Excerpt from Chapter-17 of Ash: Return Of The Beast

Excerpt from Chapter-17 of Ash: Return Of The Beast

“Harok uzni hadahs. Harok uzni hadahs. Harok uzni hadahs! Lalartu, sixth Offspring of the Old Ones! Blood demon! Dweller amongst the undead! Come! Thou who dost slay mothers at the moment of birth! Come! Carry me to the sixth of nine and light the path for my return! Then we shall be as One! Harok uzni hadahs!”

The sixth candle began shaking, vibrating furiously. The flame flared beyond its natural capacity, filling the room with a blinding light. Cowl's body went limp as the intense brilliance subsided.

At that moment, Cowl's virtual double – enshrouded in a hooded robe – materialized in the restroom at the concert hall where Pastor St. Martin was in the process of unzipping his pleated black trousers.

Deep in thought about the protest he was about to lead against the Death-Metal band, Mega Therion – that abomination and corruptor of innocent youth – the preacher was about to relieve his straining bladder when his attention was suddenly drawn to an unexpected reflection in the mirror before him. He froze, staring at the dark hooded figure standing not five feet behind him. A crackling sound came from above. St. Martin looked up. The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling were flickering like strobe lights. A moment later the room went dark.

St. Martin panicked. He spun around, his piss spattering onto the green tiled floor. One fluorescent tube in the corner flickered and came on, barely illuminating the darkness with a dim, bluish glow. “Jesus!” he said, fumbling awkwardly at his zipper.

“Not exactly,” the Hooded Figure replied from the shadows. The haunting voice came from deep within the folds of the large drooping hood. “But you would do well to pray.” The Hooded Figure then took one step forward from the shadows into the gloomy half-light.

The preacher jerked back with a sharp gasp. He searched for a face somewhere in the dark void of the hood but he could only catch a tiny glint of light reflecting off the whites of the eyes. What is this? He believed in demons but… No… this must be some kind of a joke. A sick joke.

The Hooded Figure took another step forward, then stopped.

The preacher sucked in another gasp and shuffled backward until he was pressed up against the hard, cold porcelain urinal.

The Hooded Figure lolled its head to one side, then the other, casually studying the pathetic excuse for a man who was shaking like a timid mouse trapped in a corner.

The mouse swallowed hard, his eyes darting this way and that, wanting to run but unable to move. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The Hooded Figure advanced another step but stopped as its foot made a splat in the puddle on the floor. It looked down and shook its head. “Tsk-tsk. What have you done? You're a very bad little boy.”

“I--I'm--”

“Now who's going to clean that up?”

“I… I don't--”

“You don't know? Then I shall tell you.” The Hooded Figure's fatherly tone was gentle but firm. “You. You're going to clean this up.”

“Wh--what?” The preacher's lower lip was quivering.

“You're going to do exactly as I say. Now get down on the floor.”

“Don't hurt me. Please!”

The Hooded Figure raised an arm as if to strike the man. “The floor, goddamit! Now!”

St. Martin dropped to his knees, trembling. Without looking up, he muttered, nearly sobbing. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

“Not on your knees, you fucking imbecile. Down! On your stomach!”

St. Martin slowly lowered himself face down into the stench of his own urine.

The Hooded Figure nodded approvingly. “Very good. Now squirm around like the worm you are until you've sopped up every last drop of your filthy mess.”

The preacher's will to resist was overpowered by a force beyond his comprehension. Whimpering like a helpless child, he found himself squirming and writhing around in his own liquid waste until his clothes were soaked.

“Get up.”

St. Martin struggled to his feet, his legs quivering, his hands and face glistening wet, his clothes damp and wrinkled. He stunk of piss. The unpleasant odor wafted up into his nostrils. A chunk of vomit lodged in his throat. He gagged it down. It came up again. He swallowed. It burned his throat. His eyes welled up.

The Hooded Figure nodded. “That's much better, yes.”

 “I--I don't understand.” The preacher's voice was wavering and weak.  “What do you want from me?”

“Silence would be good.”

Silence? Somehow a moment of clarity had found its way into St. Martin's state of confusion and fear, offering a glimmer of hope. There must be other people in the building! He summoned what little will power he had left and acted on his flash of inspiration. “Let me go or I'll yell for help. I swear to God, I will.”

“Well, that would just ruin everything. But, if you insist, then by all means, please. Be my guest.”

The preacher was surprised by the response but wasn't about to waste another moment. He opened his mouth to yell but nothing came out. He tried again, every muscle in his throat straining, arteries bulging, his face contorting into hideous shapes. Again and again and still nothing. Finally, breathless, confused, shaking with fear, he sank to his knees and wept, pleading to God for this nightmare to end.

The Hooded Figure looked down at its victim and spoke in a measured, sympathetic tone. “I know. But it's almost over. Now get up and come toward me.”

The preacher's mouth moved as he tried to speak. Toward you? Again, no sound, but he could hear his own words clearly inside his own head.

“You heard me,” the Hooded Figure said. “Come here.”

The preacher then realized his thoughts were somehow being perceived by the hooded creature. The realization frightened him to the point of near madness. He was no longer alone in the sanctuary of his own mind. That frail barrier had been breached. The intruder was inside.

St. Martin's head dropped to his chest and he obeyed the command. He prayed as he moved against his own will toward the hooded figure. Our Father…

The Hooded Figure recited the prayer along with the preacher. “…who art in Heaven…”

The preacher struggled to hear his own inner voice over that of the monster. …deliver us from evil… But with those words he realized the futility of the effort. He left the prayer floating in limbo.

“What's the matter?” the Hooded Figure said. Forget the words?”

St. Martin's head lifted slowly as if it had become a tremendous weight. His eyes were empty.

“Too bad.” The Hooded Figure's voice was contemplative, almost compassionate. “It's a nice prayer, actually.” Then his tone switched abruptly. “But, no matter. We've got a couple more things to get done here. So let's get on with it, shall we? Come closer.”

St. Martin moved another step closer and waited – for what, he could not fathom. He didn't even try. He was an empty, distorted reflection of the once dynamic man who had, for years, passionately served the very God that had now, for some inscrutable reason, abandoned him to the will of this monster.

 “Now,” the Hooded Figure said, “I'm going to heal you.”

Heal--?

“C'mon. You know. The laying on of hands?” It raised an arm and extended a hand out of the dark sleeve toward the preacher's face. “Close your eyes. This might hurt a little.”

St. Martin's eyes suddenly clamped shut in spite of his straining to keep them open and the creature began to chant.

“Kah-hahdin azahn. Dinjah Dinjasa. Kah-hahdin azahn. Dinjah Dinjasa!”

The very sound of the strange words caused St. Martin to recoil in horror. God in heaven! Help me!

The Hooded Figure carried on, oblivious to the preacher's torment. “Hear me, O Lucifer! Son of the morning! Approve this invocation with the seal of my Master!” The Hooded Figure pressed its hand against the preacher's forehead and pushed hard. “Thy will be done! Aum. Ha!”

