THE SEARCH FOR ULTIMATE TRUTHS:
A Review of Six Recently Published Books on UFOs and Related Topics - by Rod Drown

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What does it mean when a spokesman for one of the oldest institutions in the Western World, the Catholic Church, says there is no conflict between believing in God and believing in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets – and, furthermore, adds that said intelligent life is perhaps even more evolved than humans? What does it mean when the statement issues from a most conservative organization led by its most conservative Pope in years? What might be the magnitude of the perceptual shift possibly coming our way?

Good, Timothy: Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence
Sturm, Allan: ULOs: Unidentified Lunar Objects Revealed In NASA Photography
Feschino, Frank F Jr: Shoot Them Down: The Flying Saucer Wars of 1952
Campbell, Art: Crash at San Augustin
Bennett, Jeffrey: Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future

Changing Verities in Religious Belief

Earth. Who else are we sharing it with?

What does it mean when a spokesman for one of the oldest institutions in the Western World, the Catholic Church, says there is no conflict between believing in God and believing in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets – and, furthermore, adds that said intelligent life is perhaps even more evolved than humans? What does it mean when the statement issues from a most conservative organization led by its most conservative Pope in years? What might be the magnitude of the perceptual shift possibly coming our way?

The front story: A few weeks ago, in early May, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest, stated: "In my opinion, this possibility (of life on other planets) exists,” and added, “Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.

The back story: could this statement by the Vatican’s astronomer, coming hard on the heels of recent rather discreet UN meetings by leading countries on the subject of UFOs, be another first step in a carefully constructed “disclosure strategy” aimed at orchestrating a new perspective among Humankind toward a hitherto unacceptable reality?

For several decades many ordinary people, young and old, have been willing – some perfectly so, others more uncomfortably – to accept the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, and now it seems that the Pope, his priests and his astronomer are now catching up to the rest of us. Their acceptance – our acceptance – grew out of the fact that, occasionally, they or those they knew and respected would see its evidence in the skies of their daily lives. Or they would hear about or be convinced about the possibility from others.

A Teenage Experience

For example, when I was a boy living on a farm north of Golden, British Columbia, a near neighbour was a colourful eccentric. Hunter, trapper and big game guide, in his youth Roy Seward had been a slack rope walker of some fame known as Calgary Red. It was this memorable fellow who, on his visits down to our log farmhouse from up on the ridge where he lived and looked over the world, introduced me to the subject of flying saucers. I think I remember him suggesting they came from outer space, from other worlds. As we children sat around and listened to his stories about them, I remember being alternately thrilled and terrified by the prospect of their existence. After his visits, I would have dreams in which huge glistening machines dangling strange scaffolding and descending ladders hovered over the field beside our log house.

Then, just as I was entering my early teens, I actually saw a flying saucer. The sighting occurred in the early 1960’s when, on a late summer or early fall day under a sky well populated by cumulus clouds and large patches of blue, I had been wandering around one of our fields. For some reason I had looked up and saw, hovering and moving in small circles at about 9,000 feet, a silver-coloured circular craft. After watching it by myself for about five minutes during which time I heard no noise and saw no exhaust stream, I ran to the house to alert my parents and siblings, and then we all watched it some more.

The UFO that my parents, siblings and I watched
in the early 1960s resembled this one

While all five of us were watching the craft, two military jets passed overhead on their regular route from Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Station Namao, just north of Edmonton, to the Pacific Coast. As they did so, the strangest thing happened: the saucer-like craft appeared to disappear into the clouds. To hide? When the RCAF jets had passed out of sight over the Selkirk Mountains to the west, the silver-coloured object re-appeared. For a few more minutes we all watched in wonder and curiosity as it continued to perform as before. Then, in complete silence, it suddenly accelerated toward the west and, leaving a red “spark-like” exhaust trail behind, also disappeared over the Selkirks.

The Biggest Elephant In The World’s Living Room

Although discussing related topics, this article is mostly about Unidentified Flying Objects. UFOs. Flying Saucers: the biggest elephant in the world’s living room. Another Canadian example and one much more recent than mine: throughout the evening of December 11, 1996 at least 31 people in the Yukon Territory witnessed a giant UFO, the surface of which gleamed with rows of lights. According to a detailed report written by engineer Martin Jasek eyewitness testimony indicated a craft several football stadiums in size. Jasek, who was at the time part of a Yukon group monitoring UFOs, writes “the sightings principally took place in four locations in the central Yukon – Fox Lake, Carmacks, Pelly Crossing and Mayo….”

Six of the 31 witnesses were traveling past Fox Lake, which begins about 35 km north of Whitehorse. Two of these were cousins in two separate vehicles. Heading northbound, the cousins spotted a huge UFO over the frozen lake on the west side of the Klondike Highway. Both drivers stopped immediately and, as the second watched in astonishment, the UFO drifted directly over the first vehicle. This incident occurred at about 8:30 pm. Both men said the lights they saw were attached to a smooth and solid object. At about the same time, a couple with a young child were also driving north and also observed a row or rows of lights slowly moving across the lake. The couple stopped and talked to the first two witnesses who were excitedly discussing their own encounter.

Simulated graphic of witness encounter with a UFO near Fox Lake, Yukon. The graphic is based on an actual site photo of the area based on a witness drawing.
Photo from UFOBC

Martin Jasek was able to talk to the other two who were near or at Fox Lake. His investigation found that about half an hour earlier a single (and fifth) witness driving the same highway had also seen the light moving toward the east. There was also a sixth witness to the Fox Lake sighting but it is unclear what time she had driven through the area. Leaning forward to look up through her windshield, this sixth person had observed a large arrangement of multi colored lights passing overhead. Upon this happening, she had found her car’s interior lights starting to go dim and the music from her tape deck slowing down.

And Further Up The Highway…

At around the same time, between 8:30 and 9:00 pm, Pelly Crossing (two hours’ drive north of Fox Lake and a little more than midway between Whitehorse and Dawson City) was experiencing its own UFO sighting. Jasek begins his account of the Pelly interlude by recounting the quite interesting – if not incredible – experience of a lone trapper tending his line northeast of the village. This solitary individual observed, to the southwest, a long row of lights slowly moving over the hills in the distance. At first he mistakenly thought it was a large aircraft coming down. A surprise followed: as he was walking he happened to point his flashlight in the direction of the UFO. To his shock, the UFO started speeding rapidly toward him and ended up hovering about 300 yards in front of him! In Jasek’s words:

“A beam of light emanating from the bottom of the UFO swooped the ground once directly underneath the object. Was it a search beam? Looking for him? The UFO then drifted slowly to the right. There were other beams emanating from the craft as well: a greenish phosphorescent coloured one shone horizontally out the front (right); two at the back (left) rotated slowly to a horizontal position. All the beams could be seen clearly as there were ice crystals in the air. [The trapper] turned away from the UFO momentarily and ran across a small clearing. When he turned back to look at it, it was gone.”

Almost at the same time, two other witnesses traveling northbound just south of Pelly Crossing spotted a huge row of lights slowly moving from left to right (west to east). Upon pulling over into a gravel pit, they noted that the craft and its row of lights were about the same length as the Big Dipper. Four other witnesses from Pelly, college evening students, were able to give further information that allowed Jasek to calculate, through triangulation, the craft’s length.

Then there was, the same evening, the UFO sighting near the Village of Carmacks – seen by 9 witnesses. At this location, the mysterious craft was observed by two groups of people – four men traveling together at about 7pm and a family of five watching television. The family, in Jasek’s report, is not exactly sure what time it was when they saw the UFO, just that it was in the evening. They observed a row of lights just to the northwest of their residence moving slowly to the northeast. The lights were just over the tree line and there was no noise at all. To the men traveling together the craft seemed to take up a 60 to 90 degree horizontal chunk of the sky.

Engineer Martin Jasek's map showing the area in and around Carmacks, Yukon
photo from UFOBC

Martin Jasek ends his account of this December 11, 1996 sky born spectacle by noting that there is also some evidence suggesting that this "sighting event" encompassed an even larger area since UFO reports were heard on CBC North radio the very next day, mentioning sightings in the communities of Dawson, Mayo and Watson Lake. At the time Jasek wrote his account no witnesses from the latter communities had come forward.

For a full report on this incident, please go to www.ufobc.ca/yukon/22index.htm.

The Yukon, for some reason, seems a very popular place for UFOs. Here is one more incident – from late July 1996. For a full report, again by Martin Jasek, go to www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case102.htm.

One More Case from the Yukon

Summarized, the incident can be described as follows: At about 2 am sometime during the last weekend of July 1996 two women, twin sisters from England, driving alone at night just south of Dawson City saw a giant cigar-shaped, "something” suspended in the sky ". The craft, which had a row of rectangular windows, was sitting motionless at a slight angle. Due to their direction of travel, the two women eventually came relatively close to the object and saw much more detail. For example, they noted a swarm of small “ships” buzzing around the “front” of the object that were not there when they first saw it. Appearing as about 12 or 13 bright hazy lights, they were going in and out of the big cigar-shaped thing!

