Strange Interdimensional Portals in the Sky

A common theme in science fiction is that of the portal through space, time, alternate dimensions, or all three. These strange doorways open up into realms unknown, providing a passage to the outer fringes of our reality and our understanding. Yet, by some accounts these openings through space and time are not merely the domain of science fiction, but actually do exist. One place where such outlandish portals seem to materialize quite often is up in the sky above our heads, and here in the heavens above we can find all manner of reports and even photographic evidence of what appears to be something straight out of a science fiction story.

Among the types of portals said to have opened up in the sky are those that seem to be undeniably linked to the UFO phenomenon, with these mysterious craft apparently utilizing these doorways for their own inscrutable purposes. One very interesting report of what is claimed to some sort of alien portal in the sky occurred in May of 2015, when an amateur nature photographer snapped a pic of something very strange in the skies over the province of Groningen in the Netherlands during a storm. As he was taking pictures of the ominous dark clouds gathering above he claims that he saw a bright flash in the sky, which he managed to capture on film, yet when the photo was developed it was found to show what appeared to be some sort of doorway up in the sky emitting vapor or disgorging something else. Is this just a camera trick? What is it?

An image of the strange portal

The following year, on October 1, 2016, a very unusual aerial phenomenon was observed over Bridge City, Texas. According to UFO investigation investigators SecureTeam 10, on this evening at around 11PM a point of white light appeared in the sky, which then steadily formed a streak across the sky, growing larger and brighter, as well as taking on an orange hue. Witnesses reported that it eventually took the form of a bright orange slit in the sky, which seemed to pulse in cycles, and looked like “some sort of portal.” One witness was able to catch footage of the strange sight on a cell phone, which you can see here.

The weird brightening and dimming portal reportedly stayed stationary for around 10 minutes before fading away to leave witnesses baffled. According to the reports, during this time numerous cars at nearby Port Arthur purportedly inexplicably died on the road, their engines stalling for no apparent reason, and SecureTeam 10’s Tyler Glockner claims that hundreds of motorists were effected by this anomaly, their cars stopping dead in their tracks while still in motion and in some cases causing them to careen right off the road. Many of the witnesses also reported hearing a high-pitched whine spew forth from their radios before the cars and all electrical equipment ceased to function, and it has been speculated this was all caused by some sort of electromagnetic pulse connected to the strange object in the sky. Glockner would say of the odd incident:

Now that seems to me like an EMP (electromagnetic) wave, something like that. Something was knocking out power systems along this area very close to where the mysterious streak of light was sighted.

Was this caused by a UFO utilizing some sort of ultra-dimensional portal or is there some rational explanation? Also in 2016 was a video that heavily made the rounds that was originally posted on You Tube by a user called “Myserio Canal.” In the footage can be seen some odd clouds that begin to swirl about to form some kind of vortex in the sky, and just when it seems things can’t get any odder a bright streak of light flies straight at the portal and enters it, much to the shock of those observing it. Shortly after this UFO speeds into this mass of rotating clouds the whole thing vanishes as if it was never there at all. The video, entitled Dimensional portal in the sky absorbs a UFO, was heavily viewed and discussed and debated. While there are those who truly embrace it as genuine, it has been widely denounced by many as a hoax, and it does not help that there is no time or location for the footage given. Alien portal or hot air? You can see it here and decide for yourself.

Yet another YouTube video purportedly showing a UFO using a mysterious portal has proven to be just as controversial and was released in 2018 by channel “MRMB333.” The footage was apparently taken in the skies of Alabama during an eerie looking storm, by a witness known simply as “Nicholas.” The video shows what looks like some kind of anomalous glow flickering in the clouds as a UFO hovers nearby. The video quickly racked up over 100,000 views and stirred up plenty of debate as to what it could be, with many suggesting it was an inter-dimensional portal that may have even caused the storm, and with of course many also crying “Fake!” Real or not, it certainly is a spooky sight either way. You can see it here.

A still from the Alabama portal footage

In 2018 another video came forward, this time from the country of Scotland. In this case there can be seen a bright circular blue light hovering in the sky over Midlothian, located near Edinburgh, which looks very much like a portal of some type. An unidentified object can then be seen passing very close to this “portal” before it blinks out of existence. Again, this video became a viral sensation at the time, and has been speculated as being everything from an inter-dimensional portal, to just a spotlight or the moon behind the clouds. What do you think it is? There are countless other very similar videos out there, and it all makes one wonder just what is going on.

Besides inter-dimensional portals apparently created by extraterrestrial intelligences, there are also plenty of reports of such doorways conjured up by secret government projects right here on Earth. By far the most notorious of these come from that wellspring of conspiracy theories, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), operated by The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. The largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the LHC is located 300 feet underground directly below the the CERN Control Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, and is comprised of a vast loop stretching 27 kilometers (about 17 miles).

