Journal of Alternative Realities
                                                  Vol 7,  Issue 1,  1999
 
Contents:

 The Oz Factor                                            Technology Update
 Tracking UFOs by Satellite                         Alien Base
 Preamble to the Ultimate Debate                 From Atlantis to the Sphinx
 Spirit Possession                                         Alien Dawn
 Uri Geller                                                   Cult Encounter
 My ET Experiences                                    Robot Warriors
 Flying Saucers & Sonic Booms                   Legacy from the Stars
 Western Australian Sightings                       Underground Bases & Tunnels
 

The Oz Factor
Entering The Magical Realm
By Michael Jordan
 

The wondrous experiences of Dorothy in the film The Wizard of Oz and Alice in her Wonderland, happened as a result of these two adventurous young ladies being whisked away into a magical realm from whence they eventually returned, unfortunately without a shred of evidence to support their experiences.  Prolific writer and researcher in the field of UFOs and related areas, Jenny Randles coined the term the 'Oz Factor', to describe the sensations experienced by those who entered this state.
In her 1988 book Abduction, Randles describes the mysterious Oz Factor as, "an induced form of sensory deprivation which seems to alter the state of consciousness of the percipient.  It can become visible as a sensation of time standing still, or interfered with, or it manifests as all sound vanishing, a very odd feeling of being isolated from our world into a magic world.  It is less easy to describe than recognise, since witnesses often refer to it without having any idea of its significance.  This underlines its importance." (Randles, p.57)
Ufologists have long been familiar with the reporting of such sensations as a prelude to UFO related experiences including witnesses to so-called abductions.  Participants tell of feelings of disassociation and timelessness.  The impression created for the individual concerned is one of having temporarily vacated the material world with its distracting sensory input and entered a timeless, silent, dreamlike, mental state, unlike any other previously experienced.  Obviously a type of altered state of consciousness.

The records kept by UFO researchers are replete with cases involving aspects such as the paralysis of the witness, periods of missing time, the silence of the craft observed, its rapid or instantaneous disappearance and often the seeming absurdity of a lack of other witnesses, despite the vast size of the craft and the fact that it is seen in broad daylight.  These underlying patterns remain pretty standard and common to the Oz Factor, irrespective of language or location.
An early example of its operation is recounted by Jenny Randles:
"It occurred one hot and thundery day in the summer of 1944.  World War II raged around the village of Le Verger, near Toulon-sur-Arroux, France, when a thirteen-year-old girl, Madeleine Arnoux, decided to risk the many Germans and resistance fighters in the woods to cycle out and pick berries.  In doing so she confronted a strange object in the grass, like a small car but dull grey in colour.  She then noticed that small men stood beside it, no more than three feet tall and dressed in brown one-piece suits.  Feeling desperately afraid, she tried to run but was paralysed and lost all sense of time (the Oz Factor once more).  Then, inexplicably, the object had gone and the hold on her was relaxed.  She fled back to her village." (Randles, p.23)

In the same way that reports of hauntings describe how ghosts can suddenly disappear from view, not only do UFOs have the capacity to vanish in mid-air, but to disappear from radar screens as well.  In their informative and perceptive book of essays on UFOs, UFOs The Final Answer?, David and Therese Barclay include a chapter by Joseph Dormer in which he recounts the following personal experience recounted by a teacher in Rochdale, England:
"It was late November and I had just got home from college.  It was already dusk and, as my mother prepared to pull the curtains, she drew my attention to something she could see in the darkening sky.  I looked out through the window and saw this extraordinary craft, just hanging there, low in the sky, motionless and completely silent.  It was huge.  I mean it must have been about 100 feet long.  It was cylinder shaped, but rounded at the ends.  There were port holes along its entire length, and I could see figures in silver space suits moving about inside.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I wanted to cry out but could not .... I mean I literally could not speak or move.  Neither of us could.  It was as if we were paralysed.  We just stood there, watching this thing as it began to glide slowly across the sky.  Then suddenly it was gone.  It did not just move off at tremendous speed, I'm certain of that – it just vanished into thin air.  And another strange thing was that we seemed to be watching it for only a few minutes or so, yet when I looked at my watch afterwards, I found that a whole hour had gone by." (Barclay, p.130)
The confusion caused by the Oz Factor is well illustrated by a case investigated by university lecturer, Frank Johnson, in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, involving the reported abduction of a family of five, three adults and two children, travelling by car from Reading to the Gloucester area.  Following the sighting of what they thought was a bright planet, their car appeared to drive itself, passing the same scenery again and again, including a non-existent brightly lit house (obviously an imposed screen, aimed at blocking out something perhaps a little more alarming).  During this whole sequence, time appeared to unravel slowly in classic Oz Factor style.  The end of the experience was marked by the appearance of a spinning, brightly lit disc and the stunned participants found their way home, eventually finding out that they had arrived an hour later than expected.
It would appear that in many instances, witnesses to a UFO event may experience a momentary amnesia, not realising at the time that a time-lapse had occurred.  These lapses are apparently introduced so skilfully, that the experiencer is unaware that even one second has passed.  Typically they may recall the sighting of a light or UFO, hear a sound like bees buzzing, or feel a type of numbness overcoming them, only to then find themselves in a different position in their car or journey, from what they would normally expect.

