Who is Wilbert Smith?

Do you recognize the man in the above photo? I thought I did. I’ve seen this photograph so many times, but always thought it were a portrait of the famous UFO contactee George Adamski, or maybe George King, the founder of the Aetherius Society. It is a photo of a UFO contactee, but one I’d never heard of before. His name is Wilbert Smith and I first heard his tale at the Birmingham UFO Group meeting of the 24th of November 2011. He may well be one of UFOlogy’s greatest unsung heroes. Here’s the BUFOG website: http://bufog.blogspot.com/

My journey to the BUFOG meeting was full of friction and obstacles, usually a good omen that I’m about to have an interesting time, I think. All the trains between Oxford and Birmingham were delayed due to the wrong sort of leaves on the track or something similar and I had to change trains unexpectedly and wait for a long time at Dorridge. I’m ashamed to say that I’m not a man without prejudices and the name “Dorridge” has unfortunately always conjured up images in my head of some chuck of West Midlands suburban sprawl with crumbling red-brick factories and ugly, grey, oblong postwar office blocks. In fact Dorridge is a very clean and neat rural town and its railway station is one of the most charming I’ve ever seen; so I didn’t mind being delayed there a while before completing my journey into Birmingham, and I apologize to anyone offended by my now-eliminated misconception. The meeting ended too late for a journey home so I stayed overnight at the Travelodge in Oldbury. I settled into my room after I arrived and then headed for the venue, negotiating the treacherous roads and flicking through my A to Z at every street corner.

The BUFOG meetings are held at an elegant snooker club in a large and comfortable function room. The speaker was Andrew Johnson (See HPANWO Links), a man all regular HPANWO-readers will be familiar with, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/dr-judy-wood-in-brighton.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/12/andrew-johnson-newspaper-ad.html . He often speaks at Exopolitics events, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/exopolitics-leeds-2011.html . Today he was speaking on a subject I’ve never heard him discuss before, but one of the other audience members assured me that Andrew has delivered this speech before elsewhere: Wilbert Smith. Wilbert Smith was born in 1910 in a place called Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. He worked for the Canadian Government as a superintendent of radio regulations. Unlike that other Canadian UFO buff, and also politician, the Rt Hon. Paul Hellyer MP, Smith doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page! He was however an extremely prolific and successful researcher and there are many alternative media sources dedicated him, including even an online edition of one of his books: http://www.rexresearch.com/smith/newsci~1.htm . He was director of something called Project Magnet in the 1950’s. This was an operation set up by the Canadian Government to detect the presence of UFO by searching the sky for electromagnetic anomalies. The aim was to try to work out how these objects were powered and propelled. It’s interesting that the project was set up under the premise that UFO’s were in reality products of an extraterrestrial civilization; before even the Hyneks and Klasses of this world were arguing over whether they even existed! Strangely enough in 1964 the Canadian Government issued a statement that, although Project Magnet had existed as one of their outfits, it was a henceforth going to be merely a private project administered personally by Wilbert Smith and no longer an official government operation at all! According to Andrew this is an act of "offical denial" that came about due to the amazing discoveries made by Smith and his team: confirming the presence of UFO's as real alien artifacts. Despite the project no longer being under their management, the Government allowed Smith access to the facilities to continue his work in his own time and out of his own pocket.

Wilbert Smith’s work didn’t only concern the UFO’s that appear in the sky, he also got involved in research into contactee reports and eventually had direct contact experiences himself. He worked with a woman called Frances Swan who lived very close to Betty and Barney Hill, the famous couple who are wrongly called “The first alien abductees”. Smith had a long-term and significant interaction with an extraterrestrial being whom he called “Tyla”. What was so interesting about this contact was that Tyla instructed Smith in the engineering of unknown esoteric Free Energy and antigravity propulsion systems. He discovered that spinning a disk-shaped object at high speed can induce an antigravity effect. This has been discovered since independently by Mary Bennett and David Percy, authors of the book Dark Moon, see: http://www.aulis.com/nasa3.htm . Also Evgeny Podkletnov of the University of Tampere in Finland did a similar experiment that produced a limited antigravity effect using a spinning ring: http://www.holoscience.com/news/antigravity.html Tyla described himself as a “dustman”, here to clean up the poisons produced by nuclear weapons testing on Earth and he also showed Smith a machine called the “Caduceus Coil” that could tap usable electrical power from the Earth’s magnetic field, just like Nikola Tesla did, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/05/nikola-tesla-as-close-as-it-gets.html . Smith also worked on something he called “The Binding Force”, the details of which can be found in his book, see the link above. According to his son Jim, Wilbert Smith was not entirely discarded by all the forces of Government. Some shadow elements kept in touch with him and often employed him in their covert UFO-based endevours; this included several “Roswells” (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/03/roswells-galore.html) and Jim, in the same way as Jesse Marcel Jr, once handled a part of the wreckage of a crashed UFO, the “Ottawa Piece”. Smith also dealt with the bodies of aliens from the crashes too.

The legacy of Wilbert Smith continued long after his death in 1962, in fact scientific investigation based on his ideas endures to the present day. One of the biggest and most powerful Military-Industrial Complex aerospace businesses, McDonnell-Douglas, at one point decided to interview UFO experiencers; properly, that it. They planned not only drop by and ask to have a chat with them over a cuppa, but to pay them good money for their time and in exchange for information. The Defence journalist and antigravity agnostic Nick Cook, relates this in his interesting, but sometimes dubious, documentary UFO's- The Secret Evidence, see: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-834605691449249469# (Here's another documentary by Nick Cook, equally slippery in it's accuracy I think, The Billion Dollar Secret: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3975546396136405829#) . Another hint at what’s really going on can be found in the strange behaviour of the Apollo astronauts since the missions which history tells us landed them on the moon. I doubt that this is true, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-went-to-godamn-moon.html , but whether you believe they really did go to the moon or not, this subject is still relevant. I doubt if any of these men will ever confess openly, but they might do quietly and partially. For instance, Neil Armstrong has made some intriguing and incriminating comments. He’s a shy and private man who has little contact with the public, but if you read between the lines of his limited public speeches you might notice something strange, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vFEwAJZQY “Truth’s protective layers”!? What’s he talking about? I doubt very much if this is what his speech-writer told him to say. Buzz Aldrin has also said some very nebulous things on TV; here he is with Larry King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIXvpjnRws . The Apollo 11 crew have revealed that they did see a UFO in space when they were (apprantly) on their way to the moon. Most suspicious of all is the Apollo astronaut whom we in the UFOlogical community have come to admire and trust the most: Dr Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell was a major figure in the late Counterculture period, establishing the Institute for Noetic Sciences near Big Sur, California, the American equivalent of Glastonbury. He’s also a native of Roswell, New Mexico and professes to believe in UFO’s, supporting and agreeing with Roswell researchers who think that a UFO actually did crash there in July 1947. He’s a supporter of the Exopolitics and UFO Disclosure movements and has spoken at their famous press conferences. However Andrew is worried that he may be a shill, a government agent. Apparently the Free Energy inventor Bruce De Palma asked Mitchell’s organization to assist him develop his invention and Mitchell demanded that de Palma sell him the rights. This was not just the development lease contract which de Palma was hoping for, but basically de Palma handing over everything he’d created to Mitchell’s group and never being able to have any say in what happens to it again! De Palma wisely told him “no” at which Mitchell replied with a veiled threat. This is textbook tactics for controlled opposition; it’s happened to many Free Energy inventors sadly; even Nikola Tesla fell foul of this ruse when he got involved with JP Morgan and the Astors. The USA has a great tradition in backyard inventors, part-time amateurs who create marvels on a shoestring budget in their garden sheds, like the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison. What can happen is that a rich financier from the world of Big Business often approaches these people and offers a “partnership” that involves the inventor selling the rights for a substantial payment. These inventors are usually very short of money and eagerly snap it up. This is most often the first step towards suppression and secrecy. As soon as the contracts are signed the “business partner” takes all the papers and prototypes with the promise to “leave it all in my capable hands. This is going to be a great success!” and that’s the last the world ever hears of it. The most interesting piece of evidence regarding Edgar Mitchell’s secret life comes from a source I don’t normally champion. I find Bart Sibrel’s methods extremely unprofessional and counterproductive, but when he ambushed Mitchell he picked up something unintentionally which many people have understood is extremely significant even if Sibrel himself is too stupid to. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTUaZl6Nyho At the end Mitchell’s son says: “Do you want to call the CIA and have them waxed?” What he means by “waxed” I’m not sure; Sibrel predictably makes a joke out of it as the end of his Astronauts Gone Wild! Film, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=487zC8qzRvA But whatever was meant by “waxed” why on Earth would Ed Mitchell be calling the CIA? Bart Sibrel’s business collapsed soon after this film came out and today he works as a lowly cabbie. Maybe that’s because he was “waxed”… then again it could be just because he’s a numpty.

