7/3/09  #528
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In a dark, smoke-filled room, somewhere deep in the bowels of an secret government agency, electronic spies quietly monitor all communications throughout the planet. When key words are detected, programs go into action to trace the source and destination of the targeted communication.  And now, red lights are flashing, tapes are spinning, secret intelligence operatives are scrambling, and the black helicopters are flying.  All because once again, cyberspace is filled with your number one source of information on conspiracies, UFO, the paranormal, and much more - Conspiracy Journal!

This week Conspiracy Journal brings you such blood-boiling stories as:

- Close Encounters with the Pentagon -
- Team Claims to have Found Tunguska Crater -
- Unearthing Mt. Shasta’s Legends -
- Sacramento Group Doesn't Always Look for Ghosts -
AND: Sewer Monster Found in Raleigh, North Carolina

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

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~


Underground Alien Bio Lab At Dulce - The Bennewitz UFO Papers
IS THE TOWN OF DULCE, NEW MEXICO THE LOCATION OF AN UNDERGROUND BASE GUARDED BY U.S. FORCES AND INHABITED BY A GROUP OF SINISTER EXTRATERRESTRIALS?

It is an absolutely incredible story, says Timothy Green Beckley editor of the Conspiracy Journal. Since the mid to late 1970s there have been all sorts of rumors about an underground laboratory beneath the town of Dulce. . .The UFO Hunters show on the History Channel recently featured the entire saga of what has been taking place on Native American soil, and a few days later George Noory and Coast to Coast AM plunged head first trying to make sense out of the various accounts that have surfaced.

Beckley admits that it is difficult to pin point exactly when this macabre saga started to develop. But he gives credit to an engineer named Paul Bennewitz for getting the ball rolling when Bennewitz says he was called to the area when aliens started to communicate with him over a radio receiver. He had been directed to Dulce after observing UFOs over Kirkland Air Force Bases nuclear storage facility. Standing near the tall cliffs outside Dulce, Bennewitz took a series of photographs showing unidentified craft diving into the mountains through what he claimed were entrance ways that could be opened and closed.

One individual in the U.S. military who was involved in the early stages of this investigation claims he engaged in hand to hand combat with ETs who had taken over level seven of the Dulce Base after a conflict with our soldiers. Another person involved in this epic committed "suicide" -- or was it murder? -shortly after the "Dulce affair" was made public.

Much has been speculated upon regarding this sinister matter. But this is the complete work that contains balanced information and details from all sides. First time ever interview with Paul Bennewitz who was pushed over the edge never to return to sanity.

If you order right now you will also receive a FREE audio CD of Commander X's Underworld Mysteries and Domination by the Serpent Race. This mind-blowing book and FREE CD is now available at the special price of only $22.00 + $5 s/h. (All Foreign Orders $13 Shipping)

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SPECIAL ON TIM BECKLEY'S UFO SILENCERS

An excerpt from our Coast to Coast Stream Link chat is posted on Coast to Coast's web site this evening. For those who can't wait for the UFO Hunters show to air this summer we have copies of UFO SILENCERS for $17.50 ($5 s/h) and we will include for all net orders an hour dvd interview I did with Country singer Johnny Sands regarding his encounter with "aliens" and subsequent "troubles" with MIBs in Vegas circa 1975.
Also phone orders to 732 602-3407

 
Enjoy the brief excerpt.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/timothy-green-beckley-chat-excerpts

Order a copy of UFO Silencers

NOW AVAILABLE...
MYSTERIES MAGAZINE  #23

In This Incredible Issue:

Feature Articles
 
Decoding the Bible
Whether resting on an altar, courtroom podium, or bedroom nightstand, the Holy Bible commands respect. Although the longest debate about its teachings concerns evolution versus creationism, today’s controversy is not generating sermons or atheists’ arguments inasmuch as  challenging a standard belief system. The Good Book is getting a  closer look from people who are learning that past tragedies, such as 9/11 and the future    Apocalypse, may actually be encrypted in this 3,200-year-old text.
 
Sunspots and the Number 11 in the 2012 Prophesy
Our times are bracketed by two specific dates—September 11, 2001 and  
December 21, 2012—the greatest single act of terrorism on the continental United States and the end of the Mayan calendar. If, as some observers suspect, something more than a coincidental relationship exists between these two events, its explanation must lie beyond the powers of ordinary human reason and in the world of numbers.
 
The Mayan Calendar: Ancient Prophesies for a New World
On December 21, 2012, the world as we know it will cease to exist.  This prediction, made thousands of years ago by Mayan shamans, has  raised many questions: What does the ancient prophecy mean? Will a cataclysmic event destroy the planet and how and why did the Mayans choose the winter solstice in a year so far into the future? Scholars claim the answers to all these questions are found in the Mayan  
calendar.
 
The Loch Ness Monster: Hoax or Horror?
Whichever estimate of sightings we accept, be it 600, 3,000, or 10,000, there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence that a strange creature inhabits Loch Ness.

Now available at your favorite bookstore or magazine stand.

www.mysteriesmagazine.com

- THE DEEP POLITICS OF HOLLYWOOD DEPARTMENT -

Close Encounters with the Pentagon

For 60 years space aliens have left their mark on the Hollywood box-office in some of the most popular movies of all time, from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), E.T: The Extraterrestrial (1982) and Independence Day (1996), to the highly lucrative Monsters vs. Aliens (2009). The new Transformers sequel, Revenge of the Fallen (2009), is also poised for box-office glory this summer with its big-budget blend of eye-popping special effects, fan-fiction and UFO mythology. The most interesting aspects of the Transformers films, however, are evident not so much in celluloid form as they are behind the scenes – in a production process built around the close relationship between Hollywood, the United States military and a variety of government agencies. While the dryer details of this relationship have been relatively well documented, the curious tale of government involvement in Hollywood’s UFO movies represents a forgotten chapter in the history of American cinema.

Perception Management: Past and Present

Bizarrely – and for reasons not entirely clear – the U.S. government has taken a keen interest in Hollywood’s flying saucer movies since the early days of the phenomenon. Official efforts to debunk UFOs through media channels originated with the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel which, in 1953, decided that public excitement about flying saucers should be actively discouraged. The panel recommended “That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the… aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired,” and that this should “be accomplished by mass media such as television [and] motion pictures...” with specific reference to Walt Disney.i

Unambiguous evidence for the Robertson Panel's covert impact on media representations of UFOs is found in the CBS TV broadcast of UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy? (1966), a documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. In a personal letter addressed to former Robertson Panel Secretary Frederick C. Durant, Dr Thornton Page confides that he “helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions,”ii even though this was thirteen years later and despite the fact that he was personally sympathetic to the existence of flying saucers.

