phenomena magazine - april 2014 - issue 60

WWW.PARANORMALSCOTLAND.COM

MANAGING EDITORIAL

Hello and welcome to our April 2014 issue. I’ve been out and about travelling up and down the country conducting lectures. Sam Wright’s weekend event in March, the Probe International conference in St. Anne’s went down a storm. It was also nice meeting up with fellow ufologists Nigel Mortimer and his wife. Brian Allan was also on hand to deliver an excellent lecture on UFOs, lies and secret exotic aircraft. A lecture I would recommend to all event organisers. I also visited New Horizons in Preston thanks to John and New Horizon’s in St. Anne’s delivering a lecture with Steve Johnson. The full video can be viewed on Youtube when searching for ‘New Horizons Steve Johnson Precognition’. I’d also like to take the opportunity in thanking Dave Hodrien and his brother for their hospitality. I lectured at the Birmingham UFO Group meeting on April 23rd, followed by a lecture for Club Zero Paranormal in Cheadle, Stockport.

Quite a few more lectures planned. For those interested I will be in Blackburn at Nicola Hebson’s Curiosity Shop on May 1st at 7.30pm to deliver a talk on the subject of UFOs. Further details can be found in this issue. In August I will be visiting the UFO Truth Magazine Conference organised by Gary Heseltine. A weekend event not to be missed. Finally, in association with Phenomena Magazine ‐ The Scottish Paranormal Festival is set to be the biggest event of its kind in the UK, featuring lectures on numerous subjects along with other attractions. Full details can be found in this issue. We hope you enjoy the variety of articles in this months edition and don’t forget… If you’re interested in having your article featured in our magazine and distributed internationally, feel free to get in touch. We would love to hear about your experience’s.

EDITORIAL One aspect of Ufology that has always seemed a bit, ‘out of place’ shall say, is the apparent need of visiting ET’s to occasionally take blood and tissue samples from either animals or, even worse, human beings, and all with the alleged connivance of various governments. There was also the school of though that claimed the ET’s were actually using the humans and animals for food. ‘Ah yes’ we are told, ‘Various governments acquiesced to this and turned a blind eye in order to obtain knowledge of their technology on a swap tissue for technology basis’. Well, perhaps! At first, i.e. decades ago, I embraced and accepted Ufology at face value, (I was even there when people like George Adamski were on the scene, it was how I got into the subject of the paranormal in the first place). I just went with the flow and accepted it all as a fact, then age and with it curiosity (and perhaps common sense) kicked in.

Why would they need to do that I wondered? Why would a race that was presumably much in advance of our own and had conquered the enormous technological challenges of interstellar travel have such a primitive knowledge of medicine and physiology that they actually needed to mutilate living animals and humans to obtain the information they needed? This simply does not add up, but nevertheless the idea has become seamlessly enmeshed as an icon of traditional ETH Ufology. By the way, if anyone has any reasonable suggestions regarding why ET’s would actually need human tissue samples I would be delighted to hear them.

Managing Editor Contact: Steve Mera ‐ [email protected]

Editor Contact: Brian Allan ‐

[email protected]

Spanish Editor Contact: Dario Fernandez‐ info@e‐nigmas.com.ar

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The PM Team: Sotiris at STRANGE‐FILES.ME, Danial Verdon at UREI, Randy at UFOSTORE.COM, Dario Fernandez at e‐nigmas / portal de lo paranormal. Tim at UFOTV, Main Distribution Steve Mera & Brian Allan, Reporter Jackie Heighway

& Reporter / Photographer Rodney Howarth.

THIS MONTHS CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Mera, Brian Allan, Neil McDonald, Giuseppe DiMarco, Stephen Wakefield, Richard Freeman, John Prytz, Stefan

Hager, Russell Symonds, Nancy Talbot, Rebecca Lomas, Philip Mantle, Jonathan O'Callaghan, Harriet Arkell, Tara Brady,

James Rush & Steph Cockroft.

CONTENTS

: Learning to love the Strange. Ever since I can remember I have always loved horror movies and Halloween. As a kid Halloween was scary and fun, but when the real paranormal events started to happen it was not fun any more, just terrifying. I thought that I should not be seeing these things and feet like I was the only one who did so I kept it to myself. Giuseppe Di‐Marco describes his experiences of the paranormal... Page 7: The Labyrinth: Journeys Within, Journeys Beyond. Puzzles are beguiling to humanity. However complex or simple they appear to be at first glance, they challenge the mind – and on occasion, perhaps, the soul – to identify the order amid the chaos, and prove that we are the means to the unravelling of enigmas. Stephen Wakefield looks into the history of the Labyrinth, its myster‐ies, complexities and use around the world. Page 15: Manatorro: The Killer of Bulls. Snakes hold a special fascination for man, perhaps because of their "alieness". Their vermiform bodies have no limbs and their eyes no lids. They have no ears and "hear" by picking up vibrations via their bodies through the ground. Many are venomous and the idea of such small animals being so formidably armed is disturbing, especially when there are ones big enough to kill bulls. Richard Freeman investigates. Page 19: Roswell: E.T. Vs. Project Mogul. Some further thoughts about that July 1947 Roswell "flying saucer" that crashed or crashed‐landed, with some additional emphasis on the prosaic Project Mogul explanation that explains all – not. Firstly, I consider any bona‐fide UFO that remains a UFO after investigation by those qualified to do so as bona‐fide evidence that something ex‐traordinary – is going on. John Prytz explains...

Page 27: A Laboratory for the Future of Humanity. Underground temples with secret doorways. Connections to other cultures in the universe. Food grown in the lab. Time‐travel, astral travel or a mix of both ‐ if all that raises questions and interest, there is a place that claims it can provide all that and more. Nestled in the mountains north of Turin in the Chiusella Valley is the "Federation of Damanhur". Stefan Hager reveals a fascinating location… Page 29: Are Crop Circles Hoaxes or other Worldly Phenomena? Crop circles have gripped the imagination, attention and interest of the world ever since the earliest circular formations discovered in the 1960's. The scientific association, the media, and the New Age believers almost always showed some interest in the appearance of new crop formations. Is there a real phenomenon taking place here? Russell Symonds and Nancy Talbot reveal some interesting facts… Page 35: Sculpting the Alien. On the run in to Christmas 2013 I was looking online for a different type of Christmas gift. I came across a website of a sculptor in Lanca‐shire who had some terrific dinosaurs that he had previously made. Cutting a long story short I contacted him and asked if he would be interested in designing something unique for us here at UFO TODAY. Rebecca Lomas & Philip Mantle reveal the amazing results...

Also Featured:

Latest paranormal news from around the World... Book and dvd reviews. Events and Conferences throughout the uk, Astronomical news, Advertisements and

much more.

Phenomena Magazine would love to hear your views and opinions, please let us have your feedback. Also, If you have an interesting article, we would love to hear from you. Please contact:

Phenomena Magazine Managing Editor Steve Mera: [email protected]

or Phenomena Magazine Editor Brian Allan: [email protected]

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Learning to love the StrangeBy Giuseppe DiMarco


I have had encounters with the paranormal more or less all my life, but I my first real encounter was when I was quite young, probably six years old, but first a little back‐ground. I am one of seven children; I was born in Paterson, New Jersey and lived there for a few months when my parents, who were immigrants, decided to move back to Sicily. We lived there for around one year before my older brother and I got sick. The doctors in Sicily could not find out what was wrong with us so they told my parents to take us back to the US because the medical facilities there were much better, so we came back to the US and the doctors spot‐ted the problem and found a cure. After that my parents decided to stay in the US.

The Cyclist

Now back to my first experience. I remem‐ber when I was about six years old I used to see a man on a 10 speed bicycle, but he was dressed in bike shorts, shirt and a hat like he raced bikes. However he was transparent. I started seeing him on the main road when I was in the car with my parents and I thought it strange that I could see partway through him, but not totally. He would ride up along‐side the car and start waving at me. It made me uncomfortable so I would look away then look back, but he was still there waving to get my attention and I ignored it. That was the first day, then my parents took us visit my cousin who lived around thirty min‐utes away from our home.

We hit the main road again and this man on the bike rides along side waving to me again. I looked at him and waved back and I saw a smile, then I look away still feeling strange about it. I did not say anything to my parents in the car. He kept riding along side us for awhile. We got on the highway and he was still alongside us, but now he was peddling really hard keeping up and still waving. I am like, ‘How the hell is he keeping up on a bicycle’? That did not make any sense. I knew something was not right, but still kept it a secret never telling anyone. This went on for a year or two then stopped.

When I did eventually tell my mother (this was only a few months ago) she said I was crazy, but I believe my mother has a little bit of a gift and I inherited this from her, be‐cause she told me some really interesting paranormal events that had happened in her life. These occurred when people in her family were dying. Other family members who had already died would come to her and tell her what would occur with a dying relative and it would happen just as they said.

The Dead Child

When I was a little older, maybe eight years old, I remember waking up in the night to use the bathroom. I was totally awake and I remember this like it was yesterday. I walked in front of my dresser and a boy with his head cut off at the lower neck appeared in front of me, there was a rope around the stump, ‘Why am I seeing this’? I thought to myself. There were flames behind him. This lasted for several seconds then dissipated. Note that I said ‘dissipated’ not just disap‐peared. It was like this image (or apparition)

just dissolved slowly in front of me rather than abruptly vanished. After this encoun‐ter I kept hearing knocking on my wall every night as I went to sleep; this hap‐pened for many years. During my formative years I grew up in Wanaque, New Jersey, which is notorious for strange events and even UFO sightings. Look up ‘Wanaque UFO’ on the internet and you will see what I mean, there is also supposedly an alleged ‘vortex area’ located in Wanaque, some‐thing often reported in connection with UFO sightings, it has been suggested that aliens sometimes use them to travel here.

Ever since I can remember I have always loved horror movies and Halloween. As a kid Halloween was scary and fun, but when the real paranormal events started to hap‐pen it was not fun any more, just terrifying. I thought that I should not be seeing these things and feet like I was the only one who did so I kept it to myself. When you encoun‐ter genuine evil as a young person it leaves a profound and long lasting impression on you, until you eventually either forget about it or you finally manage to accept it

Graveyard Shift TV Show

Giuseppe DiMarco is the creator of the show Grave‐yard Shift. Throughout his whole life he's been fascinated with the paranor‐mal. At the age of ten he had his first paranormal experience which he kept a secret for years.

Throughout the years Giuseppe had seen and heard things that he could not explain which lead him to ex‐plore the paranor‐mal. He had always wanted to create a paranor‐mal reality TV show before there were any para‐normal TV reality shows around.

Learning to love the Strange By Giuseppe DiMarco


and it stops bothering you. I now know that there are many strange and uncanny things lurking on this planet we live on, I also know that some people see them and others don’t, and that some believe and some don’t. If you have never had a genuine para‐normal experience you won’t understand what I mean until you do, then it becomes very clear indeed.

The Pet Dog

I had always believed in ghosts, but not in anything demonic. I never believed anything like that until it happened to me in my early twenties. It was a nice summer’s morning and I was on my way to work. I went out to my car and noticed that my dog, Mia, was across the street and I called out to her to come to me. She did not acknowledge me so I yelled out “Mia come here” she turned around and what I saw horrified me to the extent that I could not put the keys in my car door to open it fast enough. The dogs face was distorted and evil looking, the feeling of sheer evil it radiated raised the hair on my back, arms, neck and all over. This was not Mia, this was not my dog, this was some‐thing that looked truly demonic. I drove around the block and called my mother from my cell phone and told her to go out and get the dog, but my mother said it was not even outside! I went back to the street and there was no dog in sight. I searched for a full ten minutes and found nothing.

The Demon of High Places

However, the scariest of all the paranormal events that have occurred to me happened in 2007 and the experience will be with me the rest of my life. I was working as a police officer in New Jersey. By now I had been doing paranormal investigating for ten years. If I was working nights on my rounds I would take photographs or carry out some quick EVP sessions if I was patrolling around a historic or haunted location. Well, this particular night I was on a college campus and entered one of the auditoriums which dates back to 1870. I took some photos and got some orbs, but had an uneasy feeling, so I started asking questions while taking pho‐tos. This intense feeling of being watched really got to me so I challenge this thing, whatever it was. I said, ‘If you are watching me show yourself or do something to me’. Bad move! Never challenge what you think might be a ghost, because it could be de‐monic and do things to you that you would never think possible. I returned to this loca‐tion several times and repeated the chal‐lenge with no obvious immediate effects, but that was to change.

By now my work shift on nights changed to days. I was working at one of my posts and entered a tall building. It was a nice day so I went to the roof to look out over the city. I walked to the edge I stood there enjoying the view and my legs started to shake and it felt like some force was trying to make me jump; it was like something had taken con‐trol of my legs. The thing was that my head was totally clear, I thought, ‘I’m a cop for Christ’s sake’. I backed away and thought what the hell is going on. I walked to the edge again and same thing happened, shak‐ing legs and a force trying to make me jump. I stayed clear of the edge and walked to the stairway in total shock. Then it hit me, some‐thing had got inside me and tried to make me jump off the roof. My challenge had been taken, this entity had won. From that day I dreaded going to work knowing this thing was waiting for me. I never told my wife or other officers. This thing taunted me for a year; it got inside my head and played with my emotions. It did not follow me home, but knew I’d return through my work. Walking along any high places would scare me because in my mind the entity would try to make me jump. That lasted for several years. It got to a point where the evil was so bad that I started reading the bible every day when I was at work and I kept telling this thing I would beat it. I am a firm believer in God and that He will protect me. I left the police department in 2008 and my life went back to normal, but I still think about that event. At present I’m still doing paranormal investigations and working on two paranor‐mal TV shows along with a documentary on

The Wanaque UFO. I am always happy to hear from other people in the paranormal field. Also if anyone is interested on having me on one of their projects all they have to do is contact me. Just remember do not challenge a ghost because you just do not know what you are dealing with and they will sometimes get you when you least expect it.

Some words from Giuseppe DiMarco

I started Graveyard Shift TV because, first and foremost, it has always been a dream of mine to get involved in the film and TV industry. While I was in mid twenties I wanted to make a TV show on ghost hunt‐ing, but at the time people I knew either were not interested or did not have time so I let it go. Then the Reality TV show ‘Ghost Hunters’ came on and it blew me away because this is exactly what I wanted to do and the paranormal field just ex‐ploded after that. I felt I could really con‐tribute to this field, which is why I set up the company. Originally I just wanted to make Reality TV shows on the paranormal, but now I am looking to extend further in other areas, but right now I'm taking it slowly and don’t want to get ahead of my‐self. In the paranormal aspect of it I plan to make my company global so everyone can work with us. I want to reach out to other people who have encountered different aspects of the paranormal, people who have had problems etc. We can learn from each other and maybe eventually help to make the unknown known...

Graveyard Shift TV Show

Giuseppe DiMarco decided it was

time to make a TV show that would intrigue people

interested in this field that has

exploded over the last decade. With a different twist

and mind blowing ideas for the show, Graveyard Shift is in a league of it's

own. Giuseppe has also written up

two other shows called Jersey's

Devil and Get Your Ghost On which are still being viewed by film

industries. Giuseppe is also

working on a documentary

about UFO sight‐ings, alien contact, and a vortex in a small New Jersey

town. There is also a new movie is in the works called Scared To Death

Forever.

Through social networking and word of mouth Giuseppe has

made many new friends in the

paranormal field. Giuseppe's mission is to make Grave‐

yard Shift a hit television show

world wide. When asked what is it

that will make the show big? His

answer was " We are going to do what the rock

band KISS did in the 1970's, blow

your minds!"

Jeffrey Bonicioli is the history buff of the crew so when

it comes to a haunted location where there has

been war, for example Gettys‐

burg which is also knows as the

biggest cemetery in the US Jeffrey

just can't get enough of it. Besides ghost

hunting and his interest in history

Jeffrey likes to take photographs, something he does

very well.

