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Open your browser to the Google Search page, type in UFO and hit �?search’.  You should see somewhere in the neighbourhood of 186,000,000 results.  Now try the same with YouTube.  There you’ll see somewhere near six million results.  This is the state of UFOlogy today, millions upon millions of sightings, pictures, videos and stories, and common sense should tell you that they can’t all be true.  What percentage of those untold numbers are hoaxes, or misidentified technology, or just whackos who see aliens in their soup?

UFOlogy, of course, covers a wide array of phenomena, as is delineated by the classic encounter scale (Also known as the Hynek Scale[1]):

First Kind – visual sightings of an unidentified flying object.

Second Kind – visual sightings plus the accompanying of physical evidence.

Third Kind – sightings of “occupants” in and around the UFO.

Fourth Kind – a human is abducted by a UFO or its occupants. (This type was not included in Hynek’s original close encounters scale, though is typically considered part of the classic scale)

There are several extensions to the above scale, covering everything from psychic communication with aliens to mating and breeding with ET, but for general purposes the Extended Hynek Scale above is sufficient.

Even these four types of encounters leave us with millions of cases to investigate, and in amongst the vast crowd of encounters, there are some cases that stand to a little more scrutiny, cases that might be called the cornerstone cases of UFOlogy:

(Presented in chronological order)

Roswell

The quintessential UFO encounter, Roswell refers to the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, where in July of 1947 a craft of unknown origin allegedly crashed in a farmer’s field.  Eyewitness accounts told of the bodies of little green men strewn about the crash site and a surplus of debris that was subsequently collected by military personnel.  Following the event, the military first offered a statement admitting that a “flying disc” had crashed and was in government custody, but later changed their story claiming that the craft was nothing more than a weather balloon (thought to be an implement of Project Mogul).  The public, then as now, largely disagrees with the official story and this case has been the focus of much controversy and conspiracy theorising.

Betty & Barney Hill

The first widely publicized claim of alien abduction, the Hill’s case is largely touted as the mother of all Fourth Kind encounters.  As the story goes, the Hill’s were returning from a vacation in Canada and travelling through a rural area of New Hampshire on the evening of September 19, 1961. As they travelled along, they noticed a particularly bright star in the night sky and they watched as it apparently began to follow them.

At some point the couple stopped along the roadway, just south of Groveton New Hampshire on US Route 3, to walk their dog before completing the final leg of their long journey home.  Shortly after their pit stop, the couple suffered what seemed to be a lapse in memory, and found themselves again driving along Route 3 with no recollection of having gotten back into the car.

Prompted by the missing time they experienced and by some physical evidence on Betty’s dress, the couple later underwent hypnosis in an effort to retrieve memories.  The story then took a dark turn; during hypnosis Betty recalled horrifying details of abduction by extraterrestrials, providing descriptions of the craft, the occupants and even details of a star map (of Zeta-Reticuli) that at the time was thought to be anomalous, but was later confirmed to be accurate.  The Hill’s story was adapted into the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and the 1975 television movie The UFO Incident.

Shag Harbour UFO Incident

The Shag Harbour UFO incident was the reported impact of an unknown large object into waters near Shag Harbour, a tiny fishing village in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on October 4, 1967.  While there were no clear descriptions of the craft and there were wide spread opinions that it was a manmade aircraft, what makes this case quite unique is that Police and government officials reported that the craft was an unidentified flying object.  This might seem rather elementary, but it’s leaps and bounds ahead of anything the U.S. government has ever admitted.

The impact was investigated by various civilian (Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Coast Guard) and military (Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force) agencies of the Government of Canada. The RCN conducted at least one underwater search in an attempt to locate the remains of any associated objects, though nothing was ever found.

Subsequent to the investigation, several military witnesses, including one RCN diver claimed that an alien space craft was responsible for the impact.

The Travis Walton Incident

Popularised by the movie Fire in the sky, which details Walton’s story, the Travis Walton Incident is unique among other encounters due to the fact that there were corroborating witnesses to his abduction.

On the afternoon of November 5, 1975, Walton and four of his companions were driving down a lonely logging road in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona after a long day of logging on the mountain.  The group, at some point, encountered a strange craft hovering above a clearing several feet from the roadway.  While the rest of his crew were terrified, Walton left the truck and approached the craft, only to be engulfed in a beam of intense white-green light that lifted him off the ground and threw him over 10 feet.  Believing he was dead, the crew, led by Mike Rogers, sped away in fear for their own lives, only to return to the site a few minutes later and finding Walton missing.

Despite police involvement from the beginning and a five day manhunt, Walton was feared dead, until he was “returned” five days later with physical wounds to his face and body and no recollection of what had happened.  Over the days that followed, he displayed symptoms of psychological trauma, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and eventually memories of the abduction started to come back, gruesome as they were.  Walton’s accounting of the missing time details examination and experimentation by alien beings onboard their craft, but the personal toll experienced by the entire group of loggers was largely the focus of public attention.

