Society for the Investigation of The Unexplained: SITU.

Hello folks. I've been very busy with a so-called "vacation" trip back to Michigan. The trip, no vacation, was to prepare the house and then to accept the archives of the defunct Fortean organization, The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained. SITU. As some of you will well know, it was founded by naturalist/zoologist/anomalies-lover Ivan Sanderson and served as a focus point for American anomalies researchers for two decades in the late sixties to late eighties era. When Ivan Sanderson passed away in 1973, the organization ultimately fell to Robert Warth to continue on. Robert Warth was a nice and stalwart guy and I got to know SITU during his directorship. Bob and I corresponded quite a bit and he "talked me into" writing several articles to publish in PURSUIT, and ultimately to be listed as one of his scientific consultants. I was saddened as were a great many of us, when SITU had to close and the voice of PURSUIT went silent. I didn't hear of it again for years. During that time, the SITU archives came under the ownership/stewardship of the Society for Scientific Exploration and in the personal care of a wonderfully fine fellow, absolutely dedicated to the preservation of anomalistic archival materials, Dr. John Reed. Being a busy man with a full real life, John could do no more than safely store them. He wanted to get them somewhere where they could be looked into, "cleaned up", characterized, and, hopefully utilized. That's where I came in.

My intellectual life, such as it is, has been dominated by a feeling of duty to both preserve the information-which-doesn't-fit and to get it out in front of the world, whether by my own writing efforts or by others'. John knew me as a long-time SSE member and one-time council member, a publisher of several pieces in the JSE, and a "fellow he had a talk with once" about this exact "presevation passion" we share. He wanted to know if I could "swallow" the SITU archives at my place [no mean feat I am telling you] and ultimately get them into order [an even more daunting affair] and finally arranging for utilization by responsible researchers.

I said I'd give it my best. The archives arrived in Kalamazoo on Friday. Two very hard-working days of shelving and stacking later, punctuated by anomalies "parties" punctuated by sub-sandwiches and pizzas and large quantities of extravagant commentary, our eight person crew [coming from Chicago, Detroit area, Maryland, and a scattering of my best local buddies], we at least got it all off the truck and inside. It's going to take a LOT of archival work, my friends, but it will be worth it---the unloading days themselves were some of the most fun I've had in a very long time.

I want to give you some extremely "early" assessment information. This stuff is EXTENSIVE. It nearly filled a 26-foot U-Haul truck. Secondly, it has survived the rigors of time and mice [there were nibblers about back there in New Jersey] very well. The nibblings and rare water damages are very minor [three great cheers to Charles Fort, Ivan Sanderson, & Bob Warth being guardian angels from above]. The book and journal library is pretty impressive. Doubtless not everything survived cherry-pickers, but I'll bet ALMOST everything did from what I saw going to the shelves. That brings me to the big deal.

There is an internet legend that these archives have been severely depleted by sticky-fingered knowledge-thieves. Again, who knows what all MIGHT have happened in the past, but my eyeballs say that the VAST majority if not all of the famous SITU files [even dating back to Sanderson and the early years; i.e. Sanderson's own file creation] ARE STILL EXTANT AND RIGHT HERE IN KALAMAZOO. I am hoping that this will make everyone happy. I cannot give you an accurate count yet, but I can give you a MINIMAL count. Sanderson kept his topical files arranged in three-ring notebooks usually about two-inches wide. At a minimum there are 184 of these already shelved [i.e. sitting outside the original boxes off the truck before your eyes.] I counted them the grade-school way with my own index finger. As a wild guess, there are at least 30-35 "linear feet" of them, in librarian-talk. This 184 count does not count three-ring notebooks which contain only journal/magazine runs --- these are mainly Sanderson's own constructions containing clippings, pictures, correspondence, & whatever, around some topic or set of topics. 42 of these notebooks refer to "ABSMs" [bigfoot, yeti et al], or sea, lake, or river monsters. Folks, after having read the idea that the files had been "raped clean", you can't imagine how happy I was when we opened the first box and read the ABSM on the cover!!!. God bless the protecting elementals who guard our favorite subjects.

