Many people claim to share unique connections with certain others in their lives. We hear spouses talking about the way they can sense things about each other, as well as parents who do the same with their children. Some individuals even claim to be able to communicate psychically with their pets and other animals.

Such connections, if they exist, seem capable of bridging the gaps between pure thoughts, allowing individuals to share communication by means of strange powers that the modern sciences have yet to recognize. But considering the circumstances that seem to allow this variety of “psychic communication,” could it be that relationships existing between individuals may play a role in helping understand what actually causes certain psychic phenomenon?

One fascinating and unique area where telepathic situations tend to often prevail has to do with fraternal twins. A perfect–if not better than average–example of this was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald recently, in which a pair of twins who underwent concurrent MRI examinations managed to determine, as a result of headaches one of them had been having, that a rare tumor had developed. What makes this strange, of course, is that the twin suffering from headaches had not been the one diagnosed with the tumor:

The Gurney twins is even more remarkable because it was Brenton who started getting the persistent headaches. It was Brenton who persuaded hale and hearty Craig to join a study of twins (looking into mental health and resilience) because it included an MRI scan.

The MRI test picked up no abnormalities in Brenton’s brain. But Craig, who never suffers headaches, got the shock news: a massive and rare tumour in the base of his skull.

Similar unique connections tend to also appear between lovers (a particular phenomenon I’ve experienced countless times myself). In his book Otherworldly Affaires, author Brad Steiger notes an incredible incident that was discussed in the December, 1954 edition of Fate Magazine. As the story goes, a Mrs. Charlotte T. Mazue of Los Angeles, California, penned an unusual tale where she claimed to have successfully related the specific directions to her new place of residence to her husband… and entirely through means of telepathy!

The event in question took place in 1942, and Mrs. Mazue had moved to a new location while her husband Charles had been stationed near San Francisco. Suddenly one day, Charles came to Charlotte’s mind, giving her the distinct impression that he was trying to reach her telepathically. “Perhaps he had acquired a leave,” she thought, but then became concerned, because she realized that she had neglected to write to Charles, informing him of the location of their new home! Steiger recounts the rest of the story as follows:

“I quietly repeated to myself every hour before retiring, ‘Honey, we now live in Hollywood. Come to Kingsley Drive at Santa Monica Boulevard. Rear of gift shop. Red brick court. Upstairs at the back’,” Mrs. Mazue wrote.

It started to rain when she retired at 10:30 P.M. At half-past midnight, the door chimes brought her tumbling out of bed, calling: “Coming, dear!” She confidently opened the door to find a drenched, but smiling, Charles. “So this is home,” he said, as he hugged her close to him.

Charles told her that he, of course, had had no idea that she had moved. “Seems as if someone pushed and pulled me here. I hitchhiked in and told the driver to let me out at Kingsley Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard. Then I walked to the rear of the gift shop and upstairs to you. Funny thing is, I distinctly heard you say, ‘That’s right, darling’.”

Had Charles literally been able to “hear” the directions Charlotte had been giving him telepathically? If the events related here are indeed true and accurate, how else are we to interpret the circumstances? Furthermore, if it is possible for lovers to become so close that they can achieve feats such as these in the absence of any verbal communication, could virtually anyone learn to do the same, and with the same amazing detail and efficiency? Finally, if psychic feats such as telepathy could be accessible to almost anyone, then maybe particular close bonds that we build with others in life provide natural grounds that are conducive to this kind of ability. Strength in numbers, as the old axiom goes.

Available now is my new book, The Pyramids and the Pentagon: The Government’s Top Secret Pursuit of Mystical Relics, Ancient Astronauts, and Lost Civilizations, which focuses on what the official world knows – or suspects – about a whole range of mysteries of the fog-shrouded past. They are mysteries that cover such issues as the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Atlantis-related beliefs of Edgar Cayce, the nature of Noah’s Ark, a possible Face on Mars-Egypt connection, and much more of a so-called “ancient astronauts” nature. And there’s another, equally weird saga I cover in my book…

In terms of key and integral world events, 1947 was a year of profoundly deep and significant proportions. United States President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, which paved the way for the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first, priceless collection of what have famously become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls was found in caves at Qumran, an ancient and historic site on the West Bank. At the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, a collection of fruit-flies made history when they became the first living creatures to reach the fringes of space, after being blasted into the skies above aboard a captured German World War Two-era V-2 rocket.

The age of the Flying Saucer was famously ushered in, after an American pilot – Kenneth Arnold – witnessed nine strange-looking aircraft flying close to Mount Rainier, Washington State. And, many UFO researchers believe, an alien spacecraft crashed on harsh, remote desert land outside of the small New Mexican town of Roswell. Singular, unconnected events in a world constantly in a state of change, development, and wonder, or integral parts of a greater, and very old, puzzle guided by the mysterious hands of destiny, fate and grand design?

Most people would probably say the former. But, sometimes, the majority are wrong, devastatingly so, even.

