Earth-shaking experience for UFO watchers
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Sightings of aliens have been linked to
electrical fields caused by
quakes.
Jerome Burne
You are driving along an empty road late at night when several
large, disc-shaped lights suddenly fly in front of you. One stops and hovers
above the road. Your ignition cuts out and your curiosity turns to panic.
The glowing ball is on the ground in front of you now. Is that a figure
emerging..?
You are having a UFO experience which could mean:
a) you have actually been contacted by aliens;
b) you are having hallucinations, are stressed or schizophrenic, or it is
a false memory implanted later under hypnosis;
c) you have walked on to the set of a sci-fi B movie in the making.
But there is another possibility - you might simply be receiving advance
warning of an earthquake. This is the theory of
Michael Persinger, a professor
of psychology and neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario,
who is the subject of a television documentary tomorrow night [Ref:
Equinox : Identified
Flying Objects]. Mr Persinger's research project is odd and intriguing.
For 20 years he has been working on a theory that connects not only
UFOs and earthquakes, but also powerful
electromagnetic fields and an explanation of paranormal beliefs in terms
of unusual brain activity.
"Beneath the Earth's surface seethe massive geophysical forces," says Mr
Persinger. "Around the time of an earthquake particularly, the tremendous
seismic pressure on rock crystals produces powerful local electrical fields,
measuring several thousand volts per metre, more than enough to produce balls
or columns of light."
Depending on the culture, these can be interpreted as dragons, mystical visions
or flying saucers. In one study Mr Persinger found that 90 per cent of the
accounts of luminous events in the sky reported between 1820 and 1926 could
be linked to a rise in seismic activity at the same time. More recently,
noting the connection between large dams and a build-up of seismic strain
he has found a link between UFO reports and five major American dams.
An apparent epidemic of UFO reports in Manitoba, Canada, in 1975 was found
to have coincided with a severe earthquake in the area. An apparent rash
of UFOs in Missouri during 1973 and 1974 occurred at just the same time as
the only two recently recorded earthquakes in the region.
Two British researchers, Paul McCartney, a geochemist, and Paul Devereux,
writer, have found that Clev Hill in Wiltshire, long a favourite haunt of
UFO spotters lies, beside the only two fault lines in the area.
But these geomagnetic fields are not only producing balls of light, they
are also capable of having an effect on the brain. In a series of laboratory
studies Mr Persinger has found that electromagnetically stimulating two parts
of the brain involved with memory and meaning - the amygdala and the hippocampus
- can suddenly release a flood of images from the past that are automatically
imbued with a tremendous sense of reality and importance.
He has also found that stimulating another area, the
temporal lobes, can produce all sorts of mystical experiences,
out-of-the-body sensations and other apparently paranormal
phenomena. Susan Blackmore, a psychologist and presenter
of the television programme on Mr Persinger, has reported how she felt when
her temporal lobes were stimulated with a pulsed magnetic field of the same
intensity as that of a commercially available relaxation device.
"It felt for all the world as though two hands had grabbed my shoulders and
yanked me upright... I felt as though I had been stretched halfway up to
the ceiling. Then came the emotions, Totally out of the blue, but in tensely
and vividly, I suddenly felt angry. Later... I was terrified."
So not only can the electromagnetic field produced by tectonic strain produce
UFO-like luminous shapes but the subjective experiences of those having close
encounters begin to make sense too. Reports of blacking out as the "ship"
gets near and subsequent amnesia suggest an assault on the brain's electrical
system, which could also explain why car engines often fail.
Then there are sinister aliens and sexual experiments, "Temporal lobe stimulation
can evoke the feeling of a presence, disorientation, and
perceptual irregularities," says
Mr Persinger. "It can also activate images stored in the subject's memory,
including nightmares and monsters that are normally suppressed." Strong magnetic
fields affect the genitals,sensations which can be interpreted as "spacemen
did tests on my genitals".
Mr Persinger's theory also implies that UFO spotting could seriously damage
your health. "Exposure to intense magnetic fields has been associated with
an increase in cancers of the blood, brain and sexual organs and a rise in
depression, suicide and alcohol abuse," says Mr Persinger. He notes that
of three children who were closest to the famous lights, interpreted as a
vision of Virgin Mary, at Fatima
in Portugal in 1917, two died within three years, one from a solid lung
tumour.