Well, that's all that I can say with accuracy in this first day-of-rest for my aching back after the Great Coming. I will promise you that I will [with my local buddies when I'm back in Wheeling helping Mom] keep SITU safe, slowly get it organized, tell you what we find, and when it's a bit orderly at least, tell you how to get your own eyeballs on the files if you want to travel to Kazoo.

I'm going to try to finish up the remaining bits of the CE2p entries and the last greatest trip by GHW looking for Shamballa soon. Maybe after that I'll try to sneak enough peeks at Ivan's stuff to tell you more. God bless and Peace. I think we've saved something good here, folks.

"Out Proctor" with George Hunt Williamson: a Marginally Serious Exploration Searching for Shamballa, part four.

The Shamballa tour races past several stops today, mainly because GHW did the same [i.e. didn't think about them much]. Brown Landone seemed to like these three options as well as any, but neither he nor Williamson are providing us much information. Still, just in case you want to go looking, or just want to know the "complete set":
Landone's fourth Shangri-la is in Spain near the holy monasteries of Montserrat. It certainly is a nice mystical setting for it. Here amid weird mountainous formations buildings cling to hillsides such as to make you wonder how they were built. Landone claims that a "hidden bowl" exists within a high mountain cluster "not far from Esterri". The temples are built into the mountains and house "more than a thousand men". They live in joy and peace and youthfulness ready to bring about a "New Age" of brotherhood to our planet. I've been to Montserrat and shamefully missed it. And I don't think space surveillance has detected a "titanic crater high among snows", but maybe it's just invisible to modern technology. Well...yeh.

Our next Shangri-la is near Mt. Ararat, where something else is also supposed to be located. It probably is not right alongside the Ark, but in the general vicinity. The nearest landmark is supposed to be Krestavoya Gora, The Mountain of the Cross. The Shangri-la area is known as "The Bowl of the Silver Cross". Landone claims that Jesus made a pilgrimage to this Shangri-la before going on to Southern Arabia [no reason given] and on to the Shangri-la at Ruwenzari in Africa. This differs a bit from the usual rumors of Jesus spending time at a monastery much closer to Muztagh-ata area [written about by Notovich] or Christ actually spending years in India. Landone as usual tells us nothing about his sources.

The penultimate Shangri-la is in Central America. This one is vaguest of all. It exists somewhere sort-of south of Lake Peten in Guatemala, but at least 150 miles away. It is another "gigantic bowl" called the Bowl of Stars. It like most if not all of these places is inhabited by "men" of white skin and blond hair a la Scandinavia, and forming a "White Brotherhood" of the Elder Race. All that gives me a bit of the creeps, but I can't find any real examples of actionable racism in the writing of either he nor GHW. I also looked Googlishly "south" of Lake Peten and couldn't find much in the way of truly wild high ground there. Sort-of WSW though there is some snow-capped area and an occasional pretty round lake, so maybe that area's our best shot.

All these Shangri-las didn't rivet GHW's attention much, and there's really nothing about them [prominently anyway] in his files. The seventh and final Shangri-la is different however. That is the Shangri-la of the high Andes, and a remnant of the Elder race that GHW tried very hard to find physically in person.

I'll write about his questing there in a last Shamballa-ish post, but it might take a bit of time, we'll see. This is because I'm traipsing back to my home in Michigan for two weeks beginning tomorrow. It is going to be a busy time but if we're lucky, I may have some good news about the world of anomalies in about 8-9 days. I'll try to squeeze some ordinary posts in between, but there's going to be work to be done, so I can't promise much. Till then: God be with you.

"Out Proctor" with George Hunt Williamson: a Marginally Serious Exploration Searching for Shamballa, part three.