Close to 1,000 in number the Dead Sea Scrolls – as they have become popularly and famously known – represent a veritable treasure-trove of early written material from almost every book of the Old Testament, chiefly dating from around 150 BC to 70 BC. Their amazing discovery dates back to February 1947, when, along with his young cousin, a certain Muhammad edh-Dhib, then only a teenager, stumbled across a series of caves at Qumran, on the northwest side of the Dead Sea – which borders Jordan to the East, and Israel to the West. Upon exploring one particular cave, edh-Dhib was amazed to find within it a number of ancient texts, carefully and faithfully recorded on aged parchment.

edh-Dhib excitedly scooped up the items and, with his cousin in-tow, raced back home to his family’s Bedouin camp to show them his discovery. It didn’t take long before word got around that something unusual had been unearthed. In fact, matters began to spiral with extraordinary speed when talk of the scrolls began to heat up in and around Bethlehem – particularly so when yet more scrolls were found in the area, collectively at no less than eleven caves, and throughout a period of time that extended right up until to 1956.

Those immediate times after edh-Dhib’s discovery were distinctly wild and turbulent ones. The Syrian Orthodox Church expressed its firm interest in seeing the scrolls, as did representatives of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Interested parties in the Vatican secretly negotiated to buy up some of the scrolls, others – in the field of biblical archaeology – scrambled to see them and examine them, and some scholars called for the scrolls to be placed under official control and oversight – lest they might be spread far and wide, possibly even becoming catastrophically lost or destroyed. Fortunately, this latter scenario did not happen.

What did happen, due to circumstances provoked by the turbulent Arab-Israeli War of 1948, was that the scrolls were hastily transported to Lebanon for safe-keeping. Six years later, they were up for sale – and were ultimately sold for $250,000 and transferred to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, the scrolls ended up at the Shrine of the Brook – an arm of the Jerusalem-based Israel Museum – where they continue to reside to this very day. There is, however, yet another story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is one filled with, and fueled by, dark conspiracy and involves none other than the CIA.

While extraordinary findings were being made at Qumran, historic events were unfolding in the United States. Back in late 1944, one William J. Donovan – who was the founder of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), arguably the earliest incarnation of what eventually became the CIA – mused upon the idea of establishing the ultimate intelligence-gathering agency.

It was designed to act as the nation’s focal point for securing and analyzing data relevant and vital to U.S. national security and the defense of the nation. The ambitious idea was of great interest to the president of the day, Franklin D. Roosevelt. With the battle still on to defeat the hordes of Adolf Hitler, Italy, and Japan, however, survival was the primary name of the game.

The result, it was not until July 26, 1947, two years after world peace had been restored that this ultimate secret agency finally came into being, when Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, Harry S. Truman, passed the National Security Act. The Central Intelligence Agency was duly born.

The very idea that the newly-created CIA might have played an integral, albeit deeply clandestine, role in the saga of the Dead Sea Scrolls sounds manifestly bizarre in the extreme. But, in this particular case, the old adage about truth being far stranger than fiction really does apply, as my book, The Pyramids and the Pentagon makes very clear…

As someone who is an author, I am often asked to write reviews of other people’s books. The vast majority of all the books I review are focused upon the adventures and exploits of other people. Island of Paradise by Jonathan Downes, however, is very different, in the sense that it’s a book in which I play a central role. Nevertheless, I hope this has not influenced my opinion of the book! It’s a highly entertaining, warts and all study of what occurs during the course of an expedition of the Chupacabra kind…

It was in the summer of 2004 that Jon and I headed off to the rain-forests of Puerto Rico, courtesy of the SyFy Channel, who wanted to film us chasing the Chupacabra and UFOs for its now-defunct show Proof Positive – which was a pretty well executed combination of The X-Files meets CSI, albeit in a non-fiction format. For seven days we rampaged and roamed around the island in search of the vampire-like beast, and heard tale after tale of crashed UFOs, dead aliens, bizarre conspiracies linking the Chupacabra with extra-terrestrial experimentation, secret military operations, black Flying Triangles, and much more.

The best way I can describe Island of Paradise is as a Fortean version of Hunter S. Thompson’s fabulous The Rum Diary that told of the master’s own journalistic adventures on Puerto Rico back in the 1950s. Jon skilfully captures the essence of what makes Puerto Rico so magical, in terms of its history, its culture, its people – and its overwhelming weirdness, too. Truly, as Jon demonstrates, Puerto Rico is a locale that attracts the adventurer and the thrill-seeker like no other.

And given that it was a veritable hot-bed of activity of the ufological, vampiric and downright uncanny kind, what else could I, or indeed we, do but welcome the aforementioned weirdness with wide-open arms. If Jon and I were going to spend a week hunting vampires and/or aliens courtesy of the SyFy Channel, then, as he reveals, there was no better place to do it than deep within the heart of the island of paradise, and while regularly fuelled by the finest of local cuisine and a plentiful supply of ever-present chilled margaritas and imported beer. Onward!

