- UFOs IN HISTORY DEPARTMENT -
Bel Air Man Writes of UFOs in Wartime
Research of WWII events
uncovers the unexplained.
The peculiar red orb hung motionless in the summer sky near Frederick.
A boy at the time, Keith Chester vividly recalls that day in 1966. It was about 6:30 p.m. and Chester was on his way to a friend's house. As he walked, he noticed a shiny red ball in the sky near the Catoctin Mountains.
"The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up," Chester said. "I was so scared that I ran into my neighbor's house. I still think it was a UFO." To this day, the 50-year-old Bel Air resident has not been able find an explanation for the object, but the incident sparked an interest in unidentified flying objects.
In recent years, Chester's interest has grown into a passion that led him to write Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII. The 320-page book contains descriptions of UFO sightings by American and British service members culled from research that included documents at the National Archives.
The road to writing the book began with that boyhood sighting of the red object. Chester devoured books about UFOs and became interested in space. He wanted to be an astronaut until he realized he didn't have the necessary aptitude for math, so his interest shifted to World War II history. From 1978 to 1998, Chester portrayed an infantry soldier as a member of the Military Historical Reenactment Society, taking part in events around the region.
Over time, Chester's interest in UFOs waned. But it was reignited in 1989 when he met Leonard Stringfield, who was director of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects, a research group during the 1950s, that produced books about UFOs.
Stringfield was a sergeant in the 5th Air Force during World War II and said he had his own UFO sighting.
Chester said Stringfield told him about how he was among the first people to fly into mainland Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki. Stringfield said that he was on a plane flying between Ie Shima and Iwo Jima, when he looked out the window and saw three luminous, disk-shaped objects flying in formation.
"He told me that the objects had no outline, no exhaust, and no wings," Chester said, who works as a freelance artist.
Stringfield heard a commotion in the cockpit - the engine was malfunctioning. But when the objects disappeared, the plane was able to land safely, Chester recalls Stringfield saying.
"To hear his story was mesmerizing," he said.
Chester wanted to learn more about UFO sightings during WWII. In 1999, he began visiting the National Archives once a week to study military records for information about UFO sightings during the war.
Throughout almost four years of research, Chester found documents detailing sightings described as objects, lights, flares, strange lights or rockets.
"The sightings that were documented were considered phenomena," he said. "The military thought that they knew what they were observing, but the objects didn't match anything that was known by military intelligence."
The sightings he found include a silver, cigar-shaped object that looked like an airship. He also found a preponderance of information about unexplained objects reported by members of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, a former Army Air Forces fighter squadron that fought during World War II.
"Some of the soldiers thought the objects they saw were beyond the realm of conventional technology," Chester said. "But there is something extraordinary happening out there ... and there is a phenomenon that exists, and I believe that it's extraterrestrial."
At a reunion of the night fighters, Chester met Harold Augspurger, a commander of the squadron, who recounted a sighting that Chester details in his book. While flying near the border of France and Germany, Augspurger said he saw a light in the sky that he could not pick up on the radar.
"I believe that what I saw was something from some other space," Augspurger, 88, said in a telephone interview from his home in Dayton, Ohio. "I think it's real important to document it because it's a piece of history."
By 2002, Chester concluded he had enough information to write a book. He was struck by how much documentation existed and figured most people weren't aware of it. He said he has come across so much material that he has begun work on a second book.
"The phenomenon was far larger than ever expected," he said. "I found that the military applied known terminology and didn't come up with answers. They would call something a flare, but it didn't act like a flare."
Along the way, Chester has encountered plenty of skepticism, even from friends. But he said his goal is not to persuade people one way or the other.
"It's up to the people who read my book to decide what the objects truly were," he said.
Source: The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/harford/bal-ha.ufos09dec09,0,284181.story?
coll=bal_tab01_layout
The peculiar red orb hung motionless in the summer sky near Frederick.
A boy at the time, Keith Chester vividly recalls that day in 1966. It was about 6:30 p.m. and Chester was on his way to a friend's house. As he walked, he noticed a shiny red ball in the sky near the Catoctin Mountains.
"The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up," Chester said. "I was so scared that I ran into my neighbor's house. I still think it was a UFO." To this day, the 50-year-old Bel Air resident has not been able find an explanation for the object, but the incident sparked an interest in unidentified flying objects.
In recent years, Chester's interest has grown into a passion that led him to write Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII. The 320-page book contains descriptions of UFO sightings by American and British service members culled from research that included documents at the National Archives.
The road to writing the book began with that boyhood sighting of the red object. Chester devoured books about UFOs and became interested in space. He wanted to be an astronaut until he realized he didn't have the necessary aptitude for math, so his interest shifted to World War II history. From 1978 to 1998, Chester portrayed an infantry soldier as a member of the Military Historical Reenactment Society, taking part in events around the region.
Over time, Chester's interest in UFOs waned. But it was reignited in 1989 when he met Leonard Stringfield, who was director of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects, a research group during the 1950s, that produced books about UFOs.
