In Association With Mysteries Magazine!
11/23/07  #444
http://www.conspiracyjournal.com
Subscribe for free at our subscription page:
http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/subscribe.html
You can view this newsletter online at:
https://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal444.html

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain – he may be trying to control your mind with microwave beams.  Or he could be hiding the truth about aliens and UFOs.  Or he could be selling drugs to finance some government priority that the public need not know about.  Or he could be reading the latest issue of the number one, weekly conspiracy newsletter of strange stuff and high weirdness - Conspiracy Journal!

This week Conspiracy Journal brings you such tryptophan-overdosing stories as:

- Witness to Roswell Incident Tells His Story -
- Mind of a Rock -
- Myths and legends of the Hollow Earth -
- China Monster Round-Up -
AND:  All We Zombies

All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of
CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~


IS THE EARTH HOLLOW?

What is the Secret About the Hollow Earth That Admiral Richard Byrd Took to His Grave?



THE CONCEPT OF A HOLLOW EARTH IS A THEORY THAT REFUSES TO DIE!
Explore the bizarre world under the Poles! Journey with renown researcher Tim Swartz as he attempts to unravel Admiral Richard E Byrd's mysterious journey to find a secret subterranean world! Here is evidence that the great adventurer actually ventured beyond the poles into a rich land inhabited by a race of superbeings as well as possibly refugee scientists and SS members of Hitler's dreaded Nazi regime.

EXAMINE MANY CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS - INCLUDING:
How the world was formed. The existence of the mythological lands of Hyperborea and Ultima Thule.  The development of the Flying Saucer. The mysterious lands and people of the Far North.  Operation Highjump - Antarctic Attack!  Did Hitler Escape to Antarctica?  Britain's Secret War at the Poles.  Did an Inner World race give the German's UFO technology?


This is a large size - 8.5x11 -- book with easy to read text and contains many important illustrations, art work and documents for the serious student to study. 

You can order this book now for the special price of ONLY $17.95 plus $5.00
for Shipping!

AND, if you order right now, we will send you a VERY SPECIAL FREE GIFT - a DVD of Timothy Green Beckley's (Mr. UFO) appearance on OUT THERE TV, where he talks about the Hollow Earth and other inner Earth mysteries.  You get this DVD FREE for being among the first to order this incredible book.

So don't delay, order your copy of Admiral Byrd's Secret Journey Beyond the Poles today for only $17.95 plus $5.00 for shipping -  A GREAT PRICE!

You can order online via our secure order page:  
CLICK HERE TO ORDER

You can also phone in your credit card orders to Global Communications
24-hour hotline: 732-602-3407

And as always you can send a check or money order to:
Global Communications
P.O. Box 753
New Brunswick, NJ  08903

NOW ON SALE!
MYSTERIES MAGAZINE  #18


In This Fantastic Issue:
Mental Armageddon: The Quest for Mind Control
Radionics: Mind Machines for Better Health
Mark David Chapman: Lone Nut or CIA Assassin?
America and Bio-Weapons: A Troubling Ethos
The Healing Sounds of Jonathan Goldman
And so much more, including book, music, and movie reviews, exhibit  listings, your fall horoscope, and conference listings!


Get your issue TODAY at your favorite bookstore
or magazine stand.


www.mysteriesmagazine.com



Tim Swartz, Editor of Conspiracy Journal, will be on Out There TV which will air starting Sunday, November 18.  Tim will talk with hosts Kate and Richard Mucci
about his recent article in Mysteries Magazine about the history of mind control.
As well, Tim will talk about his new book: Admiral Byrd's Secret Journey Beyond
The Poles and discuss the myths, legends and realities of the hollow Earth.

This episode will air for 14 days and viewers can find their local stations by going to www.outtheretv.com and going to the Station Listings page.

So don't miss out! Catch this exciting episode of Out There TV with your beloved
editor and all round nice guy Tim Swartz

- CAN'T KEEP A GOOD SECRET DOWN DEPARTMENT -

Witness to Roswell Incident Tells His Story


Retired Air Force veteran Milton Sprouse clearly remembers the summer day in 1947 when he returned to Roswell Army Air Field aboard the B-29 bomber Dave's Dream from a three-day maneuver in Florida.

Sprouse, then a corporal and engine mechanic in the Army Air Forces, could not believe what his ground crew was telling him: A UFO had crashed in the New Mexico desert, on a ranch 70 miles away.

The story made the front page of the Roswell Daily Record: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer," read the headline.

According to the July 8 story, "the intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced ... that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer."

The craft supposedly had been recovered after the ranch owner notified the sheriff's department, who sent Maj. Jesse Marcel and a team to investigate.

"Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk," the story stated. "After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters."