I was pleased to see that Jon included in the pages of his book a description of our time spent at our base of operations: the Wind Chimes hotel in downtown San Juan. For those who weren’t there, it might seem superfluous; but for Jon and me it was a time to rekindle a friendship that had been separated by the Atlantic for a couple of years; and it was a time to make new friendships with the SyFy Channel’s Proof Positive crew.

There is something unique about the camaraderie that comes with hanging out alongside fellow thrill-seekers and adventurers – all from different corners of the globe, most not even knowing each other, yet all thrust into a strange and surreal quest to seek out the truth about a diabolical beast said to roam a real-life paradise. But, Jon demonstrates, it was without doubt the day we go our hands on a shining, silver jeep that things really took off…

Driving around in an open-top jeep in a place like Puerto Rico with one of your best friends, with the wind in your hair (for those who don’t shave it off every morning…), and in hot pursuit of the unknown, while ear-splitting punk rock reverberates out of the CD player is all good fun. But, barely one hour into our expedition, as Jon records, everything got a bit surreal.

No expedition of this type would be complete without an excursion into the darkened depths of a shadowy old cave. That a bat decided to piss on my head while we were in there only made things more memorable.

With much humor, Jon records how I decided not to bother with rabies injections of a type that Ozzy Osbourne was forced to undergo after his own legendary encounter with a bat; and instead I hoped that the little pisser wasn’t rabid, and that I wouldn’t wake up the next day like one of the frenzied souls from 28 Days Later or the spectacular 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Needless to say, I didn’t.

Of course, I knew that all of this would serve as good fodder for Jon’s planned book on our trip around the island, and so I merely wiped my head with my bandana, swore at the offending beast and his or her brethren and continued roaming and filming. And a crew of a dozen, led by the good Mr. Downes himself, laughed heartily!

Of particular interest is what Jon has to say about an alleged UFO crash deep in the El Yunque rain-forest of Puerto Rico back in 1957. Jon tells the reader of our fascinating encounter with a woman named Norka who was able to fill in some of the gaps suggesting that at least something had genuinely crashed on Puerto Rico back in the 1950s, and who was also a veritable fountain of knowledge on all-things monstrous too.

As long as I live, I will never forget that moment when Norka told us of her own personal encounter with the Chupacabra late one night in 1975, and Jon and I turned to each other and realised that the beast Norka had seen was practically identical to the notorious Owlman of England – a creature that Jon had hunted, and been haunted by, for years. It was truly a pivotal moment in that memorable week.

As we sat on the balcony of Norka’s beautiful home high in the hills of El Yunque, sipping cold drinks, listening to her stories, and with the sun bathing down on us, I knew that we were experiencing something very special, and that beneath its beautiful exterior, something – or some things – dark, ominous, dangerous and bizarre dwelled on the island. And Jon’s chapter on this particular encounter most certainly does not disappoint.

One of the things that stood out for me upon reading Island of Paradise was how the initial quest quickly became something very different – and particularly so when new, and unforeseen, factors came into play. We had flown to Puerto Rico with the intention of trying to determine, for the benefit of the SyFy Channel, if we could find, examine and identify any evidence for the existence of the Chupacabra – such as undeniable DNA. Yet, by the end of the week we were deeply immersed in stories of crashed UFOs, genetic mutation, bizarre changes in the island’s ecology and much more.

I will never forget that week in the summer of 2004 when Jon and I roamed Puerto Rico’s rain-forest, its lowlands and its little villages in search of monsters, UFOs and aliens. It was an experience that will stay with me for all my life, and one that (as the book records) was as much about friendship, adventures and good times as it was about hunting for the Chupacara and for the remains of wrecked alien spacecraft. And at the end of the day, that was good enough for me. As for Jon: well, Island of Paradise tells it all, just as it was – the good, the bad and the plain strange.

If you’re looking for an excellent study of the Chupacabra phenomenon, its potential links with the UFO controversy in general (and crashed UFOs in particular), and what goes on behind the scenes of an on-site, week-long investigation in an exotic and mysterious world, then Island of Paradise is most definitely the one for you.

There are many mysteries that riddle aspects of the known world, serving today as veritable holdovers from a past that we, despite our best efforts, have yet to fully understand. Some of these mysteries are so strange, in fact, that they have caused a variety of different speculative theories to emerge about human origins, incorporating such things as extraterrestrial visitors, preexisting advanced societies, and possible “doomsday events” that may have wiped out life over large portions of the ancient world.

In recent news, the discovery of a 6,000 year old pre-farming settlement in north Clare, along the Irish coast, has let to much excitement among archaeologists, who have described the find as “one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland.” Due to its age, the location predates nearby settlements by at least several hundred years. Though renowned for its age, there could nonetheless be other mysteries underlying this ancient site which point to a variety of other unique potentials; these relate not only to mysteries of the Emerald Isle, but also of other areas throughout the ancient world.