Stringfield was a sergeant in the 5th Air Force during World War II and said he had his own UFO sighting.
Chester said Stringfield told him about how he was among the first people to fly into mainland Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki. Stringfield said that he was on a plane flying between Ie Shima and Iwo Jima, when he looked out the window and saw three luminous, disk-shaped objects flying in formation.
"He told me that the objects had no outline, no exhaust, and no wings," Chester said, who works as a freelance artist.
Stringfield heard a commotion in the cockpit - the engine was malfunctioning. But when the objects disappeared, the plane was able to land safely, Chester recalls Stringfield saying.
"To hear his story was mesmerizing," he said.
Chester wanted to learn more about UFO sightings during WWII. In 1999, he began visiting the National Archives once a week to study military records for information about UFO sightings during the war.
Throughout almost four years of research, Chester found documents detailing sightings described as objects, lights, flares, strange lights or rockets.
"The sightings that were documented were considered phenomena," he said. "The military thought that they knew what they were observing, but the objects didn't match anything that was known by military intelligence."
The sightings he found include a silver, cigar-shaped object that looked like an airship. He also found a preponderance of information about unexplained objects reported by members of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, a former Army Air Forces fighter squadron that fought during World War II.
"Some of the soldiers thought the objects they saw were beyond the realm of conventional technology," Chester said. "But there is something extraordinary happening out there ... and there is a phenomenon that exists, and I believe that it's extraterrestrial."
At a reunion of the night fighters, Chester met Harold Augspurger, a commander of the squadron, who recounted a sighting that Chester details in his book. While flying near the border of France and Germany, Augspurger said he saw a light in the sky that he could not pick up on the radar.
"I believe that what I saw was something from some other space," Augspurger, 88, said in a telephone interview from his home in Dayton, Ohio. "I think it's real important to document it because it's a piece of history."
By 2002, Chester concluded he had enough information to write a book. He was struck by how much documentation existed and figured most people weren't aware of it. He said he has come across so much material that he has begun work on a second book.
"The phenomenon was far larger than ever expected," he said. "I found that the military applied known terminology and didn't come up with answers. They would call something a flare, but it didn't act like a flare."
Along the way, Chester has encountered plenty of skepticism, even from friends. But he said his goal is not to persuade people one way or the other.
"It's up to the people who read my book to decide what the objects truly were," he said.
Source: The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/harford/bal-ha.ufos09dec09,0,284181.story?
coll=bal_tab01_layout
-
WATCH WHERE YOU SIT DEPARTMENT -
Naples "Miracle Chair" Draws Childless Couples
Naples "Miracle Chair" Draws Childless Couples
An ordinary old armchair under a worn blanket in a three-room flat in Naples, Italy draws thousands of hopeful pilgrims. Pasted all over the walls around it are birth announcements: pink for girls, blue for boys.
Childless women from all over the world flock to the "miracle" chair -- close to Speranzella street whose name suggests hope -- in the picturesque Spanish Quarter of Naples. There they ask Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus for a miracle.
With her "miracles" reported on Weblogs, the saint's shrine has become a main stop on the religious tourism circuit in Naples, a city which in Italy is almost as well known for veneration of saints as for the Camorra crime syndicate.
"The saint is waiting for you," Sister Elisa, an energetic 65-year-old nun from the order that has guarded the shrine for two centuries, tells hundreds of men and women of all ages gathered for morning prayer at the nearby church.
After the Mass, worshippers are led up a steep staircase and along a narrow corridor into the flat where the saint, born Anna Maria Rosa Nicoletta Gallo, spent half her life in chastity and mystical suffering until her death in 1791 at the age of 76.
Hair shirts and a whip hanging from the walls remind pilgrims of the grim "voluntary penance" the saint adopted after joining the strict order of Saint Peter of Alcantara.
As the religious name she took suggests, she was believed to carry the "stigmata" or wounds of Jesus. She was the first woman saint born in Naples, but there is no hint in her life story as to why her help is sought by childless women in particular.
"Are you married?" Sister Maria Giuliana whispers to a young woman sitting on the armchair, before touching the visitor's breast and belly with a "monstrance" or reliquiary containing a vertebra and a lock of hair from the saint.
As the nun prays, the group waits in silence.
"I am here to pray for everybody's sake, not only for myself," one young woman, who declined to give her name, whispered to Reuters in the hushed room.
CITY OF CHURCHES
Later, Sister Elisa shows a picture of a 5-month-old baby and a letter from his parents.
"We came to Naples to visit Saint Mary Frances on January 21, 2006," reads the letter signed by Dejan and Jasmina Bogdanovic, a Serbian couple living in Germany.
Evidence of Saint Mary Frances' miracles is anecdotal, but the groundswell of devotion for the "saint of the family" -- who escaped a forced marriage and an oppressive father -- has spread by word of mouth and, more recently, through blogs like caffenews.wordpress.com.
