12/16/11  #650
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Welcome one and all to the greatest show on Earth!  Inside the big top we have such mysteries as you've never seen before!  A three-ring extravaganza of conspiracies, UFOs, the paranormal and much, much, MORE!  So sit back and relax and prepared to be amazed, because Conspiracy Journal is here once again for your viewing pleasure. 

This week Conspiracy Journal brings you such eccentric stories as:

-
Inventor Looks to Build Cold Fusion Reactors in Massachusetts -
-
Will the Gods of Old Be Returning to Earth Soon? -
- Are We Living in a Super-Computer Simulation with Aliens Beings? -
- Apples Fall from the Sky over Coventry -
AND: Sightings of Santa Claus

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

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~


Mr. UFO on The Paracast

Tim Beckley (Mr. UFO) will be on this Sunday's (Dec. 18) The Paracast with hosts Gene Steinberg and Christopher O’Brien. Beckley presents his usual collection of the amazing paranormal events he's researched. You'll also learn about unusual reports of strange events near the burial place of Charles Fort in New York State with Claudia Cunningham.

The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio - Sunday, 7:00 PM–10:00 PM Eastern Time on GCN Radio (4:00 PM–7:00 PM Pacific, 6:00 PM–9:00 PM Central, and Monday at 00:00 UTC).  www.theparacast.com


MANY OF THE BOOKS BY PUBLISHER TIM BECKLEY (DBA – CONSPIRACY JOURNAL, INNER LIGHT, GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS) ARE . . .

 

NOW AVAILABLE AS E BOOKS ON KINDLE AND NOOK -- AND ALSO ARE ACCESSIBLE ON YOUR PC

 

Looks like everyone will be buying a Kindle from Amazon or a Nook from Barns and Noble this holiday season. And as much as we lament to see the printed book go the way of the Do Do Bird, the positive end of the stick is that the books are way cheaper in electronic format and you can purchased them from Kindle to read on your computer without even buying one of their readers! The books sell for below $10 and both Amazon and Nook have easy access web sites to purchase your books from. Oh and hey, NO WAITING for the post office to deliver what your order -- the books show up on your reader in a minute or two (now that's progress).


We will of course continue to keep as many of our titles in printed form for those who desire the feel of a "real book." We will continue to put out new titles. And if your physical book normally comes with a bonus CD or DVD if you alert us we will send you this bonus material when you let us know you have purchased the book itself from Kindle or Nook.


Here are a few example of the many books we have available on Kindle and Nook. Click on "Amazon" or "Nook" below each title to buy ebook.


ADMIRAL BYRD'S SECRET JOURNEY BEYOND THE POLES by Tim R. Swartz
AMAZON      
NOOK

BIBLE SPELLS: OBTAIN YOUR EVERY DESIRE BY ACTIVATING THE SECRET MEANING OF HUNDREDS OF BIBLICAL VERSES by Wm. Oribello

AMAZON
      
NOOK

CURSE OF THE MEN IN BLACK: RETURN OF THE UFO TERRORISTS by T. Beckley
AMAZON
NOOK

COSMIC TELEPATHY: HOW TO GUIDE TO MENTAL TELEPATHY by Tuella
AMAZON
NOOK (Coming soon)

EXCLUDED BOOKS OF THE BIBLE by Sean Casteel
AMAZON
NOOK (Coming soon)

HEAVEN SENT MONEY SPELLS by Maria D' Andrea

AMAZON
NOOK

ROUND TRIP TO HELL IN A FLYING SAUCER by T. Beckley
AMAZON
NOOK


THE DULCE WARS: UNDERGROUND ALIEN BASES by Branton
AMAZON

NOOK


Check our our complete list of Ebooks available on Amazon Kindle and B/N Nook. HERE


- JOBS FOR AMERICA DEPARTMENT -

Inventor Looks to Build Cold Fusion Reactors in Massachusetts

Italian scientist Andrea Rossi, who claims to have invented the world's first cold fusion machine, visited Massachusetts last week, meeting with a state senator and several scientists to explore the possibility of manufacturing cold fusion reactors in the state.

Despite heavy skepticism in the scientific community about his work, Rossi came stateside at the invitation of Massachusetts Senate minority leader Bruce Tarr, a Republican who has been active in pursuing alternative energy legislation. "My thought process was pretty simple: If it works, I want this technology to be developed and manufactured in Massachusetts," Tarr told The Boston Globe.

Rossi claims that his energy catalyzer, or "E-Cat," uses a small amount of input energy to trigger atoms of hydrogen and nickel to fuse together, giving off gobs of heat in the process. The excess heat, equivalent to more than 10 times the energy that was put in, can then be used to boil water to produce steam and ultimately generate electricity.

The process is an attractive energy solution for two reasons: Unlike in nuclear fission, cold fusion doesn't give off dangerous radiation. And unlike the fusion processes that take place in the sun, cold fusion doesn't require unachievably high temperatures.

However, in the two decades since experimentalists first claimed to have demonstrated the strange reaction, the line of research has largely been discredited. Most physicists think cold fusion is theoretically impossible, and devices that seem at first to demonstrate it generally fail to stand up to scrutiny. Today, the United States Department of Energy, academic journals and the U.S. Patent Office all consider cold fusion machines to be hoaxes.

Nonetheless, Rossi has heated up the cold fusion debate once again this year. He hasn't revealed much about the inner workings of his E-Cat machine, citing the fact that it isn't yet patent-protected, but a handful of scientists have attended demonstrations of the device in Bologna, Italy, and have given it a nod of approval, saying it produces too much excess energy to be utilizing a simple chemical reaction.

Rossi said he has sold 13 E-Cat units since a demo in October.

Along with Tarr, Rossi met with representatives from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts on his recent trip. Those in attendance said the meeting was mainly spent discussing the logistics of setting up manufacturing of household cold fusion power generators in the state, rather than the validity of the science behind cold fusion.

"Knowing the reputation of cold fusion, I went in with a very healthy level of skepticism," said Robert Tamarin, dean of sciences at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. That said, he added, "If it’s successful, no wants to have to say later that we walked away from it."

Rossi said he plans to come back to Massachusetts soon, and hopes things will move quickly. "We are all hoping to get something started in a matter of weeks, not months," he said.

Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45557227/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.TuueA1as8dU

- DEITIES IN A FLYING SAUCER DEPARTMENT -

Will the Gods of Old Be Returning to Earth Soon?
By Sean Casteel

· Why do the ancient myths of Greece and Rome still “speak” to us today? Are the old gods really the immortals they claimed to be, still capable of communing with modern man?

· Greece and Italy both have a rich history of UFO, alien and other paranormal encounters. Read the stories here of Greek and Italian UFO witnesses and alien abductees as they participate in the universal cosmic dance that dates from the times of antiquity when the gods ruled more openly.

· Are the ancient gods like Zeus and Apollo biding their time before making a triumphal return in full view of the entire world? Or is it that they have never left their Mediterranean homelands at all?


      The school of thought categorized as “Ancient Astronauts” has been a longtime staple of UFO research and lore, most often attributed to Erich von Daniken, whose “Chariots of the Gods?” sold millions of copies worldwide and made it to the top of the bestseller list when it was first published in 1968. It presents a case for, in general, the firm belief that ancient man and his various civilizations were created and guided by creatures from outer space or from some as yet unknown dimension. The theory most often focuses on the stories from the Bible or the records of the earlier Sumerian and Babylonia societies, giving short shrift to the equally compelling stories from Greek and Roman mythology.

      In this study you are now reading, the late Britisher W.R. Drake impressively offers up almost inarguable evidence that the so-called Gods of Antiquity were not just illusionary but were instead real flesh and blood beings who emerged from the sky and made themselves right at home as if this was their world to begin with. Perhaps it is, and we are but pawns in some unknown chess game being played out as part of the grand design. As an extension of Drake’s understanding of primordial cosmology, we must state our unwavering belief that the Space Gods continue to keep a watchful eye on the Mediterranean region and haven’t forgotten their past interaction with the people of the area, some of whom still hold a high degree of reverence for the deities their ancestors encountered and held forth with and conceivably even copulated with. The old stories from Greece and Rome continue to resonate today, and are given new life by the UFO mythos that began to take hold on the public mindset in the 1940s.