This loop is more or less used to hurl subatomic particles at extreme speeds in order to smash them into each other to test what will happen for the purpose of unlocking some of the secrets of our universe, including recreating the conditions of the Big Bang, to find out how our universe was create, and find dark matter, among others. Perhaps one of the most famous discoveries linked to the various experiments at the LHC was the observation of Higgs Boson particles, which give matter mass and up until then had been purely theoretical. In addition to the official explanation of this facility, there are many, many conspiracy theories about what “really goes on down there.”

The Large Hadron Collider

Indeed, the very presence of such a large scientific facility located deep underground, its innately somewhat scary-sounding premise of smashing particles together at the speed of light, and its being manned by scientists working on strange experiments down in the subterranean darkness, have all perhaps not surprisingly at all given the location a somewhat ominous reputation, causing quite a bit of concern among the public and spawning all sorts of wild theories about what is really going on there. In additions to alarm and fears that the LHC will create miniature black holes or undo reality itself are various ideas and rumors that CERN is up to all kinds of top-secret experiments and no goodery down there in the bowels of the earth. One of the more popular conspiracy theories is that the facility is actively engaged in opening rifts between dimensions in order to enable teleportation, form doorways to alternate realities, and facilitate travel through time and space.

Evidence for this sort of inter-dimensional activity is often offered in the form of the various strange things that have allegedly been photographed or filmed in the skies over CERN over the years, including UFOS, strange vortices, and other unexplained aerial phenomena. For instance, in December of 2015 footage was taken by some tourists of what seems to be an orb of some sort entering what appears to be some kind of portal or vortex, which vanishes as soon as the unidentified object enters it. Another similar video from May of 2016 supposedly shows some sort of portal in the clouds that appeared right after the power went out at CERN, an incident they claimed was caused by a weasel getting into some of the sensitive machinery.

Strange vortex over CERN

It is interesting to note that a lot of the anomalous events that have purportedly occurred at CERN seem to coincide with blackouts, such as an alleged ripple that was sent out from the facility in 2009 that purportedly disrupted the Earth’s magnetic field and distorted space and time, also right at the time of a blackout at the facility. A report from Russia claimed that this very same “time wave” had instantaneously teleported an Airbus on its way to Bolivia thousands of miles away to the Canary Islands, along with its 170 passengers. This time the blackout was blamed on a piece of bread that had fallen into the device after being dropped by a bird. One would hope that such an advanced scientific facility deep underground would be able to keep out all of the weasels, birds and bread that’ve seemingly been jamming their equipment.

One of the more recent such series of photographic oddness came in the wake of another ambitious project undertaken in recent years by CERN, which itself has already drawn a fair amount of conspiracy theories. The project is what CERN calls the Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment, or AWAKE, which has the aim of accelerating super-charged particles by way of “plasma wakefields driven by a proton beam.” It is not necessary to really understand what all of that means, only that it sounds rather ominous, scary even, and this may be why it has been singled out as one of the experiments focused on opening portals between worlds.

On June 24, 2016, photographs of alarming, portal-shaped cloud formations were taken in the skies above CERN not long after the AWAKE project was off the ground and on the same day that an experiment was scheduled. The story was big news at the time, and in a video on the phenomenon entitled What Portal did CERN open now?, the narrator says of the strange sight:

This insane ball of energy was directly over the LHC. Some people reported seeing faces in it. It is amazing they keep messing with nature and denying it. What is in the cloud – some say it is lightning or a massive ball of energy. The amount of energy pulling from nature into the collider itself, you can actually see it. What portals are doors being opened in this cloud? Is it a coincidence they had just started the Awake experiment?

Photograph from the June, 2016 event taken by witness Dean Gill

While photographs and videos such as these could have a rational explanation in known phenomena or even be cleverly crafted CGI hoaxes, there are a fairly large number of people who insist that these are the result of CERN experiments pursuing the opening of inter-dimensional doorways. It is unclear whether the LHC is being used to open these portals, intentionally or otherwise, or not, but it does seem certain that conspiracy theories and fears will continue to swirl around it as long as it is in operation.

Here we have looked at just a selection of weird portals that seem to have opened up in the heavens for reasons that remain unknown and perhaps always will be. Are these hoaxes, misidentifications, or little understood natural phenomena in action? Or could it be that rifts in space and time have actually been created. If so, then where they lead or what purpose they serve no one really knows, but whether real or not, accounts such as we will look at here truly stir up the imagination for some time to come.

from Mysteriousuniverse

Discoveries at Texas Archaeology Site Push Back Early Human Arrivals in North America

The Gault site, located just outside of Austin, Texas, has been known to archaeologists for the better part of the last century. Discovered by Henry Gault, a landowner who worked as an archaeological informant in the early 1900s, the site was officially excavated for a period beginning in 1929, under the supervision of J.E. Pearce with the University of Texas. It was reportedly looted a number of times over the ensuing years, prior to new ownership of the property that led official test excavations that began in 1991. By the end of the decade, formal excavations that would continue well into the new millennium were underway.