Government concern over, or involvement in, UFO movies continues to be evidenced in more modern Hollywood productions. Take, for example, the 1996 alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day, which, despite its proud championing of American values and leadership, was denied cooperation from the Department of Defense (DoD) due in large part to a plotline concerning Area 51 (a super-secret military facility in the Nevada desert long rumoured to be the testing ground for captured extraterrestrial technologies) and the so-called ‘Roswell Incident.’ The Pentagon specifically requested that “any government connection” to Area 51 or to Roswell be eliminated from the film – a request apparently based on the ridiculous assumption that both the Roswell Incident and Area 51 were not already known to half of America.iii

The DoD may have been unable to dictate script changes on Independence Day, but its involvement with both Transformers movies (2007 and 2009) was much more deep-rooted. The original film’s script is loaded with UFOlogical references and laboured rhetoric absolving the U.S. military of complicity in what turns out to be a massive cover-up of alien visitations. The finger is pointed instead at the quasi-governmental “Sector 7” which has been concealing its “Top Secret” alien research for decades within “special access projects” – and all without the knowledge and consent of a shocked and concerned Secretary of Defense.

The United States Air Force (USAF) provided Transformers director Michael Bay with hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars worth of state-of-the-art hardware for use in the 2007 movie, including the F-117 stealth fighter and – in its first ever Silver Screen appearance – the F-22 Raptor fighter. The DoD’s support for the Transformers sequel (2009) was no less enthusiastic as Bay was granted every benefit of the Pentagon’s coveted “full co-operation.”

Managing the Martians

The government found an earlier blockbuster to be rather less welcome. Discussing his classic UFO movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Steven Spielberg once revealed in an Australian film journal that he “found [his] faith [in alien life]” when he heard that the government opposed the film. “If NASA took the time to write me a 20-page letter, then I knew there must be something happening,” Spielberg said. “When they read the script they got very angry and felt that it was a film that would be dangerous. I felt they mainly wrote the letter because Jaws convinced so many people around the world that there were sharks in toilets and bathtubs, not just in the oceans and rivers. They were afraid the same kind of epidemic would happen with UFOs.”iv

Close Encounters raised a red flag to the powers that be, but it wasn’t the first UFO movie to do so. During the late 1940s the U.S. government regarded the subject of flying saucers with considerable gravity – 1948 saw the USAF produce its Top Secret and highly controversial ‘Estimate of the Situation,’ an official report concluding flying saucers to be of extraterrestrial origin.v Other USAF factions at the time, however, favoured the more palatable (though no less alarming) idea that the saucers were a dastardly Soviet invention. With the prospect of both Reds and Martians under the bed, it should come as little surprise to learn that when America’s very first UFO movie, The Flying Saucer (1950), went into production in 1949 it registered quickly on the USAF radar.

The film’s director, Mikel Conrad, had claimed publicly whilst still in production that he had managed to secure genuine footage of a real flying saucer for use in his movie. In September, 1949, Conrad told the Ohio Journal Herald, “I have scenes of the saucer landing, taking off, flying and doing tricks.” Conrad further claimed that his remarkable footage was “locked in a bank vault” and would not be shown to anybody prior to his movie’s release; shortly thereafter Conrad became the subject of a two month official Air Force investigation. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that an agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations was dispatched not only to grill Conrad about his claims, but also to attend the first private screening of his completed movie.

Unsurprisingly, Conrad’s fantastical claims proved to be without substance – when challenged by the USAF, he admitted that his saucer story was nothing more than an elaborate marketing scam designed to generate media buzz around what was, in reality, a tedious and uneventful movie.vi Nevertheless, what the Conrad case demonstrates, according to researcher Nick Redfern, “is that the Air Force at the time was taking a keen interest in fictional films about UFOs.” Redfern, who has studied the original documentation on the Conrad Case, suggests that the USAF may have considered it “problematic that someone was making a film about UFOs that could have contained real footage.”vii Redfern speculates that, from this point on, the USAF learned to be on the lookout for any other pesky UFO movies lurking on the horizon, and to carefully monitor – and even control – their content on grounds of national security.

The above scenario seems plausible in light of the production of a major UFOlogical documentary in 1956, entitled U.F.O., which compelled the USAF to draw up contingency plans to counteract the anticipated fallout from the film upon its release. The director of the USAF’s official UFO investigations unit, Project Blue Book, Captain George T. Gregory, was tasked with monitoring not only the film’s production process, but its public and critical reception. Believing that the film would stir up a “storm of public controversy,” the USAF had set about preparing a special case file that would debunk every saucer sighting examined in the movie and even went so far as to have three of its Blue Book officers provide “technical assistance” to the filmmakers in an effort to control the content of the documentary.viii

“A Hot Potato”

The USAF also made extensive script alterations to a seemingly innocent episode of the Steve Canyon TV series (1958–1959). Backed by Chesterfield Cigarettes and produced at Universal Studios with the full cooperation of the United States Air Force, the NBC show chronicled the daring live-action exploits of Milton Caniff’s famous comic strip character. Each episode was bookended with the seal of The Department of the Air Force and with a voice-over announcing: “Steve Canyon! A Salute to the Air Force Men of America!”

The episode to which the USAF took objection was entitled “Project UFO” and saw Colonel Steve Canyon investigate a spate of flying saucer sightings reported to a local Air Force base. According to aviation historian James H. Farmer, “This was an episode that the Air Force did not really want to be aired.” In his commentary track for the newly released Steve Canyon DVD (available at: http://stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com/) Farmer notes that the USAF was uncomfortable with the episode because UFOs were, at the time of the show’s production, “causing them a lot of public relations problems... from Roswell in ’47 to the UFO over-flights over Washington DC in ’52... the Air Force wanted nothing to do with it [the UFO issue],” said Farmer, “it was a hot potato that they were very happy to get rid of when Project Blue Book was discontinued in December of ’69.”