St. Martin's eyes flew open, bulging from their sockets. A searing pain ripped through his skull and burned like a hot poker under his rippling skin. He knew his screams, his desperate wailing cries for help, were heard by no one but himself, inside his own head. Paralyzed by the will of the monster, he was helpless to do anything but endure the torture. How many times during his ministry had he told people they were destined for Hell and now Hell had come to him.

The hooded figure withdrew its hand and stepped back.

St. Martin collapsed to the floor, a quivering heap of a shattered soul. Crowley's rendition of the Lucifer Seal was now seared into the flesh of his forehead.

The Hooded Figure nodded approvingly and knelt beside the preacher. “I told you it might hurt a little.” The tone was mockingly sympathetic. “Now just relax. I'm going to prepare you for something special.”

The preacher's eyes pleaded for mercy.

“I know, I know. But we're just getting to the good part. You'll like this. Trust me.” The Hooded Figure slowly unbuttoned the preacher's shirt, spread it open, rolled the undershirt up to the man's chin and gazed upon the smooth canvas of naked flesh. “Ahhhh, yes. Very, very nice.”

The preacher struggled against the psychic straightjacket this monster had strapped around him. It was no use. His inability to move of his own will was pushing him ever further toward the edge of madness. He tried again to catch a glimpse of his tormentor's face but looking into the darkness of the cavernous hood was like staring into the proverbial valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil…

“Ah, yes,” the Hooded Figure said. “The ol' twenty-third Psalm. Very good. How's it workin' for ya? You know, my dear mother used to read that to me at night, just after making me recite something about 'if I should die before I wake'. I slept real good with that going through my mind. Do you make your kids say that one? I bet you do. I bet you fucking make your kids say that one.”

A pitiful noise gurgled up from St. Martin's throat.

 “Yeah, that's what I figured.”

The restroom door suddenly rattled.

The preacher's eyes lit up. Someone was trying to open it. I knew there had to be someone else here! Help! Please!

The door rattled again.

Once more the preacher's silent pleas echoed inside his own head. Help! Please, help me!

The rattling stopped. “Damn it!” came a frustrated voice from beyond the door. The curse was followed by the barely audible sound of fading footsteps. The preacher's last glimmer of hope was walking away.

“Oh, come on. You didn't really think I'd let just anybody walk in here, did you? This is our time, just you and me. Now, be a good little boy and close your eyes. No peeking.”

Once again, St. Martin's eyelids fluttered uncontrollably as they struggled to resist the power that was drawing them closed. Dear God, this isn't happening! Tears squeezed out from behind his clamped eyelids. Don't let… Oh, Jesus… What is that?

• • •


Want more? Here ya go.... 
http://www.garyvaltenuta.blogspot.com/p/sit-back-grab-some-popcorn-and-enjoy.html

The Indie Book Promo - ain't gonna do it no mo'- welcome to my pity party - somebody shoot me boogie blues

Altogether now... ready? A one, a two...

You blurb all day
You blurb all night
Blurb, blurb, blurb
Til the early mornin' light.
Hopin' your book
Is the one they'll choose.
And when the sales don't come
You feel like a bum.
You got the Indie Book Promo
Ain't gonna do it no mo'
Welcome to my pity party
Somebody shoot me boogie blues.

The Indie Book Promo Blues
Yeah, it's the Indie Book Promo Blues.
Your precious time you fritter
On Facebook and Twitter
Tryin' hard to spread the news.
Then when no one bites
You turn out the lights
And cry the Indie Book Promo
Ain't gonna do it no mo'
Welcome to my pity party
Somebody shoot me boogie blues.

The reason why there are a million (well, okay, only a little over half a million on amazon) "How To" books on the subject of book marketing is because that's what every indie author wants to know. How to? Probably everything you read about the subject in those books is good advice, to some degree or another. Unfortunately, most of it isn't likely to result in a whole lot of sales. Why?

I suspect it probably has something to do with the fact that the market is now saturated to the hilt with books by indie authors. In a single year (2009 to 2010) nearly 3 million indie paperbacks were published (according to an estimate by Bowker's "Books In Print"). That breaks down to about 625,000 books a month! And that's just paperbacks! The number of ebooks published would likely double that amount. And it hasn't slowed down. If anything, the number of independently published books (paperback and ebook) published per year continues to increase.

That being the case, it's almost pointless to spend time promoting your book to a general population of readers. One of the best pieces of advice is to identify a specific target population, people who would be most likely to buy your book if they knew it existed.

 You can find a lot of online sites, forums, groups and book clubs that are dedicated to a specific genre (for example, "Fantasy"). That's great. The only problem, for an author, is that it seems most of such groups are not particularly author friendly. That is, they either flat out don't allow authors to promote their books on the group pages or, if they do allow it, they'll have it set up so that promotions are only allowed in a specific "author promotion" section on the group site. A lot of the groups at goodreads.com are set up like that. That seems like a good idea, right? I mean, I can see the reasoning. If they allowed promos on the discussion pages, we pesky indie authors would invade in droves of Biblical proportion like a plague of locusts. Thing is, it seems most of the group members who aren't authors, (and that's usually the majority) never (or hardly ever) bother to check out the book promotion section. Why? Because most of them still seem to be under the impression that if you self-published your book, it's probably not worth reading. Anyway, the result is that the only people who visit that section are other authors whose primary reason for going to that section isn't to find new books to read. No, they're only there to post a promo blurb for their own book.

Authors promoting to other authors.

That's become the case all over the internet. There are a ton of book-related Facebook groups where authors are encouraged to promote their books but, again, it's just hundreds of authors promoting to other authors whose primary reason for being there isn't to find a good book to read. They're only on that page (for a minute or two) to promote their own book. People who actually want to find a new book to read rarely (if ever) go to one of those Facebook pages.

Of course authors are readers, too. And once in a blue moon, another author will see your promo blurb on Facebook or Twitter and they'll click the link and buy the book. It's rare, but it does happen. I belong to over a dozen book-related Facebook groups and I do post promos at least 2 or 3 times a week on all of those group pages but, honestly, I don't think it does much good. So why do I do it? I guess because at least I feel like I'm doing something!

What about purchasing ad space, like on goodreads.com or Facebook? Some people do get a few sales from those ads. I've tried both but they didn't seem to result in any sales.

What about Twitter? Seems like every author now has a Twitter account. But do promo tweets result in sales? Maybe, once in a while, but the problem with Twitter is that there's no way to know if a sale was the result of having tweeted a promo blurb. There's no way to track that. I use Twitter quite a bit but, to tell you the truth, I think it's probably more of a waste of time than it is an effective sales tool. Again, I think I do it only because it's there and it makes me feel like I'm doing something rather than doing nothing at all.