Over the course of several dig seasons in recent years, Gault has become recognized by archaeologists as a site of particular significance, due to the number of complete lithic assemblages recovered there.

However, the number of artifacts found at the site is just one of the reasons it has American archaeologists so excited. Among the most recent discoveries at the site, new evidence of early occupation is pushing back the timescale on human arrivals in North America, lending further evidence toward the idea of earlier migrations into the western hemisphere than once believed.

Specifically, the Gault site has yielded intricate projectile points from its deepest strata that are well in advance of the Clovis culture. These artifacts not only count among several existing pre-Clovis discoveries in the Americas, but are accompanied by dates obtained via optically stimulated luminescence that suggest an age of 20,000 years or more, effectively placing them among the oldest of their kind found in North America to date.

Excavations at Gault over the years turned up numerous unique discoveries even before the discovery of its pre-Clovis assemblages. The site’s Clovis horizon, for instance, produced a number of fluted projectile points similar to those seen in the image at the top of this page (note that the points featured in the top image are associated with the Rummells-Maske Site in Cedar County, Iowa, rather than Gault, and are used here only for illustrative purposes).

Alongside these points was a fragmentary basal portion of a Clovis-like projectile, similar to what are identified as “Redstone” points in the Southeast (these are similar enough to a preexisting type of projectile point, called Gainey, that many experts consider the two types one and the same). Prior to its discovery amidst the Clovis assemblage at Gault, little data had been obtained for in situ discoveries of Redstone points; additionally, few–if any–had ever been documented in association with a site as far west as Gault. In total, more than 600,000 artifacts identified with the Clovis culture were recovered from the site.

Area 15 at the Gault site, as it appeared between 2007–2014 excavations (Credit: Jillabus, Wikimedia Commons).

Subsequent dig seasons at Gault continued to produce surprises, and the latest paper published in Science Advances gives full details of the pre-Clovis discoveries, in addition to the dating methods used to determine their provenance.

Luminescence dating, a technique which relies on stimulation of minerals in various ways in order to discern when they were last exposed to sunlight or significant amounts of heat, was among the methods employed to date the pre-Clovis strata at Gault. Among the earliest dates recorded in association with artifacts was 21,700 years, with a standard deviation of ± 1.4 ka. “Significantly, this assemblage exhibits a previously unknown, early projectile point technology unrelated to Clovis,” the study’s authors wrote. “Within a wider context, this evidence suggests that Clovis technology spread across an already regionalized, indigenous population.”

As I noted recently in an article about the Gault discoveries, this is by no means the first time that evidence of a pre-Clovis presence, possibly dating as far back as 20,000 years, has been found in the Americas:

The Topper site in Allendale County, South Carolina, produced similar lithic evidence which dates back at least 20,000 years, though some artifacts recovered from deeper stratigraphic layers there are estimated to be as much as 50,000 years old. Similarly, radiocarbon dates in association with human artifacts at Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, Pennsylvania, are reliably dated to earlier than 16,000 BC, with one instance of carbonized bark-like material (possible basketry) with evidence of cutting marks dating to 21,070 BP ± 2400. Charcoal recovered elsewhere from Meadowcroft shows 14C dates in excess of 30,000 years (similar to dates retrieved from Monte Verde, Chile, during excavations by Tom Dillehay).  According to J.M. Adovasio, who led excavations at Meadowcroft for a number of decades, the earlier dates are intriguing, but he and others generally work with the more likely nearer dates of around 16,000 years, which are still well in advance of Clovis.

The Science Advances paper can be read online here, which features a wealth of technical data and illustrations depicting the earliest artifacts recovered at the site. For more on the technical significance of these Gault pre-Clovis discoveries, along with an analysis of its impact in the context of advances in American archaeology, see my article “Gault Site in Texas Offers New Evidence of Human Habitation 16 to 20 Thousand Years Ago.”

As an addendum, I’ll note that many these days, in light of ongoing archaeological discoveries like those discussed here, have commented on how “things keep getting older.” That is to say, of course, that archaeologists continue to find more and more evidence for earlier occupations in the New World, as well as advanced behaviors and engineering among early cultures, and refinement of processes that include such things as crafting pottery, agriculture, fermentation, and a wealth of other innovations.

