan’s remaining eye.

Schalkwijk , the spokesman for the anonymous group investigating this mysterious house, claims that he and his group investigated the surrounding area with the use of soil investigations, measuring equipment and ‘other sources’. They arrive at the conclusion that The Round House and the estate were constructed according to ‘German rites’. Seen from above, the giant image of the Nordic god Wodan would be visible. The Round House is his one remaining eye. Schalkwijk even manages to reconstruct a helmet and a spear in the landscape. In a bush he recognizes a beard and moustache. They further claim to have found at the south a ditch in the form of a phallus, with a vulva nearby, at walking distance. “We got the most insane orders, replacing hills, dig away soil and construct rice fields. We never saw rice”, the labourers tell. These statements strengthen Schalkwijk and his group in their conviction.

Copyright Werkgroep Het Ronde Huis & Uitgeverij Nunspeet.

From other quarters too, it is murmured that the place has a reputation for weirdness. Some visitors will later claim that they felt haunted by a strange, oppressive atmosphere when visiting the by now wooded area. Other tales recount how many times, in the past but also in the present, little people were seen who allegedly had an abode in the vicinity of the Mythstee. But that is not everything. A wealthy family buys an estate adjacent to The Round House and the Mythstee in the 1930’s. Some of its members behave very curiously and subsequently more rumours start that a ‘Germanic-Celtic cult’ practice its rituals at the Round House. When National Socialism emerges, eugenic experiments were conducted there as well. Mention is made of unholy orgies with certain very high placed German-friendly Dutchmen. There’s even mention of the ghostly appearances of four or five girls. They can be seen wandering over the nearby path sometimes at night, their arms tightly clutched.

Copyright Werkgroep Het Ronde Huis & Uitgeverij Nunspeet

The problem though is that the existence of a huge geoglyph in the form of Wodan remains unproven too. On the aerial photos that have been studied by enthousiasts and researchers of the myth, nothing is seen. Also, but a few traces remain of the original landscape projects of Frank Van Vloten, seen above in a family picture in the upper right corner. Are Schalkwijk and his group of fellow researchers deluded and do they simply want to see things that are not there at all? What certainly doesn’t give one confidence is that almost anything in the book on the case is unsourced. We don’t know who spoke to whom, when or how.

But the strange stories remain.

In regards to these weird tales about little men and unholy rites by a ‘German-Celtic cult’, these stem from an odd source as well. They appear in some curious leaves with intricate drawings, done by an elderly and deceased man by thename of Eldermans. Not much is known about him, what remained of his archive when Eldermans destroyed most of it towards the end of his life, is for the most part found in a museum for witchcraft. Eldermans himself is described by his late son-in-law with simply one word: ‘witch’.

Perhaps a closer examination of the purported shadowy group responsible for the occult activity during World War One might shed some much-needed light on the matter. It is perhaps here, in the various allegations of occult orders working on behalf of Imperial Germany, that we may be able to shed some light on the matter.

Soon to follow: Part III – The Secret Brotherhood

Ancient African coins discovered on an Australian beach lead experts to question the origins of the earliest explorers to our shores. This then sends us on a quest to discover the most bizarre artefacts the continent has to offer including lost cities populated by white giants. 

Hybrid children are then encountered before we discuss shamanism and wereleopards in Africa.

• Ancient discovery set to rewrite Australian history
• Chinese Discovery of Australia
• Chinese Discoverers
• Who Did Discover Australia?: The Chinese
• A list of Australian Archaeological Anomalies
• Turnpike Bigfoot
• A Cryptomundian’s Bigfoot Encounter in Maryland

• Phantom Leopards and Collective Hallucinations
• MU Plus+ 702 – Weretigers
• Power Animals Unleashed!
• Power Animal Invocations
• Find your Power Animal! (Forest Link to find your Power Animal)
• Find your Power Animal Star Trek style!

Music

• AT DAWN WE RAGE – The Road To San Juan via Welikeit.indie
• Neutralize – Falling Down (Feat. Zoë Phillips) Hugh Hardie Remix via WFWYCD
• Truth – Devil’s Hands via Fat Berri’s
• Raffertie – Benediction via Welikeit.indie

The setting is unimpressive. A gravel road lined by trees and weed-choked ditches connects Newton County in the southwest corner of Missouri, with equally rural parts of Oklahoma. This is County Road E50, better know as Spook Light Road. And something that is impressive happens there often.