The Rendlesham Forest Incident

The Rendlesham Forest Incident is the name given to a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights and the alleged landing of a craft or multiple craft of unknown origin in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, in late December 1980.  This case is possibly the best documented UFO sighting or contact experience in history.  It happened just outside RAF Woodbridge, used at the time by the U.S. Air Force and involved several dozen U.S. Air Force personnel.

Official reports of the incident have been suppressed and possibly forged by Air Force brass, but the personal, eyewitness accounts of some of the men involved raises a few eyebrows.  Namely, Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt, from whom a lengthy voice recording of the event, as it occurred has become available, and Sergeant Jim Penniston, who claims to have had direct contact with a craft in the woods just outside the base.  Penniston’s accounting tells of strange symbols or marking on the outside of the craft and he claims that when he touched one of the symbols a large sequence of 1’s and 0’s appeared in his mind.  Those 1’s and 0’s later proved to be a binary code sequence that, according to some, reveals plans to “explore humanity” and provides several coordinates for geographical locations.

The Belgium Wave

The Beligium Wave is a series of UFO sightings in (you guessed it) Belgium, over the period of November 29, 1989 to April 1990.  What sets this event apart from most others is both the large number of credible witnesses, such as Police Officers and government officials, but also because this was the first major sighting of a craft or crafts that were triangle in shape rather than the traditional disc or saucer shape.  There were over 2000 sighting reports over 18 months, 650 of which were investigated with 500 remaining completely unexplained.

This event was best captured by a now famous photo of the craft known as the Petit Rechain photo, which is largely dubbed the best UFO picture ever taken.  It has been analysed by two independent nuclear physicists and is deemed to be entirely genuine, which is a monumental conclusion considering the state of UFOlogy.

Phoenix Lights

On March 13, 1997, thousands of people in Phoenix, Arizona witnessed an incredible sight in the early evening sky.  Now known as the Phoenix Lights, this event happened in two parts.  Part one was the sighting by many people of an enormous �?delta wing’ or boomerang shaped craft that silently floated over the city between 8:00 and 9:00pm.  Part two was a series of stationary lights that appeared over the south side of the city, which were later said to be flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft performing training exercises in the area at approximately 10:00pm.

This case is important not only because of the huge number of witnesses, but also because there was government interest in explaining the phenomenon at both the local and state level.  Former Governor Fife Symington, who claims to have witnessed the craft himself, came under fire for a publicity stunt he pulled, wherein one of his aids was paraded out at a press conference wearing an alien costume.  Expressing remorse for his not-well-thought-out gag, Symington later pressed military officials for an explanation to the event but was apparently stone-walled.

As mentioned above, these have been what some consider to be the cornerstone UFO cases among the millions and millions of reports.  Though nothing concrete has ever been found that proves that these encounters were extraterrestrial in nature, many are adamant that ET’s exist and are visiting our planet.  The abduction stories offer a chilling glimpse into the modus operandi of such ET’s, but doesn’t necessarily mean they are malevolent.  It could be that they are indifferent, much as we are to many of the bugs that trod under our own feet.

While the above offers a good cross section of the headline cases in UFOlogy, the sheer number of accounts available ensures that some will disagree with this assessment, thus stands an open invitation for anyone who would like, to submit their pick for cornerstone UFO Case in the comment section below.

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s… What the hell is that?  Since the Wright Brother’s first flight in December of 1903, our skylines have seen a flood of aeronautical wonders, from simple propeller planes to jumbo jets to stealth bombers, but all these have something in common, they’re airplanes.  What some people have been witnessing in the sky can hardly be compared to these technological marvels.

Flying Men Phenomenon, which, as the term suggests, is the strange trend being reported in many parts of the world describing humanoid figures flying or hovering without any apparent technological assistance.  Stories of Flying Men come from such exotic locales as the Solomon Islands (as previously reported in The Solomon Island Giants and their ET Neighbours) Japan and even right here in North America, a laBrooklyn, New York and most recently San Luis Valley, Colorado.

Colorado is no stranger to unexplained phenomena, what with their long history of UFO sightings, Bigfoot cases and even a satanic encounter or two.  Most of the accountings tell tales of weird humanoid looking figures hovering high above populated areas for minutes to hours.  Some say the figures are winged, others say they look just like an action figure hanging in mid air.

There are a few blurry photographs on the internet, but nothing to write home about, most are so out of focus that all you can see is a blob centre frame.  If you do a Google search for Flying Men you’ll get only a few relevant results mixed in with an ambiguous list of sites referencing other aerial phenomenon.  But one thing you might notice is that the information you’ll find is suspiciously similar, as if all the websites offering Flying Men stories are all just re-postings of the same blog article, the original for which is difficult to determine.

That article explains, quite briefly, about Colorado’s colourful past, and offers a cursory description of the Flying Men, much as you read above, but there’s no corroborative information listed and one is hard pressed to find a date for any of the reports –though if you look hard enough you can find a rare case or two, such as the report out of Poland in 2000[1], but even that report is second-hand and lacks any corroboration.