The next day, the paper retracted the story, claiming that the recovered object was a weather balloon - an account the government stuck with until 1995. It was then announced that the weather balloon story had been fabricated to cover up Project Mogul, a top-secret project involving two-dozen high-altitude neoprene balloons designed to detect Russian nuclear explosions.

According to Sprouse, five of his crew were called to the site to collect the remaining debris and load it onto a flatbed truck. Sprouse was ordered to stay with Dave's Dream in case the military should suddenly need the craft.

"I had reservations of what all they were telling me, because each one of them told something different," he said. "I thought, 'I don't know.' ... Later on, when it all started coming out in piecemeal, you could put it together and tell what they said was true."

As years passed, Sprouse grew more comfortable talking about the Roswell Incident.

Author and ufologist Thomas J. Carey interviewed Sprouse three times with co-author Donald Schmitt. Sprouse is mentioned on page 233 of their new book, "Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up."

During his first interview, videotaped at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, Sprouse was reluctant to talk about the incident, Carey said.

"He was a career Air Force guy, and they're the least likely to speak because of their pensions," Carey said. "When I interviewed him over the phone in 2001, I got a little more information, and then I interviewed him again last year and got even more. It was an evolution of coming forward."

Today, as Sprouse recounts the incident, he leans forward in earnest, a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes.

About 500 soldiers sent to the crash site were lined shoulder to shoulder and ordered to scour the property for debris, he said.

"They lined them up and then said, 'We want you to go through this ranch the way you're facing until we tell you to stop, and we want you to pick up everything unnatural,'" Sprouse said.

"When my crew got back (from the crash site), we talked for weeks," he said. "They told me everything and I believe them. ... They told me, 'Milt, it's true.'"

Among the material discovered was a malleable, foil-like material that could be laid flat with no creases after being squashed into a ball.

Whether fact or lore, one of the most intriguing pieces of the puzzle are reports of five diminutive green bodies allegedly recovered with the UFO. Sprouse believes it.

A staff sergeant in his barracks was called to the hospital shortly after the crash, he said.

"He and two doctors and two nurses were in the emergency room, and they brought in one of those five humanoid bodies that they had recovered," he said. "They said, 'We want this dissected and we want a complete history of how it functions and the parts and everything.'"

The next day, the man from his barracks was transferred from the base, Sprouse said.

"We never heard from him again," he said. "We asked and (they said), 'Oh, we don't know nothing about it.' ... I heard later that both nurses and both doctors were shipped different directions and nobody ever knew where they went."

Sprouse recalled an interesting conversation with the owner of a funeral home in Roswell several years later.

"We had some friend of ours that died, and he said, 'Hey Milt, I want to talk to you,'" he said. "He says, 'You know the base come to me and wanted five children's caskets.' That was two or three days after the crash. I said, 'No kidding.' He says, 'I only had one, and I told them that.' They said, 'One won't do us very good,' and they went somewhere else and got them."

The day the UFO story ran, the debris was allegedly loaded onto two B-29 bombers, one of them Dave's Dream, and sent to a base in Fort Worth, Texas.

Sprouse and Carey believe the material was then shipped to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where they say it remains today.

"We believe some of the stuff was loaned around, but the main repository was the foreign technology division at Wright-Patterson," said Carey, who holds a master's degree in anthropology and served briefly in the Air Force. "We've heard stories over the years of people who say that they're still trying to figure out what that stuff is."

Various rumors suggest that pieces of the ship and the bodies were stored in a mysterious Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson.

Derek Kaufman, who works in Wright-Patterson's public affairs office, was tentative when broaching the subject of Roswell and Hangar 18. He said the base tracks all such phone inquiries.

"We might get a couple of queries a month related to strange phenomena. ... Someone who believes that they've seen something very unusual - low-flying, strange aircraft or something along those lines," Kaufman said. "Folks who are UFO enthusiasts are typically the people that inquire about Hangar 18 or about Roswell, but a lot of them don't seem to be credible queries. They seem to be folks bordering on the fanatic. ... I'm hard-pressed to describe where Hangar 18 even is located."

Asked if there was any material from Roswell transferred to the base in 1947, Kaufman said, "I'll just defer to what reports have been exhaustively investigated and are now available to the general public."

Wright-Patterson's Web site includes a section titled "UFOs and other strange phenomena" that includes links to the Air Force Freedom of Information Act Web site and a 993-page document titled "The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert." In the report, the government meticulously makes its case debunking the Roswell Incident.

According to the report, the bodies recovered at the site were not alien beings, but crash-test dummies used to test high-altitude parachutes.

UFO enthusiasts say they couldn't have been dummies because the parachute tests weren't conducted until nearly a decade later.

"That's a non-starter because that project didn't get under way until the mid-'50s," Carey said. "These mannequins were a good 6 feet tall, they looked human and they were in regular flight suits. There's no way you confuse those for little aliens with big heads."

