Alien Abductions In Sci-Fi

With Halloween around the corner I've been rewatching some of the scariest films I remember from my childhood about the alien abduction phenomenon. I shared my thoughts about these films on Facebook and thought those social media posts were thoughtful enough to record on this blog.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

INTRUDERS

Tonight’s film is ‘Intruders’ based on the late Budd Hopkins’ book about cases of alleged alien abduction. It is terrifying because it is based on experiences that people actually believe happened to them… and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve them… though it raises complex questions about what the word “real” actually means… can something exist without being physical, and therefore not have to obey the normal laws of physics that govern the physical universe? Is there a non-physical world that has its own separate laws? Are these alien abductions an example of these two linked but separate realities colliding? Is human consciousness a kind of bridge allowing this? These are some of the questions I will be considering as I take a look at some of the films and classic literature in this sub genre of UFOlogy.

Watch it HERE.

THE UFO INCIDENT

Next up on my Alien Abduction filmography list is ‘The UFO Incident’, a 1975 television film based on the bestselling book ‘The Interrupted Journey’ written by John G. Fuller. It documented the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case, the first widely publicised UFO close encounter of the fourth kind.

While I believe that the accounts of alien abduction experiencers are legitimate because of the large numbers of witnesses experiencing the same thing. The large numbers, perhaps as many as 5% of the population are alleged to be abductees, also makes me question if this is a physical phenomenon or not. In other words do these accounts of alien abduction represent “nuts and bolts metallic spacecraft” piloted by “flesh and blood” alien beings who have travelled to Earth from another planet in the physical universe, or, is something else happening? 

The lack of physical evidence had led me to conclude that although “real” in the sense that the experiences were not delusions or imaginary, that alien abductions must be a paranornal or non-physical phenomenon? In other words that a real external intelligence is interacting with human consciousness but no one is physically taken onboard an alien spacecraft. That alien abductions have more to do with ghosts and demons than extraterrestrials was my conclusion.

However the Hill abduction makes me want to rethink this conclusion for two reasons. One the famous “Star Map” Betty Hill recalled being shown onboard the UFO, which she drew and was discovered after years of research to (potentionally) match the postions of real stars, Zeta I and II Reticuli. 

The second reason is the dress Betty was wearing on the night of the alleged  alien abduction. Betty claimed under hypnosis that a large needle was inserted into her stomach, according to the alien beings this was a pregnancy test. Stains on the dress Betty was wearing in the region where the needle was allegedly inserted is evidence that something physical happened to the Hills.

Whatever the phenomenon of alien abductions represents, it appears to be able to move between the physical world and the metaphysical world in a similar way to how we can travel between land and sea.

One last note. Even if you are sceptical about alien abductions, ‘The UFO Incident’ is an excellent film, telling a very real love story. It would just as easily be a good choice for a Valentine’s film as a Halloween film and stars James Earl Jones (Voice of Darth Vader) who just recently passed away. 

Watch it HERE.

COMMUNION 

Probably the first Alien Abduction film I ever saw. I remember my dad having an audio book of the original book written by Whitley Strieber, read by Planet of the Apes actor Rodney McDowell, this was probably the first time I was ever scared by something being read from a book. 

Watching the film again and having recently read the new edition of the book, it is clear to me that the encounters are not always (if ever) in the physical world. Instead they occurred in a dreamworld. But these are no ordinary dreams as they have a real physical impact such as injuries. Also other witnesses report having similair experiences in the 1980s before series like the X-Files popularised stories of alien abductions. 

SETI are currently looking for radio signals from extraterrestrials in far away solar systems. Perhaps we are receiving messages from them, but not in the form of radio signals. What if the aliens can communicate via sending signals directly into the human mind? Perhaps using human imagination and expectations based on our folklore and popular culture to take form in dreams. Perhaps even using the human nervous system to create sensations like pain that can cause physical injury.

Watch it HERE.

Listen to the audio book HERE.

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 

Perhaps the best ancient astronaut film. Before Erich von Däniken wrote Chariots of the Gods and popularised the idea that ancient aliens visited Earth in the past, Nigel Kneale got there first in Quatermass and the Pit. Originally a six part television series on the BBC it was later remade as a film by Hammer Studios and given the title “Five Million Years To Earth” for its American release.

While not an Alien Abduction film, the backstory is that ancient aliens abducted primitive apemen five million years ago, experimented on them to increase intelligence and the result were early humans. 

Ridley Scott referenced this film in the film commentary on the blu ray release of Prometheus, an ancient astronaut film that borrows far more ideas form Nigel Kneale’s script than the books of Erich von Däniken. The 3D holograms seen in the Engineer spaceship in Prometheus echoing a scene in Quatermass and the Pit where a “ghost” is seen by a soldier (offscreen) in the alien spaceship.

Considering that there are nearby stars which are much older than sun, it is possible that intelligent life evolved on planets orbiting these stars milllions of years before life started on Earth. Statistically it is more likely that aliens could have visited Earth in the remote past and gaps/leaps in mankind’s decelpment from apes to modern humans could be explained by alien engineers experimenting with human DNA. We are currently splicing DNA from plants and animals together. So why not? After all, until Charles Dawin’s Theory of Evolution the accepted explanation for most of human history for mankind’s existence was that the “Gods”, which became “God” in the later monotheist religions, created humans in their own image. So the concept that beings from the sky/stars created mankind is actualy an ancient one. 

RONEY: Quatermass - it’s a pentacle.

QUATERMASS: What? 

RONEY: Those marks. One of the ancient cabalistic signs. They were used in ancient magic(k).

From ‘Quatermass and The Pit’ (BBC, 1958-59). Later remade and adapted into ‘Five Million Years To Earth’ (Hammer Films, 1967)

DOCTOR WHO - THE DAEMONS

Doctor Who’s unofficial remake of Nigel Kneale’s ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ and my personal favourite Doctor Who story. I think this must have been my first exposure to the Ancient Astronaut Theory that Ancient Aliens have been helping humans develop for the last 100,000 years or more.

Perhaps the most interesting concept borrowed by the Doctor Who writers from Nigel Kneale’s script is the concept that Magick (yes with a “k” on the end to differentiate the real power to manipulate reality from magic, which is simply a conjuring trick) could be developed into an advanced  science with practical applications.

Eyewitness accounts of odd symbols resembling Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on wreckage/debris from alleged UFO crashes like the one at Roswell in 1947 are well known inside the UFO field. What if instead of writing these were occult symbols? What if instead of using physics to travel through space the aliens have developed an alternative science based originally on what we would call magick? 

Chemistry is an example of a science that began as a pseudo science. The treating of illnesses with magical potions. This was the beginning of treating illnesses with specific drugs to remedy a particular disease or other health problem. 

There is a certain amount of theatrics involved with cases of alien abductions. Why would the aliens want to scare the people they are abducting? The aliens should be capable of tranquillising the subjects of their experiments, so that they would have no distress or memory at all of anything happening. The way we do with animals, for instance, if a large and dangerous zoo animal needed to be seen by a vet.

It is widely believed in paranormal research circles that poltergeists feed off human fear and anger, and that the best thing to do if you are experience such a haunting is to simply ignore it until the poltergeist runs out of energy effectively. Could the aliens seen in abductions be using similar paranormal energies generated by negative human emotion to travel between different dimensions? Perhaps a non-physical realm where the laws of physics do not apply, making interstellar travel possible?