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IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? Horizon presents an earth-bound explanation for UFOs and alien encounters UFOs exist? Do alien abductions really happen? Are convincing dramas, such as Close Encounters and BBC2's The XFiles really so far from the truth? In Monday's Horizon, British psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore investigates the appearance of "grey ghosts" among the Mung people of Laos and medieval accounts of fairy abductions and the visitations of "The Old Hag", a night terror that haunts the fishing communities of Newfoundland. But the answer, she believes, is to be found in the minds of modern abductees. |
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| "First of all, most of them are not mad and not
lying," says Dr Blackmore. "Something has happened to them. It has nothing
to do with aliens but a lot to do with brains.
There are several things going on here. One possibility is false memory,
another is sleep paralysis, when you are suddenly mentally awake but your
body is still in the dreaming stage of sleep and your muscles are immobilised.
"A far more compelling possibility is the misfiring of the temple lobes of
the brain. I hope that scientists will see that, even if there aren't aliens,
these experiences can tell us a lot about the human mind and we ought to
investigate them." The prospect of a consistent scientific explanation for UFO sightings and alien abductions deters Tony Dodd, director of investigations at UFO magazine, not a jot "I deal with dozens and dozens of cases of alien abductions. Apart from the physical marks on their bodies to back up their claims, there's a consistency of signs and symptoms in different abductees, no matter which part of the world they're in. "We know categorically that major governments have been aware of this alien abduction syndrome for many years now and have played it down because they don't want to panic the public. If my intelligence officers are right, the authorities are aware of at least 20 types of aliens visiting the earth for various reasons. We want to get to the bottom of these things and are fighting like hell to get governments to admit what's going on." Horizon Monday BBC2 |
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Doing it the alien wayDavid Langford reviews Ellen Datlow's Off Limits
Other stories in Datlow's collection are less easy to classify.
Scott Bradfield's fine, brief biography of a maddeningly self-destructive
woman ends in perplexity. Neil Gaiman offers a verse screenplay that eats
like acid at the porn-movie scenarios which it parodies. Simon Ings's idea
of female meme sabotage of laddish events like Formula Zero racing is fun,
but his writing is just too good for the first-person narration of his thick,
cyber-boosted champion driver. Gwyneth Jones presents role-players in virtual
reality, acting out characters from famous fantasy novels with anything-goes
escapism... subtly sabotaged by conflicting fantasies of power and control.
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THE dark interfaces of sex, disease, technology and things alien
still fascinate us: the history of science fiction is littered with
enthusiastically daring anthologies that grappled with the once-forbidden
subject of sex But in the permissive vacuum of space, surely there's nothing
for taboo-breakers to push against? Certainly, it's harder to be simply shocking.
TAKENAfter 50 years of ridicule,denial and cover up is the real truth about alien abductions about to be revealed?
ON A hot, sticky July afternoon in 1987 Jason Andrews is celebrating
his fourth birthday at his family's cottage near Slade Green in Kent when
the heavens open. As the thunder crashes all around, there is a single flash
of lightning. Suddenly; a stream of numbers starts pouring out of Jason's
mouth: fantastic numbers, complex mathematical equations, even algebra -
all from a boy who struggles to count to ten. Seconds later the windows and
doors begin to shake violently and the four-year-old announces to his mother,
father and elder brother: 'They're waiting for me. I have to go.' Jason's
father; Paul, grabs his son and stops him from walking out into the downpour,
but the boy struggles violently, and as he does so the house shakes to its
very foundations -until, finally, he seems to wake from a trance and the
shaking stops. It is the first sign that Jason Andrews is no ordinary little
boy and, in the eight years that follow, that is dramatically corfirmed.
'It wasn't until 1995, when he was almost 12, that Jason told his astonished
parents exactly what had been happening to him - aliens had been abducting
him from his bed at night. 'It's always the light that comes first,' he confessed
to his mother; Ann. 'Then I see the tall one rise up at the foot of the bed.