Asked if there are any remnants of the mysterious event stored at Roswell, Rob Young, a historian with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson, answered, "I would not know. I've never seen anything like that. ... To my knowledge there is not."

Sprouse believes the Roswell Incident is a far-reaching cover-up that leads as far as the White House.

"The presidents are briefed on everything ... classified, unclassified, whether they'll acknowledge it or not," Sprouse said. "Clinton, says, 'I don't know nothing.' Carter says, 'I don't know nothing about that.' Bush won't even talk about it."

Sprouse's wife, Peggy, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is skeptical about the UFO story. She's been to Roswell with her husband and said once was enough.

"Been there, done that," she said. "I never did believe it and still don't believe it."

Sprouse seems to be enjoying his part in keeping the story alive.

Has the government ever asked him not to speak about Roswell?

"No, but I worry about it," he said. "I'm getting all these telephone calls on that report, and I often wonder if it's somebody looking into this."

Source: Sedona.biz
http://www.sedona.biz/witness-to-roswell0107.htm

- I THINK, THEREFORE I AM DEPARTMENT -

Mind of a Rock

Most of us have no doubt that our fellow humans are conscious. We are also pretty sure that many animals have consciousness. Some, like the great ape species, even seem to possess self-consciousness, like us. Others, like dogs and cats and pigs, may lack a sense of self, but they certainly appear to experience inner states of pain and pleasure. About smaller creatures, like mosquitoes, we are not so sure; certainly we have few compunctions about killing them. As for plants, they obviously do not have minds, except in fairy tales. Nor do nonliving things like tables and rocks.

All that is common sense. But common sense has not always proved to be such a good guide in understanding the world. And the part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to — or, even more mysteriously, be — the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom? This has been called “the most important problem in the biological sciences” and even “the last frontier of science.” It engrosses the intellectual energies of a worldwide community of brain scientists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists and even, from time to time, the Dalai Lama.

So vexing has the problem of consciousness proved that some of these thinkers have been driven to a hypothesis that sounds desperate, if not downright crazy. Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

The doctrine that the stuff of the world is fundamentally mind-stuff goes by the name of panpsychism. A few decades ago, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel showed that it is an inescapable consequence of some quite reasonable premises.

First, our brains consist of material particles. Second, these particles, in certain arrangements, produce subjective thoughts and feelings. Third, physical properties alone cannot account for subjectivity. (How could the ineffable experience of tasting a strawberry ever arise from the equations of physics?)

Now, Nagel reasoned, the properties of a complex system like the brain don’t just pop into existence from nowhere; they must derive from the properties of that system’s ultimate constituents. Those ultimate constituents must therefore have subjective features themselves — features that, in the right combinations, add up to our inner thoughts and feelings. But the electrons, protons and neutrons making up our brains are no different from those making up the rest of the world. So the entire universe must consist of little bits of consciousness.

Nagel himself stopped short of embracing panpsychism, but today it is enjoying something of a vogue. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics.

How, the skeptics wonder, could bits of mind-dust, with their presumably simple mental states, combine to form the kinds of complicated experiences we humans have? After all, when you put a bunch of people in the same room, their individual minds do not form a single collective mind. (Or do they?) Then there is the inconvenient fact that you can’t scientifically test the claim that, say, the moon is having mental experiences. (But the same applies to people — how could you prove that your fellow office workers aren’t unconscious robots, like Commander Data on “Star Trek”?)

Finally, there is the sheer loopiness of the idea that something like a photon could have proto-emotions, proto-beliefs and proto-desires. What could the content of a photon’s desire possibly be? “Perhaps it wishes it were a quark,” one anti-panpsychist cracked.

Panpsychism may be easier to parody than to refute. But even if it proves a cul-de-sac in the quest to understand consciousness, it might still help rouse us from a certain parochiality in our cosmic outlook. We are biological beings. We exist because of self-replicating chemicals. We detect and act on information from our environment so that the self-replication will continue. As a byproduct, we have developed brains that, we fondly believe, are the most intricate things in the universe. We look down our noses at brute matter.

Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.”

But the rock doesn’t exert itself as a result of all this “thinking.” Why should it? Its existence, unlike ours, doesn’t depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. And you might draw the moral that the universe is, and always has been, saturated with mind, even though we snobbish Darwinian-replicating latecomers are too blinkered to notice.

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-lede-t.html?
_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

- BLATANT PLUG DEPARTMENT -

Myths and legends of the Hollow Earth

By Tim R. Swartz

As theories go, the idea that the Earth is hollow does not garner a lot of respect. For most people, the hollow Earth is probably a close second to the "Earth is flat" theory on that big list of "crackpot" ideas. Nevertheless, as long as there have been people able to sit around a campfire, tales of a mysterious inner world have been part of mankind's heritage.