In equal measure to the idea that we’re constantly finding broad evidence for things that, at one time, might have seemed historically out of place, it is also important to make the observation that part of what has led to these new discoveries in the first place has been a fundamental change in thinking.

On a number of occasions at American dig sites I’ve visited where pre-Clovis artifacts ended up being recovered, archaeologists have expressed to me that while such discoveries had been there all along, they were essentially kept hidden for as long as they were by one simple fact: that there had been an expectation nothing would be found below the Clovis horizon. Once archaeologists began pressing on and exploring deeper strata, many were shocked to find evidence of much earlier occupations than previously expected; and inevitably, many were also criticized for presenting these discoveries, even when reliable scientific evidence to account for their provenance was offered.

People are often slow to accept new ideas, although that’s certainly not always a bad thing. Science relies on having waterproof arguments, and skepticism is the best defense against unintended leaks. However, with evidence forthcoming that is strongly in support of an idea that might have once seemed impossible, the necessity for acceptance of new data becomes paramount. Rather than to say that things “keep getting older,” I think it is important to recognize that we are learning–through science–things like how much earlier humans were traversing areas of the globe, utilizing certain technological innovations, and accomplishing things we simply hadn’t conceived they were capable of as recently as a few years ago.

Science is the ultimate tool of discovery, and as it has continued to show us new things about the ancient past, it underscores the same timeless ingenuity of the human spirit at work, both then and now.

from Mysteriousuniverse

Australian Woman Blames Duck Abductions on Aliens

Whether you believe it or not, this story has everything – alien abductions of unusual animals; a woman whose name you don’t want to Google (you’ve been warned); an oddly-named Australian town where strange farming experiments have been conducted. Throw in the chance to talk about alien ab-DUCK-tions and this is a duck tale you can’t pass up.

The story begins in Humpty Doo, Northern Territory, a small town about halfway between Darwin and Kakadu National Park. The Djerimanga or Woolner indigenous Australians were the original residents until around 1864 expedition when the Europeans arrived. The name Umpity Doo first appeared on a survey plan in 1910 and may be derived from a colloquialism for “everything done wrong or upside down,” a corruption of an Aboriginal term for “popular resting place,” or an Aboriginal slang term for “two humpies.” No, it’s not what you think (this one is OK to Google) – a humpy or gunyah is an Aboriginal form of a lean-to, a small shelter built up against a tree.

Before acquiring its unusual name, Humpty Doo was used for growing crops to feed Chinese miners brought to work in the nearby Pine Creek gold mine. “Everything done wrong or upside down” might have applied here – the mine owners experimented with rice, sugar cane, coffee and rubber, but none struck farming gold. A second experiment involved flooding the area for rice, but it failed due to saline soil, hungry geese, bad drainage and poor management (what does Umpity Doo mean again?). The Fogg Dam still exists and is considered to be a good place for bird watching.

Which brings us to the ducks … and possibly the extraterrestrials watching them. Humpty Doo resident Desi Friend (remember, Google the name at your own NSFW risk) recently reported to the local NT News that eight of her ducklings, all flightless due to clipped wings, mysteriously disappeared from her locked yard.

“Mysteriously over the course of two weeks, one by one they disappeared into thin air. There’s no sign of any forced entry, there’s no feathers, there’s no big fat snakes, there’s no dogs, there’s no evidence at all. A wild dog couldn’t have got past my dog and would have left feathers or a mess – and a snake couldn’t have eaten eight ducks in three weeks.”

Desi obviously knows ducks and also knows HER ducks – she says whatever took them knew to take the best young ones and left her with the less desirable and aptly named Squawky Duck and Old Duck. So, what else could have taken them?

“So it must be alien forces, that have left me my two worst ducks. They must prefer ducks. They were Muscovy ducks so they were massive – at least double the size of the regular ones.”

Muscovy Duck

It’s true – whatever took the ducks left her chickens and horses. But aliens? Are you sure about this, Desi?

“There’s space to land the spaceship.”

Well, that settles it. Or does it? The majority of alien animal abduction stories are about cattle and cattle mutilations, not ducks. Nick Redfern has shared accounts of human abductees seeing dogs, big cats and even Bigfoot on spaceships, but no ducks.

Is Desi Friend of Humpty Doo the victim of the world’s first alien ab-DUCK-tion or is her story too daffy? Did ETs really come down for down? I don’t know about you but it quacked me up.

from Mysteriousuniverse

Andromeda Ate The Milky Way’s Twin

It sounds like a crime committed in a Greek candy shop, but it’s actually more like a horror movie created by astronomers. According to a new study, the Andromeda galaxy was once and possibly still is a cannibalistic star conglomeration that consumed a sibling of the Milky Way and some of its own smaller siblings … and could one day eat the Milky Way too. If there’s no sound in space, what’s that chomping, slurping and burping noise?