Cars that appear to assume control of themselves in silent gliding motion, passing no other traffic on the road, with their occupants seemingly mesmerised are part of the Oz experience.  One classic case involved a couple from Zimbabwe, driving from Harare to Durban.  Following the sighting of a strange light in the sky, their car appeared to assume control of itself, seeming to glide just above the surface of the road passing unreal scenery.  After covering what seemed to be a large number of kilometres, they were to find that their petrol gauge had not moved, a passage of missing time was unaccounted for and they were not where they should have been in their journey to Durban.

A peculiar silence often seems to be part of the Oz state.  Well known abductee, Betty Andreasson gives the following description of an encounter in which alien beings came into her house:
"I can see a light, sort of pink right now.  And now the light is getting brighter.  It's reddish orange, and it's pulsating.  I said to the children, 'Be quiet, and quick, get in the living room, and whatever it is will go away.'  It seemed like the whole house had a vacuum over it.  Like stillness all around ... like stillness." (Fowler, p.15)
The ability to eliminate sound, or else create a mind-set in which the observer believes there is no sound, is another aspect of the Oz Factor.  The recurring phenomenon of phantom helicopters that sometimes appear in conjunction with UFOs (since the mid-seventies), may look like helicopters in many respects, but may have parts missing, be entirely black without markings and above all, may be soundless.  Ann Druffel comments, "Researchers who have studied these reports are inclined to speculate that the mystery choppers are imperfect 'imitations' of earth craft, it seems as if whatever or whoever constructs them are either deliberately falsifying some part of their appearance in order to bring the craft to witnesses' attention or simply do not care whether their constructions are perfect replicas." (Druffel & Rogo, p.155)
It's sometimes difficult for doubters of UFO phenomena to miss the opportunity to explain away the conjunction between the mental experiences of the Oz Factor and the sighting of unknown objects as merely tricks played by the mind, a temporary aberration perhaps.  If they are psychic then they can't be scientific they argue.  However , if UFOs and related phenomena are merely psychic projections or products of imagination, we are left to explain the physical traces they leave behind.  Deep impressions at landing sites, unmistakable radar traces and incisions and scars left on some experiencers, constitute just some of the physical evidence.  In his excellent book The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot wrote:
"I propose that such phenomena are difficult to categorise because we are trying to hammer them into a picture of reality that is fundamentally incorrect.  Given that quantum physics has shown us that mind and matter are inextricably linked, I suggested that UFOs and related phenomena are further evidence of this ultimate lack of division between the psychological and physical worlds.  They are indeed a product of the human psyche, but they are quite real.  Put another way, they are something the human race has not yet learned to comprehend properly, a phenomenon that is neither subjective nor objective but 'omnijective' – a term I coined to refer to this unusual state of existence (I was unaware at the time that Corbin had already coined the term imaginal to describe the same blurred surface of reality, only in the context of the mystical experience of the Sufis)." (Talbot, p.279)

There is little doubt that the pre-eminent psychologist Carl Jung, when he focused on the subject of UFOs, hoped to explain it in terms of his 'Archetype' hypothesis.  However, after evaluating the reports and case studies available, he was forced to conclude, "Unfortunately however, there are good reasons why the UFO cannot be disposed of in this simple manner."
The problem posed for science is that sightings of UFOs are reported by all sections of society including specialists, whose reputations as observers, in other circumstances, would be considered unimpeachable.  In addition the phenomenon is polymorphous and can be perceived in a number of different forms.  Another major drawback is the fact that not only are we no closer to solving the intrinsic mystery of their substance since attention was first paid to the subject some sixty years ago, but it has expanded to encompass aspects and enigmas previously thought to be entirely unrelated.
It would appear then that the Oz Factor is a state of sensory deprivation in which the mind, separated from normal stimuli, concentrates its focus inwardly.  As humans, we are either born with, or rapidly develop the ability to form a screen or barrier which can sometimes protect us from unwanted intrusion.  Whether this form of traumatic amnesia, with the brain responding to events so utterly different to our normal cultural experience, or mechanically induced as a direct result of the UFO experience, the net result is to leave the experiencer in a state of amnesia.  If we accept that the experience is totally hallucinatory, we are faced with a major paradox.  How can any hallucination leave ground and radar traces, cause radiation burns and affect the workings of aircraft and automobile engines?

As you would expect, researchers have put forward a number of theories to explain the occurrence of Oz Factor phenomena in conjunction with some UFO experiences, and the possible reasons for the induction of such a state.  There is much agreement on the central notion of an attempt to establish contact through consciousness.  How ironic that while SETI desperately searches for signs of technological contact from without, other energies may be trying to contact us through our consciousness!

Could the temporary disassociation from the barriers of time and space experienced, be designed to exploit an opening, some sort of gap in time, through which 'actual' information may slip through to our consciousness?  Perhaps contact designed to bring us to our senses about the omnijective, to use Talbot's term, holographic nature of the universe that we inhabit.  A kind of awakening from the spell of matter.  Interestingly, it is known that some animals enter a type of Oz Factor state, in which they appear drugged, many hours before major earth tremors in their locality.  Information about this future event is relayed to them during this state.

Well known French astrophysicist and UFO researcher Dr Jacques Vallee, in connection with the contact theory, writes in Messengers of Deception:
"At close range, the UFO phenomenon acts as a reality transformer, triggering for the witness a series of symbolic displays that are indistinguishable from reality.  These displays, which frequently begin with a bewildering series of blinking coloured lights of extraordinary intensity, induce a state of intense confusion for the subjects who are vulnerable to the insertion of new thoughts and new visual experiences."