'Suddenly there's lots of little ones everywhere. They're fuzzy and indistinct,
and they move very fast. I can't move or speak, but I'm awake and I can see
and hear and feel. I want to scream and run, but the sound doesn't come out
and my body doesn't move. (See sleep paralysis - Sue Blackmore..and Horizon
JB9?) 'I hate them. I hate them,' the boy sobbed. 'I have to go with them.
'They take me to an operating theatre, like at the hospital. It's all white
and shiny. Sometimes it's a circular room with a metal floor. It's always
cold. 'They're there. The big one touches me but I don't feel it, like as
if I've had an anaesthetic.' Then he added poignantly: 'But you don't believe
me, you just think I'm making it all up.' In fact, Ann did believe him, and
went on to explore the phenomena affecting her son's life in a book, Abducted.
This decent, uncomplicated wife and mother came to the conclusion that we
may not be alone. Now, the rest of the world may be about to agree with her.
After five decades of ridicule, official denials and alleged cover-ups, the
possibility that aliens may have visited Earth is beginning to be taken seriously
- and not just by sci-fi fanatics and UFO freaks. Scientific researchers
are increasingly convinced that thin, grey-skinned beings about 4ft tall,
with large almond-shaped eyes set in an oval, hairless, head, may not only
have landed on earth, but have also abducted human beings for bizarre
experiments; while all the time there has been an official conspiracy to
keep their visits secret. Tonight American filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the
man who brought the world Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and ET will
bring those convictions - and aliens - to life in his new mini-series Taken,
on BBC2. A CUNNING mixture of fact, conjecture and fiction, based on the
latest research, it tells the story of how aliens affected the lives of three
American families over the past half-century. A massive hit in the U.S.,
where it was broadcast on consecutive nights last month, Spielberg's series
is the most expensive TV science faction drama ever made with a budget of
more than £25 million - it's certain to re-ignite public debate on this
forever-contentious subject. But surely all this talk of aliens is far-fetched?
As a natural sceptic, I've always believed so, but over the past weeks and
months of reviewing the evidence I've come to the conclusion that it does,
in fact, warrant the closest investigation. There certainly seems to have
been an official conspiracy to keep the facts secret. In the past few months,
for example, firm evidence about unexplained events connected with Unidentified
Flying Objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrial phenomena has begun to appear
for the first time as governments around the world have released previously
secret documents. And, for the first time, politicians have started to admit
that evidence on the possibility of extraterrestrial life has been concealed.
In October last year; for example, former White House Chief of Staff John
Podesta, who worked for President Clinton, called on the U.S. government
to de-classify 'records that are more than 25 years old' and 'to provide
scientists with data that will assist them in determining the real nature
of this phenomenon'. Only four years ago, former Prime Minister Baroness
Thatcher hinted to British UFO researcher Georgina Bruni that there was
considerable secret information on the subject, adding mysteriously: 'You
can't tell the people.' BRUNI was so struck by the remark that she used it
as the title for her 2001 book on alien sightings in Suffolk in 1980. Shortly
afterwards, former Tory Secretary of State for Defence Michael Portillo also
confided to her on the subject 'I know a lot, but I tell a little'. After
a campaign by Bruni and other researchers, the Government last month released
scores of secret files on UFO sightings in this country, all of which suggest
that aliens can no longer be dismissed merely as the product of fevered
imaginations. Certainly the majority of the public now seem to believe that
aliens do exist. As the editor of the British UFO magazine, Graham Birdsall,
points out: 'Sixty years ago, 90 per cent of the population thought the idea
was "absolute rubbish". 'Now every single opinion poll on the subject shows
that millions of people firmly believe in UFOs.' Last June, for example,
when it was announced that Bonnybridge in Scotland boasted more UFO sightings
than any other place in the world,a Sky News poll showed that 65% of its
viewers believed in UFOs. Five years earlier - in one of the biggest telephone
polls ever conducted on TV - 100,000 viewers phoned ITV to answer the question