Twin sisters saw a giant cigar-shaped UFO. It had a row of rectangular windows. Small lights were flying in and out of the large object. The UFO appeared to descend or disappear behind a mountain, or into the ground. Missing time occurred.
photo from UFOBC

Five Books Guaranteed To Offend Skeptics

Do you, dear reader, believe in UFOs? Or are you, like a few of my friends and acquaintances, dismissive or – worse – offended when I ask you the question? And, if you are dismissive, how many books have you read on the subject? And, if you are offended, why is that your reaction?

Those willing to be dismissive or offended are likely to find much to engender such reactions in five recently published books. The scope of the five, all quite unorthodox in intent and subject matter, spirals inward through the solar system from the gas giants of Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. The unorthodoxy begins with claims by well-known science maverick (and Face on Mars proponent) Richard C. Hoagland. In his book, Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, co-authored with Michael Bara, he claims that our neighbouring planet contains barely covered ruins of ancient cities on the edge of former ocean shorelines that are now wind-scourged, dust-covered plains. It continues with claims by an indefatigable Florida researcher, Frank Feschino Jr., in his Shoot Them Down: The Flying Saucer Wars of 1952, that during the summer of 1952 the skies above Washington DC were full of incursions carried out by half human-half snake beings piloting UFOs that destroyed several US military jets above the cities and the suburban and the rural areas of America’s eastern seaboard. The West Virginia hamlet of Flatwoods plays a central role in Feschino’s tale. Hoagland’s claims for former Martian civilizations are based almost entirely on photographs of Martian landscape features and are more open to interpretation than the hard, fast and interlocking details that Feschino has culled from dozens of newspaper accounts and years of first hand interviews with witnesses and knowledgeable interested parties.

More unorthodoxy results from the scholarly investigative and reportorial endeavors of British UFO researcher Timothy Good who presents, in Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence, information gathered from dozens of unclassified military files of the US, UK and a number of European and South American countries. For his book, Crash at San Augustin, retired U.S. educator Art Campbell has painstakingly spent years going through the field schedules and archeological reports of several digging teams that were active in the Plains of San Augustin, a usually dry area subject to downpours. Last and very astonishing, in ULOs: Unidentified Lunar Objects Revealed In NASA Photography, are Allan Sturm’s dozens of photographs, from the Apollo missions of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which in the best of them seem to show artificial structures on the Moon that cannot have been manmade.

Taken together, these five authors’ insistence (or, in Sturm’s case, implication) that ancient cities lie in ruins on Mars (Hoagland), that huge remnants of past millennial civilizations’ engineering marvels sit solid and artificial above Luna’s surface (Sturm) and that there are presently UFO bases in Puerto Rico and Amazonia (Good) vie in strangeness with the crash of a “grey”-bearing flying saucer in Texas in 1947 (Campbell) and aerial battles between military aircraft and UFOs (Feschino). These five books, at least one of them self-published, often marshal impressive evidence, reasonable speculation and thoughtful conjecture to show that life on this Earth of ours has – for some time – been neither alone nor unvisited. Hoagland’s and Sturm’s books especially imply the possibility that there have been intelligent beings on the Martian and Lunar surfaces, whose works remain there. These five books insist that we humans have been visited and are still being visited by sentient beings from other worlds – if not also from other dimensions.

Relentless, Even Obsessive Researchers Now Have, In Some Cases, More Information To Access

These authors and researchers – and others like them – are as persistent in their efforts and their arguments as any Darwin, Watson, Crick or Hawking; are as intellectually adventurous as any Einstein or Sagan; and are as relentless in their research as any combination or permutation of Sherlock Holmes and some sidekick archival mole. Hoagland has been pricking at NASA through at least six presidencies; Timothy Good has published seven heavily researched, deeply documented and finely indexed books since 1974. Frank Feschino Jr. has spent the last decade or more digging into more than 200 books, magazines and newspapers large and small. Allan Sturm has for some time been painstakingly sorting through tens of thousands of photographs from NASA’s Apollo Missions to the Moon. Art Campbell has spent a good deal of his own money and all of his own time (and that of others, I assume) in checking into the background and details of the flying saucer he is sure crashed into an arroyo near San Augustin Texas in 1947. No doubt he has employed scientists, laboratories, private fax agencies etc. Linda Moulton Howe, who has discussed UFOs, cattle mutilations and crop circles in her research, has been intensely involved in producing radio shows and televisions programs in her attempt to open peoples’ minds to other realities.

It now seems, given the indications of such recent political, intellectual and spiritual departures as those of the Catholic Church and of certain United Nations discreet meetings and behind the scenes activities, that pioneers such as Hoagland, Good, Campbell, Feschino and Sturm are seeing their efforts pay off in the larger public realm. It could be a case of “the more you know the more you want to know”. And there does seem to be more to know: In recent years efforts of such researchers have been made somewhat easier as certain countries begin to open parts of their formerly classified UFO files to the public. This disclosure has not been perfect, since even many of the released files have been intensively redacted (certain information removed) by the authorities for reasons of national security and personal confidentiality.

Canada

The Library and Archives Canada collection of government records on UFOs is an example of such recent openness. The material contained was acquired from four federal departments and agencies – the Departments of National Defence and Transport, the National Research Council and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Library’s website says that the available documents were accumulated between 1947 and the early 1980s and represent all records filed with the federal government on UFOs. The collection contains approximately 9,500 digitized documents in a variety of formats, including correspondence, reports, memos and procedures. Some are specifically concerned with particular UFO sightings, while others are more generic in nature; the latter consisting usually of reporting forms and procedures for recording events.

Although most of these Canadian documents contain a date (pertaining either to a sighting date or the date the document was actually created), some are undated. Similarly, approximately half the documents refer to a specific UFO sighting location, while the others fail to mention a particular location.

Belgium

Belgium, well known for its hundreds of “flying triangle” sightings in the late 1990s, is another country that has released its files on UFOs. These cases are among the better-documented and most accessible to investigation to have occurred anywhere in the last decade. Numerous writers on the topic of UFOs have congratulated the government of Belgium and its air force for being very open with their own verifications of the sightings with the public at large. UFO researchers say this is the first time that such a sharing of apparently unfiltered military data has been, not only provided, but also given over in an earnest attempt to invite public investigation.

The Belgian details: beginning in late 1989, a definite UFO "flap" converged on that country, with the majority of the sightings occurring in the vicinity of Wallonia. For some time from that point on, literally thousands of people reported seeing triangular aircraft in the Belgian skies, exhibiting flight characteristics, which simply could not be explained with regard to mundane terrestrial aircraft. Unlike previous flaps, the Belgian accounts generated report after report of what, in essence, was exactly the same type of craft. The eyewitness descriptions were surprisingly similar in the vast majority of the reports. Individuals in the Belgian Air Force, police officers, and air traffic controllers confirmed a surprising number of the civilian sightings.

An artist's illustration of one of the Belgian triangle UFOs
photo from UFO Digest

Straight Science And UFOs: Sadly, Mostly Silence And Denial

In spite of such unaccustomed openness by certain governments, it seems clear that many if not most scientists are still extremely reluctant to take UFOs seriously – at least publicly. Upon hearing of what observers, believers and others insist are reports by reliable witnesses, scientists then insist on photographs. Shown photographs, they are next likely to say the photographs were faked. Some UFO commentators think that, given the vast expansion of the Internet in recent years with its concomitant flowering of personal websites and visually extravagant sites like You Tube and Face Book, it is getting harder and harder for authorities to keep the lid on what might actually be going on in terms of UFOs and possible alien visitations to our lovely blue planet.

Evidence-wise, do we perhaps have an authenticity gap? For it seems there is a paradox relating to what might be termed evidence far and evidence near. The former evidence, experienced only through telescopes, is – perhaps strangely – somehow considered more reliable than the latter. To wit: Hundreds of now de-classified military files testifying to extremely strange goings on in Canadian, American, British, French and Belgian airspace (among others’) are given less credibility in many “scientific” circles than information gathered from a hundred light years away. It is difficult to fathom why scientists and astronomers, who are fully informed about the discovery of giant gas planets around extremely distant stars and who understand that such discoveries quite logically infer the existence of undetectable earth-sized planets closer in, deny the reality of nearly six decades of well documented UFO sightings in our own atmosphere.

An example of this really pervasive “double think”: I have been recently reading a book by physicist and science popularizer Jeffrey Bennett called, interestingly enough, Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future. The book exemplifies the point made in the last paragraph quite nicely. Bennett’s whole point of argument is to show that humans are not alone in the universe. He marshals various facts and reasonable speculation in support of there being intelligent life elsewhere. Yet, in many chapters, he also seems to argue at great length to show that it is logically impossible for anyone to have seen a UFO here on earth! He demolishes quite easily (and with my full agreement, I might add) the whole “reverse engineering” theory of UFO munificence but, at the same time, writes as though he has never read – or maybe even ever heard of – any of Timothy Good’s seven or eight well-crafted books, all based in significant part on careful readings of declassified military files from the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands and other countries both in South America and the Far East. Good’s books show that alien craft have been seen and have been taken extremely seriously by military and high governmental authorities. Good is one careful researcher. His books are scholarly in the extreme.