It is as if the confusion and sudden removal from reality as we know it, provides an avenue for re-framing our total picture and effecting changes in our viewpoint.  Vallee continues:
"What we see emerging in the UFO phenomenon is not gradual contact but rather gradual control – of our beliefs, expectations, fears, hopes and dreams.  We know from behavioural psychology that the best schedule of reinforcement is one that combines periodicity with unpredictability (citing the intense patterns of UFO activity followed by quiet periods when it seems to have gone away entirely).  Learning is then slow but continuous, it leads to the highest level of adaptation.  And it is irreversible.  It is interesting to observe that the pattern of UFO waves has the same structure as a schedule of reinforcement."

The idea of receiving information about the true nature of reality, is a recurring one amongst writers and researchers of this subject.  Michael Murphy in The Future of the Body, puts it very succinctly:
"Are these 'somethings' – aspects of a greater existence, distorted perhaps by the subject's perceptual filters?  Are they first glimpses of a 'larger earth'?  To a frog with its simple eye the world is a dim array of greys and blacks.  Are we like frogs in our limited sensorium, apprehending just part of the universe that we inhabit?  Are we as a species now awakening to the reality of multi-dimensional worlds in which matter undergoes subtle reorganisations in some sort of hyperspace?  Is visionary experience analogous to the first breathings of early amphibians?  Are we ourselves coming ashore to a 'larger earth'?"

Michael Grosso, writing in Mind at Large, contends that there is a relationship between these different forms of contact with human consciousness, originating from a single source of intelligence which makes use of whatever aperture it can locate to instruct our collective mind and modify our basic ideas of the workings of reality.
With a difference of opinion from those researchers who support the concept of contact from alien intelligences, lie those who maintain that UFOs are a type of psychic projection.  They contend that as our knowledge and belief system changes so are we creating a psychic window through which those energies can interact.  The act or state of contact is a real event, but it reflects traumas submerged in the subject's unconscious.  Dr Kenneth Ring argues that UFOs are imaginal (not to be confused with imaginary) experiences:
"They are similar not only to the confrontations with the real but mind-created world individuals experience during NDEs, but also to those mythic realities shamans encounter during journeys through the subtler dimensions.  They are in short, further evidence that reality is a multi-layered and mind-generated hologram."
In The UFO Experience, one of the founding fathers of UFO research, Dr Allan Hynek, had this to say:
"It seems to us that rather than being extraterrestrial in any simple sense, UFOs could well be part of the same larger intelligence which has shaped the tapestry of religion and mythology since the dawn of human consciousness."

Does the state of mind described by the term the Oz Factor, then, create the bridge necessary for this type of contact?  Can we under the right circumstances attract the imaginal into our three-dimensional world?  In response to these questions Michael Talbot writes:
"At present we simply do not know, but in a world that is comprised less of solid objects travelling in space and time and more of ghostly holograms of energy sustained by processes that are at least partially connected to human consciousness, such events may not be as impossible as they appear .... the evidence suggests that we are still children when it comes to understanding the true nature of time.  And like all children poised on the threshold of adulthood, we should put aside our fears and come to terms with the way the world really is." 
 

References
Barclay, David & Therese Marie.  (1993)  UFOs The Final Answer?
Druffel, Ann & Rogo, Scott.  (1989)  The Tujunga Canyon Contacts.
Fowler, Raymond.  (1979)  The Andreasson Affair.
Grosso, Michael. (1989)  Private communication with author, February 17, 1999.
Hynek, Allen.  (1972)  The UFO Experience.
Jung, Carl.  (1958)  Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
Murphy, Michael.  (1993)  The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Future Evolution of Human Nature.
Randles, Jenny.  (1988)  Abduction.
Ring, Kenneth.  (1989)  Towards an Imaginal Interpretation of UFO Abductions.  ReVision 11, No.4.
Talbot, Michael.  (1991)  The Holographic Universe.
Vallee, Jacques.  (1979)  Messengers of Deception.
 
 
 

Tracking UFOs by Satellite
By Simon Harvey-Wilson
 

For most of the cold war the superpowers' ground and satellite early warning systems would have needed to be able to track UFOs in order to distinguish them from nuclear missiles.  It would have been in neither side's interests to start World War III because for example NATO mistook a flight of five UFOs flying westwards from Russia for the first salvo of a nuclear strike against the West.

Detailed information on these early warning systems remains classified despite the end of the cold war.  This may be one reason why Western nations have been reluctant to acknowledge the reality of UFOs.  If they did admit their existence, the scientific community and those who had swallowed the 'They don't exist' line might demand to see the radar evidence.  But how could the Pentagon provide such proof and still keep the extraordinary capabilities of such surveillance infrastructure secret?  Yet without providing such evidence their claims would be no more convincing than those of the UFO community who likewise cannot produce any radar tapes.  The worldwide amateur UFO research community probably does not own a single radar set, air traffic control computer, jet fighter, or satellite between them.  All such hardware is in the hands of governments who so far have refused to use them to settle the UFO question.

I believe that Western governments would rather that the public knew as little as possible about their tracking systems, firstly for national security reasons and secondly because, once the public knew how extensive and sophisticated they were, they would realise that they were almost certainly capable of proving whether UFOs exist or not within little more than twenty-four hours.  Instead we are being asked to believe that such governments have apparently discovered nothing conclusive in this field for fifty years.