One report does stand out against the background however, and that one comes courtesy of the famous Rense.com.  The post, authored by Santiago Yturria and titled The Mysterious Flying Humanoids details a series of sightings in Colonia Agricola Oriental, Mexico, by renowned Mexican sky-watcher and UFOlogist Salvador Guerrero among several others.

In March of 2000 Guerrero captured a spectacular sequence of video footage of a so-called flying humanoid over his home.  This marked the beginning of a long series of sightings all over Mexico, a series that produced the best known photos and video captures of this phenomena.

The single thread of commonality between all of the reports, including those that occurred in foreign airspace, is that the witnesses were able to see, clearly, fully formed arms and legs, which begs the question…what the hell are these things?

Despite the evidence and anecdotal reports, little serious investigation has been undertaken in this regard, and as you might imagine, everyone is scratching their heads trying to come up with an explanation.  Whatever they are, it appears no one region has a monopoly on the Flying Men phenomenon and if you watch the skies long enough, who knows what you might see.

That’s no moon, that’s a space station!  Well Sir, you may just be right.  If you follow space news at all, you’re likely well aware of the Mars Madness that’s gripping the world of astrophysics and space exploration lately.  You can hardly throw a digital rock on the internet without hitting some story about Curiosity, NASA’s intrepid and reasonably well functioning Mars Rover; the main component of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).

Part of the fervour is aimed at Mars’ two little moons Diemos and Phobos, both of which were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877.  Since these two small satellites were first spotted, controversy has surrounded them.  There have been questions about their sudden appearance and their strange orbits for more than a century.

Phobos in particular has garnered a great deal of infamy and is the focus of a whopper of a conspiracy theory.  It’s hollow…and artificial.

This theory was first postulated by famous Soviet Astronomer and Astrophysicist Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, who calculated that Phobos orbit around Mars is not only faster than it should be, but is decaying.  From this Shklovsky concluded that Phobos is actually a mammoth spaceship.

Prior to Shklovsky’s observations, Russian Astronomer Dr. Cherman Struve made detailed and precise calculations about the orbits of both moons, but over the following decades, Shklovsky noticed that Phobos’ orbital velocity and position no longer matched Struve’s mathematical predictions.

Shklovsky theorised that Phobos was much, much lighter than previously thought, and was therefore subject to tidal forces on Mars, he concluded: “There’s only one way in which the requirements of coherence, constancy of shape of Phobos, and its extremely small average density can be reconciled. We must assume that Phobos is a hollow, empty body, resembling an empty tin can.”

This isn’t the only evidence though.  Questions about the sudden appearance of both moons in 1877 or so have been floated about the astrophysical community for 100 years.  Despite the fact that the capable technology and know-how were readily available many years prior to their discovery, and the fact that Mars has elicited a huge amount of interest for millennia, no one else had ever observed moons orbiting Mars.  This seems to support the idea that Phobos and possibly also Diemos are giant orbiting space craft.  Craft built by…who knows?

It doesn’t stop there though.  The ESA, or the European Space Agency, NASA’s European counterpart and the second largest space agency in the world have taken a surprising stance on this issue.  An ESA study abstract that appeared in

the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters (a semi-monthly scientific journal published by the American Geophysical Union) reveals that Phobos is not what many astrophysicists and astronomers have thought for years, a captured asteroidal satellite.[1]

“We report independent results from two subgroups of the Mars Express Radio Science (MaRS) team who independently analyzed Mars Express (MEX) radio tracking data for the purpose of determining consistently the gravitational attraction of the moon Phobos on the MEX spacecraft, and hence the mass of Phobos. New values for the gravitational parameter (GM=0.7127 ± 0.0021 x 10-³ km³/s²) and density of Phobos (1876 ± 20 kg/m³) provide meaningful new constraints on the corresponding range of the body’s porosity (30% ± 5%), provide a basis for improved interpretation of the internal structure. We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.”

This can only be interpreted one way, according to Casey Kazan[2], and that is that Phobos is an artificially constructed space ship that was built, obviously, by extraterrestrials.

“…the MARSIS radar reflections officially published on the official ESA Phobos website contained explicit scientific data, from multiple perspectives, which strongly “supported the idea that this is what radar echoes would look like, coming back from inside ‘a huge… geometric… hollow spaceship’.”

To top it all off, now there are claims, and photos, of a strange monolithic structure on the surface of Phobos.  According to famous Astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin in a C-SPAN interview from several years ago: ”We should visit the moon of Mars. There is a monolith there, a very unusual structure on this little potatoes-shaped object that goes around Mars,”

As you might imagine, this theory hasn’t gone unnoticed by the sceptics, and Kazan has been accused of perpetuating a hoax originally perpetrated by Shklovsky, though many contend that Shklovsky’s original conclusions are valid and should be accepted.  Supporters often cite the many failed attempts at reconnaissance of Phobos and Diemos, what with the disappearance of two probes sent to survey the moons and the technical problems that have plagued other attempts.  Mainstream science however, is not in the mood for giant artificial moon/spaceship/space-station hijinks and to date the official story is that Phobos is composed of highly porous phyllosilicates.

