Welcome again to your number one source of conspiracies, UFOs, the paranormal, and everything else weird and strange. Is your local newspaper afraid to print the truth? Does your 6:00pm television news leave you bloated with nonsense?  Are website blogs filled with extremist, political baloney? Then Conspiracy Journal is the weekly conspiracy newsletter for you!

For the last several months, a variety of odd aerial phenomenon have been reported worldwide, specifically involving the reports of loud “crashing” sounds and explosions around various locales, in addition to occasional reports of unidentified objects cruising through the heavens and burning brightly as they go.

In the latter case, such anomalous events occurring in conjunction with one another may result in a few plausible theories. For one, the entry of meteorites known as fireballs, which are generally much larger than the typical pebble-sized stones that burn brightly (and only momentarily) as they fizzle into nothingness, sometimes are reported in conjunction with sonic booms, as they come scorching into Earth’s atmosphere.

Such was the case recently over parts of Texas and Oklahoma, where a number of reports of bright flashes in the sky had occurred, in conjunction with large, crashing explosions which appeared to emanate from the sky. While the meteorite theory has certainly been offered, there are other things being attributed to the cause of the ruckus… so which was it, or are we really dealing with a combination of both?

Writing of KMOV.com out of Saint Louis, Marjorie Owens tracked down an expert in meteorite behavior upon entry of Earth’s atmosphere, who shared the following insights:
   

    "According to Dr. James Roberts, a University of North Texas astronomer who talked to WBAP,  the mysterious object in the sky was likely a burned up meteor. A KHOU meteorologist in Houston said it may have been part of the Geminids meteor shower, which takes place in December. The meteorites often appear to be slow moving and are usually best seen at its peak on December 13 and 14."

Furthermore, it was said that the loud booming noises reported by some could simply have been the sounds of the meteorites breaking apart. Thus, the present explanation appears simple enough… that is, it was until the Lockheed Martin Company stepped up claiming that, quite the contrary, it had actually been their handiwork that some people in the Southwest had reported hearing:

 
    "A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin tells us the booms were caused by supersonic flight tests being conducted by the company. The flights were authorized by the FAA and are conducted in the corridor that runs from Dallas through Oklahoma."

Does the fact that one of the sources presented conflicts with another proposed solution here cause the mystery to deepen? Not in the least, if we take into consideration the fact that this almost always happens, especially when people find themselves grasping for prosaic solutions to any given set of unusual circumstances (think swamp gas, the light of Planet Venus, and illumination reflecting off the bellies of geese in flight… you get the picture). Indeed, whether or not there is a natural atmospheric solution to the mystery crash-and-flash show seen over the Southern USA recently, or one comprised of aircraft test-flights, there is often a division or contrast that begins to emerge when various experts from unrelated fields start offering their own explanations (especially when they conflict, like in this case). Hence, those whose minds may gravitate more toward conspiracies may be likely to look at the available evidence–and the argument that potentially arises between different perspectives on the matter–and simply reject the available notions outright. “Clearly, there is something more here!”

In truth, my gut tells me we’re not seeing much of anything anomalous here, let alone anything unusual. But the fact that officialdom can’t agree on what the underlying cause really is, regardless of the circumstances, does tend to give the impression that a lot more could be going on than probably really is. Thus, one might ask: how often do conflicting sets of data used to explain various prosaic phenomenon only aid in further muddying the waters?

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/12/the-muddy-waters-of-conflict-strange-flashes-and-crashes-illuminate-the-americas/

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Are aliens taking abductees to their underwater lairs to administer frightening physical examinations out of the way of prying eyes?

Is a “secret invasion” about to take place that is being kept veiled for the time being because the ETs – or whoever they are – have hidden themselves in our vast bodies of water?

There is now ample evidence that existing alongside the UFO phenomenon is an equally complex but less well known phenomenon with the acronym USO, which stands for Unidentified Submerged Object, or alternately, Unidentified Submarine Object. While they are seen much less frequently than the aboveground UFOs, they are nevertheless observed often enough to warrant extensive study as a related phenomenon.