Phenomena Magazine: April 2014 - Issue 60: www.phenomenamagazine.co.uk

The Labyrinth: Journeys Within, Journeys Beyond By Stephen Wakefield


Puzzles are beguiling to humanity. However complex or simple they appear to be at first glance, they challenge the mind – and on

occasion, perhaps, the soul – to identify the order amid the chaos, and prove that we are the means to the unravelling of enigmas. There is a satisfaction in completing even the most mundane of

puzzles, with the utility of mind over matter suggesting our empowerment in the face of so much uncertainty, thus where the puzzle is more profound there can be genuine worth and meaning

in its completion. The labyrinth is a particularly beguiling form of puzzle which can

represent the amusement of the child in play, the symbolic representation of the human mind or the journey from birth to

death, or indeed of death to the beyond. Labyrinths are especially apparent as symbols beyond their material reality, as they

frequently obviate the complexity of the maze (with multicursal form, whereby numerous choices of direction are offered) in favour of the apparently unsophisticated (the unicursal, single path which

leads directly to the centre). Where less stimulation is overtly possible in terms of actually solving the riddle, there must instead

be a deeper and more profound purpose at hand...



Labyrinths, and the use of the shapes which make them up, are as old as our species. Petro‐glyphs (rock engravings) in South Goa dating from between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago offer images of bulls, human figures and recognisable labyrinth forms, while the Solovetsky Islands of Russia contain over a dozen labyrinths made from arrangements of stone boulders, and cup‐and‐ring markings in the form of the maze on coins, in caves and made on grander scales with the use of standing stones, reach across the globe and link with Megalithic cave art of simple form but mysterious import. The shapes, and the patterns that they are ar‐ranged in, appear to be of timeless meaning to the human understanding of and reaction to the cosmos; the sun, the moon, animals and human‐ity itself are all apparent, alongside composite images of recognisable shapes in coordinated form with one another – drawing a response of recognition even today, but with a true purpose that has been frustratingly lost in the thousands of years since their creation. As archetypal forms they are elusive, but their existence as an expres‐sion of human life, endeavour and rumination is testament to just how little separates us today from our earliest ancestors. It is telling that the interpretations of what these labyrinths might be have ranged from humanity’s attempt to understand its place in the universe and the ritual journey from mortal death to the realm of the afterlife, to life‐size ‘sketches’ of fishing equipment or other such tools that would serve a purely material but important purpose for a given community. The mists of time have obscured the truth, and we are left with the greatest puzzle of all to piece together – yet, relying as any conclusion must on belief rather than evidential proof, there is little hope of con‐sensus on the subject, and no chance whatsoever of absolute knowledge where the mystery of the labyrinth is concerned.

The Classical Form

The Ancients tell us that five great mazes existed in their time: one in Egypt (which Pliny and oth‐ers believed was located at Lake Moeris, South‐west of Cairo), two in Crete (in Knossos and Gor‐tyna), one in Greece (on the island of Lemnos) and one in what is today Italy (at the city of Clu‐sium). The Classical form was indeed more iden‐tifiable as a maze rather than as a labyrinth, and of such diabolical nature that one might be lost within it, so overwhelming was its form. This type of labyrinth is no less symbolic than its simple brother, however, and ideas on its pur‐pose include the luring in of monsters or devils so as to entrap them away from society, the repre‐sentation of chaos which has so terrified man since his earliest days under the stars, and the connected use of the maze as a liminal space (outside of normal time and space) within which initiations into sacred orders and mystery schools

could take place and prove the worthiness of a given candidate. Of the five discussed Classical mazes, the Egyp‐tian is the only one which can be at least debat‐ably dated. Believed to have been constructed in the mid‐19th century B.C.E., it was spoken of in some detail and with no little exaggeration by the likes of Herodotus (484‐425 B.C.E.) and Strabo (64/63B.C.E. – 24 C.E).

Herodotus was particularly impressed by this labyrinth, which to him was ‘greater than even words could tell’, eclipsing even the pyramids in its expanse and majesty and putting to shame the composite efforts of the Greeks. Three thou‐sand interconnecting rooms, many of immense size with stone walls covered in intricate carvings were responsible for but part of his awe, as one corner of the labyrinth gave out to a pyramid nearly 250 feet high bearing its own stone carv‐ings (reached through an underground passage) and Lake Moeris, a giant man‐made expanse connected by canal to the Nile, overlooked all of this with two more pyramids rising from it, again flanked by works of stone. Pliny the Elder (23‐79 C.E.) was no less amazed by the site, which prompted him to suggest that these labyrinths might perhaps be ‘the most stupendous works on which mankind has ex‐pended its labours’. By the time of the antiquar‐ian and Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie (1853‐1942) there were but ruins where once the

magnificent complex had stood, but there re‐mained sufficient evidence for him to record what appeared to be a building of 1,000 feet on an East to West trajectory, and 800 feet from North to South.

Situated near Crocodolipolis (the ‘City of the Crocodiles’), the lower rooms of the labyrinth contained the remains of the Kings who had overseen its construction, as well as the re‐mains of sacred crocodiles that had been cov‐ered in jewels and fed on the finest of foods in life before their ritual embalming and transpor‐tation to their final place of rest within the gi‐ant labyrinth complex. It was this reverence for the sacred beast (and typical Kingly ego) that fuelled the construction of such a place, where the divine could rest in a site that was suitably glorious and all but impenetrable, the sanctity of death and the majesty of kingship sacrosanct and immediately obvious to even the lowliest of men. More detail was left to posterity by the Greek labyrinths, from which the very word ‘labyrinth’ also derived. Actually originating with the Mi‐noan (pre‐Greek) civilization, it came from the Lydian term ‘labrys’ which denoted a double‐headed axe, a powerful symbol of royal power that unites the Greek labyrinths with that of Egypt as homes of the regal and the divine, and suggests the widespread use of the labyrinth form as a place of especial human significance. In the Minoan context the labrys was most commonly associated with goddess‐worship and matriarchy, and when surmounted with a ‘sacral knot’ design represented the human cycle of death and resurrection, made possible by the life‐giving properties of the feminine principle. The connection between labrys and labyrinth therefore also suggests the liminal quality of a space especially created to serve as a boundary between life and death, essentially as a gateway to the beyond couched in an ar‐chitectonic form so as to keep the two realms separate for all but the initiated.

The Cretan labyrinth at Knossos is perhaps the most commonly known of the five Ancient models due to the immortality granted to it through myth. Constructed by Daedalus for King Minos, this was the home of the Minotaur, the half‐human and half‐bull monster that de‐manded feeding every nine years on the blood of Athenian maidens and youths lest he find his way from the maze to torment all others. The purpose of this labyrinth was most certainly keeping the beast lost within it, just as it served to disorientate and diminish those sent into it so that they would be all the more ready a prey for the Minotaur. Of course, the brave Theseus ventured into the maze and at length slew the beast, returning to his love Ariadne thanks to the thread that she had gifted to him and which had served as his lifeline back to civilization. Celebrations were



had including the ‘Geranos’ or ‘Crane Dance’ which saw its participants emulate the threading of the labyrinth, a dance that survived by ac‐counts until very recently as a form of retelling of the myth for new generations.

The labyrinth of Knossos has been identified as that of Gortyna, later described by the likes of the French botanist J. P. de Tournefort (1656‐1708) who declared that its passages (opening on the side of Mount Ida) were so numerous and confusing that should he take a wrong step, he ‘...could scarce ever get out again without the utmost danger of being lost.’ However, Tourne‐fort himself concluded that the network of pas‐sages was more likely a natural formation than a man‐made construct – and opinions remain di‐vided as to if this ‘labyrinth’ and that of the Minotaur are one and the same. It is entirely possible that with the development of Cretan culture came a similar development in stories relating to the natural cave system of Gortyna. It would not be unusual to have a col‐ourful story attached to what is in truth a some‐what random occurrence, whether to offer a moral to the ‘modern’ man or to explain through the acts of gods and men how such a miraculous hive of passages might have come into being – as is apparent in the cave art of Palaeolithic man and the continuing interpretations of the laby‐rinth and associated enigmas, humanity strives to perceive mystery and spiritual wonder in the mundane, if only to assure itself that it is not alone, that there is more beyond the here and now, and that we, like the patterns of the laby‐rinth, are but part of a larger picture which per‐spective alone obscures us from realising. Even where easily explained, the labyrinth and its rid‐dles are tantalising bringers of hope to the trapped and estranged being that is the rational human.

Faith and Fancy

Labyrinth forms were adopted into a more acces‐sible and immediate form by the Greeks and Romans, who used them as meander decoration (where a continuous line is placed in a repeated pattern) for their various decorations of collage, vessels and even on pavements of towns and cities. The expanse of the Roman Empire being what it was, the meander was soon found across Europe, and with it the concept of the labyrinth became an aspect of more popular conscious‐ness and everyday awareness. Certain accounts tell of French clerics, circa 1000 C.E., performing a ritual Easter dance along the path on Easter Sunday. While the origins and exact manner of this performance are, like so much else, lost in time, the insinuation is of cer‐tain cliques within the Christian faith perceiving the meander – and through it the labyrinth – as a symbol of transmission between realms, as the Ancients before them did. It was a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic journey of

the soul, lost in the material realm, working its way back to its holy source through faith and fortune.

Unfortunately, even where more definite proof of labyrinth‐usage within Church art and archi‐tecture is found, the meaning behind it remains elusive. The labyrinth found in the basilica of St. Reparatus in Algeria (bearing at its centre a word square using the words ‘Sancta Ecclesia’ or ‘Holy Church’), for instance, suggests that the labyrinth was here used as a meditative aid for clerics who worked their way along its paths toward the Mother Church in the Holy City – it is easy to imagine the shuffling gait of the penitent working from the outside toward the centre, offering prayers as he went – but there is little evidence to support this as fact. The same can be said for other church labyrinths, which found especial popularity during the con‐struction of some of Europe’s greatest cathedrals in the 12th – 14th centuries. Reims, Amiens and Chartres, all in the North of France, were built in the gothic tradition and are the finest examples of medieval craftsmanship; as testaments to faith as equally as to man’s labours in its name, these buildings all contained at one time large depic‐tions of the labyrinth on their floors, though that of Rheims fell foul of a Canon in the 18th century who had grown weary of it attracting so many people who walked its paths with great clamour, and had it destroyed! Bayeux Cathedral has a beautiful circular laby‐rinth on the floor of its chapter house that is some 12 feet across, while at Poitiers there was once an unusual image of unknown size almost in a form like an almost circular tree, with the en‐trance serving as the trunk (long gone, a repre‐sentation of it remained on the wall of the

cathedral’s North aisle as a reminder). Further afield, certain Italian labyrinths (such as that of San Michele Maggiore at Pavia) can be found on a much smaller scale on the walls of the church, carrying at their centre a representa‐tion of Theseus and the Minotaur for good measure. Britain, too, is home to fine examples of the form, with Ely Cathedral in particular offering a wonderful labyrinth of 20‐foot di‐ameter on the floor of its West Front (though this is a product of 19th century restoration, rather than 14th century religious zeal).

Of all of these sites, it is perhaps Chartres that is the most compelling. Not only is its labyrinth one of the best preserved of such images, but its measurements correlate to the church hous‐ing it so perfectly that its inclusion has to be acknowledged as more than mere decoration, if not as the means by which the cathedral was itself planned and plotted. A plaque once sat at the centre of the labyrinth, recognising the links between it and that of the Minotaur; that this connection was drawn within one of the greatest cathedrals of Europe is a fitting statement to the power of the sym‐bolic labyrinth, declaring its potency as an em‐blem of growth and pilgrimage that transcends the vagaries of worldly faiths. As might be expected, theories explaining the purpose of these church labyrinths are various and contentious; the idea that the floor art served as a substitute for pilgrimage is an inter‐esting one, though it was only during the 18th century that the title ‘Chemin de Jerusalem’ or ‘Path to Jerusalem’ was applied to that at Rheims and elsewhere, thus it cannot be con‐cluded outright that the 12th century models had this purpose.



Other theories, holding that the labyrinth visually represented the web of sin that the faithful must strive to avoid, or the challenges that the good Christian would encounter, do make sense of the wall art which was far too diminutive to be of practical use (not to mention somewhat too ver‐tical for walking tours), but cannot be proved to be existent for that purpose. It is likely that while many would simply reflect on the image by way of spiritual contemplation, others may well have chosen to practically follow the course of the path – it is impossible to argue one explanation for all forms, and it is doubtful given the quirks of the human character that any one conclusion would encapsulate the entirety of its response to the labyrinth. What is more acceptable is the understanding that the labyrinth, though of practical use at certain times and to specific cultures, has always had an effect on the imagination and further insight of the human mind. Whether seen in a pagan, Christian or indeed secular context, there is a response to the form that is perhaps too singular and profound for one theory to sum‐mate, but which is impossible to overlook. Some clarity might be adduced from the Scandi‐navian ‘Troy Towns’ which would eventually find popularity in Britain and the broader expanses of Northern Europe. Fennoscandia and the Baltic countries were once home to hundreds of these arrangements, originally large‐scale labyrinths composed of stone avenues but eventually etched into the ground alone (a more common phenomenon but one easily lost to time should the earth alleys not be kept clear of fresh growth and other natural debris). Where Sweden would give these sites names akin to ‘Troy Town’ or ‘City of Troy’ (such as Tro‐jaborg or Tröborg), further titles would associate them with the Holy Land, Jerusalem (possibly like the cathedrals of Europe), or pathways of giants. They are particularly interesting to this study as they began to be produced during the 13th cen‐tury, soon after the first of the cathedral laby‐rinths was constructed, and were largely situated near to the sea – a combination of facts which suggests a practical use for the earth mazes that relied on the perceived good luck or sacred na‐ture that they bore. It has been forwarded that seamen would enter and trace the paths of the labyrinth before a voyage, so as to lure with him any unwanted evil spirit or bogie that might cause him misfortune once at sea; having reached the centre of the labyrinth he would run out of it and leave the troublesome entities behind, duly fortified that his work would be successful that day, and his safe return assured. This is another theory beyond substantiation, but the concept of the enemy being lost within the maze while the innocent leave unharmed is a tantalising one...and the psychological benefits of

recreating what is in essence a child’s game too obvious to be rejected. The labyrinth offers ca‐tharsis, and cleanses body and soul – achieving this by replaying a childlike ritual is not uncom‐mon, and may well account for much that the human species has employed since the beginning of time, easily denigrated but profound and very real in its benefits.

The Recreational Riddle

The eventual production of labyrinths across Britain, in the form of miz‐mazes (turf mazes) and ‘Troy Towns’ can be seen as a purely practi‐cal application of the labyrinth form similar to the Roman meander design so many centuries before; there may not be a significance behind their success beyond the simple fact that they were aesthetically pleasing and a satisfying addi‐tion to the immaculately designed gardens of the great and the good. Nonetheless, the labyrinth found a home in Lincolnshire (‘Julian’s Bower’ in Alkborough), in Hampshire atop St. Catherine’s Hill in Winchester, in Essex at Saffron Walden, and in Oxfordshire, Rutland and the Isle of Scilly. Many others, across the length and breadth of the country, have since disappeared but are re‐membered locally. These larger earth works were often sited close to ecclesiastical buildings or similar sacred spaces, denoting a possible continuation from their symbolic inclusion in churches, though some (such as Julian’s Bower) were used for May Day revelries of a somewhat more pagan nature, just as others in Germany and Poland saw pro‐cessions along their paths during Whitsuntide (the eighth Sunday following Easter Sunday). Less ritual labyrinths became desirable during the 17th and 18th centuries, and were created

most notably yet to varying effect across France and England. Versailles held a superlative model between 1677 and 1778 which eventu‐ally came to include thirty‐nine fountains, each representing one of Aesop’s fables and said to communicate with one another through the water which issued from each animal’s mouth; the hedge maze at Hampton Court in Greater

London was another of note, a hedge maze with half a mile of paths that may have existed in one form as early as the 16th century but which saw great acclaim after its replanting during the last years of the 17th century. The combination of myth, ‘ancient wisdom’, spiritu‐ality and pure aestheticism saw the turf maze find popularity further afield in the United States also, and they continue to be created across the North America and Europe to this day.

The 20th century saw a plethora of uses for the labyrinth across a broad range of mediums. They feature in Picasso’s 1935 work ‘Minotauromachia’ and the 2013 work of Mark Wallinger, where 270 enamel plaques were designed (one for each for each London tube station) in celebration of the Underground’s 150 year anniversary, to name but two notable examples within the world of art. The Argentin‐ean writer Jorge Luis Borge (1899‐1986) was apparently fascinated by the labyrinth form and included it in several of his short stories, while



physical mazes were included to great effect in Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ (1977) and the vis‐ceral horror‐fantasy film ‘Hellbound: Hellraiser II’ (1988). There was even an installation on the floor of St. Pauls Cathedral for one week in 2000 by way of a nod to previous centuries’ usage of the symbol within church spaces.