More from Jeffrey Bennett, regarding alien intelligence as it might be expressed in interstellar travel:

“The very minimum technology required for aliens to travel from their home stars to here might look like a huge multigenerational spaceship. Using nuclear rocket technology not too far beyond our own, they might be able to achieve speeds of a few percentage points of the speed of light, so that they could make the trip in only a few centuries if they are coming from nearby stars. But a ship like this would simply drift past earth, so that if we saw it at all we would see it as a steadily moving light for the few seconds during which it might be near enough to be seen. To explain the reports we hear of UFOs, the alien technology would have to be far more advanced.”

Some researchers might say that maybe they (UFOs and their occupants) aren’t coming from distant stars. Maybe they are coming from other dimensions.

More Bennett:

“Alien visitors of the type that people claim to see in UFO sightings [seem as if they] are able to travel quite easily among the stars. They appear often, and in substantial numbers, and apparently don’t mind visiting for just a few minutes or hours at a time even after the long journeys from the stars. It would seem that, for them, a journey to earth is little more troubling than an intercontinental trip is for us, and certainly no more difficult than it is for us to reach the Moon. …Remember that, on [a] ten to 10 billion scale, both Earth and the Moon fit in the palm of your hand, while the nearest stars are thousands of miles away. To scale, they can cross a continent while we can barely travel an inch.”

More Bennett:

“And there you have it: Alien visitors can in essence do the equivalent of flitting back and forth across the United States as easily as you can run your finger around the palm of your hand. I have no idea what kind of technology they might have that would enable them to do that. What I do know [is that] this technology is far beyond what we have, and very likely beyond what we can even yet conceive of.”

Richard Hoagland: Lost On Mars?

(Note. Although both Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara are listed as authors of Dark Mission, for the purposes of this article, I will refer only to Hoagland. This will make the language less cumbersome. My apologies to Michael Bara) Richard Hoagland is probably best known for his belief that there is, in the red planet’s Cydonia region, a giant artificially constructed “Face” looking upward to the Martian sky. He further postulates that certain points on this “Face” connect with other equally artificial structures, such as pyramids, via sacred geometric and uniquely esoteric orientations. Although virtually the entire scientific community and most other people are utterly convinced that closer-in photography from recent NASA flybys has shown the Face and its various pyramids merely to be weirdly eroded Martian landforms, Hoagland persists in his ideas. In fact his current claim could, according to some definitions, be construed as tending to paranoia: that NASA is refusing to release photographs it possesses that do show clearly artificial structures in the Cydonia region.

I am uncertain about some of Hoagland’s claims. On at least one other occasion, he has made speculative statements that end up being empty promises. For example, in the last year or two Hoagland's website has promised a dramatic concluding chapter to his series on the Saturnine moon Iapetus, which he also claims to be at least partly artificial – a meteor-blasted artifact from a long gone space-faring civilization.

The Enterprise Mission’s pages dedicated to Iapetus are full of photos showing flat (as opposed to the expected curved) horizons, apparently perfectly geometric arrangement of craters and other seemingly artificial surface features. The pages also contain conjecture by Hoagland who claims that NASA has suppressed information pertaining to certain anomalous radar returns between the NASA’s Cassini probe and Iapetus – information that, in Hoagland’s mind, would provide evidence that Iapetus’ surface has been artificially altered. The question raised is this: Is NASA trying to make Hoagland look bad?

In Hoagland’s Universe, NASA seems more often than not an institution that hides, rather than highlights, profound discoveries. However, before we dismiss Hoagland as a mere conspiracy-monger with no credibility, we should examine a fascinating tale with which he and Bara open Dark Mission. If true, the tale demonstrates that NASA has been a party to generating false information. On July 22, 1969, two days after the historic Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, Hoagland was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California, in his capacity as a CBS science advisor. Hoagland was in the JPL press area looking for the CBS Anchor Desk when he watched some curious circumstances unfold.

Not a Straight-Shooting Cowboy

He noticed a rather uniquely attired person being shepherded around the Von Karman Press Theatre by a more conventionally attired JPL official. As Hoagland describes his experience, he saw a man dressed as a “cowpuncher”. The fellow, with his jeans, long light-coloured “great coat” and dark leather bag slung over his shoulder, looked rather like a refugee from a Clint Eastwood movie. Fascinated by this standout anomaly among dozens of engineering types in shirts (and pocket protectors?), Hoagland saw that the “cowpuncher” was placing something on each chair. Upon checking, Hoagland was shocked to find the “something” was a package of written material that claimed that NASA had faked the entire Apollo landing. What was even more bizarre was that the head of JPL’s Press Office, Frank Bristow, was shepherding around the cowpuncher!

Among the other curious incidents and situations mentioned throughout the entire book, two especially fascinate in Chapter 4. In the first one, Hoagland details how NASA Scientist Ken Johnston, working during the post-Apollo days as head of the photography section of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, was ordered to destroy four complete sets of original orbital and handheld photography developed during the Apollo missions. Hoagland writes that:

“The orders were explicit – [Johnston] was to destroy all four sets of the literally tens of thousands of Apollo lunar photographs taken by the astronauts”

Reluctant to destroy such heritage documents, Johnston managed to save one complete set and later donated many of its photos to Oklahoma City University.

In the other incident, Hoagland writes how Johnston once provided a show of new lunar photographs taken by a recent mission, some covering the far side of the Moon. Commentating on the photographs was the lab’s Chief Astronomer Dr. Thornton Page. One photograph caused quite a stir because, taken just as the craft exited from the dark side, it showed a crater with a plume of something coming out of it – plus five or six lights in the bottom of the crater.

Dr. Page, obviously very interested and intrigued, had Johnston repeat the film a few times. Then, according to Johnston, Page said something like, “well, isn’t that interesting?” and the audience members chuckled and laughed, and then Dr. Page asked Johnston to carry on.

A few days later, Johnston began showing the film sequence to several rank and file engineers, first advising them that he had a most interesting surprise in store for them. But it was Johnston who was surprised. For, in describing to Hoagland what actually happened, he said that when he came to the particular photo in the sequence:

“…as we were approaching the same crater…and we went past the crater – there was nothing there!”

Puzzled, Johnston stopped the camera, took out the film, examined it for evidence of tampering and found none. That afternoon, he ran into Dr. Page and asked him what had happened to the film. To his great surprise, Page:

“…kind of grinned and gave me a little twinkle and a chuckle and said, “There were no lights. There is nothing there.”

Some Other Highlights from Hoagland and Bara

For me there are three photographic highlights of Hoagland’s and Bara’s Dark Mission: the first is something that looks very much like a paperclip sitting on the edge of a crater on the Moon. This truly remarkable photograph appears as Figure 4-16 on the lower half of Page 185. The second shows what have come to be known as the Glass Tunnels of Barsoom. These very artificial-looking forms are discussed in Chapter 7 on Page 322 and are shown on Fig. 7-5 (Page 329). Another big surprise is that Data’s Head seems to be lying among other debris in a lunar crater called Shorty. Interested readers can either buy Dark Mission or borrow it from their local library. Once you have done either, go to the last page of the colour section, opposite page 269 of the text. There you will see a photo seeming to show, for the world to see, a robot head eerily resembling Data’s – the robot in Star Wars!

Hoagland’s investigative skills are impressive and he is ever alert to details that seem to prove his point: consider his take on Astronaut Al Worden’s statement that, while flying over one crater, he (Worden) definitely felt he was looking at the crater’s bottom through a “haze layer”. Worden meant that he had the impression he was also seeing something else floating between him and the lunar surface. Hoagland quickly points out that Worden’s interpretation cannot make sense. There is no atmosphere on the Moon; thus there cannot be a “haze” layer. What Worden was looking at, suggests Hoagland, was the bottom of the crater through the remains of a transparent dome. It would be similar to looking through a dirty greenhouse window. Such atmospheric-like diffraction is caused, says Hoagland, by the remnants of old domes on the lunar surface. In Chapter 4, “The Crystal Towers of the Moon, Hoagland writes that there are such ruins all over the Moon. (One wonders if these ruins would be visible to the most powerful earth-based telescopes.) He writes that some of these are over a mile high. He summarizes by writing that such remnants prevail because, on the Moon, glass is twice as strong as steel.