What about giveaways? I tried the Kindle 5-day free download thing. At the end of the 5 days, nearly 500 copies of my novel (Ash: Return Of The Beast) had been downloaded. I have no idea how many of those 500 people actually read the book after they downloaded it but none of them bothered to post a review on amazon. Getting reviews is really the primary reason for giving the book away in the first place. The more reviews your book has on amazon, the more likely it might attract other readers.

Some people have had better luck with the giveaways but, from what I've heard (from other authors who have tried it), it's not all that effective. Some authors have argued, saying, "Well, at least now my book is being read by hundreds of people!" Well, maybe. What they don't seem to realize is that there are 10s of thousands of people out there who are practically addicted to scarfing up as many free ebooks as possible just because they can. They'll probably never get around to actually reading most of them.

What about personal blogs? I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to blogging. This blog has only been in existence for a few weeks and it's had only a little over 500 page views. All I know, at this point, is that those 500+ page views haven't yet translated into a single book sale. But, like I said, I'm still new at this and looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Another suggestion you'll often find in those "How To" books is to "engage in conversations with readers without necessarily promoting your book". The idea is that sooner or later, as people get to know you, they'll want to know more about your books and that will result in sales. Been there, done that (still doing it) and it's not all that effective. Nothing wrong with engaging in online conversations with people who love books but the bottom line is you'll end up investing a LOT of time for very little (if any) actual return in terms of book sales.

So what's an author to do? That's what we ALL want to know. The best advice I can offer is to just do what you can (all of the above) with the realization that it's probably not going to result in a lot of sales. And while you're doing those various promo activities, keep on writing! Get another book out there. Or a series of short stories or novellas. The more books you have available, the better the odds of getting sales. If you have one book available, you might only get 2 sales in a month. But if you have two books available, and two of each are purchased, you've collected royalties on four sales that month, and so on. It takes time for the sales numbers to build up. But as your sales numbers increase (along with the number of reviews), so does the ranking of your books in amazon's system. The higher the ranking the more visible your book will be for people using key words to search for specific kinds of books on amazon.

Of course there's always the possibility that your book contains that undefinable magical "something" that excites the first few readers so much that they tell all their friends they just have to read it, and then it becomes an over-night cultural phenomenon, in which case a big publisher will offer you a ton of money for the rights and you'll no longer have to suffer the Indie Book Promo - ain't gonna do it no mo' - welcome to my pity party - somebody shoot me boogie blues.

CHANNELING: Real or Fake? An Alternative Explanation

I’ve been intrigued for years by the phenomenon known as channeling. I first became aware of this activity back in the 1970s with the publication of The Seth Material by Jane Roberts. The next popular channeler to hit the scene was J.Z. Knight, channeling the entity named Ramtha. Then came Lee Carroll’s Kryon. Soon there was Sheldon Nidle and the Galactic Federation of Light, Barbara Marciniac with the Pleiadians and Phyllis Schlemmer’s Council of Nine. Many more have followed in their wake, perhaps numbering in the hundreds just in America alone, although most of them are not as well known.

I’ve attended four channeling sessions, by four different channelers, out of curiosity. What intrigued me about all of them, and about all channelers in general, is that it’s virtually impossible to know if they’re really channeling or if they’re faking it. Any rational person would tend to think even those who are not consciously faking it are in any case probably victims of some sort of dissociative personality disorder, or some kind of temporary psychological break from reality during which time they experience audio hallucinations. So I decided to see if any serious research had been done on this phenomenon by qualified behavioral scientists. To my surprise I found there has been some work done in this area of research.

I won’t bother to go into the details of that research now. Much of it has been summarized here:

http://bit.ly/9Bw5TB

The bottom line is that a number of explanations have been proposed from the results of the research. All of the explanations, of course, are based on the psychological and psychiatric data accumulated over the past hundred years or so. On the other hand, some of the research is based on more current science such as quantum mechanics. For example, the work of renowned theoretical physicist, David Bohm, is mentioned in the material on the page linked above. His idea of the “implicate and explicate” order, or realms of reality, was never really intended to explain the phenomenon of channeling.

 Nevertheless, it does provide a basis for such an explanation that gets beyond the more conventional explanations derived from psychology and psychiatry. In fact, Bohm's idea (based in quantum physics) of how reality is structured (and there are several others in the field of quantum mechanics who tend to agree with his hypotheses) eventually boils down to something very similar to the explanations of channeling that are provided by the channeled entities themselves. In simplified terms, it often goes something like this:

There is but One Source and we (along with the channeled entities themselves) are all part of that One Source. Therefore, there is always a natural channel of communication available between us, them (the channeled entities) and the One Source. But it occurred to me that there just might be yet another explanation for the channeling phenomenon. Let’s call it the Simulated Reality Hypothesis or SRH.

Sometime back in the 1980s my son told me that the video game arcade, where he liked to hang out, was going to be the first in the country to acquire a holographic video game. Instead of the characters in the game being displayed on a computer screen they would be displayed, in 3-Dimensional form, on a flat surface that you could view from every angle, 360 degrees around the platform.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be an unsubstantiated rumor and never came to pass. But it did spark a vision in my mind:

I suddenly envisioned the earth as a platform (metaphorically speaking) and that we humans are merely holographic projections moving around on that platform. Not only are we moving around but (and this was a little disturbing) perhaps we are being controlled to some degree by “someone” or some “thing”, in some other dimension. In other words, this invisible entity (or group of entities) is playing an incredibly sophisticated, high-tech, holographic computer game and we are the characters in a simulated reality.

By some “coincidence”, just a week or so after having this intuitive flash, I was introduced to a book called The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav. To my amazement, Zukav was talking about very similar ideas derived from the science of quantum physics. Then, just a couple weeks later, I was in a book store and just happened to stumble onto a book called The Holographic Universe by science writer, Michael Talbot. This book is basically an overview of some of the ideas of some of the world’s leading thinkers and researchers in the field of quantum physics. Among them is the aforementioned physicist, David Bohm. As I read through this book I became more and more convinced that this idea that we are living in a simulated reality just might be the truth of the matter.

Since then, of course, we’ve all been introduced to that idea through three incredible movies: The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and Dark City. Maybe there’s more to the fundamental idea behind these movies than most people are willing to consider. More to the point, maybe this idea also provides an explanation for the phenomenon we call “channeling”.

Dr. Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford, has written a fascinating paper entitled “Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?”. It’s available online:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

In the introduction Bostrom writes:

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.

The paper is well written and Bostrom does a terrific job of presenting a convincing case for the idea that we are, indeed, living in a simulated reality generated by an extremely powerful computer system. So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume he’s right.

If that’s the case, then perhaps the messages that channelers are receiving are being transmitted from the program that is running the simulation and/or from the entities (advanced humans or otherwise) that are controlling the program. Perhaps these transmissions are simply scripted material devised as part of an experiment, a research project designed to see what effect the “messages” will have on the channeler (the primary subject who is directly receiving the messages) as well as on the rest of the people who, in turn, receive the message from the channeler.