Appreciation of the labyrinth was formalised by the ‘Labyrinth Society’, which was formed in 1998 to celebrate the history of the maze, edu‐cate as to its meanings for man and ensure the upkeep and in some cases the very survival of certain labyrinths. Organised walks tour famous sites with a full awareness of the ‘pilgrimage’ that they are undertaking, now focused on the labyrinths and their heritage as much as any higher meaning behind them. It should be noted that certain Christian speakers have denounced these gatherings as evil, and the labyrinths that they ‘worship’ as gateways to supernatural forces anathema to the True Religion – a fact which, if nothing else, attests to the complexity of the human response to stimulation and the contentions which can never be fully overcome. The mystery behind these images and construc‐tions is unlikely to be explained given this trait, and personal faith will continue to take prece‐dence over any kind of fact. The 21st century retains the labyrinth as a sym‐bol, though any central meaning at its heart is very much open to debate, as it appears to have been for thousands of years. Indeed, the laby‐rinth has at the same time been many things to many different peoples: Plato’s ‘Euthydemus’ (c.384 C.E.) has Socrates equate the labyrinth with the throughline or logic within a given argument or debate, which if fol‐lowed can return the thinker to reason as long as the complex network of twists and turns does not waylay his senses; to the pagan mind, as we have seen, it was the abyss capable of trapping

the uninitiated or the evil, a manner of worship for the gifts of nature’s annual cycle, or as Sir James Frazer (1854‐1941) believed, an imitation of the sun’s rotation that united man tribes with the life‐giving source; the Christian may have practised pilgrimage upon it, or come to under‐stand his place and the role of his faith within the world as a result of contemplating it. To the alchemist the labyrinth represents the entire labour of his or her Work toward the Phi‐losopher’s Stone, with a fabled and terrifying beast at its heart which must be overcome be‐fore the careful retracing of one’s steps, aided by the sacred knowledge which alone can light the path. The process is one of physical and spiritual endeavour, immense risk and, where successful, ultimate transformation to a higher state (not dissimilar to the Platonic suggestion of greater understanding that results from the labyrinth of logic). The labyrinth is the meditative process, informed by the various energies encountered en route to enlightenment; it is the serpentine flow of yogic energy that invigorates the body and the mind; it is the means of shedding the rigid and unwise attitudes of the narrow‐minded in favour of ac‐ceptance of new ideas and greater truths; it is the maze of the unconscious which we see in shadow yet dance to the tune of; it is process of taking the estranged corporeal state of the man or woman and reuniting it, through growth, to the centre or numinous ‘Other’ from which it emanated. It also happens to be a delight for the eyes, a joy for the young and a reminder of the incessant human need to order the chaos and conquer the unknown (even if he is solving puz‐zles of his own devising).

Essentially, the labyrinth is a template open to endless speculation, a pattern which can be transposed to fulfil any and all metaphors, dreams, visions and viewpoints. Despite the evi‐dence apparent in churches, recorded history and the very land on which we tread, its full meaning is tantalisingly just out of reach – and

appears to have been since the first efforts at cave drawing in the Palaeolithic era – lest we conclude that its meaning is exactly what we subject it to through our personal responses to it. It is all we have considered and more, an em‐blem from deep within our consciousness that exists to fuel our myths, legends, acts and be‐liefs. Inscrutable, it reflects the core of what we are upon ourselves, and asks us to take the most suitable path before us based on our own understanding. Beyond time, space and being, it is exactly what we wish it to be, offering a freedom of interpretation unrivalled elsewhere. And as is so often the case, it is the journey and not the destination which can offer true revela‐tion.

Stephen's book 'Magic, the Esoteric & the Occult' is available online now. A second title 'Black Arts: journeys on the left‐hand path' will be released later this year. You can find out more at www.sjwoccult.com

Welcome to Neil McDonald's Megalithic Tours. "Ten Years on the Road"

'Join our small friendly groups on specialist tours to ancient, mystical and historical sites in Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and Malta'. Now in our 10th year, Neil’s specialist tours visit many of the most popular Ancient, Mystical and Historical sites. The smaller size of our groups means that we can also reach the more remote, little known sites that Neil has discovered over many years of experience.

We visit most areas of Britain from Cornwall to Orkney and Shetland. Our European destinations include; Carnac in Northern France, the Malta Tem‐ples, and the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage in Spain. In the South of France’s Cathar Country we look into the mysteries of Sauniere and Rennes‐le‐Château, the knights Templar, the Priory of Sion and the Cathars.

Megalithic Tour Groups ‐ are small, friendly and welcoming. Quite a number come along on their own and others with friends or partners. Many of our travelers enjoy the social side of the tours and value the opportunity to get to know like minded people during the day, over dinner or later in the bar. Some like to keep their own council of course and that is respected, but many have made lasting friendships and come back many times. One of our regular travelers recently told me that "we always have great fun, it's like coming back to see old friends".

Check out Megalithic Tours ‐ Mysterious Earth Conference 2014 below... Not to be missed!

Neil has a fascination with pre‐history and the activities of our ancient ances‐tors, the so called 'Early Stone Builders'. His interests include all aspects of history and he has been taking tour groups around our many and varied sites for some years. Neil has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Excess Baggage’, Edge Media TV's, 'Now That's Weird', Glastonbury Radio’s 'Mysterious West’ and BBC Radio Lancashire.

If your group would like a private tailor‐made tour, planned to your require‐ments, we will build you an itinerary from our range of tours. Please contact us for details. International Visitors ‐ from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere overseas are always welcome at Megalithic Tours. If you have a group Neil would be pleased to create an itinerary for you. Tours from our 'Tours Page' can be mixed and matched to cover part or all of your stay in the UK.

NEIL MCDONALD’S BOOKS: AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.CO.UK

For further tour details and general information please contact us. We will respond to your enquiry as

quickly as possible. To book a tour please download our printable book‐

ings form or contact Neil on;

Phone ‐ 01772 728181 or 07799 061991

Email ‐ [email protected]

Or Write To: Neil McDonald, Mega‐lithic Tours, 50 Cottam Avenue,

Ingol, Preston, Lancashire. PR2 3XH

AMAZING! BOOK YOUR TICKETS

NOW!

May 4th 2014 ‐ Mystical Cornwall ‐ Only 4 Places Left ‐ 7 Day event

May 18th 2014 ‐ Northern France & the Stones of Carnac ‐ 7 Day event.

May 31st 2014 ‐ Yorkshire's Amazing Megaliths ‐ 7 Places Left ‐ 2 Day event.

June 7th 2014 ‐ Piel Isle & Furness Abbey ‐ 7 Places Left ‐ 1 Day event.

June 14th 2014 ‐ Cathar Tour 1. ‐TOUR FULL ‐ 10 Day event.

June 28th 2014 ‐ Cathar Tour 2. ‐ Only 5 places left ‐ 10 Day event.

July 25th 2014 ‐ Crop Circle Quest Week‐end ‐ 4 Day event.

August 1st 2014 ‐ Stonehenge, Avebury & Glastonbury ‐ 4 Day event.

August 9th 2014 ‐ Mysterious Anglesey ‐ 2 Day event.

August 17th 2014 ‐ Ireland the Emerald Isle ‐ 7 Day event.

August 29th 2014 ‐ Santiago de Compos‐tela Pilgrimage ‐ 11 Day event.

September 13th 2014 ‐ North Wales Weekend ‐ 2 Day event.

September 20th 2014 ‐ Scottish West Coast Highlands & Islands ‐ 8 Day event.

October 4th 2014 ‐ Celestial Cyprus ‐ NEW ‐ 7 Day event.

October 26th 2014 ‐ Pendle Witch Hal‐loween Day Tour ‐ 1 Day event.

November 2nd 2014 ‐ Magical Malta ‐ 8 Day event.

Neil McDonald provides some critical informa‐tion in regards some amazing sites through‐out the UK and Isle of

Man. All books under £10.00 at Amazon UK. Well

worth grabbing a copy or two.

FEATURING STEVE MERA & STEVE JOHNSON ON

APRIL 6TH 2014


Manatorro: The Killer of Bulls By Richard Freeman



Snakes hold a special fascination for man, per‐haps because of their "alieness". Their vermiform bodies have no limbs and their eyes no lids. They have no ears and "hear" by picking up vibrations via their bodies through the ground. Many types are venomous and the idea of such small (in the main) animals being so formidably armed is dis‐turbing. Humanity fears that which is different and this fear has manifest in many different ways from the snake veneration of the Aztecs to the disgusting rattlesnake round ups of the southern U.S were thousands of snakes are captured and cruelly slaughtered in the name of "fun" by in‐bred red necked scum. In the steaming morasses of the South American Jungle we find the great‐est of all snakes. The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is by far the largest in the world it's girth greater than that of the reticulated python ( Python reticulates) that is sometimes regarded as the longest snake but not the bulkiest. The anaconda has one huge advantage over the py‐thon that may well allow it to attain a greater size. All pythons are oviparous, that is they lay eggs. This must be done on land. Anacondas are ovo‐viviparous; they retain the eggs inside their bodies until the young hatch, then give birth to them live. This means they do not have to leave the water; their final link with the land is broken. Living in water almost all of the time means ana‐condas are buoyed up, the do not have to sup‐port their own body weight on land very often, and hence can grow to a very large size. The largest reliably measured specimen was 27 feet long, but this may be a mere tiddler. Ever since the white man first ventured tentatively into the green hell, he has brought back tales that are the very stuff of nightmares, snakes whose size defies belief. The earliest man to re‐turn with such bone chilling yarns was one Charles Waterton better known as Squire Water‐ton a great British eccentric and adventurer. A Yorkshire man from a wealthy Roman Catholic family the Squire insisted on sleeping on bare boards with a block of wood as his pillow. Almost unique in his age he was a teetotaler and vio‐lently opposed to hunting for sport. He was a passionate naturalist and collector of animals and with true intrepid Yorkshire spirit he made four expeditions into South America between 1812 and 1824, traveling in Brazil, Venezuela, and Guiana. In typical Waterton style he exposed as much of his skin as he could in the jungle at night, hoping to be bitten by a vampire bat. He was most disappointed when he was not bitten but one of his companions was. The ungrateful man ran and hid in a latrine. Waterton`s books are full of such shenanigans and it is obvious he enjoyed himself immensely. The Squire lived to the ripe old age of 83, a miracle when one reads of some of the risks he took! Of the anaconda he writes… “The camoudi snake (as it was called in British Guiana) has been killed from thirty to forty feet long; though not venomous, his size renders him

destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet and that he will destroy the strongest and largest bull. His name seems to confirm this; there he is called "matatoro" which means literally "bull killer". Thus he must be ranked among the deadly snakes, for it comes to the same thing in the end whether the victim dies by poison from the fangs, which corrupts his blood and makes it stink horri‐bly, or whether his body be crushed to a mummy and swallowed by this hideous beast”. In 1944 specimen of large size was encountered in Columbia by a team of prospecting geologists led by Roberto Lamon. The men shot the snake and measured it at 11.4 meters (37 feet 6 inches). The group left the creature to eat their lunch, intending to come back and photograph their trophy and skin it. Upon their return they were amazed to find it gone. The bullets had merely stunned the animal, which had recovered and absconded in their absence. Fredrico Medem a Columbian herpetologist saw an anaconda he estimated to be between 9 and 12 meters (30‐40 feet) and obtained a report of another 34 feet long. General Candido Mariano de Silva Rondon, who lent his name to the Ron‐donia area of Brazil, saw a specimen killed by Indians, some 11.6 meters (38 feet) long. There are several records of snakes in this size bracket that cannot easily be dismissed as some have involved reputable scientists. A 10.4 meter (34 foot) anaconda was shot by Vincent Roth, direc‐tor of the national museum, in British Guiana. Mr R.Mole a naturalist, who made many impor‐tant contributions to the knowledge of the wild‐life of Trinidad, reported a 10 meter (33 foot) example there in 1924. Dr F.Medem of the Co‐lombia University, saw a 10.26 meter (33 foot 8 inch) snake killed on the Guaviare River.

reported a 10 meter (33 foot) example there in 1924. Dr F.Medem of the Colombia University, saw a 10.26 meter (33 foot 8 inch) snake killed on the Guaviare River. The Marquis de Wavrin was another explorer of S. America and was active before World War 2. He told the great Belgian Cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans that he had seen anacondas over 30 feet long and the natives told of far larger ones, He once shot a 8 meter (26 foot) individual that had been coiled around a branch. When he ex‐pressed a desire to retrieve the cadaver his canoe men told him that it was a waste of pow‐der to shoot such a small snake and a waste of time picking it up. They went on to say… "On the Rio Guaviare, during floods, chiefly in certain lagoons in the neighbourhood, and even near the confluence of this stream, we often see snakes that are more than double the size of the one you have just shot. They are often thicker than our canoe.” F.W Up de Graff an explorer of 7 years experi‐ence spotted a giant anaconda as it lay in shal‐low water under his canoe: “It measured 50 feet for certainty, and probably nearer 60. I know this from the position in which it lay. Our canoe was a 24 footer; the snake's head was 10 or 12 feet beyond the bow; it's tail a good 4 feet beyond the stern; it's body was looped into a huge S, whose length was the length of our dugout and whose breadth was a good 5 feet." When witnesses are cross examined face to face by a renowned zoologist we have to give them a little more credence. One of the wit‐nesses of the next case was interviewed over several days by no less an authority than Ber‐nard Heuvelmans, the great Belgian zoologist mentioned earlier.



It was in 1947 when many wild and sometimes fierce tribes were still commonplace in the S. America. A particularly war like group where the Chavantes who had recently killed a number of Brazilian officials. Francisco Meirelles of the Ser‐vice for the Protection of the Indians organized an expedition to try to establish peaceful rela‐tions with the Chavantes. The 5‐month endeavor included in its 20‐man line up Serge Bonacase a French painter whom Heuvelmans later inter‐viewed. By the second month the company had reached a large island between the two branches of the Araguaya River, and made base camp there. The men spent several days in preparation for the big push into the wilderness or ‘the ser‐tao’ as the green hell was known. They spent long reconnaissance and hunting trips away from the island. On one such trip 8 of them were hunt‐ing capybaras in a swamp between the Rio Manso (charmingly known as the Rio das Mortes, the river of death, as the Chavantes butchered any one who dared to cross it) and the Rio Crista‐lino. The Chavantes did not put in an appearance by the group encountered something far more frightening. "The guide pointed out an anaconda on a rise in the ground half hidden among the grass. We approached to within 20 meters of it and fired our rifles at it several times. It tried to make off, all in convolutions, but we caught up with it after 20 or 30 meters and finished it off. Only then did we realise how enormous it was; when we walked the along the whole length of it's body it seemed as if it would never end. What struck me most was it's enormous head… As we had no measuring instruments, one of us took a piece of string and held it between the ends of the fingers of one hand and the other shoulder to mark of a length of one meter. Actually it could have been a little less. We measured the snake several times with this piece and always made it 24 or 25 times as long as the string. The reptile must therefore have been nearly 23 meters long." Unfortunately none of the men were zoologists and none realized the importance of the find. Bonacase himself had heard so many stories of giant anacondas he believed them to be com‐monplace. The carcass and even the skin would have weighed the men down too much for them

to have brought it back. So sadly this invaluable specimen was left to the jungle scavengers. (This seems to be the bane of cryptozoologists. Speci‐mens always fall into the hands of those who do not know their importance and hence seldom find their way to civilization.) The late 1950s brought perhaps the most dramatic encounter with an anaconda. The political climate with its upsurgence in communism in Latin America was such that the U.S government placed CIA agents in sensitive areas. One agent called "Lee" was told by a cattle rancher of a giant snake lairing in a cave in Bolivia. The reptile was said to be over 10 meters (33 feet) long. It was said to have eaten 10 Indians and many cattle over the years. Every 3 months or so the serpent emerged sized a steer, dragged it into the river, killed it, then ate it. Then it would return to its cave. The rancher wanted Lee to capture the animal and take it too a zoo as It was "probably the larg‐est snake in the world". The problem was dis‐cussed at embassy many times until someone came up with an audacious plot to catch it. The plan was to flush the monster from its lair with tear gas whilst a long sack complete with zip fasteners was held over the caves mouth. There would be two "zip men" one at each end of the sack to hasten the operation. For added security Lee carried (ironically) a . 357 python pistol. It was just as well Lee was "packing heat" as things did go spectacularly wrong. The tear gas was shot into the cave and the anaconda thrashing madly shot out of the cave and into the sack. Once its entire length was inside both ends were zipped up. The agents had not reckoned with the snake's vast strength however. Its violent writh‐ing split the sack end to end and the brute was free. The livid animal came rushing at Lee who whipped out his pistol and managed to put a bullet in its head. The snake threw itself into a huge loop smashing into a small hardwood tree about as big as a telephone pole. The tree was shattered like matchwood and the snake fell back into the jungle. Lee pumped another two bullets into its head. When it had expired they measured it its length proved to be 34 feet 3 inches. Lee skinned the snake and took the hide back to the U.S were he kept it in his garage.