However, the focus of Hoagland’s effort is Mars, and the authors raise some interesting questions. They wonder why NASA, for example, after years of ridiculing his insistence on the real existence of the “Face”, termed the structure “a high priority target” for the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft. The Odyssey had an interesting range of instruments on board. One of them, THEMIS, contained a visible light camera, thermal imager, and an infrared camera. The latter camera is able to “shoot” pictures of what lies below the surface. What the instruments revealed was quite incredible. Under the dust at and adjacent to the Cydonia region were shapes in the form of a cityscape. Hoagland says that something like a tunnel could be seen running from the city. He writes that an instrument on the Odyssey probe, the MOLA (Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter) confirms that Cydonia is a deep dust-covered plain atop a thick layer of ice that has preserved and concealed…ruins of a highly advanced civilization beneath.

John Glenn’s Speech on Frasier

However, although it is subtler, probably the most attention-getting part of Dark Mission occurs when Hoagland describes Astronaut John Glenn’s guest appearance in March 2001 on the top-rated NBC Television series Frasier. According to Hoagland, it was Glenn who had approached the network and not the other way around. It was almost as if Glenn had something important he wanted to say to a very large audience.

It also appears as if the script was somewhat jerry-rigged to accommodate Glenn. For, as Hoagland describes it, the whole scene set up for Glenn’s big speech seems contrived:

“An argument ensues between Frasier and Roz, [who] retire to the control room to have it out in private. As they do, Glenn – in the studio all by himself – begins to recite [his speech, which is] completely out of context with anything else that has happened in the show, or with the action now taking place behind him in the control room. As he does so, he does not address any of the characters around him. In fact, he looks directly into the camera, solely addressing the audience at home watching throughout America.”

And what a speech it is. According to Hoagland, Glenn says the following:

“Back in those glory days, I was very uncomfortable when they asked us to say things we didn’t want to say and deny other things. Some people asked, you know, were you out there alone? We never gave the real answer, and yet we [saw] things out there, strange things but we know what we saw out there. And we couldn’t really say anything. The bosses were really afraid of this; they were afraid of the “War of the Worlds-” type stuff, and about panic in the streets. So we had to keep quiet. And now we only see those things in our nightmares, or maybe in the movies, and some of them are pretty close to being the truth.”

Timothy Good: A Fine Researcher

In Good’s case, the highlights lie more in the text. It is clear that he has gone through hundreds of formerly classified files to come up with a book tantalizing in its implications.

Good documents numerous intrusions of flying discs at sensitive nuclear installations in the US and how those events have led to secret conferences involving top scientists. He details how, during the 1950s, giant USOs (Unidentified Submarine Objects) were reported by the US Navy during encounters near the Iranian Coast and elsewhere. Other examples this indefatigable researcher has found include multiple UFOs encountered by a ship of our own Royal Canadian Navy (as it was known then) near Hawaii. In the same decade a giant B-36 bomber on a photoreconnaissance flight near North Dakota was approached by a 100-foot diameter porthole-ed disc, which paced the plane for nearly eight minutes, in full view of 25 aircrew. Numerous photographs were taken of the object with cameras specially issued by the USAF Project Blue Book. During another event during that decade, an unknown cigar-shaped craft hovered at low altitude above the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Caribbean in 1958, causing a power breakdown in the vessel.

Into the 1960’s: Good details the story of the 1965 crash-landing of an unknown craft at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, during the 1990’s, John Podesta, President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff spearheaded a group aiming at government disclosure concerning this particular case. In another typical 1960’s case, a UFO affected an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), causing the installation to malfunction.

Allan Sturm

Allan Sturm’s ULOs: Unidentified Lunar Objects Revealed In NASA Photography – a book of anomalous lunar photographs showing things, which do not have the right to be there, is astonishing! The Moon is indeed out of this world. Of the several dozen photographs he has selected from Apollo Flights 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 and 17, six are especially intriguing – three from Apollo 12, two from Apollo 15 and one from Apollo 17.

ALLAN STURM – BEST PHOTOS BY PAGE

page 11/121
general location on moon: 2/3rds LEFT (of CENTER) NEAR SIDE, CLOSE TO EQUATOR (Oceanus Procellarum)

page 61/121
general location on moon: 2/3rds LEFT (of CENTER) NEAR SIDE, CLOSE TO EQUATOR (Oceanus Procellarum)

page 62/121
general location on moon: 2/3rds LEFT (of CENTER) NEAR SIDE, CLOSE TO EQUATOR (Oceanus Procellarum)

page 71/121
general location on moon: 2/3rds LEFT (of CENTER) NEAR SIDE, 1/3 NORTH OF EQUATOR

page 75/121
general location on the moon: JUST AROUND THE EDGE OF THE RIGHT FACING SIDE, 1/3 NORTH of EQUATOR

page 120/121
general location on the moon: FAR SIDE, NEARLY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE FAR SIDE GOING WEST (to the left and around the side from our view here on Earth), JUST A LITTLE NORTH OF THE EQUATOR

Sturm’s book can be ordered or downloaded (as a high-resolution PDF) by going to his website.

Frank Feschino

Of the five books mentioned, Frank Feschino Jr.’s could have been the most engaging reading since it really concentrates on certain events occurring over a relatively brief time – events that involved a number of ordinary, everyday people. It is a single narrative well contextualized in its surrounding social, political and military milieu. However, it is unnecessarily dense, badly organized and needs some serious editing. Still it does contain a wealth of previously unseen information – the result of an astonishing amount of research and interviewing work.

At the centre of “Shoot Them Down” lurk two incidents concerning the so-called Flatwoods Monster, one of the most spectacular UFO events of the 1950s. The first occurred Friday evening, September 12,1952, when a group of West Virginian teenage boys and one of their aunts ran into what can only be described as a 12 foot high fire breathing, stinking monster of a horror show. The second followed the very next evening a few dozen miles away to the south. These two events culminated three months of very active UFO activity along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, especially over and around Washington DC. During this period UFOs – singly and in groups – were a fact of life day and night over the Capitol area.

Feschino’s introductory chapter, “The Space Ships of Summer”, describes monitoring activities at the U.S. Air Force’s Air Intelligence Centre at Dayton, Ohio's Wright Patterson Air Force Base in June 1952. Run by Edward J Ruppelt of Project Bluebook, it was a somewhat chaotic and probably understaffed central clearing house for UFO sightings across the country. That month 39 cases were listed as “Unknown” of which 25 were military sightings. Unknown craft had been sighted over sensitive installations like the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. July proved just as interesting. Among other UFO-related events, two F-94 Starfighter jet interceptors pursued a UFO over Massachusetts and a brilliant formation of 10 or 12 lights was filmed over Tremonton, Utah. Bluebook reported 42 unknown cases in total between July 15 and 30.

Then comes the famous July 19th and 20th Washington, DC sightings in which numerous unknown craft were observed over the Capitol by both radar and visual means. Saucers were also over Boston and Los Angeles. In the latter, 25 people over four nights saw what the press termed “audacious flying machines”. Elsewhere in US air space two Air Force jets encountered three cylindrical objects in a vertical stack formation at 50,000 to 80,000 feet.

The next weekend the UFOs returned. Feschino captures the mood perfectly when he relates a remarkable highlight: a celebrated World War 11 fighter pilot, Lt. Colonel “Black Mac” Magruder, was roused from his bed and hurriedly taken to a Pentagon situation room on the night of July 26th. Magruder joined a group of air force officers watching as their jets entered Capitol air space to intercept unidentified radar blips. The jets had been ordered to shoot down the alien craft if possible. At least one jet was lost when it “just disappeared from screen”. At a Pentagon press conference a few days later senior air force officers said that about 20 percent sightings across the U.S. were of “relatively incredible things”

Such relatively incredible things continued. For example, in June and July of 1952, 235 USAF fighter aircraft were involved in major accidents, including 94 fighter aircraft destroyed with 51 fatalities. Coincidentally, in June, 148 reports were received by Blue Book, followed by 536 in July. Feschino writes that this was highest number in Blue Book’s 17-year history. The two-month total of UFO reports was 684. He also notes that three fighter jets just disappeared into thin air, never to be seen again. A further sober note: Feschino’s contacts told him that there were many more incidents unreported by the official agencies.

August continued busy. On the 5th, over Westover Air Base and Washington, sightings beginning just after midnight continued into early afternoon. In the early evening returning UFOs were chased by fighter jets over DC. Quoting earlier UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe, Feschino adds that UFOs appeared often over Atomic energy plants, USAF bases, US Naval Airbases, Naval Air Service locations and major cities. In Chicago, for example, 54 UFOs were sighted by at least 14 observers.

Fleeing The Flatwoods Monster

Chapter 11 spotlights the real gem at the heart of Feschino’s work – the Flatwoods Monster itself. At dusk on Friday evening, September 12, 1952, teenage boys playing football in a Flatwoods, West Virginia schoolyard saw a bright light making its somewhat unsteady way across the sky. It landed east of the hamlet on a hilltop field of the abandoned Fisher Farm. Led by Kathleen May (32 years old and the May boys’ aunt), seven boys – Gene Lemon (18), Neal Nunley (14), Eddie May (13), Theodore Neal (13), Fred May (11), Ronnie Shaver (10) and Tommy Hyes (6) – went onto the abandoned farm in search of the light.