Roman Catholic Italy is rich in relics, which may be all or part of a saint's body or a belonging such as clothing. The most famous example in Naples is a glass phial believed to contain the dried blood of Saint Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples who was beheaded by pagan Romans in 305 A.D.
Each year pilgrims crowd the cathedral to witness the "miracle" of Saint Gennaro's blood, whose liquefaction is seen as a good omen for the city. On his feast day, a statue of Saint Mary Frances is carried behind his along the streets of Naples.
But nobody appears to know exactly how many relics have been preserved over the centuries in the churches of Naples.
"It is not even possible to say how many churches there are in Naples," Don Luigi Merluzzo, head of public relations at the Archdiocese of Naples, told Reuters.
"There are 287 churches listed in our Archdiocese's website, but many others, which are either closed or privately owned, are still kept out of the public eye," he said.
BLESSED FROM AFAR
Back at Saint Mary Frances' shrine, when the morning visits are over the nuns spend few hours each day answering hundreds of letters from Italy and abroad.
"Hi, I'm Francesca Rosa Limongelli. I was born in London on January 22, 2007, but, even though we are far away, my mum and dad have been feeling the presence of Saint Mary Frances with them," reads a letter published on the congregation's brand new 2008 calendar.
"Even if we don't have an email address yet, we receive many prayer requests by mail or by phone," Sister Elisa said. "Our followers often send us an item of clothing asking us to intercede with the saint by placing their objects on the chair.
"We have a lot of work to do. But the saint has a prayer for everyone," she added in a reassuring tone.
In a city where saints play a role in everyday life for many believers, the saint's work goes beyond reproduction.
"Some days ago a man came to us," Sister Maria Aurora said. "He wanted a house, a job and children. We told him to be patient but, thanks to Saint Mary Frances, his prayers have been fulfilled."
Source: Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/wl_nm/italy_religion_chair_dc
-
IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD DEPARTMENT -
Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad
Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad
An A&E Billboard 'Whispers' a Spooky Message Audible Only in Your Head in Push to Promote Its New 'Paranormal' Program.
New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination."
Indeed it isn't. It's an ad for "Paranormal State," a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it's another story.
Ms. Wilson, a New York-based stylist, said she expected the voice inside her head to be some type of creative project but could see how others might perceive it differently, particularly on a late-night stroll home. "I might be a little freaked out, and I wouldn't necessarily think it's coming from that billboard," she said.
Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E's show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. "If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it," he said. "If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody's going to hear that noise. But if you're only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you're never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people."
Holosonics has partnered with a cable network once before, when Court TV implemented the technology to promote its "Mystery Whisperer" in the mystery sections of select bookstores. Mr. Pompei said the company also has tested retail deployments in grocery stores with Procter & Gamble and Kraft for customized audio messaging. So a customer, for example, looking to buy laundry detergent could suddenly hear the sound of gurgling water and thus feel compelled to buy Tide as a result of the sonic experience.
Mr. Pompei contends that the technology will take time for consumers to get used to, much like the lights on digital signage and illuminated billboards did when they were first used. The website Gawker posted an item about the billboard last week with the headline "Schizophrenia is the new ad gimmick," and asked "How soon will it be until in addition to the do-not-call list, we'll have a 'do not beam commercial messages into my head' list?"
"There's going to be a certain population sensitive to it. But once people see what it does and hear for themselves, they'll see it's effective for getting attention," Mr. Pompei said.
A&E's $3 million to $5 million campaign for "Paranormal" includes other more disruptive elements than just the one audio ad in New York. In Los Angeles, a mechanical face creeps out of a billboard as if it's coming toward the viewer, and then recedes. In print, the marketing team persuaded two print players to surrender a full editorial page to their ads, flipping the gossip section in AM New York upside down and turning a page in this week's Parade into a checkerboard of ads for "Paranormal."
It's not the network's first foray into supernatural marketing, having launched a successful viral campaign for "Mind Freak" star Criss Angel earlier this year that allowed users to trick their friends into thinking Mr. Angel was reading their mind via YouTube.
"We all know what you need to do for one of these shows is get people talking about them," said Guy Slattery, A&E's exec VP-marketing. "It shouldn't be pure informational advertising. When we were talking about marketing the show, nearly everyone had a connection with a paranormal experience, and that was a surprise to us. So we really tried to base the whole campaign on people's paranormal experiences."
So was it a ghost or just an annoyed resident who stole the speaker from the SoHo billboard twice in one day last week? Horizon Media, which helped place the billboard, had to find a new device that would prevent theft from its rooftop location. Mr. Pompei only takes it as a compliment that someone would go to the trouble of stealing his technology, but hopes consumer acceptance comes with time. "The sound isn't rattling your skull, it's not penetrating you, it's not doing anything nefarious at all. It's just like having a flashlight vs. a light bulb," he said.
Source: Advertising Age
http://adage.com/article?article_id=122491