Its current whereabouts are unknown. As noted earlier this size would seem very small for a snake to swallow such large livestock. Lee’s colleague David Atlee Phillips understandably doubted his friend’s outlandish story. Some‐time later he was attending a party at Washing‐ton and mentioned the saga to Darwin Bell, then deputy assistant secretary for interna‐tional labor affairs. Bell claimed not only to have known Lee but also to have taken part in the capture attempt. “I was the tail zipper man”, he told an amazed Phillips. More recently a giant anaconda was reported near Sao Paulo Brazil. Farmer come hunter Joao Menezes was fishing with his 3 year old son Daniel and turned his back on the boy to store some fish in a wooden shack. Suddenly his son’s screams rent the air and the horrified Menezes turned to see a 45‐foot anaconda had risen from the waters and sized his boy by the neck. He tried in vain to prize the snake's jaws apart then ran home for his rifle. By the time he got back however the boy had been crushed and was in the process of being swallowed. More recently still the world‐renowned ex‐plorer Colonel John Blashford‐Snell was told a most intriguing story whilst traveling across the Andes by river from Bolivia to Bunenos. It seems a 13 meter (43 foot) anaconda was cap‐tured by a farmer after it had eaten a cow. He apparently incited it with a pig on a rope. Sub‐sequently he tried to sell his story, unsuccess‐fully, to the press. The creature is now said to be residing in a pond on a farm in northwest Brazil. This occurred in late 1999. If the creature is being fed by the farmers it may well remain in the pool. This is a cryptozo‐ological "sitting duck". More recently still Damon Corrie; chief of the Eagle Clan Arawak Indians in Guyana was told by some hunters of an encounter with a giant snake. It occurred in 2006 at a remote lake called Corona Falls. The hunters saw an ana‐conda so vast they fled in terror. Damon asked the hunters just how big the snake was and they pointed to a fallen palm some 30 feet long. The hunters said that the snake’s head and tail would have stretched past the top and bottom of the tree if it were to lie on top of it. This would make the creature in the region of 40 feet long. The recent discovery of a giant fossil snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis shows that serpents of a terrifying size did actually exist. The fossils were uncovered in an open cast coal mine in Columbia. They indicated a gigantic snake re‐lated to boas and anacondas that reached 40‐50 feet long in life. The fossils date to the Pa‐leocene around 58 million yeas ago. It is inter‐esting to think that the South American jungles of today may be the home of a snake at least as large as titaoboa...

April 8 - Mars at Opposition. The red planet will be at its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun. This is the best time to view and photograph Mars. A medium-sized telescope will allow you to see some of the dark details on the planet's orange surface. You may even be able to see one or both of the bright white polar ice caps.

April 15 - Full Moon. The Moon will be directly opposite the Earth from the Sun and will be fully illuminated as seen from Earth. This phase occurs at 07:42 UTC. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Full Pink Moon because it marked the appearance of the moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the first spring flowers. This

moon has also been known as the Sprouting Grass Moon and the Growing Moon.

April 15 - Total Lunar Eclipse. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes completely through the Earth's dark shadow, or umbra. During this type of eclipse, the Moon will gradually get darker and then take on a rusty or blood red col-our. The eclipse will be visible throughout most of North America, South America, and Australia. (NASA Map and Eclipse

Information)

April 22, 23 - Lyrids Meteor Shower. The Lyrids is an average shower, usually producing about 20 meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced by dust particles left behind by comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher, which was discovered in 1861. The shower runs annually from April 16-25. It peaks this year on the night of the night of the 22nd and morning of the 23rd. These me-

teors can sometimes produce bright dust trails that last for several seconds. The second quarter moon will be a slight problem this year, blocking the less bright meteors from view. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Me-

teors will radiate from the constellation Lyra, but can appear anywhere in the sky.

April 29 - New Moon. The Moon will be directly between the Earth and the Sun and will not be visible from Earth. This phase occurs at 06:14 UTC. This is the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters

because there is no moonlight to interfere.

April 29 - Annular Solar Eclipse. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is too far away from the Earth to com-pletely cover the Sun. This results in a ring of light around the darkened Moon. The Sun's corona is not visible during an annular eclipse. The path of the eclipse will begin off the coast of South Africa and move across Antarctica and into the

east coast of Australia. (NASA Map and Eclipse Information)

DVD REVIEW Phenomena Magazine regularly receives DVDs and provides reviews. After which we promote and advertise them within the magazine, Facebook pages and of course on our websites. If you have a DVD you would like to be reviewed and advertised, simply contact Phenomena Magazine via our website or send your DVD title direct to Phenomena Magazine Head Office.

I hope you’re sitting down, readers, because I have some bad news. The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia does not take place in Con‐necticut at all. Nor is it about ghosts named Georgia. It takes place in the state of Georgia, which is often called the “Connecticut of the south,” I think. The good news is that this will inevitably lead to a 50+ film franchise covering all of the states and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. QVC could even sell a giant, collector’s map of the U.S., like they did when the state quarters came out. That way fans could display their entire collec‐tion of The Haunting in Connecticut films, like Ghosts of North Dakota, which is often called the “Connecticut of the Dakotas,” I think. Unfortu‐nately, the idea of this many Haunting films is scarier than anything you’ll find in Ghosts of Georgia. The film is based on the true story of the Wyrick family, whose young daughter Heidi allegedly began seeing ghosts back in the late ‘80s. It all started when parents Lisa and Andy moved the family to a small house in rural GA. Shortly after, Heidi started seeing an elderly apparition she called “Gordy.” The parents shrugged it off as an imaginary friend until Heidi reported seeing another ghost. This second spirit was named “Con” and not as friendly as Gordy. She claimed Con was trying to kidnap her and when her folks did some investigative work on their new home, they found that it once belonged to a James Grody and Lon “Con” Bachelor – both men long since dead. The film dramatizes these events and throws in a story about the Underground Railroad and an evil taxidermist. They also make the mother, played by Abigail Spencer (Mad Men), a medium struggling with her sixth sense. The ghost of her mother constantly haunts Lisa and she takes anti‐psychotic pills to keep the visions at bay. When they move to the house in GA, Lisa’s literally bombarded with supernatural visions, so at first it seems like the movie is going to be all about her. Then it gradually shifts so that the daughter Heidi (Emily Alyn Lind) is the center of ghostly attention. Meanwhile, the dad Andy (Chad Michael Murray) is just trying to get the damn yard work done. Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica) plays Joyce, Lisa’s older sister who moves into a trailer on the Wyrick’s property.

She’s a medium too, but the ghosts don’t really seem that interested in her. When I say Lisa and Heidi are “bombarded” with visions, I’m not playing around. There are more jump scares in Ghosts of Georgia than I think I’ve ever seen in any horror film ever. They’re absolutely relentless. The tool is cheap to begin with, so the barrage of them in this film screams laziness and lack of artistry on the filmmakers’ part. Not even the natu‐rally creepy atmosphere of GA’s deep, murky woods is utilized very well. Speaking of “tool,” when did ghosts all look like extras in a Tool video? So many apparitions in Hollywood horror films nowadays are monochrome and move in a jittery‐spastic manner. I first remember seeing a ghost like that in 1999’s House on Haunted Hill and it’s been like an epidemic ever since. The cast does the best they can with the script, which must have been littered everywhere with “jump scare” notes. Katee Sackhoff, who’s been doing a lot of voice work since BSG ended, is the definite highlight. She’s just naturally magnetic and brings some much‐needed intensity to even the quieter scenes in the film. Chad Michael Murray is great at looking confused all of the time and Abigail Spencer is perfectly fine in a role that doesn’t require much more than acting scared and concerned.

THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2

Title: The Haunting in Connecticut 2

Format: DVD & Blue Ray Price: £7.25 DVD:

Pal. English: 101 Minutes Amazon.co.uk,

Amount of discs: 1 Region 2

Review by Patrick Cooper

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2014Apr15T.pdf




http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplot2001/SE2014Apr29A.GIF


Roswell: ET vs Project Mogul By John Prytz

Here are some further thoughts about that July 1947 Roswell "flying saucer" that crashed or crashed-landed outside of that town, with some additional emphasis

on the prosaic Project Mogul explanation that explains all – not.

Firstly, I consider any bona-fide UFO that remains a UFO after investigation by those qualified to do so as bona-fide evidence that something extraordinary – and therefore of scientific interest – is going on. That's even more the case when the numbers mount up into the hundreds, even thousands worldwide. Every bona-

fide UFO case, every solid unknown, is a "WOW" event in the same way that that "WOW" event in SETI circles is cited again and again as something extraordinary.

Secondly, when it comes to UFO incidents, the earlier the better in order to mini-mize all of the cultural and social related stuff that now goes with the subject and

taints it...

Phenomena Magazine: November 2013 - Issue 55: www.phenomenamagazine.co.uk


There are dozens of excellent bona‐fide cases from 1947 through 1952 (especially Washington, DC – July 1952). After that, things get potentially more tainted but there are still lots of good unknowns. Here's a case and quote from the Condon Report that skeptics put so much stock in – that Sci‐entific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects ‐ regarding the McMinnville, Ore‐gon UFO photographs taken 11 May 1950.

"This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geomet‐ric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object , silvery, metallic, disk‐shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two wit‐nesses."

Then we have footage from the two classic UFO films from Great Falls, Mon‐tana (August 1950) and Tremonton, Utah (July 1952) both of which to this very day still carry the tag "unidentified". One could go one and on with UFO "WOW" cases. But if one wants THE case, let's start with Roswell.

So, even though the following case is ‘explained', the very fact that it hap‐pened so early on in UFO lore and the major participants are no nonsense military officers, and there's material on the public record that cannot be dismissed or disputed, I'd have to go with Roswell as the cream of the crop (I can see readers rolling their eyes up now).

Roswell Is Boring: Apparently Roswell is not regarded by most of the UFO experts in America as an interesting case. Roswell seems to be considered a very weak case by UFO investigators. Some prefer this case (like Rendlesham Forest) or that case or some other case as the bees‐knees of ufology but not Roswell. However if Roswell is such an uninteresting case, why are more books devoted to that case than any other UFO case? I bet if I Google "Roswell" vs. "Rendlesham Forest" I'd get way more hits on the former! In any event, Roswell is the only bona‐fide UFO case I know of where the US military admitted publicly it was in possession of an actual "flying sau‐cer" (and they have been back‐pedalling furiously ever since). That alone, IMHO, makes it unique and therefore highly interesting.

Relevant Roswell Personnel: The buck obviously stops with Colonel Blanch‐ard, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) CO, who dictated and ordered the issuing of the initial Roswell press release. According to the sceptical Roswell UFO tome authored by Kal K. Korff, The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You To Know [Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y. 1997; p.28], "Ramey telephones Colonel Blanchard and conveys to him both General [Lt. Gen Hoyt S.] Vandenburg's and his own ‘extreme displeasure' over the fact that a press release was issued without proper authority." However, Colonel Blanchard was never officially reprimanded, and eventually rose to the rank of a full four‐star general in the USAF. That Colonel Blanchard was not reprimanded is puzzling since it was because of his ‘mistake' that he created a major head‐ache for officialdom, one which persists down to this very day. The obvious question was whether this rise in rank and lack of a reprimand was payment for Blanchard to keep his mouth shut over the reality of the Roswell event. It has been reported (Korff – p.49) that Mrs. Blanchard has allegedly stated that following the death of her husband that he had believed the Roswell debris had an out of this world origin, for what that's worth.

Former Lt. Walter Haut, the RAAF PIO Officer in July 1947 who wrote up (under the direction and orders of Colonel Blanchard) that press release, stated in a signed affidavit dated 14 May 1993 that "there is no chance that he [Colonel Blanchard] would have mistaken it ["a flying saucer or parts thereof"] for a weather balloon. Neither is there any chance that Major Mar‐cel would have been mistaken." Haut also stated that "In 1980, Jesse Marcel told me that the material photographed in Gen. Ramey's office was not the material he recovered." [See also The General Ramey Photo‐op section be‐low.] Haut continued that "I am convinced that the material recovered was some type of craft from outer space."

W.W. ‘Mac' Brazel, who discovered the wreckage is on record (Roswell Daily Record, 9 July 1947) as stating that he had previously discovered two downed balloons (presumably weather) on the property and that this new

debris did not correspond to that type of artifact. The 1995 USAF Report: As a result of public and congressional pressure, the USAF reopened the Roswell case in about 1994, publishing their findings in their 1995 document The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. There's a whole potful of points to be made with respect to this document and findings, which in brief that Roswell is explainable by a downed Project Mogul balloon.

Point One: The USAF searched internally for relevant documents or records regarding Roswell. They found nothing unusual had occurred involving extra‐terrestrial materials or alien bodies that was officially documented. Of course that search only could have extended to unclassified or declassified records. And that's the whole crux of the matter. If Roswell had something to do with or involved extraterrestrial materials and/or alien bodies, and that had been documented, that material and documents would still be classified and hence not be available to those doing this reinvestigation for official histori‐cal records. Thus, their findings via a document search that the Roswell case as far as ET was concerned was lacking documentation hence validity and thus incorrect resulted in their ‘final word' on the matter, a ‘case closed' conclusion, is bogus. Even if the compilers of this 1995 report knew about classified Roswell documentation involving ET, they couldn't say so in an unclassified public report.

Point Two: Their search for documentation was confined to what records the USAF had under their control. Omitted from the search were documents that other agencies might have held, including the US Army. That's a major flaw in that in July 1947 there was no USAF, only the US Army Air Force.

Point Three: A big deal was made over the fact that there appeared to be no nationwide heightened military alert or operation or security activity during that immediate post recovery interval. There was no higher tempo of opera‐tional activity or messages going to and fro, etc. which the report says is highly suggestive that nothing unusual was going on. Well, why would there be, heightened activity that is. We're not talking "Earth vs. the Flying Sau‐cers" or "Independence Day" here. We're talking wreckage from just one location here, not nationwide invasion by Bug‐Eyed Monsters with heat rays and ray guns a‐blazing. Was the military going to declare war on ET based on some alien debris?

Point Four: The only thing they found were records about a then ultra Top Secret Priority 1A project called Mogul, instrumentation lofted high into the atmosphere by balloons to detect above ground Soviet nuclear testing. These flights were launched from New Mexico in June and July of 1947. Ah! What goes up must come down; two plus two equals four; Roswell case solved. Roswell wasn't a weather balloon; that WAS a cover‐up story. Roswell was a Mogul balloon! At least the USAF admitted that something out of the ordi‐nary happened.

Point Five: The 1995 USAF report did state or conclude was Roswell was not. Roswell was not an airplane crash. Roswell was not a missile crash. Roswell was not a nuclear accident. Roswell was not an extraterrestrial craft. Of course they would say that, even truthfully if no unclassified or declassified documents said otherwise – it's all that classified stuff that might let that Roswell cat out of the Roswell bag.

Point Six: We finally get around to the official conclusions which in a quickie version amounts to a whopping big MAYBE when it comes to Mogul. Let's quote the quotes and see where the chips fall. "The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information that the ‘Roswell Incident' was a UFO event" [Obviously for reasons already gone into]. "All available official mate‐rials, although they do not directly address Roswellper se [their italics], indi‐cate that the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Brazel Ranch [sic – actually the Foster Ranch; Brazel was just the foreman, not the owner] was from one of the Project Mogul balloon trains." [Reference: page 30 of the 1995 USAF report.] Of course there was no identification of exactly which one of those Mogul balloon trains.