One last thought … it is suggestive that the alleged covert group set up by the US Government to study the alleged UFO wreckage found at Roswell in 1947 was called Majestic 12 … as in Magic or Magick 12. 

HAWTHORNE: Oh, you could go on all day and all night showing us pretty pictures. I mean, horns have been a symbol of power ever since

DOCTOR: Ever since man began? Exactly. But why? All right, Captain Yates, the curtains. Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths, gods or devils, but they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.

BENTON: Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?

DOCTOR: Precisely, only far, far older and immeasurably more dangerous.

JO: And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?

DOCTOR: That's right. They're Daemons from the planet Daemos, which is?

JO: Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy.

DOCTOR: And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago.

From ‘Doctor Who: The Daemons’ (BBC, 1971)

FIRE IN THE SKY

Probably the scariest of the Alien Abduction films, ‘Fire In the Sky’ is based on the alleged (the other witnesses passed lie detector tests) experiences of Travis Walton as described in his book ‘The Walton Experience’. If not for this case I would probably separate cases of alleged alien abduction and the UFO sightings into two distinct and separate types of phenomena, one involving “nuts and bolts” physically real but unknown aircraft. And the other real only in that it involves something (possibly intelligent) external affecting (possibly communicating) with the human mind. In the case of the latter, whatever it is using popular culture, folklore and religious beliefs to construct a lucid dream so real that it can cause physical injury on the experiencer.

…However, unfortunately it isn’t that easy to separate UFO sightings and alien abductions, and Travis Walton’s experience perhaps best documents why.

Walton was seen being struck by an energy beam from a UFO by multiple witnesses. It was clearly a physical object not a dream or hallucination. 

Perhaps then the UFO occupants can choose between many different communication channels to make contact with humans, much in the same way we decide between having a face to face meeting, or making a phone call or arranging a Microsoft Teams or Skype meeting. The only difference being that the UFO occupants can use consciousness itself as a communication channel when face to face encounters are not necessary or possible. 

Watch Joe Rogan interview Travis Walton HERE.

ROSWELL

Docudrama about Major (Later Lieutenant Colonel) Jesse Marcel, who in 1947 was the Intelligence Officer for the 509th Composite Group (509 CG), a bomb group of the United States Army tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. And in 1947 still the only such operational group at that time. It was the 509th that conducted the atomic bombings in Japan that ended the Second World War. Let that sink in for a moment. This group was about as elite and as important to defence as it possibly gets. 

Now consider this … it was the Major Jesse Marcel who as the Intelligence Officer of the 509th was the first army officer to investigate an alleged “Flying Disk” crash in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. And after seeing the wreckage confirmed it was wreckage from a flying saucer. This story was then realised to the press and went viral around the world, including the major British newspapers like The Times!

… Then the next day… the United States Army apologised and said it was all a big mistake… it was just a weather balloon. How anyone could possibly believe that someone with the background and position Marcel had could possibly make such a mistake boggles the mind. The story becomes even more ludicrous when you realise th at following this alleged mistake of comic proportions Marcel was promoted. It just doesn’t make any sense.

About 30 years later Marcel and dying, he finally broke his silence and confirmed it was not a weather ballon. It was what he originally said a “flying saucer”, a term which since 1947 had become synonymous with alien spacecraft. And the United States Army was forced to admit that the weather balloon story was indeed just a cover story as Marcel claimed. The new official account was that what was recovered was a giant sized, high altitude Mogal survaliance balloon, part of a top secret project to spy on Russia and determining if that had developed their own Atomic Bomb (which they finally did two years later in 1949). For me this still doesn’t make sense. A balloon is a balloon, no matter how big or top secret it is. I think I was about ten when I first heard this story in the 1990s, since then the offical story has just grown even more hard to believe. Nonsense about 6ft tall crash test dummies from the 1950s being confused with child sized dead aliens seem in the 1940s. Now people from a military town can’t tell the difference between dummies and dead aliens? 

I don’t believe it. I’ll believe Marcel.  Just think about logically, if it wasn’t for the implications, I don’t think anyone could possibly believe the ballon story.

Watch it HERE.

ALIEN

My favourite film. On the documentary that accompanies the DVD realease, the director Ridley Scott explains that the complex lifecycle of the Alien creature was based on real parasitic wasps, who inject their embryos into caterpillars which paralysis their host until the lava are ready to burst out. Combined with the “used future” look that Ridley Scott borrowed from the writer Dan O'Bannon’s first film ‘Dark Star’, the complex life circle of the alien gives the film a sense of realism lacked in the B movie space monster films of the 1950s that ‘Alien’ owes much of it’s film DNA to.

Another seed of reality that would go I noticed by most filmgoers in 1979 was the location of the alien planet in the film, Zeta II Reticuli system. The same star system where the humanoid “grey” aliens responsible for the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in the 1960s allegedly originated from.

Weirdly, the life circle of the fictional alien in the film in some ways echoes the bizarre reproductive experiments reported by alleged alien abductees under hypnosis in the real world. These experiments involve the hybridisation of humans with aliens, using human women as incubators before the unborn hybrid is removed and finishes gestating in an artificial womb onboard a UFO. Such bizarre stories are easily the most fringe and controversial aspect in an already fringe enough topic… but the stories are consistent.

Assuming these stories reflect something that is a physical reality and are not an attempt to communicate using symbolism via visions and dreams, what do these accounts potentially tell us about the greys and their motives for abducting people? 

Could it be that like the fictional alien in the Ridley Scott film, the greys can only reproduce by fusing their own DNA with that of another species and using this other species as a host to gestate their offspring? 

Zeta II Reticuli system is estimated to be twice as old as our own sun. Any potential life originating from there then, could potentially be twice as old as life on Earth, which could include intelligent life. Any intelligent life that left their home planet millions of years ago could possibly evolve to make hybridisation with other species possible. It would be the fastest way to adapt to the environment of a new planet and also avoid the fate of the Martians in HG well’s novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, where the Martians all died from exposure to Earth’s microbes that they had no immunity to. 

THE FOURTH KIND

The Fourth Kind is a disturbing film to watch, but very interesting. If aliens are travelling from other solar systems to Earth, it is impossible for them to be coming in nuts and bolts spacecraft travelling slower than the speed of light. UFOs are seen too often and seem to be reacting to current events on Earth too quickly. For example the first Atomic Bomb was detonated in 1945 and within two years in the same region flying saucers turn up, seemingly investigating our nuclear weapon tests. If these objects came from another solar system they would need to be at least approx 4 light years away. Meaning it would take a radio signal at least that time to reach our nearest neighbouring solar system. Then travelling at light speed take another four years to get to Earth. That’s eight years total. As UFOs were being seen in 1947 (and earlier) in the American Southwest and were seemingly interested in nuclear weapons, it would seem to indicate they could send signals and travel faster than light to get here two years after the first Atomic Bomb test.

While travelling faster than light is impossible in our physical universe, other universes could potentially have different laws of physics that allow objects to travel faster than light.

So if such a parallel universe existed it could be used as a kind of cosmic motorway. The only problem is how could an object travel between parallel universes?

Arthur C. Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Could aliens be using what we would call magick (yes with a “k” to differentiate real magick from fake magic conjuring tricks) to open portals into other dimensions? This might sound absurd, but a lightbulb would appear to be magical to someone who had no knowledge of electricity. I’m only suggesting that there might be something to magick which could potentially be developed into another science one day. Perhaps a science of the Mind or Consciouness. 