The Spook Light, found south of Joplin, Missouri, is a glowing orb the size of a basketball that floats down the road from Oklahoma. If you’re sitting in a car waiting for the light, it often dances on the hood of the car, winks out, and reappears behind the car like it had gone right through the cab. The locals say this happens a lot.

Roberta Williams, from nearby Carthage, Missouri, has seen the Spook Light, and she knows it’s real. “It was before midnight,” she said. “It was like a big, huge ball with a yellow glow and it went right straight through our car. I just screamed.”

According to local legend, two Quapaw Indian lovers, chased by warriors and an angry father, jumped from a cliff into the Spring River and died. The Spook Light is supposedly one of the young American Indians walking this quiet road searching for their lost love.

The light gained prominence when white settlers moved into the southwest corner of Missouri in 1886, but the local American Indians reported seeing the light in the early 1800s, said historian Virginia Hoare of Seneca, Missouri. People have seen the light ever sense.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the light in 1946, but couldn’t find the source. Explanations range from gas escaping from the abundant shale in the area, to refracted automobile headlights, to UFOs, and ball lightning.

Northwest Missouri State University physics professor David Richardson planned to investigate the Spook Light with colleagues in 2011, but the EF5 tornado that struck nearby Joplin two months before the study put it on hold. “I’ve always been fascinated by ball lightning and if the Joplin Spook Lights failed the first hypothesis (headlights), then I’d have turned to (ball lightning),” Richardson said. “Having a place that regularly produces ball lightning would be awesome to study, if in fact the location produced it.” Ball lightning in nature is, as of yet, unexplained, although it has been created in the laboratory.

Regardless of what causes the light, it’s there. Locals have seen it often, including Hoare. “When I was in high school, and I graduated in 1934, I saw it,” she said. “It came right through the car. We saw it coming toward us and I looked out the back window and I saw it had passed through the car.”

Former mayor of Seneca Gary Roark has never seen the Spook Light, but knows many who have. “It’s a little bit like people with stories about UFOs,” Roark said. “There’s no doubt they’ve seen something, but what it is is anybody’s guess.”

A building sits at the turnoff to Spook Light Road. Although it’s a private residence now, it used to be the Spook Light museum. The museum was originally owned by Arthur “Spooky” Meadows who later sold it to Garland “Spooky” Middleton. Middleton sold soda to people who stopped to see the Spook Light.

Bill Caldwell, librarian for the nearby Joplin Globe, said he knows why people are interested in the light. “It’s such a community happening. It’s just part of the landscape,” he said. “It is unexplained and intangible, there’s just no way to know what it is.”

To find Spook Light Road from Joplin, take Interstate 44 to Exit 4; Missouri 43 south 4 miles to Gum Road; turn west on Gum Road to a T; turn south; then turn west onto E50. Hoare has advice on the best place to park. “You never know quite where to stop on the road,” Hoare said. “But people say ‘where do you find the most beer cans? That’s where you can stop and see the Spook Light.’”

I trusted Virginia – she’s seen the Light.

Greetings, fellow Coppertops! This week’s prescription of Red Pills will bring you multiverses, exoplanets & events that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. We’ll have a lunch made out of insects & wreck a flying car, after we lose our temper due to hatchet job articles in the Washington Post. And following our study in the raise of UFO sightings in Canada, we’ll join our friends up North to warmly welcome Commander Chris Hadfield, after his long mission aboard the ISS. Speaking of which, it’s my pleasure to announce that the Red Pill Enteprises continue to branch out, and that soon there will be an important development involving our good friends of Grimerica –stay tuned, boy & girls!

10 Our first Red Pill is a follow-up to a story we mentioned last March, when it was revealed how the Planck telescope confirmed a mysterious distribution of the background microwave radiation in the Universe, along what Cosmologists like to call the ‘Axis of Evil,’ because we know how scientists like to mock the things they don’t understand –Big Bang anyone?

Now an article on The Daily Mail reports on Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton, a theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who says the map of the Universe drawn by Planck further confirms a theory she proposed in 2005 along with Richard Holman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University. What is it they proposed that merits a mention in this column? Simply put, that the anomalous distribution of radiation in the Universe is the result of other universes exerting an influence on our own.

Actual photo of the multiverse

She said: ‘These anomalies were caused by other universes pulling on our universe as it formed during the Big Bang.

‘They are the first hard evidence for the existence of other universes that we have seen.’

Needless to say, many of her colleagues remain skeptical. But if proven right, then this finding would constitute physical, measurable evidence that everything we can detect with our most powerful telescopes, is just part of a small bubble swimming around an infinite sea. And if other Universes past or present can exert a gravitational pull in the microwave radiation, does that mean Dark matter & dark energy will follow the fate of the luminiferous ether?

