Paranormal Phenomenon Hot Spots

Flying "Rods" - Organic Creatures or UFOs?

Air rods, also called "flying rods" and "sky fish," are something like crop circles in that even the skeptics admit they exist. The only question is what they really are. Invisible to the eye, they are picked up by cameras all over the world. Are they living creatures, alien probes, or some sort of 3D electromagnetic smudge? To believers in the cryptozoology-based theory of air rods, air rods are probably living creatures, and they are possibly related to older stories of atmospheric beasts. To skeptics, air rods are bits of flying debris, insects or birds filmed under unusual conditions, or blips on film that are due to errors in film processing.

Air rods were discovered in the 1990s. People found that some films of all types, ranging from home videos to movies seen in theaters, had odd disturbances that looked something like blurry rods that were mostly transparent, occasionally whitish in color. Most of these disturbances were fast-moving and barely visible to the eye. These rods showed up best against large areas of the same color, such as the sky.

The people who examined films for anomalies of this sort started calling what they did "sky fishing" because they usually started by looking at the areas of sky that were visible in films. They found that these rods were widespread. Countless films had them lurking almost imperceptibly in the corners, including old television shows, movies, films of sporting events, almost everything imaginable. There were simply too many examples to study them all, running into the thousands or tens of thousands. There were also air rods visible in photographs, but these were hardly studied at all for reasons that will become clear below. Close study of air rod films revealed a number of very interesting features. As these rods zoomed about, they displayed all the features of three-dimensional objects. In other words, they were not two-dimensional blotches on the camera lens or on the film itself, but something out there in the environment that was actually being filmed by accident...

Flood Myths from Around the World

Sumerian : In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story that is the source for the Noah story. The Gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the God Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a huge (seven decks encompassing one acre in area) ark. Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures." The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights. The Gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day. The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest. A swallow was sent, but it too returned. Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the Gods. He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.

Greco-Roman : Zeus decided to punish humanity for its evil ways. Other Gods grieved at the destruction because there would be no beings to worship them. Zeus promised a new stock, a race of miraculous origin. He was going to use thunderbolts when he remembered one of Fate's decrees: that a time would come when sea and earth and dome of the sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of the universe would collapse in ruins. With Poseidon's help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood every part of the land except the summit of Mount Parnassus. When Zeus crushed the hanging clouds in his hand, there was a loud crash, and sheets of rain fell from heaven. The rivers began rushing to the sea. When Neptune struck the earth with his trident, the rivers raced across the plains. Sea and earth could no longer be distinguished; all was sea without any shores, covering every living being except for one fortunate couple, Deucalion and Pyrrha. Earlier, Deucalion and Pyrrha had consulted Themis at her oracular shrine...

US Governments Secret Mind Control Experiment MK Ultra

by Richard G. Gall

On 28 November 1953, a delusional and depressed Dr Frank Olson threw himself out of the tenth floor window of his New York hotel. Olson was a long-serving scientist for the US Army's secretive Chimical Corps Special Operations Division, whose problems began at a meeting 9 days earlier. The meeting had been orchestrated by Sidnet Gottlieb, Head of the CIA's Technical Services Staff. Unknown to those present at the meeting, Gottlieb had aquired a quantity of LSD and secretly wanted to test it. Spiking Olson's drink with the LSD, he passed the bottle around and sat back waiting for results. Olson, an outgoing personality who loved practical jokes, soon began to suffer jarring side effects. One of those present at the meeting, Ben Wilson, later recalled that Olson 'was psychotic'.

Gottlieb and his boss, the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, initiated a 20-year cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Olson's death.At stake was the CIA's super secret project, MK-ULTRA. The project had grown out of an earlier secret programme, known as Bluebird, that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing. In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with careful hypnotic programming. Ever evolving, project Bluebird was later renamed Project Artichoke, after a vegetable that Dulles was particularly fond of. Artichoke was an 'offensive' programme of mind control that gathered together the intelligence divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Farce and FBI.