Andrew is extremely suspicious of some of the leading figures in the UFO and Disclosure community, particularly Dr Steven Greer, and I share his suspicions. See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/01/year-ago-dr-stephen-greer-of-disclosure.html I’ve changed my mind a bit since I made this film and have become, if anything, even more cynical of Greer than I was then. He’s done something similar to Ed Mitchell; he has attempted to legally seize the copyright of the UFO photos and footage people capture on his organized skywatches, his so-called “CE5" outings. Andrew takes heart from the fact that he sees Disclosure as something with two streams. The first is the conventional one that the Exopolitics movement is concerned with: campaigning to force governments to declassify their secret information about UFO’s. Both Andrew and I believe that this is probably impossible for reasons I’ve discussed lot recently, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html However there’s a second stream of Disclosure, according to Andrew; this is the Disclosure initiated by the extraterrestrials themselves through their contact with ordinary people and their attempts to educate and reveal information to them. That’s good news because the second stream is one that the Shadow Government can do little to prevent!

The BUFOG meeting was a very good event and I’d like to thanks Dave Hodrien and the other organizers for it. And thanks to Andrew for a very interesting and entertaining lecture. After Andrew had finished speaking, Dave revealed some sad news: After much worry and speculation I can now confirm that UFO Matrix magazine has folded. I’ve bought a 2-year subscription and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back, but really I don’t care. My main feeling of sadness comes from the fact that this was an excellent magazine that had brilliant potential, but it was launched very much against the economic tide. To add insult to injury it failed in its first year. Unfortunately Paranormal magazine has gone the same way, even though it had become quite mainstream and I saw it on sale in many railway station shops. One journal that seems omnipresent even through this Winter of Discontent is the ever-ready Fortean Times. It happens to be the publication that takes the most Skeptical line short of the openly-specialist Skeptic press, like Skeptic magazine, see: http://skeptic.org.uk/. After their disgusting coverage of the Hollie Greig scandal I’ve sworn never to read the Fortean Times again! There is an upbeat ending to this bit of bad news that Dave relayed at the meeting though: Another very informative magazine that has recently closed down UFO Data, is now available free online to download: http://www.ufo-data.co.uk/index1.htm There's plenty here to keep anybody with any interest in UFO's quiet for a while!

I slept well in my bed at the Travelodge and had a relaxing journey home in which all the trains ran on time! I’ll end this article with a speech by Wilbert Smith, in his own words: http://www.disclose.tv/viewvideo/26032/Wilbert_B_Smith___1958_Ottawa_Address

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-ufo-disclosure-petition.html
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And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/cctv-in-oxford-taxicabs.html
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The Ark of the Covenant

Mythology is a frustrating thing. One of the main reasons it’s frustrating is because within the norms of Conformist culture it’s just like God: You either believe in it as a preestablished truth or you reject it 100% as nonsense; there is no Third Position; no in-between or middle way. You may either embrace literally a myth that is part of your chosen off-the-shelf package religion or you see it as an entertaining story that is completely imaginary. I’ve spoken before of how I see this as the reason we’ve never solved the mystery of Atlantis, (See EG: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/05/beyond-knowledge-conference-2008.html) but lately I’ve come across another historical conundrum that is similarly afflicted: The Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant is the most enigmatic historical artifact and religious relic in the world. It first appears in mythology in the Bible; the Book of Exodus. In one of the best-known stories ever told, Moses leads his fellow Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to Mount Sinai. He ascends the mountain to the summit, a place of pilgrimage in modern times, where God descended in a storm cloud flanked by two cherubim blowing ram's horn trumpets and gave Moses the Ten Commandments. God carved the text of the Ten Commandments onto a pair of stone slabs with his finger (Does God really have fingers!?) and Moses brought them down from the mountain after, in the best of Biblical tradition, forty days. God told Moses to build a wooden box to carry the stone tablets in. As He did with Noah, God gave a very precise design blueprint for the box. The box was to be oblong in shape, measuring 2.5 by 1.5 by 1.5 Royal cubits in dimension, that’s 3.75 x 2.25 x 2.25 feet. It was to be made of acacia-wood timber and covered all over with solid gold plating. Similar acacia-wood carrying-staves were inserted into four gold rings built into the side and the staves were never to be removed even when the box was standing on the ground. The box was to be covered with a golden lid with similarly golden figurines of the two cherubim that accompanied God set on top (God Himself, of course, was never portrayed in an image). This box was to be called the Ark of the Covenant. According to some myths other objects were placed in there too: a facsimile of the original tablets, also inscribed by God’s finger, after the originals were smashed by Canaanite idolaters, who took over while Moses went away for a while. Also it is said to contain Moses’ own first hand-written Torah, Aaron’s Rod and several other Israelite heirlooms. This was long before the building of the famous Temple of Jerusalem and the Israelites were a nomadic culture at that time so they carried the Ark with them wherever they went, which must have been quite a burden seeing as it was partly made of solid gold! Whenever they stopped and set up camp the Ark was placed inside a sacred mobile shrine called the Tabernacle which consisted of a special tent that only Moses and the Ark’s vanguard could enter; this tent was also set up to very specific dimensions dictated by God (Maybe this is why the Masons call God “the Great Architect”). The Ark was more than just a ceremonial antique though; it was also a very powerful weapon of war that was a channel of God’s power on Earth. In fact the Israelites defeated several enemies by using the Ark; most famously the Ark destroyed the fortified walls of Jericho after God told the army to march around it 7 times (7 is another recurring number in the Bible) brandishing the Ark. After 40 years (that number again!) of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites installed the Ark permanently in Solomon's great Temple of Jerusalem. The home of the Ark was in an inner sanctum known as the “Holiest of Holies” into which only the most senior high Levite Priests were permitted to enter. This Temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times and today all that remains of it is the Wailing Wall, but what happened to the Ark that lay inside it? After the final sacking of the Temple by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC the Ark is never mentioned again in the Old Testament. This is strange; you’d think that whether the Ark survived or was destroyed, the authors of the Bible would have something to say about its fate. This was the most prized national treasure that the Israelite people possessed, designed by God, built by the founder of their nation and containing a specimen of God’s own handwriting. This is the God revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. So what happened to it? According to the Book of Revelations the Ark ascended into Heaven and St John saw it when the Temple gates were opened in one of his visions. However usually these kinds of ascensions are very dramatically noted at the time they happen, as with Mary, but not this one. It’s as if God whipped the Ark out of the back door as Nebuchadnezzar’s armies were marching up the drive; that’s not God’s style.