9

Telescopes in…SPAAAAACE

If there are other Universes surrounding our own, do they follow the same laws of Physics? does light in them travel faster or slower? do they have stars & planets where life can evolve? The possibilities are mind-blowing!

To think that less than a hundred years ago scientists were still wondering whether our galaxy was all there was in the Cosmos, and even if there really were other planets orbiting other stars. I still remember when the first exo-planet was officially discovered and how the news made headlines in every major newspaper in the planet. Ironically, thanks to the Kepler telescope the discovery of a new alien planet is met with a collective ‘Meh.’

But we only appreciate what we have once we lose it, and unfortunately it seems the Kepler telescope’s days of blowing the minds of space enthusiasts are finally over. On May 15 NASA announced the space probe has suffered a malfunction in one of its 3 functioning gyroscopes –Kepler is equipped with 4, and 1 had already failed in the past– which means the satellite will not be stable enough to stay in orbit & aim its telescope.

The fact is that Kepler had lasted way longer than its estimated life span, which makes the mission a complete success. And NASA scientists are still hopeful that with a little tweaking Kepler can right itself & remain functional for a little while longer.
But the downside is that Kepler’s replacement mission won’t be launched until at least 2017 –and that’s only if no jackass in Congress affects NASA’s plans by cutting on their budget.

So fare thee well, Kepler. From the 3rd rock of the Sun we salute you, & acknowledge how much YOU rock.

8

Missions like the Kepler space telescope help us realize just how unrealistic our assumptions have become, due to the influence of Sci-Fi in pop culture. Now I’ve always been & always will be a Star Wars fan, but the way George Lucas showed those ultra-clear images of faraway planets on the monitors of the Death Star, you’d think the galaxy was littered with viewing satellites every few parsecs!

Uncle Lars really let the place go… oh wait.

Speaking of the best Sci-Fi franchise of all time –sorry, Darren– my TDG brother Rick MG pointed me out to the work of NY photographer Rä di Martino, who ‘accidentally’ found the abandoned remains of the original Star Wars set while scanning Google Earth, left in Tunisia more than 35 years ago by Lucas & co, and known only by a handful of individuals.

You call it luck? In my experience there’s no such thing.

7 di Martino’s work makes me wonder. What would happen if 200 years from now some clueless archeologist found the remains of Mos Eisley and the Lars homestead? would he or she mistake them as proof of Ancient Aliens intervention?

Imagine this pyramid but as a pile of rocks.

Or perhaps the Star wars ruins will not be so durable, and not long before now a few greedy nerds will travel to Tunisia & bag themselves a very pricey piece of memorabilia. The fact is that not even bonafide ruins are safe from mindless destruction, as was patently proven by the destruction of a 2300 year old Mayan pyramid in Belize, all just to obtain gravel for the construction of a road. Like feeding a wooden stove with the pages of a Gutenberg Bible.

Yes, I listened to Ben & Aaron discuss this on the latest episode of MU, and on this issue I don’t happen to agree with Aaron one bit –sorry, mate. Choosing to preserve one archeological ruin over the other based merely on aesthetic considerations reminds me of conservationist efforts that focus on the ‘cute’ animal species like the pandas or the tigers, but leave out the ‘ugly’ animals like sharks or bats. What you find useless or of little importance today might be proven to be vital in the years to come.

Meanwhile following up on a previous Pill we covered in June of last year, scientists have released images of what they think is the mythic Ciudad Blanca (White City) in Honduras, a once-in-a-lifetime discovery achieved through the use of sophisticated LIDAR technology. Let’s just hope these ruins are prettier than the Noh Mul temple in Belize…

6

Don’t mess with the Sun.

The Sun has unleashed 4 massive solar flares this week:

Experts say that a rise in solar activity is common right now because the Sun is in a phase of its 11-year activity cycle that is nearing the solar maximum, expected in 2013. According to space weather experts at NOAA, more strong solar flares may be expected in the coming days.

See what happens when you mess with the Mayan legacy, bitches??

5 Scientists have learned that low sunspot activity has a subtle effect on crop yields. As if we didn’t face enough problems with our food production due to the effects of Climate Change & the fact that people just can’t overcome their addiction to having more babies!

Come on. Every one is doing it!

Seriously though, there’s just not enough land & water to raise enough cattle to meet the protein demand of a rising population. So what are we to do? The United Nations suggest we bug our way out of world hunger –literally.

Wasps, beetles and other insects are currently “underutilised” as food for people and livestock, the report says. Insect farming is “one of the many ways to address food and feed security”.

“Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint,” according to the report.

Nom Nom Nom

To all the people wincing at the thought of swapping their Big Mac for a beetle sandwich (“Yum! extra crunchy!”) I suggest you lighten up. As a Mexican I’m accustomed to having chapulines as a spicy appetizer –they’re delicious when you’re drinking Tequila or Mezcal– so I agree that adding insects in the mainstream diet would be an easier solution to World Hunger, than lab-grown meat or other means of synthetic protein.

Besides, think about it: you like eating shrimp & lobster? then you’re being a big fat hypocrite, because those are basically the insects of the sea.

4

If there’s something that creeps people out more than having cricket legs between your teeth, is the thought of suffering the amputation of some part of your body due to cancer. And yet the entire world’s attention centered last Tuesday on Angelina Jolie’s revelation that she had gone through a double mastectomy to avoid the risk of developing breast cancer –as fellow Gralien Report fan Milton said on the chatroom last week, for a few moments Twitter was turned into Titter (if you find that joke offensive go complain with him).

I find Jolie’s decision to be very brave, and thanks to a cloning breakthrough produced using the same technique that created Dolly the sheep in the 90s, perhaps her parting away with her breasts will only be a temporary situation. This is a very exciting development, because it’s the 1st time stem cells have been created out of adult cells, which should put religious groups at ease –then again, those religious groups are also against human cloning, so I guess you can’t win them all, right?

I am going to drink you so hard right now…

Oh, and the secret ingredient for the success in the cloning therapeutic technique? Coffee:

“It is remarkable that adding caffeine was the key that resulted in embryonic stem cell lines from all three [egg] donors,” commented Alison Murdoch, professor of reproductive medicine at Newcastle University in the UK where scientists have carried out similar research.

Inducing those poor poor embryos to java addiction. Have these people no morals?! *slurps its third cup of the morning*

3 If we’re currently on our way to develop the capacity to grow a complete human being out of a single cell from an adult donor, what are we to make of the claims raised by UFO researchers, who are utterly convinced alien beings are coming to this planet to kidnap hapless citizens, who then are used as guinea pigs for some machiavellian hybridization program?

One member who listened to these seemingly crazy rants & decided to pay attention was Harvard professor John Mack, who then became heavily involved with Abduction research & went out to write Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994).

This week the magazine Vanity Fair published a refreshingly balanced article –written by Ralph Blumenthal– on the late John Mack & his involvement with a phenomenon that seemed to “contradict virtually all of the basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology on which modern science depends,” as one colleague wrote to Mack. The article explores the heavy toll on Mack’s reputation his interest in ‘alien abductions’ brought to him, along with his personal reassessment on the phenomenon, and its implications on the evolution of Consciousness in the Universe, topics he touched upon on his last book Passport to the Cosmos (1999).

But since mainstream media can’t abide the thought of these silly topics being given the minimum amount of credibility, Blumenthal’s article was rapidly followed by what can only be kindly referred to as a hatchet piece on the Washington Post: The fear that drives our alien belief, by Caitlin Dewey:

Researchers at the Universities of Westminster and Vienna have identified a proverbial host of factors that appear to correlate to belief in UFOs: Gender, politics, religiosity, intelligence, fantasy proneness—even certain psychological disorders, like schizophrenia.

So basically entertaining the existence of UFOs is a tell-tale sign your head has a few screws missing. But wait! there’s more:

Without these stories, psychologist Stephen Diamond explains in an essay on UFOs and the “cry for meaning,” we have to accept the fact that some things mean nothing, and others are totally beyond us—a strange, frightening and ultimately deflating thought.

In fact, it’s arguably easier to believe the universe is full of life, even hostile life, than to believe the universe holds no meaning at all. In that respect, a belief in UFOs answers many of the same questions as a belief in God—explaining, perhaps, why the religious tend to not believe in them.

“You believe in UFOs? Stop being a pussy & face the Nausea of a meaningless existence!”

What can really be said about Dewey & her admirable insight on the belief in UFOs? My Cosmic Compadre señor Micah Hanks has shared his own thoughts at his blog, so there’s hardly anything left for me to add. I’ll only say that when it comes to fear, it comes in all shapes & sizes. And ascribing an existential fear as the basis of an UFOlogical interest might very well constitute a fear itself; one borne out of a refusal to accept that something as important as a non-human intelligence present in our world has been downplayed & overlooked by the powers at be, simply because its the only way to save face against a power that escapes their control –and fearing the idea of something controlling your life instead of you, is probably the reason many people embrace atheism instead. But hey, what do I know? I don’t write for the Washington Post.