By the time the USAF had finished with the script, it was, in Farmer’s words, “pretty tame... compared to the earlier renditions.” Indeed, in the episode as eventually aired the UFO sightings are attributed to a combination of hoax-induced hysteria and – in support of the Air Force’s original Roswell cover story – misidentifications of weather balloons.

Producer John Ellis of the Milton Caniff Estate is likewise intrigued by the number of revisions to which the script was subjected: “The thing that’s interesting is that when you look at the original scripts... every single page got re-written, and re-written, and re-written...” ix David Haft, the show’s producer, was more to the point in his recollection of the Air Force’s reaction when he submitted the first script draft for official approval: “"Oh, oh, oh, oh! No, no, no, no!" Haft also noted that the USAF had difficulty in deciding what was acceptable for broadcast.x

A number of alterations to the “Project UFO” script are particularly revealing. In one of the earliest early drafts, for example, Steve Canyon speaks to his Commanding Officer, Colonel Jamison, in defence of a civilian UFO witness: “Why call him a jerk?” asks Canyon, “Seems to me like he acted like a pretty solid, clearheaded citizen...” This dialogue was removed. Elsewhere in the draft, Canyon appears to be enthusiastic about flying saucers. At one point, when a fresh UFO report comes into the base from the local town, Canyon, “Jumps to [his] feet, rushes to [the] door,” and cries “This I gotta see!” before making “a hurried exit.” Interestingly, in the final scene as originally written, Canyon is actually seen opening a book on flying saucers, “and sits there quietly reading...” Needless to say, this scene failed to make it to the final draft, and, in the version as aired, Canyon’s excitement about UFOs is replaced with scepticism or plain indifference. It is important to remind ourselves that such changes are neatly in line with the Robertson Panel’s recommendations to “strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the… aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired,” through, “mass media, such as television...”

Perhaps the most significant alteration to the “Project UFO” episode involved the removal of an entire plot strand concerning the recovery and scientific analysis of what is initially suspected to be flying saucer debris (but which eventually turns out to be nothing of the sort). The draft included dialogue like: “That thing [flying saucer] dropped a small metal ball enclosing an electrical apparatus so intricate, so ingenious, nobody yet has been able to figure out its purpose,” and, “the metal wouldn’t respond to any of the standard tests.” With such obvious shades of Roswell, it is unsurprising that the Air Force was concerned.xi

Despite its content having been tamed to the point of banality, the USAF preferred that the episode not be aired at all. “It got stuck on a shelf,” says Ellis in his DVD commentary, “it was finished... but they held on to until near the end of the series to air it.” In fact, it was only through a last act of defiance on the part of the show’s producers toward the end of its run in 1959 that the episode was screened at all.

That the Pentagon should have seen fit to involve itself in UFO-related entertainment in a debunking capacity makes sense in light of its repeated attempts over the decades to publicly wash its hands of the flying saucer problem. But this approach seems to be at odds with a number of instances dating back to the 1950s in which the U.S. military (possibly in conjunction with the CIA) has actually facilitated the production of UFO-related media content promoting not only the idea of UFO reality, but of extraterrestrial visitation.

Disney and the Aliens

Intriguing testimony along these lines came from Oscar-winning Disney animator Ward Kimball. Kimball was best known for bringing to life beloved Disney characters such as Jiminy Cricket, The Cheshire Cat and The Mad Hatter, and for redesigning Mickey Mouse in 1938. He also worked as Directing Animator on the Disney classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia (1940).

In 1979, Kimball claimed that in the mid-1950s the USAF had approached Walt Disney himself to request his cooperation on a documentary about UFOs that would help acclimatise the American public to the reality of extraterrestrials. Even more intriguing was that, in exchange for his cooperation, the USAF would apparently supply Disney with real UFO footage for exclusive use in his documentary. According to Kimball, Disney accepted the deal and began work immediately on the USAF project, which would not have been unusual considering Disney’s established relationship with the U.S. government (during WWII Disney made approximately 80 propaganda shorts for the military).

While Disney waited patiently for the USAF to provide the UFO footage, his animators produced conceptual designs of what an alien might look like. Predictably, the offer of the UFO footage was eventually withdrawn, provoking Kimball to challenge the official military liaison for the project, a USAF Colonel who told Kimball that “there was indeed plenty of UFO footage, but that neither [he], nor anyone else was going to get access to it.”xii Needless to say, the project was abandoned and forgotten by all but the few who had worked on it.

The Glittering Robes of Entertainment

In connection with research she was conducting for a UFO documentary in 1983, Emmy award winning filmmaker and journalist Linda Moulton Howe was told by government sources that the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which depicted an alien landing in Washington D.C., was, in her words, “inspired by the CIA,” and “one of the first government tests of public reaction to such an event.”xiii As farfetched as this may seem, the screenwriter for The Day the Earth Stood Still, Edmund H. North, was actively serving as a Major in the Army Signal Corps just months before being selected by 20th Century Fox to pen the script. During his time in the Corps, North had been in charge of “training and educational” documentaries, and later established himself as a Hollywood scribe of patriotic war films including Sink the Bismark! (1960) and Submarine X-1 (1968), as well as Patton (1970), for which he received an Oscar – all of which raises the possibility that he maintained an official or quasi-official role in the government’s cinematic propaganda campaigns throughout his career.

The man responsible for overseeing the production of The Day the Earth Stood Still – 20th Century Fox production chief Darryl Zanuck – was himself in charge of an Army Signal Corps documentary unit during the Second World Warxiv and said that, “If you have something worth while to say, dress it up in the glittering robes of entertainment and you will find a ready market… without entertainment, no propaganda film is worth a dime.”xv

Disclosure through Documentary?

In 1972, filmmaker Robert Emenegger – formerly Creative Director at Grey Advertising – and his producing partner Allan Sandler were encouraged by the USAF to make a major documentary feature about the UFO phenomenon. Emenegger told us that Sandler “had very strange connections” for a producer and thought that he “did things for the CIA, and maybe even the FBI… they all seemed to work together.” Emenegger himself had worked for the U.S. government in various media-related capacities and evidently the pair had been deemed suitable for the sensitive assignment.

Emenegger described to the authors how he was briefed on the UFO project at Norton Air Force Base in “a clean room used by the CIA… so there was no way anyone could eavesdrop on us.” In an offer similar to that made some twenty years earlier to Walt Disney, the USAF promised Emenegger real UFO footage – this time allegedly showing a UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in 1971 and the subsequent face-to-face meeting between alien visitors and delegates of the U.S. government. Emenegger was sceptical, but was assured by the USAF that the footage existed, and was genuine.