In the book “UFO Abduction From Undersea,” published by Timothy Green Beckley through his publishing company Global Communications, I contributed some opening chapters on USOs to set the stage for a book coauthored by Miami UFO researcher Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo and the late Colonel (Ret) Wendelle Stevens about a fascinating USO case that took place in 1979.

“UFO Abduction From Undersea” begins, fittingly enough, with the attempt to define just what an USO is. In an interview I conducted for the book with world-renowned UFO researcher Stanton Friedman, he told me, “There have been a number of reports over the years of objects that do several things. Navy submarines have apparently seen things moving along much faster than they can underwater, without going in or coming out. Others have seen UFOs come down in the water and move around and then take off from the water. And there have been reports of things that just come bursting forth out of the water.”

Another story was told to me by Don Ledger, the coauthor of a book on the famous Shag Harbor incident. Ledger received training in the fields of marine navigational aids and radar. In the course of that training, he spoke to a man at a sonar shop at a naval base in Halifax, Canada.

“He was working as a repairman for the navy on sonar,” Ledger recalled. “I asked him, ‘Did you ever see anything unusual down there, like whales or something besides submarines?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah, every once in a while we’ll run across something that seems to be moving way too fast for a submarine.’ I said, ‘What do you mean by fast?’ And he said, ‘Well, one time we recorded one going about 150 miles an hour underwater. That’s impossible.’ So I said, was there something wrong with the equipment? And he said, no, the equipment all checked out.”

The sonar repairman also said it hadn’t been the first time such an object had been sighted and it would not be the last time, either. The repairman also said the USO had reached an incredible depth of two miles, which is also well in excess of the abilities of manmade submarines. It is amazing that they can handle the pressure without killing the occupants, especially when that fact is coupled with the extremes of speed these objects can reportedly attain. Perhaps, Ledger speculates, the objects are surrounded by an energy field that operates equally well both in the air and underwater.

“They’re probably in an envelope all their own,” Ledger said. “It doesn’t really matter how deep these things go. It probably doesn’t affect them whatsoever.”

I also spoke to Chris Styles, Don Ledger’s research partner and his coauthor for the book “Dark Object: The World’s Only Government-Documented UFO Crash,” published in 2001. The book deals with a sighting that took place in Shag Harbor, on the southern coast of Nova Scotia in Canada.

“On October 4, 1967,” Styles told me, “around 11:20 PM, several people called the nearby RCMP detachment and reported seeing simply lights. Some reported that an airplane had crashed into the ‘Sound,’ as they called it, Shag Harbor.”

When the police arrived, they found a pale yellow light floating on the water. The light began moving under its own power and left a heavy, dense trail of yellow foam on the water. When they saw the light sink beneath the surface, they commandeered a local boat and went out in the harbor to look for it, but found no physical evidence.

The search resumed at first light the next day, and ships were sent by the Canadian navy as well as seven divers. After five days, the search was called off, with nil results. No aircraft were ever reported missing, and it was generally believed that the object was the crash of a UFO. The government documents that declare the object to be a downed extraterrestrial craft are freely available in Canada, according to Styles.

Before it disappeared, the object was reported by several witnesses to be at least 60 feet across and to display flashing colored lights that repeated in the same sequence over and over. But Styles emphasized that it was not the public who called the object a UFO. The neighboring residents had only initially reported strange lights. It was the Canadian authorities themselves who referred to the incident as a “UFO search,” contrary to normal expectations surrounding such things.

When asked why the extraterrestrial occupants would operate underwater, Styles said, “I think water provides a perfect medium for hiding; it’s great for stealth. You’re out of sight and out of mind. I mean, off the coast of Nova Scotia, so many feet down, there’s not a whole lot of traffic there, right? I know some people have wondered, is there a base down there? These things are always fun to speculate about, but I’m more into getting the data. We’ll find something and then we’ll worry about the interpretation.”