Where are these early warning systems, what can they do and where does information about them come from?  The first thing to point out is that all the information in this article comes from open sources.  Anyone can look it up in the library or on the Internet, provided you know where to look.  Writers and scholars who specialise in this subject call it 'Strategic Studies'.  My first source is a book called An Illustrated Guide To Space Warfare by David Hobbs, who was a researcher at Aberdeen University's Centre for Defence Studies.  Three other sources are The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries by Jeffrey T. Richelson & Desmond Ball; Pine Gap by Des Ball; and A Base For Debate: The US Satellite Station at Nurrungar also by Des Ball.  Professor Desmond Ball has been the head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and Dr Richelson has been a consultant and Senior Fellow at the National Security Archive in the USA.  I assume therefore that they know what they are talking about.  It should also be emphasised that none of these books mentions UFOs.

But why, you might ask, haven't these writers had their knuckles rapped for releasing classified information?  As far as I can gather the answer is because all the information they discuss is derived from open sources and is either out of date or sufficiently vague so as not to be of any threat to national security.  Nevertheless, out of date information is still relevant to the UFO debate.  If it can be shown that the world's superpowers had the equipment to track and therefore research UFOs thirty or more years ago, then it is most unlikely that today's equipment is any less capable, which suggests that they have been concealing their knowledge of the UFO phenomenon for all that time.

How would you track UFOs if you had an almost unlimited budget?  We know that some UFOs can be picked up by radar.  There are numerous reports available which attest to that.  Most civilian airport radars have a limited range and it is not the job of civilian air traffic controllers to keep a look out for UFOs.  Thankfully they devote their time to stopping passenger jets from crashing into each other, and most of us would prefer that they kept doing precisely that.  However military radar plays a different role.  In theory any nation's air force is supposed to be interested in identifying everything that flies into its air space in case it turns out to be hostile.  Despite government protestations to the contrary, this would definitely include UFOs.

BALLISTIC MISSILE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM.   The United States BMEWS system is vast, complex, and has a degree of redundancy built into it so that, if one part fails or is damaged, another part can take over.  Let us deal with the ground-based systems first.  Nuclear weapons can be fired from submarines, from underground silos, from the air, and perhaps even from space.  To protect the North American continent, the USA and Canada cooperate in maintaining a huge radar shield over their combined land mass which can detect incoming missiles or craft from any direction.  Because land-based missiles from the old USSR would have probably come by the shortest route, which is over the North Pole, this early warning system, now called the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), is especially strong in that direction.  The NORAD operations centre is inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs in the Rocky Mountains.  NORAD is answerable both to the Canadian Prime Minister and the US President.  (More information about NORAD can be found on the Internet at: www.space.com.af.mil/norad/index.htm)  To complete the radar shield there are also huge radar beams facing West, South and East from the North American coast, so that nothing that is detectable by radar can fly into Canada or the USA from any direction without tripping this system.  This means that any radar-detectable UFO that is seen by the public anywhere within Canada or the USA must fall into one of these four categories.
 

• It must have been detected by the radar system as it flew past the coastline, or in from space, or
• It must have somehow got through the system undetected by using stealth, inter-dimensional travel or something of that nature, or
• It must have come from an underground or underwater alien base located within Canada or the USA, or
• It must be a craft owned by either the US or Canadian government or a member of the public such as a well financed inventor.

The US military also has its own missile tracking system separate from its NORAD cooperation with Canada.  This system extends into space and around the planet.  The US Air Force Space Command runs something called SPACETRACK which provides data on satellites and missiles from its network of sensors around the world, including NASA's tracking systems.  SPACETRACK also gets information from the US Navy Space Surveillance System (NAVSPASUR) which operates a line of radar stations running from Georgia to California that transmit a fan-shaped radar beam into space to a height of about fourteen thousand kilometres.  This system can detect and calculate the orbital characteristics of any satellite or other object breaking the beam. (Hobbs, p.76)

SPACETRACK is also linked to something called the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) which consists of a world-wide network of 100 centimetre telescopes linked to low-light-level television cameras which are powerful enough to provide real-time pictures of an object as small as a football in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the ground.  By now these cameras may be even more sensitive and include infra-red sensors.  I assume that this means that, if a UFO or mother-ship is detected by radar somewhere in orbit around the planet, one of the GEODSS telescopes somewhere on the planet can be asked to film it within minutes.  There are GEODSS telescopes in New Mexico, South Korea, Hawaii, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Portugal (Hobbs, p.80) and probably several other places.  This would suggest that someone within the US military-intelligence community by now has a whole video library of state-of-the-art UFO footage.

To show how coordinated the US military's early warning systems are, it is interesting to read a 19th August 1998 press release from the US Air Force News Service which detailed the retirement of General Howell M. Estes III after thirty-three years in the US Air Force.  Before his retirement General Estes simultaneously held three positions.  He was the commander in chief of NORAD (CINCNORAD) which meant that he "was responsible for the air sovereignty of the United States and Canada, as well as providing tactical warning and attack assessment."  He was also the commander in chief of US Space Command (USCINCSPACE) which meant that "he commanded the unified command responsible for directing space control and support operations."  And finally, he was commander of US Air Force Space Command (COMAFSPC).  In that job "he directed satellite control, warning, space launch and ballistic missile operations through a worldwide network of support facilities and bases."  General Estes it seems had a very responsible position, but the press release neglected to say whether tracking UFOs was also a part of his job brief.  His replacement is General Richard B. Myers.