As with the Holy Grail, since the Ark vanished from history and legend, several theories have arisen as to where it might be right now. These theories have spawned many fictional accounts, such as Stephen Spielberg’s celebrated film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first in the Indiana Jones series. In this film the Ark is hidden in Egypt. It’s also said to be located in Ireland, England, Jordan, France, South Africa and Italy. But by far the most likely story is that the Ark went to Ethiopia; how the Ark ended up there is a long and interesting story, but there’s also archaeological evidence that it is a true one. Ethiopia is an ancient and unique country, almost unknown to the outside world until it tragically shot into the global headlines the 1980’s, when a famine wiped out millions of its people and this inspired rock stars to come together in the first ever international concert to raise money to save them. In fact the country deserves notoriety for other more positive reasons. It is home to one of the most archaic and fascinating religious traditions on Earth. It has both an unusual orthodox Christian church and a very old Jewish tradition. There are two stories of how the Ark of the Covenant arrived in Ethiopia. One of them states that the Ark was not destroyed during the Babylonian conquest at all; not because God had managed to get it out of the way, but because the Ark had been removed before then, over 200 years before then in fact. The theory goes that the Ark was taken by Jewish refugees when a usurper-king called Manasseh came to power. Manasseh is portrayed in the Bible as a deeply wicked man who brought down the Kingdom of Israel with much brutality and then committed a gross blasphemy by installing a pagan idol in the Temple. The Jewish loyalists fled and it seems reasonable that they would save the Ark by taking it with them. But where would they flee to? This was a big question that’s not easy to answer. However we can suppose that wherever they went to there would be historical and archaeological evidence for their presence because such a high class of refugees would have a great impact on the surrounding area, its culture and traditions. In fact they’d enjoy a similar status as the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan Buddhist followers do today. It seems likely that they would desire to build a new temple, maybe not quite as grand as Solomon’s original one in Jerusalem, but still substantial. Does a record of any such presence exist?

Yes it does. If you travel up the river Nile into southern Egypt you come across a small and apparently insignificant island called Elephantine; this is right on the ancient trade routes between Africa and Palestine. On this island during the time of King Manasseh’s regime a large and powerful Jewish expatriate community emerged and the ruins of their buildings can be seen to this day on the island. Among them is a huge temple complex; at the time, this was the only Jewish Temple in the entire world to be built other than the main one in Jerusalem. It must have been a very special place for Jews during this early Diaspora, perhaps special enough to be the new home of the Ark of the Covenant? Unfortunately the relationship between the Elephantine Jews and their Egyptian asylum-granters was rather shaky. This was because the Jews still practiced animal sacrifice, especially prime rams, at a time when the local Egyptians were worshipping a ram-god called Khnum. The conflict came to a head in 410 BC and the result was that the Jews were evicted from Elephantine. The Egyptians then demolished the Temple. Where would the Jews go from there? Not north for sure because there lay Egypt and they would have surely have been under exile as a result of their eviction, and beyond Egypt lay their arch-enemy Manasseh. To the West was nothing but the endless Sahara Desert and to the east the Red Sea. So they could only have gone south. Upriver on the Nile lay some very green and pleasant lands like Kush, Ophir and Nubia, the region today called Ethiopia.

The second legend is a native Ethiopian one and is today the foundational doctrine of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It concerns a well-known, but very tenuous and mysterious historical character: the Queen of Sheba. The story goes that the Queen of Sheba came from one of the countries in what is now Ethiopia and lived in the early 9th Century BC, just when the Temple in Jerusalem had been built. On a state visit to Jerusalem she had a fling with King Solomon through which she became pregnant. Her baby became King Menelik I. When he came of age the young king went back to Jerusalem to remind his estranged father of his responsibilities. A deal of some kind was struck which meant that Menelik was given the Ark of the Covenant to take to Ethiopia on condition that he imposed the Judaic faith and culture on his people. He did so and the Jewish tradition in that country endures into the modern era. I find this tale slightly dubious. Sure I know that paternity feuds can be very bitter and costly indeed to the paternal party, but there’s no way Solomon would hand over the Ark. It would be better if he handed over the rest of the entire nation and kept the Ark. Remember what this artifact meant to his people; it was literally a direct gift from God. Also if Menelik had taken the Ark it would mean that the Ark would have been removed from the Temple in Jerusalem just a few short years after the thing had been built! What a waste of effort! Whichever of these tales is the right one there is very strong evidence that the Ark ended up in Ethiopia. Its first sanctuary was Lake Tana. Archaeologists had to visit the extremely remote and isolated Monastery of Debre Damo to discover this secret. This mountain fortress was sealed off from the outside world for over 1500 years and can only be entered by shinnying up a leather rope to a doorway 60 feet up on a sheer cliff face. There, the location of where the Ark was held was revealed. I say was, not is; but bear with me.

Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile, the final destination that the Jewish exiles from Elephantine would have come to by following the river. The lake is huge and is covered by many islands, some of them isolated monasteries on which outsiders were forbidden. The area is held sacred by the Ethiopian people and has been used as a fortress to guard national treasures during the frequent occasions when the country has come under attack from an outside enemy or internal strife. The most inaccessible and exclusive of all these outposts is the island of Tana Kirkos. It is almost totally undiscussed; even most Ethiopians have never even heard of it. Here both local legends and archaeological evidence agree that something of enormous spiritual and historical value was kept here. In Part 3 of this TV show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOqLpT6HKzY we see the location where a new Tabernacle may have been erected. The socket holes in the rock match the very precise God-given measurements from tradition, ones that the Jewish priests would have very solemnly and reverently reproduced on the ground of this foreign land. In Part 4 you’ll see that nearby is a very regal grave, maybe the last resting place of the chief Levite Priest who led the expedition. Also in Part 4, you’ll see that the islanders of Tana Kirkos possess sacred objects that they say were brought by the Jewish refugees and show them to the camera. The Ark was kept on Tana Kirkos for 800 years and then, in the 4th Century AD when Ezana, the first Christians king of Ethiopia, sat on his throne, this most holy treasure was moved to the Royal city of Aksum.

For over 600 years Aksum was the centre of a prosperous Christian empire and the heart of its power lay in its sacred core, the Cathedral of St Mary of Zion, the place where the Ark of the Covenant has rested for the last 1600 years. Today the home of the Ark is a surprisingly modest building, a small chapel-like structure in the grounds of what is today a fairly average-sized newly-rebuilt cathedral. It is called The Church of the Tablet and was built in the 1950’s by Emperior Haile Selassie’s wife after the Ark began to cause damage to its original storage site in the old cathedral; I’ll explain how and why such damage might be done in a moment. However this sanctuary is a place of great veneration and on festival days thousands of people will gather in the streets of Aksum as a Tabot, an effigy of the Ark that is always used in Ethiopian church services, is paraded through the city with enormous reverence. As for the real Ark? That’s an entirely different matter. The real Ark never leaves the little chapel and nobody is allowed near it except the Keeper. The post of Keeper of the Ark of the Covenant has got to be the most exclusive and carefully-vetted job application that exists. He is a man who is the most trusted and dedicated of all the Ethiopian clergy selected in a way that makes the Papal Conclave look casual. He and he alone is permitted to enter the Church of the Tablet and look upon the Ark. He takes vows to tend the Ark and do nothing else ever again; he never leaves the small chapel compound and never leaves his job until the day he dies. Under no circumstances is anybody else allowed near the Ark. This is apparently more for their own protection than that of the Ark. The Ark, it seems, can easily take care of itself! More on that in a moment, but one thing is for certain: anybody who goes on a quest for the Ark will eventually end up in only one place: outside the high security railings surrounding the Church of the Tablet. The Ark will lie just a dozen feet away from them but for all the chance they’ll have of viewing it, it might as well be on Mars! Of course in a region as volatile and unstable as northern Ethiopia there’s always a risk that in a period of disorder somebody might try to force entry to the chapel and look at the Ark, or even try to steal or destroy it. If that happens then I’ve no doubt that it will be over the Keeper’s dead body… but maybe it will be over the perpetrator’s too.