With this in mind it is interesting that one of the aspects of real world alien abduction mythology which is highlighted in the film is the phenomenon of alleged screen memories. These are distorted memories of real events subtly altered either by the sub consciouness mind to make the memories accessible without driving someone insane, or, perhaps artificially altered by the aliens encountered during abductions to hide their activities. Put simply instead of remembering an alien, abductees remember other mundane things instead in their place. In the film the aliens are replaced in the memories of the protagonist by an owl, something which is widespread in real abduction accounts. Which is interesting because the owl has long been an important symbol in ancient religions. The owl was associated with the Ancient Greek godess of wisdom Athena. And even today owls are still allegedly ‘worshiped’ in outlandish rituals by the quasi secret group the Bohemian Club.

It could simply be that the large black eyes of owls lend the creatures to being good standins for the black eyed grey aliens mostly associated with abductions. But an alternative explanation could be that owl and other esoteric symbolism is somehow being used to generate somekind of energy or power (for lack of a better similarly as this psychic power may not  be energy in the scientific sense of the word that can be measured) which is used to phase in and out of our physical universe in ways we don’t yet understand.

In 2000 Guardian newspaper journalist Jon Ronson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones secretly filmed the “Cremation of Care” mid summer ceremony conducted at the secretive Bohemian Grove. Watch The Secret Rulers of the World - episode 2 which was shown on Channel 4 HERE.

Radio Replay - 27th July 2014

 
Could ghosts be 3D psychic recordings? 

 

Are humans the descendants of apes genetically modified by ancient astronauts? 

 

Was the Rendlesham Forest incident really a mind control experiment? 

 

Just some of the topics touched on in this interesting discussion.

The Welsh Roswell: Did A UFO Crash In North Wales In 1974? - Richard's Room 101

What has become known in UFO circles as the “Welsh Roswell” or Berwyn Mountain incident splits the UFO research community into two distinct camps, those who believe that an alien spacecraft crashed on the Mountain range and those who believe the seemingly out-of-this-world events can be explained by a combination of natural phenomena and the popularity of shows such as the X-Files which feed the public’s need to believe in the unexplained. What is not in any doubt is that something happened on the Berwyn Mountain, North Wales on the night of January 20, 1974. The events on the mountain range were witnessed by the whole community. Police Constable Gwilym Owen stated, “there was a great roar and a bang. The Sky lit up over the mountains. The colour was yellowish but other people in the valley described seeing blue light.” 

   

Annie Williams who lives in the nearby town of Llandrillo told investigators about what she witnessed that January night. “I saw this bright light hanging in the sky,” she said. 

   

“It had a long fiery tale which seemed to be motionless for several minuets, going dim and then very brilliant, like a dormant fire which keeps coming to life. It would have been like an electric light bulb in shape, except that it seemed to have rough edges. Then fell somewhere behind my bungalow, and the earth shook.”

 

   

Other witnesses also reported the ground shaking as if something had crashed into the side of the mountain. David Hughes of the local village post office at Ysbyty Ifan reported that “The whole house shook violently and suddenly. It began quite suddenly, lasted for a few seconds, then stopped just as suddenly.” 

    

Hundreds of locals fearing a plane had crashed on the mountain phoned the emergency services, and within an hour police were searching the mountain. Five days after these mysterious events, on January 25, 1974, it was reported in the British press that an RAF mountain rescue team had also been dispatched to the area, but allegedly found nothing. One member of the public who heard an explosion and was convinced something had crashed into the mountain was district nurse Pat Evans. Thinking that a plane had crashed after contacting Colwyn Bay police she made her way up the mountain to offer assistance to the survivors while they waited for the emergency services to arrive. Instead of finding a crashed plane, however, she saw a bright ball of red light on the mountainside.

   

“There were no flames shooting or anything like that. It was very uniform; round in shape … it was a flat round”. As she watched, she observed the light change in colour from red to yellow and then white. Smaller “fairy lights” could be seen nearby. Too far away to reach on foot, the nurse turned back to head home, puzzled by what she had seen. 

    

 After the initial frenzy of media interest, the story gradually died down and was almost forgotten about, until the mid-Nineties when the Roswell UFO crash was approaching its 50th anniversary and the alien autopsy hoax was generating new interest in an old topic.

     

Alien bodies and Wreckage 

In 1996 retired police sergeant Tony Dodd published in UFO Magazine an account of a man who claimed he was in the British Army at the time of the Berwyn Mountain crash. According to this anonymous whistleblower in January 1974 his unit “received orders to proceed with speed towards North Wales.” After arriving at Llangollen, North Wales on the evening of January 20, Dodd’s source noticed a great deal of “ground and air” activity in the area. “We, that is myself and four others, were ordered to go to Llandderfel and were under strict orders not to stop for any civilians.” 

    

Upon arriving in the small Welsh village his team was then ordered to load two large oblong boxes into their vehicles and to take them to the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire, England. Warned not to look inside, some hours later they arrived at Porton Down and delivered the mysterious cargo. 

      

It is then alleged that the staff at Porton Down opened the boxes still within sight of Dodd’s informant and others. Inside we are told were the remains of two alien beings “five to six feet tall” which had been put inside “decontamination suits.” The Porton Down staff removed the suits, revealing creatures to be “so thin they looked almost skeletal with a covering skin.”

     

The Army source also told Dodd, “Although I did not see a craft at the scene of the recovery, I was informed that a large craft had crashed and was recovered by other military units.” Even more bizarre was this former Army man’s claims that he was told by others in his unit that they had also delivered extraterrestrial beings to Porton Down, but that these creatures were “still alive.” 

    

While the claims of Dodd’s British Army source have never been proven to have really occurred, it is interesting at least that someone that nobody disputes investigated the UFO phenomenon for the British Government, Nick Pope, wrote a science fiction novel, Operation Thunder Child, in which alien creatures are taken for study at Porton Down. “In any contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation the key strategic objective would be to open lines of communication and facilitate peaceful contact. Secondary objectives would include information exchange, with a particular emphasis on science and technology,” Nick Pope told me in an interview for my Sci-Fi Worlds column in 2009.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF OF AMERICA

Could There Be An Alien Base Inside The Bermuda Triangle? - Richard's Room 101

The Bermuda Triangle, sometimes known as the “Devil’s Triangle”, is a triangular area of the north-western Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and a point near Melbourne, Florida, where famously numerous ships and aircraft have mysteriously disappeared throughout the ages. Since records began in 1851, it is estimated that an amazing 8,127 people have been lost in the Bermuda Triangle. However, perhaps the most intriguing and famous disappearance of all, occurred just after WWII on December 5, 1945, when an entire squadron of aircraft vanished without a trace and no clue as to what happened to them. Of course, this was the infamous Flight 19, which, more than any other case, brought the triangle into popular consciousness, sparking all kinds of explanations. The strangest and most interesting is the theory that they were abducted by aliens who have a base somewhere in the triangle, interesting because the alien/UFO theory was popularised by Stephen Spielberg in his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

    

While there could be a rational explanation for the disappearance of Flight 19, it is worth remembering that Lt. Charles Taylor was exonerated in 1947 by the Board for Correction of Naval Records, at the request of his mother, in regard to “responsibility for loss of lives and naval aircraft” and that the conclusion of the US Navy’s report was changed to “cause unknown”. 