Step three on the Shangri-la travel tour is the famous one: the secret vastnesses of the Himalayas. Landone simply tells GHW that it's existence is obvious and that all the clues you need are embedded in James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. GHW believed that this was basically true, but that this Shangri-la was one that he could do more research upon. He felt that the clues were widespread far beyond Hilton.
GHW felt [he'd say "knew"] that there were parts of the lives and writings of Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Ossendowski, Hedin, and others which could illuminate the way. One of those who most intrigued him was Nicholas Roerich. Roerich was a Man-of-Peace and a "mystical painter" [one of his many striking paintings is above], who was also a far traveler. Roerich believed in the possibility of a future Utopia and the existence of one in the past, and perhaps still hidden in the present. He believed in the veracity of visions, particularly those arising through Art. And, he believed in Shangri-la, or at least some remnant of it, in the mountains of Central Asia.

There are lots of reasons for this faith in Roerich's [in many ways, beautiful] life . I am not expert enough to capsulize them. One thing relevant to our topic is represented by the picture on the left. It is Roerich holding a small casket within which is a piece of a "Stone from Heaven" which allegedly came to Earth thousands of years ago falling in Tibet. It was one of four such relics held as sacred in Buddhism. It was a magical charmstone which had the properties of the western "Philosopher's Stone" which could grant wishes, cure illness, bring enlightenment. Sometime in the distant past, it was "chipped" to make a ringstone for a king. Other pieces were saved. Roerich's box allegedly contained one of those.

The stone, Roerich felt, was similar to Moldavite in make-up. Moldavite itself is a bit of a mystery. Minerals classified as Moldavite are "glassy" and dark green [like the Cintamani stone; the sacred stone's name], and are considered one of the "tektites". These minerals have an uncertain past. Geology generally considers them to be the melt-products of the smashing of a meteorite into the right sorts of Earth minerals, heating them up and glassifying them. So in a real way, all tektites might be considered as stones from Heaven, and Moldavite a "Gemstone from Heaven" as you see above middle. Whether that's how King Lha Thothori Nyantsen got his, we don't know. Roerich believed that he had a fragment of the original much larger stone and wished to return his piece to the motherstone. That motherstone, he believed was in Shamballa.

Parts of Roerich's Asian journeys were inspired by this desire to get to Shamballa, a mountain "country" in central Asia. He apparently did not make it, but did find what he supposed was a remaining monastic outpost of Shamballa, where he left his stone with the monks, so that they would return it the rest of the way. There in the [partly underground] kingdom of Shamballa, the elder keepers of wisdom would utilize the powers of the stone to accomplish good---good both within their realm and beyond into our violence-racked world. In this, Roerich was echoing not only the belief in Shamballa but in the central Asian location of the Underworld Realm of Agharti and the benevolent King of the World. All this of course excited GHW.

GHW further became enthused because he believed that the Polish traveler and writer A. Ferdynand Ossendowski had also received accurate intelligence about Shamballa. Ossendowski was just as much embroiled in Russo-Siberian war as Roerich had been in peace. He spent much time wandering in central Asia and the Gobi desert and in the service of world-class crazy person Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg [who was however a dangerous military commander]. In about the years 1920-1921, Ossendowski met several persons in the Gobi area who gave him bits of alleged facts about the underworld kingdom of Agharti and its King of the World. GHW interpreted this as related directly to both Shangri-la and to the legends of Atlantis and Lemuria.

Ossendowski was told that this kingdom originated 60,000 years ago when a holyman led followers into the underworld. There they have stayed to this day, though some few have visited and some few have remained. Its population now numbers in the millions. One informant told him that these people originated from two large islands once in the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Supposedly no one [at least no one "around here at the time" --- i.e. the places which Ossendowski was visiting] knew where the entrance to the kingdom could be found. Another informant, however, said that the kingdom was worldwide, connected by tunnel systems from Asia all the way to the Americas. Down there the King of the World sat [probably with the sacred Cintamani Stone from Heaven] and with the wisdom of the Buddha assessed the condition of Mankind and decided whether to act to alter matters.