What Kathleen May and the boys encountered on the Fisher Farm

As the group cautiously moved up the trail in the deepening dusk, an unusually thick mist began to cover the ground. The group also smelled a very strong, quite repulsive odor. Then – terror! According to the eight witnesses, they were scared out of their wits when they encountered a 12-foot tall “thing,” which “floated” toward them from under an oak tree beside the pathway. It appeared to have a cowl- like collar behind a “helmet” containing two light-emitting “eyes” and, on its lower half, some kind of “hanging drapery”. The eight panicked at the sight and, jumping over, under and through gates, ran down the hill until they were safe in the May home. Afterwards some of the boys experienced extreme vomiting and Kathleen May noted “oil stains” on her uniform.

The news spread rapidly and, within an hour or so of the encounter, a follow-up armed incursion took place. Bolstered by a shotgun and revolvers, a group of men and boys, led by local news photographer A. Lee Stewart Jr., (who also doubled as a kind of sheriff’s deputy) were guided to the site by Lemon and Nunley. They noted a lingering odor and, as well, two “skid marks".

The air force certainly seemed aware of the incident, exhibiting a definite interest in it and the dozens of strange lights traveling American skies that night. And so, military officialdom was next arriving on the scene. At 1 am the following morning about 50 National Guard members were dispatched to the scene. More than four decades later, Feschino tracked down their commander, former Flatwoods resident Colonel Charles Leavitt. The colonel confirmed that, on orders from Washington, his group had arrived at the Fisher Farm by a back road.

Subsequently Kathleen May and Gene Lemon appeared on the nationally broadcast television show “We the People”, and as usual in most media treatments of the question of UFOs and their occupants, unfriendly humour and ridicule replaced serious commentary. The television show hired an “artist” whose real task seemed to be to take May’s and Lemon’s sincere attempts to describe something very real and very frightening, and to distort it into a cartoon-like “monster” with stick arms and a frowning face. (A few years later another skeptic suggested the group had simply seen the light-reflecting eyes of a barn owl sitting on the branch of the Oak Tree).

Feschino devotes most of Chapters 27 and 28 to detailing the descriptions of 13 UFOs seen descending over Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania between 8 pm and 8:10 pm, Friday evening September 12, 1952. Categorizing the craft and the various sightings into three kinds of objects – three mid-Atlantic UFOs, one jet-shaped UFO and five southeast North Carolina Rescue UFOs – he attempts to describe where they were and where they were heading.

George Snitowsky encounters an alien

The Flatwoods encounter on September 12th was frightening enough but the next one was altogether bewildering – a real nightmare. Feschino next very graphically describes an encounter the Snitowsky family – a young couple with a baby – experienced the very next evening. Around 8 pm Saturday, September 13, 1952 George and Edith Snitowsky and their 18-month-old son were driving from Ohio to New York. Somewhere in Braxton County, between Frametown and Sutton, and a few miles south of Flatwoods on Highway 79, the Snitowsky family had what was likely the most terrifying night of their life. As Feschino describes it, their car stalled and then:

“As George continued trying to start the car, the fresh mountain air became filled with a sickening odor, something [described by George Snitowsky as] ‘like a mixture of ether and burnt sulfur.’ …suddenly the car was bathed ‘in a dazzling flash of light with a wavering, unsteady beam’. The light was emanating from a wooded area bordering the road.”

Snitowsky ventured into the woods to investigate. After going some distance he decided to return after experiencing a kind of electric shock that buckled his knees. With some difficulty, he staggered back onto the road. No sooner was he on the shoulder in the dark when things became even more disturbing. Looking toward his car, he saw his terrified wife leaning out the window. Speechless with terror, she was staring over his shoulder at something behind him. Feschino writes that when George Snitowsky turned around to look, about 30 feet behind him he saw:

“[A] figure …standing immobile, on the fringe of the road, about 30 feet off to my right.” He described the figure as “a good eight or nine feet tall, and in the general shape of a man.” He further described it as having a head and shoulders and a bloated body.”

Snitowsky baled into the car, grabbed his wife and child and all of them huddled on the floor as a tentacled reptilian inspected the hood of their car. Then it returned into the woods and, a few minutes later, a bright light ascended into the nighttime sky.

As summed up by Mannix Porterfield of the Beckley West Virginia Register Herald, Feschino believes that, on that evening and the preceding days, a series of dogfights between UFOs and USAF jet interceptors took place. Most of the time the air force jets were outmaneuvered but, according to Feschino, three UFOs were damaged off the east coast of America as they descended from the mother ship.

Porterfield, who interviewed Feschino in late 2006 at a UFO conference, said the author’s work shows that the American military engaged a convoy of alien aircraft in a pitched air battle right off the Atlantic Coast. Following the engagements these damaged alien craft headed inland and one of them landed on the Fisher Farm in West Virginia. Feschino repeated what he claims in his book:

"There are tons of documents right there, intelligence reports, talking about pilots chasing these things, going after them,'' Feschino told the journalist, citing the once-hidden reports on the Air Force's so-called Project Blue Book.

Based on his in-depth research and numerous interviews with witnesses, Feschino is convinced the “monster” was indeed an alien inside a metallic probe, or small shuttlecraft, not unlike the lunar modules used by America astronauts, explaining why it appeared to “float” along the ground. According to Porterfield, Feschino thinks the aliens were likely conducting reconnaissance flights over America and were especially interested in atomic plants and Air Force installations. Regarding the Flatwoods incident, Feschino found that “In all of that night in 1952, there were about 18 and one-half hours of sightings.”

The Blue Book actually devoted an official case report to the Flatwoods incident, he learned.

“Besides that one page, there were about 200 other pages of UFO sightings that occurred throughout the night,” he said. “Flatwoods was not an isolated incident. This was not just one little incident. The one in Flatwoods was only 5 percent of the story.”

Art Campbell

Art Campbell’s book, Crash at San Augustin, on the San Augustin, Texas flying saucer crash is well written as befits a former educator. In the beginning chapters Campbell has devoted much effort to “atmosphere” in describing the times and people involved in the story. The most provocative reading occurs in the last few chapters of the book.

In terms of the putative crash site and its artifacts, here is Campbell’s essential story: He found an arroyo near the Plains of San Augustin in Texas where it was rumored that a UFO had crash-landed in 1947. He dug the arroyo up, painstakingly filtered the material and, in doing so, found some materials and objects that, after quite extensive laboratory testing, appear not to be of earthly manufacture or fabrication.

Campbell found a number of artifacts at the site, including two items that seemed to be soles from shoes – one more intact than the other. As the former educator writes:

“The shoe soles found at the arroyo site consisted of one complete tiny shoe sole and one partial sole of a different size.”

Campbell mentions that he spent nearly a decade researching these soles.  The small one has 7 layers of material, which has been thoroughly analyzed.  After examination by a number of shoe experts, the smaller sole was found to be unlike any that could fit a human foot, whether child or adult.

In his research, he also enlisted the assistance of private laboratories (including one which had, on behalf of the Vatican, examined the famous Shroud of Turin).

The discoverer of the crashed UFO on the Plains of San Augustin was a soil engineer named Barney Barnett who, in his recollections of that day, remembered seeing several archaeologists at the crash site. Art Campbell, after some years of searching, found the names of those who were probably there – a digging team led by an archeologist who later taught at Harvard.

Campbell implies that Barnett's discovery was taken very seriously in high-level Washington DC intelligence and security circles. This was made clear to him one day when a young air force officer visited him on an informal basis. The young officer told Barnett that he was dropping by because a very senior USAF officer had told him that, should he want to talk to someone who had actually touched a flying saucer, he should talk to Barnett.

A fascinating sidelight: Campbell, in what I think is a recent addition to his website, notes that a local resident who was driving on a road near the area of the crash site, on or near the day of the crash, saw a strange little person walking. As reported to the Caton County Sheriff’s office and later repeated at a military intelligence briefing, the resident

“…noticed it was unlike any human child he had ever seen. It was not wearing children's clothing, but a one-piece gray outfit."

Is UFO Research One way to the Poor House?

I wanted to find out the specifics of UFO research in 2008. I wanted to know how hard these men and woman worked in their investigatory efforts. I wanted to get a sense of the life of a UFO researcher, how communications and connections worked in the UFO research community and its associated realms. I also wanted to get a sense of researchers’ philosophical outlook on UFOs and any thoughts they had on their origins. Though I tried to contact all five, only three responded – Timothy Good, Art Campbell and Allan Sturm. Good said that he was too inundated with emails to have time to correspond. However Campbell and Sturm were generous with their time and replies.

Although he has never experienced a sighting himself, Art Campbell said he first became interested in UFOs and Extraterrestrial beings in 1954.