For example, there are the stories surrounding the Greek god Hermes, born the son of Zeus, who was considered by the Greeks to be the father of gods and men, the ruler and preserver of the world. Hermes plays many roles and appears in many different ways in the Greek pantheon.

      Writes author Keith Thompson in his book “Angels and Aliens,” “Hermes is the swift-footed messenger of the gods between heaven and earth, from which he derives his character as a god of oracles. As a messenger or herald, Hermes has access as well to the underworld, guiding the souls of the departed to rest across the threshold of life and death.”

      Hermes also serves as the mediator between conscious and unconscious, surface and depths. He is the god of “persuasive speech,” or oratory, as well as a patron saint of liars and thieves.

      A story is told about Hermes that took place when he was barely a day old. He stole a herd of cattle belonging to his half brother Apollo, covering his tracks as best he could. When the theft was reported to Apollo by a local mortal named Battos, Apollo dragged Hermes off the couch where he pretended to sleep and delivered him to Zeus, who would surely punish Hermes for his cattle rustling. Without a hint of shame, Hermes denied the accusation and then took up a lyre and began to make music for Zeus and Apollo, much to their delight. They did not believe Hermes’ protestations of innocence, but they were irresistibly charmed in any case.

      When Hermes further ingratiated himself to Apollo by giving him the lyre he had been playing, Apollo made a present to Hermes of a divining rod and along with it the power of prophecy, which Hermes must communicate not by words, which was Apollo’s domain, but by signs and occurrences.

All of which added to the complex nature of Hermes’ communications and revelations.

      “Whereas Apollo insists on single meanings, clear and straight like an arrow,” Thompson writes, “communications under the sign of Hermes borrow from twisted pathways, shortcuts and parallel routes. It makes many round trips and ends up sometimes in meaningful dead ends. The paths of Hermes are multiple.”

      Yet if Hermes were merely a liar, Thompson observes, then no one would listen to his stories.

      “This is a crucial point for the UFO phenomenon as well,” he writes, drawing a comparison to our fascination with the wonders from the heavens we have come to call the flying saucer mystery and the gods of the sky. “If each and every sighting invited a definitive explanation, there would be no controversy about ‘meanings.’ UFOlogists (pro and con), like Apollo, are interested in ‘proving’ things. Hermes (like UFOs themselves?) wants to win over the audience and get applause, even if it means twisting the truth.”     

THE PERFECT HUMANS

      Admittedly, we know very little about the true nature of the Greek religion beyond the myths and legends that have survived into our present time. What we do know is that about 1200 B.C.E., the residents of what we would call Greece and Asia Minor shared a common, undisputed belief in a group of deities from the heavens that came to be known as the Olympians.

      The world famous Erich von Daniken has devoted an entire book to the subject of Greek mythology called “Odyssey of the Gods,” in which he suggests that the Greek gods were in fact extraterrestrial beings who arrived on Earth thousands of years ago.

      On a website devoted to the Greek/Roman UFO connection as part of the NetScienta posting, an unnamed author writes, “Archeological evidence and the writings of the ancients, including Aristotle, prove these gods interbred with humans, performed genetic experiments, and bred ‘mythical’ creatures, such as centaurs and Cyclops.”

      The same author explains, “Greek gods were a way of explaining the unexplainable in a person’s life. According to Greek mythology, there once was a time when great events had occurred and the gods had involved themselves in human affairs. These gods were described as ‘the perfect humans.’”

      Zechariah Sitchin once remarked that people often say the gods of old, with their love affairs and various intrigues and jealousies, are “just like people.” But Sitchin said it’s the other way around, really, that we as people are just like the gods who made us, imperfect and weak in many ways.

The Greeks’ creation story goes like this: Prometheus and Epimetheus were spared imprisonment in Tartarus because they had not fought alongside their fellow Titans in the war with the Olympians. Having found favor, they were given the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure. This is a method similar to genetic splicing, the author declares, which makes the story all the more feasible given that we can splice genes ourselves now and there is much evidence that the  UFO aliens/gods can do the same. Witness the human/alien hybrid children that are so much a part of the present day alien abduction phenomenon.

HUMANOIDS IN GREECE

      Shifting gears into the modern era, we come to the sightings in Greece of humanoid forms, which include a high number of encounters of the third kind. On the website of our good friend Brian Haughton, Mysterious People.Com, he devotes several pages to the research of Greek UFOlogist Thanassis Vembos, a fulltime journalist, author, translator and researcher whose versatile lifelong interests include the paranormal in all its aspects as well as Astronomy, Astronautics and science fiction.

      Vembos makes the important point that UFO sightings and alien encounters have never received the attention they deserve in his nation’s press.

      “After World War II,” he writes, “the only relatively credible medium of information was the newspapers. So the only source of ufological information was the local press, even though it usually distorted the narratives and presented information with no substantive details due to a complete lack of knowledge about UFOs. In fact, the UFO subject was unknown to the greatest part of Greek society until the 1960s.”

      The heaviest wave of sightings in Greece was in 1954, when all of the European theater was overcome with flying saucer fever. On Vembos’ own personal site, which you are invited to visit (at www.Vembos.gr), there are many apparently well-documented reports listed from that fateful year. We found the following incident to be without a doubt the most puzzling and intriguing:

      “November 20. A strange report comes from Vovoda village, near Aegion, Peloponnese. At 7:00 A.M., 84-year-old Helias Coromilas was at his field, at Voulomeni, outside Vovoda, when he noticed a small object, resembling a small car, rolling on the road and then entering the field at a distance of about 100 meters (300 feet) from the witness. Coromilas ran to warn the driver of the ‘car’ that there was a steep cliff in front of him, but when he approached it, suddenly the ‘car’ took off, making no sound at all and, engulfed in dust, flew away into the sky. Coromilas said later that the ‘car’ was dark in color, had two wheels and was 1.5 to 2 meters in size and one meter in height. He considered the whole event ‘supernatural.’”

      In addition to the wave of 1954, other UFO incidents related by Mr. Vembos keep us fascinated, especially the experience related to him firsthand by a Greek university professor identified simply as Mr. G. P., with the name of his home city also withheld in order to protect his privacy.

      It was the year 2001, and the professor was at home, in the wee hours of Sunday, June 24, watching a late-night talk show on television. It was approximately 2 A.M. His wife and son were asleep and his daughter was out. The talk show began to bore him intensely, so the professor went to bed. He was walking to the bedroom when he noticed that the kitchen light was on.

      “Reaching out to switch it off,” Vembos writes, “he felt a sense of coldness, like a cold wind on his back. He turned to see what it was. The thing he saw was like a bolt out of the blue. A strange humanoid was standing right there, before his eyes. It was a slim, tall creature – almost six feet – and seemed to be wearing a tight-fitting light blue ‘coverall.’”

      The witness would explain later that, “It was like the stockings that burglars put on their head, but it was covering the whole body, from head to toes.”

      The face of the creature was “coarsely formed.” It had only bulges and cavities where the eyes, the nose, the ears and other facial characteristics should be. The witness said the humanoid’s whole appearance was like that of a “coarse computer graphic.”

      “The witness had the impression,” Vembos goes on, “that the apparition was masculine. It was moving in ‘slow motion’ with large strides showing great flexibility, ‘like that of a dancer not touching the floor.’ It came out of the kitchen and went right to the bathroom (the bathroom door was open). Its movement reminded the witness of a hurdler in action. In spite of his shocked astonishment, the witness was curious enough to run after the creature. But it disappeared into thin air. Before the witness realized what he had just seen, the humanoid appeared for a second time. Now it came out of his daughter’s bedroom and ran into the kitchen, where it again disappeared. After that, it made its appearance for a third time, coming out from the bathroom and disappearing again – for good – in the living room. The whole ‘chase’ had lasted approximately 30 seconds.”