As an aside, while camping in the Gobi, a Mongol guide told Ossendowski to be silent and listen. "Did you see how our camels moved their ears in fear? How the herd of horses on the plain stood fixed in attention and how the herds of sheep and cattle lay crouched close to the ground? Did you notice that the birds did not fly, the marmots did not run and the dogs did not bark? The air trembled softly and bore from afar the music of a song which penetrated to the hearts of men, animals and birds alike. Earth and sky ceased breathing. The wind did not blow and the Sun did not move. At such a moment the wolf that is stealing up on the sheep arrests his stealthy crawl; the frightened herd of antelopes suddenly checks its wild course; the knife of the shepherd cutting the sheep's throat falls from his hand; the rapacious ermine ceases to stalk the unsuspecting salga. All living beings in fear are involuntarily thrown into prayer and waiting their fate. So it was just now. This it has always been whenever the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and searches out the destiny of all peoples on the Earth."

The quote is interesting in many ways, but I include it here as a unique form of describing the quality encountered in many UFO cases called the OZ Effect. Make of that what you will.

Now utterly fired up for the quest, GHW decided to decipher the exact location of Shangri-la. Because he, for no good reason known to me, believed that James Hilton knew exactly what HE was talking about when he wrote Lost Horizon, it was to the novel he went for his answer. And of course, being George Hunt Williamson, he found it.

Through the text GHW "learned" that the likely location of Shangri-la, central Asian variety, began with the silk road city of Kashgar in far northwestern China, or "Chinese Turkestan". This is a shot of Kashgar with towering mountains behind it--- not a bad setting with which to begin. One then needed to take the road to another of the old silk road [alternative] cities, Yarkand, to the southeast. If you drew a line between Kashgar and Yarkand and used their endpoints as the corners of a [rough] equilateral triangle, pointing sort-of westward, the third position in the triangle was the approximate location of Shangri-la.

Well, my intrepid explorers, here is your Google travel map. Note the positions of the two silk road towns and then note the distinctive Google teardrop marker forming the triangle to the WSW. That teardrop marks the mountain Muztagh-ata, the domed snow-capped "signature" mountain for a whole range of peaks. GHW says: "Muztagh-ata rears its dome above its surroundings, is crowned with a shimmering field of eternal snow, it is a beacon, visible from the interiors of the great deserts to the east [Takla-makan], it towers above to about 26000 feet. The shape of the great dome fits Conway's [Hilton's lead character in the book] description of the great cone-shaped mountain of which he said there was a legend". In the book the mountain overlooks the "Valley of the Blue Moon", or KARAKAL. Muztagh-ata overlooks a lake called KARA-KUL. Well, that is all it takes for GHW. He's sure that he knows where Shangri-la is.

So, why didn't he go?? When he was young, he was busy with one mind-boggling adventure after another. When he wrote the notes I'm working from, he was old and ill and though as feisty as you get, wasn't up to more adventuring. But there's nothing stopping YOU, is there?? Renew that passport! Take a plane to Beijing and on to Ulan Bator and a Landrover to Kashgar and beyond. I mean, Shangri-la!! Where Yak butter tea replaces soda pop, and spitted mutton takes the place of Big Macs. And if you get dysentary there's always the Cintamani Stone to put a stop to that. You could use the quiet meditation time to regain your sanity from this crazy world, admit it.

And really, what's the downside???

"Out Proctor" with George Hunt Williamson: a Marginally Serious Exploration Searching for Shamballa, part two.

Stop #2 on the Shamballa express with GHW: Central Africa. It is in the Mountains of the headwaters of the Nile [naturally]. Rwenzari, or the older way Ruwenzori.

Explorers have always wanted to know about the mysterious headwaters of the Nile, and they have been located in strange high mountains from the beginnings of maps. These mountains acquired the appropriate name of the Mountains of the Moon [and the icon of the Moon is alleged in some of the traveler tales to relate to the priesthood of Shangri-la]. [We'll see an example of such an alleged amulet much later in our Out Proctor tale.]