2 And it’s also interesting Dewey neglects to consider that some people happen to believe in UFOs because, guess what: they’ve seen them. Shocking, I know.

And those people’s numbers seem to be rising, at least in Canada. According to researcher Chris Rutkowski, who just finished compiling the Canadian UFO Survey for the year 2012, there were more than twice the number of UFOs reported than in the previous year –an average of five each day. Of those reports, only 7.5% were deemed unexplained.

The study found that more than half of all UFO sightings were of simple lights in the sky. Witnesses also reported point sources of light, spheres and boomerangs.
Results of this study show that many people continue to report unusual objects in the sky, and some of these objects do not have obvious explanations. Many witnesses are pilots, police and other individuals with reasonably good observing capabilities and good judgement.

Numbers of reported UFO sightings remain high. Several theories for this can be suggested: more UFOs are present and physically observable by witnesses; more secret or classified military exercises and overflights are occurring over populated areas; more people are unaware of the nature of conventional or natural objects in the sky; more people are taking the time to observe their surroundings; more people are able to report their sightings with easier access to the Internet and portable technology; or even that the downturn in the economy is leading to an increased desire by some people to look skyward for assistance.

Although the largest percentage of reported UFOs is simply lights in the night sky, a small number are objects with definite shapes observed within the witnesses’ frame of reference.

Popular opinion to the contrary, there is no incontrovertible evidence that some UFO cases involve extraterrestrial contact. The continued reporting of UFOs by the public and the yearly increase in numbers of UFO reports suggests a need for further examination of the phenomenon by social, medical and/or physical scientists.

So what about the spike? Chris & his colleague Geoff Dittman don’t elaborate on that –after all, that’s not their job– but perhaps –& let’s be clear I’m speculating here!– people were raising their gaze upward more frequently due to the Mayan Apocalypse craze. There could also have been an increase of unidentified things in Canadian airspace which could be explained by way of radio controlled drones, or even flying cars crashing near schools –wait, what??

Professor Frink Crashes his flying car

Yep, an experimental flying car crashed in British Columbia last week.  Perhaps the ‘driver’ lost control of the car while trying to avoid collision with a UFO. Anything can happen in those blue Canadian skies, eh?

1 Even without the increase of UFO activity, there’s no denying that Canada is closer to space than ever before, thanks to the rising star of Chris Hadfield, who just recently returned to Earth after his 6-month mission as commander of the ISS –but not before he gave us this jewel of a music video, which keeps bringing tears to my eyes no matter how many times I’ve watched it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Which in turn elicited this immediate reaction:

Fuck Yeah, Canada! That is all

Until next time, this is RPJ jacking out, encouraging you to add your voice to the symphony of Life.

One of the questions that I often get asked when it comes to the matter of Cryptozoology goes something broadly like this: “If Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster, and all the rest, are real, then why can’t we ever catch, or find, just one example of them?” Well, there’s no denying, at all, that it’s a very good question!

The skeptic, of course, would say the reason for the lack of such a specimen is simple: all the reports can be explained away via folklore, fantasy, mythology, mistaken identity, and hoaxes. Those monster-hunters who believe the beasts they seek to be flesh and blood and nothing else, would say the creatures are just incredibly elusive. I say neither approach is correct.

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Sasquatch, lake-monsters, and the many and varied other types of mystery animal that get seen every now and again, are absolutely real. In that sense, I believe the skeptics to be mistaken. But, there’s a problem with the flesh and blood angle of the conventional cryptozoologists - as I see it,  at least.

If this bizarre “monster-menagerie” is just comprised of animals that science and zoology have not classified (or downright refuse to classify), then we should be seeing them purely at random locales – places that are normal, everyday environments, but that just happen to be home to some very strange animals. When we look closer, however, we see that is not what is actually happening: The places are often as profound as the beasts themselves.

Indeed, in many cases where crypto-creatures are seen, the location is already noted for its high-strangeness. And, with that said, let’s take a look at a few such places.

I live just outside Dallas, Texas, and – with good friend and fellow creature-seeker, Ken Gerhard – wrote a book a couple of years ago called Monsters of Texas. The book included a chapter on sightings of Bigfoot-type beasts in a massive area of East Texas forest called the Big Thicket. Many of the reports emanate from a long road that runs through the dense woods. Its name is Bragg Road.