So in other words, no established causality was found between Mogul and Roswell, its all conjecture. So, no cause and effect was established and Mogul




is concluded to be only a "most likely source". That's hardly proof beyond reasonable doubt. However, if one turns back to page 22 of the 1995 USAF report, you're led to believe under the section "WHAT THE ‘ROSWELL INCI‐DENT' WAS" was that Mogul was the be‐all‐and‐end‐all of the matter. It was‐n't they; it isn't now.

Point Seven: I can't really accuse the USAF of an initial cover‐up as most pro‐Roswell buffs do since their cover‐up orders would have come from even higher authority. I can't say this 1995 report is a cover‐up since for reasons noted above the report, to drive the point home, could not reveal the exis‐tence of anything that was still classified.

Lost and Found: Isn't it absolutely amazing that the team responsible for operating (launching and recovering) those top secret Project Mogul balloon flights lost one somewhere outside of Roswell, N.M. That's rather gross, in fact absolute negligence IMHO. And apparently they made no effort to re‐cover their lost top secret property from the RAAF immediately the Roswell incident broke out in the press. In fairness, some of the Mogul flights were "service flights or test flights and thus the powers‐that‐be might have been more nonchalant about them and losing one. Now Mogul balloons were tagged with whom to contact (University of New York) if found, along with a reward offered and reimbursement for time and trouble taken. No doubt the powers‐that‐be thought that there was no real chance Joe & Mary Citizen would have figured out the real top secret purpose of the stuff. To Joe & Mary Citizen it would have just been a weather balloon. That misidentifica‐tion was reinforced on the "to be contacted" tag which clearly noted (that misinformation) that this was "weather equipment". So, with all that Roswell debris recovered, the RAAF personnel never did find that "please contact if found" Mogul tag, logical if the debris wasn't from a Mogul balloon flight.

If the Roswell debris collected by the RAAF [Roswell Army Air Field] person‐nel proved not to be the property of the RAAF they seemed not to have gone through any official channels to find out the proper owners (and maybe get financial compensation for cleaning up their mess). Why's that? Of course if the materials were from ‘out of this world' that might explain that.

Here's a contradiction. Even the 1995 USAF report on Roswell stated it was only probable that a Project Mogul balloon was the cause of the Roswell incident, yet the Roswell debris was in the hands of the AAF (now USAF) and should have been easily identified as the debris from the missing (lost) Mogul flight and therefore there should have been no probability involved in the Roswell explanation, rather instead a certainty.

The General Ramey Photo‐Op: The whole photo‐op that was staged in Forth Worth was clearly to reinforce the new official line that Roswell wreckage was just balloon material, and any book about Roswell will contain one or more of the official photographs taken by both civilian photographers and a base photographer. As far as the photographers were concerned, it was an all look but don't touch quickie session – in and out ASAP. Present were of

course Brigadier General Roger Ramey; Ramey's Chief‐of‐Staff Colonel Tho‐mas J. DuBose; Major Jesse Marcel (who wasn't allowed to say one word; just pose and smile for the camera and grin and bear the embarrassment); and Warrant Officer Irving Newton, the base weather officer whose presence was just to confirm for the record that the wreckage displayed was that from a weather balloon.

It should have been sufficient IMHO for General Ramey to just issue a press statement downplaying the Roswell event with the weather balloon cover‐up, or cover story, and ordering all other relevant RAAF personnel to back up that weather balloon tale if asked (an order which of course General Ramey, well, so ordered), and thus letting the story quickly fade away as having been explained by something mundane.

Instead, General Ramey goes over‐the‐top at far greater expense (and expo‐sure) to strut the public stage and demonstrate the (apparent) reality of the weather balloon story or explanation with actual weather balloon materials and actual photographic ‘evidence' of same. Of course you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that what was photographed in General Ramey's office may not had any connection whatever with the actual Roswell debris. The photo‐op wasn't really evidence since there was ample opportu‐nity to substitute real weather balloon debris for the Roswell wreckage be‐fore‐the‐fact. You don't have to watch too many whodunits to realise the numerous ways of the slight‐of‐hand.

But that exposure wasn't all positive. If Ramey had not of staged that photo‐op there would be a lot less meat on the Roswell bone since it has given the pro‐Roswell faction a whole lot of ammo, a whole separate avenue to attack from. Obviously once out of the clutches of the military, Marcel denied that what was photographed in Ramey's office had anything to do with what he and others found outside of Roswell. It was chalk and cheese. Independent verification for the deception comes from Ramey's former Chief‐of‐Staff, Colonel DuBose (who retired as a Brigadier General). In a signed affidavit (16 September 1991 – after he retired from the military) DuBose stated "The material shown in the photographs taken in Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the [Roswell] material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press." It's on the public re‐cord.

Despite claims to the contrary, if you go with the philosophy that if you were‐n't someone who saw and handled the debris then you weren't a primary witness, then the photographs taken of the ‘wreckage' in General Ramey's office is not primary evidence for Roswell = balloon given the chance for substitution of debris materials to conform to the new official ‘weather bal‐loon' line.

Transport of Roswell Debris: How Much Stuff Was Removed? For starters, the amount of Roswell material or wreckage according to the original discov‐erer W. W. "Mac" Brazel, confirmed by Major Jesse Marcel, well Brazel noted that the debris field was about 200 yards wide and 3/4ths of a mile long (or




some 240,000 square yards), the entirety of that massive area covered with this stuff that Brazel couldn't identify and he had previously found a couple of downed weather balloons on the property (of which he was the foreman, not the owner). That Brazel couldn't identify the stuff was the stimulus that set in train the chain of events that led to him calling the civilian authorise (local law enforcement) hence they in turn alerting the military at the nearby RAAF. And the rest as they say is history! A Mogul balloon train is at best only 600 feet long – assuming that's the reality behind Roswell. Alas, that's not hardly sufficient quantity of stuff to account for the size of the debris field as related by Brazel. Okay, once the debris was discovered and collected, it was transported.

To Fort Worth: A B‐29 was half‐loaded or half‐filled with crated Roswell wreckage, along with a separate satchel for General Ramey and along with Major Marcel transported to Fort Worth AAF for that General Ramey photo‐op. A half‐filled B‐29 amounts to an awful lot of stuff but that's what Major Marcel claimed to be the case, and he was there. Apparently then the Ros‐well material was reloaded onto a B‐25 and hence continued on to Wright Field with the bulk of the Roswell cargo. Marcel returned to RAAF the follow‐ing day.

To Wright Field: Both an FBI‐telex (evening of 8 July 1947) and statements by Brigadier General Arthur Exon who was stationed at Wright Field in July 1947 and later became the base CO, an officer in a position to know what went on, confirmed that Roswell debris was sent to Wright Field for analysis. In fair‐ness of course neither the FBI nor General Exon actually examined the debris at Wright Field (because of that military and otherwise official policy of ‘need to know' officially called compartmentation). The flight from RAAF to Wright Field was via a C‐54 piloted by Captain Oliver W. "Pappy" Henderson, which, to be honest, doesn't make Henderson either an actual eyewitness to the debris itself (that ‘need to know' again). Regarding your need to know, even if you have a need to know you are only given as much knowledge as you need to have in order to do your job – no more, no less. Most people albeit in the loop rarely see the Big Picture.

To Washington, D.C.: That Roswell debris was forwarded onto Washington, D.C. was confirmed by Ramey's Chief‐of‐Staff, Thomas DuBose, in DuBose's affidavit referred to above. DuBose stated that "The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy." The orders to immediately ship Ros‐well debris via Fort Worth to Andrews Air Field (Washington, D.C.) was given by the Deputy Commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), Major Gen‐eral Clements McMullen, stationed at the Pentagon. General McMullen's orders were given directly to Colonel Blanchard at Roswell and also given directly to Colonel Thomas DuBose (Chief‐of‐Staff to General Ramey) at Fort Worth AAF according to DuBose himself in that 16 September 1991 signed affidavit.

To Los Alamos: On 9 July 1947 three C‐54's carried Roswell debris from RAAF to Los Alamos, New Mexico via Kirtland Field.

So we have Roswell debris material distributed between four separate loca‐tions via six separate military aircraft – that's a lot of aircraft, especially four C‐54's, to transport the remains of one balloon, even a Mogul balloon.

Not even the Roswell sceptics deny that Roswell wreckage was sent to Fort Worth AAF, Wright Field and Washington, D.C. which is all very mysterious if the Roswell wreckage was just run‐of‐the‐mill terrestrial‐in‐origin balloon stuff.

Why Was Roswell Stuff Transported? We know the Roswell debris was or‐dered removed from the RAAF premises and ordered transported to Fort Worth Army Air Field; Wright Field (now Wright‐Patterson AFB); Los Alamos and Washington, D.C. Why? If the debris material(s) were routine terrestrial balloon and foil type stuff, what was the point? Okay, a satchel full of the material went to General Ramey at Fort Worth for his photo‐op PR stunt instead of Ramey going to Roswell AAF (rank has its privileges), but why Wright Field; Los Alamos and Washington, DC? Of course if the debris wasn't routine terrestrial stuff but potentially out‐of‐this‐world stuff, well, mystery solved. Wright Field and Los Alamos have the technical labs for out‐of‐this‐world analysis; Washington, D.C. is of course where officialdom has its HQ.

Timeline Discrepancies: A great deal has been made of some timeline dis‐crepancies given by relevant Roswell witnesses in testimony. I'm not too worried about these slight discrepancies in recollections that constitute a definitive timeline. The Roswell events only seriously resurfaced in 1980, some 33 years after the fact and from those relatively few witnesses still alive. Again, all that testimony was at least 33 years old or greater, often much greater (it's not always easy to track down witnesses so long after‐the‐fact). Let's just say that I'd be hard pressed to recall exact ordering of impor‐tant/unique events in my life 33 years on. I'd be sure to be slightly off when placing specifics into a broader context. While on all things fodder for the sceptics, while any one or two facets regarding the Roswell incident can be debated and disputed (other than Roswell personnel confusing balloon ma‐terial for a crashed disk that's just too far beyond the pale so that point is not up for debate), there's collectively just too many bits and pieces when taken together that the total package can not be dismissed or disputed. One quickly begins to butt heads against pure improbability that all facets are pure bovine fertilizer.

Was There A Roswell Cover‐Up? Apart from the General Ramey photo‐op (which we now know for certain was a cover‐up since Roswell has now been ‘explained away' as a Project Mogul balloon), and because of public pressure for answers to the bona fides behind the July 1947 Roswell event, the Gen‐eral Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the US Congress, re‐quested all relevant government records and documentation, especially those RAAF records, only to find and so reported in their July 1995 findings that all RAAF administrative records from March 1945 through December 1949 had been inexplicably destroyed, as had been outgoing messages from October 1946 through December 1949. These were documents that by law should not have been destroyed, but from the point of view of officialdom, how very bloody convenient they were. And by the way, the GAO document is a publicly available document which any Roswell sceptic can check. It goes under the title Results of a Search for Records Concerning the 1947 Crash Near Roswell, New Mexico.




Eyewitness Testimony: UFO skeptics always hammer home the point that eyewitness testimony is about as reliable as a $7 bill. While total rubbishing any and all eyewitness testimony is more than just a slight exaggeration on the part of skeptics that is a valid point as any courtroom lawyer will affirm. In any event, eyewitness testimony regarding points of lights in the sky with no frames of reference is one thing – eyewitness testimony about physical stuff you are actually holding in your hand (like Roswell's debris) is quite a different matter.

The Nature of the Debris: The eyewitness description of the found and re‐covered Roswell wreckage doesn't seem to be at face value something that's very alien and exotic, not that we collectively have a lot of firsthand experi‐ence dealing with alien stuff. The debris seems to sort itself into three cate‐gories. There's aluminium foil‐like stuff that is frequently noted as two‐sided; foil on one side; rubberish or leatherish on the other. The anomaly is that this ‘foil' was extremely strong; it couldn't be torn or cut; it wouldn't burn; it wouldn't permanently crush but would return to its original shape. Then there's ‘I‐beams' or bamboo‐like or balsawood‐like sticks. The anomaly is that these had strange hieroglyphic‐like or petroglyph‐like. Lastly there was a brittle plastic‐like stuff, like Bakelite. It doesn't seem anomalous. All the three categories were lightweight.

Misidentification: There has got to have been tens of thousands of large balloons (weather, secret and other) that have been launched and come back down to terra firma and been found by your average Joe & Mary Citi‐zen, yet there's only been one Roswell type event where a balloon was alleg‐edly misidentified as a "flying saucer" by not just one but a potful of military officers from the US Army Air Force. If Joe & Mary Citizen don't ever misiden‐tify downed balloon material for alien spaceships, it's pretty absurd that mili‐tary offices in the US AAF would. As we have read from statements by those who actually handled the stuff, there was no chance of a misidentification of the Roswell stuff for balloon materials.

Other Stuff: Reports and scuttlebutt of a second crash and crash site and alien bodies, while interesting, are actually surplus to needs and contributes nothing further to evidence provided by the Roswell incident that extrater‐restrial intelligence (ETI) exists, or at least existed in July 1947. They just muddy the waters with extraneous information. A second crash site and alien bodies go beyond the information given in the original Lt. Haut press release which is the actual smoking gun document. In fact given the history of delib‐erate misinformation and disinformation being fed to all and sundry by the powers‐that‐be, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if information regarding a second crash site and alien bodies were deliberate misinformation and disin‐formation feeds from those powers‐that‐be to help discredit the original Roswell story by tainting the entire topic as so over‐the‐top as to have it lose all credibility in the eyes of all and sundry. Some sceptics might argue that the prime document doesn't exist since all copies of Haut's press release were ordered to be confiscated, or otherwise collected back from which they had been distributed. That retrieval done, the offending document copies were then destroyed. However, the original Roswell information didn't get into the media (local, national and international), both in print and audio (recording of radio broadcasts exist) by magic. The media didn't dream this up as an April Fools Day prank. The press release existed; Colonel Blanchard ordered it; Lt. Haut wrote it up on information provided by Colonel Blanchard and then hand‐carried and delivered it to the two local Roswell newspaper offices and the two radio stations where it took off with a life of its own. You can't get the worms back into the can once the can is opened (or the cat back into the bag).

Museum Pieces: If the Roswell debris were just the remains of a weather balloon, or the now declassified remains of a Project Mogul balloon, there's absolutely no reason why the powers‐that‐be shouldn't put those actual remains on display in a museum, say the AirForceMuseum or the Air & SpaceMuseum. It would make a really popular attraction given all the public‐ity Roswell has generated. I've never seen any documentation that the debris was ever disposed of in the rubbish bin. It still should exist. However, if the Roswell debris were actually the remains of extraterrestrial technology then it should be obvious to Blind Freddy why it's not on public display.

Since it's not on public display, well you can come to your own conclusion as to why. I bring up the topic of museums because it has been asked of me what definitive piece of UFO evidence would I see fit to put into a museum as an exhibit and evidence, even proof of extraterrestrial visitations for the whole wide world to see. As to what I would put in the Powerhouse Mu‐seum, or the Air Force Museum or the Air & Space Museum, etc. it would be the debris from the Roswell incident – if I had it. I don't, but the American Government does, so why don't you folks out there kindly ask the powers‐that‐be to place it there – assuming they are through with it of course. I bet if they did it wouldn't be anything that originated from Project Mogul.

Scepticism & Double Standards: Can anyone show me the evidence that Roswell actually is (not might be) explainable by Project Mogul. No one can do it. People who accept the Project Mogul explanation have to rely 100% on the say‐so of others. They (Roswell sceptics) appear to have swallowed hook, line and sinker the (third version of the) official Roswell explanation without raising a single sceptical eyebrow. They just have to (and they apparently do) take officialdom's word for it. Why ‐ obviously because they are so biased against Roswell having any ETI connection (they say there's no evidence that Roswell = ET) that any alternative explanation no matter how absurd it is, is preferable even though that explanation also lacks any evidence. Profes‐sional sceptics tend to be old enough and worldly enough not to be so naïve as to believe that the powers‐that‐be (and that's ANY administration of any country) always tells people – including Roswell sceptics ‐ the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Might I cite the U‐2; the Pentagon Papers; the recent NSA eavesdropping issue, etc. as just a few case histories where the powers‐that‐be didn't give a stuff about anyone's right to know.

There seems to be a philosophy regarding Roswell that it is perfectly accept‐able to be sceptical in the extreme when it comes to an ET explanation, yet exhibit not one sceptical body bone or issue one sceptical peep when it comes to alternative explanations given by officialdom. They just put their otherwise sceptical brains into neutral gear. Scepticism, even for the profes‐sional sceptics, flies out the window when something comes along that is compatible with or reinforces whatever philosophical worldview that person has.