Unlike the flat Earth, the hollow Earth has not disappeared into that great dustbin of quaint and old-fashioned myths of our ancestors. No longer does anyone have stories to tell of angels taking them up on-high to view the flat Earth; but even into this modern age of spaceflight and personal computers, there are still claims of personal encounters with the lands and people of the inner world.
 
The idea of the hollow Earth is still so tantalizing that Dr. Brooks Agnew, a physicist and engineer, is planning an upcoming expedition to the inner Earth in an attempt to find the northern polar opening. Dr. Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands.

"Everest has been climbed a hundred times," Mr. Agnew says. "The Titanic has been scanned from stem to stern. [But] this is the first and only expedition to the North Pole opening ever attempted."

Dr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to suggest the theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm. In the 17th century, English astronomer and mathematician Sir Edmond Halley, who calculated the orbit of Halley's Comet, advanced hollow-Earth theories, as did German scientist Athanasius Kircher.

A SENSE OF ADVENTURE

What is it about the hollow Earth theory that continues to fascinate people? Perhaps it is because people love a good mystery and right now there are not a lot of good mysteries left for people to cling to. The surface of the planet has been almost completely explored, and now we are taking those first steps to penetrate the vast reaches of outer space. So what does that leave for the rest of us who have that primal urge to see what lies on the other side of the mountain?
 
The deepest parts of the oceans are still almost completely untouched by human exploration, but it is not so easy for most of us to do that sort of exploring. You either have to have a whole lot of money or the ability to hold your breath for a really long time to do any serious undersea exploration.

Part of the hollow Earth mystique is that many ancient civilizations have similar creation legends that involve mankind birthing from the subterranean realm. Some of these myths even seem to suggest that people first came to the surface world via a great opening located somewhere in the northern polar regions.

The Inuit has legends that tell of a beautiful land far to the north, a land of perpetual light, where there is no darkness or a bright sun. This wonderful land has a mild climate where large lakes never freeze, where tropical animals roam in herds, and where birds of many colors cloud the sky, a land of perpetual youth, where people live for thousands of years in peace and happiness. They believe that after death the soul descends beneath the earth, first to an abode rather like purgatory, but good souls then descend further to a place of perfect bliss where the sun never sets.

A Welshman, Walter Mapes, in the latter part of the twelfth century, in his collection of anecdotes, tells of a prehistoric king of Briton called Herla, who met with the Skraelings or Inuits, who took him beneath the Earth. Many early legends tell of people going under the Earth into a strange realm, staying there for a long period of time and later returning. 

The ancient Irish had a legend of a land far to the North where the sun always shone and it was always summer weather. They even thought that some of their heroes had gone there and returned, after which they were never satisfied with their own country.

The Japanese paradise was situated "on the top of the globe" and at the same time "at the center of the Earth." It was called the "island of the congealed drop." Its first roof-pillar was the Earth's axis, and over it was the pivot of the vault of heaven.

As well, the Chinese terrestrial paradise, round in form, is described not only as at the center of the Earth, but also as directly under Shang-te's heavenly palace, which is declared to be in the polestar, and is sometimes called the "palace of the center."

SUBTERRANEAN FLYING SAUCERS

Ray Palmer, who was a writer and editor of such magazines as Amazing Stories, FATE, Search, Flying Saucers, was often referred to as the "man who created flying saucers."  With his background in science fiction, Palmer was one of the earliest publishers to realize that there was money to be made on the subject of UFOs.

Palmer would never commit himself to the extraterrestrial explanation for UFOs that had become so predominant by the 1950s.  Instead of looking to the heavens for flying saucers, Palmer looked downwards into the hollow Earth as a possible point of origin.

In the December 1959 issue of Flying Saucers Magazine, Palmer wrote:  "Flying Saucers magazine has amassed a large file of evidence which its editors consider unassailable, to prove that the flying saucers are native to the planet Earth and originate from the hollow interior by way of openings in the North and South Poles."

Theodore Fitch was another writer who agreed with Palmers Thesis.  In his book, Our Paradise Inside the Earth, fitch writes: "UFO occupants who come to us in flying saucers and who pose to be visitors from other planets, are really members of an advanced civilization in the hollow interior of the Earth, who have important reasons for keeping their true place of origin secret, for which reason they purposely foster the false belief that they come from other planets."

Those who embrace the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFOs find it easy to scoff at the idea that UFOs and their occupants could originate from a yet-to-be-explored realm beneath our feet. Considering the ancient worldwide traditions that say the inner world exists and is populated by a rich variety of intelligent races, it is no more difficult to imagine that some UFOs could be from right here on planet Earth then it is to imagine them traveling thousands of light years from some far, distant planet.