The scope of the project was outlined in a memorandum dated January 1952 that ominously asked: "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?" The race was on to create a programmable assassin! A crack CIA team was formed that could travel, at a moments notice, to anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. All manner of narcotics, from marijuana to LSD, heroin and sodium pentathol (the so called 'truth drug') were regularly used...

Secrets of Great Zimbabwe

© www.bbc.co.uk

The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are the most extensive in sub-Saharan Africa, and arguably the most emotive. The name 'Zimbabwe' probably comes from the Shona phrase Ziimba dza Mabwe1, meaning 'Houses of Stone'. 30km south-west of Masvingo2 in Zimbabwe3, the ruins sit on a 1000m plateau, at the base of some low granite hills on otherwise open plains, with few trees. For generations, these cyclopean stone walls were considered one of the great unsolved mysteries of the world; who could have built these ruins when no surrounding people was capable of more than mud huts? Why could such a people not have dominated the local Shona tribespeople and built more such cities? Where had their advanced civilisation gone by the time Europeans reached the area in the 1800s? Nowadays, we have satisfactory - and often surprisingly obvious - answers to all these questions, though there are mysteries yet on the plains.

The Ruins: There are three main sections, the Hill Complex (also known as the Acropolis or Hill Town), the Valley Ruins and the Walled Town (or Great Enclosure). The Valley Ruins are now almost invisible, as they are the remains of mud-brick (daga) buildings between the other two sections. A purpose-built version of a local village is thankfully well concealed from view at the rear, offering fortune-telling and tribal dancing during the high season. It does, however, give an impression of what the Valley ruins must once have looked like, with conical thatched roofs slope almost to the ground. The Hill Complex is largely built into the rocky hillside, with walls and floors carved into the rock in some places and built on top of it in others. Guides will enthusiastically point out to visitors areas where the acoustics would allow public speeches to be made, and caves that act as loudspeakers to allow voices to be projected over the surrounding countryside. However exciting these stories may be to tourists, it should be remembered that they owe more to the imaginations of the guides than to local tradition or archaeology...

The Mysteries of Lucky Point

by D.V. Pyle, Washington, Ind., July 16, 1997

In southern Indiana there is an area which some researchers of the paranormal claim is a focal point for paranormal activity, and as such the area known as Lucky Point has become a focal point of investigations by members of the Unexplained Phenomena Research Organization. The swampy wooded area is located in rural Knox County near the town of Monroe City. According to some, strange occurrences have happened there over the years. The Unexplained Phenomena Research Organization (U.P.R.O.) is a national group dedicated to investigating unexplained supernatural mysteries. The Indiana chapter of the group is headed by Jerry Sievers out of his home in Vincennes, Indiana. "We have had reports of things from U.F.O.'s, Sasquatch sightings, spook lights and ghosts in this area," Sievers commented. One prominent mystery involves two utility poles buried in concrete, which some witnesses have claimed to observe shaking. Sievers said the poles seem to make a rattling sound sometimes. Additionally the ground has been reported as shaking at a rate of 50-feet an hour.

"They are two sets of double polls buried in concrete with a road running between them," Sievers said. "People up at Lucky Point watching for U.F.O.s have reported hearing the poles rattle." REMC, the utility company responsible for maintaining the poles, has denied there is any problem with the poles. However, Sievers claims company representatives know about the polls, but have told him they cannot determine the reason for the rattling poles. Another problem which Sievers says accompanies the rattling is that such items as camcorders mysteriously stop working in the area of the poles. Sievers said it can take five visits to Lucky Point before one is able to hear the mysterious rattling noise. "Witnesses who have heard the noise and reported it to us have said it could not be the electricity. Sometimes the vibrations are so extreme that the insulators holding the wire will jar and rattle," Sievers said...