Or worse yet, what if it’s nothing that “scientific”? What if it’s just some random entity (or group of entities) in some other dimension, sitting around playing a computer game for no purpose other than their personal amusement?

On the one hand, it seems like a bizarre idea. On the other hand, if you think about it, you might agree with me that it’s no more bizarre than the notion that the channelers are receiving their messages from Light Beings, Angels, Aliens, Spirit Guides, Galactic Federations, the Council of Nine and an assortment of Ascended Masters.

What do you think?
*********************

The Thirteenth Floor, movie trailer:
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Dark City, Part 1 of 10:
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The Mystery of the MAJESTIC-12 Documents

There exists a controversial set of purported Top Secret documents pertaining to the Government's involvement in the UFO phenomenon. The documents are known as the Majestic-12 documents. This is an article I wrote for Fate Magazine (1999) on the subject.

While this article was first published in 1999 the information it contains is a matter of historical record, still valid today, and provides a good introduction to the Majestic-12 controversy for those who may wish to pursue their own investigation of the subject.

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

THE “NEW” MJ-12 DOCUMENTS:


Smoking Gun or Tool Of Disinformation?


By Gary Val Tenuta




"OPERATION MAJESTIC-12 is a TOP SECRET Research and Development/Intelligence operation responsible directly and only to the President of the United States. Operations of the project are carried out under control of the Majestic-12 (Majic-12) Group which was established by special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September, 1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary James Forrestal." 

--  from page 1 of the MJ-12 report known as the Eisenhower Briefing document.

    Majestic-12 was established for the expressed purpose of investigating the crash of an extraterrestrial craft near the town of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Or so the story goes.

But did such an organization really exist? There is new evidence in the form of a set of documents which has many people believing it did. Yet, as would be expected with such controversial material, opinion remains divided. The story of the MJ-12 documents is now a two part saga, the first part having had its debut in 1984. For readers not familiar with this first part, the very short version goes as follows:



    In 1984, a TV producer by the name of Jaime Shandera quite unexpectedly received a mysterious package in his mailbox. The package had no return address. Inside was a role of 35mm film which, when developed, revealed what appeared to be an official briefing document prepared for then president-elect Dwight  D. Eisenhower.

It was stamped "TOP SECRET/MAJIC -- EYES ONLY". The briefing officer was listed as one Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter (MJ-1). Hillenkoetter was in fact the first director of the newly established CIA. The "MJ-1" is apparently a reference to his position on the panel of 12 men all of whom have been identified as real persons, both military and civilian, and who were alive at the time these documents were ostensibly dated. For the complete story, readers might want to locate a copy of Stanton Friedman's book, Top Secret/Majic which presents a detailed investigation and analysis of those documents.

As our current story unfolds, however, elements of the first case will be mentioned as there are documents common to each case. The discovery of the second set of documents and how they eventually came to public attention is a story involving a number of people. Let's begin then with a fellow by the name of Timothy Cooper.


    Cooper, a resident of California, was a self described "hardened skeptic" prior to his unexpected involvement in this series of events. In a recent interview with radio talk show host, Art Bell, Cooper said,

"I used to chide and laugh at people concerning UFO sightings and flying saucers".

It happened, however, that he had relatives who were military people and over a period of time, during casual conversations, they mentioned the Roswell incident and indicated that something unusual did occur near Roswell in July of 1947. This piqued Cooper's curiosity, especially since he had an interest in military history, so he began to research the story.



    Little by little, over a couple of years, he began to see some common threads linking the various versions of the Roswell story. He made personal contact with various military officers and acquired information from them which led him to believe there was truly a hot story here. He then began filing FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) requests for anything he might be able to get his hands on regarding not just the familiar Roswell incident but also other similar incidents which he had been told occurred in and around the same location within roughly the same time period. Soon, however, he acquired more than he bargained for.



    Suddenly, much to his surprise, he began receiving - in his post office box - what appeared to be genuine Top Secret military documents all relating to the now legendary Majestic-12 group.

Cooper had never requested these documents. Nevertheless, they kept coming, a few at a time, over a period of about four months. On a couple of occasions the documents were accompanied by  letters from a man who signed himself, Thomas Cantwheel. It was Cantwheel who was somehow getting these documents into Cooper's locked post office box.


  
Eventually, in 1995, Cooper had his first and, to date, his only face-to-face meeting with the mysterious Mr. Cantwheel who, Cooper surmised, must have been nearly 90 years old. Cantwheel enters the scene like a mysterious character right out of a good spy novel. According to Cooper, Cantwheel claimed to have been involved in army counter intelligence for nearly 50 years, beginning around 1942.



    In an exclusive email interview for this article, Cooper told me,

"He claimed to have been a double agent for the FBI and CIA while assigned to West Germany in the 50's. [He] was one of the original members of the Army's Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, CIC, created by General Marshall in 1942 until 1958. [He] had knowledge of [the] JFK assassination and of [the] Oswald/CIA connection.


    "He told me via letter that I was the only researcher who was looking into the White Sands connection and had my phone tapped and my mail intercepted. I'm convinced of this because he revealed personal items about me that no one could have known and the fact that I did receive FOIA documents from Army G-2 and the NSA as he promised (Stan can verify).


    "I think he chose me because my information was close to the facts surrounding the 1947 UFO incidents in New Mexico and saw an opportunity to exploit what he knew. When I met him on July 16, 1995, he said he was sick and dying and wanted to get a lot of things off his conscience. I think he said that the time was coming when the UFO mystery would be exposed and that this and other information should be given to the public and possibly, the  intelligence community would have to release more, sooner or later (Stan and myself did receive Army CIC flying saucer files and NSA UFO files shortly after)".


  
Eventually Cooper contacted Stanton Friedman and mailed copies of the documents to him. Friedman is a UFO researcher with an impressive background of over fourteen years working under security as a nuclear physicist. He is perhaps best known for his extensive research into, and analysis of, the first set of MJ-12 documents which surfaced in 1984.


  
Upon receiving these "new" documents, Friedman immediately recognized at least one of these, known as the Eisenhower Briefing document. It was a duplicate of the one which came to Jaime Shandera in 1984; the same one Friedman had subsequently subjected to intensive investigation and analysis. It is interesting, at this point, to note the similar manner in which both sets of documents were initially obtained. They each simply appeared mysteriously in the mailboxes of completely unsuspecting recipients.

[An interesting side note here (especially in light of the fact that some researchers think these documents might be part of a disinformation project) is that, according to Friedman and Berliner in their book "Crash At Corona" (p.46), when Shandera received the role of film he was already working with another UFO researcher by the name of Bill Moore. Moore tarnished his own reputation as a UFO researcher when he later admitted to having once participated in a government intelligence disinformation project.]