      It was at that point that the professor felt the sheer magnitude of what had just happened, and he nearly collapsed from the shock. During the incident he had not had time to realize how weird, how out of the ordinary the experience was.

      “The high strangeness of the incident,” writes Vembos, “was intensified by the complete lack of any sound. He had the impression that the apparition was ‘running away from something, trying desperately to avoid contact with something that was chasing it.’”

      Could it have been Hermes, on the run from his fellow gods after some new form of godlike mischief? Or was Hermes there to deliver some message to the professor, a message that the gods deemed him worthy of? If that was the case, one must assume the message was lost in a haze of mystery.

AN EARLIER VISIT FROM THE UNKNOWN

      The anonymous professor has by no means been a stranger to the unexplainable, offering up another earlier experience to the Greek investigator/author Thanassis Vembos.  

      “In 1974, the professor was at home, in another Greek city,” Vembos writes,   “where he was residing with his family. The doorbell rang and he went to open it. There was a woman standing on the doorstep, apparently dressed like a ‘nun.’ Her face was ‘indescribably beautiful,’ ‘radiating dazzling splendor.’ (Maybe it is useful to clarify that the professor is not a religious person.) The ‘nun’ seemed to be ‘self-illuminated,’ even though the outdoor light was off. The woman asked him for some money. He turned and reached out to get some from a small box. But when he turned again to the door to give her the money after a few seconds, the woman had vanished.

      “He was shocked, realizing that there was not enough time for the woman to vanish. He went out, pressed the elevator button and saw that the elevator was somewhere on the upper floors. He came down the stairs and went into the street but he could not find any trace of her. The experience was not as subjective or illusionary as it seems at first glance, since his family also heard the doorbell ringing.”

      We wonder if this might have been a materialization of the Oracle of Delphi, disguised in more modern garb. She has often been depicted wearing a head cloth or covering like a religious figure such as a nun. Perhaps she comes back from time to time, and has done so down through the ages, taking on human form in an attempt to provide us with contemporary revelations and prophecies.       

The professor also told Vembos about a third experience that took place in 1986 in which he saw an apparition of his mother-in-law as he rode a city bus full of people. His mother-in-law had died six months prior to the bus incident.

      “He was so stunned that he could not believe his eyes and could not even try to speak to her,” Vembos writes.

      Seeing an apparition of a deceased relative is also sometimes part of an abduction experience, according to researcher Dr. David Jacobs. For instance, one may be undergoing a typical bedroom abduction and see one’s late grandmother at the foot of the bed. Experiencer Whitley Strieber has frequently commented that the border between the worlds of the living and the dead is something the aliens can cross over like we would cross a street.

WHAT THE FIREMEN SAW

      Vembos also learned of another incident there in Greece that took place a couple of months after the professor’s visit from the humanoid in his home. The site of the incident was Perati, near Vravona, which is the location of the beautiful ancient temple of Artemis, also called Diana. The temple is still standing and in rather good condition.

      “Perati is a hill that John Keel would have classified as a ‘window,’” Vembos writes. “Lots of strange happenings, apparitions, UFOs and other unorthodox phenomena are reported there.”

      The witness to the Perati event was a 45-year old fireman who was doing a nightshift with two other colleagues, watching for forest fires. It was the end of August 2001. From their vantage point atop a peninsula in the area, which had a panoramic view, there was a deserted heliport – a landing platform about 15 meters in diameter – and a small wooden kiosk. It was a hot but peaceful night and the firemen were talking idly right beside a fire engine.

      “It was about 10 P.M. when they noticed a disc-shaped light-colored object flying low and noiselessly above the sea, coming towards them from the northeast. As the UFO was approaching, their mobile phones, the CB and their portable radio ceased to function.”

      The fireman had a slight impression of hearing a faint noise, “like a small electric motor.”

      “Astounded, the three men saw the UFO coming down and landing softly on its belly upon the old cement heliport platform. It was just three meters in diameter, seemed like ‘two deep plates glued together,’ and its color was whitish or gray metal. It did not have any discernible characteristics or features. It was half-hidden from their sight by shrubbery. All three of them were flabbergasted and a little afraid. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ they wondered. The fireman felt strange that he was witnessing something that he had read about or watched on TV programs.”

      After a while, a door seemed to open on the UFO. From inside, a dim light was coming out. Three small humanoids emerged from the open door and came down a stairway, one after the other. It was too dark to see details, but the humanoids seemed to wear tight-fitting, apparently metallic “scuba diver suits.” A hood covered their heads but not their faces. The witness could not make out any perceptible complexion or details on the humanoids’ limbs or bodies. The three aliens walked in line for six or seven meters and then disappeared into the night but the door on the ship remained open.

      The three men, still reeling from the shock of what they were seeing, started to discuss what they should do. One of them started to walk towards the landed UFO, but when he was halfway there he came back, saying that “something” had prevented him from going any further.

      A few minutes later, the creatures appeared again, coming up the same path they had earlier disappeared on. Walking in line, they entered the UFO. The door was closed and the UFO took off noiselessly. It flew until it vanished, to the south, behind Perati Hill. After it was gone, the electronic devices began to function again. The witnesses searched the landing area for traces, but found nothing.

They did not report their experience to the authorities for fear of ridicule. A couple of days later, they were doing the same nightshift duties when they saw another UFO, this time a much larger 30 meters in diameter. The ship passed right over their heads at a height of about 100 to 200 meters, had a whitish-metallic color and emitted a sound like “an electrical motor.” The UFO vanished into the distance, flying above Perati, and presumably over the nearby temple of Artemis/Diana.

“Detailed research,” writes Vembos, “can unearth even stranger tales from the rich lode of Greek Forteana – usually disguised as ‘folklore’ or ‘religious miracles.’”

UFOs IN ANCIENT ROME

Ancient Rome had its share of UFO sightings as well. From the Roman writer Julius Obsequens, who was believed to have lived in the middle of the fourth century C.E., came a great historical work called “Liber de Prodigiis,” or “The Book of Prodigies.” The book was an account of the wonders and portents that occurred in Rome between 249 and 12 B.C.E.

Obsequens clearly is reporting on a UFO sighting when he writes of an event that took place in 100 B.C.E.: “When C. Murius and L. Valerius were consuls, in Tarquinia towards sunset, a round object, like a globe or a round circular shield, took its path in the sky from west to east.”

Of the year 91 B.C.E., he says that, “At Aenariae, while Livius Troso was promulgating the laws at the beginning of the Italian war, at sunrise, there came a terrific noise in the sky, and a globe of fire appeared, burning in the north. In the territory of Spoletum, a globe of fire, of golden color, fell to the Earth gyrating. It then seemed to increase in size, rose from the Earth and ascended into the sky, where it obscured the sun with its brilliance. It revolved toward the eastern quadrant of the sky.”

      There is finally a third report from Obsequens, for the year 42 B.C.E., that states, “Something like a sort of weapon, or missile, rose with a great noise from the Earth and soared into the sky.”

      Since Obsequens was writing in the fourth century C.E., after Rome had converted to Christianity, he makes no reference to the ancient gods of his forefathers. Nevertheless, it was no doubt this sort of observable UFO activity that kept both the Greeks and Romans of the pre-Christian era further enthralled by the legends of their gods from the skies.

THE STORY OF BRUNO FACCHINI        

      One may recall the mega-hit HBO television series, “The Sopranos,” about a crime boss named Tony Soprano and his nuclear, extended and crime families. In one episode, Tony says to his henchmen, all of Italian descent, that as sons of Italy they are also descendants of ancient Rome, born of a kind of superior breeding stock that they should feel proud of.

      And so it was that Rome became Italy over the intervening centuries, and the sightings recorded from antiquity became the UFO and alien encounters of the present time.