Of course in other times and places skeptics no doubt would have substi‐tuted UFOs for something like ‘can black holes actually and not just theoreti‐cally exist' ("no") or debated against those who advocated the existence of atoms or of antimatter or of neutrinos (all once very theoretical and iffy). In biology would skeptics have argued against the survival of the coelacanth into the present or in archaeology against the reality of Troy? Probably yes. Why? Guess what? Scientists are human beings with deeply entrenched worldviews just like you or me. They have vested interests. They can't for years and years publicly say X and then suddenly turn around and say not‐X. They are subjected to peer‐pressure. To get grant money they have to tow the establishment line. Surely most of you have heard of the philosophy that science only really advances because the old farts finally die off making room




for the next generation with different worldviews, who in turn become the entrenched old farts who eventually get replaced by another generation, etc.

One Final Puzzlement: One thing puzzles me in a funny‐peculiar not funny‐ha‐ha way. It's a discrepancy I've never seen anyone else pick up on. If you read the original Roswell AAF press release or read the first accounts in the media (say the Roswell Daily Record, 8 July 1947) you will get phrases like "flying saucer"; "flying disk"; "disk was recovered"; "found the instrument"; "recovered the disk"; "inspected the instrument"; "saucer's construction, or it's appearance"; "gain possession of a disk"; "the flying object landed"; "the rancher stored the disk"; "the disk was picked up at the rancher's home", etc. Note that the words "crashed" or "crashed landed"; "debris"; "wreckage"; "pieces", etc. never appear. That's odd and I'm not sure what to make of it since how do you ascertain something is a "disk" if everything is in bits and pieces. It may have absolutely no significance at all.

Summary:

The Roswell incident is on the public record and has ample documentation.

You have numerous prime adult witnesses that handled the Roswell debris.

You have multi secondary witnesses (involved but who didn't see or handle the debris).

No sceptic has ever demonstrated that any witness has been anything other than a solid citizen – many being officers in the US Army Air Force.

No sceptic, not even the USAF can say with 100% assurance and give abso‐lute proof that a non‐extraterrestrial explanation is the be‐all‐and‐end‐all of the Roswell case whether that prosaic explanation is a weather balloon or a Project Mogul balloon.

The essential question is, IMHO, if Roswell really happened the way it did

according to Brazel, Blanchard, Marcel, Haut, etc., if Roswell has a bona fide extraterrestrial explanation, what are the implications?

Conclusion: Roswell = Mogul? Mogul is a nonsense answer. No matter how you slice and dice it, it's still balloon material. If you find one scrap of balloon material or stuff that pretty much gives the game away, no matter what else is attached. Keep in mind it was the purpose of the mission, not the materials that was classified. I repeat, if senior military personnel cannot distinguish balloon debris from a crashed metallic disc, something is screwy somewhere. It's like an astronomer not being able to distinguish the sun from the moon – pretty implausible. Further, why did the powers‐that‐be wait until 1995 to come out with the Mogul theory as the ultimate Roswell explanation? You can't possibly tell me that the project was only declassified some fifty years after the fact when its usefulness and purpose was worthless the minute the U‐2 and then orbiting satellites started monitoring the Soviet Union. No,

Mogul is pure bovine fertilizer; deliberate misinformation...


Other Books

Title: Encounter in Redlesham Forest

Authors: Nick Pope, John

Burroughs and Jim Penniston

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – Thomas Dunne

Books ISBN: 978‐1‐250‐

03180‐4 Price: £14.99

Available: Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Surprisingly there aren’t many books writ‐ten about the Rendlesham Forest Incident (RFI) and only a handful are in my ever

expanding book collection. Also surprising is that prior to this book Nick Pope had only written four books himself. With this in mind this book has to be a welcome addi‐tion to the UFO literature. If you are looking for the definitive account of the RFI then

this is not the book for you. It does however concentrate instead on the experiences of arguably two of the main witnesses in John Burroughs and Jim Penniston. Before read‐ing the book I was asked if it simply covered ‘old ground’. My answer is that it does to some degree but not enough to spoil your read of this book if you already know a lot about the RFI. It does set the scene and

remind us all of what a different world we lived in in 1980 when the RFI took place. More often that not UFO authors miss out on this vital aspect when recounting a

particular UFO encounter.

This book informs us in a very easy to read and easy to understand manner the ways in which the Western powers were wary of

the Soviet Union and the tensions mounting in Eastern Europe in 1980. UK Prime Min‐ster Margaret Thatcher has been in power for just over a year and the twin US bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge housed nu‐clear weapons. It was primarily those in charge of the security of these bases that were caught up in the RFI. The two main witnesses of course were Burroughs and Penniston. Nick Pope sets the scene per‐fectly to then allow Burroughs and Pennis‐ton tell there own story of the three nights

in question. Details of other witness’s encounters are also provided but make no mistake it is the story of the co‐authors that is told here in their own words in details. With all of the witnesses details laid out

Nick Pope looks at the various explanations put forward to try and explain the events. First he goes through all of the sceptical arguments and offers reason why none of them fit. I’ll not go into details of these but you will know many of them, the lighthouse etc. Nick then also looks at the three main exotic explanations: ET, interdimensional and time travel from our future. He readily admits there is no proof for all three of

these explanations and that they are purely theoretical and nothing more. They way I read it is that therefore none of the expla‐nations both sceptical or exotic fit the bill ?

The finale of the book of course is Jim Penniston’s ‘binary code’ revelations. Penniston lays out in full detail of how

these came about, why it took him over 30 years to release them and of course what they are supposed to mean. Penniston’s conclusion after all this is that the ‘craft of unknown origin’ as he calls it that he en‐countered and touched was a ‘time ma‐chine’ from our future. In other words no ET’s but us humans. I’ll not go into any

more detail than that. I would recommend you read the book to fully understand all of this. This book is much more than just the accounts of two of the main witnesses. Nick Pope pulls no punches when he says that

this in the premier UFO

CONTINUED… NEXT PAGE

BOOK REVIEWS Phenomena Magazine regularly receive books from publishers and authors, and provide a review of the material, promote and advertise them within the magazine, Facebook pages and of course on our websites. If you would like to have your book reviewed and advertised, simply contact Phenomena Magazine via our website or send your book direct to Phenomena Magazine Head Office.

Every one of us, according to this book, is inherently psychic and all we need is a gentle nudge in the right direction to awaken and use this talent. To that end the author of this extremely useful book, Michael R Hathaway, has devised a series of methods and exercises to bring this about. In the open‐ing pages the author sets out what he considers to be the top ten most important psychic abilities including, clairaudience, clairvoyance, divination, mediumship, psychic healing and of course the dubious term ‘ghost hunting’. The book is set out in defined sections; each concentrating on a par‐ticular area to be developed, and the first chapter sets out some worthwhile ground rules and intro‐duces the reader to some of the very early psychics and what they managed to achieve. Since the reader has already been told that they were born psychic, Dr. Hathaway shows the validity of this by indicating that, e.g. the invisible friends that many children have, are in fact contacts with the other side that the aging process, convention and prejudice eventually censor and filter out. The book con‐tinues by expanding upon each preceding chapter and gradually introduces the various forms of psy‐chic ability and development in turn and the methods needed to bring them to fruition. The book also offers suggestions on various methods that may be of use in enhancing psychic abilities. These in‐clude scrying, crystal balls, runes, the old tradition of reading tea leaves and, more worryingly, the use of the highly controversial Ouija board. The Ouija can be a risky process at the best of times and in the opinion of this reviewer best left alone, but the choice is of course ultimately down to the individ‐ual. Where this book differs from many others in its specialised field is inclusion of an audio CD in the package. The CD is a genuinely worthwhile addition and consists of guided meditations and other sonic enhancements to assist and encourage the psychic voyager on their journey of self discovery. Whether your dream is unfettered mastery of the psychic domain or just the ability to take a deeper look into the invisible world that surrounds us, this is the book for you.

THE EVERYTHING PSCHIC BOOK ‐ 2ND EDITION

This is an extremely effective, well written and well researched (if equally gruesome and grisly) follow up to Neil R Storey’s ‘Little Book of Death’ also published by The History Press. The book, which for the most part keeps its focus on murders committed in the UK, is perfect browsing material, because it does not have to he read in any set order and it presents is ghoulish delights as choice nuggets of information on murders, murderers and the methods they used. Some of the facts it contains are simultaneously fascinating and profoundly unsettling such as the origins of the saying ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’. This is not as I has assumed an abbreviation of sweet f*** a** meaning ‘zero’ or ‘nothing’, but refers to the horrendous 1867 murder and dismemberment of a eight year old girl, the titular ‘Fanny Adams’. Then there was the case of Mary Elizabeth Wilson, ‘The Widow of Windy Nook’ who used so much phosphorus to kill her two victims that they glowed in the dark. The remarkable thing is that age does not dull the enormity of these crimes, which still have the ability to shock. Yes, they are all here in their gruesome notoriety, Burke and Hare, Jack the Ripper, Bible John, Reginald Christie, Dr Crippen, Neville Heath, The West’s, the Boston Strangler and all the rest. The book itself is divided into twelve chapters dealing with various aspect of murder since the earliest times. This covers everything from poisons and poisoners, notorious (and still famous) murders, serial killers, ‘not proven’ verdicts and also the various implements used, some of which are still kept in various grisly ‘black museums’. For anyone with an interest in the subject of murder then this is the work of reference for you and if anyone still thinks that bringing back capital punishment is a bad idea they should read this.

THE LITTLE BOOK OF MURDER

Title: The Little Book of Murder

Author: Neil R. Storey Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 978‐0‐7524‐6994‐2

Price: £9.99

Once again Amberley, a prolific publisher of many things paranormal, includes yet another book deal‐ing with this ever fascinating subject in its catalogue. This one, written by Stephen Butt, deals with the spooky tales and lore relating to the city of Leicester. The author succeeds, where others may fail, in actually making the subject, which can often, regrettably, become mired in stodgy detail, both vibrant and interesting. He also sets out his definition of the word, ‘paranormal’, and rightly concludes that just because science cannot measure the paranormal this does not necessarily mean that it does not exist. The book comprises seven chapters, although it might have been fairer to call them sections since each is stuffed full of accounts and tales of Leicester’s surprisingly abundant supernatural past. Two of the most fascinating feature ‘Black Annis’ a particularly malevolent witch with reputed powers of shape shifting, and the fascinating Belgrave Triangle. The author makes it clear that the name, ‘Black Annis’ may have had a variety of origins. In fact the name is almost a generic title rather like tales of the ‘bogey man’ used to frighten children. Alternatively, this mythical creature may also have had its origins in ancient Celtic lore or in even older traditions of the Mother Goddess, which are likewise found in Isis and the Virgin Mary. At any rate this version of the legend has the witch tunnel‐ling her way beneath the town using her iron claws while her malice‐filled shrieks can be heard above ground. Belgrave Hall can date its origins to the efforts of a local merchant who began funding its construction1709 and the work was completed in 1713. Actually there is a rather amusing typo here, since, according to the text, the merchant oversaw the building between 1709 and 1913 and if so must have enjoyed truly amazing longevity. Anyway, the hall is also well haunted and includes sight‐ings of the (almost mandatory) Grey Lady, the Green Lady and the Victorian Lady and in addition sounds of footsteps are a regular occurrence. According to the author some of the reported phenom‐ena have been documented by the BBC and ITN in their news bulletins. As one would expect from Amberley, the book is well produced with abundant photographs and would be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of any student of the paranormal: thoroughly recommended.

PARANORMAL LEICESTER

Title: The Everything Psychic Book 2nd Edition

Author: Dr. Michael R. Hathaway

Publisher: Adams Media ISBN: 978‐1‐4405‐2702‐9

Price: $18.95

Title: Paranormal Leicester

Author: Stephen Butt Publisher: Amberley

ISBN: 978‐1‐84868‐752‐3 Price: £9.99

Other Books

Title: Encounter in Redlesham Forest Authors: Nick Pope, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – Thomas Dunne Books ISBN: 978‐1‐250‐03180‐4 Price: £14.99

CONTINUED…

case ever anywhere in the world and it’s time for Roswell to move over and be

replaced by the RFI. He rightly points out that all of the Roswell witnesses are now deceased but ALL of the RFI witnesses are alive. Most of them were US military and

that yet more have still to go on the record. Whether Nick will see the RFI hit the num‐ber one spot remains to be seen. The au‐thors also lay out a challenge so‐to‐speak. The binary codes are displayed in full and unedited. The analysis of them done so far is published as well. However, they are

open to be checked and double‐checked by others and the authors openly welcome this. If I have one irritation in the whole book it is that Nick Pope refers to the

‘ufologists’ in the third person as if he is somewhat separate from them. Well Nick I got a surprise for you, you are one of us, a ufologist. Your days as the man‐from‐the‐ministry ate long over. Does this book

answer all of the questions about the RFI and in particular the involvement of

Burroughs and Penniston ? Certainly not but it does offer a wealth of detail. Still

unanswered to my satisfaction for example is the fact that Burroughs and Penniston

were only yards apart that night in 1980 but yet one of them observed a craft and the

other just lights. How come ? It bothers me that Penniston waited over 30 years to release the binary code details (they now call in the Rendlesham Code). In fact all of this binary code information bothers me if

I’m honest.

What also bothers me is that Burroughs and Penniston speak openly about what they believe they encountered that night, Nick Pope points out that one of the other main witnesses, Col Halt has gone on the record that he believes that ET is the explanation. However this book does not see Nick him‐self commit one way or the other. This is something I would like to have seen. It will be interesting to see if others now take up the challenge of deciphering the binary

d=codes. It will be even more interesting to see if the RFI hits the number one spot in

the UFO hit parade. But what I hope we see from this book is that others involved that night finally go on the record. Some are featured briefly in this book but there are without doubt many others still to tell their side of the story. Would I recommend this book, of course I would. It is informative, fascinating, frustrating, and controversial but overall a very welcome addition to the possible understand of the RFI, the UFO phenomenon in general and a first class

addition to the UFO literature. I could have continued on with this review as it is an excellent book and one that all three au‐

thors should be proud of. I’m not saying you will agree with everything within its pages, instead I would simply suggest you sit back and digest it for what it is. Congratulations to all three authors for a fascinating read and a book that I am sure will cause much debate for a long, long time to come (no

pun intended).

Reviewed by Philip Mantle. Editor: UFO TODAY www.ufotoday.net

BOOK REVIEWS Phenomena Magazine regularly receive books from publishers and authors, and provide a review of the material,

promote and advertise them within the magazine, Facebook pages and of course on our websites. If you would like to have your book reviewed and advertised, simply contact Phenomena Magazine via our website or send your book

direct to Phenomena Magazine Head Office.

Building off the success of their previous books, including the international bestseller, Change Your Aura, Change Your Life, their most recent title Communing with the Divine: A Clairvoyant’s Guide to Angels, Archangels and the Spiritual Hierarchy explores the sacred art of communicating with celestial beings. Based on Barbara Martin’s extensive direct clairvoyant experiences, the book examines how to work closely with angels, archangels, and other divine beings who guide you in day‐to‐day life and help you achieve your destiny. World‐renowned as the “Mozart of Metaphysics," Barbara Martin, and her co‐author Dimitri Moraitis are once again headed to the bestseller lists with their new book, Communing with the Divine: A Clairvoyant's Guide to Angels, Archangels and the Spiritual Hierarchy. In their last bestseller, Change Your Aura, Change Your Life they shared how to transform your cir‐cumstances from the inside out. In their latest, readers learn how to connect personally with celestial beings—from angels to the archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and others, to the Spiritual Hierarchy of Holy Ones. These beings serve to protect, teach and guide us—that is, once we know how to communicate with them. Martin and Moraitis reveal the steps to experiencing clairvoyant and spiritual visions, and teach medi‐tation tools to accessing the wisdom, healing powers, and inspiration of these divine beings.

