These days, it seems reports of so-called “mystery booms” are an ever-present source of oddity and intrigue in the news.

With the recent landing of the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B mini-shuttle in Florida, part of the intrigue had been the sonic boom created as the aircraft broke the sound barrier upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, as it returned from its two years in orbit. While the cause of this boom is certainly no mystery, the specific mission of the X-37B, an unmanned ‘space plane’, is not public knowledge.

Elsewhere, there are booms occurring that can’t be tied to such things as aircraft, leading to a lot of speculation as to what their cause may be.

In Randolph county, New Jersey, residents have been kept awake by loud booms of mysterious origin, which some believe could be the work of explosives being set off outside of local noise ordinances.

The Randolph Reporter discussed the incidents earlier this month, noting that the booms appear to be increasing:

    "Once only heard occasionally, the noise is now occurring several times a week, and at random times from early evening to after midnight.

    "But whether it’s coming from a residence or on public property behind her residence, however, is hard to tell, she said… Swenson said the noise at times “sounds like gunfire. Sometimes, it’s a louder ‘boom.’”

    "She added a neighbor’s child was “afraid we’re going to war,” while another neighbor, a military veteran, could be traumatized by it.

    "Swenson said she spoke with police, but they can do nothing about it unless the culprits are caught in action."

In a history of recent mystery boom reports featured at my Mystery Booms website (dedicated to understanding the scientific causes underlying these “mystery” booms, and the varieties of conditions that can cause them), we see that unusual booms have been occurring in and around New Jersey for decades:

    "In late October 2014, media outlets in the northeast reported that residents in the community of Lower Township, New Jersey, had experienced what they believed to be a small earthquake. In some reports, the shaking had been accompanied by a loud “boom”, although the U.S. Geological Survey indicated that no earthquakes had been registered in the region at that time. Some believed that sonic booms caused by Navy aircraft drills might account for the noises, and though a Navy exercise had in fact been underway around that time, it preceded reports of booms and shaking by several days.

    "Only a few months earlier, similar reports of “mystery booms” in the northeast had appeared to correlate with seismic activity. In June 2014, the USGS had designated a small quake in the Hudson Highlands area near Garrison, in Putnam County, New York, as a category 5 earthquake. Loud booms were reported in conjunction with this incident, and despite the noticeable tremors, the location of the quake did not coincide with any nearby fault lines such as the Ramapo Fault, according to seismologist Leonardo Seeber with the nearby Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. It is worth noting that numerous other reports of “booms” and possible related phenomena exist for this region, including reports dating as far back as 1996."

Nearby, even older stories of the famous “Seneca Guns” go back for centuries, stemming from New York and the surrounding region (more on the Seneca Guns and other long-term regional “booming” phenomena can be read about here).

As for the causes of unusual loud “booms” such as those being reported in New Jersey, it may be that there are natural reasons for the sounds, rather than anyone setting off explosives.

“Superbolts,” a variety of lightning often accompanying upper atmospheric storms, have been known to be associated with loud booms, even in some instances where no visible storm activity had been occurring. Another natural cause underlying some boom reports involves “frost quakes,” also known by their scientific name, cryoseisms. Yet another natural cause (albeit a strange one) which might explain at least some reports of loud booms occurring at night involves what is called “Exploding Head Syndrome”, although this can easily be discounted in cases where several members of a community report the unexplained sounds. Finally, sonic booms from aircraft can also be associated with some boom reports.

New Jersey hasn't been the only area that has experienced unexplained booms.  Residents of Charleston, South Carolina and the surrounding towns of North Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and West Ashley were all startled by an unexplained booming noise which shook windows and doors. The noise was reported on the morning of Friday, May 5th just after 8:30 a.m. While reports of the boom came in from all throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry, experts and law enforcement officials currently disagree about what the source of the sound might have been.

Minor earthquakes or other seismic activity were speculated to be the cause of the boom, but geophysicists reported little seismic activity in the area at the time. There are also armed forces bases nearby, and aircraft exercises were cited as the likely cause of a similar boom last year. However, military officials in the area claim that they weren’t behind the noise.