During the site’s recent excavation, the team who had been overseeing the operation described finding “a mysterious black layer of organic material” that covered much of the settlement and surrounding area. Upon reading this, I was a bit surprised, since it immediately bore a strong resemblance to stories of strange discoveries at ancient locations in the Middle East. More specifically, I’m reminded of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, located in modern day Pakistan, where among the oddities found during the excavations of these sites were similar strange scatterings of dust or some other substance, along with small lumps of blackened, melted clay scattering the streets.

Strangest of all, there are even reports that these two Mideast locations have displayed higher-than-average background radiation at the respective excavations sites, lending to theories that range from a supernovae or other variety of ancient cosmic bombardment, to the possibility of meteorite blast sites. According to some researchers, the potential for some kind of nuclear technology that may have existed on Earth in ancient times has also been put forth to explain the curious destruction of these ancient cities.

While the latter of these theories is quite difficult to quantify, it should also be noted that another theory regarding many ancient disasters in the Mideast involves the frequent flooding of the Indus River Valley; under such circumstances, it has been posited that a tremendous flood might have contributed to the downfall of ancient Middle Eastern metropolises like Mohenjo-Daro. And incidentally, the official suspected reasons for the destruction of the recently discovered Irish settlement at Fanore Beach, north Clare, is believed to have involved a prehistoric tsunami.

Noteworthy also is the fact that cultures such as that of Mehrgarh, which preceded Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro by a few thousand years, had appeared by approximately 6000 BCE (predating the Irish settlement mentioned earlier by about 2000 years). Mohenjo-daro and Harappa appeared nearly 3500 years later, along the modern regions known as Punjab and the Sindh provinces. While no direct parallels exist for dates of the destruction between the separate Irish and Mideast settlements described here, it is interesting to consider the peculiar similarities between the theories of their demise; while conventional investigations have proposed that flooding may likely have been the cause in both instances, conclusive data does not exist to support this. What does exist is a remarkable similarity between reports of odd substances and other anomalies found in both regions.

In fact, Russian munitions expert Alexander Gorbovsky, along with other proponents of some variety of nuclear event that may have occurred long ago, have written about what was believed to constitute a “layer of radioactive ash” that covered the city sites of Harrappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Could there be any link between such stories, and the layer of silt found within the excavation along the settlement at north Clare?

As reported in the Irish Examiner Online, the strange black substance found at the site has not, in fact, been identified yet as silt:

The substance, which is two or three inches deep, disintegrates when it comes in contact with air. A large slab of the material has remained intact on an ancient settlement, indicating that a large amount of it was laid down at once, possibly as the result of a tsunami.

“We have found a mysterious layer of black organic material on the site and it is just under that level that we have found all the oldest archeology,” said Mr Lynch.

“We have not been able to identify exactly what this black layer is yet but, as it happens, it is this layer which helped to protect the ancient settlement that we are currently excavating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most of us are familiar with stories of Nessie, the long-necked lady of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. For centuries, it has been believed that a strange, dinosaur-like animal has existed within the lake’s murky waters, though granted, the waters of the famous lake are so filled with peat that it would make peering through a glass of Guinness far easier; in other words, visibility is very limited beneath the Loch. Thus, numerous attempts to prove the identity of the lake’s mystery monster have come up empty-handed.

There have been, on occasion, a variety of different “hits” with regard to the use of sonar, which seem to indicate at times that there may have been large animals within the Loch. Limited photographic evidence exists also, though the image long held to be the most famous to depict the monster, known as the “Surgeon’s Photograph”, was later proven to be a hoax. Despite much of the evidence constituting belief in a monster that resides at Loch Ness being revealed as fabricated, there are still many researchers who take the mystery very seriously, and while grasping for evidence and a better understanding of the enigma of the Loch, have offered a variety of strange theories pertaining to what Nessie might actually be.

What reminded me of some of these more colorful “alternative theories” had been an article linked at the Gizmodo website, which dealt with car-sized turtles called Carbonemys cofrinii that existed in prehistoric times. These creatures, as the image included via the link above will show, certainly resembled a partially-submerged saurian animal, the likes of which are often reported at locations like Loch Ness. Interestingly, there is a similar creature that has been claimed to appear in the Canadian Lake Champlain, thus rendering the moniker of “Champ” that was given to the watery beast said to reside there. In at least a few reports that describe Champ’s physical appearance, witnesses have described a creature that resembles a large turtle, or at very least, an animal resembling some variety of turtle or other large, stocky reptile. Could we be dealing with a leftover relative of the Carbonemys cofrinii?

Giant turtles are hardly the strangest explanation offered as explanations for sea serpents and lake monsters the likes of Nessie and Champ. Biologist Roy P. Mackal, among others, had suggested that the creature seen in Loch Ness might actually be “a variety of long necked seal,” which had adapted to having a long, snakelike neck to aid in hunting and feeding in a lake such as Loch Ness; the benefit of having a long neck such as this, as well as the reasons a mammal such as a seal might acquire one, remain unclear.