Whilst he waited for the footage to materialise, Emenegger and his crew continued with their wider production research for which they were given unprecedented access to DoD facilities, including the Pentagon. Emenegger was even granted time with high-ranking military officers apparently well-versed in UFO-related matters, among them Colonel William Coleman, a former spokesman for Project Blue Book, and Colonel George Weinbrenner, then head of Foreign Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base – the location where alien materials and bodies allegedly recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash are said to have been stored.

But who in the Air Force would sign off on such a controversial project? Emenegger put this question to Pentagon spokesman Colonel Coleman, who informed him that “the Secretary of the Air Force gave us the order to cooperate.” Thus, in an unprecedented move, the Air Force, Army, and Navy gave their full backing to a UFO-related production, so too did NASA, who provided Emenegger’s research team with previously unreleased photographs of what appeared to be UFOs in space taken by Gemini astronauts. “We had carte blanche to go anywhere, ask any questions,” Emenegger told us, “there were no restrictions put on us.” Emenegger even claims to have been shown “Top Secret” footage shot at Vandenberg Air Force Base which showed two UFOs “playfully running behind” a U.S. missile.

After months of shooting, Emenegger’s documentary was complete, save for one crucial ingredient – the much-hyped alien landing footage. At the eleventh hour the USAF withdrew its permission for use of the material; the political climate had changed, it said, and was now deemed inappropriate due to the Watergate scandal which had recently broken. “I felt like we had egg on our face,” Emenegger told us, “I felt cheated that we were not allowed to see this film. It was taken back to the Pentagon… I stupidly expected to have this footage, which would have been earth-shattering.” 36 years on and Emenegger seems as baffled by the whole affair as anyone: “Were we had? Were we being used?” he asks.xvi

Emenegger’s Golden Globe nominated documentary, entitled UFOs: Past, Present and Future, was finally released in 1974 and was ground-breaking in extensive use of information provided by the DoD. In addition to the aforementioned photographs from NASA, it featured sit-down interviews with the former heads of Project Blue Book, and footage shot inside the Pentagon of Colonel Coleman talking open-mindedly about the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. In the absence of the landing footage, Emenegger was forced to include an animated reconstruction of the event as described to him by the USAF, complete with artistic renderings of the alleged aliens. The documentary presented the incident as “one that might happen in the future – or perhaps could have happened already.”

It should be noted, however, that the landing footage wasn’t entirely absent – at least not according to Emenegger. During the dramatic reconstruction of the alleged landing, the observant viewer can catch a few frames of what appears to be a genuine, self-luminescent Unidentified Flying Object descending slowly in the distance against the backdrop of Holloman’s surrounding landscape. These frames, Emenegger claims, were taken from the original landing footage and authorised by the USAF during the editing stage for use his completed documentary.

Interestingly, echoes of Emenegger’s deal with the Department of Defense would resound decades later in the production of the aforementioned Transformers (2007) when director Michael Bay was granted the rare privilege of shooting scenes of his alien movie at the Pentagon. The DoD even threw open the gates to Holloman Air Force Base – the highly sensitive location of the alleged alien landing described to Emenegger (and it would do so again for the Transformers sequel). To this day, the only two Hollywood filmmakers to have been granted access to Holloman are Emenegger and Bay – both of whose films dealt with the subject of alien visitation – and this in flat contradiction to the DoD’s policy as stated to other filmmakers that it will not work with UFO-related productions because “UFOs do not exist.”

Colonel Coleman Returns

The plot thickened in 1978 when Colonel William Coleman – who had acted as the USAF’s official liaison for Robert Emenegger’s documentary – produced an NBC drama series called Project UFO (1978-79) (not to be confused with the Steve Canyon episode of the same name), a sort of ‘70s equivalent of the X-Files, but which, oddly enough, simultaneously seemed to promote and debunk the idea of UFO reality in each episode. It is unusual to say the least for a commercial television series to be produced by a high ranking military officer, but that this was the very same officer who had promised UFO landing footage for use in a government-approved documentary just a few years prior, coupled with the fact that the series was entirely based upon official Project Blue Book reports, suggests that a political agenda was being pursued.

What on Earth…? By now, many a sane reader will probably be puzzled, seeking an answer to the first rational question that comes to mind: “what on earth is going on here?” Why has the government’s concern about flying saucers of all things been so far reaching that it has actually seen fit to manage public perception of UFOs by attempting to influence the content of major films, as appears to be the case?

Lieutenant Colonel Phillip J. Corso, who served on the National Security Council during the Eisenhower Administration and who was formerly chief of the Pentagon’s Foreign Technology desk, claimed that the production of flying saucer movies was actively encouraged by government-led UFO study groups during the 1950s. The goal, claimed Corso, was simultaneously to fictionalise UFOs (through their association with Hollywood entertainment) and to actualise them in the mind of the viewer, thereby acclimatising the public to UFO reality and politically manipulating their perceptions of the phenomenon in the process. Corso referred to this strategy as “camouflage through limited disclosure.” “We never hid the truth from anybody,” he said, “we just camouflaged it. It was always there [in documents, books, TV shows and movies], people just didn’t know what to look for or recognise it for what it was when they found it. And they found it over and over again.”xvii

Although the CIA Robertson Panel appears to have exerted a sustained impact on media representations of UFOs, at least in the ‘50s and ‘60s, this does not constitute concrete proof of a longer-term, conscious and coherent government conspiracy along these lines. However, unless we assume that numerous individuals highly respected in their professions are either lying or deluded, it is difficult to explain the DoD’s apparent “smoke and mirrors” media tactics with regard to the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Perhaps – as some believe – the government has made a number of attempts to acclimatise the public to the notion of alien visitation. Or perhaps efforts like those involving Emenegger and Kimball are part of a smokescreen for more mundane, though no less secretive, government projects. UFO movies may even be a facet of a U.S. psychological warfare programme. As farfetched as this may sound, CIA records show that as early as 1952 the Agency’s then Director Walter Bedell Smith was sufficiently concerned about UFOs to seriously discuss, “the possible offensive or defensive utilisation of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes.”xviii