According to the United States Geological Survey, similar noises have been reported throughout the Charleston area dating back as far as 1886.

These mysterious booms have been heard for centuries throughout America’s east coast, and are sometimes referred to as “Seneca Guns” based on a historical description by author James Fenimore Cooper. These booms were heard long before the advent of supersonic aircraft or naval artillery and are even sometimes heard near inland bodies of water. Their source currently remains a mystery.

In recent weeks, similar booms have also been reported in San Diego Country California, another region with a long history of boom reports.

It is believed that atmospheric refractions, in addition to the possibility that certain USAF training exercises involving supersonic aircraft, may have been linked to several of these Western reports over the years.

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/05/mysterious-explosions-in-new-jersey
-have-an-older-stranger-history/

---

We all know that dogs are man’s best friends, but could they also be our best UFO witnesses? With their vastly superior sense of hearing, smell, and ability to see in low light, perhaps every field investigator and researcher should consider getting a canine companion!

Over the years of collecting accounts of UFO activity from the tri-state region of the Hudson Valley of New York, northern New Jersey, and western Connecticut, I have heard numerous eyewitness accounts of how dogs alerted their owners or neighbors to a UFO. Generally, the dogs’ reactions are those of fear, accompanied by barking or howling. Such cases are frequent enough that NICAP has a separate classification (Category 4) for “Animal Effect Cases,” and MUFON had a Special Publication in 2005 entitled “Animal Reactions to UFOs.”

One of my favorite NICAP case involves “Thunder,” the 175-pound Great Dane who “went crazy” barking by the sliding doors toward the woods of his Sandy Hook, CT home at 8:30 pm on the night of March 31, 1983. After several minutes of incessant barking, his owner went to see what was causing Thunder so much distress. There was a massive V-shaped craft which remained hovering in the sky for 20 minutes. Thunder “appeared fearful and barked” the entire time, and the next day he refused to go outside. Anything that would provoke such fright in a 175-pound dog would certainly be enough to make me think twice about going outside!

I recently interviewed a woman from Cresskill, New Jersey who had a German Shepherd named Hans, who had a similar reaction back in 1968. Hans was just two years old; strong, and very protective of his owner. While walking Hans near a schoolyard, the woman and her friend spotted a dumbbell-shaped craft hovering silently over the school field. They were mesmerized by the sight, but their “trance was broken” by Hans, who was “cowering, trying to dig a hole in the dirt on the side of Rose Street (which was unpaved at that time) and whimpering.” This fearful reaction by the usually fearless dog caused them all to run for home.

Another dramatic case involved a golden retriever in Putnam Valley, NY in the fall of 1984. The witness, “Joe,” told me that one night his dog began to whine, so Joe assumed he wanted to go out. However, when he opened the back door, the dog began to tremble and whine even more. Joe finally got the dog outside, where he promptly curled up into a tight ball and whined in terror. It was then that Joe noticed the entire sky above him was blacked out.

A massive black triangle, “the size of two football fields,” was hovering no more than 250 feet above him. Yelling for his wife, she came out and was also stunned and frightened by what she saw. The craft “just sat there” over them for at least five minutes. A week later, strange figures began appearing by Joe’s bed at night, he developed uncontrollable nose bleeds, and this activity continued until the following summer when he finally decided to move out of his house. Perhaps Joe should have paid more attention to his dog!

Another case I just covered in my new book “More Hudson Valley UFOs” involved four witnesses on a hot, summer night in 1988. The four friends were by Lake DeForest in Congers, NY—a location I have written about on several occasions, and where I had my own intense experience. The dogs in the neighborhood “began howling crazily” and then an odd “snake-like” UFO appeared in the sky with alternating red and green lights composing the “body,” with a bright, white beacon at the “head.”