An even stranger theory regarding the Loch Ness Monster’s possible identity is that of the giant Tully Monster. This creature is known to have existed about 300 million years ago, and did somewhat resemble known descriptions of the Loch Ness monster, though the creature was an invertebrate with a body resembling a cuttlefish, fitted with a long neck and snakelike mouth at the end. The problem with the Tully Monster theory, however, is that these creatures aren’t known to have exceeded more than about 12-14 centimeters in length; Tullys also resided in shallow tropical waters, rather than the cold and dark depths Loch Ness offers. In this case, perhaps the long-necked seal theory is actually more plausible.

When considering the number potentials involved, especially those pertaining to climate, temperature, and food supply, virtually all the existing theories regarding the Loch Ness Monster’s presumed identity fall a little short of explaining the enigma. In the event we were dealing with remnant dinosaurs or similar creatures, the propensity of reports stemming from lakes like Loch Ness, as well as other water bodies in Northern climates, presents a number of issues. Then again, reports of similar creatures in areas like the African Congo often relate to bodies of water remain so remote as to hinder virtually any progress in terms of careful and continuous study of the phenomenon. It seems that, no matter what the circumstances may be, we are continually met with hurtles in the study of these odd creatures; and thus, it is obvious that a host of rather wild, speculative theories have emerged, hoping to offer new clues to the mystery, but inevitably falling short of the available evidence.

Perhaps there are indeed biological creatures underlying such reports. But altogether, it seems that if there are indeed water monsters out there, our present methods of studying them may indeed be flawed, or simply limited altogether. Will scientific advancement in the coming decades improve the sorts of problems associated with their study, or could there be methods already available to us that might improve our understanding of such mysteries as the Loch Ness Monster and her distant cousins?

Someone asked me just recently: what will happen if, one day, we find conclusive evidence that Bigfoot really does exist? Well, the first – and quite natural – assumption that springs to my mind is that those of us who spend so much of our time looking for such monstrous things will finally get vindication that we weren’t wasting our precious time, after all! But, there are bigger issues at stake than that. Actually, they are much bigger, and far more serious than the average cryptozoologist getting congratulated on a job well done…

Many eye-witnesses claim Bigfoot – when seen up close and personal – appears to have definitively human characteristics, and particularly so in its facial appearance. On this very same track, what if Bigfoot is not an unknown ape, but actually some sort of proto-human, an early offshoot of the Human Race that, against all the odds and countless millennia, has survived extinction and avoided capture?

If such is the case, does that mean they should be given rights and recognized status as citizens of the United States? That may sound laughable, crazy and extreme to some of you reading this, but – given the theoretical possibilities cited above – can we actually rule out such a remote possibility ever becoming a reality?

And what if some over-eager hunter decided one day to shoot one of the creatures? Having the head of a deer on your living room wall is one thing. But it’s quite another to have to the head of a primitive man mounted right next to it.

In such a situation, I don’t rule out the possibility that if someone did shoot and kill a Bigfoot, and it was shown to be genetically linked to us in some capacity, then murder charges might be looming just around the corner for our unfortunate hunter.

Then there’s the matter of where the creatures live. If Bigfoot, one day, is proved to exist and is given some degree of legal protection and status as a result, what of the locations that it inhabits? Might they too become protected? Could they even become out of bounds to just about each and every one of us?

Such a situation might mean no more picnics, no more strolls in the woods, no more camping, and no more hunting – just in case someone mistakenly shot and killed a Bigfoot while out hunting for something else.

And: what about the logging industry? Whole swathes of the country – particularly so in the Pacific Northwest – are deeply reliant on logging for revenue. How would they collectively react to the news, and possibly even outright government legislation, that the forests of the United States are now out of bounds, that trees can no longer be cut down, and that whole areas are to become legally inaccessible, for fear of threatening the existence of a sub-species of us, the Human Race?

We could even go down a distinctly conspiratorial path and suggest that some of the stories about certain elements of the U.S. Government knowing that Bigfoot is real – but hiding the facts from the public – are absolutely, and incredibly, true.

After all, such secrecy and silence doesn’t necessarily mean that the government has discovered some dark and deep secret about Bigfoot. Rather, the closed mouth approach might very well stem from a fear of the hypothetical situations I described above actually developing in the real world.

I sincerely hope that one day we will finally, and unequivocally, know the truth behind the Bigfoot phenomenon, and we will have an answer with regard to what these creatures are or are not. But, I strongly suspect that if that day does arrive, the controversy won’t be over. In fact, I suspect it will have barely begun.

Mystery objects colliding with planes and secret materials that can withstand the force of 75 Hiroshima blasts warm us up for the weekend’s exclusive.

We also feature humanoid encounters in Spain, Police code signs for Sasquatch, and the case of spontaneous exploding beach shorts.

Read on for show notes, music and books.

This episode is exclusive to Plus+ members. Click HERE to learn more!