Locally, however, the road is known as “Ghost Light Road.” The reason for this is simple: strange, ethereal balls of light are seen flitting among the trees on a regular basis. Thus, we have an area renowned for supernatural activity where Bigfoot just happens to be seen, too.

Now let’s take a trip to Loch Ness, Scotland. If you thought that Nessie (or the Nessies) was the only weird thing in residence at the loch, you would be dead wrong. Aleister Crowley once had a home at the loch – Boleskine House – and while there tried to summon up demons from the dark waters.  Large black cats have been seen roaming the shores of the loch. UFOs have soared overhead, while Men in Black have been seen prowling the surrounding, wooded areas.

It’s the same with England: from the Cannock Chase woods, numerous reports have surfaced of so-called “Alien Big Cats.” Now, they might be escapees from zoos and private menageries. But, many of the reports from the Chase come from a cemetery in the woods known as the German Cemetery (it houses the remains of German military personnel who died on British soil during the First and Second World Wars). Here’s the other thing: large, black cats are not the only kind of crypto-beast seen at the cemetery.

Bipedal, wolf-like animals – definitive werewolves, some might say – have also been seen there, as have Bigfoot-style entities. And a number of reports of the ghostly and spectral style, too, have surfaced from among the old gravestones.

Moving back to the US: Stan Gordon’s excellent book, Silent Invasion, is an in-depth study of an early 1970s wave when UFOs and Bigfoot were seen repeatedly at the same time, and at the same place, in various parts of Pennsylvania. Easily rivaling John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies – in terms of multiple weird phenomena all manifesting in one area – Silent Invasion makes it very difficult to conclude that Bigfoot is just a giant ape and nothing else.

Linda Godfrey’s first-class research into American werewolves has demonstrated connections to cemeteries, to areas that were perceived as sacred and magical by Native Americans, and – bizarrely – to old military bases, too. Her books Hunting the American Werewolf and Real Wolfmen make that abundantly clear.

Now, I’m most assuredly not saying that unknown animals don’t exist – they clearly do. There is a massive amount of evidence that obviously leads in that direction and – in my view – nowhere else. But, when the locations where lake-monsters, lycanthropes, and Bigfoot (to name just three) have been seen are teeming with additional paranormal phenomena – or where the site has, for centuries, been perceived as magical or mysterious - then I think we need to look outside the box.

I will be the first to admit it’s difficult to know what we should make of these cases that tie strange creatures to a wide variety of other “things,” but there is one thing I do know for sure: when a strange creature is seen at an already-strange and renowned site, there’s something afoot that goes way beyond the conventions of just Cryptozoology.

We welcome Micah Hanks back to the guest seat to challenge the tired conventions of UFOlogy and ask the questions that need to be asked to truly grasp the possibilities behind the UFO phenomenon.

What do the coming technological changes mean for humanity and will the UFO phenomenon still hold relevance as we approach the Singularity?

Micah Hanks – The Gralien Report

• NO MORE NOH MUL: CONTRACTOR BULLDOZES MAYA TEMPLE
• Mayan pyramid bulldozed by road crew in Belize
• China destroys the ancient Buddhist symbols of Lhasa City in Tibet
• The Buddhas of Mes Aynak
• Six Months given to Save the Buddhas of Mes Aynak
• Man who thought he just had a runny nose for a year-and-a-half finds out it was really his brain fluid leaking
• Sacred Lotus Genome May Hold Key To The Secrets Of Aging
• Cloning breakthrough by US scientists
• In landmark breakthrough, U.S. scientists finally get stem cells from cloned human embryos
• Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?

Plus+ Extension

The extension of the show is exclusive to Plus+ Members. To learn how to join, click HERE. 

• Orange Fireballs and Little People in England—the Incredible 1994 UFO-Humanoid Case at Silbury Hill

Music

• Raffertie – Build Me Up via ZacGK
• Kidnap Kid – Animaux via Lautstark
• Beat Culture – Before You Go via All Ears
• antony – In Every (Original Mix) via Les Petits Bruits
• Flume – What You Need (Blue Version Edit) via Winnie Cooper
• Rampue – Katz Und Maus via Delicieuse Musique
• Airhead – Milkola Bottle via Ad Hoc

This event occurred to me at least twelve years ago, and I still don’t know what happened.

Driving home from a Friday night shift at the newspaper, my car’s cruise control set on 55 mph, I drove by a road sign I’ve driven by hundreds of times. It reads, “Orrick: 5 Miles.” Just as I went by, the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter” came on the radio.

Perfect. I lived in Orrick, Missouri, at the time, and “Gimme Shelter” was not only my favorite Rolling Stones tune, it was also four minutes, thirty-seven seconds long, which would last me all the way home.