For Stanton Friedman, it’s a matter of the USOs exploiting what’s down there of value.

“Besides just hiding from the guys above,” Friedman said, “there are a lot of resources at the bottom of the ocean. There are nodules of all kinds of metals, almost pure metals. There are loads of diamonds, for instance, off the coast of Africa, that are underwater. There are nodules of manganese and cobalt and other things at the bottom of the ocean, besides all kinds of strange sea creatures from which they may extract some very interesting biological or chemical things.”

Having established a little background on USOs, let us now examine a case of abduction from undersea.

Betty Andreasson Luca is a housewife, mother and grandmother, and is also one of the most important alien abductees ever to be investigated and documented. Researcher and author Raymond Fowler has written a series of books about Betty, which tell the continuing story of Betty’s mind-bending encounters with diminutive gray aliens she believes to be angelic servants of Jesus Christ.

In April 1980, Betty underwent yet another session of regressive hypnosis to retrieve the buried memories of some of what happened to her at the hands of the aliens. As the session began, she reported being abducted into an alien spacecraft, which may seem fairly routine at this point. But this time, she recalled the ship started hurtling toward a body of water. Under hypnosis, with the tape recorder rolling, she becomes terrified that the ship was about to “crash” into some water. Betty was so frightened that the hypnotist interrupted the session to allow her to calm down.

When the examination of this memory resumed a few days later, Betty recalls the craft entering the water and being wholly submerged beneath it. The ship proceeds to enter a cave or tunnel with walls of solid ice and icicles throughout. The underwater place is brightly-lit. Betty sees people, “people like me,” she says.

What Betty next reports is astounding. She is seeing what Fowler later called “The Museum of Time” – living people encased in the ice in what we call “tableaux” in earthly terms. Each museum person on display has his or her own scenery appropriate to their time, wearing the correct clothes, etc. The figures look neither dead nor stuffed, and include babies and children as well as many different races. Betty repeatedly calls the clothing “funny and old-fashioned.” There are too many cubicles for Betty to count.

When Fowler listened to a cassette of this particular regression session several days later, he found his mind “rebelling,” unable to believe what Betty had said. Yet how, he wondered, could Betty spontaneously and emotionally relive such detailed and intricate experiences unless they were true?

Fowler would later write, “A cold chill coursed through my body when Betty was describing people and animals enclosed in glassy cubicles in an icy cavern. Perhaps Betty was privy to the aliens’ Museum of Time!”

Does all this offer a clue as to what the USO occupants are really up to down there? In any case, they appear to be the same entities as the more familiar airborne UFOs, with the same proclivity for abducting their Chosen Ones and subjecting them to frightening confrontations with as yet unknown and perhaps ultimately incomprehensible alien truths. Do the aliens maintain a kind of museum of human history? Are they proudly and affectionately displaying specimens of their creation, humankind? Or is there a darker mockery at work here, a kind of contemptuous collecting of samples of a shamefully lower form of life?


The primary focus of the Global Communications book “UFO Abduction From Undersea” is the story of Filiberto Cardenas —THOUGH HE WAS NOT ALONE! Like Betty Andreasson Luca, he was abducted by a USO. Cardenas was also given many strange prophecies by his captors, prophecies which came electrifyingly true shortly thereafter.

It all began on the evening of January 3, 1979, when Cardenas was in his gift shop in Hialeah, Florida, and received a phone call from his friend, Fernando Marti. Marti asked Cardenas to accompany him to buy a pig from the local merchants to roast the next Sunday. Marti and his wife and daughter arrived at Cardenas’ place of business and they set out on their errand. After stopping at two different farms, they were still unable to find an acceptable ‘puerco” for their feast. As they continued their drive, they turned off onto a rural road that was in poor condition. At that point, the car began to lose power.