As I said, it appears that the Ark is more than just a relic; it has an awareness and intelligence of its own and it seems quite capable of defending itself, often greatly to the detriment of its attacker. There are many stories of what happens to people who try to abuse the Ark, one of them is Biblical. The Ark was captured once by the Philistines after a battle in which they thrashed the Israelites so badly that the Tabernacle was overrun. The Ark was carried back to their homeland in triumph and placed in their own temple. The Israelites were devastated, thinking they’d lost their most priceless treasure forever. However 7 months later the Philistines came to the Israelites and offered to return the Ark unconditionally. This was because since the Ark had been in their possession their entire country had been beset by terrible misfortune, in particular the people had all fallen ill with plagues and tumours. The Ark was exceptionally choosy about whom it had around it. It brought great success and protection to the Israelites, but to anybody else it didn’t like, it brought disaster and death. This factor of the story was included into the climax of Stephen Spielberg’s film about the Ark. Apologies for the spoiler, but what happens is that it appears that all is lost. Indiana Jones and the heroine are tied up awaiting execution and the Nazis open up the Ark to test it. Immediately they’re struck down by fire and die in a very gruesome scene which gave me nightmares as a child. The Ark, so the stories go, has a willpower all of its own and will react very violently if you try to harness it to your own devices. But this is just a story isn’t it? Just ancient myths and a film script? Maybe not, because the Keepers of the Ark in Aksum say the exact same thing. They don’t only keep ordinary people away from the Ark as an act of respect for the Ark’s sacred status, but to protect them from the Ark!

You may be wondering why I’ve decided to write about this subject. Am I about to turn religious? Do I believe the literal truth of the Ark’s origins? Am I now going to try and persuade you that God really did come down to Moses and write on stone tablets with his own hand? No! Definitely not! I’m not going to suggest that the legends associated with the Ark of the Covenant are the absolute truth of its origins; but then again, as I said at the start of this article, I’m not sure that we can just dismiss the entire phenomenon of the Ark as make-believe. The Ark may well be a real object of enormous physical, energetic and/or spiritual power that was found by tribesmen in Palestine 3000 or so years ago, and the Bible stories and Ethiopian fables were legends that grew up around factual accounts and experiences of it over the ages. Graham Hancock (see HPANWO Links column) has speculated that it might be some form of high technology; I think it may be part of a Roswell-style “flying disk”. There’s no way to be sure, but in 2008 the History Channel said in one of its programmes that the Keepers of the Ark usually don’t live very long; they are quickly struck down by maladies like cataracts and other conditions associated with exposure to excessive radiation. It might be some kind of interdimensional object, portal or energy field; or even something else altogether that we can’t even imagine. Whatever it is, it is without a doubt the most incredible relic in the entire world. It has seized the imagination of the people who’ve come into contact with it for over 3000 years… and sometimes their lives too. We will probably never know, unless for some hitherto unimaginable reason the Ethiopian priesthood decides to bring the Ark out and put it on public display, but that is so unlikely that it hardly deserves a second thought. However on the 25th of June 2009 the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church said that he would unveil the Ark the following day; when the following day arrived he said he’d changed his mind!
(Sources: Raider of the Lost Ark, Hational Geographic and Grahamhancock.net)

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And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/11/david-icke-in-sun.html

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Pre-Roswell Roswells

One of the common topics I’ve explored on HPANWO is UFO’s and the various falsehoods associated with them; for instance: that they’re only seen by “loonies”, that they didn’t exist until impressionable and imaginative people, usually wearing anoraks, first saw them in cinemas in the 1940’s etc. As we can see, UFO photos and reports both date back to far earlier epochs, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/old-ufo-photoes.html. Another myth is that UFO’s are unknown in the Third World and are only seen in developed Western nations where people have been exposed to them culturally; but the Zulu Shaman Credo Mutwa reports that this is definitely not the case, in fact he has been abducted and abused by the very same beings that were seen in a famous Brazilian case, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/alien-abduction-similarities.html. In this article I shall explore the theory that the famous Roswell Incident of 1947 was the trigger that led to all subsequent incidents that resembled it, and that no such incidents occurred before it. The word “Roswell” of course refers to the city of Roswell in New Mexico, USA which was the centre stage for that most explosive of all UFO tales; however since then other similar incidents have occurred and the word has almost become a common noun with the qualifying adjective designating the place, EG: Brazilian Roswell, Welsh Roswell etc. It means: a very significant UFO event, especially one in which a large amount of decisive physical evidence is left behind, like a crashed craft and alien bodies, and that this evidence is secretly salvaged by the government and covered up. It’s only a matter of time before the Oxford English Dictionary adds the word to its list under that definition.

Contrary to what you might have heard, there are "Roswells" that predate the Roswell Incident. I’ll take you through all the ones I’ve heard about and if you’ve heard of others that I haven’t then get in touch and let me know. We’ll go backwards in time from the most recent to the earliest, but all of them crucially took place before July 1947:

Cape Girardeau- April 1941
The details of what will inevitably be christened “the Missouri Roswell” can be found in this MUFON (See HPANWO Links column) paper. The title is misleading however; this is not “the first Roswell”, but I’m getting ahead of myself! This is a fascinating document that presents the compelling evidence for the case very comprehensively. Somebody has not only done a good research and analysis job here, they’ve also managed to communicate it well: http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/rswood_mufon2001.pdf. The story was first revealed in 1984 in a book by UFO researcher Leo Stringfield. He received a letter from a lady named Charlette (sic) Mann concerning a UFO crash-retrieval in 1941, a full six years before Roswell. The crash occurred just a few miles from Cape Girardeau, a busy and picturesque city nestling on the banks of the River Mississippi. Charlette’s story was then corroborated by other sources: her own sister gave a sworn affidavit that Charlette’s story was true. The Sheriff of Cape Girardeau County, at the time, backed her up, as do seven leaked Presidential documents from three sources and possibly even a handwritten memo from J Edgar Hoover. In April of 1941 Charlette’s grandfather Reverend William Huffman was the local minister at the Red Star Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau. One evening at about 9 to 9.30 PM he received a phonecall from the police asking him to come to the site of a light aircraft crash 10 to 15 miles outside town because the injured occupants were not expected to survive and they wanted somebody to administer Last Rights. Rev. Huffman did not consider this request unusual and left immediately; remember that America is a far more religious country than most European nations, like my own, the UK. He arrived at the scene and saw that it was not a plane that had crashed but a disk-shaped object. The disk was broken open and inside he saw strange control seats and artefacts, and also markings that he thought looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics, a recurring comparison that covers several other UFO reports. Lying on the ground outside the craft were the bodies of three small humanoids which resembled the classic Grey; one of them had been moved to one side and the minister thought that it might be alive. As it was he was only required to give two of the beings the Sacrament of the Dying. There were many policemen at the scene, as well as firemen and news photographers. Military personnel turned up and swore everybody to secrecy before taking over the entire operation and sending Huffman home. Huffman was a patriotic and God-fearing man who took oaths seriously, but he couldn’t resist telling his family members what he'd experienced, including his son, Guy, who became Charlette’s father. Charlette knew about the incident because her father and other family members mentioned it occasionally as a family curiosity, but it was from the 1984 deathbed confession of her grandmother Floy, William Huffman’s wife, that she learned the complete tale; that which she related to Leo Stringfield. She found out what became of the photo of one of the aliens that her father had shown her one night at a party. The photo had been taken by one of the photographers at the scene and given to Huffman by a friend of his at his church a few weeks later. Huffman gave it to another friend in the early 1950’s: Walter Wayne Fisk. Fisk was a career photographer who’d made a living taking snaps of Cape Girardeau’s famous rose gardens and probably Huffman thought he’d appreciate this piece of evidence more than the average man-on-the-street. As far as we know Fisk still has that photograph today. Recently, the researcher Stanton Friedman managed to track down the elderly Walter Fisk to his current home in New Mexico. They spoke on the telephone and Fisk told Stanton all kinds of strange tales, like how he was a psychologist and worked for the President, but he refused to confirm or deny whether he still had the photograph. Since then he has declined all attempts to speak on the subject and so the whereabouts of the photograph remain a mystery. Charlette described the photo to Stringfield: It showed two men holding up one of the aliens by its arms. She sketched a reproduction of it, see above at the top of this HPANWO article, and since then two photographs have emerged online that are said to be the original, see below:



I personally doubt that either of these photos are the real McCoy. The first one looks a bit too neat; it looks like it was shot in a studio enviroment with proper lighting effects, and the quality leads me to think that it was taken using modern equipment. The alien also looks a bit too much like something you could buy in a Roswell tourist shop! The second photo is very obviously taken in daylight, even though the crash was late at night, and it shows a creature far smaller than the ones Charlette reported seeing; it’s barely two feet tall. The most intriguing evidence lies in the independent articles, like the Hoover memo. This incident took place just a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbour and the US Government knew it was going to have to fight a war very soon and although there were serious leaks, like the photograph, it’s obvious that there must have been some kind of protocol already in place to deal with an incident like this UFO crash. It may not have been as perfect as it was at Roswell but there’s no way the Government would have been able to suppress news of this hitting the airwaves unless they had a contingency plan; and if they had a contingency plan then they must have had previous knowledge or experience of UFO crash-retrievals. Experience? Where did that come from? A few weeks later, on the 21st of May, a huge tornado ripped through the heart of Cape Girardeau killing 23 people and injuring many more; 233 homes were destroyed. It’s possible that any notoriety generated by the UFO and aliens was drowned out by this much more terrestrial disaster. The burying of news and long time periods between events and witnesses to them coming forward has plagued UFO cases left, right and centre throughout the history of UFOlogy; none more so than the next Roswell on our list:

Gateshead- 1940
The strange case of the “Gateshead Grey” took place the year before Cape Girardeau, but it went completely unreported at all until 2008. The researcher who broke the story was a friend of mine, Richard D Hall (I’ve been interviewed on Richard’s TV show and will be again shortly, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ben-emlyn-jones-on-richplanet-tv.html) When he did a lecture on UFO’s in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, he was contacted by an elderly gentleman who told Richard that he’d seen one himself. Robert Hall (no relation) had lived in the Bensham area of Gateshead in 1940 where he’d been a small child, aged just 5, and he’d had a close encounter which led to a full-blown Roswell. Gateshead is a very large and populous town that occupies the land south of Newcastle on the banks of the River Tyne; if an alien landing can be covered up there, it can be covered up anywhere! (In fact in my fictional novel The Obscurati Chronicles, I include a situation in which a UFO crashes in a big town near London, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-13.html.) It became famous in 1998 for the erection of the 66 foot high sculpture the Angel of the North, although in my view it looks more like an aeroplane stood on its tail than an angel. Are the Grey and the Angel being in the same place a coincidence or is something more occult and esoteric going on?... That’s a story for another article. In 1940 a strange atmosphere hung over the country; war against Germany had been officially declared the previous September, but the worst hostilities had yet to break out and negotiations were going on to try and find a peaceful conclusion to the conflict. However Britain was still preparing for the onslaught to come, building up the Armed Forces and organizing parades on city streets to reassure and inspire the British public. It was while watching one of these marches one fine day, on a hitherto undisclosed date that year, that 5 year old Robert and one of his friends were sitting on a wall on a main throughfare called Saltwell Road watching the troops file past. (It helps if you use Google Maps or Earth to follow this narrative) Eventually they got bored and felt cold (this could indicate that the date was not in the summer months) and ran down Stephenson Street, the side terrace near where they lived. When they were halfway down the road they saw a translucent barrier across the street that Robert described as resembling heat-haze. The two boys found that the barrier didn’t reach right down to the ground and they could pass under it by ducking. Then, at the bottom of Stephenson Street they were confronted by a large ovoid object hovering just above the ground about 12 to 14 feet in diameter. Running parallel to Saltwell Road at the other end of the residential terraces is an alley known as “the Back Alley” where local children used to play, and lined up all along this alley were a large number of beings of many species. In fact it was a veritable ET menagerie with more variety than any other reported encounter I’ve heard of; Robert’s descriptions of these entities answer those of other alien contactees’, and this was confirmed by Derrel Sims, see: http://www.alienhunter.org/. There was a humanoid creature that was covered in fur, “Bigfoot” Robert called it; classic Greys in several sizes, “Praying Mantis” insectoids, dwarf-like gnomes and blond, blue-eyed “Nordics”, very humanlike beings which you wouldn’t look twice at if you saw them in normal human situations. Robert and his friend were taken aboard the craft and underwent the medical examination that is a common feature of UFO abductions, blood specimens were taken and they were pacified by a paralyzing weapon that one of the aliens held in its hand. Robert was terrified and tried to flee; he saw other children climbing the fence by the railway line bordering the alley. Robert eventually managed to escape the aliens’ clutches and ran back to the main road where he alerted the marching soldiers. One of the soldiers went to have a look and shot at the aliens with his pistol. Panic ensued and people on the main road fled. The craft rose into the sky and disappeared.
If the events of that day weren’t incredible enough, more was to come three days later. Robert was on his way to the shops one morning and he took a short cut through a pedestrian alley further up the road than the Back Alley; suddenly he realized that he was not alone. He looked round and saw a Grey running towards him. He pelted as quickly as he could to the nearest street where his Uncle Ernie ran a coal yard. Robert tripped on the kerb and thought that the Grey had got him, but luckily Uncle Ernie was on the pavement outside and he attacked the Grey with a coal shovel and killed it. Uncle Ernie Wren was still alive in 2008 and Richard met him, but unfortunately Ernie is somewhat senile and unable to give a solid witness account. Ernie then moved the body behind the gates of his coal yard while Robert went and found a policeman. The body was then moved by a police or army vehicle to the crypt of St Cuthbert’s Church about half a mile away on Bensham Road where it was apparently stored for three months. There is no mention in the church’s management records of this going on, but then it’s not the kind of thing the Vicar would be too open about, especially if he’d been warned to keep quiet. Robert reports seeing men in white overalls going up and down the narrow outdoor stairway leading to the crypt and visits from “professors”. On at least one occasion during this time the local area was subjected to house-to-house searches, Northern Ireland Troubles-style; the soldiers were apparently searching for more of the aliens.
Robert suffered from a lot of the classic symptoms of “post-abduction syndrome” including a triangular scar on his face that lasted for 8 years. He was visited by military officers, scientists apparently investigating the matter and a very eager news reporter whom Robert says physically assaulted him to try and make him part with information. He was also followed to school many times by a frightening stranger. These sound to me very much like Men-in-Black encounters, at least some of them, and the callers may not have been whom they said they were or looked like; in fact they may have been aliens themselves, but that’s a long story.
All the researchers who have interviewed Robert Hall say that he comes across as honest; he’s a simple and ingenuous man who doesn’t fit the profile of a fantasist or liar. The UFOlogist Gary Heseltine has also interviewed Robert; Gary is a police detective and so has developed a good intuitive ear for when he’s being spun a yarn, and he passes Robert’s testimony as truthful. As I said above a very long time has passed between the incident occurring and research into it beginning, meaning that the majority of witnesses are probably no longer living, the memories of the living witnesses will have become faded and distorted, and direct evidence is harder to come by. Richard and the others have done a good job retrieving even what little they have. There’s no mention of the event in any newspaper archives or local records. Despite the fact that there are a few old people living in the area who also lived there in 1940 no others have professed any recollection of the UFO incident and the only one positively known to have been in the vicinity at the time is refusing to comment. However Robert’s sister Rhoda does recall the hostile visitors who questioned her brother. This would be less frustrating if Robert Hall were not such a credible witness. One thing he mentioned that is especially interesting is that he expressed his confusion that the craft he saw was so small while the aliens which presumably came from inside it were so numerous; I imagine that if he underwent an examination inside the UFO then it would have had to have been larger on the inside than its 12 to 14 foot exterior. The notion of alien craft being Doctor Who's TARDIS-like: larger on the inside than the outside, is not one Robert Hall is likely to have made up; however it is a recurring feature of many other abduction reports. A good example is Jan Siedlecki’s 1976 encounter in Leeds in which he describes a disk-shaped craft only about 20 feet across, yet it had three deck-levels inside (Good-1998). A bullshit-merchant would probably not put these details into his charade and make the craft’s inner and outer dimensions proportional, in line with terrestrial logic.
The week before this HPANWO article was published I travelled to Newcastle to record my interviews on Richplanet TV, and Richard showed me the location of the Gateshead Grey sighting. I took a few photos (Apologies for the darkness and poor quality, they were done on my mobile phone). It was immediately apparent that the architecture of the nearby houses and public buildings was 19th Century and so the area must look pretty much the same in 1940 as it does today. I took a photo of the famous kerbstone where little Robert tripped over as the Grey bore down on him before Uncle Ernie dispatched it to defend his nephew, but unfortunately the shot didn’t come out. It was too dark and my mobile phone camera had no flash. However it’s likely that this is the original kerbstone because it looked quite old, and although pavements need to be regularly resurfaced the kerbstones last much longer. I’ve very rarely seen them changed where I’ve lived.