Mystery object nearly causes mid-air collision

UFO Amnesty: Ex-Army Colonel John Alexander Seeks Amnesty For Military Who Witness UFOs

How One Man Took a Secret Super-Material to His Grave

Starlite, the nuclear blast-defying plastic that could change the world

Starlite – New Scientist

Spain: A Humanoid at Fuengirola (CE-3, 1976)

Black Cow

A Shape-Shifting Monster

Icelandic politician moves 30-ton boulder onto his property so he can hang out with elves

Icelandic MP Moves Elves’ Boulder to His Home

Rocks Set Fire In Pocket: Woman Burned By Beach Rocks That Spontaneously Combusted In Her Pants

Radioactive man? Milford resident pulled over by state police

Kumare Trailer

Music

Submotion Orchestra – All Night (Kreed’s Bootleg) via Indie Shuffle

DAILON – Silhouettes via Portals

Jack Dixon – You Won’t Let Me (Synkro Remix) via WFWYCD

Kaligraph E – LifeAhead via Live for the Funk

Just a few days ago, I was chatting with a colleague in the field of Cryptozoology about what the creatures of Loch Ness, Scotland really are – presuming they do exist, of course! I found it pretty enlightening that he got quite defensive over my remark that maybe the beasts are not still-surviving plesiosaurs - as so many, including pretty much the entire Scottish tourist industry, want or hope them to be. When I suggested the possibility of giant-eels roaming the deep waters of the old loch, a distinctly frosty atmosphere developed.

Why? I’ll tell you why: because I had dared to question his carefully developed and nurtured belief system. And, for him, the image of giant eels swimming around was nowhere near as exciting and as engaging as a colony of plesiosaurs on the loose.

As we’ll now see, belief – whether relative to Nessie, UFOs, ghosts and the rest of the world’s many and varied paranormal puzzles – is a very dangerous thing.

So many people in Forteana profess to being open-minded on whatever happened at Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947, the true nature of Bigfoot, whether or not life after death is a reality and…well, the list goes on and on. But, that’s actually not so – unfortunately. Time and time again I have seen researchers – in pretty much all aspects of Forteana – take that arms-folded, barriers-up approach when their cherished theory is questioned or doubted.

Are these people for real? Indeed, they are. I’m not saying I’m anything special, because I’m most certainly not. But, correct me if I’m wrong, the reason why Mysterious Universe exists, the reason why books are published every year on a mountain of mysteries, and the reason why paranormal-themed radio and TV shows exist is specifically because we don’t have the answers. If we did, I wouldn’t be writing these words right now, because I wouldn’t need to! Instead of having answers, we have beliefs.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with belief – it does, after all, fuel every single religion on the face of the planet. But belief – in a deity, in a Heaven or Hell, in aliens, in Bigfoot or in anything else of a potentially supernatural nature – should be recognized, and more importantly admitted, for what it is: an acceptance that something exists without hard, definitive proof of that existence or its nature.

Now, of course people see UFOs, encounter lake-monsters and giant hairy ape-man, and have profound near-death experiences. But, this is all very and vastly different from having proof that UFOs are specifically alien spacecraft, Bigfoot is without doubt an unknown/unclassified ape, or that there really is a God and a Devil. The former are unusual events and experiences that require explanations. The latter are beliefs constructed to try and explain and rationalize those same experiences and events.

Is that a problem? Well, again, not if there’s an admittance that any explanation is theoretical and belief-driven. The problem, however, surfaces when a demand is made (consciously, deliberately or otherwise) that belief equals fact. It doesn’t. Or, it shouldn’t. But, for so many, it sadly does.

I very well remember the fury that erupted in 2005 when my book Body Snatchers in the Desert was published, and which suggested the events that occurred in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947 had far less to do with careless aliens in need of a few good lessons in flying, and far more to do with dark and dubious military experimentation.

While debating the book at a conference in Roswell itself in the summer of 2007, it became very clear to me – and very quickly, too – that whole swathes of people didn’t just disagree with the data contained in my book. They clearly – from an emotional and an “I want to believe” perspective – just plain did not want the alien theory threatened. Why? Because the ET angle was exciting, reinforced their hope that there’s more to life than just birth, school, work and death, and made them feel that researching Roswell, and the bigger UFO issue, hadn’t been a big waste of time.

But, here’s my point: if we solved Roswell and it was proved to have been an alien event, well that’s great. Ufology is vindicated. But, if it’s one day proved not to have been an ET encounter, then why is that a problem? For me it isn’t. Research should be about finding answers, no matter whether we like those answers or not, and no matter if they utterly shatter our preconceived beliefs or add significant weight to them.

I don’t know with 100 percent certainty what happened at Roswell. Neither does anyone else in Ufology. Maybe the number of people at an official level who know the full story is incredibly small. I don’t know if the people I interviewed for Body Snatchers were telling the truth or were a bunch of manipulative liars. But, I do know that denying the validity of this or that simply because it doesn’t sit comfortably with what someone wants to so desperately wants to hear is utterly ridiculous.

It’s the same with Bigfoot. Most researchers of the phenomenon support the “unknown ape” theory to explain the many sightings that have been reported for so long. But, the fact is that there is barely a Bigfoot enthusiast out there who has not come across at least one case of Bigfoot high-strangeness in the course of their research. That’s to say where the witness has reported the creature vanishing in the blink of an eye, when the beast has been seen at the same time – and even at the same location – as a UFO, or when something else, but equally mystifying, occurs.