COMMUNING WITH THE DEVINE

There is an old saying about ‘Gilding the Lily’ that is apropos of this remarkable book. Just when you think he has said it all, in this updated version of his now classic ‘The Truth Agenda’, respected re‐searcher Andy Thomas does it again and adds yet more perspective and focus on the strange and frequently unnerving world of subterfuge, uncertainty and misinformation that we are told is ‘the truth’. Again this is a weighty volume and from what I could see much (if not all) of the book has been revised and updated There would be little point in reiterating the abundant praise and plaudits in my previous review for what is now almost the main reference point for information of this kind, because it’s all contained here. The glaring anomalies surrounding 9/11, political assassinations, the UFO phenomenon, the paranormal and the sinister agenda of the religious right, especially in the USA, and ultimately orches‐trated mind control. Where the book carries a note of hope is where the author shows that by wishing change to occur, we really can alter the negative outcomes that ‘the controllers’ intend: this is chaos magic by any other name. It is impossible to overstate just how vitally important this book is, a true masterwork of its kind and a must read for any person with an interest of what really goes on behind the façade of normality. Buy it, read it and learn.

THE TRUTH AGENDA

Title: The Truth Agenda (Expanded and updated Third

Edition). Author: Andy Thomas

Publisher: Vital Signs Publishing ISBN: 978‐0‐95506608‐1‐6

Title: Communing with the Devine

Authors: Barbara Y. Martin & Dimitri Moraitis Publisher: Tarcher

ISBN: 13: 978‐0399167744 Price: £12.75

The author and editor of more than two dozen books on theology and the dialogue between faith and science, Peters has also been a consultant to NASA and SETI on the subject of astroethics; and, he has appeared as an expert in several TV documentaries about ancient aliens and UFOs. "UFOs: God's Chariots? offers a fascinating critical survey of the aerial phenomenon since it essentially began in 1947…. Highly recommended for reading and reflection."‐‐Robert Ellwood, Professor of World Relig‐ions, University of Southern California. "Peters' astrotheology takes us on a wise adventure into a lively cosmos, where neither 'belief ' nor 'unbelief ' answers the questions about UFOs and ETI." ‐‐Catherine Keller, Professor of Theology, Drew University. Are UFOs celestial saviors, coming to save Earth from self‐destruction? Are UFOnauts advancing human evolution by birthing hybrid children? Is it time for a new "astrotheology" that enshrines the UFO phenomenon at the same level as the space sciences at NASA and SETI? UFOs: God's Chariots? uncovers and exposes the clandestine spiritual dimensions within the UFO phenomenon. UFOs vibrate with transcendence, omniscience, perfection, and redemption. UFOs: God's Chariots? delves deeply into government conspiracies, analyzes the newest models of close encounter interpretation, and reveals the results of The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey, in which self‐identified believers were asked if making contact with an intelligent extra‐terrestrial civilization would undermine our historic religious traditions. They said no. Does this mean we're ready to share our pews with aliens?

(PM ‐ It was a pleasure to read a book on the subject of UFOs and the author know his subject well. A excellent book I read from cover to cover in a short time. A very well written and exploratory ap‐proach to the UFO subject. Very thought provoking with some brilliant facts. Well worth getting your hands on a copy. It belongs on your shelf with some of the great ones)… Steve Mera.

UFOs: GOD’S CHARIOTS?

Title: UFOs: God’s Chariots? Author: Ted Peters

Publisher: New Page Books ISBN‐13: 978‐1601633187

Price: £14:99

http://www.ufotoday.net/


A Laboratory for the Future of Humanity By Stefan Hager

Underground temples with secret doorways. Connections to other cultures in the universe. Food grown in the lab. Time-

travel, astral travel or a mix of both - if all that raises questions and interest, there is a place that claims it can provide all that

and more. Nestled in the mountains north of Turin in the Chiusella Valley is the "Federation of Damanhur" - an eco-

village and spiritual community founded in 1975 by Oberto Air-audi (1950 - 2013) and 24 followers. Nowadays an estimated

800 people live in the valley, with many sympathisers around the globe and a steady stream of visitors.

A Laboratory for the Future of Humanity By Stefan Hager


In the Seventies, the tightly knit group of a handful of people had started to dig caves into the hard rock of the Italian Alps. Airaudis vision of an under‐ground temple complex was obviously so strong and compelling that these people spent most of their time digging out an underground cathedral that earned the praise of being the 8th wonder of the world. Agreed, Damanhur shares this title with a lot of places around the globe, but imagining the feat of building a temple complex underground without heavy machinery ‐ and without the authorities knowing what's going on ‐ is quite a feat. Plus, it is artfully decorated as well. T he Damanhurians, as they refer to themselves, call this complex the Temples of Humankind. When they slowly opened up to new people ‐ only a few at the time ‐ one of the original founders got disgruntled that newcomers were treated in the same way as the "Elders", and left the community. It seems he felt that his influence over how the group should progress waned; of course, other motivations like money and power may have been involved as well. By the time he left, the people of Damanhur had already managed to build the "Temples of Humankind" by digging them out of the Italian Alps ‐ bucket for bucket. They hadn't asked for an official permission, knowing well that this would never have been granted anyway. The person who left tried to black‐mail his former friends with the threat of exposure and when that blackmail scheme didn't work he went to the authorities. Obviously he relayed information about the hidden temples to the police; in 1992 armed policemen stormed the houses of the people living there, con‐vinced that the community posed a serious threat. Damanhur itself values peace very highly, so there was no resistance; and without this incident it is likely that it would not have grown to the size it has today. Showing the richly decorated underground temples to the State Prosecutor won him over; in‐stead of ordering their destruction, he decided to make efforts to preserve them. Arts and spirituality are closely related to the people of Damanhur; but they also think of themselves as a laboratory for the future of humanity. There are ongoing experiments, and they range from growing artificial meat in a lab to healing techniques. Naturally with that variety come methods that are more spiritual than scientific, and which might involve a leap of faith.

The Temples are open for visits (booking in advance is strongly recom‐mended), and the secret passageways as well as the magnificent halls can be experienced. Take the Hall of the Spheres, for example; it is here where con‐nections with other life‐forms can be made according to one of the Damanhu‐rian websites: "During the experience of Contact with the Cosmos, held dur‐ing different times of the year, the spheres can be used for experimental re‐search to contact non‐earthly intelligences." (http://www.thetemples.org/en) Damanhurian websites: "During the experience of Contact with the Cosmos, held during different times of the year, the spheres can be used for experi‐mental research to contact non‐earthly intelligences." (http://www.thetemples.org/en) The community north of Turin is difficult to describe. Apart from being la‐belled a cult, fake religion, philosophy or way of life it is indisputable that the people who are involved have changed the region at least. After a legal strug‐gle, which began with the "discovery" of the Temples by the authorities, it

seems that the community have now obtained planning permission to en‐hance their Temples. Interestingly enough, the design of the Temples had been thought up by Oberto Airaudi, who had been trained as an insurance agent, not as an archi‐tect; but when structural engineers analysed the underground complex they were impressed by the flawless design and implementation. Damanhur cer‐tainly is a place that gets the sixth sense tingling. It can be easily mistaken for an artistic community, but in this case the rabbit hole goes way deeper than that. They invented (or re‐discovered) their own symbols and language, and at their university they offer a wide range of classes from Astral Travel to Spiritual Physics. Their current major project, an open meeting ground for religious and politic leaders of the world, has been delayed by lack of money and probably by the death of the founder Airaudi in 2013. The next years will show whether the idea behind Damanhur is strong enough to survive without the leading found‐ing figure; visiting the place while it still exists is highly recommended.

Links:

http://www.damanhur.org/home‐damanhur (Official website)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Damanhur (Wikipedia article)

http://42mysteries.com/201212_poe_damanhur.html (Article about Damanhur)

http://www.thetemples.org (Website for the Temples of Humankind)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/damanhur_ms/10290601516/

Stefan Hager is the editor‐in‐chief of the influential Sauniere Society maga‐zine. (PM ‐ A fascinating read, well worth looking at).

http://www.thetemples.org/en





http://www.damanhur.org/home-damanhur

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Damanhur

http://42mysteries.com/201212_poe_damanhur.html

http://www.thetemples.org






Are Crop Circles Hoaxes or other Worldly Phenomena? By Russell Symonds & Nancy Talbot

Crop circles gripped the imagination, attention and interest of the world ever since the earliest circular forma-

tions discovered in the 1960's. The scientific association, the me-dia, and the New Age believers almost always showed some inter-est in the appearance of new crop formations. The M. Night Shya-malan movie Signs, which starred Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoe-

nix, and many other fictional works used crop formations as a main feature in their subject matter...


A crop circle design is created when a field of rapeseed, rye, wheat, corn or barley is flattened into what usually appears to be a pattern of circles and/or some other geometric shape. The earliest field formations consisted of simple circles, but the designs generally evolved into more and more complex pat‐terns ever since, with some designs becoming a highly involved triple Julia set or even with some formations exhibiting three‐dimensional qualities. The patterns found in sacred geometry can often be found in crop formations.

Serious investigators of the crop formation phenomenon, regardless of how basic or involved the patterns are, often wonder whether they are the result of simply being man‐made (most likely), an effect of freakish weather, or something of otherworldly or paranormal in origin.

The History of the Crop Circles.

Records of crop circle formations date back as far as the 1880's in England. According to these early records, crop circles were thought to be caused by freak storms that created round impressions in the cultivated fields. There has been little interest in crop formations and little written about them until al‐most a century later. Crop formations again attracted more interest in the press when more sightings were reported in the 1960's. Crop designs did not just appear in England, they also occurred in many places all across the globe such as in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and Russia. Areas and locations considered to be ancient, sacred and holy were often near the formations of crop circles. Most crop circles were discovered in the southern portion of England, mostly in the area of Wiltshire County.

Multiple explanations were created regarding the formation of crop circles. One theory stated that crop formations were the effect of strange weather such as whirlwinds and tornadoes. Another concept joined or linked crop circles to disc‐shaped UFO's and otherworldly beings such as aliens. The mys‐tery behind most of the crop formation phenomena was destroyed when two pranksters by the name of Dave Chorley and Doug Bower claimed to have created most of the crop circles in Wiltshire County themselves using planks, rope and other locally found tools under cover of the darkest hours of the night.

Some Crop Formations Still Defy Explanation.

After the time that Dave Chorley and Doug Bower came forward claiming that they created the crop circles that appeared on the fields of Wiltshire County, later research revealed that eighty per‐cent of all documented crop forma‐tions are of human origin. However, a twenty per‐cent of carefully recorded and researched crop formations had no indication of being created by human hands and therefore still had no "earthly" explanation. What then could be causing the unexplained twenty per‐cent? Many paranormal researchers and scientists were forced to conclude that the remaining unexplained group of crop formations had to have other explanations for their occurrences. Experts decided on the creation of "cereology" as a serious area of research to help solve the problem of finding out the actual truth behind the formation of the most genuine field designs.

Crop Formations That Are Well‐Known.

The following are a few highlights of various significant circular formations that appeared after the 1960's:

* The solar system formation, discovered in Longwood War‐ren, Hampshire, UK. With a similarity to the planets of the inner solar system and an obvious absence of the planet Earth, this formation attracted much interest to scholars and scientists alike.

* The dumbbell formation, first discovered in Chilcomb Farm in UK. Assumed to be the first of the dumbbell formations, where two circles were connected by a line and flanked with two rectangles at each side. Formed in 1990.

* The Barbury Castle tetrahedron. Barbury Castle is a Neo‐lithic fort in the United Kingdom. Because it depicted one of the sacred hermetic symbols, the symbol of the Trinity, it was considered highly significant. This tetrahedron design ap‐peared in the fields near Barbury Castle in 1991.

* The "Tree of Life" formation. Another Barbury Castle con‐figuration that appeared in May of 1997.

Crop Formations and Sacred Geometry.

There is an obvious connection between crop formations and sacred geome‐try. Sacred geometry is an aspect of geometry for the purpose of communi‐cating an eternal truth, expanding consciousness and spiritual awareness. There is also a sense of balance, centeredness and well‐being that comes from the sheer beauty and elegance of the sacred geometry often used in the design of a crop formation. Sacred geometry carries its own meaning and message whether it be created by extraterrestrial artists from a higher realm, or as in the vast majority of cases, simply stomped‐out by Earth‐bound human designers. Many sacred jewelry designs are based on crop circles or on sacred symbols often found in crop circle formations…

A psychic connection.

There are those that believe in certain psychic connections, ie predicting where a crop formation may occur and in some cases assist with their design in some form of psychic manner. One of the world’s leading experts in this field is Nancy Talbot who along with BLT research teams have investigated hundreds of formations and found startling evidence to suggest something truly strange is responsible for some of the formations discovered around the world. One was recently discovered in Holland. A formation that was pre‐dicted by an associate of Nancy’s before it was actually discovered… She says:

Shortly after dark on Tuesday night, April 22nd, Robbert got the feeling that another circle was coming and that it would be near the village of Hoeven where he grew up. As Roy was with Robbert that evening they drove to the farm fields around Hoeven, repeatedly checking a particular field (one with tall grass) which Robbert “saw” in his "mind’s eye” as the one where the new formation would be—but they could find nothing. When Robbert got back to his apt. he Skyped me, during which he stated he had a strong feeling that a new circle was coming—saying that now he could not only “see” what it would look like, he could also “smell” the grass in which it would appear. I immediately asked him to make a sketch of what he “saw” and hold it up so I could see it through Skype (Robbert doesn’t know how to scan things into his computer)‐‐so I could be a witness to the accuracy of his “vision” when the actual formation appeared. Having worked with Robbert since 1997, and having never observed him to be mistaken about these “knowings” about where and/or what “design” new formations will be, I expected that a new formation would appear…and most likely soon… This is the sketch that Rob‐bert showed me through his Skype camera on the night of April 22‐23rd 2014—compare it with Yvonne’s aerial photo taken in the morning:




Above: The drawing… Made on April 22nd 2014…

Above: The Formation, discovered on April 24th 2014...

On Wednesday April 23rd Robbert was in meetings with the author of a new book (in Dutch) which has just come out, and so was with many people all day. After dinner with this group Robbert was driven back to his apt. around 9:00 ‐ 9:30pm where he soon “felt the energies” again and “saw” (in his mind’s eye) a flash of light over the same field where he and Roy had looked the night before. Finally his feeling that the new formation was coming was so strong he called Roy again (Roy lives 20‐30 minutes away, by car), to ask if he'd come back so they could go check the field again. What Robbert actually said to me was he felt the same urgency as would a father‐to‐be who has just been told his wife has gone to the hospital to give birth — that to him "these crop circles feel like my children.” He would often state…

After an hour or so Roy returned and sometime around midnight they reached the same field they had carefully checked the night before and, this time, could immediately see the new formation in the tall grass. As you can see, it looks just like the drawing that Robbert showed me through Skype the night before.

There is a large (22m+ overall diameter) thin ring with nine circles and one large ring inside it, forming a lovely cross…with three circles leading up to the edge of the big thin ring (overall length = 28m). When Roy returned in the morning he met a man who is an “overseer" of the fields around Hoeven and stopped to speak to him. This man told an interest‐ing story, saying he has been patrolling his area for decades, day and night, to protect the area from poachers. In all this time he has never seen a formation being made by Robbert (or anyone else), in spite of the fact that many circles have been found in this area over the years. And he told Roy he can find no explanation for how these many crop circles have occurred….that, to him, this is a genuine mystery.

The farmer in this case has indicated that he does not want people in the field since the grass is very tall and ready to be mowed. He did not mind that Roy took photos, but said he would cut the grass quickly now.

Robbert said that the “energy” in this formation is very strong and “fresh” and, if he receives a “message” related to the formation he will get that info posted on his website. For more photos of this, and all 2014 Dutch circles, see Robbert’s Crop Circle Archive (in Dutch, but many reports translated into English): http://www.robbertvandenbroeke.nl/graancirkelarchief.

For more information in English about Robbert and the ongoing phenomena around him, you can see reports posted by Nancy. An introduction to his case on the BLT website: http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert.php.

Nancy Talbott BLT Research Team Inc. P.O. Box 400127 Cambridge, MA 02140 (USA)

Note: Though many crop formations throughout the world are considered a hoax, carefully created mathematical works of art which can be carried out by a handful of skilled crop circle makers at night and in the dark. There are still many formations that seem to defy rationality. Are some crop circles authen‐tic? If so… then what or who is responsible for their complex design and crea‐tion. The crop circle phenomenon is a mystery not quite ready to be put to bed. A truly unusual phenomenon that dates back hundreds of years…

Check out the fascinating website above...