This is 29 Hedley Street where Robert spent his childhood and lived as a five year old boy in 1940.

This is the spot at the bottom of Stephenson Street where the UFO appeared.

This is the gate to Uncle Ernie’s coal yard through which the dead Grey was dragged so it could be concealed. This gate looks very old and might also be original.

These are the narrow steps leading down to the crypt. St Cuthbert’s Church has been deconsecrated and abandoned since 1940 and today it is being converted into a museum (Not a UFO one!). By the time Richard and I arrived here it was night-time and completely dark and so I declined to descend the very narrow and steep stone stairway into the crypt; if it had been daytime I would have tried it. As you can see if you watch Richard’s documentary, see below, the crypt is just an empty derelict chamber filled with rubbish measuring 12 feet by 8, and according to Robert Hall, for three months 72 years ago it was used by the military to store an extraterrestrial corpse. This part of the tale is very revealing I think. Why did they leave it there for that long? Couldn’t they have moved it to somewhere more secure and convenient? This indicates to me that, unlike with Cape Girardeau, Roswell and all subsequent crash-retrievals, the British Government in 1940 had no contingency plan on how to deal with this kind of thing; it was as unexpected to them as it was to Robert and his friend. I wonder if the secret reports on the Gateshead Grey may have been shared with the Americans, even though they were neutrals in the war at that time. This may have triggered the US Military to work on a plan of what to do if something similar happened on their soil. Was this why they were all set up and ready a year later when that saucer came down near Cape Girardeau?
The story is told in Richard’s own words in this full-length documentary: http://www.richplanet.net/detail.php?dbindex=146 and here is the follow-up: http://www.richplanet.net/detail.php?dbindex=206 . The Gateshead Grey is a tantalizing mix of thin evidence, but believable testimony. The case becomes even more interesting when we find out that, even if it’s unknown in the modern human world, it may have influenced our folklore subconsciously: watch it and you’ll find out where the catchphrase “Little Green Men” might have come from!




Aurora- April 1897
As we go back in time before the 1940’s the stories of UFO-related encounters become dimmer and mistier. Although, as I demonstrate in the link above to pre-1940’s UFO photographs, it’s obvious that the phenomenon existed, it had little or no presence in popular culture. As we approach the century-ago marker we find a bleak landscape as far as Roswells are concerned. There are a few very tenuous recitations about crashed objects being seized during World War I, but nothing tangible. Then as we enter the close of the 19th Century we’re suddenly hit in the face by an almost unbelievable story from Texas: The Aurora Incident.
During the 1890’s news stories began to flood the entire world about the presence of “mystery balloons” and “dirigibles”. When studying the Aurora incident it’s important to understand the terminology used at the time; this was an era when the only aircraft were gas balloons and primitive airships; the Wright brothers’ first aeroplane didn’t lift off until December 1903, and conventional engineering wisdom beforehand mostly proclaimed that the aeroplane was impossible. Words like: “UFO” and even the slightly older: “Flying saucer” had yet to be coined. What these reports were describing was undoubtedly what we today would call a global UFO flap. This came to a head when on the 19th of April 1897 the Dallas Morning News announced that one of the mystery airships had struck a windmill in the city of Aurora, Texas. Despite it being officially classified as a “city”, Aurora only has a population of 376 and is just a small, sparse and isolated suburb of Dallas. The windmill was actually a wind-driven water pump fitted to a well in the garden of a Judge JS Proctor. The craft impacted at about 6 in the morning and exploded, scattering loose debris over a wide area, destroying the judge’s flower garden. Many of Aurora’s residents were alerted by the noise and rushed to the judge’s house to see if they could help. There was a badly burned and battered body in the debris that was thought to by the airship’s pilot. A local man who was an army signalman and keen astronomer stated to the reporter that in his opinion this was “a man from Mars”. Again, we need to be aware of the contemporary language difference here. At the time some of the most popular pieces of literature were books like HG Wells’ War of the Worlds which was about an invasion by intelligent but hostile creatures from Mars; it came out the following year, but others like it were around in 1897. Because of their influence, and lack of real knowledge about the true nature of Mars, anything extraterrestrial would have called “Martian” or “from Mars”. This was what we would call “an alien”. The creature was given a full Christian funeral and buried in the local cemetery. Again this would not be unusual practice in the United States at that time; remember William Huffman’s story above? The grave was marked by a very rough stone without an epitaph, see photo above, but it did feature what looks like a crude engraving of a cigar or disk-shaped UFO. There followed a clean-up operation in which the largest fragments of the object were carted off (Where!?) while the smaller ones were thrown down Judge Proctor’s well.
Again the hoodoo of a massive delay before the investigation returns to haunt us. The first serious research was not begun until the early 1970’s! The researchers' first move was to turn to the tastiest potential source of evidence: the grave. Unfortunately one cannot just walk into a cemetery with a spade and start digging up graves. Like most countries, the United States has Rights of Sepulchre laws that protect a person’s final resting place under strict guidelines that have few exemptions, and violating them is a serious criminal offence... even if the beneficiary of those legal rights is an extraterrestrial being! The investigators from MUFON wrote to the relevant authorities asking for permission to exhume the body and were given a firm and decisive negative reply; much to their frustration. The local council even posted a police guard at the graveside while the investigators were in town in case they attempted any grave-robbing. I can only imagine what it must feel like for a UFO investigator to stroll through a cemetery and walk above a grave that has an alien body just a few feet underground. But worse was to come because it seemed that somebody wasn’t going to take the chance that the burial authorities might change their minds. Soon after the first investigation the tombstone was stolen and it also looked as if somebody else had tampered with the grave, maybe even secretly exhuming the body themselves before the investigators could. Today the Aurora Cemetery Authority claims not to even know the grave’s exact location. Researchers have often noted that the people of Aurora are generally very uncooperative with UFOlogists and have no desire to explore this unusual piece of their hometown’s history... Has somebody warned them off? It’s ironic to think that as the Government were secreting away the bodies from the Roswell crash in 1947 another alien was lying in a grave just a few hundred miles away in Texas, and had been for 50 years. At the time of the first investigation there were fortunately a few very elderly witnesses to the crash still alive and they were tracked down and interviewed by an excellent individual, I think: Jim Marrs, see HPANWO Links column. Unfortunately he faced the same problems as Richard D Hall did over the Gateshead Grey; it’s not just governments that bury UFO secrets, the passing of time does too. However several people remembered seeing the object in the sky and after it had hit the ground.
There are several hoax theories going round, including one promoted by a former mayor of Aurora. The reporter who wrote the news story, SE Haydon, had a reputation as being a practical joker. There was apparently a motive for trying to put Aurora on the map. The town was in dire straits socially and economically because it had recently been hit by a spotted fever epidemic that had killed many people there; indeed the town went through several periods of quarantine (I myself was once stuck inside a quarantine zone in my hospital and it’s pretty frightening I can tell you!) The town’s main industry, cotton farming, had also just been decimated by an infestation of pests, boll weevils. Most people there were unemployed, poor, sick and hungry. The recent cancellation of a railway line through the town must have been a severe blow; and, in the same way some other places have tried to fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary, somebody decided to take action by fabricating a fake UFO crash... or so the theory goes. One wonders who, how and why they came up with this idea when there are plenty of other more promising ways to boost a town’s profile. Personally I’d stage some fake serial-killer deaths! Also the theories come from people who had no first-hand knowledge of the incident at all, and all Jim Marrs’ other contacts say the UFO was real, so unless we were faced with a conspiracy by a group of slow-witted octogenarians, we’ll have to knock the hoax theory on the head for now.
There’s more, apart from the grave there’s another massive potential source of data: the well into which the people dumped the debris. But annoyingly, just as with the grave, the well has been sealed over with a concrete slab and the current owner of the land refuses permission for UFOlogists to gain access to it. I’m beginning to wonder if Lyall Watson’s “Cosmic Nanny” isn't at work here, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/lyall-watson.html. There is an interesting story attached to the well though, if not a sad one because it concerns a man’s illness and disability. In 1945 a man called Brawley Oates bought Judge Proctor’s old house and went to live there. Like the judge before him, he got all his drinking water from the well and before long the unfortunate man was struck down by debilitating rheumatoid arthritis in his hands, rather like David Icke has been. Was Oates’ condition caused by drinking water from the well that had been infected with some kind of toxin from the alien debris? Whatever, the well remains sealed and a sturdy brick outhouse has been constructed over it to protect it further. Here’s an interesting documentary about the Aurora case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmY9D7T0m7A.