  

The earliest suggestion that Flight 19 was anything other than just an accident, that this author has seen, came in the form of a “Letter to the editor” from one “Edward R. Walker of Colorado” in the August 1946 issue of Amazing Stories magazine. The letter shows that almost immediately after the disappearance of Flight 19, people were already beginning to speculate that the incident was more than just the result of pilot error due to poor weather. In his letter Walker writes:

   

“A couple months ago I read another AP dispatch about SIX NAVY PLANES disappearing ALL AT ONE TIME off the coast of Florida. Hundreds of hours were spent searching for a trace of them but none was found. Wish I had cut this out for you also, but you can verify that yourself. This is one of the strangest happenings that I have ever heard of in my lifetime. Even if they had flown over a carpet on anti-aircraft fire one or two would have gotten through. As I remember the article it wasn’t even storming.”

   

In his response to Walker’s letter the editor, Ray Palmer, who went on to become the editor of Fate magazine, not only agreed that something unexplained had happened to Flight 19 but also all but accused the US Navy of a cover-up:

   

 “About those Navy planes, now you’ve got something! As we remember it, search planes also failed to come back. Not a sign, not a message, just instant disappearance. And no fuss about it since, just official forgetfulness. Your EDITOR would like to KNOW what happened, because it wasn’t anything ordinary.”

   

In his book Berlitz also considered more esoteric and paranormal possibilities to explain the disappearances inside the triangle, including chapters on space and time warps, energy devices left behind from an advanced lost civilization, as well as extraterrestrials and even cryptoterrestrials: 

   

“Lacking a logical and readily acceptable explanation, independent researchers concerned with the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle have gone even further afield — some to explanations based on exceptions to natural law, others to suggestions of interdimensional changeover through a passageway equivalent to a “hole in the sky” (which aircraft can enter but not leave), others believe the disappearances are engineered by entities from inner or outer space, while still others offer theories offer a theory or combinations of theories that the phenomenon may be essentially caused by still functioning man-made power complexes belonging to a science considerably older than and very different to ours.” 

   

 According to most triangle researchers, Christopher Columbus was probably the first person to document allegedly strange phenomena in the area. On October 11, 1492, the eve of discovering the New World, Columbus reports that he and his crew observed a mysterious light moving strangely up and down in the evening sky, appearing and quickly disappearing several times that night. Columbus wrote in his log:

   

“The land was first seen by a sailor called Rodrigo de Triana, although the Admiral at ten o’clock that evening standing on the quarter-deck saw a light, but so small a body that he could not affirm it to be land; calling to Pero Gutierrez, groom of the King’s wardrobe, he told him he saw a light, and bid him look that way, which he did and saw it; he did the same to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, whom the King and Queen had sent with the squadron as comptroller, but he was unable to see it from his situation. The Admiral again perceived it once or twice, appearing like the light of a wax candle moving up and down, which some thought an indication of land. But the Admiral held it for certain that land was near…”

 

   

Whatever Columbus and his crew saw that historic night is probably impossible to know for sure now. In that limited sense, at least, the odd light is a true UFO in that it will probably always be unidentified. Perhaps more interesting, though, are the bizarre compass readings Columbus also recorded in the triangle.

   

Today, the triangle is supposedly one of only two places in the world, the other being the Dragon’s Sea in the Pacific, in which there is an unusual level of magnetic interference that can adversely affect compass readings. Whether paranormal or not, this magnetic interference is definitely interesting. Many have speculated that UFOs may be using some form of electromagnetic propulsion. Perhaps there could be a link of some kind between the magnetic interference, UFO sightings, and the mysterious disappearances in the triangle? 

   

Doctor Who fans will remember “The Sea Devils” a classic 1972 Jon Pertwee story written by Malcolm Hulke, the plot of which is very reminiscent of the triangle mystery. The story involves the Third Doctor and his companion Joe Grant investigating the mysterious disappearance of ships off the English South Coast and the discovery that an ancient race of amphibious reptiles, operating from a deep underwater base is responsible. 

   

Science fiction is filled with interesting storylines that parallel mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle, but is it possible that there really could be another civilization, of any kind, sharing the planet with us, living beneath the waves in seclusion? 

  

Amazingly, it is true that we actually know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the bottom of our own oceans. In theory, at least, it is possible that anything could be down there hidden beneath the depths. What's more, making things more interesting, about half of all UFO sightings are said to take place near large bodies of water. 

   

In Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOs (1970), renowned zoologist, Ivan T. Sanderson hypothesized that an advanced aquatic non-human civilization may have evolved right here on the Earth. This parallel, aquatic civilization could be twice as old as mankind, Sanderson proposes, and may well have developed space flight long before us. Sanderson even goes as far as suggesting that such a civilization could be behind many of the mysterious disappearances in the triangle as well as UFO sightings. Interestingly, more recently Sanderson’s ideas have been echoed somewhat in Mac Tonnies’ last book before his untimely passing in 2009 The Cryptoterrestrials. The year before his death, I had the privilege of interviewing Tonnies about his cryptoterrestrial hypothesis that we are sharing this world with another indigenous intelligent species: 

   

“I’m fascinated by accounts of apparent UFO occupants and have been rethinking who or what we might be dealing with. I’m of the opinion that the extraterrestrial interpretation is incomplete. Could we be interacting with indigenous humanoids? That’s the question I’m posing in the book I’m writing. Time will tell if it.” 

  

While the ETH or extraterrestrial hypothesis has become synonymous with the UFO phenomenon in popular culture, many serious UFO researchers give the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis equal kudos. In 2009 in an interview for my Sci-Fi Worlds blog, I asked former MoD UFO investigator Nick Pope about Doctor Who’s Sea Devils and what he thought about the possibility that we humans are sharing the planet with another intelligent Earth species: “Well, I hope these monsters are brought back at some stage! I reference the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis a fair bit in my first sci-fi novel, Operation Thunder Child. There are plenty of USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) reports and many UFO sightings where an object is seen over water, so who knows? I’m not hugely attracted to the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, but I certainly can’t rule it out. And as the saying goes, we arguably know less about the deep ocean than we do about the Moon or Mars.” 

   

Richard Freeman, who is a researcher for the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), the only full-time scientific organisation dedicated to the study of unknown species of animals, went also agreed that extraterrestrial hypothesis needed to be considered when I interviewed him in 2009: “I have never bought the extraterrestrial hypothesis. The so-called ‘aliens’ are generally too humanoid looking to have evolved on another biosphere. If ‘alien’ encounters are objective events, and that’s a big if, I think the creatures are coming through time or dimensions rather than from outer space. There seems to be a strange analogue with fairy lore as well.” 

   

Another possibility, of course, could be that the planet has somehow been covertly colonised by an extraterrestrial civilization from another solar system. In Unearthly Disclosure (2000), best-selling author Timothy Good disclosed information given to him by “a senior reporter in Washington, DC,” who, in turn, received it from “a senior US Air Force officer”, about the existence of extraterrestrial bases on the Earth. Good writes: “According to the officer, aliens have been coming to Earth for a very long time. Following the Second World War, they began to establish permanent bases here, in Australia, the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet Union and in the United States.” 

   

If extraterrestrials are really coming to Earth from another solar system, it would probably make sense that they would establish such bases to save them continue making the long voyage back and forth home. Also, the reference to the Caribbean is intriguing because that is where part of the Bermuda Triangle is located. 

   

However, whether from this world or another, where better to build an impenetrable, covert base than beneath the oceans of the world. The Bermuda Triangle, in particular, might also make a good location for such a base because of the volcanic activity there, which could be used to generate geothermal electricity as a power source.