He estimates that, over the last 14 years, he has spent about $25,000.00 out of his own savings pursuing the truth behind the San Augustin crash. He struck me as an exceedingly careful investigator. He seemed to hint that some laboratories might have been somewhat reluctant to assist him if they knew the nature of his interests for he noted that “In having lab analysis done it is best to not let labs know you are interested in UFOs. You simply pay the asking fee and continue on with research. I seldom let it be known in my writing where lab work is done. If anyone wishes to challenge my research I will show them the paper work and they can check out the lab themselves. [To date I] have had no challenges on my research.”

Asked about the level of cooperation he has received from government authorities, he described their cooperation as “slow but very good.”

Among some UFO researchers, it is a given that the government or “black agencies” are out to thwart their investigations. I asked Campbell if he had ever felt he was being followed, his telephone tapped or his research activities monitored by unfriendly agencies. Campbell, obviously a quick wit, came up with the following story:

“No, I work pretty much alone. Once I saw two men dressed in black coming up the walk. And was very relieved that they were Mormon Missionaries. I invited them in.”

Being curious about how much of a network there is among researchers into the UFO phenomenon, I wondered if the five authors of the books reviewed in this article knew each other. Campbell’s reply:

“Some, I know and I am on good terms with Stanton Friedman, I know Tim Good fairly well and, Linda Howe, I am in contact with.” He did not know Allan Sturm or Frank Feschino.”

I also wanted to know, since Crash at San Augustin was published, if any more witnesses or informants to the incident had come forward? Campbell replied that “No one has come to me with additional information on the Plains of Saint Augustin crash but I did get some spin-off. [After my book was read by a military man stationed at Holloman Air Force Base] I learned that President Eisenhower had made a secret trip [there] in 1955, concerning Aliens.”

Art Campbell: “More Than One Race Of Alien Visitors”

No matter when and where UFOs have been seen, compared to the common and known technology existing at the time – whether in the Middle Ages, the late 1940’s or, say, even a month ago – their technology has always seemed at least an order of magnitude in advance of the best capabilities of existing human military or civilian technology. Given UFOs’ breath-taking speed and maneuverability, it has always seemed to me that they could not have originated from any earthly civilization existing at the time. So, wanting to know what two serious researchers thought, I asked both Campbell and Sturm their opinions on these mysterious craft, their occupants and their origins. I encouraged them to be as practical or as imaginative in their responses as they liked. Feel free to speculate or to repeat others’ speculations, I said. Concluding my interview, I asked them the following question: What, in your opinion, is the most significant truth about UFOs?

Campbell, after saying that he had not the slightest idea where Earth’s alien visitors come from, ventured however to suggest that they “probably [come from within our] solar system [but] from different origins.

“Some,” he said, “seem to be very interested in the world’s natural propagation. Others are interested in our social behavior. Still others in bovine tissue/membrane, for what ever reason.”

And the significant truths related to aliens? In Campbell’s view it was that “We are being visited by more than one race of Aliens, each with a different agenda. They all seem to want us to survive any nuclear threat – [which arises] largely from ourselves. I am not sure whether they want us to survive for benevolent reasons or selfish, perhaps some of both.”

Campbell added the following: “My own significant truth varies in a lot of areas. From a religious/ philosophical standpoint the visitors’ presence has and does continually show me that any writings attributed to a higher than earthly source (Bible, Koran, etc) are [really only] man’s fears and hopes that he feeds back to himself in the name of a higher being. The understanding of God is, I am sure to all beings in the universe, always just out of reach. Whether by accident or design this reaching makes Man primarily a searcher. In the final analysis it is this quest for the unknown that allows us to grow and progress in our life. The destination will always be elusive but it is a journey we must take to help ourselves discover the reality of how things are with the knowledge and hope of what they should be.”

Allan Sturm: Injured Leg Led to Lunar Anomalies Research

Being out of work due to an injured leg was when Allan Sturm first became interested UFOs and extraterrestrial beings. During this enforced downtime, he began teaching himself physics, quantum physics and thermodynamics. Then he “bumped into UFOs, alternative energy, weather control and metaphysics”. From exposure to such arcane information, he told Grab News that he “naturally [started] pondering the universe and all it's potential,” adding, “I always loved science when I was a kid”

Sturm has had two UFO sightings – once in childhood and once when he was in the military. Like Campbell, he has funded his research from his personal savings. Currently, he estimates he has spent about $15,000 over the last six months.

Sturm told Grab News via email that, in his experience, he had gotten “full cooperation [from government authorities].” Regarding “Big Brother”, Sturm said he has found no evidence that the government or anyone else is monitoring him.

He also said that Mike Bara, co-author with Richard C Hoagland, of Dark Mission, had expressed high praise for Sturm’s research effort. Bara to Sturm: “I love your book!"

As for the structures that his photos seem to show, Sturm believes that they are very old.

“From their appearance in the Apollo photos, whoever made them made them long, long ago and had command over local natural resources. Note that they look dusty and appear to have been "smeared" over with moon dust.” Sturm seemed to believe that the builders may have used this engineering technique that to block radiation and small meteors. He added that this same method is being considered by modern lunar base engineers.

I wondered if Sturm, upon discovering the structures, had attempted to contact anyone in the US space program to suggest that future lunar missions specifically check out the areas on the moon that contain the structures shown in his photos. His response was quite modest: “No – not until my book is popular enough in both public and academic circles do I have the right to suggest such a thing.”

Sturm: of course governments would suppress information

So far as UFOs’ origins and the ancestry of alien beings, Sturm said, “I have no idea. Others suggest [the UFOs are from] various stars/star clusters [and hold that opinion from having been told it directly by aliens themselves or from having inferred it after reading ancient texts]. Some even suggest [they come] within our own solar system, and others say they come from within our own galaxy, and even others suggest other dimensional realities. [The fact that they seem to be able to appear] whenever they do and then vanish – there's a book's worth of speculation on this topic....”

Sturm had critical words for some of those who presume to lecture with authority on UFOs.

“There are a lot of authors taking advantage of people's desire to know the truth. They write complete hogwash - selling their opinion as fact to a hungry crowd of truly interested people. This may be because serious professionals are too involved in other topics or avoid the topic due to potential ridicule, etc.” In his book, he doesn’t pontificate endlessly about these objects. Rather he leaves it up to the reader to analyze the hundreds of ULOs presented and arrive at his/her own conclusions.

Sturm was also pretty irritated on another point. He suggested that he was getting very tired of being asked whether he believed in UFOs?

“When I'm asked this question, I respond by asking, "What do you mean by “believe”? Are you asking if I think they exist?"

He finds such questions “very annoying” [because”] it’s akin to being asked, "Do you believe in fairies?", "Do you believe in Angels?", "Do you believe in God?"

Sturm feels that what such questioners are really revealing is their own belief that normal, rationally minded people should have neither time for, nor truck with, UFOs. Expressing himself further he added: “Do I believe UFOs exist? I believe that unidentified flying objects have been seen. What are they? I don’t know. Was anyone in them? I don’t know. Do I think governments would naturally suppress knowledge of the origins of UFOs and possible occupants? Hell yes. Do I think the governments would make this call for a) the benefit of the people and, b) to remain in control? Hell yes - we all take on roles in our social systems and it's only natural that our elected "parents" would shield us from "the big picture". Time will tell.”

Universities And UFOs

Aside from the Catholic Church and certain monarchies, the Western World’s oldest institutions are its universities, which supposedly have as primary tasks the deepening and widening of human knowledge and perception. Contact while writing this article with two recently retired academics active in UFO investigation and research confirmed my opinion that no Canadian, American or European university – public or private – devotes anywhere near sufficient resources to researching or teaching about UFOs.

Jim Marrs, recently retired, taught 30 years at the University of Texas at Arlington and Stephen Graf, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, taught 35 years at Ohio’s Youngstown State University.

Marrs taught a credit course through Arlington’s Department of Continuing Education. Though there was initialone of the University’s regents, the first class drew 25 students. Marrs, author of the best seller Alien Agenda (1997), “guestimates” that just under 100 students took his course over the three years it was taught. He said the calibre of both attendees and discussions was uniformly high. Those taking the course ranged from the simply interested to people claiming personal experiences – including sightings and/or contact. Marrs recalled that once it was understood that there would be no judgmental attitudes, classroom discussion broadened into fascinating areas. He also reflected on his teaching methods: opposition to such a course offering from

“…just like Stephen, I did not lecture but encouraged my classes to search for material themselves. For example, my first class assignment always was to come back to class prepared to present at least one example of a UFO event prior to the year 1900. Many students picked up on the Aurora spaceship crash of 1897 or the Great Airship Mystery of 1896-97 (which ended abruptly following the April 17 reported crash in Aurora, Texas). Finding accounts dating back to the Bible and beyond energized others. This was a great way to introduce classes to the fact that the UFO phenomenon has been with mankind since its inception. It is not a recent issue. By researching for themselves, students gained knowledge on their own rather than deciding whether or not to trust some authority,” he explained.