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, exploration in this area of the world took on political as well as romantic interests. The newly formed Germany was exercising its muscles in an attempt to carve out a few leftover pieces from the English, French, and Spanish-dominated "colonial" world. One such opportunity was in East Africa. And at the western side of that area was Mt. Kilimanjaro and the fabled Mountains of the Moon. Both German and British explorers penetrated the region for adventure and nationalistic "gold".

The historical "stars" of the show were Stanley and Livingstone [Dr. Livingstone is shown on the left]. Brown Landone says this: "Dr. Livingstone had passed near it [The Shamballa Temple lands] in 1866 in exploring the Rovuma Valley". He says that two men reached it in 1869 [without naming who they were]. And "then in 1891 Dr. Stuhlmann, exploring 18900 foot heights near Ruwenzori, probably discovered it."

Probably discovered it?? Landone explains that Stuhlmann, when he reported on his expedition to German science societies refused to account for 19 days of the trip. He told a friend that he had discovered something so incredible that if he told of it, he would be the laughing stock of geographical societies worldwide.

One of the unnamed men of 1869 however spoke of beautiful palaces inhabited by men with golden-white hair, living for two hundred years in "God's Valley of Peace".

So, to GHW's taste, entered into the story the novelist H.Rider Haggard.

Haggard was a early example of fantasy writing which was framed in Earthly settings. Most people if they know of him at all, know him from "SHE" and "AYESHA", but he wrote many more such fiction pieces which could be seen as reflecting somehow a knowledge of mysterious hidden societies.

Landone said that this theme was not accidental in Haggard's fiction. He said that "Mystics" also knew of the existence of this African Shangri-la, by their own psychic means, and that one of them told Haggard about it, whereupon he immediately penned SHE and AYESHA. Landone said that Haggard had strongly fictionalized that Shangri-la because he had promised his source that he would not reveal the secrets of the place to the world. But to the insightful, one could still detect the outlines of this society separated from mainstream civilization for thousands of years.

GHW bought most of this but put a small twist on it. He said that H. Rider Haggard had met with exalted Masters in Egypt ["80 sit alone in some great temple"] and received some information from them. "On the other hand, HRH did not visit Ruwenzori". Instead, Haggard is supposed to have gleaned specific information about the Ruwenzori Shangri-la from Dr. Stuhlmann himself when on a British speaking tour in London. As far as I can tell GHW had no reason whatever, other than he liked the thought of it, to assume that Dr. Stuhlmann was even in London let alone that Haggard spoke with him. But at least there was a German explorer named "Dr. Franz Stuhlmann" at the time, so there is a shred of something for us to hold onto. And I like the fact that the area has always been felt to be mysterious and special. Just look at how it was represented in the map to the left.

So, saddle up!! And get cracking!! Turn off the TV and pack up for East-Central Africa. You know you don't really have anything better to do. [Just look at how pretty the place is.]

"Out Proctor" with George Hunt Williamson: a Marginally Serious Exploration Searching for Shamballa

Out Proctor we go on this winding path [for those who don't know what the expression in this blog of "Out Proctor" means, search it and it will become horrifyingly clear---in brief, it means that we are talking about something that is at a high-probability of being nonsense, at least in the approach we're going on at the moment]. Shamballa is certainly a concept of great intrigue and fun, and who knows if there is anything to it? We'll walk a bit with one person who not only believed that there was something to it, but that there were SEVEN Shamballa/Shangri-las. One must never underrate George Hunt Williamson on anything.
Here's our boy: GHW was one of the most imaginative adventurers that the planet has seen. As a few of you know, in his later years he went to live with a female companion, Thelma Dunlap, where he hoped to wrap up all his unique ideas in several books---none of which occurred by the time of his death. Ms. Dunlap kept his files until her own death, when they were passed on to Florida UFO bookseller Bob Girard. He then sold most [98%] of them to me. I bought them not because I felt that the secrets of the Universe were to be revealed therein, but because GHW was, in his way, important to UFO history, and, like Adamski, his files and thoughts should be preserved. I've never regretted spending that money, as GHW's files have been a great imaginative ride, and often a wild Hoot of a read. This "holding" in my archives allows me to present GHW's idiosyncratic view on a subject interesting to many people, here. This is not going to be comprehensive. That would take a book chapter at least. But, since we're in this one for fun, perhaps a skimming will still be worth it.