The US early warning system is not limited to the North American continent.  They have installations on friendly territory around the planet, occasionally in places one has never heard of.  Some of them have remarkable capabilities, for example the Cobra Dane radar system, located on the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, "is sensitive enough to detect a grapefruit-sized metallic object at a distance in excess of 2,200 miles [3,500km].  In its tracking mode it can simultaneously handle up to 200 objects at ranges of up to about 1,250 miles [2,000km]." (Hobbs, p.76)  I wonder how many UFOs they have tracked over the last twenty-five years and who got to look at the radar tapes.  There is little point in having such marvellous technology if an intelligence analyst somewhere does not get to see the data it produces.

What evidence is there that such US radar systems are actually used to track UFOs?  In an article called 'The Roswell Incident: Fragments of Evidence' by Linda Moulton Howe she quotes an anonymous informant's recollections of what his grandfather, who claimed to have been on the Roswell crash retrieval team in 1947, had told him about the military's concern about UFOs entering US airspace.  The grandfather claimed they had "recommended to the President that a Space Program be set into motion and that a system of satellites be placed into orbit by 1957, and this satellite system be patched into the DEW Line system (Distant Early Warning radar stations at 70th parallel across North America) which later became NORAD (North America Radar Defence).  Grandad stated that it was his opinion that NORAD was formed not only to track possible ICBMs from hostile nations, but as an established detection system for UFO craft."  Although this claim does not constitute concrete evidence, it would be very puzzling, if not irresponsible, if the US military was not doing their best to track UFOs.  After all, it's not as if they are short of (taxpayers') money.

Further evidence that NORAD may be involved in tracking UFOs is to be found in an article called The 'Colorado Connection' by Graham Conway in Flying Saucer Review.  Conway gives several examples of Canadian residents who had rung their local air force base to report seeing a UFO, only to find themselves patched through to someone in NORAD, Colorado who took the details.

SATELLITE SYSTEMS.   So far we have only discussed ground-based tracking systems which are limited by their inability to see beyond the horizon, although over-the-horizon radar can see further.  However nothing compares to the view from space.  In my opinion using satellites to detect and/or track UFOs would be the most cost-effective method because such systems are already paid for, are already there watching out for nuclear missiles, and are already classified.  Any extra work they did would go unnoticed.  But their most important advantage is that satellites can see a huge area of the planet at one time.

Most surveillance, communication and weather satellites are 'parked' in what is called geosynchronous or geostationary orbit.  This means that the speed at which they naturally orbit the planet matches exactly the speed at which the planet rotates.  That means that, when seen through a telescope from the ground, the satellite appears to be stationary.  This illusion occurs because the ground that the viewer is standing on is actually moving at the same speed as the satellite.  Therefore, if you want your surveillance satellite to monitor a particular area of the planet you just park it in a geostationary orbit above your target area, and it effectively just sits there looking down.  One of the disadvantages of this system is that everyone else who can afford it is doing the same thing.  The geostationary orbit above the equator is by now so crowded with satellites that they will soon have to install parking meters up there.  Another disadvantage is that geostationary orbit is about 36,000 kilometres above the ground which means that getting a clear picture isn't easy.  Add that to the fact that the ground beneath the satellite may be covered by clouds, and spends half the day in darkness as the planet revolves, and one begins to see why the spy satellite business is so expensive.

The field of view or 'footprint' of a geostationary surveillance satellite covers an enormous area of the planet.  For example a satellite parked over the equator near Singapore would be able to see a circle beneath it that extended from above the Arctic circle in the north to below the Antarctic circle in the south and from a line roughly joining Cairo to Moscow to the west to well past New Zealand to the east.  This is a vast area that includes most of Russia, the whole of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Australia.  With this kind of coverage one only needs to maintain three such satellites evenly spaced around the equator to be able to view the entire planet except the North and South poles.  To function effectively, a surveillance satellite must transmit the data it has recorded to a receiving station on the ground that is in line of sight beneath it, because electromagnetic radiation will only go in straight lines.  That is why the receiving stations for any geostationary satellites that are looking at Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, India or China must be on the same side of the planet as those countries.  And from a geopolitical perspective, the most suitable place to locate such satellite bases is in Australia.

PINE GAP.   There are two US satellite bases in Australia that are known to the public: the first is called Pine Gap and is located near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, while the second, called Nurrungar, is in South Australia, five hundred kilometres north-west of Adelaide.  There exist several conspiracy theories about these bases, especially Pine Gap, that are beyond the scope of this article.  However it should be pointed out that UFO researchers who publish conspiracy theories about these bases who have not read the previously mentioned well documented books about them are not doing very much for their credibility.  Admittedly these books do not mention UFOs, but they are still important starting points for serious research.

According to Professor Ball the satellites that report down to Pine Gap are Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) ones.  SIGINT can be broken up into Communications Intelligence (COMINT), "the interception of foreign communications transmitted by radio or other electromagnetic means", and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) which "consists of information derived from monitoring foreign non-communications electromagnetic radiation".  ELINT can further be broken up into Telemetry Intelligence (TELINT) which is "concerned with monitoring of foreign telemetry signals such as those produced in missile tests" and Radar Intelligence (RADINT) "which involves the monitoring of foreign radar emissions." (Ball, 1988, p.2)  SIGINT satellites also listen to foreign satellite communications.  More details of what all this means are in Ball's book Pine Gap.  Processing and analysis of the huge volume of information produced by these satellites are handled by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Because its SIGINT satellites operate as giant vacuum cleaners in the sky, sucking up electromagnetic data, rather than as tracking satellites, it would seem unlikely that Pine Gap has anything to do with tracking UFOs.  This does not preclude the possibility that Pine Gap may have some sort of black UFO related mission(s) hidden behind the classified missions already discussed.