    So once again Friedman found himself in the midst of the MJ-12 mystery and spent the next two years investigating these papers (apparently approaching nearly 200 pages) in an effort to verify their authenticity. The effort was fruitful but extremely time consuming. In time he decided to more or less turn the project over to his friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Wood and Wood’s son, Ryan. Both are residents of California.

Dr. Robert Wood

Ryan Wood

    Dr. Robert Wood is a retired physicist who worked for McDonnell-Douglas and served as an advisor to NASA in conjunction with the space station project. His son, Ryan, has degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the California Polytechnical Institute. When they received the documents from Friedman they were intrigued and excited by the role they would now fill as the primary investigators of what could be one of the most important discoveries in history. It was now up to them to pull together the resources and people who could help them determine the authenticity of these papers. So they proceeded diligently, quietly, behind the scenes for several years in an all out pursuit of the truth.


    Recently, the Woods came into contact with a young multi-millionaire entrepreneur named Joseph Firmage.

Joseph Firmage

Firmage has his own interests in the UFO phenomenon and persuaded the Woods to go public with these documents by posting them on the internet. And so, in late November of 1998, the documents appeared on Firmage’s web site. Shortly thereafter, the world was made aware of these documents when Michael Lindemann, editor of the respected CNI News online bulletin, broke the story on Jeff Rense’s highly touted, nationally broadcast, Sightings On The Radio. Immediately, the UFO community was a-buzz with excitement as the news spread like wild fire across the internet. Within a couple of weeks, the Woods appeared on Art Bell’s Coast-To-Coast radio program for an interview.


    In that interview Dr. Wood said the authenticity of the documents “depends on four or five different things”. He went on to list items such as the signatures of the various signers of the documents, the font of the typewriters used to produce the documents, characteristics of the paper they were written on, the chronology of the events described in the documents, and other such details. Regarding the signatures, he says many of them have been compared to other known signatures by these same men. Dr. Wood believes, from his comparative analysis, that the signatures are indeed authentic. Apparently, however, as of this writing, these signatures have yet to be analyzed by qualified handwriting experts.


    Dr. Wood found a number of things which point to the authenticity of at least some of the documents. He cited, for example, one of the documents known as the Einstein/Openheimer letter. He said the size of the paper is smaller in length and width than standard letter size paper and is consistent with a move by the government during WWII as part of a policy to save money on paper production. Dr. Wood's son, Ryan, also had an intriguing bit of information lending to the authenticity of the documents.


    Ryan Wood points to the fact that the documents contain many pieces of information that would be difficult for a hoaxer to come up with. He cites, for example, the document called the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Report. This report states:

"As to the bodies recovered at LZ-2 [an MJ-12 code referring to a site near Socorro and the White Sands Missile Range -- GVT], it appeared that none of the five crew members survived entry into the atmosphere due to unknown causes".

    The document goes on to say that an autopsy was conducted on “one well preserved cadaver” by someone named Major Charles Rea. In the ongoing effort to verify the identities of the many names which appear throughout the MJ-12 documents, Ryan had a difficult time locating any record of a Major Charles Rea.

A thorough check of the government document section of the Stanford Library turned up nothing. He continued to search, however, and finally found Major Charles Rea listed in some literature on medical specialists. In the process of preparing this article Friedman told me Major Rea was a very prominent Physician-surgeon and head of medical services for the Manhattan Project covering Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. Rea was, according to Friedman, "a  likely candidate indeed for autopsying an alien body because of both his medical skills and his high security clearance". However, Friedman adds, "I have never seen his name mentioned in connection with anything no less UFOs though, as a nuclear physicist working on classified programs,  I have been at Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Los Alamos". Ryan Wood implied that the difficulty he incurred in his effort to dig up information on Major Rea was typical of what he and his father, as well as Stanton Friedman, have encountered in their attempts to verify many of the personnel names and other bits of information found in these documents.


  
Also cited was page-6 of the document known as the Intelligence Assessment. This document identifies John F. Kennedy as having been assigned to the department of Naval Intelligence as an officer during the war. It also says "some of the recovery operation" was made known to him. The fact that Kennedy served as an officer under Naval Intelligence is not widely known. This is just one more indication that these documents are either what they purport to be or, if fake, the perpetrator must have had deep access to military files including intelligence data.


  
It is precisely this sort of thing that leads Robert and Ryan Wood to believe it would be extremely difficult for someone to have simply fabricated these documents. And as Stanton Friedman has pointed out, after all these years no one has come forward to chide us and say, "Ha ha, it was me! I got you all!"


  
Another example is the document known as the White Hot Intelligence Estimate. As in other portions of the MJ-12 documents, there is information here that corresponds with similar information found in entirely, and otherwise unrelated, sources. Even if some of this information is readily found in other sources, that doesn’t necessarily mean a hoaxer borrowed it from one source and inserted it into another. In fact, just the opposite might be the case. Such duplication of similar information from divergent sources could be seen as corroborating evidence of the factual nature of the information.


     
The White Hot Intelligence Estimate is dated 24 September, 1947. It mentions navigation controls, the operation of which, could be linked to artifacts described and speculated on by the late Colonel Philip J. Corso in his book The Day After Roswell (Pocket Books, 1997). The MJ-12 report describes navigation and engine controls “...activated by tactile manipulation of the fingers, feeding impulses to the brain and vice versa”. Colonel Corso, in his book, described what he called “headbands” which were on the dead alien bodies found at the crash site. On page 109 of his book he calls these items “sensorized headbands” and suggested these devices somehow picked up brainwave activity, virtually translating thought into electronic “system commands” used to control the operation and navigation of the craft.


  
It is interesting to note that the White Hot Intelligence Estimate is dated 24 September, 1947. This date is just one day after the dating of a report mentioned in Corso’s book. That report, dated 23 September, 1947 was from General Twining to Brigadier General George Schulgen.

This is the famous report, probably acquired through a FOIA request, in which Twining, referring to what he called “flying disks”, states unequivocally:

“The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious”.



    This “new” set of MJ-12 documents is not without it’s drawbacks, however. Among other things, such as questionable dates, there are a number of misspelled words. However, the item which has caused considerable controversy is found in the document called Majestic Twelve Project First Annual Report. The report is dated 1952. Within the text of this document is the word “retro-virus”. The question is, did this medical term exist in 1952? At the time of this writing, Ryan Wood, after an intensive search of the literature in the Stanford University medical library, has yet to come up with anything to show this term in use during the time the document is alleged to have been authored.


 
 Reportedly, according to Michael Lindemann, there is mention of a nonhyphenated version of the word in the medical literature after the mid 1970s. Lindemann points out, however, and others including Stanton Friedman agree, that even if some of these documents are not purely authentic it does not necessarily follow that the whole batch is bogus. In fact what could be the case is that this entire set of documents is "real" in quite another way. They could be an authentic tool of government disinformation. It is well known that a tactic of disinformation, in the professional sense, is to purposely mix and mingle hard, factual, verifiable data with completely bogus pieces of information. Now, if these documents are, in fact, a product of disinformation, who produced them, and why? Here enters a man by the name of Steven Schwartz, reportedly an acknowledged expert on Soviet era disinformation and a man with connections to the CIA and an alleged association with the Hoover Institution which studied Soviet disinformation tactics during the Cold War period.