      One such Italian encounter story comes from 1950 and happened in the small town of Varese. According to Billy Booth, writing on the About.com website, “On the 24th day of April, 1950, 42-year-old factory worker Bruno Facchini was working the late shift and stepped outside to get some fresh air on his break. His home city of Varese had just had a severe thunderstorm. The last distant streaks of lightning were still visible as Bruno decided to see if the electrical system had popped a circuit breaker. He was completely taken aback at what he saw not far from the factory doors.”

      Bruno went to investigate a bright light that he thought was part of a transformer problem and was shocked to see a circular-shaped, glowing object with a ladder descending from its bottom. At the top of the craft was a greenish glow which partly obscured a light-skinned being. The strange being appeared to be welding something on the ship.

      “Bruno’s first impression of the craft,” Booth writes, “was that it was a type of experimental craft from a nearby air base. His impression was quickly altered by the sight of several other small alien creatures which emerged from the craft. In a moment or two, the ladder began to be drawn up into the mysterious craft, and the beings began to reenter the craft through an invisible door of some kind.”

      The full realization of what he was seeing caused Bruno to simply flee on foot, at which point he began to hear a sound like that of a large beehive.

      “One of the remaining creatures,” the post continues, “pointed a type of weapon at the scared worker and a beam of force knocked him to the ground. Although in pain, he was able to watch the last activities of the strange aliens as they prepared the craft to take off. The beehive-like sound increased as the object made its way into the skies and vanished from view.”

      The following day, Bruno filed a full report with the local police. Signs that something really had been there the night before were still visible, such as burned patches on the ground and the indentation marks of an extremely heavy object. The police also found some odd, green pieces of a metal-like substance, which were sent off for analysis.

        “The results of this test concluded that the fragments were an ‘anti-friction’ material,” Booth writes, “containing several types of metal along with a lubricant.”

      Later tests of the same material commissioned by UFO investigators and conducted by a scientific institute specializing in metallurgy found that the debris   was 74 percent copper, 19 percent tin, and other trace elements, which does in no way cast doubt on Bruno’s story since we cannot know whether those metals are found only on Earth.

“Bruno’s story was taken very seriously by all who knew him,” Booth says. “He was a respectable man, very well-liked and considered to be reliable and trustworthy. He gained nothing from his tale of the strange object and occupants he described.”       

FETUS OF THE GODS?

In an online posting from the Unexplainable.net website circa 2010, writer Chris Capps relates the story of an Italian woman named simply “Giovanni,” who claims to have been taken aboard a UFO for the purpose of creating a hybrid alien/human race. The notion of an ongoing alien genetics program has been considered a central element of the aliens’ plan since 1987, when Budd Hopkins’ seminal work “Intruders” revealed that abductee Kathie Davis was also used for breeding experiments and even met one of her own half-alien children while onboard a UFO. The fact that there is an Italian woman reporting the same thing should come as no surprise.

In Giovanni’s case, there is plenty of supporting evidence, including implants in her brain, a strange phosphorescent material embedded in her skin in strange symbols, and even a fetus which was not detected until complications from her up to that point unknown pregnancy required an examination by a team of doctors.

“The phosphorous material in her skin,” Capps writes, “has been analyzed and shown to be a singular glowing material that experts are saying has not been fully identified and is thought to be made only under extremely specific circumstances, using magnetic fields comparable to those found in the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The material was not only discovered within her skin, but also in her home and in a small patch of burned grass in her yard.”

Meanwhile, her doctors don’t understand the tiny artificial metallic implants which Giovanni has had in her brain for several years. She claims they were put in her brain by the creatures who had been abducting her since she was four years old. She has no idea what the implants do or what their intended purpose is.

The well-known abductee, Whitley Strieber, once had his own brain implants verified by doctors using an MRI machine. The scan proved the objects were indeed there, but were positioned in such a way as to make surgically removing them impossible without causing some degree of brain damage in the process. It is generally believed that implants in the brain simply come with the territory where alien abduction is concerned.

“Finally,” Capps writes, “the most grim bit of evidence is the undetected life sign in Giovanni’s body that ultimately ended in abortion. After the fetus was removed, doctors claimed it was certainly not what they expected. Though human fetuses can at an early stage resemble what many describe the Grays as looking like, they also said that several developed features were distinctly not normal for a fetus at that stage, and that it was likely that the child was either developmentally mutated, or something else had caused it to exhibit abnormal features.”

Of course none of this was any surprise to Giovanni, who already suspected that the child was a hybrid implanted in her by her alien captors. By itself, the fetus could have been an earthly aberration, but, when combined with the other evidence, her claim of an alien abduction becomes all the more believable.

  The gods of Greece and Rome would mingle their seed with the occasional mortal woman, breeding creatures half human and half god who would go on to live their own mythical adventures. Was the strangely misshapen fetus found inside Giovanni intended to be just such a hero of prose and poetry?

THE 1978 ITALIAN UFO WAVE

The February/March 2011 edition of “Open Minds Magazine” (website at openminds.tv) featured on its cover a fascinating account by Umberto Visani of the 1978 wave of UFOs sighted over Italy that was so undeniably real that politicians of the time demanded an investigation.  

One such sighting took place on September 16 of that year, in a section of Naples, at 10 P.M.

“Antonio Attansio and Franco Prezioso, two fishermen, were fishing on the dock. All of a sudden, the water in front of them appeared to boil, with huge bubbles seven feet in diameter appearing on the surface. At the same time, the two men could see an underwater beam of light illuminating the boats out at sea. This beam was very long, thin and greenish in color. After a few minutes, the beam moved slowly away, and the fishermen could no longer see it because other boats were hampering their field of vision. As the strange beam disappeared, the water stopped boiling. The two fishermen were astonished and could not think of any possible explanation as to what they had witnessed.”

Was it perhaps a visit from Neptune, the Roman god of the sea? While it is true that some modern day “Romans” still believe in the ancient gods, maybe there are those who need reminding that the world is stranger and the gods more powerful than one might be comfortable with.

Another sighting recounted by Visani took place on December 24 of that fateful year of 1978, in a place called Matera, near Mount Gran Sasso, at 7 A.M.

“Benito Franchi, an employee at the power station, had barely started to work that morning when he began to suffer from a strong headache that nearly paralyzed him. Bizarrely, at the same time, he felt as if his hair was crackling. During this time, the controls of the power station went wild, and the generator progressively lost energy for no apparent reason. Then, after seeing a strange flash coming from a window, Franchi went outside and observed a dazzling spherical object flying high in the sky. Franchi called his colleague, Guido di Varano, and informed him about the events. Together, they tried to call the police station, but the telephone did not work. The sighting was corroborated by a local hotel owner and its guests.”

 This has been a sampling of the cases reported by Visani, whose article was itself a small sampling of the many sightings that took place in 1978. At the time, the Italian military admitted to having collected several reports from prominent and reputable members of the community, and a member of Italy’s parliament demanded to know “which measures Parliament wants to take to establish the origin of such phenomena and calm down the population.”

There has been an enormous amount written about the idea that the gods of old have manifested themselves in our relatively new technological age as highly- advanced creatures exhibiting a technology still light years ahead of our own. The gods of old and the present day UFO occupants appear in many guises, but their origins and purposes remain mostly unknown and are likely unknowable. But perhaps Zeus is still up there, observing the Earth from a flying saucer and seeking a new mortal woman to impregnate as he savors mischievous Puck’s comment, “What fools these mortals be.”    

Take this link for more information or to purchase book from amazon.com - also available on Kindle and Nook.

SPECIAL  BOOK EXCERPT
From The Book:  Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece And Rome – Revelations Of The Oracle Of Delphi - by W.R. Drake, with Timothy Green Beckley Sean Casteel.
Reprinted with the permission of the publisher Timothy Beckley/Global Communications
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved

[If you enjoyed this review, visit Sean Casteel’s UFO Journalist website at www.seancasteel.com to read more of his articles and interviews.]