The two men examined the engine but were unable to see what the problem was. Then the engine began to reflect red and violet lights in sequence. At the same moment, they heard a strange noise, like a swarm of bees. Next the car began to shake, and Marti’s wife began to scream in panic, believing it was an earthquake. When Cardenas tried to approach her to calm her down, he became paralyzed, frozen under the hood of the car. Then the same force that had paralyzed him began to lift him and suspend him in the air. Cardenas began to shout, “Don’t take me! Don’t take me!” The noise and lights ceased and everything seemed to return to normal. Then Marti looked up and saw a UFO ascending into the sky. He shouted, “They have taken Filiberto!”

After several attempts, he was able to start the car. He felt compelled to tell the police, but feared he would not be believed, or worse, that he would be accused of having himself harmed Cardenas. He decided to inform the police anyway and also called Cardenas’ wife, saying, “A light took Filiberto away.”

Meanwhile, Cardenas awoke onboard the UFO, in a seat that seemed to hold him in place by some kind of suction and restrained all his movements. He saw three strange figures, one of whom placed a strange helmet on his head and spoke to him in a language he thought sounded like German. He was shown projected images, as on a television, of scenes from the past, present and future of humankind. He was then taken to a smaller ship that discharged from the mother-ship. He saw a beach approaching, and then the UFO plunged into the sea. Everything was obscured by the incredible velocity at which the ship moved.

The ship veered to the right and began to lose speed. Cardenas could now see a tunnel with walls that seemed illuminated as if they were phosphorescent. The ship entered the tunnel and then emerged in a place that was completely dry. The area was huge. He noticed two symbols, one of them being a serpent as large as “an electric light pole,” Cardenas later said. The other image was similar but smaller. His captors took him from the ship and told him to sit down on a large rock.

At this point, one must note the similarity to what happened to Betty Andreasson Luca. As with Luca, the UFO that transported Cardenas quickly plunged into the sea and emerged in a dry alien environment. While in Luca’s case the surroundings were icy, it is still remarkably similar to the large cave to which Cardenas was taken.


In the cavern area, Cardenas was welcomed by a human-looking figure who said he was from the Earth and had long worked with the UFO entities. He seemed to be saying that Cardenas was most fortunate to be receiving instructions from “beings like us.” After some further conversation, and a quick trip to what was apparently an undersea alien city, Cardenas was returned to a pasture near where he had been originally abducted. The aforementioned predictions Cardenas received from the aliens included everything from the future succession of the popes to the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan, the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City and the demonstration by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Cardenas, armed with the prophecies from the aliens, was also able to accurately predict the assassination in 1981 of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990.

All of these prophecies are included in this expanded edition of “UFO Abduction From Undersea,” written by Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo. Sanchez-Ocejo provides an impressive amount of data and documentation that tells the story of Filiberto Cardenas in exquisite detail, providing transcripts of the regressive hypnosis sessions in which Cardenas relived his bizarre experience and even medical documentation on the typical marks and scars left on Cardenas’ body in the aftermath of his excursion into the unknown.

The late Lieutenant Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens, the UFO researcher who published the original book, also contributes a preface that takes up the defense of the worthiness of the case in spite of the fact that local media at the time scoffed at the story and quickly ceased to cover it. In spite of that media scorn, there is still a wealth of supporting evidence, Stevens writes, that was completely overlooked at the time.

Serious UFO researchers may want to watch the witnesses tell their story and see the subsequent hypnosis session. This will give the reader a feel for the obvious sincerity of those involved. It is available in Spanish on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUghBO3dloU

One must once again applaud the continued effort by Timothy Green Beckley to republish classic UFO/flying saucer books, in newly expanded form, that have not only earned a place in history but should also be read by a new audience who will undoubtedly learn that, while there may be nothing new under the sun, there is still a great deal to learn from Ufology’s past. “UFO Abduction From Undersea” will enthrall the reader even as it terrifies, and who could ask for more than that?