  

The biggest problem with the alien base theory, of course, is like the wreckage of the missing planes and ships, why hasn’t it been found by the many detailed searches inside the triangle? Perhaps instead of a base, the Bermuda Triangle is the location of a “wormhole” to another world. 

   

In his book, another possibility Berlitz considered was that there could be a “vortex” or “portal” somewhere in the triangle which aliens from another planet or dimension are using as a bridge or gateway to Earth. An outrageous theory back in 1974 when The Bermuda Triangle was first published. 

   

Today, however, serious scientists regularly discuss the possibility of other dimensions and “wormholes” in books and on scientific documentaries for TV. In the bestselling book Hyperspace Michio Kaku refers to Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle: 

   

“Ever since Flight 19, a group of U.S. military torpedo bombers, vanished in the Caribbean 30 years ago, mystery writers too have used higher dimensions as a convenient solution to the puzzle of the Bermuda Triangle, or Devil’s Triangle. Some have conjectured that airplanes and ships disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle actually entered some sort of passageway to another world.” 

  

The internationally acclaimed physicist also explains in his book how such a “passageway” could work. Comparing space travellers to flatworms living on an apple, Kaku writes: 

   

“It’s obvious to these worms that their world, which they call Appleworld, is flat and two dimensional, like themselves. One worm, however, named Columbus, is obsessed by the notion that Appleworld is somehow finite and curved in something he calls the third demission. He even invents two new words, up and down, to describe motion in this invisible third dimension … By burrowing into the apple, he can carve a tunnel, creating a convenient shortcut to distant lands. These tunnels, which considerably reduce the time and discomfort of a long journey, he calls wormholes. They demonstrate that the shortest path between two points is not necessary a straight line, as he’s been taught, but a wormhole.” 

   

Perhaps the disappearance of Flight 19 and other planes and ships inside the Bermuda Triangle can be explained away by more mundane explanations, such as intense weather conditions and human error, but until we more fully explore the bottom of the world’s oceans we have no way of knowing for sure what could be down there.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

The Betty Hill Star Map - Richard's Room 101

On the night of 19/20 September 1961, on their way home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire from a short break in Canada, something happened to Betty and Barney Hill that began a new controversy in UFO research that continues even today. While modern polls show that as many as four million Americans could believe they might have been abducted by aliens, back in 1966 when the first book detailing the Hill case The Interrupted Journey was first published, the New England couple’s claims of alien contact were almost unheard of. There had been the famous Contactees of the 1950s, men and women who claimed they had been visited by the human-looking occupants of flying saucers with warnings about nuclear war and environmental concerns. But the experiences of the Hills were completely different, reporting beings that were obviously not human, and had no such messages.

   

Instead under hypothesis, the Hills told of how they were kidnapped and experimented on by short humanoid beings aboard a “cigar-shaped” craft that had pursued the couple that September night as they traveled home on Route 3 between Lancaster and Concord. The alien abduction phenomenon was born. 

    

There are two major explanations often given to explain the Hills’ recollections under hypnosis. The first offered by some psychiatrists is that the Hills’ abduction experience was a hallucination brought on by the stress of being an interracial couple during the end of the segregation era in the United States. But this explanation was discounted by Betty Hill, who said the couple’s interracial marriage caused no significant problems with their friends or family. This was echoed by Dr. Simon, who also thought that the Hills’ interracial marriage didn’t influence the couple’s abduction account in any way. 

    

In 1990 Martin Kottmeyer suggested in his article “Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports “ that Barney’s account of his abduction experience under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the popular science fiction anthology series The Outer Limits, entitled “The Bellero Shield”, which was broadcast twelve days before Barney’s first hypnotic session. This episode featured an alien being with large wraparound eyes reminiscent of the eyes of the alien beings described by Barney under hypnosis. In his article, Kottmeyer wrote: 

   

 “Wraparound eyes are an extreme rarity in science fiction films. I know of only one instance. They appeared on the alien of an episode of an old TV series The Outer Limits entitled “The Bellero Shield”. A person familiar with Barney’s sketch in “The Interrupted Journey” and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Baker will find a “frisson” of “déjà vu” creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. “The Bellero Shield” was first broadcast on 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separate the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wraparound eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces.” (Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports, Martin S. Kottmeyer)

     

When asked about The Outer Limits TV series Betty claimed to have “never heard of it”. Kottmeyer also pointed out that the medical tests the Hills described were reminiscent of scenes in the 1953 science fiction film, Invaders from Mars. 

   

Clearly, there are superficial similarities between the ‘Bellero alien’ from The Outer Limits episode and the oval-headed beings described by Barney and Betty, but there are significant differences between the two also. The Hill aliens were dressed in black, shiny uniforms and were “somehow not human”. The ‘Bellero alien’ in contrast was dressed in all white, and while humanoid, was very clearly non-human. 

   

While it is possible that some of what the Hills ‘remembered’ under hypnosis could have been influenced by the science fiction films and TV shows of the 1950s and 60s, the best evidence that Betty and Barney Hill didn’t make up or imagine everything they said under hypnosis, is the star map drawn by Betty Hill. 

    

In 1968, Marjorie Fish of Oak Harbor, Ohio read The Interrupted Journey. Fish was an elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer. Intrigued by the “star map”, Fish wondered if it might be “possible to determine which star system the space travelers came from. Assuming that one of the fifteen stars on the map must represent the Earth’s Sun; Fish constructed a three-dimensional model of nearby Sun-like stars using thread and beads, basing stellar distances on those published in the 1969 Gliese Star Catalogue. Studying thousands of vantage points the only one that seemed to match the Hill map was from the viewpoint of the double star system of Zeta Reticuli. 

      

This was significant because the distance information needed to match three stars, forming the distinctive triangle Hill said she remembered, was not generally available until the 1969 Gliese Catalogue came out. Five years after Betty Hill drew the star map. 

     

Fish sent her analysis to Webb and agreeing with her conclusions, Webb sent the map to Terence Dickinson, editor of the popular magazine Astronomy. Dickinson did not endorse Fish and Webb’s conclusions, but for the first time in the journal’s history, Astronomy invited comments and debate on a UFO report, starting with an opening article in the December 1974 issue. For about a year afterward, the opinions page of Astronomy carried arguments for and against Fish’s star map. Notable was an argument made by Carl Sagan and Steven Soter, arguing that the seeming “star map” was little more than a random alignment of chance points. In contrast, those more favorable to the map, such as Dr. David Saunders, a statistician who had been on the Condon UFO study, argued that the unusual alignment of key Sun-like stars in a plane centered around Zeta Reticuli (first described by Fish) was statistically improbable to have happened by chance from a random group of stars in our immediate neighborhood. 

   

Skeptic Robert Sheaffer, in an accompanying article, said that a map devised by Charles W. Atterberg, about the same time as Fish, was an even better match to Hill’s map and made more sense. The base stars, Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani, plus the others were also closer to the sun than the Hill map. Fish counter-argued that the base stars in the Atterberg map were considered much less likely to harbor life than Zeta Reticuli and the map lacked a consistent grouping of sun-like stars along the lined routes. 

    

Another interpretation of the star map was offered in 1993 by two German crop circle enthusiasts, Joachim Koch and Hans-Jürgen Kyborg, who suggested that the map depicted planets in the solar system, not nearby stars. The objects in the map, they said, closely match the positions of the sun, the six inner planets, and several asteroids around 1960. This would parallel other abduction accounts where witnesses claim to be shown such depictions, though admittedly often elaborate and unmistakably our own solar system.