Throughout the sighting, the “Dogs were barking and howling and making a total racket,” one witness told me. Another witness described the incredible sounds as “The dogs of Rockland (County) going out of their skulls.” As dogs are capable of hearing at distances four times greater than humans, and can hear at much higher frequencies, can we conclude that these craft—which are often silent to us—are emitting sounds that are alerting our dogs to their presence long before they come into our view? Should investigators consider utilizing sound detectors in the roughly 20,000 to 60,000Hz range to replicate the superior capabilities that dogs have over us?

There were other cases of dog reactions with which I have dealt that may bear this sound theory out. During a cold winter’s night in 1985 in the town of Wallkill, NY, a man told me his dog “was barking frantically outside.” He tried several times to quiet the dog, to no avail. Then a 40-foot diameter sphere of multi-colored lights appeared over a field across the street. This bizarre craft, which looked like a “massive ball of Christmas lights” began rotating and moving, almost as if it was rolling down the field, only it definitely remained above the ground. After this craft “shot straight up into the air” and was gone, an enormous triangular craft passed directly over his house. How did the dog know these craft were in the area before they could be seen, and why was he so frightened by them?

More recently, on January 4, 2013, a man in Pine Bush, NY, who works in law enforcement, couldn’t get his dogs to stop barking out in the yard. As he was trying to calm them down, he realized “There was something huge in the sky that blocked out all the stars.” The object was an incredibly large, silent rectangle at an altitude of about 200-250 feet. There were several white lights along the edges, one in the center, and one red light, as well.

Finally, there is the remarkable case from Monroe, NY in 1982. A woman, Donna, was in bed with her husband when her two Samoyed dogs “started going crazy” as if there were intruders in the house. Donna tried to wake up her husband, but he somehow remained in a deep sleep despite all the barking.

“Then there were these bright lights shining in the bedroom window, as if a Mack truck had just pulled up.” The next thing Donna knew was that it was morning. Her skeptical husband didn’t believe a word of what she told him about the dogs and the lights, and her being unable to awaken him—until he went outside to look for any signs that something had been there.

Running back in the house, white as a sheet, he told Donna that the huge pile of sand that was in the driveway (which was going to be used for a construction project) was completely gone. All that was left was a few concentric circles of sand which had been compressed and fused into the blacktop! Fortunately, they had the presence of mind to take photographs, so we can estimate the size of the outermost circle, which was about 12 feet in diameter. And while the original circles have been paved over, Donna told me that I would be welcome to uncover and study them, if I can find the appropriate scientific team to do it.

So what are we to learn from “man’s best friends” and their reactions to UFOs? They are able to sense a lot more than we are, and can sense whatever it is at greater distances and long before our eyes and ears can pick it up. Researchers and investigators should always include questions about witnesses’ pets, as well as inquire about the reactions of birds, livestock, wild animals such as deer, and insects.

There is more to UFO phenomena than we can probably imagine, but with the help of the faithful family dog, perhaps we can gain a little more insight and knowledge into the nature of the phenomena. And if your big, strong dog is terrified to go outside, maybe you should stay in the house, too!

From the editor: Author and occasional OpenMinds.tv contributor Linda Zimmerman was inspired to submit this entry after a recent story about a deer watching a UFO. For more about Linda, visit her website at: www.gotozim.com.

Source: Open Minds
http://www.openminds.tv/mans-best-ufo-witness/40130

---

Order using PayPal and we will extend a ten percent discount for anything ordered from Conspiracy Journal #47.

Email mrufo8@hotmail.com and tell Tim Beckley what it is you wish to order and he will send you back a PayPal invoice which you can pay immediately. Safe and secure and faster than waiting for us to get your order in the mail or charge it over the phone by credit card (which we can do by your leaving a message at 732 602-3407 - by dropping us a line at the same e mail).

Members of a Hindu far-right organization called Arogya Bharati say they are working with expectant couples in the country to produce “customized” babies, who, they hope, will be taller, fairer and smarter than other babies, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper.

The group's health officials claimed that their program — a combination of diet, ayurvedic medicine and other practices — has led to 450 of these babies, and they hope to have “thousands” more by 2020, the report said.