- TIME TO REBOOT DEPARTMENT -

Are We Living in a Super-Computer Simulation with Aliens Beings?
By Diane Tessman

One of the more mind-boggling theories is that we live in a computer simulation. Our world, our universe, might be a virtual reality matrix, programmed by the super-computer of a civilization of beings more advanced than we can possibly imagine. We wonder, where do the aliens and their UFOs fit in this?

While our computers have a long way to go to equal the human mind in overall ability, computer science is leaping ahead, every year, every month, every day. Think back ten years: We could not have imagined then what computer technology does for us today. Think back 20 years: Who would have guessed that computers in general and the Internet specifically would play such a pivotal role in all of our lives! Computers are wiping out the U.S. Postal Service, for goodness sakes!

Now think ahead 50 years: Where will computers be then, if our human race still survives?

How about 500 years? How about 2 million years? What will super-computers be doing by then? Yet, 2 million years is a drop in the cosmic bucket.

Nick Bostrom is a professor at Oxford University, faculty of Philosophy. I will not try to recreate his entire argument here, but he feels “the probability that you are living in a matrix is quite high.” He backs up his argument very convincingly. His matrix is not that of “The Matrix” films, but if you found that premise interesting, you will find Nick Bostrom’s theories absolutely mind-bogglingly fascinating and possible! You can also enjoy hearing about Bostrom’s theory on “Through the Wormhole,” DVD, Season One, with Morgan Freeman.

Here is his Simulation Argument: You exist in a virtual reality simulated in a computer built by some advanced civilization. That civilization is most likely to be our own human descendants, although they may no longer be of the species Homo sapiens. They may run simulations of the past, studying their ancestors.

Your brain, too, is merely a part of this simulation. One of the preliminaries of this assumption is that of “substrate independence.” This is the idea that conscious minds could in principle be implemented not only on carbon-based biological neurons (such as those in your head), but also on some other computational substrate such as silicon-based processors.

Are you thinking this is way too far out? Let me ask you, how do you tell if something is computer-generated? You look for the pixels, yes?

What is our world, our universe, composed of? Quantum physicists tell us it is composed of sub-atomic particles which are composed of strings. Look at an illustration of this phenomenon: It is exactly like pixels.

Given substrate independence (consciousness in silicon, not carbon), it is in principle possible to implement a human mind on a sufficiently fast computer. We do not have powerful enough hardware yet. We do not yet have programming ability, either, that can upload scans of the human brain into a super-computer but there are no real barriers to doing this, it is only a lack of technical advancement.

If you are such a simulated mind, there is no way to tell it; your virtual reality looks and feels perfectly real. This is the reality you have always known.

The core of the simulation argument - we should accept one of these propositions as true:

1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small
2) Almost no technologically mature civilizations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours
3) You are almost certainly in a simulation

If the Simulation Argument is correct, at least one is true, according to Professor Bostrom. If you wish to read his reasons for the above argument, google his work! It is fascinating, including his reasoning that, for instance, if you are a contemporary Christian fundamentalist, you might conjecture that those who programmed your life, set up the simulation in such a way that you will be rewarded or punished in the afterlife, according to Christian criteria. And for non-Christians as well, an afterlife would be a real possibility for a simulated creature; you could be continued in another simulation after death, or you could be uploaded into the simulator’s universe and perhaps provided with a body there.

So how do aliens and their UFO fits into this theory? Of course it might be a highly advanced alien race who is running the master computer. It seems more likely Future Humans are fascinated with their root species and original home world (Earth), and are running the virtual world.

However, the UFOs in our skies, and the Grays (fetuses), Reptilians, Tall White humanoids, and all those occupants seemingly within the saucers, would be just as much computer simulations as we are in this Simulation Argument.

Abductions by these aliens would be part of the simulation, experienced by a relatively few virtual human minds. Some would have good experiences, some would have bad experiences. This theory certainly proves that a good encounter experience is as real and as valid as a bad abduction experience.

It seems unlikely that plasma experiments in the skies, by earth militaries, would be seen all over the world, in the skies of countries which do not even have much of a military. However, those colorful orbs in our skies could be part of the simulation, and thus intelligently controlled not by the human military but by the programmers. And, I bet UFO landings would have to be in the program! Why stop at fly-overs to see the virtual human reaction? Let’s have the aliens and humans meet face to face!

And look at how these UFOs fly! Yes, probably they have gravity-nullifying technology, but why are they flying so low these days? After all, it seems advanced UFO occupants could use “zoom” technology which we humans have these days, thus spy satellites can pick up human movement in a tiny shack and Big Brother, from way up high, can pick one face out of a huge crowd of protestors. Why don’t the aliens use “zoom” to observe us and not send lumbering strange triangles just a few feet over our heads? Perhaps the low-flying craft are just a feature of the simulation as “time” goes along.

And those UFOs covered by clouds? What a great computer simulation! “Quick, I’ll put a cloud around my UFO so that military jet misses me!” The ultimate computer game?

Or, maybe it is more serious than that. What if this simulation ends in 2012?

Some of us feel we belong somewhere in the future, and that we are “star people.” Maybe this sounds very conceited or naïve or whatever, to those who don’t understand. Might we have inklings of being uploaded back home? That is, might our consciousness feel a pull to migrate back to our source?

Perhaps this advanced race doing the simulation is very enlightened. This would seem to be a foregone conclusion if they have managed to survive all this time. Maybe they are running this simulation to make sure our world (our simulation) does not crash entirely but rather can be restored in a new and better program.

I am not a “believer” of this theory but it makes sense in a lot of ways. How about glitches in our reality, like déjà vu and crazy coincidences? Sounds like a computer to me.

I’m not a solid believer in any one theory regarding UFOs and/or human origins, but I do believe in the force of consciousness itself. I also believe that most aliens are of goodness and decency. I am a bit tired of fear, demons, and parasites, but that’s just me.

I find this “matrix theory” remarkably freeing. Nick Bostrom states that he finds this theory to be proof of deities, in a literal way (those who created our world). He finds it inspirational and positive. To me, it is not frightening; it is in fact fascinating and makes some sense. Welcome to the matrix.

Diane’s web site: www.earthchangepredictions.com email: dianetessman@hotmail.com

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- WATCH YOUR FINGERS DEPARTMENT -

Mystery Creature Lurking in Waters Near Olympic Park

Wildlife experts have revealed that a mysterious giant creature is lurking in waters near the Olympic Park in East London.

Witnesses alerted environment bosses after seeing a 16lb Canada goose dragged under the surface, with fears there could now be a pike, alligator or even a large python stalking the waters near the Olympic site.

The number of swans on the river and waterways near the newly-built £9bn Olympic Park is also dropping.

Mike Wells saw the deadly attack on the Canada goose from a boat on the River Lea last month.

He said: 'We were just passing the time of day looking at a Canada goose 30 yards away, but then it just suddenly disappeared.

'It went down vertically. There wasn’t any hesitation, it went straight down. It didn’t come back up. My friend and I looked at each other slack-jawed.

'Being a river person, I pieced together what we’d seen in seconds. The goose was prey to something.

'A Canada goose is not a small bird. They weigh about 16lb, so whatever took it was also large.'

Mr Wells, who lives in the Lea Valley, is convinced the beast is the same creature which took down a goose in the same area in 2005.

Lea Rivers Trust staff reported seeing a Canada goose being dragged beneath the surface in 2005, and large holes were found burrowed into the bank of the river.

He added: 'It must be the same creature. Some people I've spoken to think it could be a very large pike and I've seen some turtles about a foot across, but they're not really big enough to take a goose.'

In 2005 experts thought the creature could have been an alligator, snapping turtle, or some other kind of pet which had been released into the wild.

Experts said a trap would need to be set to catch the beast, but it appears to have returned to the same waters last month.

Mark Gallant, of the Lea Rivers Trust, said after the 2005 attack: 'Someone might buy it as a baby turtle.

'After they've had it in their pond, or bath, or whatever they are going to keep it for a while and the thing starts to grow and grow and grow and grow.

'Obviously they can't keep it in their homes anymore so what do they do? They think they are doing a good thing for the actual animal by putting it into a river or stream.'