What has become apparent to me is that when it comes to Roswells we have two research obstacles: Since at least 1941 there has been a secret policy in place to cover up and deny these incidents. It’s a global policy, because whether the crash occurs in the USA, Brazil, China, Russia or any other country in the world, the same thing always happens: The government sends the army in, keeps everybody away, enforces media silence and then comes up with stupid cover stories about weather balloons or escaped chimpanzees. The other obstacle is time: the human lifespan, and our memory. There may or may not have been a decision by governments on dealing secretly with UFO’s before 1941; I suspect not, but this era is now so long ago that only the very elderly remember it, and their memories are blighted by inevitable lacunae and inaccuracies. The best hope for us all is to deal with the cause of the current and recent Roswells, what Stephen Bassett calls the “Truth Embargo”.

Just to end this article, let's look at the remarkable tale of a Mr James Lumley, a man hiking in the Rocky Mountains one day when he saw a lighted object cross the heavens and burst into pieces like “a sky-rocket”. This was followed by a rushing sound like high wind. The following day, Mr Lumley discovered: “that, as far as he could see in either direction a path had been cut through the forest, several rods-wide, giant trees uprooted or broken off near the ground, the tops of hills shaved off and the earth ploughed up in many places. Great and widespread havoc was everywhere visible. Following up this track of desolation, he soon ascertained the cause of it in the shape of an immense stone driven into the side of a mountain. An examination of this stone, or so much of it as was visible, showed that it was divided into compartments that in various places it was carved with curious hieroglyphics. More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by a liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics are the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but a fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings.” This report is dated to the 19th of October 1865, see: http://www.rense.com/general16/histufocrashing.htm. Could this be the first ever Roswell?

Latest HPWA article: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/registering-hpwa.html

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/engineered-humans-to-beat-climate.html
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And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/disclosure-petition-ii.html

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The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 14


 

Part 14 of the draft of my new novel The Obscurati Chronicles is up on Ben's Bookcase now. See: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-obscurati-chronicles-part-14.html
 
In this episode: Glyn Southsea finds out all is not what it seems to be about the disaster that has hit his hometown and he soon finds himself investigating the "Hertfordshire Roswell".

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-rain-of-yellow-balls.html
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And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/ammach-conference-2012.html

And: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/programme-12-podcast-malcolm-robinson.html

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Crop Circle Challenge 2013

Spring is in the air!... Well, no it's not really; it's been either pouring with rain or blowing with snow drifts for the last few weeks. However it is mid-February at the time of writing and today in Oxfordit is not too bad weather-wise. I can see snowdrops and crocuses budding, which means that the change in the seasons is not far off. And at this time of year my mind inevitably turns to the question: What will this year's crop circle season be like? Also as the early flowers start blooming so has the radio career of an acquaintance of mine, Trystan Swale. Trystan is a Fortean-Skeptic, but one who lives a world away from Droike (See the HPANWO Forum in the Links column); in fact he's very amiable and easy-going, and I wish him luck with his new venture. I've met him at several conferences like the ASSAP Seriously Strange one in 2011, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html. He used to present a Skeptic podcast called Righteous Indignation, and this has now closed down. But after moderately short break he is now back on the air with a brand new podcast: Fortean Radio: http://www.ripodcast.co.uk/(The old RI archive has been taken down but most of the shows can still be obtained from this cache on fellow-presenter Hayley Stevens' website: http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/righteous-indignation-back-catalogue/). Trystan's new Fortean Radio programme is aimed more at the open-minded instead of the Skeptic end of the Fortean spectrum. It's already on its second episode and in this one he interviews Paul Devereux of "earthlights" fame. In the programme they discuss crop circles and bring up something that I'd never heard of before, something which appears to be an attempt to clear up the central controversy of the entire crop circle phenomenon: the 100% Man-Made Hypothesis.