But, so often, these rogue cases are dismissed as mistakes and hoaxes. Or, worse still, they are just outright ignored. Why? Because they threaten the orderly belief-system that Bigfoot is just an unidentified large ape and nothing else.

And, here’s the danger: by ignoring or dismissing certain data that does not fall comfortably into an accepted zone of belief, the field of research (Cryptozoology, Ufology, the whole bloody lot) is doing itself a huge disservice by limiting its ability to finding the answers.

When it comes to the unknown, a mind already made up is a mind deceiving itself.

Greetings, fellow Coppertops! This week’s mission of discovery will let us explore strange chemical mysteries and magnetic remedies, glimpses of the not-so-distant future along with reminiscences of our folkloric past, and the most serious revelations might just be hidden under the veil of comedy. So everyone take positions and be on the lookout for squiddies.

(10) Electro-magnetism is the most effective defense against those damn sentinels, and it looks like it might also be the key to defend ourselves against some of Earth’s most feared predators: sharks. American chemist Eric Stroud says magnets can be very effective repellents against the razor-toothed leviathans, since their snouts possess tiny electrical sensors that get saturated by the strong fields of the magnets.

Although this looks like promising research, I cannot help thinking we as humans have ALL our priorities ass-backwards. Sure I got traumatized for life like everybody else thanks to Spielberg and his giant rubber carcharo-bot, but if we look at the statistics we find that the odds of being killed by a shark are 3 hundred million to one —chances of being on an airplane with a drunken pilot? 115 to 1. Good luck with magnets helping you with that, Ben!

(9) The scariest thing about shark attacks is that you can rarely see them coming, but when it comes to spontaneous human combustion, they are still completely unpredictable. The latest of these infamous ignitions was suffered by a 43-year-old woman in San Clemente Calif, and authorities suspect two rocks which the victim had previously gathered at the beach and kept in her pocket were behind the near-tragedy:

“There is phosphorous that naturally occurs on the sand at the beach, but no one has ever heard of pants catching fire,” Stone said.

Stone is the name of the OCFA capt. that attended the victim, Twilight language once again. Saint Clement BTW happens to be the patron saint of blacksmiths & metal workers, and ‘Old Clem’s night’ “started literally with a bang and showers of sparks during the ritual “firing of the anvil,” according to Wikipedia —not to mention the hour of the event: aprox. 3:30 pm, quite close to 333, my personal number of the Trickster. Curiouser and curiouser…

(8) They say the desert is the ocean of fire, and for a poor WWII pilot stranded in the middle of the Sahara, it must have been Hell on Earth. As The Daily Mail —and our own Aaron Wright— reported this week, an RAF Kittyhawk P-40 fighter plane that crashed-landed 70 years ago has been found in a surprising state of preservation, which quickly prompted British archeologists to ask the MoD for its immediate recovery. The pilot, Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, is presumed to have tried to walk out of the desert; a sadly fruitless attempt which, nevertheless, speaks volumes about the courageous determination of the men and women who valiantly served their country in the greatest conflagration in human history.

A fight where you lose while still standing is never a defeat.

(7) A name reminiscent of another great man is Kennedy, and this week said name was linked once again with yet another tragedy, which causes some to invoke a multi-generational curse plaguing the famous lineage. This time it was the turn of Mary Kennedy, 52, the estranged and troubled wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who was found dead of suicide (by hanging) last Wednesday.

Who knows. Maybe it’s the karmic result of the Faustian pact that the leader of the clan, Joseph, signed to secure his son’s rise to power. Or maybe it’s the cosmic ripples caused by how close we came to our self-annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. Whatever the case, it seems like the name Kennedy is still mired with quite a lot of bad mojo.

(6) When it comes to curses and names which convey scenes of great affliction though, few in the New Age lexicon can pair with Nibiru. After all, a bullet you might get to dodge, but a whole planet? Not even The One would pull that off!

And as far-fetched as the idea of a rogue planet might be, it’s hard to repress such imagery for a second or two after reading the news that an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro is proposing the existence of a new unseen planet, in order to explain the celestial mechanics governing the objects inhabiting the farthest domains of our solar system. Based on the calculations by Robert Gomez, either our hypothetically new neighbor is 4 times the size of the Earth, with an orbit 140 million miles away from the Sun, or it could also be the size of Mars but with a highly elongated orbit —an orbit that would occasionally bring the body sweeping to within 5 billion miles (8 billion kilometers) of the sun. You just know this is going to eventually be mentioned in some new episode of Ancient Aliens, which will undoubtedly unleash large quantities of mouth-frothing upon the keyboards of many a skeptic.