Zoology graduate Michael Allen, who lives near the Olympic Park, told the Hackney Citizen: 'It might be an escaped pet snake like a python.

'It could survive in this climate, although it would be a bit sluggish. A small goose or a duck could be a perfect meal.'

A spokesman for British Waterways said of the incident last month: 'We don't believe there is a crocodile in the river.

'Things that have been suggested are a big pike or a mink, which can prey on ducks. But geese might be a bit big for them.'

She continued: 'In some areas you get terrapins which get dumped and have taken to the conditions well - they can get to the size of dinner plates.

'But geese might be too big for them to take as well.

'No-one has reported anything to British Waterways, but we would encourage people to get in touch if they have seen anything.'

Source: Daily Mail (UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073486/Olympic-Park-beast-Experts-
fear-alligator-python-loose.html

- KNOWLEDGE BEYOND TIME AND SPACE DEPARTMENT -

Can Your Sixth Sense Tell When a Loved One has Died Miles Away?

It’s something many of us suspect – and now there’s startling evidence it really happens.

Leaning against the back of her chair, Annie Cap clutched at her chest as she coughed and battled for breath. ‘I’d never experienced anything like this before. I felt like I had a blockage in my airways and I couldn’t take in any air,’ she recalls. ‘It was a horrible sensation.’

At the same time, Annie felt suffused with an urgent sense of purpose: she knew she must call the hospital thousands of miles away, where she knew her mother lay gravely ill.

Still gasping for breath as she dialled the number, Annie asked to be put through to her mother’s room. ‘My sister answered the phone and was stunned to hear my voice. She and the rest of my family were just about to call me to tell me Mum was dying.

‘She had been coughing and fighting for breath for the last half-an-hour. My sister put the telephone to my mother’s ear so I was able to tell her I loved her, and it was ok, she could let go. She took her last breath as the phone was being held to her head.’

Could Annie’s own sensation of fighting for breath have been a coincidence? She doesn’t think so. ‘To me, there is no doubt Mum was very deliberately reaching out to me across the miles. She wanted to say goodbye, and this was her way.’

Annie had no way of putting a name to her experience at the time, but in the seven years since her mother passed away she has become convinced that what happened was a shared or so-called ‘empathic’ death experience, in which she physically felt her mother’s fatal symptoms.

The notion so overwhelmed her that she has spent the last few years trying to make sense of it. The result is a book, Beyond Goodbye, in which Annie explores the notion of synchronicity in death — that we can, sometimes, connect with a loved one in extraordinary ways that are not easily explained by science.

As she puts it: ‘I found there are thousands of reports of people halfway around the world from their loved ones who sensed something at the time they passed on. It can be as simple as a feeling of dread, seeing a fleeting image or just an absolute knowledge that a particular person has died.

‘At the more extreme end of the spectrum, it can be a physical experience. But people just didn’t feel they could talk about it.’ That’s hardly surprising: plenty of people remain sceptical about the notion of any near-death phenomena.

Until seven years ago, in fact, Annie, now 51, was one of them. ‘I was the last person to believe in this stuff,’ she says. ‘I thought when you died you died, there was nothing fancy about it. I was agnostic, a sceptic — all those things.

Raised in Oregon in the U.S. as one of seven children, she moved to Britain 13 years ago and settled in Canterbury, Kent, after meeting her husband Matthew, a cider producer. Despite the physical distance between them, however, she remained incredibly close to her mother, Betty.

‘I was the last child left at home with Mum, and when my mother and father divorced I also lived with her for a couple of years as an adult. We were more like close friends.’ Her mother, she says, remained in reasonably good health until, aged 78, she became ill  very suddenly.

‘She fell ill on Boxing Day 2004. No one thought it was serious until tests showed that all her major organs were shutting down,’ Annie recalls. ‘I desperately wanted to fly home but by the time I realised how serious it was, I couldn’t get a flight — because of the time of year everything was fully booked. All I could do was sit and wait for the news.’

Yet instead of a telephone call from a family member, she now firmly believes she received a spiritual message from her mother in the form of those acute physical symptoms.

‘My mother died on January 2, but at first I didn’t really compute what had happened as I was dealing with the most horrendous grief. I was distraught, and cried constantly. At the same time, I was just grateful I’d had a chance to say goodbye,’ she says.

‘As time went on, I did try to talk about what had happened with my siblings but it was difficult. I encountered a lot of resistance. Most of them seemed sceptical.’

As she tried to make sense of what had happened, Annie was also battling other sensations. ‘I had this extraordinarily profound conviction that my mum was back with me,’ she says. ‘In the darkest moments of my grief, I had very distinct sensations of her stroking my hair to comfort me, just as she used to do when I was a child.’

There were other peculiarities, too.

‘I started to find hair pins, of the kind my mother used to wear, dotted around the house. They would be in random places — by the coffee-maker, on the sofa. My husband noticed them, too. I had very short hair and didn’t use anything like that, so it was hugely odd.’ Annie continues: ‘My mother was a smoker and I woke up in the morning to the smell of cigarettes even though our house was totally smoke-free.

‘It took me a long time to admit these things were happening, although it helped that I wasn’t alone. My husband is a very rational man, with a science degree, but he was there when a lot of these things happened.’

Intrigued, Annie started to research her experiences, discovering that they had much in common with people who had undergone near-death experiences.

‘Those people often end up with heightened sensation, a sort of sixth sense if you like, which is how I felt. I was taken aback, but it was also a relief to find I wasn’t alone, that what I’d felt was normal.’

Nor is Annie alone in believing she experienced a moment of extraordinary empathy with a dying relative despite being separated by a vast physical distance. Astonishing though it may sound, an increasing number of people believe they were physically connected with their loved ones as they passed away, while others speak of experiencing visions of a world beyond while gathered at the bedside of a loved one as they take their last breath.

Women like Hannah Evans, a 41-year-old teacher from Newcastle upon Tyne, who believes she ‘shared’ in the death of her father, Eric, when he died from lung cancer two years ago.

‘Dad and I were very close and I was devastated when he diagnosed with cancer,’ she says. ‘He was given a year to live and for the last few days he was hospitalised. I was an only child and Mum had died several years earlier, so our relationship was quite intense. I barely left his side.’

As her father’s condition worsened, nurses told Hannah to prepare for the end. ‘I knew he didn’t have long. He was drifting in and out of consciousness and I don’t think he even knew I was there,’ she recalls. Yet what happened next was utterly unexpected.

‘I felt like I was having my own out-of-body experience. I felt like I was watching everything from above, my dad’s body, the nurses. And I could see myself, too. And in the distance I saw light and my mum smiling.’

Hannah has no idea how long it lasted, but the next thing she can remember, the trance was over. ‘I felt myself pulled back, as it were, and I was just in my chair, with the nurses saying: “I’m sorry, he’s gone.”

‘It was an extraordinary feeling, and one that, at the time, I had no real comprehension of.’ Of course, what Hannah experienced can be dismissed as the grief-stricken hallucinations of a tired and emotional daughter. Yet Hannah says she cannot shake off her conviction that she accompanied her father on his first steps of his journey to the afterlife, undergoing an altered state of consciousness which coincided with her father’s dying breaths.

‘I was never one for believing anything like that, but this has changed me,’ she says. ‘I had never heard of shared death experiences. I only know how I felt and what I saw.’

Nonetheless, her conviction is not enough to convince the cynics. Large parts of the scientific community tend to dismiss near-death experiences as simply hallucinations caused by anoxia — or lack of oxygen to the brain. Shared death experiences, they reason, are the product of coincidence, or hallucination, viewed afterwards through the understandable human desire to connect with a loved one as they pass away.

Not so, says Dr Peter Fenwick, an eminent neuropsychiatrist who has spent many years studying near-death experiences and shared death experiences. He has become increasingly convinced they are a result of a ‘loosening of consciousness’ that occurs around the death process.