The terrifying report, published in Nature Astronomy, comes from University of Michigan astronomers Richard D’Souza and Eric Bell. They were studying the Local Group – the collection of at least 54 galaxies that lists the Milky Way and Andromeda as its largest and has its gravitational center right between the two of them. It’s predicted that the Local Group will someday – possibly 4 billion years from now – become the Local One as all of the members collapse into the center.

Collapse? Or should we say ‘are consumed by one giant cannibalistic galaxy that is probably Andromeda’?

Andromeda

That may be what the models developed by D’Souza and Bell are suggesting when they used them to analyze the faint halo of stars surrounding Andromeda. Once thought to be the crumbs of many small galaxies eaten by Andromeda, the simulations instead showed that the stars were potentially from a single large galaxy surpassed in size only by Andromeda and the Milky Way. Furthermore, that giant galaxy was most likely a fraternal twin of the Milky Way that astronomers never knew existed. The astronomers named it M32p after the M32 halo around Andromeda that’s the faint reminder of what it once was … and a faint predictor of what may happen to its surviving sibling.

But first, Andromeda would probably turn the Milky Way into a form of the mysterious M32 – a small, dense satellite galaxy made of both old and new stars that has long puzzled astronomers like Bell … until now.

“M32 is a weirdo. While it looks like a compact example of an old, elliptical galaxy, it actually has lots of young stars. It’s one of the most compact galaxies in the universe. There isn’t another galaxy like it.”

Milky Way

The model shows that this “weirdo” is actually the remaining center of Milky Way sibling M32p, likened to the nearly indestructible pit of a galactic peach sloppily chomped to near extinction by a cannibalistic celestial companion. While the pit remains whole, the rest of the M32 peach is now part of Andromeda’s huge galactic disc, which the simulation shows is sturdy enough to have survived many galactic collisions.

Will the Disc of Andromeda (a great name for a band) be all that’s left in four billion years when the Large Group becomes one? Will there be anyone left to sing along?

from Mysteriousuniverse

Charles Moore and the Roswell Bodies

In 1997 a controversial U.S. Air Force document was published. It’s title: The Roswell Report: Case Closed. In a foreword to the report, the USAF stated: “The ‘Roswell Incident’ has assumed a central place in American folklore since the events of the 1940s in a remote area of New Mexico. Because the Air Force was a major player in those events, we have played a key role in executing the General Accounting Office’s tasking to uncover all records regarding that incident. Our objective throughout this inquiry has been simple and consistent: to find all the facts and bring them to light. If documents were classified, declassify them; where they were dispersed, bring them into a single source for public review.”

The USAF continued: “In July 1994, we completed the first step in that effort and later published The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. This volume represents the necessary follow-on to that first publication and contains additional material and analysis. I think that with this publication we have reached our goal of a complete and open explanation of the events that occurred in the Southwest many years ago.

“Beyond that achievement, this inquiry has shed fascinating light into the Air Force of that era and revitalized our appreciation for the dedication and accomplishments of the men and women of that time. As we celebrate the Air Force’s 50th Anniversary, it is appropriate to once again reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to make ours the finest air and space force in history.”

On its decision to finally address the matter of the bodies allegedly found on the Foster Ranch, the Air Force began as follows: “The July 1994 Air Force report concluded that the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, did indeed recover material near Roswell in July 1947. This 1,000-page report methodically explains that what was recovered by the Army Air Forces was not the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien crew, but debris from an Army Air Forces balloon-borne research project code named Mogul.

“Although Mogul components clearly accounted for the claims of ‘flying saucer’ debris recovered in 1947, lingering questions remained concerning anecdotal accounts that included descriptions of ‘alien’ bodies. The issue of ‘bodies’ was not discussed extensively in the 1994 report because there were not any bodies connected with events that occurred in 1947. The extensive Secretary of the Air Force-directed search of Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force records from 1947 did not yield information that even suggested the 1947 ‘Roswell’ events were anything other than the retrieval of the Mogul equipment.”

The Air Force then got to the point: “Subsequent to the 1994 report, Air Force researchers discovered information that provided a rational explanation for the alleged observations of alien bodies associated with the ‘Roswell Incident.’ Pursuant to the discovery, research efforts compared documented Air Force activities to the incredible claims of ‘flying saucers,’ ‘aliens’ and seemingly unusual Air Force involvement. This in-depth examination revealed that these accounts, in most instances, were of actual Air Force activities but were seriously flawed in several major areas, most notably: the Air Force operations that inspired reports of  ‘bodies’ (in addition to being earthly in origin) did not occur in 1947. It appears that UFO proponents have failed to establish the accurate dates for these ‘alien’ observations (in some instances by more than a decade) and then erroneously linked them to the actual Project Mogul debris recovery.”