“The parents may have lower IQ, with a poor educational background, but their baby can be extremely bright. If the proper procedure is followed, babies of dark-skinned parents with lesser height can have fair complexion and grow taller,” Hitesh Jani, the group's national convener, told the newspaper.

Jani explained that the program consists of a “purification of energy channels” and body before a pregnancy, and mantra-chanting and “proper food,” such as meals rich in calcium and vitamin A, after the baby is born.

The newspaper identified the group as the “health wing” of the conservative Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, but Ramesh Gautam, Arogya Bharati's national general secretary, said the group was merely “inspired” by the conservative ideology of the RSS rather than being officially supported by it. Arogya Bharati's website says it is a "voluntary organization of service minded people who have an interest in the health of society.”

On Saturday, the chairwoman for a state child rights commission tried to attend one of the workshops where couples are counseled on how to produce these “genius” babies — as the Economic Times termed it — but was barred by organizers, that newspaper said.

“This is an unscientific thing that’s happening here. It cannot continue,” Ananya Chatterjee, the chair of the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights, said. The group countered that her charges were “politically motivated.”

Responding to a petition from the commission, the West Bengal state high court later mandated that organizers present an affidavit and video of the proceedings, which went off as scheduled.

The program launched over a decade ago and has spread to several Indian states. Organizers said it was inspired by a RSS leader who met a woman in Germany more than 40 years ago. An official said the woman led a post World War II re-population effort in Germany for “signature children” based on the same principles, according to the Indian Express report.

This comment — and its evocation of the legacy of Third Reich era eugenics — prompted immediate backlash on social media, with one critic writing on the Daily O opinion website that this “dystopia in the womb” was “straight out of the Nazi playbook.”

The RSS was founded in 1925 as a volunteer organization to advance the rights of Hindus. Over the years, it has given rise to many of the country’s more successful conservative politicians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A few of its founders praised in essays and books the totalitarian movements of Nazism and fascism sweeping Europe at the time, scholars have noted.

“The original RSS stalwarts found a political validity in racial resurrection championed by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich,” Angshukanta Chakraborty, an opinion writer on the Daily O website, wrote, adding, “And even now, a racially pure search for homeland or creation of one along racially/communally pure lines appeals to the RSS and is the heart of its ideology.”

Source: The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/08/straight-out-of-the-
nazi-playbook-hindu-nationalists-try-to-engineer-genius-babies-in-india/?utm_term
=.98a418581022

A family claim a possessed blue-eyed doll wanders their house at night and scratches their children while they sleep.

The Nunez family say creepy blonde doll 'Sarita' is causing paranormal activities to occur and is awakening the spirit of a family member who killed herself years ago.

The family, who live in El Callao, Peru, said they see strange lights and hear weird noises in the house, and bizarre scratches appear on their kids.

The strange goings on started seven years ago, when the nephew of mum Ivonne gave her the blonde blue-eyed doll, dubbed the "Peruvian Anabelle".

Ivonne and her three children claim during the night they leave the doll in a corner of a room, but in the morning, she has moved to the table or can be found sitting on the furniture.

When pushed, they claim she makes a sound as if she is 'praying'.

One of the children, Steven, 18, said that he usually wakes up with bruises and scratches for unknown reasons.

His sister, Angie, 20, claims she often hears strange noises in the middle of the night, like knocking on the door or the wardrobe three times, but there is no one there.

"Every night I feel as though somebody is looking at me from the corner of the room", she said.

The family decided to ask a medium to investigate the case and contacted 'angel expert' Soralla de los Angeles, who visited their house.

She cleansed the home and dozens of strange lights like circles appeared there as she did so.

Soralla also walked around the house during the ritual and claimed to have detected the presence of a mysterious woman in one of the rooms.

According to Ivonne, she is her sister-in-law, who killed herself in that exact spot.

The angel expert also said that she felt an evil presence inside the doll that wants to hurt the family.

She did a cleansing ritual in order to protect the house and to make spirits leave and left seven candles in the living room.

Source: Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/possessed-blue-eyed-doll-
wanders-10406435