Please visit Sean Casteel's website at: www.seancasteel.com

Source: UFO Review
http://www.ufodigest.com/article/bizarre-experimentations

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah.

Ballard's track record for finding the impossible is well known. In 1985, using a robotic submersible equipped with remote-controlled cameras, Ballard and his crew hunted down the world's most famous shipwreck, the Titanic.

Now Ballard is using even more advanced robotic technology to travel farther back in time. He is on a marine archeological mission that might support the story of Noah. He said some 12,000 years ago, much of the world was covered in ice.

 "Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube," he said. "But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history."

The water from the melting glaciers began to rush toward the world's oceans, Ballard said, causing floods all around the world.

"The questions is, was there a mother of all floods," Ballard said.

According to a controversial theory proposed by two Columbia University scientists, there really was one in the Black Sea region. They believe that the now-salty Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland, until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea. The force of the water was two hundred times that of Niagara Falls, sweeping away everything in its path.

Fascinated by the idea, Ballard and his team decided to investigate.

"We went in there to look for the flood," he said. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under."

Four hundred feet below the surface, they unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea. By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5,000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

"It probably was a bad day," Ballard said. "At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under."

The theory goes on to suggest that the story of this traumatic event, seared into the collective memory of the survivors, was passed down from generation to generation and eventually inspired the biblical account of Noah.

Noah is described in the Bible as a family man, a father of three, who is about to celebrate his 600th birthday.

 "In the early chapters of Genesis, people live 800 years, 700 years, 900 years," said Rabbi Burt Visotzky, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. "Those are mythic numbers, those are way too big. We don't quite know what to do with that. So sometimes those large numbers, I think, also serve to reinforce the mystery of the text."

Some of the details of the Noah story seem mythical, so many biblical scholars believe the story of Noah and the Ark was inspired by the legendary flood stories of nearby Mesopotamia, in particular "The Epic of Gilgamesh." These ancient narratives were already being passed down from one generation to the next, centuries before Noah appeared in the Bible.

"The earlier Mesopotamian stories are very similar where the gods are sending a flood to wipe out humans," said biblical archaeologist Eric Cline. "There's one man they choose to survive. He builds a boat and brings on animals and lands on a mountain and lives happily ever after? I would argue that it's the same story."

Catastrophic events of this kind are not unique to the Bible. Some contemporary examples include the 2004 tsunami that wiped out villages on the coasts of 11 countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There was also Hurricane Katrina, described as the worst hurricane in United States history.

Scholars aren't sure if the biblical flood was larger or smaller than these modern day disasters, but they do think the experiences of people in ancient times were similar to our own.

 "If you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you want a scientific explanation why this has happened," said Karen Armstrong, author of "A History of God." "But you also need to something that will help you to assuage your grief and anguish and rage. And it is here that myth helps us through that."

Regardless of whether the details of the Noah story are historically accurate, Armstrong believes this story and all the Biblical stories are telling us "about our predicament in the world now."

Back in the Black Sea, Ballard said he is aware that not everyone agrees with his conclusions about the time and size of the flood, but he's confident he's on the path to finding something from the biblical period.

"We started finding structures that looked like they were man-made structures," Ballard said. "That's where we are focusing our attention right now."

At first Ballard's team found piles of ancient pottery, but then they made an even more important discovery. Last year, Ballard discovered a vessel and one of its crew members in the Black Sea.

"That is a perfectly preserved ancient shipwreck in all its wood, looks like a lumber yard," he said. "But if you look closely, you will see the femur bone and actually a molar."

The shipwreck was in surprisingly good condition, preserved because the Black Sea has almost no oxygen in it, which slows down the process of decay, but it does not date back as far as the story of Noah.

"The oldest shipwreck that we have discovered so far of that area is around 500 BC, classical period," Ballard said. "But the question is you just keep searching. It's a matter of statistics."

Still, Ballard said the find gives him hope that he will discover something older "because there, in fact, the deep sea is the largest museum on Earth," he said.