Marrs explained how he came to his present perspective on the UFO phenomenon: “Because of my background as a journalist, I have come into contact with too many credible people (astronauts, air traffic controllers, pilots - both commercial and military - and police officers) to deny the reality that something not manmade is flying in our atmosphere. Anyone today who continues to deny this reality cannot possibly understand world events as they are missing a large and vital piece of the puzzle.”

Stephen Graf’s course at Youngstown State U is an upper division one set up as a special topics course. Graf briefly described the course’s history at Youngstown:

“It's been in the catalog three times. As a member of the Five Year Extended Teaching Service at YSU, I’ve offered the course once a year for three years. It has only been taught one semester. There were seven students, six regular plus one in the "over sixty" college who didn't get a grade. The other two times the course was canceled because not enough students registered. I have two years left to see if student interest can be elevated.”

Graf structured the course for maximum student involvement; essentially there was no lecture.

The course included weekly "Think tank" sessions during which time the students generated discussion of the reading topics. Graf monitored these discussions but he did not interfere. There were also weekly “Spin” presentations and subsequent analysis in which students selected from the media a topic related to UFOs, presented it to class and got classmates to judge the "spin" from a list of possibilities.

Neither Marrs nor Stephen Graf are aware of any universities in the United States, Canada or Britain where significant numbers of faculty are engaged in teaching about or researching the UFO phenomena. Furthermore, they knew of no universities devoting an entire department to the topic. Both were highly critical of academics’ avoidance of the topic.

Marrs: “It is shameful that academia, and specifically the scientific community, have allowed themselves to be constrained from seriously investigating what perhaps may be the greatest story in human history”

Graf: “I believe that situation (of a lack of university interest or involvement) to be deplorable, but it shows how effective the ridicule and cover-up has been.” He added that “Psychology Departments, in particular, should be on top of the topic instead of shunning it like a plague.”

Graf mentioned another fairly recent book, Dr. Steven Greer's Hidden Truth-Forbidden Knowledge (2006), which he praised highly as “a much more comprehensive approach to the topic” than any of the five reviewed in this article.

He added that most approaches to the subject of UFOs leave out the tie-in with the oil crisis, the non-hostility of the extraterrestrials, the psychological warfare aspects (abductions and mutilations, staged by human covert operations) and the higher consciousness component of communication with the Extraterrestrials

(Graf said that Greer's work can be found on four primary websites: DisclosureProject.org “for the nuts and bolts stuff with military, government and corporate witnesses (over 400)”
CSETI.org “for peaceful citizens of earth communicating with ET peoples in ordinary space/time but also in higher consciousness”
AERO2012.com “for new energy approaches”
TheOrionProject.org “for a plan to get ordinary citizens involved in a non-profit push for long-suppressed energy sources”.

Aaron Clark started UFO Educators Group

Aaron Clark of Oberlin College's Department of Physics in Oberlin, Ohio teaches a one-credit course in the experimental college program. Clark said there was not much resistance to the creation of this course. Sixty students have completed the course in the last 5 years.

Clark said that the interest in the subject matter is high. “The calibre of discussions has ranged as it depends on the [calibre of the] students,” and added, “I have former students frequently coming back to me to ask questions.

Like Marrs and Graf, Clark was not aware of a university anywhere in the world where there is a full department or significant number of faculty addressing the subject of UFOs.

“That is why I started the UFO Educators group,” he concluded and added, “I wanted to encourage others to teach classes on UFOs and provide a place where teachers could network with each other.”

A Therapist’s Experience

I also received a reply from Karin Hoppe Holloway, a certified hypnotherapist. She said that her involvement with the whole topic of UFOs began 20 years ago.

"After reading Whitney Strieber's [book] Communion, I realized I had a good number of anomalies in my life and I became very frightened. I could only find a school teaching hypnotherapy and so I took the courses and offered myself as the class guinea pig," she explained. A regression experience brought her back to health. Her unusual experiences continued but she no longer feared them.

In her work for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), she discovered that many therapists and investigators have no idea of how to conduct a non-leading investigation, or of how to help and heal humans who have witnessed aliens. Hoppe Holloway, now living in England, has written a book, Close Encounter Analysis: The Therapist's Guide to Alien Abduction, to instruct mental health professionals.

Holloway's website

Linda Moulton Howe And The May 1974
Albuquerque-Scandia Hills UFO Landing

Well-documented sightings of UFO aerial phenomena and landings by dozens of witnesses such as the 31 Yukon residents mentioned near the beginning of this article and those described by authors Good, Feschino and Campbell have deep-reaching implications. By happenstance, just as I was about to complete this article, I learned that U.S. researcher Linda Moulton Howe was going to speak in Vancouver.

Linda Moulton Howe can easily be considered the doyen of UFO researchers. Her expertise in UFOs and related areas is wide-ranging. For the past few decades, she has produced documentary films, television programs and radio shows on UFOs and related subjects. She has also written and reported on medicine, alternative energy sources, animal mutilation and astronaut training. On the Internet her award-winning website devoted to science, environment and earth mysteries news can be found at www.Earthfiles.com.

The highlight of Moulton Howe’s presentation to about 150 people at UBC’s NORM Theatre on Saturday evening, May 10, 2008 was her revelation of the details of a truly remarkable incident that occurred May 27th through May 29th, 1974 in the Scandia Hills, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She gave convincing evidence from three separate sources that, during this three-day period, at least two UFOs landed and were met by security personnel from the US armed forces and other agencies. Indications are that the incident was preplanned. That the incident had never previously been reported, although it certainly happened and probably dozens if not hundreds were aware of it, evinces just how effectively intimidating the fear of public ridicule and the pressure of official denial can be on those people who have either seen UFOs or believe they exist.

The First Witnesses

Moulton Howe told the audience the incident came to her attention when, as a result of a radio appearance, she was contacted by a man claiming that he, along with his mother and aunt, had witnessed a UFO landing on the outskirts of Albuquerque on the evening of May 28, 1974. He said that neither he nor the two women had ever told anyone about the incident.

Her initial witness said he had been a child at the time that, while playing with other kids outside his apartment home, had seen a sky born glowing disk heading toward the Scandia Hills. The boys had yelled for the two women to come out and look. Coincidentally, his mother and his aunt had just heard on Albuquerque Radio KKOB that a UFO had been spotted in the sky. Soon the two women and the boy were driving out to the apparent landing area. After about 15 minutes, and followed by several other curious sightseers’ cars, they arrived close enough, after leaving city streets and following a dirt track in the lower hills, to see a glowing craft of about 45 feet in diameter hovering in a kind of hollow at the base of a much higher part of the Scandia Hills.

These three witnesses told Moulton Howe they remembered the craft being surrounded by soldiers. They also recalled seeing one person in civilian clothes; all the others were uniformed. There were also vehicles parked near the strange, glowing craft – including at least one truck and trailer combination. They had the impression that some of the soldiers were perhaps looking for a being in the bushes.

However, their observation of the surreal situation was extremely limited. They had barely arrived when they were peremptorily ordered to turn around and leave the area immediately by a no-nonsense state policeman. They recalled him seeming nervous about the events unfolding behind him.

Given the number of military personnel and vehicles at the site, and the brief time (about 15 minutes) between their initial sighting of the craft and their arrival, these three initial witnesses told Moulton Howe they felt that there had been something preplanned about the occasion. They believe, as does Howe, that the army and other authorities had been waiting there: the craft had been expected, a kind of liaison had been set up and a meeting previously arranged.

Led to Another

Following upon her public reports concerning her meeting with the man, his mother and his aunt, Moulton Howe was subsequently contacted by two other witnesses, both of whom sought confidentiality. The first was “Bob Morales” who had been 14 in 1974 and the second had been in a group of three young men, then in their early 20’s, who had been camping on a high point in the Scandia Hills overlooking the UFOs’ landing site.

“Bob Morales” told her he had been heading home from baseball practice when he saw the craft descending. He phoned a friend, newly equipped with his driver’s license, and both young fellows drove toward the site – approaching it from the south. (The first group of mother, son and aunt approached it more from the north).

The reconnoiter was very short lived: the two teenagers ran into armed guards who, after asking them their names, told them to leave the area immediately!

After they left and had driven some distance away, Bob Morales tried to persuade his friend to again approach the site – but more surreptitiously. To his surprise, his friend kicked him out of the truck, leaving Morales alone on the road and went home. Fear of losing a newly gained drivers license can make teenagers extremely antsy! Bob Morales then crept up on his own, trying to see what was going on. Again he ran into some tough armed guards who again warned him to leave immediately. This time he was frightened enough by their threats that he ran all the way home – a distance of several miles! Upon arriving home, he found that, by then, the radio station KKOB DJ was making sarcastic jokes about the event. (I wonder if the DJ had been reached and convinced by authorities to engage in ridicule rather than reality checking.

And Three More…

The three young campers saw the events unfold below them in 1974. Thirty-three years later, one of them heard Moulton Howe describe the Albuquerque event on radio in 2007. Calling himself “Sam”, he contacted her. After leading her through some email tag, he eventually gave enough information to make her realize that the incident had actually lasted three whole days – from Monday, May 27th to Wednesday, May 29th, 1974. In his early contact with her, “Sam” was very leery about getting involved in Moulton Howe’s investigation. He told her that he “had already had two other sightings in Wyoming”.