GHW was convinced by [essentially] trance-control mediumship that there had been in the ancient era an "elder race" who had inhabited Earth, built a great civilization, and "vanished" both to Space and to the "underworld". They were the source of both Atlantis-type myths and the UFOs. Because GHW felt that neither element of the Elders had actually disappeared, he wanted to go looking for them. Going after the UFOs was a bit out-of-his control [though he tried that, too], but going after the Masters of Atlantis et al was not. He could go looking on Earth for them. But where to search??

One of his inspirations was a man named Brown Landone. [picture at left]. Landone is rather indescribable. Born in the 19th century, he was sort-of a writer and historian, who dedicated a large part of his life to peace-activism and utopian visioning. Something led him into what we would call an "occult" view of these matters, and his personal search for examples of ancient utopians of Egyptian and earlier times. He came to believe that much of the Atlantaean myth was reality, that certain mathematical forms had truths imbedded in them which revealed ancient wisdom, and that a "new order" of priesthood [and a new Temple] should be initiated. So, he began to write more and more esoteric essays and pamphlets about all this.

GHW was impressed. There is one of Landone's pamphlets in the collection which directly addresses Shangri-la. It's short but GHW read it avidly, re-writing every word in his notes. The title, which is surely an extension of Landone's thinking in the small book represented on the left, reads: "The Seven Shangri-las, Seven Known Horizons". In this pamphlet Landone states with no caveat that there still exist seven temples maintained by a elder "brotherhood" in widespread locations around the world. He goes on to briefly [vaguely] locate each one, and say a bit in his defense as to why /how he knows each to be true.

GHW seems to have taken Landone's ideas as a rough outline for his personal exploration. In his files, there are indications that he took every one of the seven seriously. Some of these became much more central to his mental adventuring than others, but in this and the following posts, I'll try to give a little of the flavor of what each meant to him---sometimes this was just a note-it-and-let-it-go type of thing; sometimes this was a major element in his personal life. In today's post, I'll take Landone's first-listed Shangri-la and, piecemeal, bounce down through the list in posts to come.
Stop #one on the Shamballa Temple trail is Venezuela. Exactly why, who knows?? Landone claimed that a [unnamed] traveler had seen the Venezuelan Shangri-la in 1925. He was lost in high mountain jungles and entered a secret city "surrounded on all sides by deep chasms". These people were informed about events taking place in the rest of the world, despite having no apparent means whereby to know them. In 1936, it was seen again from the cockpit of a wayward small plane. They described the land as a bowl of green vegetation in the high mountains. Within that land were seen temples. The troubled plane flew to the East and found flat land ultimately to land upon. Landone hinted that his "brotherhood" knew the location of the place.

Well, the general area he is speaking of certainly contains some neat things. One of them [on the left] is Angel Falls, perhaps the tallest significant volume waterfall anywhere, and rather magnificent regardless. One could imagine this natural wonder falling from Shangri-la-ish heights except for the fact that this area of southern Venezuela has been thoroughly explored ever since it became a tourist attraction. Still, one can get one's imagination going just by looking at the flat table mountain from which it comes.