Government/military involvement in UFO movies continues to this day. The 20th Century Fox remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) had Pentagon involvement in the form of official DoD Hollywood liaison Phil Strub and a number of high-ranking military officers whose names can be found at the tail end of the film’s closing credits. Also featured is a special thank you from the film’s producers to “the men and women of the United States military for their production assistance.” Similarly, Disney’s UFO-themed Race to Witch Mountain (2009) received assistance not only from the military but from the CIAxix – a curious arrangement since the latter is not even represented on screen; what’s more, the film’s portrayal of the military is decidedly negative. In accordance with the media policies of both DoD and CIA, these facts would tend to disqualify a film from receiving production assistance from either party. In this case, however, both were only too willing to lend a helping hand, as Andy Fickman, the film’s director, told Premiere Magazine: “the military advisors and intelligence advisors constantly helped to keep us honest every step of the way.”xx

Conclusions

To paraphrase The X-Files’ agent Mulder: we may “want to believe” the U.S. government when it says it no longer takes an active interest in UFOs. Certainly we all “want to believe” that Hollywood entertainment is just that – entertainment, rather than disinformation.

Judging by the examples outlined in this article, official policy regarding media representations of UFO phenomena seems to have shifted from project to project, from decade to decade, between concerted debunking efforts at one end of the spectrum and, at the other, more subversive attempts to quietly monitor and even seed the content of UFO-related media for purposes of psychological warfare and/or perception management. If nothing else, this should provide incentive for us to sit up and pay greater attention to the fleets of flying saucer movies that will undoubtedly continue to land in our multiplexes in the years to come.

Robbie Graham is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bristol and a Film lecturer at Stafford College. Matthew Alford, PhD is author of the forthcoming book: “Projected Power: How Hollywood Supports U.S. Foreign Policy” (Pluto Press, 2010). The authors have written about the politics of Hollywood for a variety of publications, including The Guardian and New Statesman.

Source: Information Clearing House/Robbie Graham and Matthew Alford
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22893.htm

Tim R. Swartz on Friday Night Kevin Smith Show

Be sure to tune in tonight to The Kevin Smith Show when Tim R. Swartz, editor of The Conspiracy Journal, makes an appearance to discuss with Kevin such topics as Nikola Tesla, time travel, UFOs and other weird mysteries. This will be an exciting show that you will not want to miss!  Tune in at 7:00pm Pacific, 9:00pm Central, 10:00pm Eastern.



- THE BLAST HEARD AROUND THE WORLD DEPARTMENT -
   
Team Claims to have Found Tunguska Crater

Scientists have identified a possible crater left by the biggest space impact in modern times - the Tunguska event.

The blast levelled more than 2,000 sq km of forest near the Tunguska River in Siberia on 30 June 1908.

A comet or asteroid is thought to have exploded in the Earth's atmosphere with a force equal to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Now, a University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground.

Lake Cheko - though shallow - fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists.

Their investigation of the lake bottom's geology reveals a funnel-like shape not seen in neighbouring lakes.

In addition, a geophysics survey of the lake bed has turned up an unusual feature about 10m down which could either be compacted lake sediments or a buried fragment of space rock.

Other features suggest a recent origin for the lake.

Luca Gasparini, Giuseppe Longo and colleagues from Bologna argue that the lake feature, about 8km north-north-west of the airburst epicentre, may have been gouged out by remnant material that made it to the ground.

"We have no positive proof this is an impact crater, but we were able to exclude some other hypotheses, and this led us to our conclusion," Professor Longo, the research team leader, told BBC News.

The object that hurtled through the atmosphere on the morning of 30 June, 1908, is thought to have detonated some 5-10km above the ground with an energy equivalent to about 20 million tonnes of TNT. The explosion was so bright it even lit up the sky in London, UK.

Small fragments of the body should have survived the airburst and made it Earth. But, mysteriously, no crater - or even the slightest trace of the impactor - has ever been positively identified.
   
"In my opinion, they certainly haven't provided any conclusive evidence it's an impact structure," commented Dr Gareth Collins, a Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) research fellow at Imperial College London, UK.

He added: "The impact cratering community does not accept structures as craters unless there is evidence of high temperatures and high pressures. That requires evidence of rocks that have been melted or rocks that have been ground up by the impact."

Dr Collins pointed out that the Cheko feature was "anomalously" shallow and lacked the round shape of most craters - being more elliptical in its form. Elliptical craters only occur if the impactor's angle of entry is less than about 10 degrees.

"We know from modelling of the Tunguska event that the angle of entry must have been steeper than that," Dr Collins told BBC News.

A key feature of other impact craters is conspicuously missing from Lake Cheko - a "flap" around the crater rim of upside-down material tossed a short distance from the crater by the impact.

Dr Collins added that if pieces of the space rock had survived the airburst, they would have been too small and travelling too slowly to have generated a crater the size of Lake Cheko.

An impact would also have felled trees all around the crater, said the London geologist, yet there appeared to be trees older than 100 years still standing around Lake Cheko today.

Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, was also cautious about the findings, adding: "There has been an inflationary increase in the number of claims that allege discovery of impact events or impact craters."

The Italian researchers argue that some of the lake's anomalous features could be explained if a space rock was travelling at a low speed and had a "soft" impact into the swampy Siberian taiga.

The crater could have become subsequently enlarged by the expulsion of water and gas from the ground. The Bologna team says this could also account for the limited damage to the surrounding area and the absence of a rim of upturned ejecta.

"If formed during the impact, [the rim] would have been rapidly obliterated by collapse and gravity-failures during the subsequent degassing phase," the authors write in the journal Terra Nova.

Intriguingly, Lake Cheko does not appear on any maps before 1929, though the researchers admit the region was poorly charted before this time.

The University of Bologna team plans to mount another expedition to the Tunguska region in summer 2008.

The researchers aim to drill up to 10m below the lake bed to the anomaly picked up in the geophysics survey and determine whether it really is a piece of extraterrestrial rock.

However, an expedition to the region in the 1960s estimated that Cheko was between 5,000 and 10,000 years old, based on the development of silt on the lake bottom.

Source: BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6239334.stm

- MYSTERIES OF THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT -

Unearthing Mt. Shasta’s Legends

Researcher, author and filmmaker Stephen Sindoni  landed in Mt. Shasta determined to unveil one of the great mysteries of the mountain: the myth of Lemuria.