The truth of the matter may never be known, at least until man sets foot on the Martian surface, but wild speculation aside, Mars Madness is bound to continue well into the future.

Express your opinion in the comment section below.

Why do all famed prophets, such as Nostradamus or Edgar Casey, always report fire and brimstone type predictions?  Why is there never a prophecy that mankind will have a day of peace and illumination, on, oh I don’t know…a Tuesday? (Yes, I am aware that some prophecies have been positive in nature, but the vast majority are negative)

Perhaps the reason is simply the nature of humanity, and I don’t necessarily mean that we’re destined to destroy the planet and ourselves along with it, which we very well might be.  I mean that perhaps the reason is that all of our prophets are human, with fears and flaws and crushed personal aspirations.  Or are they?

Well people…I give you Webbot!

Ok, so maybe Webbot isn’t really all that new, but it is, well, novel.  I’ve written about prophets before, and perhaps I wasn’t exactly charitable when I did so.  I mean, when you have to change whole words and phrases in a prediction to prove, after-the-fact, that the prediction actually did predict an event –such as must be done with a large number of Nostradamus’ quatrains- then you’ve opened yourself up for some criticism.

Webbot, however, has been 100% accurate in all of its predictions! Well no, actually it hasn’t.  But shouldn’t an electronic, internet-wide, uber-surveillance wonder-algorithm using super bot be able to predict humanity’s future with 100% accuracy?  That depends on who you ask.

Developed in the late 1990’s by Clif High and his associate George Ure to predict stock market trends, The Webbot Project, as it is now called, operates through the website www.halfpasthuman.com[1], where High sells his predictions piecemeal.  High claims that his spider-like web robot can accurately predict future events by crawling the web and analysing “web chatter” to identify trends in global human emotion.  He treats his algorithm as top secret and is rather tight lipped about how The Webbot Project works.  High also has a YouTube channel: The Webbot Project, where he expounds on a wide array of subjects relating to metaphysics, prophecies and the paranormal.

The Webbot Project has been analysing the internet for more than two decades and in that time it has had its share of hits and misses.  Much of the predictions you’ll find via the website above are rather mundane and cryptic, but some of them have been more sensational, such as:

• The 9/11 Terror attack
• The 2003 Northeast Blackout
• The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami
• Hurricane Katrina in 2005

Now, the legitimacy of these predictions is in question and they are widely regarded as postdictions – predictions that can only be attributed to events after the event has happened, often with liberal editing of the original prediction.

The Webbot Project does, however, have a long list of misses, such as a massive earthquake in Vancouver, Canada and the Pacific Northwest was predicted to occur on December 12, 2008.  The US dollar was predicted to completely collapse, or Israel was to bomb Iran in 2011 and in reaction to this crisis, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was to be thrown into major chaos ten days later.  And most notably Webbot predicted a major catastrophe in 2012, relating to the Mayan Prophecy and a possible magnetic pole shift for the planet.

These failures, especially the 2012 catastrophe prediction have brought The Webbot Project into disrepute, but much like its human counterparts in history, none of this has done anything to dissuade true believers.  High continues to churn out prediction after prediction even though those efforts have been criticised citing the ambiguity and gloom and doom nature of the predictions as major faults.  Or as Tom Chivers of The Daily Telegraph says:

“…the internet might plausibly reveal group knowledge about the stock market or, conceivably, terror attacks [but] it would be no more capable of predicting a natural disaster than would a Google search, … the predictions are so vague as to be meaningless, [and] the prophecies become self-distorting.”[2]

Ultimately, is Webbot just as fallible and biased as its human contemporaries?  I would say so.  While it may be a technological marvel, cold, calculated and robotic, it is fed by human emotion, using our digital voices as the basis for its predictions, and as long as there is a human element to the process, our biases, fears and dreams will be a major part of its prophecy.

What do you think about The Web Bot Project?  Should we trust to an artificial intelligence in seeking answers about what the future may bring?  Voice your opinion in the comment section below.

If there was an efficient way to attain internet infamy and to lose all professional credibility, it would definitely be fabricating evidence, staging online publicity stunts and perpetrating academic trickery.

Most would aptly recognise the above as a recipe for disaster, but one, it seems, sees these methods as par for the paranormal course. I am of course referring to Dr. Melba S. Ketchum. The (Texas A&M) doctor of veterinary medicine who, in 1985, established DNA Diagnostics; a self-proclaimed leader in all types of DNA testing, including: human and animal forensics, human and animal paternity and parentage testing, disease diagnostics, trait tests, animal and human identity testing, species identification and sex determination.  If you believe the bio listed on the DNA Diagnostics website, Ketchum is a pillar of the DNA world, yet her recent behaviour paints a very different picture.