Another slightly less well explored area nearby is the Roraima plateau. This has the exact immediate impression of a world isolated and far up into the clouds. A perfect Shangri-la. Unfortunately another wonderful fantasy has already beaten Shangri-la in its claim to the premises: A.Conan Doyle's LOST WORLD. People have taken the claims of still-existing dinosaurs on the Roraima plateau just as seriously as Landone takes Shangri-la. There have been claims of seeing wheeling Pterosaurs above the escarpment right into the latter half of the 20th century. But alas for all that, there have been many expeditions to explore Roraima by now and nary a "extinct" plant let alone the Pterosaurs. Unusual species yes; species from the Cretaceous period, no. I wish...but, no. So, to find Landone's or GHW's Venezuelan Shamballa, we need to go further into the wild mountains than Roraima. But where?? It's a big country as you can see in the map below. To aid you in your quest [and I know several of you are making your travel arrangements now] I've put a map below. It has Angel Falls [A] and Roraima [R] encircled, and has the line connecting Caracas and Manaus [on the Amazon] noted. Maybe an area where small planes might fly and get off course?? And just to be extra helpful, I've circled the minute [Hah!!] area which I recommend you search. If you survive the "violent tribes" that Landone says live there, please let the rest of us know how it went.

Finding [Miniature] Alien Life: taking a short break from the CE2ps.

There's a new study that has hit the journals concerning the slow-going scientifically conservative way of pursuing the existence of Alien Life, but it is of interest [to me, at least] nevertheless. It appears in the March issue of the Journal of Cosmology and you can google it easily if you're intrigued. The primary author is Richard B. Hoover, and he is from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The study concerns the team's claims to finding clear evidence of fossilized Cyanobacteria in the interiors of certain types of Carbonaceous Chondrite meteorites. [designated "CI1s"]. This class of meteorites was selected because [as far as I can tell] of the characteristics of their interior geology, making the case that you are NOT looking at terrestrial contamination easier. The most famous meteorite in the CI1 class is the Orgueil, which fell in France in the 19th century, and has been studied more than any other outer space visitor. [a picture of a piece of the Orgueil is at the left].The electron microscopy of some of the bacteria-like filaments found by NASA is striking [please Google the paper to see them--I got a little lazy it seems and didn't download any for easy inclusion here], but the microscopy doesn't stand alone. Chemical constitution tests of elemental ratios were done on specific filamentous structures, which exhibit a greater carbon-content richness than surrounding matrix. The main evidence for the "likeness" to Earth-born cyanobacteria is, however, the microstructure. This is probably the final brick in the wall to getting the conservative establishment to include this sort of discovery in the textbooks---sort of Science's Imprimatur on the Truth.

This is great for the exploratory adventure that we in the human race are on, and fits nicely into what everyone was ready to believe anyway---that is typically the way of Science, at least in the textbook stage. It, of course, does nothing to help us in UFOlogy. Extraterrestrial fossil bacteria are a long [psychological] distance from currently visiting alien technology---and the two are miles apart in laboratory-style evidence. So...Nice, but not to get cocky about in our commentary.

For me, there was an added bit of "fun" in this. I own a piece of the Murchison meteorite. The Murchison is also a carbonaceous chondrite, though not a CI1. It is a CM2, probably the next clearest example of a potentially non-contaminated-and-demonstrably-non-contaminated specimen. A piece of the Murchison is shown next above on the left. [It looks very much like my own, but bigger]. The Murchison easily out-competes the CI1s in carbon-content and bio-organic molecules [90+ varieties of amino acid-like molecules have been found there, including almost all the terrestrially biologically-active ones----you probably could "eat" an extract of the Murchison if you were "Lost-in-Space" and were desperate and had the extraction technology.] This new paper may open up the field to re-exploring the Murchison and other carbonaceous chondrites for further strong evidence of ET life. That would be extra fun for me just to childishly hold the thing in my hand.

I also am blessed with a piece of the Allende carbonaceous chondrite, but it will probably not contain fossilized alien life. It is VERY rich in carbon-containing molecules, but is is very old. [a picture of a piece of the Allende is at the bottom]. This meteorite is considered perhaps the oldest known bit of matter on Earth, estimated to have been formed in a supernova burst over 4 1/2 billion years ago. Some folks think that a rain of stuff like the Allende formed the resident bio-organic "pool" of resources to get Life on its early start.