So the next time someone says to "keep your eyes to the skies;" perhaps you should also spend a little time looking downwards, for as above, so below.

For more information about the mysteries of the hollow Earth, check out Tim R. Swartz's new book: Admiral Byrd's Secret Journey Beyond the Poles, available at www.conspiracyjournal.com and Amazon.com

- ATTACK OF BIRDZILLA DEPARTMENT -

Experts Try to Identify Mysterious Bird Flying Around S. Texas

More sightings of a huge flying creature, originally reported by KENS, have prompted an investigation to determine if it is a monster or myth.

"Even though it was dark, the thing itself was black. The blackest I'd ever seen," said Frank Ramirez.

Years ago, Ramirez thought he was after a prowler in the back of his mother's Southwest Side home. But what greeted him on the garage rooftop still gives him goosebumps now.

"That's when the thing up there turned to me, and it was in a perched state, and it started to turn," he said. "It started to move its arms and this giant blackness was just coming out. At that point, I dropped the stick and I ran."

Ramirez sketched a drawing of the large, bird-like creature. The image is disturbing, and similar to dozens of sightings across San Antonio and South Texas.

"If you were to take a man's face and pull his chin down, just like a stretched face," said Ramirez.

"I was just terrified and as I was running. I just thought it was going to carry me off or something."

An earlier KENS story about a large, prehistoric-like bird drew more than 100,000 hits on MySanAntonio.com. More than a few people in San Antonio came forward to say they'd seen the creature, too.

One woman contacted KENS by e-mail, saying that because of our story, she now knows she's not crazy.

KENS caught up with cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard at the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. Gerhard recently wrote a book, called "Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters" on the large, dark birds.

"When investigating mystery animals, it's important to point out that there are vast areas of land, even here in South Texas, that remain uninhabited," said Gerhard. "If an animal like big bird does exist, it certainly needs some habitat, somewhere to hide."

The Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge has 88,000 acres, and the marshes and prairies are home to 413 species of birds, but no flying pterodactyls.

"Raptors of all kinds, from hawks to falcons, come throughout. Our most common is the Harris Hawk, " said Park Ranger Stacy Sanchez.

But even Sanchez admits that blogs spiked with reports this summer of something.

"People were posting about a very large, raptor-like bird, and they were talking about an 18-to-20-foot wingspan. I don't know ... It's kind of a myth," said Sanchez.

Critics say where's the proof? Eyewitness testimony without a feather or other body of evidence leaves these stories as they are — just stories.

"We know that it's rare, and we know that this area's been pretty popular hangout in the past," said Gerhard.

Gerhard has been installing cameras in Harlingen, where Guadalupe Cantu wants his big bird sighting documented and validated.

Back in San Antonio, Ramirez has mounted an outdoor light to keep the creature at bay.

"I know what I saw. It took me more than a week to step out of this house. I wouldn't step foot out of this house," said Ramirez. "It had this very, very horrible demeanor-look on its face. Like I was lunch," he said.

On Nov. 21, Gerhard was featured in the episode "Birdzilla" on the History Channel's series MonsterQuest.

The Giant Thunderbird Returns

Stephen Wagner, of Paranormal.about.com put together an excellent overview of sightings of mysterious, enormous birds that have been seen soaring through the skies and in the past they've even been blamed for snatching children from the ground.

A gigantic bird has been sighted in Pennsylvania. On the evening of Tuesday, September 25, 2001, a 19-year-old claimed to have seen an enormous winged creature flying over Route 119 in South Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The witness's attention was drawn to the sky by a sound that resembled "flags flapping in a thunderstorm." Looking up, the witness saw what appeared to be a bird that had a wingspan of an estimated 10 to 15 feet and a head about three feet long.

This is the most recent sighting of an incredible creature - most often considered a myth - known as a "Thunderbird." Sightings of these gigantic birds, apparently unknown to science, go back hundreds of years and are a part of many Native American legends and traditions. They have even been blamed for abducting, or attempting to abduct, small children. And now they seem to be soaring through the skies of Pennsylvania.

On September 25, the witness told researcher Dennis Smeltzer, that the huge black or grayish-brown bird passed overhead at about 50 to 60 feet. "I wouldn't say it was flapping its wings gracefully," the witness told Smeltzer, "but almost horrifically flapping its wings very slowly, then gliding above the passing big rig trucks."

The witness observed the creature for about 90 seconds in total, even seeing it land on the branches of a dead tree, which nearly broke under its great weight. Unfortunately, no other witnesses saw the bird on this date and no tangible evidence could be found for the bird after the site was searched.

What makes this story more interesting, however - even plausible - is that other sightings of similar description were reported in Pennsylvania in June and July, 2001.