The Scottish Paranormal Festival

The Festival will wear a serious face during the day and relax into fun and entertainment night. It will attract

participants and audiences both local and international, expert and curious, believers and sceptics.

It will feature a number of varied and parallel strands.

TALKS & LECTURES ‐ in association with experts, au‐thors and academic institutions.

DEBATES ‐ on all aspects of the paranormal.

FILMS THE STIRLING PARANORMAL FILM FESTIVAL A Festival‐within‐a‐Festival of feature films, documenta‐ries, TV productions, and the work of paranormal film‐

makers.

THEATRE ‐ Plays and theatrical presentations on para‐normal themes

PSYCHIC SESSIONS Also in the theatre, featuring top mediums currently

working in the UK TOURS

Local and further flung paranormal locations

GHOST HUNTS ‐ Exploring some of the more haunted parts of Stirling

PARANORMAL MARKETPLACE ‐ Books, DVDs, and esote‐ria touching every area of the paranormal

CEILIDH OF THE VAMPIRES! ‐ A Masked Halloween Ball, the ultimate in dangerous decadence. Choose your

partners!

THE GHOST BOX ‐ The Festival will also have a Commu‐nity dimension, with an exciting initiative to record the paranormal experiences of the people of Stirling, and

visitors to the Festival

The Ghost Box will enable members of the public to put their own experiences on record. Anyone can make an anonymous or open digital film recording of any strange phenomena they have seen or heard or felt. These recordings will be preserved as a unique and

important oral history archive of the city.

PARTNERS & SPONSERS

The founder and director of Paranormal Scotland is

award winning international film producer

Peter Broughan.


What is the Wallis UFO? Young mother tells how mystery object sped off before her eyes. By Harriet Arkell.

A young mother has told how she saw a mysterious silver object hovering in the sky above her house this morning. Elyse O'Neill, 26, took these photographs on her smart phone after spotting what she described as a car‐sized, silvery object above her back garden in Wallis, Pembrokeshire. The mother‐of‐one said she watched as the UFO split into two, reconnected, and then flew off. She said: 'I was standing in the garden at 6.45am smoking a cigarette when this thing shot across from the moor over on the right, and stopped right in front of me.

'It was so bizarre, it took my breath away. 'I ran inside to get my phone. There wasn't enough battery left to film it, but there was enough to take pictures, so I started snapping away. 'It was hovering, spinning like a top, and as I watched it, it split up vertically into two pieces.' She added: 'I'm a country girl and I know what sheep sound like, but the sheep in the field beyond were making a horrible, high pitched sound all the time it was there. 'Slowly, the two pieces joined back together and then about 15 seconds later it just shot off straight up into the sky ‐ in the blink of an eye. 'I've never seen anything move so fast. I've seen a shooting star before and it was faster than that ‐ there's no way it could be man‐made, it moved too fast.

Nick Pope, an expert on UFOs and a former government adviser on unexplained phe‐nomena, said: 'This is truly bizarre and what makes it particularly mysterious is the description of the way the object moved from a hover to a high speed in an instant.

'This rules out most of the conventional explanations such as aircraft lights, a meteor/fireball, or a Chinese lantern. 'Perhaps it was some new secret, prototype spy plane or drone, but if not, it's a genuine mystery. It would be fascinating to find out if anything unusual was tracked on radar.'

Is it really just a 'shiny rock'? Nasa claims to have solved mystery of the light on Mars

By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Nasa has spoken out on the controversy surrounding a strange 'glow' spotted on Mars ‐ and says it is either a shiny rock or a

glitch in the Curiosity rover's camera. UFO blogger Scott Waring claimed that the new photograph taken by the rover suggests

there are intelligent creatures living underground. However, Nasa says it has now investigated the image, and found it is simply a

trick of the light. 'One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun,' a Nasa spokesperson told

MailOnline. 'When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west‐northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky. 'The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be caused by cosmic rays striking the camera's detector.' Nasa's engineers believe the glow may have been caused by sunlight reaching the camera's sensors through a vent hole in the camera housing. The agency says this has happened previously on other cameras on

Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incom‐ing sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned. Nasa also revealed the glitches are commonplace. 'Among the thousands of images received from Curiosity, ones with bright spots show up nearly every week.' The Curiosity rover is currently exploring an area of Mars known as ‘the Kimberley.’ Named after a region of western Australia, the area sees four different types of rock inter‐sect and is scientifically fascinating. The particular spot the rover is in ‘gives us a great view for context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley,’ Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology

said in a release.

Over the next few weeks, Rice will be leading the science for the rover as it drills and analyses rocks at the location. But it’s not the fact that a car‐sized vehicle is exploring an alien world 57 million miles (92 million km) away that piqued the interest of the OFU

community. Rather, what appears to be an anomaly in a photo has caught the attention of him and other UFO enthusiasts. ‘An artifi‐cial light source was seen this week in this NASA photo which

shows light shining upward from… the ground,’ Waring wrote on his website. ‘This could indicate there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do. He goes on to claim: ‘This is not a glare from the sun, not is it an artifact of the photo process. ‘Look closely at the bottom of the light. ‘It has a very flat surface giving us 100 per cent indication it is from the surface. ‘Sure Nasa could go and investigate it, but hey, they are not on Mars to discover

life, but there to stall its discovery.’

According to NASA, however, the bright spot is not that unusual. Curiosity takes images using two cameras, one in its right eye and the other in its left. While the image from the right eye shows this bright spot, the same image from the left eye does not. Ben Biggs, editor of All About Space magazine, says we should not jump to any conclusions when seeing images like this. 'While the "light" is as yet unexplained, it's quite a leap to assume that it has an intelli‐gent source,' he says. 'The public can afford to speculate wildly but Nasa is an organisation internationally renowned for credible science. 'It needs to exhaust every other likely explanation before

it can begin to explore less realistic phenomena.'


Football spectators spooked by 'ghost' which appears to run through fans during match in Bolivia. By Tara Brady

Football spectators have been spooked by a ghostly figure that appears to run through fans during a match in Bolivia. The unexplained shadow glides quickly through the stands during a game in Hernando Siles Sta‐dium in La Paz, Bolivia. It even appears to run straight through a barrier at speed. The video, shot during a television broadcast of the match, has gone viral with internet sleuths sharing their theories on the appari‐tion.

This is not the first time an unexplained apparition has been spotted at a South American stadium. Some Venezuelans believe the 'ghost' of their de‐ceased President Hugo Chaves was responsible for saving an otherwise certain goal during an interna‐tional match against Colombia. A figure can be seen tapping the ball over the goal post.

Video can be viewed at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

news/article‐2611010/Football‐spectators‐spooked‐

ghost‐appears‐run‐fans‐match‐Bolivia.html

Watch Russian 'ghost' car as it appears out of nowhere and shoots past stunned BMW driver at busy intersection By James Rush

Video footage of a Russian 'ghost car' has left viewers scratching their heads after apparently showing a vehicle appearing out of nowhere at a busy intersection. The car nearly causes an accident as it suddenly appears in front of traffic turning left at traffic lights on a main road. The dash cam footage, believed to have been filmed in Russia, was taken from a vehicle behind the BMW which nearly crashes into the black car. The vehicle from which the video was taken then appears to nudge into the BMW after failing to stop in time.

The video has so far gained more than 1.2million hits on YouTube after it was uploaded on March 31. Edited versions slow the footage down in an attempt to pinpoint the exact moment the car suddenly ap‐pears. Viewers from across the world have attempted to explain how the car appears in front of the BMW. Some have suggested the car is hidden by other vehicles until the last moment, while others have sug‐gested the video is a fake. The video can be viewed at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article‐2606791/Watch‐Russian‐ghost‐car‐appears‐shoots‐past‐stunned‐BMW‐driver‐busy‐intersection.html

Family posing for pictures in museum shocked to discover ghostly image of girl in Victorian clothing

'which followed them around' By Steph Cockroft

A couple claims they discovered images of a ghostly Victorian girl when flicking back through family photos taken during a trip to the museum. John Burnside and Shona Backhouse, from Wake‐field, West Yorkshire, say they had a 'funny feeling' when they

visited the Castle Museum in York two years earlier with their son Johnthomas, then 18 months. But it was only when they looked back through the snapshots two years later they noticed a faint

black and white figure lurking in the images.

Mr Burnside, 27, said: 'It's enough to make you paranoid. It gives me goose bumps every time I think about it.' The couple decided to look through the photos after Mr Burnside found his old mo‐bile phone memory card in his pyjama pocket. It was only then that they spotted the ghostly figure. Mr Burnside said: 'It was

weird. I didn't notice anything at first, then I thought I was imagin‐ing it. So I asked Shona and she said 'Yes. It's a little girl.'

'When I phoned my mum she at first thought it might be a little girl that my sister lost, but my dad spotted that the girl in the picture was in Victorian dress. 'I don't like the idea of ghosts or anything like that. It gives me panic attacks.' There have been

claims in the past at Castle Museum is haunted. A crew filming an episode of Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns programme in 2006 insisted they had heard shrill voices and seen ghostly children

running around. Mr Burnside said: 'There was not a little girl like that on the day at the museum. It was pretty dead there to be

honest all through the day. Anyway, it looks like you can see right through her. 'It is even more incredible when you think how many times those pyjamas have been through the wash with the mem‐

ory card in the pocket.'

His partner Miss Backhouse, 25, who works in a tanning salon, said: 'It is like it was following us because it was in the last picture of me taken outside. 'It is really weird. I never noticed it until

other day when we looked through the pictures. 'But I told John when was at the museum that I had funny feeling and didn't like it there. 'The room one of pics was taken in I wouldn't go inside. It

gave me goosepimples and shivers. 'Our son was around 18 months' old at the time. I can't really remember if he sensed

anything ‐ but I know I didn't like it at all though.'

Museum officials said they had no idea who the figure in the photographs might be. Meanwhile, there has been increasing popularity for apps to create or enhance peoples' own ghost

photos, such as Ghost Capture. The app's developers boast that users can 'choose from creepy Victorian children, faceless torsos,

Civil War soldiers, ghostly orbs, and more'. (Phenomena Magazine ‐ Most definitely another example of a Ghost App).


Sculpting The Alien By Rebecca Lomas & Philip Mantle


On the run in to Christmas 2013 I was looking online for a different type of Christmas gift for my eldest daughter. Although she is now studying forensic biology at university she has always been fascinated by dinosaurs ever since watch Jurassic Park as a child. Just by chance I came across a website of a sculptor bin Lan‐cashire who had some terrific dinosaurs that he had previously made. Looking at his site in greater detail it was easy to see that he was interested in sci‐fi as well which was right up my street. Cutting a long story short I contacted the sculptor in question, Martino Catalano, and asked him outright if he would be in‐terested in designing something unique for us here at UFO TODAY. After a few conversations Martino hit upon the idea of an alien grey head but not as a bust but a wall plaque instead. The deal was done and UFO TODAY columnist Rebecca Lomas took a short drive to interview Martino at his workshop in Lancashire. INTERVIEW WITH SCULPTOR MARTINO CATALANO Q: Is sculpting/sculpture something you were always interested in Martino? Oh Yes it definitely was, from an early age as far back as I can remember from primary school at around the age of four. The first thing I saw was the art class at school with the plasticine and board and it was the first thing that I made a beeline for. Making a snake was easy I would roll the plasticine put two eyes on and I was away!

Q: What was the first sculpture that you ever made and sold? The first sculpture that I sold was a rearing unicorn in the 1980’s. At first when I started the sculpting I never really felt the inclination to sell the sculptures, I created them out of the love of it and so I didn’t start selling my work until I was in my forties. Q: When you started as a sculptor was there any one thing or person that you would say was the biggest influence on you? Yes it was definitely Ray Harryhausen who does special effects, (one of his most known pictures being Jason and the Argonauts). When I was younger I would always be making dinosaurs and King Kong’s, there was quite often a plasticine King Kong Gorilla melting on the fireplace! Q. What mediums do you sculpt with, do you have a favourite? I always use ‘wet clay’ or terracotta it is great to work with and produces great sculptures. Q. What is your typical day like? A lot of my day always involves casting of existing sculptures that I have created rubber moulds for as limited editions and for this I use resin.

I tend to make something at any one time such as a sculpture that's intended as a limited edition and then make a rubber mould of it. However if it is a ‘one‐off’ sculpture for a private commission, then I make a 'waste‐mould' in plaster or a cheap rubber material. For most standing sculptures, for instance fig‐ures, I use an armature which is made from either aluminium, steel or wood with chicken‐wire.

Q. Do you artistic skills run in the family? My younger brother I would say is the only other artistic person in the family; he is what I would call the 2D artist in the family. Also my dad could sketch and would draw for us when we were young especially chickens as he lived on a farm. Q: There are quite a number of sci‐fi sculptures on your website, is sci‐fi an interest of yours? Oh yes, myself and my mum used to watch ‘Appointment with Fear’ on a Monday night about 40 years ago though it was hard to get up for school the day after that was my responsibility! That is where it all really started and I’m a huge fan of sci‐fi, I did work on an alien related film over the last couple of years. I love the alien films. Q: What's the most unusual sculpture you've ever been asked to make? I would say that the most unusual material I have been asked to make a sculpture out of was carving polystyrene, this sculpture was of morphing shapes

Sculpting The Alien By Rebecca Lomas & Philip Mantle


like abstract art which is also a love of mine and something I am very passionate about. I love the elemental works like Henry Moore those shapes are al‐most ‘alien like’. On the whole I tend to instigate my own creations. Q: What's the most difficult sculpture you've ever made? I would say thinking back that it was a decorative architectural faience piece, which is a term for glazed architectural terracotta. This one was an outside piece for a water feature it had to be geometrically correct so there was a repeating pattern that had to perfect this was time consum‐ing and a challenge with it being neither animal or humanoid, it was mainly repeat pattern floral and straight lines.

Q: Is there anything you can't make? The most challenging ones can be very small sculptures, those that are below 6 inches for exam‐ple. A lot of people tend to think that the smaller they are the easier they are to complete when in fact the intricate details can take hours and hours. As far as subject matter anything with straight lines can be more difficult. Personally I love creating the alien figures, humanoids, animals and anatomy. I absolutely love sculpting human faces and flowing shapes, something that is very fluid that does not restrict me is my favourite.

Q. Which project are you most proud of? You know it is difficult to say one particular piece as I have done so many, but because I am an alien fan I do love those. Two of my favourites though would be the anatomical abstracts that I have created such as the ‘Cobra Queen’ and ancient style productions I have done such as the ‘Greek Sphinx’ which can be seen on my website. Q: I have to ask, Martino Catalano, not exactly a regular Lancashire name is it? No I’m Rochdale Italian! my mother is from England but my father is from Pescara in Italy. Q: What plans for sculptures do you have planned for the future? I want to start creating more abstract art and maybe create pieces for homes using bronze, and of course I am creating the Grey Alien bust for UFO TODAY. Q: If any of our readers are interested in your work or would like to commission a piece from you what's the best way to contact you? The best way to contact me would be through my website at www.martinocatalano.com where

you can also see a gallery of my creations. Q: Now you have produced an 'alien grey' bust exclusively for us here at UFO TODAY, could you tell us how you designed this. Is it based on any one particular incident or is it a compilation of images? Yes I have printed out some references which I tend to always do when I am making a sculpture of a particular thing, it definitely includes many references and of course I have put my own stamp on it, I have tried to make this alien grey more round with less furrows it is more fleshy and life like. Q. What medium and process has the sculpture gone through? The alien has been created in terracotta clay, then when it is finally completed I will make a silicone mould of it and cast with resin, then it will be painted and finished and ready for display. So here it is the Alien Grey Wall plaque. This is an exclusive for UFO TODAY. You will not be able to purchase this anywhere else. It is 35cm from top to bottom (just over one foot) and at the widest point 13 15 cm (five and a half inches). The cost of the alien grey wall plaque is as follows: Each bust is £30.00 It comes in three finishes: iridescent, iridium/pyrite and the natural grey. These are a limited edition and we only have 10 of each available. Postage and packing costs are as follows: UK £10 (Highlands and Islands £15) Republic of Ireland £15 Europe £20 USA £30 Australia and Asia (rest of the world) £50 Delivery time is UK 5 working days overseas allow 10 working days.

You can only purchase this unique item via UFO TODAY on our web site at: www.ufotoday.net

http://www.martinocatalano.com

http://www.ufotoday.net

phenomena magazine - april 2014 - issue 60

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