As he was casting about for ideas for a screenplay in his New York home, Sindoni came across the longstanding Mt. Shasta legend of JC Brown, a geologist who, in 1904, is said to have found a tunnel that leads eleven miles underground to the lost civilization of Lemuria.

Intrigued by the tale, Sinsion began to research the known details, wondering if there could be any factual basis for the story.

His journey from some basic research in a New York City public library to a cross-country journey to Mt. Shasta has led to some findings that add a new dimension to the story.

The Legend of JC Brown
There are many accounts of the legend, one of the most common sources is Emile Frank’s book “Mt. Shasta: California’s Mystic Mountain.” Sindoni noted that access to the legends were readily available, but the accounts he heard left a lot to speculation. Had anyone, he wondered, attempted to follow up on any of alleged facts?

The original story goes something like this: JC Brown, a geologist for the Lord Cowdray Mining company of London, was prospecting for precious metals in the Mt. Shasta area when he came across an interesting geological feature which, upon further investigation, turned out to be a tunnel.

After excavating the opening, Brown entered the tunnel, following it for a couple of miles and eventually finding rooms full of gold and copper plates, as well as ornate statues. He also found a burial chamber that contained 27 skeletons that ranged from 6-foot-6 to 10 feet in length, two of which were shrouded in mysterious robes.

According to the legend, Brown continued his explorations, yet little is know of what happened between 1904, when the cave was first discovered, and 1934, when the story first appeared in the Stockton Record newspaper.

It was shortly after  the newspaper story that Brown mysteriously disappeared. He was in the process of preparing an expedition party to fully excavate and explore his discovery, but the boat headed north never left the Stockton Harbor. Nobody ever heard from JC Brown after June 19, 1934.

Legend busting
For Sindoni, there were too many holes in the story and too many possible leads that, as he saw it, could be pursued. He noted, in particular, that a big part of what drew him to this subject in the first place is that there appeared to be enough factual evidence to provide the basis for a good research project.

“When I take on a project, I want to deal with hard evidence,” he said.

Working with the rough framework of the story, Sindoni set out to verify what he could.

He said he began by tracing the records of the Lord Cowdray Mining Company. In doing so, he discovered that there was no record of a JC Brown, but he did find that a geologist by the name of JB Body had been employed by the company. Records indicated that Body had travelled to Mt. Shasta in 1904 along with Lord Cowdray himself, Sindoni said.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, Sindoni soon became convinced that “JC Brown” was the alias for the real life JB Body.   

After further research, Sindoni said he found out that the Cowdray Mining Company had been prospecting for oil in Mexico and, by 1904, had unearthed vast reserves under the name of the Mexican Aguilar Oil Company. Body was employed as one of the geologist who worked with Lord Cowdray, and the two together became very wealthy. Sindoni claims to have traced the roots of this company to today’s Shell Oil, and he notes that at his death in 1927,  Cowdray was one of the wealthiest men in the country, and that at the time of his disappearance, Body was worth an estimated $45 million.

Sindoni’s research eventually led him to believe that  Cowdray and Body were originally in Mt. Shasta to  visit the then famous Shasta Springs Resort, located along the Upper Sacramento River just north of Dunsmuir. (At that time, the resort was a popular destination for the San Francisco elite, who came to enjoy the region’s healing waters and stunning vistas.)

As Sindoni sees it, the reason for their visit was most likely recreational, as the two may have been celebrating some recent oil discoveries.
Checking border crossing records, Sindoni says he was able to locate proof that a JB Body and a Weetman Pearson (the birth name of Lord Cowdray) did indeed cross into the US at  Laredo, Texas in 1904. He noted that border crossing information is public record and that he was also able to trace some of the records of the Lord Cowdray Mining company.

Sindoni also verified that the two later returned in 1907, crossing into the US at the same place. Travelling with them this time were three more geologists, also under the employ of the Lord Cowdray Mining Company.

Gaps in the record
What happened between 1907 and 1934 when the man calling himself JC Brown eventually told his story to the Stockton Record remains unclear.
Sindoni says that his research reveals that JB Body crossed in and out of Mexico 13 times between 1905 and 1912, but after that there is little evidence as to his whereabouts.

The research shows that Body continued to be actively involved in the affairs of the Mexican Aguilar Oil Company, earning a large fortune in the process, according to Sindoni. (Both Body and Cowdray were reported to regulary associate with high ranking Mexican officials, including president Porfirio Diaz, until the Mexican revolution shifted the political landscape and the oil fields were overthrown.)

What happened between the last reported border crossing in 1915 and 1934 when Body showed up as JC Brown in the Stockton Record office in 1934?
This question leads to a lot of speculation. At this point, Sindoni’s trail of evidence dissipates somewhat, though he did indicate that there was an indication that Body may have travelled between his England home to the US on a handful of occasions.

In Sindoni’s opinion, JB Body developed the alias JC Brown because he lived in fear.

According to Sindoni, Body claimed that several attempts were made on both his life and the lives of his family members. This, explained Sindoni, is most likely why he took on the alias and why there is very little evidence of his whereabouts.

According to Sindoni,  when Body travelled as JC Brown, he would stay in public housing facilities, leading to the impression that he was essentially penniless.

After he reported his story to the newspaper and began to gather his team of 80 explorers and all of the necessary supplies, he disappeared.
What, wondered Sindoni, would lead to such a disappearance?

Newspaper records indicate that none of the expedition’s members lost any money, which helped assuage allegations that “JC Brown” was a swindler.
Though the legend indicates that he was never heard from again, Sindoni’s research evidence in a registry of civil engineers that JB Body died at home in England in 1938.

While on the brink of unearthing his great discovery, he went back underground. What was the reason?

Lemurian portal?
Like the legend of JC Brown, Sindoni’s tale of exploring the legend has its own elements of drama and mystery. Upon his arrival in Mt. Shasta last fall, Sindoni came across the story of an alleged 2008 Lemurian sighting in an area just north of Dunsmuir. Armed with this bit of recent local lore and the knowledge that Body and Cowdray had been in that general area during their initial 1904 visit, Sindoni began exploring on foot.

To his own amazement, he claims to have found the entrance to a cave that he believes is the same one that Body himself had discovered in 1904. He claims that its physical description and general location appear to be similar.

There are, however, a few issues that keep this case from being completely “solved,” the first being that the site is located on private property and is therefore inaccessible. (Sindoni did note that he received permission to hike on the property during his initial forays). He said that because of this, he is unable to reveal the exact location.