   

Barney Hill died in 1969 and Betty in 2004 and both stuck to their abduction account until the time of their deaths. While it is possible elements of their story were influenced by the Cold War science fiction films of the 1950s and 60s; the star map, if Fish’s interpretation is correct, couldn’t have been based on prior knowledge.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Another Crashed UFO in New Mexico? - Richard's Room 101

So entrenched has the 1947 Roswell crash become in the minds of many UFO researchers, that it is often overlooked that the Roswell incident was not actually the first crashed saucer story to enter the public consciousness. That distinction belongs to another alleged UFO incident in the New Mexico desert. This time near Aztec, a small town in the upper western portion of the state, hundreds of miles away from the Roswell crash debris field found by Mac Brazel’s on the Foster Ranch in the summer of 1947. 

  

In his 1950 best-selling book Behind The Flying Saucers gossip columnist Frank Scully alleged that a flying disk had been found on a ranch 12 miles from Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, the year after the alleged Roswell crash. In Paul Kimball’s 2003 documentary Aztec 1948 UFO Crash UFO researcher Nick Redfern summed up the alleged events at Aztec: “The jest of the Aztec tale is that in 1948 a flying saucer complete with anywhere between 14 to 18 bodies crashed in Aztec, New Mexico and was recovered in high secrecy by the US government.”

   

According to Scully, he was told about the Aztec crash by a man he called “Dr. Gee”, who was supposedly a specialist in magnetic anomalies working for the US government at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where famously the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic bomb had been centred. Dr. Glee explained to Scully that the alien vehicle used some kind of magnetic propulsion system to levitate and that this was the reason he was brought in by the US government.

  

In his book and talks, Scully claimed that Dr. Gee had been flown out by helicopter to the New Mexico desert in April 1948 to look at the wreckage of a flying saucer that had crashed there. The Doctor also allegedly told Scully that the deceased bodies of the spaceship’s alien crew, who were described as small humanoid beings just over three feet tall, were also found at the crash site. The bodies of these creatures were said to be hairless, with soft downy skin, and two of the crew may have still been alive for a short time after the impact of the crash. Later accounts of the Roswell incident would also involve the recovery of similarly described deceased alien beings. In their 1994 book The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell authors, Kevin D. Randle and Donald Schmitt wrote: “Stringfield, from his sources, said that he was able to draw a number of conclusions. According to Stringfield, the beings are humanoid, three and a half to four and a half feet tall … There was no hair on the head … In fact, there isn’t much hair on the bodies.” 

  

As well as the biology of the aliens found at the two crash sites, there are also similarities between the Roswell debris found by Mac Brazel a year earlier and the lightweight but durable metal the Aztec saucer was said to be constructed from. In Behind the Flying Saucers Scully wrote: “It looked like aluminium, but wasn’t of a metal known to this earth.” 

  

Another similarity to Roswell are the pictorial symbols similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics alleged to be on the inside of the Aztec craft. The son of Major Jessie Marcel, who was one of the men sent by Colonel Blanchard to investigate the debris found by Brazel on the Foster Ranch, also reported seeing strange purple writing that resembled hieroglyphics on pieces of the Roswell debris. In his book The Roswell Legacy published in 2007 for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, Jesse Marcel Jr. described what he remembered being shown by his father back in July 1947. 

  

“As I looked at the piece, with the light reflecting on the inner surface, I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols-squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like. Approximately one-fourth of an inch tall, they were imprinted on the inner surface of the beam, and only on one side. They were not embossed into the I-beam but seemed more like part of its surface.” 

  

The parallels between the alleged alien creatures and materials described by Aztec and Roswell witnesses are intriguing. In The Roswell Incident, published in 1980, the authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore even speculated that the Aztec crash story was a garbled version of the Roswell crash. 

  

There are some big problems with the credibility of the Aztec crash story, however. Scully’s book was debunked in two articles in True magazine published in 1952 and 1956. Written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter J. P. Cahn, the two articles revealed that Dr. Gee, who he named as Leo GeBauer, and Scully’s other main source Silas Newton, were in fact two slick oil conmen who had hoaxed Scully. 

  

The Aztec incident has been revived somewhat in recent years by a book by Scott Ramsey, a UFO researcher and successful businessman from North Carolina. One anomaly highlighted by Ramsey that should give sceptics pause for thought is a mystery road off of Hart Canyon which leads to what he believes was the crash site, a deforested area surrounded by trees with broken branches as if something had flattened the area. The mysterious dirt road doesn’t appear on any road maps of the area until around 2003, and it is unknown where the road came from or who made it. Ramsey suggests that the road was made by military personnel attempting to extricate the Aztec saucer after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Hart Canyon. This might seem like wild speculation, however, there is some physical proof at the alleged crash site that something happened there in 1948. 

  

Adding to the mystery is a concrete slab sticking up out of the ground at the alleged crash site. Like the road, there are no records or reasons why it should be there in the middle of nowhere. Ramsey believes the slab was made by the military to support one of the legs of a crane used to carry out the crashed saucer. Laboratory tests have also shown that the concrete slab dates to around 1948, the year of the alleged saucer crash.

  

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Regan Lee

Regan Lee is a prolific writer, penning columns for UFO Magazine and Binnall of America as well as writing and publishing a book on the Oregon Bigfoot legend. Bigfoot and UFOs might sound like an unlikely combination, researchers in both fields sometimes dismiss each other, but there are some parallels.

One of the many categories of alleged alien beings associated with close encounters is known as the "Animal" type. These are large furry humanoid creatures which closely resemble the famous ape-man. More generally, though, like UFOs far from there just being one definitive answer to the Bigfoot mystery there are probably many explanations.

Some Bigfoot sightings might be explained by the traditional hypothesis that there may still be a species of undisclosed primate roaming the forests and mountains of the world, but other sightings might have more exotic explanations, including extraterrestrial visitors and even beings from other dimensions. In my interview with Regan we discussed all of these possibilities.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Regan, I want to focus on your Bigfoot research in this interview. I think I first became interested in Bigfoot because of my interest in Doctor Who, the Yeti or Tibetan Bigfoot are in two classic stories from the series, The Abominable Snowmen and the Web of Fear. How did your own interest in Bigfoot begin?

Regan Lee: I've always been interested in anything Fortean or unusual, in mysteries "of the weird..." I don't remember a time when I wasn't curious about all these things. But probably my interest with Bigfoot really took off when I moved to Oregon, and I came across Bigfoot encounters connected with UFO sightings. Stan Johnson's story, an Oregon LTW (long-term witness), and other similar tales in Oregon, had me go from "this is ridiculous! --Bigfoot and UFOs all in one tale -- to "this is really juicy Fortean stuff!" I think I'm open to the stranger aspects of Bigfoot encounters because of my own lifelong experiences with UFOs and the paranormal in general.

  

Richard Thomas: Have you ever had a Bigfoot sighting yourself, or are there any sightings that particularly impressed you?

  

Regan Lee: I haven't had a Bigfoot sighting myself. I did have one odd experience while discussing Stan Johnson's experiences with someone who knew him. Now, Johnson's story involves psychic communications with the Sasquatch, travels in UFOs, spiritual and religious epiphanies, healings... a sort of UFO contactee-Bigfoot combo. I met Johnson at a UFO conference; he was very charismatic. I literally felt "buzzy" as he was talking; he exuded an energy, that was for sure.