According to “Sam”, the three campers, equipped with a pair of binoculars, had parked their truck east of the Scandia hills and had hiked to the top. According to “Sam” they had first seen see the craft on Monday, May 27th. “Sam” told Moulton Howe that he and his friends had watched not one but two craft during the three days they had the site under observation. “Sam” reported that sometimes they had seen both an oval craft and a triangular craft “parked” side by side. On occasion, they said, one of the craft would leave and then another (or the same one?) would return. Because they were afraid of getting involved with the army once they noticed their truck being guarded by soldiers, they stayed atop the Scandia Hills longer than they had intended to. Their three days of enforced isolation gave the young men plenty of time to observe the two craft. Something they noticed about one were rune-like engravings on its surface.

Finally, after unsuccessfully waiting for the military to leave, they decided to return to the truck and brave the military gauntlet. Upon arriving at their vehicle they were detained, taken to Kirkland Air Force Base where they were held incommunicado for two days and closely questioned. They were not allowed to call their parents, lawyers or any one else.

Security was so tight and officialdom was so concerned about what the young men had seen, that chemical toilets were brought into the interrogation rooms. Their two questioners presented themselves as “Mr. Smith” and “Mr. Jones”, and offered no ID. In the end, the three young men signed undertakings not to tell anyone about what they had seen. They were given a “cover story”: the downed craft they had seen was a downed “Russian Geo Satellite”.

The incident was certainly traumatic for the witnesses. Following their release, “Sam”, the fellow who contacted Moulton Howe, told her he was followed intermittently for some time thereafter. He also told her how one of his two friends had found it very hard to accept that the craft they had watched had been operated by intelligent life. His friend, being a fundamentalist Christian, found it most troubling that the Earth was not God’s single creation, that the Universe had not been created for Man alone.

Newspapers Altered?

During her search for corroborative evidence, it became clear to Moulton Howe that someone had spent much effort to cover up and remove any traces of the Albuquerque landing from public awareness. For example, seeking to find news of the incident in the city’s newspapers, she went to the Albuquerque library where she checked microfilm copies of the May 29th newspaper. To her surprise, she found nothing about it. In the available microfilm copies, she found nothing – except on the first copy where there was something rather surprising. That particular issue of the newspaper had been photographed with a “block card” on the relevant page that effectively prevented researchers from reading whatever text was under it! On the two other “unblocked” copies of the May 29th edition, there was no mention at all to be found. It appeared that the layout had been changed!

More Moulton Howe:
Retrieved UFO Power Plant, another Roswell witness and MAJIC

Among other topics, Moulton Howe mentioned two other remarkable incidents or situations during her 90 minute presentation in Vancouver: the first concerned the retrieval of a power plant from a downed UFO in 1941 (long before UFOs had entered the realm of public consciousness) and the second involved the Roswell Landing in New Mexico in 1947.

In the first case, in 1941 a UFO, described as “not of earthly origin” had been downed or crashed in Missouri and a “neutronic power plant” was recovered. President Roosevelt sent a memo to General George C Marshall regarding this craft and its power plant. The power plant was removed to a base and Robert Oppenheimer of the Los Alamos Atomic Bomb project was assigned to study and evaluate it.

The second validated aspects of the famous Roswell incident. The source of this validating information was Thomas Coleman Sheppard, a US Navy enlisted man from 1975 to 1995, stationed at White Beach Naval Station at Okinawa in 1976. He was on shift one evening with two other more senior officers, one of which was an adept safecracker. The safecracker officer accessed a high security safe and found within it black and white photographs taken at Roswell. Moulton Howe presented a video interview she had recorded with Sheppard in which he showed some drawings he had made from memory of the B&W photographs he had seen. Sheppard recalled to Moulton how very difficult it had been for him to accept that what he was seeing were aliens. He found the implications rather too disturbing. Describing the skin of the creatures, he said it looked somewhat scaly on certain parts of their bodies. The photographs showed three dead or injured aliens on stretchers plus one standing in the back of a truck of late 1940’s vintage. The latter being was alive!

The reason the base commander at Roswell allowed the release of the story with headlines along the lines of “a UFO has been retrieved” was because he was not in the what might be termed the “denial loop” and did not know about the policy. This is why the story was carried in several major newspapers. And, once the higher levels of authority heard what was going on, further stories were stopped – to such an extent that, during one telex transmission, the FBI came on the line and instructed the operators to cease all further transmissions.

A New Paradigm, not necessarily “scientific”, is needed

On occasion sleep was staved off by coffee, meals were postponed and regular wage-earning work was set aside. Working on this article over the last several weeks has nearly always proved interesting, very often fascinating and, upon several occasions, distinctly unsettling. Interesting because questions of whether ancient civilizations may once have installed themselves on the Moon are, for me, far more engaging than the latest derivative “performance” by the newest “star” on American Idol. Fascinating because, in the contextual reading I did for this article, authors like Jim Marrs and Michael A.G. Michaud, who approach the subject very comprehensively, have provided me with information and perspectives I would never have imagined on my own. Unsettling because one wonders about the meanings and motives behind, to say the least, rather mean-spirited actions like cattle mutilations. In the opinions of some commentators, these incidents range from being the results of covert military and government operations, which seek to lay the blame on aliens in order to set up fear and aversion in the general population, to being caused by the aliens themselves. In the latter case, one then wonders why they would be as cruel as we can be. After all, speaking as a former farmer, cattle are among the least offensive of creatures.

Here is a fascinating tidbit that may have relevance to the inability of many people, scientists included, to acknowledge the possibility of sentient beings from elsewhere visiting earth. While I was researching this piece, a friend told me something very strange, which I had not heard before. Apparently, when British sea-born explorers such as Captain James Cook first came to the South Seas and set their sailing ships at anchor in the islands’ bays and lagoons, the natives couldn’t see them! There they were – these three and four mast-ed wooden ships, their white sails billowing – floating on shimmering blue waters. But to the South Sea Islanders, the strangers’ ships were invisible.

Researching this article has put me in contact with people I would have otherwise never met – intelligent, humane and (in some cases) susceptible people. From their emails or through their books, I have heard of situations and occurrences that, for lack of a better analogy, bought me back to childhood. Back to childhood with its sense of wonder and it’s sense of vulnerability. For example, through one correspondent, I came across the story of a slick and frightening attempt at hypnosis in a railway station by a man and woman who at first had seemed utterly normal. My informant is quite sure the event was an attempted kidnapping aimed at removing evidence concerning UFOs and my informant, many years after the event, is still unnerved by it. I know it reminded me of an incident right out of Carlos Castaneda.

In a more technical realm, I heard about how, when long-range radar (which is able to track objects in distant earth orbit, several hundred miles out) was first invented, it discovered some artificial objects circling our planet. Since this was a few years before even the first Sputnik was launched, it brought into question exactly whose craft these were and where they were from. Working on this article has engendered wonder. And puzzlement. And a sense of the profoundly mysterious.

The Mysteries in Crop Circles

Crop circles were another esoteric phenomenon with which I renewed an acquaintanceship. The circles contain within their ever-increasing complex patterns allusions to music, Pythagorean and non-Pythagoreanalive, the two old fellows would have had to have been working all night every night for months! The thing is, of course, is that it suits the interests of some to have us all believe that all circles have been hoaxed into being. geometry, and physics. Within their patterns, researchers and others have experienced strange occurrences related to time: it has speeded up, gotten lost, and even slowed down. Some people have heard voices. One frightened soul’s fears were somewhat assuaged when he was told, as he stood there immobilized, “Be not afraid, we are from another dimension and you are standing in the middle of our craft”. Interpretations as to meaning range from those who think they are messages from the planet itself to those who think the circles are merely cosmic directional signs placed by intergalactic travelers. Whatever they are, every summer imprint as they themselves throughout fields in the Stonehenge area of England, they bring along with them the intellectual phenomenon of blind skepticism or, as I like to think of it, “Dunce Determinism”. I refer to the ingrained belief, held by those who have insufficiently thought about them, that they are all the work of self-admitted hoaxers like the famous “Doug and Dave”, two old gentlemen now deceased. The problem, however, is that, given the numbers of crop circles appearing when Doug and Dave were

Thinking about it, I think I like the Vatican Astronomer’s take on things – his statement, “Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.

A good crop circle site can found here.

A Dream that summarizes, sort of

Several months ago, before this article was hardly even a gleam in my eye, I dreamed the following dream from which, for reasons of privacy, names have been removed:

Person A, Person B and I are together one evening in a building that seems to be our home when, for some reason, I go outside.

To my surprise, I look up in the sky and see a spacecraft hovering overhead. A being inside, who looks like he is Chinese or otherwise Asian but with quite dark skin, waves at me to go back inside. “You are no