Ballard does not think he will ever find Noah's Ark, but he does think he may find evidence of a people whose entire world was washed away about 7,000 years ago. He and his team said they plan to return to Turkey next summer.

"It's foolish to think you will ever find a ship," Ballard said, referring to the Ark. "But can you find people who were living? Can you find their villages that are underwater now? And the answer is yes."

Source: ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-
noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533#.UMs8znfld8F

For decades, the US Defense intelligence Agency has delved deep into the mysterious worlds of psychic phenomena, extra-sensory perception, and the paranormal powers of the human brain. But, the DIA has also focused on the mind-skills of other living creatures beyond just us, the Human Race. Dogs have been a particular favorite of the DIA, and even more so the many psychic hounds of the former Soviet Union.

It was 1975 when the strange canine caper kicked-off, and, unsurprisingly, it was initiated to try and secretly determine if studying the presumed supernatural skills of Soviet dogs might provide the US Government with some sort of military-based and espionage-themed advantage over the Russians.

In a report titled Telepathy in Animals the DIA began: “Soviet research on telepathy in animals in the 1920s and 1930s was devoted largely to proving that telepathy between man and animals did indeed exist. A good example of the early Soviet approach was research conducted by V.I.M. Bekhterev of Leningrad University. In collaboration with a circus performer, V.L. Bekhterev reported that trained dogs successfully solved arithmetic problems and identified or retrieved objects solely on the basis of their trainer’s mental suggestion.”    

The DIA was careful to note, however, that the test-results were, in at least some cases, apparently reliant upon the relevant circus performer being present at all times. In other words, when the handlers were not around, the dogs did not do quite so well as when they were present.

This did not, however, lead the DIA to think that outright fakery was at work. Rather, it simply inspired those working on the project to dig ever deeper and figure out why this should have been so.    

The DIA learned from its careful and secret study of Soviet research in this particular field that Bekheterev’s initial goal had been to prove – based upon his personal suspicions - that ESP between people and dogs resulted from “some form of electromagnetic radiation,” or EMR, as it is known.

And it was a theory that continued to be pursued for years by Soviet scientists, as the DIA noted in its report: “The EMR theory of information transfer is still unresolved by the Soviets, but is still the major basis underlying much of their research.”

Thirty years after Bekheterev was hard at work trying to crack the secrets of how successful mind-to-mind contact could be achieved between humans and dogs, Soviet research was still at full throttle. That same research was delving into near-uncharted and mysterious waters, too, as the DIA’s findings made amply clear:

“In 1962 B.S. Kazhinskiy advanced the theory that animals are capable of visual and aural perception and reflex understanding of the behavior of other animals or humans. He postulated that this ability resulted from the capacity of one animal to detect analyze, and synthesize signal-stimuli given off by another animal.”

Or, as Kazhinskiy preferred it himself: a “bioradiational sight ray.”  

If Kazhinskiy’s conclusions concerning both visual and aural perception were genuine, suggested the DIA, then the startling possibility could not be ruled out that not only dogs, but the entire animal kingdom of our planet, possessed psychic powers that were far in advance of anything the likes of which the average human could boast.

Then, bringing matters right up to 1975, the DIA recorded that a Soviet scientist, one A.S. Presman had concluded that so-called “electromagnetic signaling” was universal between animals, but not, unfortunately, amongst the Human Race, which, - Presman speculated – “may have lost the capability for such communication as a result of evolution and the development of verbal and artificial communication channels.”    

The DIA concluded that, by the mid-seventies, Russian studies of animal-based ESP were far in advance of just about anything and everything that had been afoot in previous decades. Noting that the terms “ESP and “telepathy” were, by then, rarely used by Soviet scientists, the DIA reported that the early research of the 1920s and 1930s had been replaced by “sophisticated research protocols which study complex interactions between man, animals and plants.”

And, with that above-statement in mind, it is worth considering one final point. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s report was written nearly forty-years ago and summed up what was known about such matters back then.