  

So there I am, talking about Johnson with this person, when a cone of light comes down from the ceiling and completely surrounds us. I was seeing coloured lights and everything, feeling very "buzzy" as I call these psychic connections of mine. Sound was muffled, as if cotton balls were stuffed in my ears. I thought I was going to vibrate up towards through the ceiling! When our conversation ended, the cone lifted up, back through the ceiling, and everything was back to normal. I've had a couple of other things like that happen -- not directly related to Sasquatch, but connected in a roundabout way.

I told this story to a woman I met at the first OSS (Oregon Sasquatch Symposium) in Eugene. She told me that it was "spirit" that had manifested, responding to being called, in a sense. Or responding to the energy generated while talking about Sasquatch in that context. Come to think of it, it was a lot like a very intense ghostly apparition -- a mist or ectoplasm -- I had once experienced in a haunted house.

Richard Thomas: Probably the most famous Bigfoot sighting was captured on the Paterson film. What do you think of the footage?

  

Regan Lee: I saw that film in the theatre the first time in, I think, the late 60s, maybe early 70s. I think it was the Pickfair theatre in L.A. Well, it's one of those things where I keep going back and forth, but I lean towards it's a real film of a real Sasquatch. I have days when I'm not so sure, but I then I go back the other way and say, "Yeah, it's real." Despite the hundreds of attempts to debunk the film, in my opinion no one has been successful in that. Something about the way the creature moves... not so easy to reject as fake. I also believe Bob Gimlin, who I saw at the OSS and just following him through the years. He's either a very good lair or actor or, he's telling the truth. I think he's telling the truth.

Richard Thomas: My own belief is that like UFOs there is no single explanation for Bigfoot sightings, some might be undiscovered animals and others might have some more esoteric explanations. In Doctor Who the Yeti are robots created by an alien intelligence to conquer the earth. You also write about UFOs, do you think there might be an alien connection or something equally strange with Bigfoot?

Regan Lee: I agree with your take Richard. There is a connection with UFOs, what we call aliens, and all kinds of weirdness and Bigfoot. There are plenty of stories of encounters involving Bigfoot and other strange things that forces us to consider them seriously. When I say "there's a connection" I mean that there are stories out there fro witnesses that we have to consider. What that means, is another story. Unfortunately, there are those in Bigfoot research that stick strictly to the flesh and blood angle and ignore or reject there weirder accounts. I have no idea what it all means. Like UFOs, it's tangled, complicated, and no one has the answer. I do think Bigfoot is a lot more than ust flesh and blood -- it's certainly not a simple "giant ape" -- there's a lot more going on here than that.

  

Richard Thomas: I think Mac Tonnies might have been on to something with his Crypto-terrestrial hypothesis to explain UFO sightings. His idea was that instead of beings from outer space, UFOs were really the work of a parallel civilization right here on the earth, possibly another species of human. Have you seen any evidence that far from being lower on the evolutionary ladder, or, a missing link, Bigfoot might be a parallel species to man and might be a lot more advanced than we think? For instance, do you think stories about Bigfoot being able to go invisible might be proof of them possessing superior technology like a Star Trek cloaking device or something similar?

  

Regan Lee: It is tragic that Mac died so young. He was really on to something with his theory. I still hang to an ET explanation for some of the UFO stuff -- but I have been thinking the past few years that it's much more than that, or, more specifically, not only that. Call them Djinn, or whatever, but entities do exist right alongside of us. I think they are more aware of us all the time than we are of them. Sometimes we get glimpses of them, experience them, much to their amusement. I don't know if they control that or if it's just the way it is. I base this opinion on the research and experiences of others but also, on my own direct experiences with entities.

 

I don't think Bigfoot posses literal technology -- like they have machines underground or off in some hidden forest laboratory. Although, Peter Guttilla, in his book Bigfoot Files, relates some very strange stories of Bigfoot, or Bigfoot type creatures, wearing a sort of tool belt with all kinds of electronic gadgets. Lots of other weird stories like that.

I think that, very possibly, Sasquatch posses abilities that allows them to manipulate energy, that causes us to experience things on some level we interpret as, say, paranormal.

Richard Thomas: In 2010 there were reports that Bigfoot had been shot. What was your reaction to this news and do you think we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot? (I know a Russian expedition made some claims we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot?

  

Regan Lee: I didn't believe the story, and I hoped it wasn't true. I am a NO KILL/NO CAPTURE person: very adamant about that. I've offended some in the Bigfoot community by being so... opinionated, I guess, about this, but when it comes to killing another being, I am opinionated. Whatever Bigfoot is, it's clearly highly intelligent, and no doubt as intelligent as us humans. Maybe more so. But the NO KILL stance isn't based solely on intelligence -- as if that's the only criteria. It's a living being, clearly wants to be left alone in the sense it hasn't come out and camped out on the local wildlife management steps-- who are we to go out and kill it, just because we want to? I know all the arguments about doing it for science, and I say: I don't care. It's not justification enough.

 

Okay, I went off on a tangent there. Back to topic. Like UFOs, I don't know if we'll ever get definitive proof that will satisfy everyone within all the infrastructures that Bigfoot exists. Both have remained maddeningly elusive for a very long time. That elusiveness is part of the phenomena. It's supposed to be forever elusive. I'm okay with that but it frustrates others, and some refuse to accept that. It's not hopeless; within that elusiveness answers can be found. It's difficult to explain. It's sort of a state of being.

I just don't think definitive proof will ever be produced because Sasquatch isn't "definitive."

Richard Thomas: For readers who want to begin their own research are there any books you would suggest they read, magazines they should subscribe to, or groups they should join?

  

Regan Lee: I come from a kind of folklore, Fortean perspective, so I'd recommend books that discuss the stranger side of Sasquatch encounters. Researchers like Stan Gordon,Henry Franzoni, Peter Guttilla, Lisa Shiel, Nick Redfern. Lee Harper wrote a book with Ida Kannenberg, My Brother is a Hairy Man. Sali Sheppherd- Wolford's Valley of the Skookum about her experiences with Bigfoot years ago; she's the mother of Bigfoot researcher Autumn Williams. Williams isn't specially about the paranormal or UFOs, she does solid field researcher, but she's open and sympathetic to the kinds of accounts that some others may reject or scoff at. There's Jack Jack Lapserits and Henry Franzoni. I'd also suggest writers like Patrick Harpur, Colin Bennett, George Hansen, who don't write about Bigfoot necessarily, but their views on the paranormal in general and a sort of Gestalt perspective.

  

There are a lot of blogs out there that I like but among the Bigfoot blogs that address the stranger side of things: Nick Redfern has something like, four hundred blogs or so; I like Thom Powell's thomsquatch,Lisa Shiel's blogs , Autumn Willaims at Oregon Bigfoot.com and Melissa Hovey's The Search for Bigfoot, Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters. there are a lot more I can't think of but there are so many dedicated people out there sharing their experiences about Sasquatch and related subjects, it's just amazing.

See if there's a state or local Bigfoot group in your area and join up, depending on their policies. Some are very vocal in their insistence that no discussion of anything paranormal or weird take place. Even if you're not intending to do field research, or believe in a strictly flesh and blood creature, ti's good to take part. I belong to a local Bigfoot research organization that is definitely primary flesh and blood, field research but they're open to other theories; and I joined a few others that aren't local, but good people and again, there's a diversity of members regarding all kinds of experiences. So find the one that fits who you are.