As I reported to you in my previous article titled Bigfoot Is Real!, Ketchum, through DNA Diagnostics presented a press release touting some rather amazing findings.  The original press release can be found here.  In it you will see that Ketchum has “successfully sequenced Bigfoot DNA”.  The paranormal blogosphere went crazy over this news, myself included.  Though there were some who kept their cool and warned of Ketchum’s past involvement in some funny business regarding “angel DNA”, wherein Ketchum is said to have referred to the DNA of angels (yes, heavenly beings) in a research paper.  Ketchum supporters cited supposedly common usage of the term “angel DNA” in reference to unknown DNA material in genetic research circles.  This is yet to be confirmed.

In her new study, Ketchum claims to have sequenced four samples of material thought to be hair and skin specimens of the famed North American cryptid known as Sasquatch.  Early on, Ketchum was criticised for releasing her conclusions via a press release (on the internet no less) prior to publishing her study for peer review, which is the normal procedure for such findings.  It was said by some that Ketchum was, understandably, excited about her conclusions and wanted to share the information in the quickest fashion, not worrying about issues of credibility.  Later Ketchum cited academic prejudice as the cause of her unorthodox methods, stating that respected science journals refused to publish or even review her work because of the controversial nature of the subject, and she was thus forced to take matters into her own hands.

And take them into her own hands she did indeed.  The long awaited, peer reviewed publication of her research came in time, from science journal DeNovo.  The world, again, was atwitter, paranormal pundits the internet over were scrambling to get a peek at the publication, though they were about to be disappointed, again.  Visitors to the DeNovo Journal website (www.denovojournal.com) were presented with a humdrum page that was difficult to navigate and which offered no real substance, and to top it all off the journal was charging $30 a pop to view the paper. (Which I’m told isn’t all that unusual as science journals go.)  Faced with that initial let down, some rather industrious internet sleuths delved a little deeper into the DeNovo website, finding that the web page was only weeks old and (initially) hosted on a free service.

In the weeks that followed much speculation permeated twitter and the larger paranormal blogs, and it eventually came out that Ketchum’s Bigfoot DNA paper was the only one posted on the DeNovo website.  To top it off, it became known that Ketchum had actually acquired the Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Exploration in Zoology or JAMEZ and renamed it DeNovo Journal.  It seemed that Ketchum had circumvented the peer review process and self-published her results, essentially faking scientific credibility for her “ground breaking research”.

At this point, the validity of her conclusions is largely irrelevant.  For all the paranormal public cares, she could parade Bigfoot through CNN’s anchor room and have him dance a funny jig with Anderson Cooper and we still wouldn’t believe her.  Ketchum has made public statements denying that she self-published her work and is now something of an internet celebrity, weighing in on bigfoot discussions on the likes of the internet radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, among others.  She has, since the start of this mess, advocated for legal protection for Sasquatch, calling for the government to assign legal status to the creature, making it illegal to hunt, shoot or trap the animal (whether or not it exists).

In case you couldn’t tell, my patience with this situation has reached its limit, and I personally call for the greater paranormal public to leave Ketchum and her “research” behind.  We deserve better and we can provide the scientific community with better opportunities for advancement.  As has been said, by the publishers of other, well respected scientific journals, competent and well executed studies of DNA, whether of Sasquatch or whatever, will be greeted with professional scepticism, peer review, confirmation and will be published without bias for all the world to see and enjoy.  These kind of hijinks are unnecessary, and are ultimately harmful to a greater understanding of the scientific method.

As long time readers of my blog already know, I was once the caretaker of the most haunted hotel in Cambridge Ontario.  As mentioned in parts I & II of this epic, I lived on the grounds from late 1995 to early 1998.  I was tasked with security and minor maintenance of the vacant building, and in carrying out my duties I came across some other-worldly phenomena.

Upon moving into the small service quarters, located in the shadow of the immense hotel, my young family and I were completely unaware of the events to come.  My eldest son was born shortly after my wife (of the time) and I had moved in.  My life was a whirlwind at the time and neither my wife nor I spent much time worrying about the ethereal consequences of living so close to the Preston Springs Gardens Hotel.  That is until we started experiencing some very weird happenings.

It started with small, barely noticeable events, like, on grocery day, a loaf of bread would spontaneously jump off the counter when our backs were turned, doors would open and close of their own power and the cat would seem to play with unseen playmates.  Nothing truly unexplainable happened until our son was born in November of 1996.  We would lie in bed late at night and listen to our new born baby coo and laugh over the baby monitor, and when one of us would enter his room to check on him, we would catch, peripherally, one of his stuffed animals suspended in thin air over his crib, which would then fall as though it had been caught red handed.