Professor Ball is a little vague as to whether Pine Gap also has a Photographic Intelligence (PHOTINT) mission.  However an article in The West Australian newspaper (Saturday, 7th September 1996) claimed that Pine Gap "is reportedly one of the earth stations for orbiting US photographic reconnaissance and electronic intelligence satellites."  So, do any Pine Gap satellites take photos of UFOs?  There is a significant technical difference between taking satellite photographs of fixed ground locations and taking them of small fast moving aerial objects like UFOs.  If the Pine Gap satellites do have PHOTINT capability they could probably only take photographs of UFOs if they received appropriate real-time tracking information about their location, unless they had actually landed on the ground.  As far as we know, providing tracking information is not what Pine Gap does, but it is what Nurrungar does.  (A Pine Gap Internet site can be found at www.octa4.net.au/marlinw/)

NURRUNGAR.   The United States satellite station at Nurrungar is a ground station for the US Defence Support Program (DSP) whose geostationary satellites provide the US Air Force Space Command with its first warning of the launch of any nuclear missiles in the event of nuclear war.  During the Gulf war they were also used to detect the launching of Iraqi Scud missiles.  In other words DSP satellites are designed to detect and track flying objects.  To do this they are equipped with 3.63 metre Schmidt infrared telescopes, visible light and ultraviolet sensors, and nuclear detonation detection (NUDET) sensors.  The infrared detectors are designed to sense the radiation emitted by nuclear missile booster rockets after they have been launched.

The ultraviolet sensors are designed to detect fluorescing gases around the booster rockets or missile nose cones during their flight.  Visible light television cameras on the satellites are also able to transmit pictures to the ground station when necessary.  UFO researchers will be interested to note that Professor Ball quotes Philip Klass as an expert on the equipment carried on these satellites. (Ball, 1987, p.22)  The NUDET sensors can detect certain nuclear particles, gamma-rays and x-rays from nuclear explosions.  (The Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar home-page can be found at www.roxby.net.au/~gumby/JDFN/index.html)

How clearly a satellite that is thirty-six thousand kilometres away can see what is happening down near the ground is highly classified, but one has to assume that DSP satellites, and any more recent versions, have the capability to see things that are as small and fast moving as nuclear missiles, otherwise they would be ineffective.  It seems therefore that these satellites would be ideal for tracking UFOs.  They wouldn't even need to be told to do it, they would track them automatically because of UFOs' resemblance to various missiles.  We know that UFOs sometimes radiate very brightly.  It is suspected that this is caused by plasma (fluorescing atmospheric gases) surrounding the craft.  We also know that UFOs often interfere with radios and televisions which suggests that they do emit some sort of radiation.  Given all the different electromagnetic frequencies that DSP satellites can detect, it would probably be safe to assume that they are able to detect and track at least some UFOs and have been doing so for some time.
The tracking and film recordings of these craft from such satellites would surely by now have revealed some interesting intelligence.  For example, by correlating this tracking data with geographical locations one could perhaps get a better idea of what UFOs are actually doing.  A single sighting from a witness on the ground may not tell us very much, but the cumulative data from say ten years of satellite tracking in Australia or anywhere else, including the large proportion of the planet that is covered in water, would present a very different statistical picture.

Some questions to be asked would be, are there more sightings near population centres, do they follow power lines, are they following some sort of grid pattern, do they revisit the same locations at fixed intervals, are they looking at known mineral deposits, or magnetic anomalies, or military bases, or is there no discernible pattern in the sightings?  As more data is accumulated, the more revealing and sophisticated such an analysis could become.  Different radar signatures for different types of craft could be gathered as well as technical data on acceleration and speed characteristics.

Such tracking data might help us discover whether some UFOs have underground or underwater bases.  Unfortunately we must assume that whoever or whatever is operating UFOs isn't stupid.  They may have very capable stealth or deception techniques that enable UFOs to pop in and out of view all over the place in a manner that completely befuddles any unfortunate intelligence analyst trying to find a pattern in the sightings.

An example of evasive action taken by aliens can be found in an article called 'Another Astonishing South American Report' by Flying Saucer Review consultant Jane Guma.  It describes the case of Orlando Jorge Ferraudi who in August 1965 was taken, fully conscious, into a UFO while fishing by a river on the coast of Brazil.  The UFO then set off under water.  Using telepathy, an alien explained that this was to avoid radar.  After a while they emerged from the sea and flew at a low altitude to the coast of Uruguay, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Africa from where they flew upwards into space.  The alien supposedly explained that "We must take these precautions so that we can thus avoid being regarded as invaders or conquerors.  We want your people to get used to us slowly, to see us just as like anybody else, because we are not strangers in this part of the Universe." (Guma, p.7)  It does however seem strange that the aliens would take such elaborate measures to avoid detection while explaining them to a human so that they eventually get published in a UFO magazine for everyone to read.