The Air Force explained: “Air Force activities which occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947. ‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research. The ‘unusual’ military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.”

It’s worth noting that in the immediate years before the Air Force’s “bodies report” was published, rumors were already quietly floating around to the effect that a report on the bodies angle would indeed soon be surfacing. On this very matter, and in a recent article for MU titled “The Many and Varied Balloons of Roswell,” I wrote the following (QUOTE):

“In 1997, Jim Wilson – writing for Popular Mechanics – said that the magazine’s staff had been told of a forthcoming government report that would explain the matter of the bodies said to have been found on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in July 1947 – and that it would all revolve around a secret program involving Japan. Such a report did not ultimately surface. What did surface was the Air Force’s controversial report suggesting the bodies were actually crash-test dummies. But, apparently, Popular Mechanics were onto something. Wilson wrote that magazine staff suspected  ‘…the documents scheduled for future release will tell of a Japanese counterpart to Operation Paperclip. One of its purposes was to determine if the Japanese had constructed a suicide-piloted version of the Fugo  [balloon] incendiary bomb.'”

I added in my article: “Wilson continued it was the opinion of Popular Mechanics that ‘…the craft that crashed at Roswell will eventually be identified as either a U.S. attempt to re-engineer a second-generation Fugo, or a hybrid craft which uses both Fugo [balloon] lifting technology and Horten-inspired lifting-body. In either case, Japanese engineers and pilots brought to the U.S. after the war to work on the project could have been the dead ‘alien’ bodies recovered at the crash site.’ This is very similar to many of the stories provided to me of a Japanese/balloon connection to Roswell.” (END OF QUOTE).

Of course, the “bodies” report that Popular Mechanics suspected might surface never did appear. The Air Force stuck by its crash-test dummy theory and had no time for secret programs involving Japanese personnel. Jim Wilson and the staff of Popular Mechanics, however, were not the only ones to have heard rumors of a “bodies report” surfacing – and to have heard of such rumors years before the publication date of the Air Force’s report on such matters.

All of this brings us to the little-known matter of a man named Charles Moore. As is noted at Wikipedia: “Moore was recruited as a project engineer for Project Mogul in 1947 by New York University geophysicist Athelstan Spilhaus, who headed the Balloon Group within the project. Project Mogul, led by Dr. James Peoples and his assistant Albert P. Crary, made use of Moore’s work in materials science allowing the construction of balloons which could better withstand cold temperatures and safely rise to significantly greater altitudes. A balloon that Moore helped launch in New Mexico on June 4, 1947, was later identified as the source of the debris found on the Foster ranch which led to UFO conspiracy theories and claims surrounding the Roswell incident.”

Indeed, Moore championed the idea that the debris found on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in July 1947 was from a Mogul balloon array. There is, however, a story concerning Moore, the Air Force’s report, and the “bodies” angle, which many are not aware of. In 1997, Tim Shawcross’ book, The Roswell File, was published. In his book, Shawcross notes that a few years before the Air Force’s crash-test dummy report was published, he chatted with Moore about the matter of the Roswell bodies. Moore gave Shawcross a somewhat intriguing and carefully-worded response: “True – people reported…but that I think is another story and something there may be more on later but it had nothing to do with what we were flying.”

Moore also told Shawcross that a new report – one which would finally explain the matter of the bodies – was likely to surface in either 1995 or 1996. How did Moore know this? From contacts in the Pentagon, that’s how. There is, however, a very interesting aspect to this saga of Moore and his knowledge of a “bodies” report. Moore reacted in a very strange fashion to Shawcross’ questions. Indeed, Moore, as Shawcross noted, “became increasingly agitated…” and “ended the conversation rather abruptly.” Shawcross noted that the next time he spoke to Moore on this same matter, he (Moore) “was even more curt and seemed distinctly worried that he had mentioned as much as he had.”

Why Moore got so worried and deeply concerned about discussing a looming Pentagon report that would explain the Roswell bodies as being nothing stranger than dummies, is hard to fathom. If the report Moore had heard of was focused on the likes of the highly controversial things that Popular Mechanics anticipated (namely, a secret program involving Japanese personnel) I could easily understand why Moore might have been concerned about what he had revealed to Shawcross. But, just a few snippets of material on nothing stranger than a few dummies? Where is the harm in revealing that?