Sindoni explained that the opening has been sealed over with cement and that there are hieroglyphic-like markings that surround it.
On a website dedicated largely to the JC Brown legend, Sindoni has posted several You Tube videos, as well as photos and narrative.  Several show him standing in front of the entrance to a cave.

Also on his website are videos and narratives about other Mt. Shasta legends and lore that he says he is beginning to explore. The web address is stephensindoni.webs.com.

Sindoni says his findings have the potential to refute the prevailing theory that North American civilizations date back only 12,000 years. “If this is true, it could mean that the Lemurians are the descendants of the true Native Americans,” he said, noting that several Native American mythologies refer to an advanced civilization known as “the tall ones,” who were said to roam the earth up to 40,000 years ago.

Like JB Body himself, Sindoni says that some unusual things have happened to him since he has begun looking into this legend.  

He claims, among other things, that he is the target of a surveillance program and that, in his opinion, there are “forces” conspiring to keep this story under wraps.

Despite this, Sindoni asserts that, in the end, the truth will prevail. “There are two sides to every story and then there is the truth,” Sindoni said, acknowledging that his findings will be treated with a high degree of skepticism, but he feels he has brought enough “hard evidence” to the case to at least arouse some curiosity.

“I tell the truth, and I fear no man,” he proclaimed.

Other anomalies
Asked if he believes that his findings indicate that a “lost civilization” really does exist beneath the mountain, Sindoni replied, “As of four weeks ago, I have become convinced that it does.”

Currently, Sindoni is wrapping up this project and beginning to explore some of the other legends that exist in the area.

He regularly posts videos on You Tube about his various projets. Among other things, they include “”Stephen Sindoni Discovers Secret Hidden Messages in Microsoft Software,” “Sindoni Says: Egyptians reveal 911 Was An Inside Job,” and “Inside Hollow Earth.”

Speaking of the time he has spent in Mt. Shasta, he said, “I’m loving it. I’m where I need to be, and the mountain has given me validation.”
In addition to his research, writing and hiking around for clues, he does some web design and elder care work.

Sindoni was recently interviewed on BBS radio and has appeared on “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory. He has also appeared locally on community access channel MVTV15 and at the Stage Door in Mt. Shasta.

For more information about Stephen Sindoni and to see some of his several videos, visit stephensindoni.webs.com.

Source: Mt. Shasta News
http://www.mtshastanews.com/news/x1885878418/Unearthing-Mt-Shasta-s-legends

- COSMIC CONNECTIONS DEPARTMENT -

Russians Say Massive Magnetic Shift Downs Airliners

Reports circulating in the Kremlin are saying that Russian Air Force Commanders have issued warnings to all of their aircraft to exercise “extreme caution” during flights “in and around” an area defined as Latitude 17 North [North Atlantic Ocean] Latitude 3 South [South Atlantic Ocean] to Latitude 8 North [Indian Ocean] Latitude 19 South [Indian Ocean] between the Longitudes of 46 West, 33 West, 46 East and 33 East, and which covers the greater part of the African Tectonic Plate.

The reason for this unprecedented warning, these reports state, are the rapid formations of “geomagnetic storms” emanating from the boundaries of the African Tectonic Plate that due to their intensity have caused the loss of two major passenger aircraft during the past month leaving nearly 300 men, women and children dead.

The first aircraft to be downed by this phenomenon was Air France passenger flight 447, and which these reports say that upon encountering one of these geomagnetic storms, on June 1st, near the western boundary of the African Tectonic Plate close to Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha Islands, was “completely annihilated” causing the deaths of 216 passengers and 12 crew members as their plane plunged in pieces into the Atlantic Ocean.

The second aircraft to be downed occurred on the eastern boundary of the African Tectonic Plate today when another of these geomagnetic storms slammed from the sky a Yemeni Airways flight to the Island Nation of Comoros in the Indian Ocean of which of the 153 passengers and crew aboard, only 1 “miracle child” has been rescued, so far.

To the catastrophic events occurring within the African Tectonic Plate it has been known for over a year with the reporting of a “new ocean” forming in Ethiopia, and as we can read as reported by Nature News Service:

“Although the birth of an ocean is an extremely rare phenomenon on the largest of historical scales, the geophysics is currently experiencing such an event. Even more dazzling, this occurs in one of the Earth's most inhospitable and arid regions, the Afar Depression in Ethiopia.

The African continent is literally unstitching itself apart just like the sleeve of an old shirt, along the area known as the East African Rift, which traverses it beginning with the southern end of the Red Sea, going through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. The molten lava beneath the Earth's surface makes it thin by constantly pushing against it, and eventually breaks it and tears it apart.”

Though Western scientist assert that the formation of this new ocean is not likely to be finished for millions of years, Russian scientists state, unequivocally, that due to the Suns current unprecedented Deep Solar Minimum, our Earth is in danger of being, literally, “ripped apart”, at the worst, or nearing a “total pole reversal” due to an as yet unexplained, but extremely powerful, gravitational force emanating from the outer reaches of our Solar System that some researchers state is the mysterious Planet X, and which many believe to be a large brown dwarf and known to the ancient peoples of Earth as Nibiru, and called by the name of Wormwood in the Christian Bible.

Russian scientists further warn that the West’s “obsession” with manmade Global Warming is a deliberately designed propaganda effort to shield their peoples from the fact that not only our Earth, but all of the planets in our Solar System are currently undergoing rapid warming, and as proved, beyond all doubt, by Doctor Scientist Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, when in 2007 he released his findings that for the previous 3 years the ice caps of Mars have been melting at an unprecedented rate.

And, as reported by one, of many, dissident Western news sites, “Photographs of the merging of two red spots on Jupiter, evidence of warming on Neptune's largest moon Triton, warming on Pluto that is "puzzling scientists" and, of course, the already documented warming trend on Mars all add up to convincing evidence for increased solar activity across the entire solar system.”

To the most chilling parts of these reports on the current instability of the African Tectonic Plate are those Russian scientists who assert, that, should a powerful enough gravitational force be exerted upon this region [such as that which would occur in our Earth’s presence with a Planet X type body], it would cause this plate to be subsumed with the Atlantic and Indian Oceans completely covering what is now known as the African Continent, and further cause a corresponding rise of what were known to the ancient peoples as the Continents of Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and Lemuria in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Interesting to note about these current events is that the most documented psychic of 20th century America, Edgar Cayce, predicted that both Atlantis and Lemuria would arise again during the ending of our Earth’s present age, and which many in the World currently believe will be in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan Calendar.