On June 13, a resident of Greenville, Pa. was startled by the great size of the grayish-black creature seen soaring overhead, at first thinking it was a small airplane or ultralight aircraft! This witness observed the bird for at least 20 minutes, clearly seeing its fully feathered body and confidently estimating its wingspan to be about 15 feet and its body length at about 5 feet. This bird, too, was seen to perch on a tree for at least 15 minutes before taking to air again and flying off toward the south. A neighbor of this witness claimed to have seen the creature the next day, describing it as "the biggest bird I ever saw."

Less than a month later, on July 6, a witness in Erie County, Pa. reported a very similar sighting, according to an item in Fortean Times magazine. Again, the creature's wingspan was estimated to be 15 to 17 feet and was described as "dark gray with little or no neck, and a circle of black under its head. Its beak was very thin and long - about a foot in length."

These were not the first sightings of Thunderbirds in Pennsylvania, as you'll read later in this article. And if these reports are accurate, these birds are the largest flying creatures not yet identified by science. By comparison, the largest known bird is the wandering albatross with a wingspan of up to 12 feet. The largest predatory birds - which the Thunderbird is most often likened to - are the Andean condor (10.5-foot wingspan) and the California condor (10-foot wingspan).

Centuries-Old Legend

The legend of the Thunderbird reaches back hundreds of years as part of the mythology of several Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region. And the legend might have remained strictly a part of those cultures had not the great winged creature been seen countless times by the "white man" over the centuries.

According to the Native American myths, the giant Thunderbird could shoot lightning from its eyes and its wings were so enormous that they created peals of thunder when they flapped.

Tall Tales or Crypto Creature?

There are many tales of the Thunderbird that are more recent than the Native American legends. The animal is almost always listed in the catalogs of cryptozoologists' mysterious creatures, and although the Thunderbird has been sighted on numerous occasions, a credible photograph or video of one has never been produced, and one has never been killed or captured... except perhaps once.

A tale comes out of the Arizona Territory desert about two cowboys who encountered the giant flying creature in 1890. As cowboys are wont to do, they took careful aim with their rifles at the amazing creature and blasted it from the sky. According to an article in the April 26, 1890 edition of the Tombstone Epigraph, the cowboys and their horses dragged the lifeless monster into town where its wingspan was measured at an incredible 190 feet and its body measured at 92 feet long. It was described as having no feathers, but a smooth skin and wings "composed of a thick and nearly transparent membrane." Clearly, their description more readily resembles a pteranodon, pterosaur or pterodactyl than a large bird.

Most paranormal researchers consider this story to be a good example of Old West creative writing on the part of the newspaper. But there may be a hint of truth in it. In 1970, a man named Harry McClure claimed that he knew one of the cowboys when he was a small boy. The real story, as the cowboy told the youth, was that the creature they shot at had a wingspan of 20 to 30 feet. They did not kill the Thunderbird, however, and returned to town only with their fantastic story.

One more intriguing element to this anecdote is that a photo was supposedly taken of the great creature, held up with its wings spread by several townspeople. Remarkably, many people recall seeing this photograph printed in Fate, National Geographic or Grit magazine, or in some book about the Old West, but as yet this photo has not been produced.

In his book Unexplained!, Jerome Clark lists many more sightings, including:

    * In the early 1940s, writer Robert R. Lyman spotted a Thunderbird sitting on a road near Coudersport, Pennsylvania. It soon took to the sky, spreading its 20-foot wingspan.
    * In 1969, the wife of a Clinton County, Pa. sheriff saw an enormous bird over Little Pine Creek. She said its wingspan appeared to be about as long as the creek was wide - about 75 feet!
    * In 1970, several people saw the gigantic bird "soaring toward Jersey Shore [Pa.]. It was dark colored, and its wingspread was almost like [that of] an airplane."
    * In 1948, several witnesses along the Illinois-Missouri border sighted a condor-like bird about the size of a Piper Club airplane.

Abductors of Children

The most terrifying stories about giant birds is that they occasionally attempt to carry away small animals and even children. This item appeared in the July 28, 1977 edition of the Boston Evening Globe:

CARRIED OFF
10 year-old Marlan Lowe and his mother Mrs. Ruth Lowe claim that one of two large black birds with eight-foot wingspans tried to carry Marlan off in its claws Monday evening in Lawndale, Illinois. Although several birds experts say that no bird native to Illinois could lift 70 pound Marlan. Mrs. Lowe say that Marlan was carried 20 feet before the bird dropped him when he struck the bird with his hand. (UPI)

Despite what the "birds experts" say, why would a mother make up such an incredible story that would certainly expose them to ridicule?