And, just for fun: both the Murchison and the Allende came to Earth in 1969. The Universe was laughing at us and saying: well you clowns couldn't get anything done with the Condon Project, so try these two things!! Hah! Got to love a Universe with a sense of humor.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects part seven-c

These are the final five cases for this part: #s 101-105 [1974 era].
This set contains a "5" [Lome, Togo] and a "4" [St. Kilda, Victoria]. My guess is that Knutby, Sweden has a good chance of being a powerful case, but I don't know the investigator and my file doesn't allow me to go far with it. Who knows about Avon Lake, OH as this is one of those things where the investigators encouraged an abduction narrative ultimately---or such seems to be true from the report in a magazine. My file on Union NJ is minimalist. There may be much more on this in the Ted Bloecher correspondence files, but that must wait for a much later day.

St. Kilda, Victoria, Eastertime 1974: A flat-bottom disk with a large door in its side beamed a light at the witness and went its way. The witness was paralyzed, and this subsided as the craft left. One night later the thing returned. It stopped outside her window and the door opened. She became paralyzed [and nauseous] again. She was sweating and her eyes ached, but this time she broke through the paralysis herself. She ran to get a neighbor, but all that neighbor saw was the light of the craft disappearing as it rose in the distance. The sketches on the left are from an Australian UFO newsletter.

The Avon Lake OH case may be total bunk, half good, or all good. My reading is that I have some confidence in the first part of it. Here a large globe flies over, pulsing and causing interference on TV. A light is beamed into a bedroom and onto the face of the witness. She felt as if this light was pushing her down on the bed. The object was swaying and making a roaring noise. It took off and she was released. Later she was awakened again by the roar. She jumped up and looked out windows but could not see the thing this time. The noise stopped and that was that. The next morning she had burning bloodshot eyes, light sensitivity, and headaches. A high school student is allegedly also witness to a light over her house, seen from greater distance [this is the sort of detail that I can't quite credit as there is no formal statement as to how we know this.] Police were called after the first incident and in the morning after, lending some credibility. This is an APRO case and that's too bad, because with those archives criminally kept from the research community, we can never see the actual investigative report probably---[the author, Allen Benz, was APRO librarian, the "criminality" is not his, by the way, but those "owners" who have "buried" the files from the serious UFO community.]. Following this business, for several months, this witness claimed a wide variety of odd experiences which included pain attacks but also cures. Frenetic UFO buffs decided that she was a likely abductee and in came the hypnosis. Who knows what we had on our hands given the amateurism of most of that. All I have on this one is instinct for the early part that seems to have actual UFO-related facts. So, I tentatively "buy" the first night visitations and their physiological effects, a throw my hands up about the rest.

Knutby, Sweden is actually more interesting to me. This is because there were four witnesses. If that is true, and if they were all interviewed by an honest and competent researcher, then this case is very good. It's mainly a CE2em vehicle-stop case with CE2p sequelae. Four people are in a car when confronted by a lighted 30'd "egg" on the road ahead. The car engine quits, as do the lights and radio. The object sits there buzzing, its light changing from green to white. Then it roars, rises, and is rapidly gone. The radio synchronistically comes back on. All four witnesses had diarrhea, and mild headaches for three days. The father of the affected family was described as a Swedish Army officer, and the researcher rated his credibility high. The only reason I hold back on this is that I don't know the organization involved [although the report is written very professionally, and there is a claim there that this is one of nearly 400 cases in their "SWECAT".] I probably should just relax and give this one a "5" but ....

The last one is Lome, Togo and the illustration below is for that incident.
Here the witnesses saw a 70' disk out from the shore. The thing was hovering in place and generating large waves. The object seemed to be projecting some force constantly on the water as it appeared to be depressed just below the craft like a 15 to 18 foot deep basin. Waves rolled out concentrically from there. There were high-pitched whistling and light beams projected onto the witnesses. The whistles hurt the ears, and the beams paralyzed. They felt an atmosphere of high heat as well. All these problems ceased immediately when the object left. Next day sequelae included sleepiness, headache, and fainting. This is another good French organization case and a well-known researcher [Joel Mesnard].

All for now. Next time we'll begin cases #106-120. Making some kind of progress, I guess.