Harry Houdini (1874-1926)

© New content 1999 PBS Online

Few performers have ever captured the public imagination like Harry Houdini. From his breakthrough in 1899 to his death in 1926, Houdini was one of the world's most popular entertainers, a true star of stage and screen. Time and again, his escapes from seemingly impossible predicaments thrilled audiences, who found in him a metaphor for their own lives, an affirmation of the human capacity to overcome adversity. Escapism in both senses of the word. But while nearly everyone is familiar with Houdini's stage persona, his little-known personal life is equally revealing. Taken as a whole, the public and private views make "The Elusive American" a uniquely powerful window on his times.

His love of America was such that he always claimed Appleton, Wisconsin, as his birthplace. But the man known as Houdini was actually born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary. He would not arrive in Wisconsin until four years later, when he, his mother Cecelia, and four brothers joined his father, who had become rabbi of a small Reform congregation there. Although an educated man, Herman Mayer Weiss (Weisz was changed to Weiss courtesy of immigration officials) was not destined for success in America. His life-long struggle to provide for his family would make a lasting impression on his son "Ehrie," who was forced to work from an early age to help make ends meet. Still, the boy was drawn to performing, making his debut in a neighborhood circus as the nine year old trapeze artist, "Ehrich, The Prince of the Air."

In 1887, after a series of failed rabbinic appointments in the Midwest, Herman Mayer Weiss brought young Ehrich with him to New York, where they lived in a boardinghouse and found what work they could. When he wasn't working, Ehrich excelled in sports, particularly swimming, boxing, and running, developing the natural athletic gifts which would be vital to his future act. He also rediscovered a childhood interest in magic, and in 1891 teamed up with a friend named Jacob Hyman in an act they called "The Brothers Houdini." After his hard-luck father died in 1892, eighteen year old Ehrich left his mother and brothers in New York and took to the road...

Were There People Before Adam and Eve?

By Willie Martin
Copyright @ 2007 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party

This question is almost always asked whenever atheists and agnostics are trying to confound or confuse a New Christian. It comes from a reading of: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth..." (Genesis 1:27-28) Men have theorized for years about the possibility of the co-existence of another race of human beings upon the earth during the time of Adam. It must be recognized that there is considerable evidence to show that the earth was not only inhabited by a race(s), but as a result of the earth becoming void and without form, that race or races were apparently destroyed. But first let's look at the word "Replenish": Replenish: 1). to make full or complete again, as by furnishing a new supply. 2). to supply again...or the like. 3). of people. (New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second Edition page 1205)

Jeremiah the Prophet refers briefly to the existence of such a race(s), but he states that, as a result of the earth becoming void and without form, that race(s) were apparently destroyed. "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man...I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger... For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black..." (Jeremiah 4:23-28) Job also makes reference to a past age, a former time: "For enquire... of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers." (Job 8:8) Job then relates: "For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste." (Job 30:3)...

Amazing UFO Sightings in the Soviet-Era

By Paul Stonehill

Summary: The Russian Ufology Research Center has a collection of "hydrosphere aspect" sightings The secret files of the Soviet Navy contain much valuable information on UFO sightings. Soviet military researchers quite thorough. The files have been largely inaccessible, even after the fall of the USSR. But I was able to collect some interesting information. The Russian Ufology Research Center has a collection of "hydrosphere aspect" sightings The secret files of the Soviet Navy contain much valuable information on UFO sightings. Soviet military researchers quite thorough. The files have been largely inaccessible, even after the fall of the USSR. But I was able to collect some interesting information.