No matter what anyone says about all this; Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts... no one knows everything and no one has a magic key to unlock the mystery. You are entitled to follow your own truths in all this and make up your own mind. For myself, I change my ideas about things as I continue to both experience events as well as where my studies take me.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Regan, where can readers find your columns and blogs?

  

Regan Lee: I contribute online to UFO Digest, UFO Mystic, Monster Track, Tim Binnall's Binnall of America, Skylaire Alfvegren's League of Western Fortean Intermediates and I run several blogs of my own; Frame 352 is my Bigfoot blog, Mothman Flutterings, Animal Forteana are others. And of course, there's The Orange Orb, Vintage U.F.O. and Saucer Sightings, which deals with UFOs. I've written articles for some of Tim Beckley's books and I write a column for UFO Magazine.

  

Thank you, Richard! You do great work and it's an honour.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

NASA’s Project Blue Beam - Will the US Government Stage UFO Sightings in 2012?

Not since the Millennium Bug panic in the years running up to the year 2000 has a specific date been the subject of so many apocalyptic theories about the end of the world as December 21, 2012. The date believed to be the end of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar.

The Maya civilisation used many calendars to measure time and record history. The main two calendars used by most ordinary Maya would have been the 260-day Tzolkin and the 365-day Haab. Because neither of these calendars numbered years, a combination of both the Tzolkin and Haab dates was used to identify the precise date. This method was sufficient because a particular combination of the two dates would not occur again for about 52 years, which was above the general life expectancy of the time.

To specify dates that occurred more than 52 years ago the Maya used another calendar called the Long Count. This calendar identified a date by counting the number of days from the day when the Maya believed that time began, on August 12, 3114 BCE. The Long Count used a 360-day year called a Tun, in which 20 Tuns made up a Katun (72,00 days) and 20 Katuns made up a Baktun (144, 000 Tuns). The 13th Baktun will be completed on December 21, 2012, which is said to be the end of the 5,125-year-long “Great Cycle.” However, sceptics say that this is a misinterpretation and that there is no evidence that the Maya believed the world would end on that day.

Whatever the truth about 2012 it would seem that someone wants us to believe something Earth shattering will happen on December 21 in that year. The doomsday theory has been featured in bestselling books, as well as documentaries, films and popular TV shows.

In the last episode of The X-Files (tantalisingly called The Truth) it is discovered by agents Mulder and Scully that aliens plan on colonising the Earth on December 21, 2012.

When I asked Dean Haglund, who played Langly in The X-Files, about the 2012 revelation in the final episode of the sci-fi cult, he told me he was sceptical about 2012 doomsday scenarios:

Here is an excellent example of a collective fear manifesting itself into popular culture. Since this airing, 2012 has become the hot topic at all the conventions, however, as Paul Dean said in our documentary, when he was talking to a Mayan priest about all of this, he said that ‘western society has it all wrong’ and that since we cannot hold a duality in our minds, a quantum Schrodinger's Cat scenario if you will, then we can only picture the end of something as a finite disaster and not both that and the re-awakening into the light.

Haglund was less sceptical, however, about the possibility that US government agencies could have been feeding information to The X-Files writers.

“I have heard that the popular culture is used as a tool by whatever elite, business, government, Illuminati, etc., to both gauge and control the populace,” The X-Files and Lone Gunmen star told me when I asked him about his comments on The Alex Jones Show back in 2005 about the script writers being approached by members of the CIA, FBI and NASA with ideas for episodes.

But why would US Government insiders want the viewers of The X-Files to associate 2012 with an alien invasion? One popular theory on the internet is NASA’s alleged partly declassified Project Blue Beam, a supposed plan by the US Government to create a “New World Order” by staging a fake UFO invasion using holograms and other advanced technology. A researcher who appeared in the documentary film The New World Order and is a screen writer himself, told me in an interview:

“The alien invasion hoax is also another reason why so many Hollywood science fiction movies involve aliens arriving in vast armadas to destroy us and take over our planet. They were quite prevalent in the 50s and you can find modern-day examples like Independence Day, War of the Worlds and even Mars Attacks. Very few movies about extra-terrestrials actually involve aliens with peaceful intentions. E.T. certainly comes to mind, but even movies where they arrive as our benevolent ‘saviours’ like The Day The Earth Stood Still, is still another permutation of the New World Order hoax, in which case it's about giving up our sovereignty, our ‘petty little differences’ as Reagan put it, and joining a fascist global regime in order to achieve an alleged ‘world peace’. It will be world peace but with a seriously heavy price on our freedoms. Mostly, though, these movies are programming us to believe that once we see vast armadas of classified military vehicles hovering in the sky, that they will in fact be UFOs driven by ‘extra-terrestrials’ who are here to ‘kill us and take over our planet.’ And then the only solution we'll be presented with will be a heavy reliance on a Militarised 'New World Order' to save us. That's where the real agenda lies.”

While many UFO researchers are sceptical about some of the specifics about Project Blue Beam, the basic premise that the US Government might be fostering the belief that UFOs represent aliens from outer space is another matter. The US government definitely has technology a lot more advanced than what they admit to having. In 1993 the “father of stealth” Ben Rich, director of Lockheed's Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991, stated at the University of California School of Engineering in 1993: “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects . . . and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.”

Other government insiders have also made comments implying the US Government were behind UFOs or at least hyping the ETH. In his book, The Secret Team, Colonial Fletcher Prouty, who was the real life basis for the Mr X character in Oliver Stone’s film JFK, speculated that with the fall of communism in the early 1990s UFOs and aliens would take the place of the Soviet Union as the new major threat to the United States.
 
"This is the fundamental game of the Secret Team. They have this power because they control secrecy and secret intelligence and because they have the ability to take advantage of the most modern communications system in the world, of global transportation systems, of quantities of weapons of all kinds, and when needed, the full support of a world-wide U.S. military supporting base structure. They can use the finest intelligence system in the world, and most importantly, they have been able to operate under the canopy of an assumed, ever-present enemy called ‘Communism.’ It will be interesting to see what ‘enemy’ develops in the years ahead. It appears that ‘UFO's and Aliens’ are being primed to fulfil that role for the future. To top all of this, there is the fact that the CIA, itself, has assumed the right to generate and direct secret operations."
   
More recently Mark Pilkington in his new book Mirage Men has argued that instead of perpetrating a UFO cover-up the US intelligence agencies have really been promoting ideas like alien abductions, UFO crashes and recoveries, and secret bases all along.

“In the book I'm specifically referring to those people from military and intelligence organisations who have used the UFO lore as a cover for their operations and, in extreme cases, have seeded new material within the UFO culture to further muddy the waters,” Mark Pilkington told me when I interviewed him in 2010. Although Mark didn’t think all UFOs were explainable.

“I'm not sceptical about UFOs themselves – people see them every day – nor am I sceptical of the existence of ET life, I believe it's out there, and I can accept that it will come here and perhaps even has done at some point in our past. What I am very sceptical of is the popular notion of ET visitation as presented in the UFO lore that has emerged since the late 1940s. This has developed out of a multi-directional feedback loop between UFO experiencers, UFO book authors, mainstream popular culture and those in the military and intelligence worlds who would exploit and shape these beliefs and ideas.”

So will the US Government or one of its alphabet agencies really stage a massive UFO sighting on December 21, 2012? We’ll have to wait to see. But with the London Olympics, Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the US presidential election all taking place in 2012 perhaps we shouldn’t be so focused on December 21 in particular.