(5) Speaking of drooling, it seems our ancestors were used to do plenty of that inside their caves; at least according to some archeologists who think they’ve found the oldest depiction of female genitalia. The alleged paleo-vulva was found in France —of course— at a cave called Abri Castanet, a site full of symbolic engravings considered to be as old as the ones we discussed last week in Chauvet, where beautifully artistic depictions of mega-fauna were found. So I guess Castanet is where they sent all the exiled pervs to live?

Or maybe it’s the archeologists the ones that need to leave their excavation sites more often, because honestly —and not that I’m bragging to be an expert or anything — but that er, thing doesn’t look like a vagina to me! It’s waaay to round for starters, man… unless our great-great-great-great-grand daddies used to be more um, well endowed shall we say, back in those ages—Hmm… maybe *I* need to get out my cave more often too.

(4) But when it comes to tripods, you really can’t beat modern Science. Meet Cathy Hutchinson, a 58-year-old paralyzed woman who can command a robotic arm with the power of her thoughts:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Boy I bet that coffee was the sweetest thing she’s ever tasted

Might we also see the day when healthy individuals decide to upgrade their own physicality, without restricting themselves to anthropomorphic conventionalities? If that’s the case, ‘being human’ is a term that will turn fuzzier and fuzzier.

(3) Science Fiction is turning into Science Fact quicker than we can seem to manage, but what of the time when we used to believe in magic and coexist with fantastic beings? That time never faded away in Iceland apparently, with people from all professions and walks of life still believing in the existence of elves. Case in point: MP for the Independence Party Árni Johnsen, who arranged for the relocation of a 30-ton boulder which he believes is the home of three generation of fairie folk. The rock was moved from Sandskeið in southwest Iceland to his home in the Westman Islands last Tuesday.

“I had Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a specialist in the affairs of elves from Álfagarðurinn in Hellisgerði, Hafnarfjörður, to come look at the boulder with me,” recollected Árni. “She said it was incredible, that she had never met three generations of elves in the same boulder before.”

“She said an elderly couple lives on the upper floor but a young couple with three children on the lower floor,” the MP described

Well, isn’t that nice? Elvish condos!

Now it would be easy to mock these sort of folk beliefs, but I’m not going to do that. Regardless of the possible existence of invisible pixies with a penchant for monolithic dwellings, this news got me thinking about the current assumptions we members of the Fortean community have re. things like Disclosure: Right now we all are under the impression that *if* Disclosure were to happen, it would be an immediate & universal paradigm shift; yet what guarantees do we have that would be the case? What if Disclosure happens in a gradual fashion, with some communities adopting an absolute certainty in the existence of non-human entities, and slowly expanding until some global turning point was finally reached?

(2) But in order for that to happen, we may first need to break the code of silence preventing Military personnel from sharing their UFO experiences. And that’s exactly what Ex-Army Colonel John Alexander is seeking with his plea for amnesty to anyone in the military who has been previously sworn to secrecy about UFOs. Now this is something of a tricky situation —or would that be trickstery?— because it’s well known Alexander’s position that although yes, some UFOs are genuine signs of alien intelligence, he not only thinks the US government is not withholding any secret & explosive information about flying saucers, but that the general attitude it takes when faced with the few truly unexplainable cases is a collective & bureaucratic ‘Meh’.

So why the plea for amnesty then? Well it’s simple really (or is it?): this way Alexander thinks it would show once and for all that “there’s no policy of [UFO] secrecy” and sway the suspicions of the UFO community & the American people, finally proving their government isn’t hiding anything from them. Because with the amnesty obviously no one in the Military would have any fear of coming out with the UFO secrets they’ve been allegedly ordered not to reveal, and since no one will ever come out —per John’s rationale— then there weren’t any UFO secrets to begin with, right?

Well, I only have two things to respond to Alexander: Bradley Manning, and Code Red.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(1) Alexander is fond of always finishing his UFO presentations by putting on a pair of sunglasses and flashing a toy neuralizer in front of the audience, jokingly mimicking the MIB characters made famous by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the 1990s. This summer the black-suited duo will return to the big screen, and during a promotional stunt on a radio program for the BBC, Will Smith happened to reveal a very suggestive little anecdote: During a private tour to the White House, Smith’s son Jayden had a rather other-worldly inquiry for president Obama —a question he strikingly anticipated:

“The aliens, right? OK, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of extraterrestrials but I can tell you if there had been a top secret meeting and if there would have had to have been a discussion about it, it would have taken place in this room.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obviously this little ‘intimate’ moment between Obama & lil Jayden is so deliciously ambiguous you can take it any way you want. One can easily just regard it as a LOL take showing the President is a man smart enough to know when to lie back and not be serious. BUT… with all the previous examples we have where Obama’s predecessors seemed to have taken a light-hearted approach as a way to downplay a real personal interest in the UFO phenomenon, it does make you wonder…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maybe the actual fantasy is to imagine the person living in the White House would ever be entrusted with whatever knowledge about UFOs all the soup-letter agencies have gathered through the decades, when they don’t even share the stuff they know with each other! Need-to-know is the real glue holding that house of cards together :-/

Until next time, this is RPJ jacking out & wishing everyone a safe return to Zion.