One event that occurred early on was precipitated by the removal of items from the hotel.  The day of our move in, as described in Part II, my brother, my best friend and I performed our maiden exploration of the derelict hotel, wherein we found a huge pile of discarded kitchen wares, books and other ephemera in an ante-room near the rear entrance.  Among the garbage were two beautiful glass vases, thick hand blown white glass that engendered visions of red roses.  Being somewhat of a romantic in those days, I happily absconded with the vases as a gift for my wife.  Bringing them into our small home, my wife cleaned them and placed them on our bathroom window sill, one at each end of the three foot long sill.  Several weeks later I fulfilled my romantic duty by purchasing a single red rose for each vase.    That evening as we lay in bed, we heard a crash, which caused me to leap to my feet and dash into the bathroom, only to find both vases smashed on the floor in the middle of the room.  Now, this in-and-of-itself is nothing to be alarmed by, but for the placement of the glass.  It was as though someone had picked up the vases and thrown them to the ground in the middle of the room.  My wife and some friends speculated that some entity took exception to my removing them from the hotel, which was an idea that weighed on my mind for some time.

This event wore on me, over time, as my mind went over the details again and again, I couldn’t reconcile the weirdness.  And when compared against all of the other events, I just couldn’t get over the idea that someone or something was with us.

Months later, as I hosted a party that included family and close friends, my guests insisted on an extended tour of the hotel, and it was my pleasure to oblige.  We wandered the halls, exploring and marvelling at the splendour of this once opulent building, eventually congregating in a large suite on the backside of the hotel.  As we stood talking and laughing, we noticed something moving through the over-grown gardens surrounding the concrete baths located halfway up the backyard.  Wispy and white, this apparition, which we couldn’t completely make out, appeared to move from bath to bath.  Each of us stood in amazement, silently watching through the large windows as this ghostly body glided over the shrubbery.  We watched for a few minutes, until eventually it moved toward the building and disappeared near the rear gallery doors.  Suffice it to say, my guests were eager to get out of this haunted building, so we walked, with goose bumps, all the way from the fourth floor to the service entrance on the first floor.  We never did see the apparition again, but the building always provoked a feeling that one was being watched.

We lived in that small “cottage” (as my sons affectionately call it) for just less than three years, and in that time I witnessed many weird events like those already discussed, from unexplained lights and shadows, to strange whispers and even a push down the stairs (as described in ‘Hotel Haunting in Cambridge’).  As time went on, my family grew and we were forced to move to a more appropriate home, leaving all the spookiness behind us.  From time to time I pass by the hotel and I reminisce over all the memories I have of that time of my life.

Several theories have been proffered to explain these phenomena, from poltergeist, to a caring but deceased head nurse of the property’s days as a retirement home.  But I prefer to leave speculation as to the cause of these events to the reader.  It saddened me to see of the recent fire in the service building in mid 2011, which has culminated in the demolition of the building in the summer of 2012.  While the hotel still stands, its condition unchanged since the last renovation effort, I fear it has a date with a wrecking ball in the not so far off future.

Aside from the well known Stonehenge in Wiltshire England there are literally hundreds of monolithic sites the world over.  From the Great Pyramid at Giza to the city of pyramids at Teotihuacan, some consist of multiple stones that are moderate in size, but others are simply gargantuan monoliths.  How were such huge stones worked and moved about in an age before the advent of modern technology?

The largest quarried monolith (but not moved) is in Nanjing China, it is the Stele Base(of the Ming Dynasty) in the Yangshan Quarry and it comes in at a whopping 16,250 tons (or 32,500,000 pounds).  Though since it was never moved, it’s ranking at the top of the list is a little misleading.  The largest stone monolith ever moved is the Thunder Stone at St Petersburg Russia. It is 1500 tons (or three million pounds), it was moved 6 kilometres over land in 1770 for the Russian Empire.

At second place is the Ramesseum or memorial temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II, located in the Theban Necropolis in Upper Egypt.  A syenite statue of Ramesses, weighing approximately 1000 tons (or two million pounds), only fragments of which still exist, was allegedly transported 170 miles over land.  This is the largest remaining colossal statue in the world.

Coming in at a close third is the trilithon at Baalbek, Lebanon.  A group of three horizontal giant stones, 800 tons each, which make up the podium base for the Roman Jupiter temple.

These and other sites around the world have huge stones used in their construction, though modern science is largely at a loss to explain how such stones were moved and erected.  Aside from it’s hard-to-pronounce name, Ollantaytambo in Peru is a good example, several stones 100 tons or more have been precisely set as walls and other structures with an almost inconceivable level of accuracy.  How were these stones moved, let alone placed with such exacting standards?

Modern science tells us stories of wooden rollers and counterbalanced primitive cranes, but to some these answers are inadequate.  Ancient alien theorists loudly contend that the sheer size of these stones makes it improbable that archaic technology had any part in the operation.  Of course, the alternative offered by these theorists is that aliens provided advanced technology and methods to our ancient ancestors.