  
According to information received by Lindemann, Schwartz has expressed a strong conviction that this latest set of MJ-12 documents is a product of the Soviet disinformation regime of the Cold War era. Reportedly, Schwartz claims that the Soviets occasionally used the UFO phenomenon in disinformation projects. To date, Schwartz has not elaborated publicly on his assertions regarding this intriguing scenario. However, if his contentions are indeed correct we could surmise at least a couple of things:

(1) the Soviets had spies situated deep within the U.S. intelligence network, which probably is not surprising and

(2) these documents were in fact created some 45 years ago.
   This second item is much more important than the first because it would nail down the age of these documents, thus eliminating the possibility that they were concocted just within the past couple of years as part of some elaborate hoax. It would tell us something else also. It would strongly support the idea that not only was our government aware of the UFO phenomenon as something real but it must also have considered it to be of significant importance; significant enough that the Soviets, realizing the level of U.S. concern about UFOs, would spend the considerable time, effort, and money to concoct an elaborate and sophisticated scheme of disinformation centered entirely around the UFO scenario. Just how this would be used effectively for Soviet purposes, I don’t know, and Schwartz has yet to explain his ideas in a public forum.


  
So where does that leave us? Are these documents the smoking gun we've been waiting for? Are they part of some sophisticated disinformation scheme cooked up over 40 years ago? Perhaps Mr. Lindemann summed it up best, by saying,

"In the end, the real dilemma regarding the new MJ-12 documents, as with any evidence of UFOs that appears to be tainted by errors, may be that they are more likely to help preserve the UFO cover-up than threaten it. Such is the intent of disinformation -- and history may one day show that no subject ever attracted more intense and expert disinformation than the subject of UFOs. This does not mean, of course, that all of the MJ-12 documents are necessarily fraudulent. Indeed, some may be entirely authentic. But the writing is already on the wall: the controversy will continue unabated. There is no resolution in sight".

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

NOTES:

Ten years after my article appeared in FATE Magazine, Timothy Cooper allegedly disavowed his belief that the MJ-12 were authentic and claims he was foolish to have become so involved in the controversy. http://rense.com/general85/m12.htm
The question is, did he genuinely make this retraction of his belief or was it just a way to distance himself from a controversy that became too burdensome to deal with?

For anyone interested in seeing good, full-size images of many of the MJ-12 documents, click here: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_mj12_33.htm

Then & Now… When did "hip" replace "hep"? And were there "rap" lyrics in the 1940s?

When did "hip" replace "hep"? And were there "rap" lyrics in the 1940s?

Let's start with the first question. What led me to write about this today was a comment an email friend wrote about his mother who was born in 1921. He commented that she was pretty hep. I realized he was using that old slang term because it was in use during her era. But it made me wonder just when and how the term "hip" replaced "hep". Would that be a hep replacement? (Sorry. Bad joke.)

When I was a kid back in the late 50s, I remember reading about the "beatniks", especially those involved in the jazz scene. They were known as "hep cats". I can even remember using the word "hep", myself, to mean something or someone was really "cool". Of course just using the word made me cool, too. (chuckle) But when did it change? And who changed it?

It's not really possible to know for certain who first used the word "hip", much less who first used the older word "hep". But, during my search for an answer, I stumbled across some information about a Caucasian jazz pianist in the 1940s by the name of Harry Raab. He grew up in the predominantly Black communities of Harlem. He became known as "The White Negro". (Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gibson).

Gibson claimed to have coined the term "hipster" sometime between 1939 and 1945 while he was performing on Swing Street. That's also when he gave himself the stage name of Harry "The Hipster" Gibson.

To say Harry was a wild man, is not an exaggeration. Some of you are old enough to remember the wild performances of rock-n-roll legend, Jerry Lee Lewis, in the late 50s and early 60s. If you haven't been around that long, see the video below. You'll see why I posted this video in a moment.


Now take a look at this clip of Harry "The Hipster" Gibson. Looks to me like Jerry Lee must have been heavily influenced by ol' Harry.



Harry had a pretty good little career going as a live performer for a while but then he wrote and recorded a song called Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? and he was suddenly blacklisted by the music industry. I'm guessing this lyric in the song may have had something to do with that:

She drank a cup every night
And ooh, how she would dream.
Until somethin' rough got in the stuff
And made her nipples scream.

Here's Harry performing that song:



Regarding these lyrics:

She drank a cup every night
And ooh, how she would dream.
Until somethin' rough got in the stuff
And made her nipples scream.

It occurred to me that the last line may actually be:

"And made her nipples cream."

Without seeing the lyrics in written form, there's no way to know because, when spoken (or sung), they both sound the same and maybe even makes more sense. In any case, it still retains its humor…. albeit in a crude sort of way. Not unusual at all, considering the raw lyrics of a lot of (now obscure) blues songs of the 20s and 30s. But, let's get back to the "Hep" vs. "Hip" conundrum and the question about whether or not "Rap" music existed in the 1940s.

Well, turns out Harry wrote a song called It Ain't Hep and, although I couldn't find a recording of the song, I did find the lyrics. If these lyrics don't read like rap lyrics (allowing for the era in which they were written), I don't know what does. Check it out:

Hey you know there's a lot of talk going around about this hip and hep jive. Lots of people are going around saying "hip." Lots of squares are coming out with "hep." Well the hipster is here to inform you what the jive is all about.

The jive is hip, don't say hep
That's a slip of the lip, let me give you a tip
Don't you ever say hep it ain't hip, NO IT AIN'T
It ain't hip to be loud and wrong
Just because you're feeling strong
You try too hard to make a hit
And every time you do you tip your mitt
It ain't hip to blow your top
The only thing you say is mop, mop, mop
Keep cool fool, like a fish in the pool
That's the golden rule at the Hipster school
You find yourself talking too much
Then you know you're off the track
That's the stuff you got to watch
Everybody wants to get into the act
It ain't hip to think you're "in there"
Just because of the zooty suit you wear
You can laugh and shout but you better watch out
Cause you don't know what it's all about, man
Man you ain't hip if you don't get hip to this hip and hep jive
Now get it now, look out
Man get hip with the hipster, YEAH! Got to do it!
be hip not hep, coz hep is not hip
so just be hip and pray you dont slip!

And finally, just for fun, check out this old black & white clip of Harry "The Hipster" Gibson in a movie called Keep The Beat where he's teaching a high school class about "the beat". Pretty funny. Seems silly now but was undoubtedly considered outrageously "cool" at the time. You'll get a kick out of this:


So, there ya go. Now you're hip to the hep.

Synchronicity! What is it? Have you ever experienced it?