‘In effect, this means the mind of the dying person is then no longer bound by any constraints of time and space, which seem to limit us while we’re in physical form,’ he explains. ‘This can then encompass someone with whom the dying person is closely connected.’

Nor is Dr Fenwick alone among the medical community in believing the received view on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers and psychologists is too narrow for a proper understanding of what happens as people approach death.
Dr Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, also believes the way we view consciousness needs to change.

He has spent years studying near-death phenomena, sparked by the realisation that a sizeable portion of patients who had suffered cardiac arrest reported the same sensations and phenomena at a time when they had been pronounced brain dead, and says he has moved from a position of scepticism to acceptance.

‘What I’ve witnessed and the data I have gathered have convinced me the hypothesis that consciousness is a by-product of brain-function has to be discussed again,’ he says. ‘It’s hard for people to accept because it goes against the basic principles you learn in medical school, which holds that consciousness is only there when the body is functioning.

‘Now I am convinced it is not true, that it can exist separately. Moreover, I believe in an altered state of consciousness where there is no time and space in the way that we understand it.’

This, he says, goes some way to explaining shared death experiences in which people undergo vivid and sometimes terrifying dreams in which their loved ones appear to them to ‘tell’ them they have passed away — only to wake and find the prophecy has come true.

Robert Lennox, 46, from Gloucestershire, remains convinced that his wife Sharon appeared to him in a dream at the exact moment she was killed in a road accident on the A1 five years ago. An engineer, Robert was in California on business when he underwent what he is convinced is a shared death experience.
‘I had the most terrifying nightmare, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Sharon was standing by a roadside just saying over and over: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

‘I woke with the certain knowledge she was gone. When I turned on my phone, I had several messages to call home and found she had been killed instantly when a lorry had collided with her car at lunchtime.’

Robert says he shared what had taken place with only his closest friends, aware of the cynicism that surrounds such proclamations. ‘A lot of them have said it was clearly coincidence. One friend said it was a product of misplaced guilt that I wasn’t with Sharon when she died in clearly horrible circumstances. But it doesn’t explain the conviction I felt. I feel convinced Sharon did speak to me that night.’ For Dr Fenwick, the scepticism is understandable.

‘These instances are outside one’s normal experience, and that frightens people,’ he says. ‘For some people, even discussing them feels like we are harking back to an era of shamen, even though increasingly the bright light of science is a very good way of examining this phenomenon.’

Meanwhile, Dr Penny Sartori, who was prompted to investigate near-death and shared death experiences after nearly 20 years as an intensive-care nurse, also believes many people have experienced empathic death moments with a loved one but have chosen to suppress them.

‘One problem is we haven’t really got the language for these shared experiences,’ she says. ‘Some people call it synchronicity, some call it energy resonance, some call it linkage. However you chose to label it, I believe it’s not uncommon, it’s just that people tend not to talk about it for fear of being ridiculed.’

For Annie, however,  the experience has proved life-changing. ‘I have encountered scepticism about what I went through but I also know how it felt, and what it has meant for me.

‘It enabled me to feel my mother’s presence in my life long after she’d gone, and it has also made me unafraid of death. That’s a wonderful thing.’

Source: Daily Mail (UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2074247/Can-sixth-sense-tell-loved-died-miles-away.html

- THE SKY IS FALLING DEPARTMENT -

Apples Fall from the Sky over Coventry

An avalanche of more than 100 apples rained down over a main road in Keresley, Coventry on Monday night, December 12.

Keresley is a village in the City of Coventry, West Midlands, England, located about 95 miles northwest of central London.

The street was left littered with apples after they pelted car windscreens and bonnets just after rush-hour.

The bizarre downpour may have been caused by a current of air that lifted the fruit from a garden or orchard, releasing it over the junction of Keresley Road and Kelmscote Road.

One driver said: "The apples fell out of the sky as if out of nowhere. They were small and green and hit the bonnet hard.

"There were other cars on the road at the time too and everyone had to stop their cars suddenly.

"It wouldn't surprise me if some cars were damaged. I know the area well and there are no apple trees around."

Several days after the event, the smashed apples could still be seen up and down the 20-yard stretch of road.

Dave Meakins, a retired fork lift truck driver, said he thought the apples had been thrown as a prank by children.

"I honestly don't know where the apples could have come from," he said.

"I assumed kids must have thrown them because we do get the occasional egg and apple thrown but there's way too much for that.

"I would love to know where they came from."

Some said they thought the apples had fallen from a passing plane.

Keresley parish councillor Sandra Camwell said a freak black-out happened on the same road last year.

She said: "Strange things do happen in this part of the world. I think it's highly likely that apples did fall from the sky.

"We're in an area with a spooky history, where there have been witches for centuries, after all."

The Met Office said it was possible the apples had been scooped up by a tornado. No explanation was offered on why the storm was able to pick and choose apples while leaving leaves, sticks and other debris behind.

He said: "It's hypothetically possible that a tornado could have picked them up and that they were transported in turbulent air until they fell."

Jim Dale, senior meteorologist, from British Weather Services, said: "The weather we have at the moment is very volatile and we probably have more to come.

"Essentially these events are caused when a vortex of air, kind of like a mini tornado, lifts things off the ground rising up into the atmosphere until the air around it causes them to fall to earth again.

"Returning polar maritime air is such an unstable condition and it basically means air returning from the polar regions which is very unstable.

"We've all heard of the fish and frogs falling from the sky and apples is certainly unusual because they have some weight to them but it is not out of the realms of possibility."

The weird rain of apples is just the latest in a series of bizarre examples of things falling from the sky.

Residents, officials and scientists were left baffled in June 2009 by an apparent downfall of dead tadpoles in central Japan's Ishikawa prefecture.

Clouds of the creatures appeared to have fallen from the sky in a series of episodes in a number of cities in the region.

One 55-year-old man who heard a strange sound in a car park in the city of Nanao found more than 100 dead tadpoles covering the windscreens of cars in a ten-square metre area.

In March, 2010, residents of a remote Australian town 326 miles from the nearest river witnessed two days of fish raining from the sky.

Many of the hundreds of spangled perch were still alive when they fell to the ground in Lajamanu, in the country's Northern Territory.

Weather experts believe the fish were sucked up in a thunderstorm before being dumped over the small town, with a population of less than 700.

n August 2000, a storm of sprats rained down on Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the BBC reported.

Experts explained that the two-inch fish were probably scooped up from the sea during a powerful updraft created by a mini-tornado, before being carried along in storm clouds and dumped when rains fell.

A Met Office spokesman said it was quite common for cloud bursts to open and release a hail of fish or frogs.

Source: The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8956076/Apples-fall-from-the-sky-over-Coventry.html

- YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS DEPARTMENT -

Sightings of Santa Claus

Perhaps this is a ridiculous question, but: Does Santa Claus really exist? Some would say that the question is silly because of course Santa Claus is a myth. Others would say the question is ridiculous because of course he is real! How can we doubt it?

Over the years, many children and adults have reported sightings of the real Santa Claus - not department store Santas or bell-ringing Salvation Army charity collectors, but the real thing. They even claim seeing the sleigh and reindeer in some cases. Are these illusions seen through the eyes of Christmas excitement and expectation? Or are these cases of genuine Christmas magic?

BRISTOL, ENGLAND - 2000

I am 14 now, but this happened back in 2000 in my old house in Bristol, England. I was with my mum and dad and my sister. It was about midnight [on Christmas Eve] and I was the only one awake because I was really excited. I could hear these big footsteps in my living room. I was quite scared, and I could also hear bells tingling above me. So I wanted to see what was going on.

I walked down the stairs very slowly and I could see this big man putting presents around my living room. I wanted to say something, but I was too scared to do it because I thought he would be angry. I ran back upstairs and went back to sleep. I was so convinced I saw the real Santa and told everyone in the morning... but no one believed me. - Alex H.