In September of the same year, in Burlington, Kentucky, a small dog was the victim of a similar abduction attempt. This item appeared in the September 2, 1977 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer from a report by the Associated Press:

A five-pound puppy remains in critical condition today while wildlife experts try to decide whether it was attacked by an American Bald Eagle. Mrs. Greg Schmitt, Rabbit Hash, Ky., said the beagle was snatched from her farm and dropped in a pond 600 yards away. Mrs. Schmitt said she did not see the incident but that a 7-year-old neighbor boy did. He said it was a "big bird" which took the puppy skyward. The veterinarian, Dr. R. W. Bachmeyer, of Walton, Ky., said wounds on the puppy might have been caused by talons.

In this case, it seems to have been assumed that the predator was a bald eagle, but could it have been a Thunderbird?

Other abduction stories include that of a 42-pound five-year-old girl named Svanhild Hansen who in June, 1932 was carried away by a "huge eagle" from her parents' farm in Leka, Norway. The giant bird carried her for more than a mile, the report stated, after which it dropped her unharmed on a high mountain ledge.

In 1838, another five-year-old girl was snatched from the slope of the Swiss Alps, where she was playing, by an eagle that carried the child to its nest. Unfortunately, the girl did not survive the ordeal, and her badly mutilated body was discovered some two months later by a shepherd. The eagle's nest, subsequently found, was said to contain several eaglets surrounding "heaps of goat and sheep bones."

Source: KENS 5 Eyewitness News
www.mysanantonio.com/news/kens5/iteam/stories/MYSA111507.bird.kens.7e017e4.html

- CRYPTO CRAZINESS IN CHINA DEPARTMENT -

China Monster Round-Up

Two giant ape-like creatures were spotted in the afternoon of November 18, 2007, in Shennongjia, an area famous for the legendary "bigfoot" wild man located in central China's Hubei Province. Four independently traveling tourists claimed that they were almost face to face with two wild men while touring around the Licha River, at the northern foot of Laojun Mountain. If their words prove to be true, the tourists will be the first eyewitnesses of "bigfoot" in southeast Shennongjia Nature Reserve in recent years.

According to a Changjiang Times report on November 20, Zhang Jinxing, a scientist conducting investigations in the Shennongjia Nature Reserve, reported the thrilling event to relevant local authorities in the afternoon of November 19. When Zhang had finished his investigation that morning, he came across four independently traveling tourists, two men and two women, in a land-rover. These tourists told him that they had seen two wild men around the Licha River in the morning of November 18. They were near a sharp curve on the mountain road when three of the four, two men and one woman, spotted two giant, dark figures standing behind a tangled mass of shrubbery some 50 meters away from their car. It seemed that the two creatures didn't see the car at first, but they soon fled into the dense forest. Later that day, the tourists reported the event to the Lichahe Forest Maintenance Station and came back to the spot with two forest rangers. At this time, they only found a few footprints, branches they believed were broken by the wild men and wild fruits scattered on the ground.

Since the Lichahe Forest Maintenance Station is situated in a remote area in the Shennongjia Nature Reserve, local authorities didn't receive the report in a timely fashion. Currently, the proper authorities are busy contacting the four eyewitnesses and an investigation team has been sent out along the Licha River to conduct a thorough investigation. Local authorities have promised to announce investigation results as soon as possible.

Explanation of Mysterious Tianchi Monster

A senior researcher from the National Academy of Science of The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said the "Tianchi monster" a Chinese photographer caught on film last month is probably the mutated offspring of trout stocked by the North Korea 40 years ago.

77-year-old Kim Li-tae said during an interview with the Choson Shinbo, a newspaper published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, that he was one of the North Korean researchers who released nine trout into Tianchi Lake, located on Changbai Mountain, on July 30, 1960. At a later date they released other species of fish such as carp and mosquito fish into the lake.

Generally fish cannot survive in a lake created by volcanic activity, but the Korean researchers have proven through experiments that fish can be transplanted live into the lake. Fish stocked by the researchers could survive by eating insects and other creatures blown to the lake by strong winds. The fish mutate during growth and form new varieties, so the trout they stocked might now be called "Tianchi trout," Kim said.

In 2000, the Korean researchers did experimental tests on "Tianchi trout" found in shoal waters that measured 85 centimeters in length and weighed 7.7 kilos, but they've never been able to test trout from the deeper waters of Tianchi Lake. The "Tianchi monster" that Chinese photographer Zhuo Yongsheng, who works for a local TV station run by the administration office of the nature reserve at Mount Changbaishan, Jilin Province captured on film last month, might be a "Tianchi trout" from the deep of the lake, Kim said.

Tianchi Lake is China's biggest and deepest volcanic lake, with an area of 9.8 square kilometers, and water surface 2,198 meters above sea level. The average water depth of the lake is 204 meters and the deepest spot is 373 meters.

Earliest record of "monsters" date back over 150 years, but in the past decade the "monster" only appears in the summer.