'Have aliens already visited Earth?' and 92 per cent voted 'Yes'. 'There's
strong evidence to suggest that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial
intelligence,' insists Birdsall. And after my own research I am prepared
to admit that it is no longer possible to dismiss people such as Birdsall
as 'cranks'. Spielberg, whose film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
dramatically raised the issue of alien encounters for a global audience,
is certainly convinced they've happened. Fascinated by the possibility from
childhood, he's devoted part of his life to discovering the truth and has
become an authority on the subject as a result. But there is a striking
difference between Spielberg's approach in his TV series Taken and the one
he took two decades ago in ET. This time the aliens he is depicting are not
trying to phone home -they're here to subvert, and ultimately control, the
human race. And the new TV series, his first since the award-winning Band
Of Brothers, is not only about the arrival of aliens, it's also about 'alien
abductions'. 'I thought I couldn't do justice to this genre in a two-hour
movie,' Spielberg explains. 'We would need a lot more time to do the history
of alien abduction,starting back In 1947, right through to today. Watching
the first episodes, it's clear that Spielberg has done everything in his
power to create a fictional series on the edge of fact. This is no sci-fi
comic book, no Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, but a compelling and all too
plausible - drama. British UFO expert Mike Soper, of Contact International,
is as convinced as Spielberg that alien abductions have happened. THE TELLING
fact is that there are features common to all the people's stories,' he
maintains. 'They all remember being taken to a craft, and often talk about
being "examined". 'Many talk about something being "implanted" in their bodies,
and when they return they often have triangular marks on their bodies and
aren't wearing exactly the same clothes were before the abduction'. Ministry
of Defence civil servant Nick Pope, 37, agrees. 'Abductions most definitely
do occur;' he says. 'And although the phrase "alien abductions" is a gift
to those people who want to deride it, these are genuine, ordinary people
who believe that they have been in extraordinary situations.' Pope isn't
a man with an anorak and a slightly weird look in his eye. He is a down-to-earth
civil servant who had no interest in aliens at all until 1991, where the
MoD. asked him investigate reports of UFOs, allen abductions and other strange
phenomena. 'The 100 or so people I interviewed about being abducted by aliens
weren't publicity seekers merely after their 15 minutes of fame,' he explains.
'I came to the conclusion that some of these people had to be telling the
truth. And if just one of the abductees' reports is true, the implications
for the human race would be profound and disturbing.' One person who helped
to convince Pope was 37-year-old British-born make-up artist Bridget Grant,
whom he met seven years ago. She addressed an audience of 750 people at the
British UFO conference in Leeds In 2001, where she talked about her own
abduction. She explained that in February 1993, when she was living in Los
Angeles, she was driving with a friend in the Brentwood area at 5.50pm one
bright; sunny day when she drew up at a set of traffic lights. 'I suddenly
saw this silver tip out of the corner of my eye,' she explained. 'Then I
saw that it was a solid silver craft, with a red-orange colour underneath
it, about 35-45ft in diameter. It came right above the car and I leaned towards
the steering wheel and looked up.' The craft 'flew really, really low' over
her head, she said, and away to the west. Her friend Jane, sitting in the
passenger seat, saw it, too. Grant was so disturbed by the experience that
in September 1998 she went to see the American UFO researcher Budd Hopkins,
of the Intruders Foundation in New York, to undergo four sessions of 'regressive
hypnosis'. She wanted his help to remember the exact details of what happened
on that afternoon in 1993 because she thought she had forgotten something.
It appeared that she had. For when this pale young woman, with shoulder-length
dark hair, addressed the Leeds audience she told them she'd not just seen
the spacecraft but had been abducted by it, even though she thought she was
in her car the entire time. 'There is often a time shift element in the stories
of abduction, where the individual doesn't realise that time has passed,'
explains Nick Pope. 'My hands were gripping the steering wheel,' Grant explained
to the conference. 'But then I felt a pressure, like my body was being sucked.
It felt like all the atoms of my body were going through the steering wheel.