Then my drive fell out of reality.

A pull on the car engine snapped me out of the road hypnosis that had overtaken me. It took me a few seconds to realize that pull was the cruise control trying to keep the speed steady up a hill. The trouble was there were no hills between that road sign and my turnoff. Looking out the window didn’t help; a thick fog had enveloped the car and I could barely see the dotted line on the road. I slowed the car and drove up two more hills before I saw a light piercing through the fog.

Turning onto a gravel road toward the light, I found myself in the parking lot of a Jehovah’s Witness church and knew where I was – five miles on the other side of my turnoff. As I sat in the parking lot, my car in park, trying to figure out how I missed the exit, I heard something I couldn’t believe. “Gimme Shelter” still played on the radio. It continued to play for another minute and a half.

After I calmed a bit, I put the car in gear, pulled back onto the highway and went home. The fog quickly dissipated. I’d driven ten miles in three minutes at 55 mph. That wasn’t possible. What happened to me?

Cases of missing time and distance are as common as they are confusing. The Internet is littered with tales of travelers entering a fog only to discover they’re suddenly 300 miles away from home, or they’ve gone nowhere, but it’s inexplicably hours later. Explanations range from time slips, to dimensional slips, to alien abduction. Whatever the case, Brandon White of Maryville, Missouri, has experienced missing time and distance; more than once. “The first time I was about ten and I was walking out in the front yard,” White said. It was just after lunch.

As White went toward a thick ring of pine trees that surrounded his family’s farmhouse, he saw something floating on the other side of the tree line. “It was pale, sort of translucent,” he said. “It was passing between our house and the neighbor’s house. I thought it was a blimp.”

His afternoon suddenly disappeared. “The next thing I remember was coming in for dinner; 5 or 5:30,” he said. “I didn’t think about it at the time. As a kid, time was nothing.”

But five hours of his life were just gone.

In his teens, his life got stranger. “At 13 or 14 I stopped sleeping. I was deathly afraid of sleep,” he said. “I would fall to sleep, get into an REM sleep, and start screaming. I would wake up in strange places. In the yard, on the porch, upside down hanging from my bunk bed.” White said he doesn’t remember when he’s been able to catch more than four hours of sleep a night. “I had very vivid nightmares,” he said. Those nightmares often included a bird. “A big black crow. It would flap over my face, trying to take my breath.”

Later in his teens when White worked at Long John Silver’s in a town 38 miles away, he experienced more missing time. “I was riding my motorcycle. I remember that night very specifically. I worked a double shift,” he said. “Before I left town, I filled up my (gas) tank.” As he pulled onto a gravel road toward his parent’s house, he saw an orange ball hanging low in the sky. “I stopped and thought, ‘the moon’s a weird color,’” he said. “Then I saw it was not the moon. The moon doesn’t block the landscape.” As he got closer, he saw this orange ball was thirty to forty feet in diameter, and hovered five or six feet off the ground.

He got off the motorcycle three hours simply disappeared. “It’s the last thing I remember,” he said. “It was 7:35 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. I pulled into Dad’s driveway and something zoomed over me and disappeared into a valley.”

He stopped the bike and got off, leaving it running as he dashed to a fence to look for the light. It had gone. When he returned to his motorcycle, it started to sputter and the engine died. It was out of gasoline. “I filled it up, drove 38 miles, and it died,” White said.

White lost three hours of time and a tank of gasoline in what should have been a 40-minute motorcycle ride. Was the light responsible?

Years later, when White worked in nearby St. Joseph, Missouri, he stopped at a gas station around 1 a.m. to buy coffee and a candy bar to help keep him awake for the 45-minute drive home. He didn’t know something strange awaited him. “I got on the highway, next thing I knew there was a thick fog,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was. I was on this nameless dirt road.” And he was moving fast.

The narrow road, sloped on each side and covered by a canopy of trees, seemed like a tunnel. He slowed and tried to figure out where he was. “I found a field where I could turn around,” White said. “The fog was so thick I had to open my door to see the side of the road. I had no idea where I was. I was really, really fuzzy and disorientated. I know I was upset about something, but I don’t know why.”

Lights eventually bit through the fog and White pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store near the highway, but things were less than convenient. The store sat at the end of an exit that consisted of two difficult turns. White said he shouldn’t have made those turns. “I would have had to, at 70 mph, gone through those 90-degree turns while I was unconscious,” he said.

When he woke, “I was pretty fuzzy headed. It was like I’d been drugged.”