Source: MINA Macedonia News Agency
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/7331/53/

- A HAUNTING WE WILL GO DEPARTMENT -

Sacramento Group Doesn't Always Look for Ghosts

Brad Smith entered a Stockton home recently when, all of a sudden, he felt an ice-cold grip on his left wrist.

There was nobody there to grab it.

Smith, who investigates whether ghosts exist at certain locations, said he doesn't know what it was, but it could have been a deceased relative.

Smith, a member of a Sacramento-based organization called American Paranormal Investigations, spoke to about 40 people attending Wednesday night's meeting of the newly formed Lodi Paranormal and Historic Anomaly Society.

Smith is what is his group calls a "debunker," someone who searches buildings attempting to prove that they aren't haunted. He looks for logical reasons for funny noises, like a running air conditioner, a breeze from the window or a creaky wooden floor.

In Stockton, Smith checked for a significant amount of electric and magnetic fields in the neighborhood, which could cause something that appears to be ghostly.

"It could be anything," Smith said.

It could be a ghost of someone who once lived in the house, it could be someone who once lived in the neighborhood.

"It may be passing through," he said. "They may be curious just like us."

Smith, who was a reporter for two years for the Siskiyou Daily News in Yreka beginning in 2006, said his group will return to the Stockton house for a more thorough investigation. He now writes for what he described as an "area newspaper" and does crime reporting online.

Dave Bender, who founded American Paranormal Investigations in 2001, told interested Lodians that he doesn't use the term "ghost" when discussing possible paranormal activity. Instead, he likes to use the word "apparition," an unusual or unexpected sight.

Bender said American Paranormal Investigations won't come to someone's residence strictly to look for ghosts.

"Twenty percent of the things we encounter are paranormal," Smith said. "The other 80 percent can be easily explained."

It's more important to listen to people's stories about what they think is abnormal in their house, Bender said.

"They don't want people to think they're crazy," he said. "What's important to them is to be willing to listen to their story.

"I can teach you how to investigate," Bender said. "I can't teach you how to care about people. We're here to make the family feel better."

Describing his most unusual experience searching for ghosts, Bender recalls visiting a house in a nice Sacramento neighborhood. He didn't notice anything unusual, but several women, including his wife, felt like they were choking.

One woman was walking in a bedroom at that home when something unexplainable bumped into her. She fell down and hurt her elbow.

"It was nasty, that's what it was," Bender said.

Smith said he was blown away one night in Auburn, where several people told him they saw creatures resembling "gray humanoids."

"So we scouted the area. At the driveway, I saw this blurred humanoid shape in the air, turn and go away," Smith said. "We tried to debunk it, but we couldn't explain it another way."

For more on American Paranormal Investigations, visit www.ap-investigations.com.

Source: Lodi News-Sentinal
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2009/06/26/news/2b_ghosts_090626.txt

- DON'T BE ALARMED, BUT IT IS ALIVE DEPARTMENT -

Sewer Monster Found in Raleigh, North Carolina


It looks like blob of wriggling pudding staring out through a single, puckered eye. You can see it caught on camera, clinging to the concrete pipes below Raleigh's Cameron Village: the Sewer Monster.

It's really a colony of prehistoric creatures known either as bryozoans or moss animacules, thousands of wormlike animals, biologists report. Clustered together in a glistening mass, they feed through tentacles on whatever floats past. More common in ponds, they have turned up in a set of sanitary sewer pipes under one of the country's oldest shopping centers.

Shacked up in a six-inch sewer main, the clusters of worms are about the size of a golf ball, estimates Ed Buchan, an environmental coordinator with the city. But the video footage, captured with a tiny, snakelike camera, makes the monster appear at man-eating size to viewers watching at home.

That may explain why a two-minute video tour of the Sewer Monster's lair has spread across the Web like flesh-eating bacteria, prompting nationwide cries of horror and disgust.

"Mystery Life Form in NC Sewer!" read one headline, followed by this comment: "It looks like meat. HEART MEAT!"

At Cameron Village on Wednesday evening, visitors were split into two groups: Those who had seen the sewer monster video and been horrified, and those who planned to Google it the minute they had the chance.

Maria Schmitt, Jeff Lepley and Annie Powell, all 21, were in the latter camp, but they quickly rectified that using Schmitt's iPhone.

"It looks like a brain or something," Schmitt said. "That's in the pipe?"

"I'm glad I don't live here," said Powell, a Houston native.

The trio immediately regretted their decision to watch the video before eating dinner at the Village Draft House.

"I'm glad I didn't order pasta," Schmitt said.

Raleigh Public Utilities Director Dale Crisp said the video was not shot by the city, but rather by a contractor hired by the property owner. Lynne Worth, property manager for Cameron Village, was out of the office on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

Crisp said the city first learned of the video several weeks ago when a link was sent to an employee in the stormwater division. Raleigh has two teams of employees whose sole task is to send tiny cameras into new and existing sewer lines and then review the footage for anything out of the ordinary.

This latest footage surprised even the professionals who thought they'd seen it all.

"I don't know if we've seen anything move on its own inside a sanitary sewer line," Crisp said. But shop owners in Cameron Village only laughed, especially those at North American Video, which has an impressive horror film collection.

This isn't the first time a bryozoan has ventured inside a sewer pipe. Denver's utility workers discovered some last year but opted to leave them alone. So far, said Mitch Terry, of the city's water and sanitation district, the weird cluster of creatures hasn't clogged anything.

Bryozoans are harmless, said Thomas Kwak, biologist at N.C. State University. He likened them to coral or anemone, retracting when they are disturbed, catching what they can. If they were to take on the qualities of a Sewer Monster, it would be a very slow attack. Bryozoans move at a rate of 1 to 10 centimeters a day, Kwak said.

"They can get as big as the size of a watermelon," he said.

If the city found such an infestation, Crisp said, it would clear it quickly.

"Anything other than water, human waste and toilet paper and you run the risk of having a blockage created by any debris, whether it's a sack of worms or anything else," he said.

But one morning, you may catch a nightmare glimpse a mass of gravy-like sludge climbing out of a drain, claiming new territory one centimeter at a time.

Source: The News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1592049.html

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