Being able to detect and track UFOs in real time would also enable the military to see at once if any of them had crashed.  The nearest rapid-deployment recovery team could then be alerted to ensure that any live aliens were apprehended, the UFO debris cleared up, and an appropriate cover story concocted before the media and local authorities got in on the act.  By ensuring fast and efficient crash retrieval such a tracking system would contribute to depriving the public of irrefutable evidence of the reality of UFOs, and facilitate the reverse engineering of recovered debris before anyone else got their hands on it.

BLACK PROJECTS.   How likely is it that a satellite station such as Nurrungar is tracking UFOs in addition to its other classified duties?  In an article to advertise his book Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny – Insider Account of Alien Contact and Government Cover-Up, retired Staff Sergeant Dan Sherman, who claims to have worked for the National Security Agency as an Intuitive Communicator with aliens, explains how US government extraterrestrial programs are hidden.  He claims that behind the usual categories of Secret and Top Secret exist what are called 'Unacknowledged Special Access Programs' (USAPs) otherwise known as 'black' programs.  These tightly compartmentalised programs operate on a need-to-know basis.  Behind them exist the most highly classified programs which are the extraterrestrial related ones.  This ensures that every alien project is carefully camouflaged behind another black project.

This classification system makes good sense and could easily operate at Pine Gap or Nurrungar.  Even those personnel with above Top Secret clearances might not know that a few of their colleagues spend some of their time accessing a highly restricted part of the computer system that receives and analyses UFO tracking data.  It is a common requirement in such work environments to activate a password controlled screen-saver on your computer terminal every time you get up from your desk.

It might be claimed that, quite apart from stealth technology to prevent satellites from tracking them, UFOs might not emit sufficient electromagnetic radiation to be detected by DSP satellites.  However in a detailed technical article in the MUFON UFO Journal called 'Do Our Satellites See UFOs', Ronald S. Regehr addresses this question and concludes that the electromagnetic intensity of at least some UFOs "is certainly detectable by today's technology satellites, thus effectively proving that at last one of our spy satellites could detect UFOs."  (Regher, p.18)

While this article has only discussed information about US radar and satellite systems that has almost certainly been superseded by more advanced technology, it must be remembered that an increasing number of other countries are launching sophisticated satellites that may be able to track UFOs as part of their surveillance missions.  Such countries include Great Britain, France, Japan and China, with several others in the pipeline.  This fact alone may provide some pressure on the United States to come clean about the UFO phenomenon rather than suffer the possible embarrassment of another country releasing such information before they do. 
 

References
A Pine Gap Internet site can be found at: http://www.octa4.net.au/marlinw/
Ball, Desmond.  (1987)  A Base For Debate: The US Satellite Station at Nurrungar.
Ball, Desmond.  (1988)  Pine Gap: Australia and the US Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellite Program.
Conway, Graham.  (1998, Autumn)  The 'Colorado Connection'.  Flying Saucer Review, Volume 43/3, pp.20-21.
Guma, Jane.  (1997, Winter)  Another astonishing South American report.  Flying Saucer Review, Volume 42/4, pp.6-10.
Hobbs, David.  (no date)  An Illustrated Guide To Space Warfare.
Howe, Linda Moulton  (1997, August-September)  The Roswell Incident: Fragments of evidence.  Nexus  Vol.4, No.5, pp.73-77.
How the NSA communicates with grey aliens.  (1998, Feb-March)  Nexus,  Vol.5, No.2, p.61.
Pine Gap references:  http://www.octa4.net.au/marlinw/pine_gap_sites.htm
Regehr, Ronald S.  (1994, April)  Do our satellites see UFOs?  MUFON UFO Journal, No.312, pp.6-9.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. & Desmond Ball.  (1990)  The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries.
Sherman, Dan.  (1997)  Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny – Insider Account of Alien Contact and Government Cover-Up.
The Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar home-page:  www.roxby.net.au/~gumby/JDFN/index.html
US Air Force News Service. (1998, August 19)  http://nacomm.org/news/1998/qtr3/estes.htm
 
 
 

Preamble to the Ultimate Debate
By Morley Legg
 

It is not always easy settling on what is true. For one thing too much truth too quickly can be unsettling indeed when
dealing with ufology, but ideas are afloat for the safest way through this.
A recent television debate between an historian, three theologian-scientists and the noted atheist zoologist Professor Richard Dawkins highlighted the gulf between the two sides of the ultimate disagreement on whether religion and science are compatible (Compass, February, 1999).

Whereas the religionists believed in God, a purpose in life, and that morality depended on the presence of religion, Richard Dawkins tersely stated that living creatures were made from "the same range of atoms as the rest of the cold dead universe", and that the only thing special about living matter was that its atoms were arranged as digitally coded genes.  He said all the information can now be read out of a cell and stored in a computer, and subsequently be available to be read back into other cells, saying that "the modern molecular digital gene is a nail in the coffin of the religious world view."
Naturally there were firm, tense disagreements.  In the face of his four opponents Dawkins was impressive.  He maintained life had no ultimate purpose and that religion was basically "stupefied superstition."  It was a debate that encouraged viewers to wonder and think.

Carl Sagan is equally critical of religion.  His book The Demon-Haunted World leads us to expect that in a debate on UFOs he would be as cold and abrasive as Dawkins.  It is odd that at the close of this millennium divisions are deepening, as if in anticipation of an outcome.  But will mainstream science on the one hand, and mainstream religions on the other, be overtaken by a growing mass of people eager for clarification as to whether or not aliens are here?  There is a fear that knowing too much too quickly could endanger the world economy.  Yet to continually dismiss the implications of the whole picture – sightings, abduction claims, the full range of physical evidence, cattle mutilations etc – by declaring all experiences to be misconceptions or hallucinations seems unwise indeed.  There are signs, however, that debates on this matter are a growing probability.