NEW YORK CITY, NY - 2002, 2004 and 2007

It was Christmas Eve of 2002 in New York City. We invited some friends and relatives over for dinner, sort of like a Christmas Eve celebration. After that, I decided to go to my room to watch some television, but there was nothing good to watch. I then found myself pacing back and forth in the hallway. My house is big, so there was no one with me. Everyone was in the living room watching a movie I wasn't interested in.

About seven minutes into my pacing, I saw a tall, fat figure scurry away about 20 feet away from me. It was crouched down, too. It was even wearing some sort of Santa Claus suit. I didn't believe in Santa, but this just freaked me out. There was a strange man in my house!

I quickly ran to where my parents were and told them all about it. They grinned at me and said jokingly, "Maybe it was Santa Claus." I didn't believe that, so I just sat down in the living room with my family and everybody else.

Then it occurred again on Christmas Eve, 2004. I remember it more vividly than the last one. I was lying on the couch in the living room. My parents were in the kitchen having a conversation about a business blog or something. Suddenly, I saw a huge man, about seven or eight feet tall, crawl underneath the tree and just vanish. Before it disappeared, it looked at me and said, "Shh." Very strange, so I went into the kitchen and sat with my parents.

Smaller happenings occurred the following Christmases. I recall one in 2007, it was daylight this time and I just happened to see another tall figure with a Santa hat trudge by me for two seconds, then it was gone. This really happened. - Claxton Kalmbach

WHITE SANTA - 1969

I had an experience when I was three years old and still young enough to wear footed pajamas. The year was maybe 1969, Christmas Eve. I wanted to see what Santa had brought me, so I quietly walked down the hallway and looked around the corner to our living room. I saw my parents and someone I didn't know around our Christmas tree. The stranger was an old guy with a white beard and hair with a red suit. I quickly went back to my room as fast as I could with footed pajamas and slid into bed.

I told my mom what happened many years later and she insisted that I was dreaming or that it was my dad. That wasn't possible because my dad was sitting in a chair behind the stranger and my mom was standing right next to my dad! I'm African American, and during that time the tenants in our building were all African American, so Santa stood out! - Joanne

NEIGHBORHOOD - 1973

One Christmas Eve about 35 years ago, while I was in my teens, I was in a car with my parents, returning home very late at night. We were talking the whole way about Santa Claus and how great it would be if he really did exist. As we pulled in the driveway of our house - there he was, tiptoeing in the snow in-between two houses across the street! We all laughed when we saw this and remembered the incident for many Christmases thereafter. P.S.: No robberies were reported. - Del

BRIGHT LIGHT - 2003

I am 13, now but I saw something when I was seven. It was dark, night time around midnight [on Christmas Eve]. I was in bed, but I wasn't asleep (who could be?). All of a sudden, I saw a red light beaming down into my window. It was so bright, and somehow I knew it was him.

I looked up in the sky, but all I could see was the bright light coming from a small object. I didn't hear a helicopter or anything, but I did hear the unique sound of bells and, of course, the sound of hooves tapping on the roof. These sounds lasted for a few seconds after the light had disappeared, then they were gone. - Jade

SAN ANTONIO

I was about 7 and I was looking outside my second-story window, just waiting to see him. I saw something approaching in the distance: it was a huge sleigh and it was flying right over my house! I don't remember seeing any reindeer, but I did see a man dressed in red with a beard. I was so startled, but I kept looking, even sticking my head and half my body outside of the window!

I told my family, but I knew they really didn't believe me. I swear on my life to this day I saw something. I don't know if it was really Santa Claus, but I did see what I described! - Drew

SCOTLAND - 1978

An old friend came to see me a couple of weeks ago. We lost touch years ago, but he managed to trace me and he brought me a Christmas card. After a few minutes, I asked him if he remembered the Christmas Eve about 30 years ago when we were outside our houses. We grew up next to each other.

It must have been around 7.30 p.m., a clear night, when we suddenly heard a bell or bells in the distance getting closer real fast. As we both looked up, there was the reindeer, the sleigh and Santa flying very fast and low over my house. It was brief, but we both ran to tell our families. Of course, everyone laughed, but I tell you it was real!

So when my friend turned up I asked him if he remembered, and he said of course he did... but he didn't like telling people about it now. You can imagine why! - Jimmy

UP ON THE ROOF - 2006

Three Christmases ago, I was coming home from my aunt's, where we have a party. I was crying because one of my cousins told me that Santa wasn't real. Then we came around the corner of my street and there it was - a big red sleigh and reindeer sitting on my roof! And then Santa popped out of my chimney!

I told everyone the next morning to see if they could remember, but they couldn't. But a couple of days ago, my dad went up to the roof to fix the leak... and there were long, straight lines going across the roof. I took a picture and showed it to my baby cousins and told them always believe. - Anonymous

AUSTRALIA

This happened long ago when I was about ten years old. Our house was in the suburbs. I swear that on one Christmas Eve, I was sleeping in my room when I heard my backyard door open, then close, and then a minute later it opened and closed again another three times each, about a minute apart. I thought it must have been my parents bringing in our presents from our garage, although, I don't recall seeing them go past my bedroom to their room. I was hiding under the covers at the time.

On another Christmas Eve, I tried to sneak down to the living room to try and catch Santa, but I chickened out and left. As I was walking back to my bedroom, I passed our front door and the light came on from outside, and I thought I could see the shadow of someone outside. Of course, now that I think about it, it could have just been a passerby or a cat or something. Or maybe - just maybe - it could have been Santa. - Nick

EERIE SANTA

I was five years old, and I was in my room when I heard shuffling in the living room. I got up and peered around the doorway, where I saw a man in a Santa suit standing in front of the Christmas tree. He must have felt my presence because he turned around and looked at me. He didn't look jolly or kind and happy like you would expect Santa Claus to look. He looked kind of eerie, like he was staring into my soul.

Automatically, I ran into my parents' room and hid under the covers. I don't know why I was so scared at the time, but I wrote it off as a dream for a while before I forgot about it completely.

Years later, I remembered it. I thought it could have been a burglar, but when I asked my parents, nothing was ever missing from that apartment. The only time we were ever robbed was when we moved later on. The only explanation I have now is that it was some kind of apparition. - Ana

MEMPHIS, TENN. - 1980s and 2009

I grew up in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1980s, I was 8 or 9 years old. My parents and I were coming home from a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. When we pulled up in the driveway, we saw Santa Claus in a sleigh hovering above our house. All we could hear were sleigh bells. The sleigh was illuminated so that we could see Santa (in full outfit) in the sleigh. I remember seeing reindeer, but I don't know how many there were. Santa waved at us and flew off in the sleigh.

I'll never forget it, and I'll never forget my dad's face of total shock. He was an air traffic controller and when he went back to work after the holidays he asked about it and nothing came up.

In another bizarre twist, on Black Friday in 2009, I was waiting in line at a local Target store and broke out into conversation with another lady in line. We were talking about Christmas shopping, and all of a sudden out of nowhere she mentioned that her brother had seen Santa Claus in his sleigh two years before. I stood with my mouth wide open because I couldn't believe it. Every Christmas Eve I still think about him and look outside to try to get a glimpse. - Mrs. Wages

QUIET SANTA

I was probably around 8 years old when on Christmas Eve around 12 a.m., I had been lying awake in bed for about 30 minutes. I was extremely excited, thinking about the morning and opening presents. Anyway, I start to hear these very faint footsteps approaching. Slowly, a man in boots, carrying a sack looked into my room, my parents' room and then my brother's room. I'm absolutely 100% positive I was awake, too. I could see him fairly well because we had a nightlight on across the hall in our bathroom. I remember hiding my entire face under the covers with a small portion for my eyes to see. He then walked away quietly and he was gone.

Of course I told my parents and brother in the morning about my sighting and, of course, they thought I was crazy. To this day (I'm 28 now), I ask my parents if they had anything to do with this, and they still deny it and say I was dreaming. I strongly believe I saw a spirit or some kind of entity of Santa. - Richard

Source: paranormal.about.com
http://paranormal.about.com/od/othermiracles/a/Santa-Claus-Sightings.htm

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