Ancient alien theorists, such as Georgio Tsoukalos and David Childress (as seen on the History channel’s Ancient Aliens, The Series) suggest that various advanced technologies were used to move these stones, such as anti-gravity technology, and even acoustic levitation.  Anti-gravity is a misnomer, in that there is no way to cancel gravity.  There are ways to counteract gravity’s effect on an object, whether through electromagnetic force or aerodynamic lift, but this is not true anti-gravity per se.  Ancient alien theorists contend however,  that aliens who visited Earth in the distant past possessed some heretofore unknown technical ability in anti-gravity which they passed on to our ancestors, and that this knowledge has been forgotten over the years.

Acoustic levitation is, on the other hand, technologically feasible. Scientists have used acoustic levitation techniques to cause ping pong balls to dance around inside acoustic chambers.  The technology uses sound waves, vibrating at a resonant frequency to almost magically levitate an object. But while it is theoretically possible, it is doubtful that anyone could use this technique to levitate something as large as these stones.  Nonetheless, these ancient alien theorists are confident in their assertion that this technology was used in our ancient past.

As mentioned above, modern science suggests that wooden rollers, levers and fulcrums, and the use of many, many men were the true method, and it seems to diminish the accomplishment when these ancient alien theorists insinuate that our ancestors were incapable of erecting these monuments on their own.  One thing remains certain, the stones were moved and manipulated, somehow.  We may never know how exactly, but we can be reasonably sure it wasn’t by alien intervention.

In a world that boasts some very strange things, it seems that Peru has more than it’s fair share.  Located on the pacific side of Central America, Peru is the most extreme country in the world. It boasts the world’s highest tropical mountains, the world’s driest desert, the world’s most biologically diverse rain forest, the world’s richest fishery, and the world’s most extraordinary cultural and archaeological diversity.

In a part of the world with such rich archaeological bounty, containing much Mayan, Aztec and Incan legacy, Peru boasts some of the world’s most interesting heritage sites; from Machu Picchu to the Nazca Lines, from Ollantaytambo to Lake Titicaca and the Amaru Maru “star gate”.

Below is a list of some of Peru’s most amazing archaeological tourist attractions (in no particular order):

Huacachina

Huacachina is a small oasis village in Ica Peru.  With a year-round population of around 115 people, it is a tourist hot spot known for it’s desert sporting potential.  Built around a small natural lake called the “oasis of America”, the big draw is the sports of sand-boarding and taking dune buggy rides on sand dunes that stretch several hundred feet high.

Lake Titicaca

The largest lake in South America and with an altitude of 12,500 feet above sea level, Lake Titicaca is the highest lake on the planet.  It is located on the Peru/Bolivia border and boasts a large number of island villages that are open to tourism.  Located near Lake Titicaca is Amaru Maru, or the “star gate”.  Carved into a large sandstone boulder in the Hayua Marca mountain region is a “doorway” that is believed to be a literal star gate, through which a shaman was said to have disappeared for several minutes only to return with stories of other dimensions.  It is thought by some theorists that the door is a gateway used by ancient Incas to travel to otherworldly destinations, though mainstream science remains sceptical.

Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo is a town and an Inca archaeological site in southern Peru some 60 kilometres northwest of the city of Cusco. It is located at an altitude of 2,792 meters (9,160 feet) above sea level in the district of Ollantaytambo, province of Urubamba, Cusco region.  Possibly the greatest example of ancient Inca architecture in Peru, Ollantaytambo boasts some of the most bafflingly huge stones used in the construction of the ceremonial buildings and terraces.  These stones, some weighing in excess of 100 tonnes, have been placed with an accuracy of a few millimetres.  No one has been able to explain how these stones were moved and manipulated, but there are those who say that the Inca had otherworldly help.

Nazca

As I’ve written about before, Nazca is home to the famed Nazca Lines, a series of shallow lines drawn in the sand of the Nazca desert, depicting animals, human figures and geometric shapes.  It is less a tourist destination than it is a site to pass over via airplane, as the lines are best seen from above.  Modern science is at a loss to explain the purpose of the lines, and some theorists are adamant that they were designed as a method of communicating with ancient aliens.

Machu Picchu

Ranked as the top tourist destination along the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu is possibly the hardest-to-get-to site in Peru.  Seated at an elevation of 7,970 feet above sea level it was built around 1450ad.  It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows.  Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham.  Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored. The restoration work continues to this day.

Chan Chan

The largest Pre-Columbian city in South America, Chan Chan is an archaeological site located in the Peruvian region of La Libertad, five km west of Trujillo.  Chan Chan covers an area of approximately 20 square kilometres and had a dense urban center of about six square kilometres.  The vast adobe city of Chan Chan was built by the Chimu around AD 850 and lasted until its conquest by the Inca Empire in AD 1470.  Present-day visitors to Chan Chan can enter the Tschudi Complex, believed to be one of the later citadels built in the city.