Although White concedes for the skeptic it’s within the realm of possibility he could have fallen asleep at the wheel and gotten lost in the fogbank, he was miles from where he should have been, and would have had to be amazingly lucky. “I don’t know how I could have made those turns,” he said. “I lost distance and time. I don’t have the foggiest idea how I got there.”

In early 1941, Sir David Petrie was appointed Director General of the Security Service. MI5, and was given substantial resources to restructure the organization, whose origins date back to 1909. As a result, MI5 became one of the most efficient agencies of the War. After the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, it was learned that all of the Nazi agents targeted against Britain had been successfully identified, and in some cases recruited as double-agents, by MI5 – something that contributed to the success of the Allied Forces landing in Normandy on D-Day on 6 June 1944. 

A number of files pertaining to the wartime activities of MI5 have been declassified and are now available for public inspection at the National Archive, Kew, England. One deals with MI5 investigations of what are intriguingly described as “markings on the ground.” With hindsight, today, those markings may have been nothing less than Crop Circles!

According to the report: “This account is not concerned with the activities of fifth columnists such as sabotage, capturing airfields and key points, and harassing the defending army, but in the methods used in communicating to each other and to the enemy. Reports from Poland, Holland, France and Belgium showed that they used ground markings for the guidance of bombers and paratroops (and of lights by night).”

The author of the report continued: “Such ground markings might be the cutting of cornfields into guiding marks for aircraft, painting of roofs and the inside of chimneys white, setting haystacks on fire, and laying out strips of white linen in pre-arranged patterns. For guiding and giving information to advancing troops they would conceal messages behind advertisement hoardings and leave markings on walls and telegraph poles.”

Most notable of all: from interviews conducted with Allied personnel who had taken part in the hostilities in Poland, MI5 had determined that one of the ways that Nazi spies were communicating with German Luftwaffe pilots was by “beating out signs,” twenty meters in diameter, “on harrowed fields or mowing such signs on meadows or cornfields.” Crop circles, as they are famously known today!

Interestingly, as a result of finding such curious formations across wartime Europe, MI5 began a stealthy check of cornfields throughout the British Isles for any evidence of similar activity. In a section of a report titled Examples of Ground Markings Investigated, a still-anonymous MI5 employee wrote:

“Field, north of Newquay, Cornwall: Aircraft noticed, in May 1940, strange marking in this field and it was photographed. Enquiries were made and it was found that the lines were formed by heaps of lime used for agricultural purposes. The farmer concerned was above reproach and removed the lime heaps.”

A second report followed: “Field at Little Mill, Monmouthshire: In May 1941 a report was made that an unusual mark was visible amongst the growing corn. Near one of the gates was a mark in the form of the letter G, some 33 yards long. This mark had been made by sowing barley transversely through the grain.”

MI5 added: “Air photographs were taken and it was seen that the tail of the marking pointed towards the Ordnance factory at Glascoed. The farmer, a man of good character, was interviewed, and admitted that he had sown the field himself. He explained that he had sold the field in April.

“Shortly after, having a drilling machine nearby which had a small quantity of barley seed in it, and wishing to empty it as he had to return it to the farmer from whom he had borrowed it that night, he turned his team of horses into the grain field and drilled it into the ground thickly to get rid of it. He did this because it is extremely difficult to remove the grain in the machine by hand, and to sow it was the quickest way of getting rid of it.

“He agreed to plough up this part of the field. As a satisfactory explanation had been reached, the case was carried no further.”

And the reports kept on coming: “Field, near Staplehurst, Kent: In October, 1943, aircraft saw a faint white circle on the ground. Enquiries were made, and it was discovered that before the war the field was used as an emergency landing ground by Imperial Airways; the mark was made by them, and they paid a small yearly rent to the farmer. At the beginning of the war the mark was obliterated in some way, but this had worn thin. Steps were taken to obliterate it again.”

It is quite clear from examining the contents of these now-declassified files that the foremost thought on the part of MI5 was that the wartime Crop Circles across Europe – as well as the similar formations found on the British mainland – were the work of Nazi spies, and that the designs were intended to convey a specific, coded message to German bomber-pilots.

It’s also deeply important, however, to note that with regard to the truly unknown formations that MI5 studied (those from Poland, Holland, France and Belgium), the theory they were created by the Nazis was simply that: a theory, an assumption, an assessment of the fragmentary data available.

Of course, in 1944, no-one was perceiving these formations as something possibly linked to distinctly unusual – possibly even paranormal – phenomena. But, maybe, that’s exactly the direction MI5 should have been looking in…