Submarines : Mr. Krapiva attended lectures given by veteran officers of Soviet nuclear-powered submarines. They had served in the Soviet North, in secret naval installations and bases. The lectures sometimes veered off the planned presentations, and many spellbinding tales were told. For instance, episodes when Soviet sonar-operators (military hydroacoustics technicians) were "hearing" (at great depths) strange "targets". Their submarines were actually being chased by other "submarines". The pursuers changed their speed at will -- speeds that were much faster than any other similar vessel in the world at that time Lieutenant-Commander Oleg Sokolov confidentially informed the students that while he was on duty during his submarine's navigation, he had observed through a periscope an ascent of some strange object through the water. He was not able to identify it, because he viewed it through the optical system of the periscope. This underwater "take off" took place in the early 1960's. A few years ago V.V. Krapiva met with Professor Korsakov of the Odessa University. Professor Korsakov told him of a conversation he had with a friend of his, a Soviet Navy officer who had served at the Sevastopol Naval base. Back in the 1950's this officer personally sighted a UFO. The object moved upward from behind a battle cruiser...

Giants, Myth or Reality?

By Patrick Cooke

In the human experience, giants are literally the "elephants in the room". When our research first began on this paradigm, we had little knowledge of how extensive the evidence of their existence was. We now have a comprehensive database consisting of over 200 historical descriptions; over half from the United States and the U.K. history, alone. And, our unpublished files contain enough information to more than triple the current data we now have online. Were one to undertake a thorough study of giants and record all in detail, it would certainly be a life's work.

The lack of the presence of giants in orthodox history, academia, and anthropological studies is appalling in light of the true historical records from every part of the globe. Even more mysterious is the seemingly unanimous decisions by the keepers of the world's museums and archeological treasures to keep the physical evidence of giants hidden from public view. Only a smattering of the evidence is available in obscure locations. Thousands of skeletons and hundreds of historical reports are ignored. The accepted knowledge among the world's peoples is that giants are the creatures of myth and folklore, relegated to children's fairy tales and B grade horror movies, an it is almost a crime not to include a giant in any fantasy film or video game. The reality is that giants were present throughout our history from ancient biblical accounts and historical Roman military campaigns to the relatively modern genocide of the natives of North America. Giants appear in the legends of Australia, Bavaria, Belgium, Chad, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India , Italy, Kazakhstan, Laos, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nova Scotia, Pakistan, Patagonia, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, Russia, Scotland, Sicily, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Terra del Fuego, Turkey, the United Sates, Wales, Zanzibar, and the ancient Incan, Toltec, and Nordic cultures, just to name a few. Giants are everywhere; in our religions, our history, our literature, and our folklore.

Miracle of Solid Crystal Tears

Twelve-year-old Hasnah Mohamed Meselmani produced razor-sharp glass crystals from her eyes, Share International reported at the end of 1996. Nabil Matraji, our correspondent in the Lebanon, contacted the Meselmani family to find out more about the amazing phenomenon, which lasted from March till November 1996. A discussion with Hasnah confirmed that the unseen hand behind the crystal miracle was that of Maitreya. A report about the mysterious "white knight" follows. Commotion stirred the Arab world: a girl was making hard glass crystals, sharp enough to cut paper, appear from her eyes seven times a day without any apparent injury to herself - it had to be some kind of miracle. The 12-year-old Hasnah Mohamed Meselmani became the centre of attention. Religious authorities and scientists sought answers to the riddle.

The answer soon came: it was 'fraud', and the girl had admitted it, at least that is how the story was reported. Many people were upset and disappointed, others, less inclined to believe in inexplicable 'miracles', were relieved. Lebanon and other Arab countries declared the file closed and silence descended on the story of Hasnah Mohamed Meselmani. And yet certain questions remained unanswered. For instance, questions about the nature of the so-called fraud. How did Hasnah manage to pull the whole thing off with crystals coming out of her eyes in full view of television cameras? If the television pictures were authentic and anything to go by, then fraud would seem to be out of the question: the girl's eye was filmed in close-up and showed pieces of glass slowly pushing out of her eyes as if coming from the retina. Could she have first hidden them in her eye herself? Or was it just illusion that the glass fragments were seen coming out through the retina? And had Hasnah mastered the trick of keeping them hidden in the corners of her eyes? And in both cases: how could she do it without sustaining any injuries with crystals shown to be sharp enough to cut paper, as also witnessed by the television cameras?..