Sacsayhuamán

A walled complex built on the outskirts of the city of Cuzco, Sacsayhuamán was the former capital of the Incan Empire.  The best-known zone of Sacsayhuamán includes its great plaza and its adjacent three massive terrace walls. The stones used in the construction of these terraces are among the largest used in any building in prehispanic America and display a precision of fitting that is unmatched in the Americas.  Much like Ollantaytambo, modern science is at a loss to explain how these stones were moved and placed with such precision.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m an atheist.  I don’t believe in God, nor do I believe in any of the dogmatic ideas that follow.  In light of this some might question my penchant for the paranormal, as much of the paranormal derives from a religious belief, i.e. ghosts are the product of the immutable soul.  I admit, however humbly, that there does appear to be a bit of a conflict between atheism and paranormal research.

To clarify, I don’t think of myself as a paranormal researcher, though much of my attention has been focused on paranormal topics over the last three years.  So that label wouldn’t be far off the mark.  I don’t, however, go out hunting for ghosts; I’m much more of a theorist, so to speak.

When I started this blog, I wanted to pursue topics that were interesting to me, and admittedly, I hadn’t come to the conclusion that I was an atheist at that point.  I was just a writer with an empty page, and it seemed to me that paranormal topics were somewhat popular at the time.  I’ve written about ghosts and demons, and monsters and boogeymen, among many other mysteries.  Along the way, while I researched post after post, I searched my proverbial soul and eventually came to the conclusion that I cannot abide by the theological assertions of religion.  Though, it was less of a revelation than it was a slow and subtle awakening.

Much of what I’ve written, I admit, is in conflict with atheism; or rather it could be interpreted that way.  I’ve come to think of my paranormal pursuits in terms of science and logic, nevertheless I feel an odd compulsion to apologize for my words.

To resolve the ensuing conflict I submit that much of my interests can be thought of in scientific terms.  For instance, the traditional idea of ghosts and ghostly phenomena is such that their origins follow from the idea of a soul.  The primary hypothesis for an explanation of ghosts is the Dead Person Hypothesis or DPH.  This suggests that ghosts are the disembodied souls of people who have passed on, a familiar idea to most.  What I assert, however, is that ghosts derive from much more subtle energies in our atmosphere, similar to electromagnetic fields, and can be thought of in terms of science.  I take each of the various phenomena that are often thought to be connected to ghosts and deal with them individually, apparitions and other haunting type activity, EVP (electronic voice phenomenon), and photographic evidence to name a few.

What I’m saying is, essentially, that ghosts are not the souls of dead people.  Now, I’m not talking about your average haunting.  99% of what most would call paranormal phenomenon is either pure hoax or a condition of the mind, Pareidolia for example –a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.  Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

It’s the remaining 1% of all paranormal cases that, to me, requires a closer look.  In my mind, these few instances of “spiritual” phenomena, which seem truly unexplainable, are potentially understandable through physics and electromagnetic theory.  I believe that constructs like the subtle energies found in zero point fields and the effects of electromagnetic fields on the brain can explain a large number of ghostly experiences, but I don’t think this invalidates the phenomenon.

I believe there’s a link between paranormal experiences and religious experiences, as I discussed in my previous article titled The God Helmet and the World Grid.  As discussed, Dr. Michael Persinger used intricate electromagnetic fields via his “God Helmet” to elicit feelings of religious and paranormal experience.  And the fact that these feelings can be artificially generated suggests to me that such phenomena are the products of our brains interpreting naturally occurring fields of the same type.

In this regard, I’m able to reconcile, in my own mind, the divide between a spiritual and an atheistic perspective.

But ghosts aren’t the only thing I write about.  A large portion of my attention has been on cryptozoology and specifically Bigfoot.  And quite simply, I endeavour to keep my mind open to the possibilities.  I’m reminded of the discovery of the great apes in central Africa in the 1860’s.  For many years there were stories of hairy beasts living in the mountainous rainforest of the Congo, and these stories were largely thought to be mythological by the Western world.  That is until they were discovered to be a real life creature.  As far as Bigfoot is concerned, it seems to me that there is more evidence for the existence of a large bipedal hominid in North America (and other locations around the world) than there is for the existence of God, what with the many foot casts and eye witness reports.  And while I admit that a large portion of that evidence is certainly false or misidentified, there is I think, like the ghosts, a 1% rule with Bigfoot.

While this may seem like a man trying to rationalize some very irrational things, I would have you know that the dichotomy that exists between the assertion that I am an atheist and my penchant for the paranormal is something that has weighed on my mind for quite some time.  The above is nothing more than a wandering train of thought, exploring the space between each belief.

For such a small book, Free Will certainly packs a punch.  Sam Harris has presented a well thought out argument for the illusion of free will.  His main point, as I see it, is another example of a first cause question.  He argues that the origin of our thoughts precludes freedom of will, in that every thought, desire or choice is the product of neural conditioning resulting from/influenced by our genetics and past experience.

I’m not sure I buy his premise.  While I’m impressed with the semantic idea: “I want this, but I don’t know why.” I fail to see how this negates any idea of free will, but perhaps this is my own failing.  One thing I do agree with is the notion that sin is predicated on the existence of free will, which is something I think few people recognise.

For the cost of the book, it’s a natural must read, even if you don’t buy into his argument, it’s well worth the effort. I give it three out of five.