Source: China.org.cn
http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/232477.htm

- BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE WILL DEPARTMENT -

All We Zombies

When the French chemist Michel-Eugene Chevreul, who discovered the margarine, received a pendulum as a gift in 1812, he was really surprised. As he was told, the pendulum worked as a detector of occult forces: it only oscillated when held in the air over water, metals or living things. When a different material was put between the pendulum and the metal, however, the oscillation ceased. He could verify it himself, holding the pendulum. It was not a fraud. It worked as magic.

But Chevreul was a scientist, and he knew that it is not enough to eliminate the possibility that other people may deceive him. We also deceive ourselves.

Chevreul then conducted a series of experiments, among them the simplest of all, but that nobody had done until then. He simply blindfolded himself and asked another person to place and remove objects under the pendulum without his knowledge. All of a sudden, the pendulum stopped working as a magic detector of materials.

Chevreul discovered the simple basic fact that he was indeed the one moving the pendulum and it only reflected his own knowledge. No magical forces included.

On the other hand, Chevreul knew that he was not consciouly making those movements, which were nevertheless intelligent and coherent. His expectations were being transmitted to the pendulum unconsciously. This unusual effect would be called the ideomotor effect, and further study of it would prove even complex movements may be accomplished unconsciously.

In a previous post we saw how our own conscience and free will are not what they seem to be. That intelligent unconscious movements can emerge should not be surprising: it is the same that happens with our own conscience. The only difference is that such movements are not felt as being ours, they are not tagged by our conscience.

Which brings us to the zombies.

PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES

Libet’s famous experiment on the free will evidenced that almost half a second before we feel we made a decision, our brain has already been taking steps in such direction, exhibiting the so-called “readiness potential”. Our free will, at least as the freedom of making decisions the moment we feel we made them, is an illusion.

But if the readiness potential already indicates that we will make a decision, couldn’t we create a machine to foresee our decisions before we feel we made them?

Surprise: this has been already done, even before Libet’s famous experiment.

In 1963, William Grey Walter asked some subjects to control a slideshow with a button. What they didn’t know was that the button was not connected. What was connected were the sensors on their heads, measuring the readiness potential in their brains. As soon as the potential to press the button was detected, the slideshow went forward.

The result was reportedly bizarre. The subjects said that the slideshow seemed to predict their decisions. Amazingly, Walter created a precognitive machine more than forty years ago.

Though it may seem the easiest explanation, the experiments by Libet and Walter are not evidence of time travel: they are evidence of the illusion of our free will. Chevreul’s pendulum and all the other applications of the ideomotor effect are also evidence of the illusion of our consciouness: our unconscious may behave as a sentient being, fooling even ourselves. But it’s all on our own mind. The alien hand syndrome is one extreme demonstration of it.

Walter was also a pioneer of robotics, and his most famous robots were the “electronic tortoises” Elsie and Elmer. They were the first autonomous robots in history, half a century before the Roomba. Elsie and Elmer moved freely, without programmed paths, in search of light sources that indicated where they could recharge their batteries.

Given his studies of free will, it’s very relevant to note he described the electronic tortoises’ movements as showing signs of… free will.

Which brings us finally to the point. If something acts exactly as if it has free will and consciousness, does it actually have free will and consciousness?

It is a philosophical question, and to some, the answer is no. Even if a robotic descendant of Walter’s electronic tortoises behaves exactly as a human being would, showing all of the responses suggesting conscience and free will, that would not mean that it actually has any of it. It would still lack something, maybe a soul, a spirit. Without them, it would be a philosophical zombie.

But the experiments and cases that we saw demonstrate that consciousness and free will are much more complex and hard to define than they look.

We don’t have to wait for a Terminator T-1000 model capable of befriending John Connor and saying “Hasta la vista, baby”, to finally question the popular (and even religious) ideas about consciousness, free will or even soul.

We already live every day with clear demonstrations that unconscious phenomena can have all the appearance of consciousness.

The thing that moved Chevreul’s pendulum was a philosophical zombie. And it lived inside his mind. What’s the difference between it and Chevreul? Play with the pendulum, and ask if you’re not a “zombie” yourself.

Source: Forgetomori
http://forgetomori.com/2007/11/

SUPPRESSED SCIENCE - FREE ENERGY - ANTIGRAVITY

Tesla's Secret Lab - www.teslasecretlab.com

Articles - Information - Amazing Books and Products - Including
Tesla Purple Energy Plates!

All Tesla - All The Time At Tesla's Secret Lab - Drop by for a
visit Today! - http://www.teslasecretlab.com

Conspiracy Journal - Issue 444 11/23/07
http://www.conspiracyjournal.com
Subscribe for free at our subscription page:
http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/subscribe.html