'Then I saw this being. I was fascinated by its appearance - it was transparent,
had white hair and was carrying a baby.' Hard though it may be for some to
believe, and Grant is reluctant to discuss the events further; there is no
doubt that the artists' impression of the being which she said she saw looks
uncannily like many of the other descriptions of aliens that have surfaced
in recent years. However; as sceptics point out, there have been so many
depictions of 'space creatures' with dome heads and large oval eyes that
it is hardly surprising that this has become something of a stereotype. When
Spielberg was researching the aliens for Close Encounters, he held lengthy
consultations with the veteran American astronomer Dr J Allen Hynek a once-fierce
critic of UFOs and alien phenomena who changed his mind completely after
he became a consultant on the subject for the United States Air Force. Hynek
assembled the authoritative American dossier on alien encounters, Project
Blue Book, and advised Spielberg what aliens looked like. But the idea that
little grey -rather than green - men, with elongated fingers, legs and neck,
may actually have visited this country still sounds incredibly far-fetched
- until you talk to Georgina Bruni. 'When I interviewed Lady Thatcher a few
years ago,' Bruni explains, 'I was describing to her the fact that U.S. military
personnel here in Britain had reportedly had contact with aliens, and an
alien spacecraft, in Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk in December 1980. 'I expected
her to tell me that I'd been watching too many episodes of the X Files. But
she didn't look shocked at all: She just sald, twice: "You can't tell the
people."' WITH Bruni's encouragement, in the wake of this conversation Lord
Hill-Norton, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, tabled l6 Parliamentary
questions m the House of Lords as a result of which the Government released
more than 20 previously secret files concerning UFOs arid aliens. One of
the files revealed that the Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill wanted the
matter investigated in 1952. He sent a memo to his scientific adviser, Sir
Henry Tizard, asking What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount
to? What can it mean? What it is the truth? After several months Tizard reported
that all the sightings were "explicable by natural events" although shortly
afterwards the Government explicitly banned RAF personnel from discussing
sightings with anyone not from the military. The U.S. Government had adopted
a similar policy of official secrecy five years earlier; in the wake of a
spate of incidents near the U.S. Air Force base at Roswell New Mexico, in
July 1947 - incidents that Spielberg uses as him starting point for his TV
series. And so the modern history of UFOs, aliens - and official cover-ups
was born. British UFO researcher Jenny Randles, who has spent more than 20
years investigating UFO and alien phenomena,maintains that in more recent
times alien kidnapping has become much more common. 'An ever growing tide
of people suspect that they may be alien abductees,' she says. So is it fact
or fiction? I'm not certain, but the evidence of witnesses such as Jason
Andrews and Bridget Grant is hard to ignore.And it's clear that as the 21st
century begins, opinions are changing. The Government announced recently
that it was 'open minded' about the 'existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial
life forms' -a markedly different official position from the one taken half
a century ago. Perhaps the politicians are beginning to accept that we are
not alone. Steven Spielberg certainly does. |
Avon-calling UFOs
BY JOHN HIGGINSON
![Is it a bird?
People outside a pub in Stratford-upon-Avon look to the sky [Picture:Caters]](graphics/ufo/AVON.gif)
MORE than 100 people had a close encounter of the X-Files kind
when they saw five unexplained flying objects hovering over a town centre.
Dozens of people spilled out of a pub to watch the spectacle - with one likening
it to the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day. The UFOs lit up
the otherwise clear night's sky above William Shakespeare's birthplace of
Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. Tom Hawkes, 30, took pictures from outside
the One Elm pub. He said: 'Three had formed a triangular shape and one was
to the right. Then another one came hurtling towards the rest at what looked
like a very fast speed. 'But as it neared them it suddenly slowed and stopped
altogether. 'The objects were there for about half an hour. It was very eerie
because they didn't make any sound and they stayed still before moving slowly
beyond the horizon. It was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen and
the way in which everyone gathered in the street to watch them reminded me
of a scene from Independence Day.' Chef Kern Griffiths, 26, said: 'I saw
five lights. We all thought they were hot-air balloons at first because the
glowing spheres looked like a burst of flames. But I couldn't see any outline
of the balloon itself and they were travelling far too fast. They were unlike
any aircraft I've seen.' Military chiefs and airports denied responsibility
for the lights, which appeared on Saturday.[Metro 25/7/07]
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