While there is some academic debate over just what distinguishes "synchronicity" from "coincidence" I would suggest there is no difference of kind in this matter. I think it's more likely a difference of degree. Rather than a dichotomy it's a continuum; something like a thermometer that measures one thing, degrees of temperature. The temperature is either hotter or colder. Our hypothetical "thermometer" might read COINCIDENCE on the low end and SYNCHRONICITY at the high end. What determines where an event might fall along this continuum would depend on at least two things:
 
(1) the degree of perceived meaningfulness of the event and
(2) the odds against the event even happening in the first place.
You're welcome to twist or tweak that analogy any way you like or dismiss it altogether but it works for me. Having said that, however, I'm not sure which of those two factors carries more weight; the "perceived meaningfulness" factor or the "odds" factor. The reason I say that is because of some events I've experienced personally which, because of the high "odds factor",  I felt were more than just coincidence but, on the other hand, the "perceived meaningfulness factor" was pretty low. Unless I was just too dense to pick up on their deeper meaning! Let me show you what I mean. The following are actual experiences I've had with this phenomenon.
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THE BOOK, THE BUCK, AND THE BIC


    It was the summer of 1975 and I had just spent several peaceful days at a cabin in the Methow Valley on the eastern side of Washington state. I had also just finished reading a book called INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE by author and psychic researcher Alan Vaughan. The book is a collection of truly incredible coincidences in people's lives. The last part of the book is a discussion of the concept of synchronicity. The author informs us that after reading the book, the reader may very well experience some rather remarkable coincidences, simply from having been made aware of the fact that such things do happen.

    All too soon it was time for me to make the four hour trip back to my home in Seattle; a trip I had taken countless times. I had gone about two miles down the North Cascades Highway with the sun shining and the thick forests lining the roadside when I noticed I was speeding along at about 70 miles per hour. This was not unusual. What was unusual was that I suddenly thought to myself, “I really should slow down. A deer could run out in front of me”. In all of the many times I had driven that stretch of highway I had never seen a deer on the road and I had never even thought about it before. But no sooner had the thought crossed my mind, as I rounded the bend, sure enough a deer came running out onto the road in front of me. Fortunately I was slowing down and was able to avoid running into it. Okay, that was pretty cool but there was more to come.

    After about an hour's drive I came to a favorite spot where a river runs along the highway. There is a nice little roadside park at that point so I decided to pull over and enjoy the view for a few minutes. I got out of the car and went to light up a cigarette but noticed that I had left my lighter back at the cabin and the lighter in the car didn't work. Then I noticed a campfire smouldering about 50 feet away from where I stood. I thought I could light my cigarette from the hot coals so I began to walk over there. As I approached, I noticed there was some camping gear and other personal items around the fire, including a woman's purse. The campers were down at the river and saw me walking toward their campsite. I decided rather than arouse their suspicion and disturb their activity I would just turn around and walk back to my car. About halfway to my car I looked down and noticed the sun gleaming on something that was mostly hidden under a small bush. I bent down to see what it was. I reached out and picked it up. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a brand new Bic lighter.

______________________________________________________________
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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AISLE

    I was standing at the magazine rack in a local department store, looking through a book of Time-Life photographs. As I flipped through the pages there was one photo that especially interested me. I looked at it for a minute and continued on through the pages to the end of the book. Then I wanted to take one more look at that particular photo but I couldn't remember what page it was on. I also forgot the title of the photo but I thought if I looked through the index I might recognize the title when I saw it. I turned to the index and, starting at the top, I ran my finger down the list of titles. When I saw the title I was looking for I ran my finger across the column to see the page number. At the exact instant, the precise moment that my eyes saw the page number, 128, a child, in the adjoining aisle, separated by a six-foot tall shelving partition, said in a loud voice, “One twenty eight!” I just blinked my eyes and shook my head and thought to myself, “Wow. That was weird.”

    Apparently, he and another child were arguing about something and “one twenty eight” had something to do with their own private conversation.  I had been so involved in the book that I hadn't even really been aware of their presence until his voice echoed what my eyes were seeing. It was like being awakened out of a dream. When you think about it, the odds against that happening, at that exact instant, must be astronomical.

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

SYNCHRONICITY? SHOW ME A SIGN!

    One day while browsing through a copy of Reader's Digest, I read a humorous little anecdote about a road sign someone had seen at the entrance to a small bridge. It read:

 “IF THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS BRIDGE IS IMPASSABLE”.

    The next day I happened to stop at a small new-and-used book store which I had never seen before in an area of the city I seldom visit. I spied a small cardboard box full of old books on a table and decided to have a look. The first book I pulled out (published nearly twenty years ago, by the way!) was called Funny Road Signs. On the cover was a cartoon illustration of the same sign I had just read about in Reader's Digest twenty four hours earlier!

    Before reading the anecdote in Reader's Digest, I had never heard about that silly road sign. Then, BAM! I get hit with it twice in less than twenty four hours. What are the odds of that happening? It was totally weird and I'll probably never run across anything about that road sign again. Or will I?
_______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

THE COP WHO WASN'T THERE

    Now, this one is really strange. I was driving down the road one Saturday morning on my way to Lynnwood, a  neighboring Seattle suburb. As I was driving, I was listening to the news on the car radio. The newscaster was relating a late breaking story about a robbery which had taken place at a convenience store located on a corner in Lynnwood. The robber had fired a gun at a police car and the bullet shattered the driver's side windshield. The policeman was not injured.

    By now I had just entered into the Lynnwood area and as I was listening to the news story, I glanced out my window and noticed a policeman standing in the small parking lot of a 7-11 store on the corner. I noticed there was no police car in the parking lot and that seemed odd; just a cop standing there without a car.

    Traffic was moderately heavy and moving slowly. As I drove past the store, the cop appeared to be staring directly at me. It was strange. Only at that moment did it occur to me that this must be the store in the news story that I was listening to at that very moment. Wow, I thought, what a coincidence!

Then about two blocks further down the road I passed a police car parked on the side of the road in front of a row of small shops. A couple of these shops are auto repair businesses and one was an auto glass repair shop. Well ok, I thought. That explains why the cop at the store had no car. This was his car at the auto glass shop. The news report said the window had been shot out.

It was weird to be seeing the elements of this story appearing before me as they were being told to me by the newscaster. But I had to know for sure if this was all what it seemed to be. I decided to check it out. I would go back to the 7-11 store and ask the cop if this was the store in the news story and if he was the cop whose window was shot out and was that his car up the street at the auto glass shop?

    I turned the car around and was back at the 7-11 store in less than five minutes. Four minutes, tops. But when I got there the cop was gone. I went inside and asked the clerk if this was the store that had just been robbed and where the cop car had its window shot out. She had no idea what I was talking about! I asked her about the cop who was standing in her parking lot a few minutes ago.  "What cop?" she said. "There wasn't any cop out there."