This all makes me wonder if – when Moore spoke with Shawcross – he, Moore, had come across controversial data that closely mirrored Popular Mechanics‘ data on the bodies. If that was the case, I can well understand why Moore regretted sharing a few words on the matter with Shawcross. Perhaps, in light of all this, it’s time for us to take a closer look at what Charles Moore may really have known about the Roswell bodies…

from Mysteriousuniverse

Bizzarre and Mysterious Rocks of New England

The New England region of the eastern United States is a place of deep history, struggle, and indeed many mysteries. Here we can find all manner of ghost stories and strange tales, and it is a wellspring of the paranormal and the bizarre. Among such tales are the many enigmatic and baffling rocks that dot the landscape here, which cover everything from historical oddities to the outlandishly paranormal.

One of the weirdest mystery rocks of the New England region supposedly lies at Glastenbury Mountain, also called Green Mountain, near Bennington, Vermont. The area has long been a treasure trove of strangeness, including mystery lights, ghosts, Bigfoot sightings, and other various unexplained phenomena, and the Native peoples of the region long avoided this as a cursed place. Perhaps most famously there was a series of bizarre disappearances that took place over a five-year period between 1945 and 1950, which have remained unsolved and have earned the region the ominous nickname “The Bennington Triangle.”

The first vanishing occurred in November of 1945, when experienced hunter and guide Middie Rivers was with a group of hunters when he rounded a bend and seemingly stepped right off the face of the earth. The only clue that would ever be found was a single bullet beside a stream. The following year, on December 1, 1946, 18-year-old Paula Jean Weldon was hiking at Glastonbury Mountain when she too vanished without a trace. Two witnesses reported being right behind her on the trail and reported that Weldon had rounded a corner, but when the couple reached the same spot the young woman was nowhere to be seen, and hasn’t been seen since, despite extensive searches.

Glastenbury Mountain

The spate of unsolved disappearances continued in 1949, when in December of that year James E. Tetford boarded a bus bound for Bennington but never got off. His luggage and an open bus timetable were found, but Tetford has never been seen again, even though passengers remember seeing him on the bus when it departed, as if he just blinked out of existence. The following year, little 8-year old Paul Jepson was sitting in the family truck when his mother went to feed some pigs. When she returned he was gone, and an extensive search turned up no sign of him except a scent trail followed by dogs into the woods that just stopped. That same year Frieda Langer was hiking with her cousin near a place called Somerset Reservoir when she slipped and fell. She told her cousin to continue on and that she would catch up later but she never did, instead disappearing without a trace. Her body would be found several months later in an area that had been thoroughly searched, and it would be the last of the “Bennington Triangle” disappearances. I have gone into more detail on these vanishings here.

In the years since there have been theories on these vanishings too numerous to go into here, ranging from Bigfoot attacks, to UFOs, to interdimensional doorways, and everything in between, but one of the most unusual of these was put forward by the author and paranormal researcher Joseph Citro, who incidentally was the one who first coined the term “Bennington Triangle.” In his 2009 book The Vermont Monster Guide, Citro suggests that these people may have fallen victim to a mysterious carnivorous rock from Native folklore that was said to actually swallow people whole. According to legend it was a large boulder in appearance, but that if a person were to lean against or step upon its surface it would swiftly and hungrily absorb them, and Natives were very wary of the area because of this predatory boulder. Citro would write of this “Man-eating Rock” thus:

No one alive has seen this dangerous anomaly on Glastonbury Mountain. Native Americans knew of it, and warned people away. We can only imagine it as a sizable rock, large enough to stand on. But when someone stands upon it, the rock becomes less solid, and, like a living thing, swallows the unfortunate trespasser. A number of disappearances have been reported on Glastonbury Mountain. Could all these vanished folks have stepped inadvertently on this hungry stone?

While the Man-eating Rock of Glastonbury Mountain may only exist in myth and legend, there are other mysterious rocks in New England that are very much real, if no less enigmatic. Equally wreathed in spooky legends and folklore is a large rock located in North Manchester, Maine, that according to legend holds the footprints of the Devil himself. The rock itself appears to have imprinted within it three footprints, with two looking human and another appearing as if it is a cloven hoof. The story behind this strange anomaly is that as the first early settlers of Manchester were trying to build a road through the area they encountered many large boulders and rocks blocking their path.

According to the tales, somewhere in the vicinity of what is now the Case Cemetery, the construction workers came across a particularly intimidating and massive boulder. All attempts to move it proved fruitless, and the crew became worried that they wouldn’t be able to go through it at all, that it would thwart the whole project, so one of the workers purportedly proclaimed that he would sell his soul if that damned rock would just get out of their way. Apparently, the next day the rock was indeed moved some distance away, and etched upon it were those footprints as a record of the deal. Spookily, the man who had “sold his soul” was nowhere to be found, gone without a trace. The footprints themselves, with two human-like and one cloven, have been explained as either those of the Devil changing shape, or more sinisterly evidence etched in stone of the demon chasing the man to claim his payment in souls.