It's hard to say for sure when crop circles began. The earliest reports of structures fitting the definition date back to the 17th century but these were very rare. It's possible they're a related manifestation of patterns seen in other media, like sand, snow or grass. The modern era, the time in which they became commonplace and sophisticated in shape and design, took off only to the 1970's. As their name suggests, the were originally just circles or formations of circular figures, but these changed to more elaborate forms; however the name had stuck as a linguistic anachronism, in the same way people talk about "film in a camera" even in the age of digital photography. The phenomenon entered popular culture in a major way in the early 1990's; they were debated in Parliament and even inspired advertising campaigns; here's a TV programme about them from that time period: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLVHJ_Q3LFI. Theories about their origins ranged from UFO's and mysterious earth energies to rutting hedgehogs. Then one day an explosive revelation burst into the media: the crop circles had all been created by two elderly Wiltshire men, Douglas Bowers and David Chorley. The two men did a public demonstration in a field to show off their capabilities and the popular furore died down with a "Oh well, another mystery solved" closing line. Crop circles were forgotten by most people, including myself. Then many years later I was watching Esther Rantzen's Esther show and she was interviewing Andy Thomas (See: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/programme-26-podcast-2012-mayan.html) and he was discussing all the latest research into crop circles and I said to myself: "What? Is it still going on?" Since then I've delved into the subject in its current location, not mainstream but still a big part of the alternative milieu. Even within the alternative community opinions are deeply divided. Some maintain that they're all the work of "Doug and Dave" and their proteges, others that a supernatural element still endures; and even that Doug and Dave were set up as disinformers to quench the rising public awareness of the crop circle presence. For some who believe in the 100% Man-Made Hypothesis, crop circles are still a supernatural creation with UFO's and higher powers operating through the planks of the human circle-makers. Others just see it as a revolutionary new form of landscape mega-art. The controversy between the two sides has become quite vitriolic; many conferences now ban those who support the 100% MMH from attending, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgfuUwM4xQQ. 100% MMH proponents accuse crop circle "believers" of wishful-thinking and an unwillingness to face the "truth" that they're all just simply made by people. Those who support a supernatural explanation see the 100% MMH-advocates as "shills" and "liars" trying to debunk the phenomenon because the Government are paying them to, or just out of pure spite and a sadistic enjoyment of shattering the dreams of others. The controversy continues to this day; and recently a challenge has been issued that might just clear the matter up once and for all, the Crop Circle Challenge 2013: http://www.cropcirclechallenge.co.uk/. The claim made by the 100% MMH faction is that all crop circles are made by humans using simple methods and tools, garden rollers, the "stalk-stomper", a plank with a loop of rope attached to it, and a surveyor's kit: tape measures and land-markers etc. The circles are created this way secretly during the night. In order to demonstrate or discredit this claim, an enigmatic and shadowy group called "the EHA" has opened a competition to anybody who can recreate the spectacular Milk Hill formation of 2001 under controlled test conditions that match those professed by the 100% MMH-ers. If successful, the winner will receive a hundred thousand pounds as a cash prize. They would also no doubt go down in history as the people who finally settled the crop circle dispute. If they fail or do not apply, it will definitely inflame and invigourate the critics of the 100% MMH.
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Trystan Swale and his fellow hosts Andy Russell and Anna are not impressed by this challenge and explain why in their show; Swale has also written an article on his blog about it: http://www.leavesthatwither.co.uk/crop-circle-challenge-2013-is-it-real/. Their disapproval centres on the list of rules for entry. Crop circle-making teams have to apply to a panel of referees to take part and will need to send in a CV, up to and including high-definition video recordings of themselves at work. This can get the applicants into serious trouble because crop circle-making is technically a criminal offence. It involves trespass and vandalism, and in fact once a circle-maker, Matthew Williams, was actually prosecuted for his nocturnal planking activities (a fact he wears on his sleeve with enormous pride! See: https://www.youtube.com/user/truthseekers666). According to Trystan, Anna and Andy, the terms and conditions are too demanding and even "ridiculous", claiming that the referees are insisting on identical weather conditions to the time the Milk Hill formation appeared, including a similar amount of water and mud on the ground. There are also no set criteria about what constitutes a "replica" that can be agreed on by referees and entrants alike. They also don't agree with their challengers that a lack of footprints equals no human feet. The actions of the circle-making methods erases footprints anyway, the say. Also the entrants will not be told until thirty-six hours before the commencement of the experiment which field the Milk Hill replica crop circle will be made, except it probably will not be the same location; this adds to the lack of clarity in the Challenge's rules. The environmental conditions and other variables, like the kind of crop matrix the entrants will be working with, will affect the outcome and even the choice of tools the circle-makers will have to prepare. Also nobody knows exactly who the organizers of the Challenge are. Nobody can say for sure what "the EHA" is. Rumour has it that it's a codename for the actress Sarah Miles, and she is apparently the "representative" for them. Sarah Miles was once a major star in films like Ryan's Daughter in which she headed the cast along with Trevor Howard and John Mills, but today she is semi-retired and only takes part in minor TV and stage roles. She is very keen on natural health therapies and drinks a cup of her own urine once a day to prolong her life (Personally I'd consider departing this mortal coil a few years early as a fair price for not having to subject myself to that daily practice). Trystan has contacted them asking for more details, but found their spokesman somewhat "spikey". Swale, Anna and Russell conclude that the test is loaded and biased and intended to be unwinnable. Also a successful or unsuccessful outcome would prove nothing on its own about whether the 100% MMH was right or not.

I have to agree with Trystan, Anna and Andy's criticism of the Crop Circle Challenge 2013, including their irrelevant disparagement of its website design. However I think that the principle behind this notion is a good one and with a little adaptation could be made to work creatively and decisively. What the Challengers basically need is to learn a bit of professionalism. They need to sit down and work out some fairer and more comprehensive rules; and they need to negotiate with the 100% MMH community before even designing the experiment, let alone deciding the terms and conditions. They need to be more transparent; we need the names and addresses of everybody in "the EHA" and they need to be willing to talk to the media and answer enquiries politely and informatively. They need to get a proper team of lawyers involved to work with both the 100% MMH community and its critics; once they present a more competent outlook they may attract more investors to provide even more prize funding. My own suggestion, as a speculative outsider, is that perhaps a replica of a pervious formation is a bad idea and instead the Challenge referees and entrants could decide on a new design, sufficiently complex to satisfy those who believe in the supernatural origins of crop circles, but simple enough to be realistically achievable. Perhaps the experiment should be a two-stage process, with a simpler and cheaper preliminary test that the entrants would have to pass before progressing to the main Challenge. Recreating the environmental conditions is a fair point. The wet and windy weather that lashed down on Milk Hill on the 12th of August 2001 will be available for analysis in the records of the Met Office; and waiting for another wet and windy night during an English summertime is hardly a major obstacle! However if the entrants need to plan in advance where they'll be working and know what kind of tools to bring and what kind of clothes to wear etc, then the Challenge referees must allow them to know all that they need to know beforehand. It's worth comparing the Crop Circle Challenge 2013 literature with that of James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, see: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.htmlwhich may have inspired our cerealogical pundits to produce an antithesis to it (They are not alone in doing that, see: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/programme-18-podcast-ross-hemsworth.html). Whether you agree with Randi's views or not makes no difference to this point: There is no doubt that he knows exactly what he is doing and has worked meticulously for almost fifty years to assemble a proficient and unbreakable competition that is legally watertight and leaves no doubts on the part of any potential entrant. The organizers of the Crop Circle Challenge should not allow a difference of intellectual opinion to get in the way of learning how to do the job properly from the master.

My own views on crop circles have changed considerably over the years. As I said above, when they came back to my attention via Andy Thomas on the Esther show I was surprised and intrigued. For many years I thought that nearly all of them were supernatural and made by UFO's or aliens; and that only a handful of the simpler ones came off the planks and rollers of Doug and Dave. When I went to the Glastonbury Symposium in 2010 I met many people who still believe this, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/ben-goes-on-tor.html. Since then I've learned that most of them can be categorically accounted for by human activity. The actual ratio vacillates quite a bit depending whom you talk to when seeking help for your investigations, but there's no doubt that the man-made ones constitute a significant majority. Since then I have teetered on the brink of accepting the 100% MMH quite a number of times, but somehow just when I'm about to come out of the closet as a true blue "plankophile" some titbit of information comes my way to push me back into uncertainty again. This is why I'd very much like to see a proper experiment on this subject done. The Crop Circle Challenge people have given us a brilliant idea but failed miserably in their attempt to apply it practically. Also Trystan, Anna and Andy are correct when they say that the outcome of the Challenge alone would not necessarily solve the conundrum totally. In fact there would have to be a number of different experiments done before we'd be able to say for certain whether the mystery had finally been solved. Even then when the study is as complete as it can be, there will be the die-hard resistance fighters on both sides. If the Challenge is successful some will still claim that aliens are involved; and conversely if the circle-makers continuously fail to live up to their boasts then some Skeptics will still want to raise the bar further and further, unable to concede that there's more to this phenomenon than they've always insisted. Either way I don't think I will be joining the ranks of either militia. A correctly-conducted experiment wouldmake me decide, I promise. I'd like very much to see the Crop Circle Challenge done properly because, quite frankly, once I know for sure, I think I will enjoy the phenomenon more... And there are plenty more mysteries waiting in the wings to step out onto the stage to enthral me.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ben-emlyn-jones-on-mind-set-podcast-10.html

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