    Like I said, this was a strange one. I just figured I must have passed through the Twilight Zone.

MY CLOSE ENCOUNTER with the BLACK TRIANGLE UFO

Since early in the 1980s there have been hundreds of sightings of huge triangular-shaped UFOs around the world. Their size, shape, and flight characteristics do not match any known conventional or experimental aircraft. I'm one of the lucky few who have seen one.

 The following is a true and accurate account of my “close encounter” in Seattle, Washington in 1993. I believe it was in the month of November. It was a Sunday night about 9:30. I often had occasion to be driving north about that time of evening on Sundays and I usually took the I-5 freeway.

This time, however, I knew the freeway, northbound, was jammed up due to an accident. So I took an alternate route which eventually led me to what I think was East Marginal Way, right next to the main Boeing Aircraft facility in Seattle.

As I was traveling, northbound, I noticed three red lights low in the sky ahead of me and to my right. They were moving in unison, very slowly across my field of vision from east to west. At first I thought they must be the lights of a low flying plane, perhaps about to land. Then I thought, no, they must be helicopters because a plane, even if it was landing, wouldn't be moving that slowly. The trouble was, I couldn't actually see the craft or crafts that the lights were attached to. They were, maybe, a half mile ahead of me, about 30 degrees to my right.

Normally, I wouldn't have paid much attention to this because I'd been making that Sunday night drive past Boeing (although via the freeway) for twelve years. This is also not too far from the Sea-Tac Airport. In all that time I'd seen plenty of airplanes and helicopters flying low in this area. But something was different this time. It took me a minute to realize what it was.

It was the fact that the lights weren't blinking. I thought that was odd. It seemed to me every airplane or helicopter I've ever seen flying at night had blinking lights. I squinted my eyes as I drove toward the lights, trying to see just what I was actually looking at. Although I was now only about two blocks away from being directly under the flight path of these lights, I still could not make out what they were attached to. However, from their slow, steady movement, in unison, I was pretty sure all three of them were attached to a single object rather than being independent of each other.

By the time I was directly in line with their flight path, they were about to enter the airspace above Boeing Field to my immediate left. At this point I was convinced it was a single, low-flying craft of some kind and I knew there was something very odd here.

I pulled my car off to the side of the road and rolled down the window to get a better look. But the craft was now directly overhead so I had to get out of the car to see it. I opened the car door and stepped out. Craning my neck to see the craft as it passed slowly directly over my head at an estimated altitude of less than 500 feet (Note: at the actual time of the sighting my impression was that the craft was perhaps only about 150 feet above me) I could see it was a gigantic black triangle.

There is no other way to describe it because that's precisely what it was; a huge, black, triangle; not just "sort of" triangular shaped, like one of those stealth jets I'd seen photos of. It was just one big, three-sided, cookie-cutter-straight-edged, black, geometric shape; a triangle with one large, round unblinking red light at each of its three corners, flat up against the underside of the craft.

There was a high, gray cloud cover that evening, subtly lit by the Seattle city lights in the distance. I could clearly and unobstructedly see the object like a huge, dense black silhouette against this gray ceiling. I stood there almost not believing what I knew I was seeing. I actually said to myself, “Ok. What, exactly, are you seeing? You're going to want to remember every detail of this! Just the facts, now. What, exactly, do you see?” I made a mental inventory:

• Black triangle.
• Red light on each corner, flat up against the underside of the craft.
• They don't blink. (Note: at this point it has proceeded on past me and was now over Boeing field)
• It looks like it's about seventy-five to a hundred feet above one of the main Boeing hangars.
• It's moving very slowly. Maybe five miles per hour.
• It's heading west.
• It appears to be about the size of a football field.”

Suddenly I realized, as I stood there in the dark on this quiet empty street, the object didn't make a sound! Maybe more than anything else, that's what made the whole thing so eerie. Something that huge, that close, moving through the air at a snail's pace should be making some kind of a sound. A hum. A rumble. Anything. But, no. It just moved across the sky like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie with the volume turned off.

I looked up and down the street to see if anyone else was witnessing this silent event, but the street was dark and empty in both directions. It occurred to me, however, that the thing had just passed directly over hundreds of cars on the freeway which was only a few miles east of where I was standing.

I looked up again at the mysterious craft now blending into the dark horizon. I watched it until I couldn't see it anymore and then it was over. I got back into my car and closed the door. The window was still open and I took another look. Nothing was there but the gray night sky, softly aglow from the distant city lights. It was as if nothing had happened. But believe me, it did, indeed, happen.

••• Addendum: The weekend following my sighting, I told my ex-wife about it. We're on good terms and I was either picking up my son for a weekend visit or returning him. I can't recall which. In any case, her response to what I told her was rather shocking but it may be significant to note that she has no interest in the UFO phenomenon and is not prone to making up such stories "off the cuff".

She was working as a cocktail waitress and often had conversations with many people during the course of her work. She told me that one of her customers, a Boeing employee, told her that there was an underground manufacturing facility located somewhere on the Boeing property where they were building a huge, triangular craft. Supposedly this was a "secret" underground facility that no one was really supposed to know about.

I asked her what else he told her but, having no real interest in such things and being very busy that evening, she didn't bother to ask any questions or in any way follow up on the conversation. As I recall, she didn't know who this fellow was as he was apparently not one of the "regulars".

I don't know if his story has any merit or not but I did find it very curious, especially coming from her, and especially since I did see the craft cruise slowly, directly over the Boeing manufacturing plant.

Also of interest is the fact that Boeing made big news in 2002 when a story hit the press that they were experimenting with anti-gravity propulsion. Later, however, they denied it. I recall, however, that some researcher (I think it may have been Bill Hamilton) claimed he'd actually seen a 45-page document from Boeing pertaining to the anti-gravity research.

It occurred to me at the time of the sighting that the craft seemed much too big to be able to cruise that slowly without just falling to the ground. In fact it's more accurately descriptive to say it was "floating" rather than flying.

In any case, as stated previously, my ex-wife not only has no interest in such matters, she's also not one to come up with such imaginative tales on the spur of the moment. She was quite serious when she related this incident to me.

So just what did I see? Was it an alien craft? A secret military craft? I don't know. We'll just have to file it into the "Gray Basket" as UFO researcher, Stanton Friedman, is fond of saying.

Additional note of interest: My affidavit attesting to the details of my sighting accompanied about 30 others which were offered into evidence in attorney Peter Gersten's lawsuit against the U. S. Department of Defense in the 1990s. It was an FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) suit attempting to acquire any documents the DoD might have in their files related to this particular type of UFO. Gersten presented a favorable argument and the judge ordered the DoD to search for and present any such documents. Of course the DoD claimed they had nothing and eventually the judge went along with the government on this one. Gersten was instrumental in forcing the government to release hundreds of UFO documents in the late 1970s/early 1980s - files the NSA and FBI previously claimed didn't exist.