This may all sound like pure folklore, but the cemetery whose wall the rock in question in now a part of has had its fair share of paranormal happenings over the years. Sudden temperature drops, shadowy figures, and strange sounds and lights coming from the cemetery are par for the course, more often than not right in the vicinity of the anomalous rock. That cemetery has actually become quite a hotbed of the paranormal, and one wonders if the “Devil’s footprint” has anything to do with it. Whatever the case may be it is a spooky legend to be sure.

The Devil’s Footprint

Other mystery rocks seem to represent anomalous history and hint at the existence of mysterious ancient peoples. One of the most well-known of these is a massive 40-ton, 11-foot high boulder originally located in the riverbed of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts, which is covered in ancient petroglyphs and writing of unknown origin that have been baffling experts for centuries. The rock was described in Rev. Cotton Mather’s 1690 book The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated thus:

Among the other Curiosities of New-England, one is that of a mighty Rock, on a perpendicular side whereof by a River, which at High Tide covers part of it, there are very deeply Engraved, no man alive knows How or When about half a score Lines, near Ten Foot Long, and a foot and half broad, filled with strange Characters: which would suggest as odd Thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd Shapes in that Elaborate Monument.

The origins of the geometric shapes, drawings, and writing etched upon the rock are just as much a mystery today as they were back then. In 1963 Dighton Rock was removed and placed in a museum at nearby Dighton State Park for preservation and study, and despite being analyzed by numerous scientists and archeologists over the years, no one is really certain who made the markings or what they mean. The petroglyphs have managed to elude understanding, its writings and symbols undecipherable, and the rock has sparked all manner of speculation, ranging from the rational to the decidedly fringe, such as that they were left by pre-Columbian Norse, Phoenician, Portuguese, or Chinese explorers, that they were merely made by the Native people of the area, or even that they were made by aliens or were an actual message from God. In the end, no one knows, and the Dighton Rock has gone on to become a legendary unsolved mystery.

Dighton Rock

Somewhat similar to Dighton Rock is another large boulder located in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, called the Quidnessett Rock, or also the Narragansett Runestone. Discovered half-buried in the mud flats of Narragansett Bay in 1984, the 2.5 ton boulder is not nearly as large as the Dighton Rock, but it similarly bears numerous strange symbols or runes of mysterious origins. The stone has gone on to be studied by various institutes such as the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission (HPHC), the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), and the University of Rhode Island School of Oceanography, but answers have remained evasive to say the least.

Theories include that it is some sort of ancient pre-Columbian Viking carvings or that it was a marker created by The Knights Templar in ancient times, but it is far from clear, and the stone has drawn in droves of curiosity seekers over the years. So many people came to the mud flats looking for the rock, in fact, that one local man actually stole it in 2012 and dropped it into deeper waters for the purpose of keeping the tourists away. The rune stone was eventually recovered the following year and put on display at Updike Park, in the quiet village of Wickford, where it has continued to puzzle all who try to understand it. Making matters of its origins murkier is that in 2014 a man named Everett Brown came forward to say the markings on the Narragansett stone were a practical joke carried out by him and his brother in 1964, although this has been disputed and is likely a hoax itself.

The Narragansett Runestone

Yet another mysterious rock is a strange object that was dug up one day in 1872 as a fence post was being bored out at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, on the land of an influential local man named Seneca Ladd. What baffled workers pulled out of the ground that day was a brown, egg-shaped rock measuring about 4 inches long and 2.5 inches thick, encased in clay and covered with carvings of abstract shapes like inverted arrows, a moon shape, and some spirals and dots, as well as various objects such as an ear of corn and a human face, the meanings of which are a complete mysterious, as are who made it and why. Through the whole thing is a single hole bored all the way through it from top to bottom and created by two different sized bits for reasons just as inscrutable as anything else about the artifact.

Ladd himself took full credit for the discovery, even though he had had no hand in actually finding it, put it on display, and thought it to be some relic of a mysterious Native tribe. The strange rock was in his possession until his death, after which it was donated to the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1927 and finally properly studied, although such analysis has found no clear answers. It remains unknown just what the strange relic’s origin, purpose, or even its age is, although some have speculated that the hole through it may have been made with power tools in the 20th century. Other than that, no one really has a clue as to what the Lake Winnipesaukee mystery stone is, and the answer may be forever buried in history.

The Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone

What mysteries do these rocks hold within them that we have yet uncovered? What forces led to their creation and where do their origins lie? We have yet to understand them, and they serve to remain mysterious ciphers amongst the landscape of the weird in New England. Being the rocks that they are they will no doubt be around for some time, forever taunting us and baffling us until long after we are gone, remaining there as inscrutable as always, perhaps until the end of time.

from Mysteriousuniverse