This surely begs an important question that may have a major bearing upon national security matters in the second decade of the 21st Century: what could the Russians be working on, today, of an amazing, animal-espionage nature that we don’t know about?

Source: Mania
http://www.mania.com/lair-beasts-creatures-psychic-kind_article_136049.html

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An archaeologist in Belize has sued the makers of the Indiana Jones movies, alleging that the latest and final film of the franchise made millions off an actual artifact he believes was stolen nearly a century ago.

Dr Jaime Awe, the director of the Institute of Archaeology of Belize, claims that the ancient object featured prominently in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a direct facsimile of an actual artifact.

Dr Awe is a noted professor of archaeology and an adventurer like the real Indiana Jones, famously played by Harrison Ford onscreen.

Despite the use of the skull's likeness, the nation of Belize - where Dr Awe claims the skull came from - was not given a cent of the film's profits, which totaled nearly $800million worldwide.

The lawsuit, filed in Chicago on December 5, states that Dr Awe is acting on behalf of Belize.

The Walt Disney Company and George Lucas' Lucasfilm are listed among the defendants in the suit.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of Awe's suit and its history. In the complaint he filed with the US District Court in Illinois, Awe explains the history of the so-called "Mitchell-Hedges Skull."

The Mitchell-Hedges Skull was allegedly discovered in 1924 by Anna Le Guillon Mitchell-Hedges, adopted daughter of the adventurer F.A. Mitchell-Hedges. The Mitchell-Hedges removed the skull from Belize in 1930, in violation of laws that were already in place forbidding the removal of artifacts and antiquities from Belize.

Awe claims that the Crystal Skull from the film bears a striking resemblance to the Mitchell-Hedges Skull and thus must have been based on its likeness. Awe goes on to allege that Lucasfilm never approached Belize for permission to use the skull's likeness, although Awe claims that "Belize has a right, title and interest in and to the Mitchell-Hedges Skull."

Awe is suing the Mitchell-Hedges estates as well as Bill Homann, the late Anna's husband and current custodian of the skull, for the return of the skull, and is suing Lucasfilm (and Disney as the parent company) and Paramount for tortious interference with prospective economic benefit and civil conspiracy.

Along with unspecified damages, Dr Awe demands that the skull be returned to Belize.

The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull is a life-size artifact made of quartz crystal. It is certainly one of history's most unusual and controversial objects — one whose beauty and mystery have captured the imaginations of both scholars and seers. The legends surrounding it are many, often overpowering the truth about it, and the lore is increasing with no signs of abating.

The original instigator of amazing claims for the crystalline wonder was F. A. "Mike" Mitchell-Hedges (1882-1959). Explorer, gambler, author, and soldier with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution, the adventuresome Mitchell-Hedges was quite a character.

The crystal skull was originally called the "Skull of Dunn" after an associate on one of the expeditions to Lubaantun (Belize). This is where Anna Mitchell-Hedges, Mitchell-Hedges adopted daughter, at the age of 16, claims to have found the crystal skull in the ruins of a Mayan pyramid.

The first time the Mitchell-Hedges Skull was mentioned in print was in July 1936, in an article in Man — A Monthly Record of Anthropological Science ("Published Under the Direction of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland") in which G. M. Morant and Adrian Digby of the British Museum compared the similar British Museum skull with the skull.

They were not able to deduce much, not even reliably which one was created first, or — if their creations were related — which one served as the model for the other. Even the British Museum skull's origin is shadowy — though it was supposed that it might have come from Mexico.

Anna Mitchell-Hedges kept the skull until her death in 2007.

It's currently in the care of her husband William Homann in Indiana, who continues to profit from the skull by allowing it to be put on public display at various exhibitions, the lawsuit claims.

Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245471/Real-life-Indiana-Jones-Jaime-
Awe-sues-Disney-Lucasfilm-Crystal-Skull.html

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