In Britain, in July 1997, a significant televised debate between ufologists and sceptics brought a phone-in response of one hundred thousand calls – with ninety-two percent voting for the ufologists (Strange But True, 1997).  The enthusiasm of the audience gave the impression that more would follow.  Such debates are of immense importance if the evidence and implications of an alien presence are to reach the wider public.
There is another reason why further debates could be inevitable.  On August 29th 1998, in England, The Times newspaper published a front page report saying that Father Corrado Balducci of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, said it was wrong to assert that reports of encounters with aliens are not credible.  "Their existence can no longer be denied, for there is too much evidence for the existence of extraterrestrials and flying saucers", he said.  The report indicated that some Vatican officials were taking the matter seriously.

The announcement was further reported in the English UFO Magazine (November–December, 1998, p.65) which commented that because three leading religious figures attended the inaugural meeting of 'Origins' at the White House in the United States, they could have been warned: "You have five years in which to educate your flock to the extraterrestrial concept ..."

These unexpected admissions will fuel divisions, and the question of an alien presence on earth will need resolving.  It will take time for whole populations ignorant of the claims to adjust.  However, there could be help from an unexpected source.  In January 1999, on the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Radio National program Late Night Live, Peter Vardy, a philosopher from the University of London, was speaking about new approaches to aid in arriving at the truth.  There was no mention of ufology, but aspects of his talk offered hope for anyone dedicated to uncovering the truth from controversial or suppressed material.

Peter Vardy spoke of new ways to explore the important neglected ground between the idea of absolute truth and the idea that truth is only a social construct – that truth varies with different cultures.  Truth, he stressed, was "most dangerous with people who know", and who then use it as a weapon of power to inflict on others, as fundamentalists are inclined to do.  Comments were made that whereas imperialism in the Western patriarchal rational approach suppressed or controlled the feminine and the indigenous, control in our modern world had fallen into the hands of science and the owners of the world's media.  Many who explore anomalous phenomena have often felt science and the world media were reluctant to give fair representation to disclosures that undermine conventional viewpoints.

Getting to the prime truths behind major controversies – whether they are environmental, nuclear, or alien abduction – is surely of ultimate importance.  And this is where the advice of Peter Vardy is interesting.  He said it was important for young people to start thinking about meaning, value and what is true, and then to ask, "How do we critique what we have arrived at?"  Becoming familiar with the rudiments of arriving at truth, and being practised at facing even our own critique, would be essential for those taking part in debates.  Humility was essential; any sign of arrogance suggested truth was becoming elusive.  He said if you are making a "realist truth claim" you have to accept the possibility of being wrong.

Vardy said religious and values education (RVE) should not be associated with the church.  It was an academic subject open to all beliefs.  The aim was not to surrender to education as if it were an indoctrination, but to help young people to probe, to question, to analyse – to think through issues of meaning and value.  In Britain, RVE was now mandatory in science and business faculties because it was realised that huge advances in science involved consequences.  Students required a grasp of the end result of their endeavours.

Imagine a debate is in progress and we take a side on whether or not aliens exist on earth.  How would we cope with being proved wrong?  With so much disinformation fed into ufology, 'being wrong' about certain issues or cases is a possibility we should be prepared to admit.  As for being wrong about the whole UFO-alien phenomenon, well, we'll have to wait and see.  The important thing according to Vardy is to have developed and maintained the truth or the integrity of your seeking, and that integrity should enable you to admit being wrong, in spite of the costs involved.

It is hard for people entrenched in polarities to agree on the possibility of being wrong, and it is not unknown for fundamentalist attitudes to show up in anyone, scientists included, who use their education as if it were an indoctrination.  The debate between Richard Dawkins and the theologians suggested some personal work on desires and agendas was required.  Peter Vardy's idea of being open to re-examining knowledge, of becoming practised at self critique, could reduce divisions and antagonisms, thereby shifting emphasis from fighting to defend a position, to being open to learn something new.

This may call for a different mind-set.  The first essential is to have an adjudicator awake to preconceptions, and proficient at imposing fair standards.  This was proved possible with Michael Aspel's handling of the English debate.  And then it would be a requirement for each participant to have read and be questioned on literature chosen by the opposing side.  For example the sceptics might choose Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, and Curtis Peebles' Watch the Skies for ufologists to study.  The ufologists might challenge the sceptics with Jim Marrs' Alien Agenda and Timothy Good's Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat.

It could be argued that Truth, like reality, has different facets; that each individual is like a lens with a certain setting.  Usually we remain with our unique focus, but it is known that under certain conditions one's consciousness can move through different settings.  Perhaps only then can one appreciate the ranges of difference between the perceptions of theologians, scientists, and abductees.  But in this rapidly changing world, exploring these different ways of sensing reality, or realities, should give us the best chance of discovering a way to survive.

Peter Vardy's ideas may be what we need to enjoy more fulfilling debates, and also a way to ward off the influence of selfish genes.  But when the question of an alien presence is brought forth for public scrutiny, dare we hope that we will be more satisfied with the truth, even if it leaves us feeling mistaken or vulnerable. 

References
Dawkins, Richard  (1989)  The Selfish Gene.
Extraterrestrials and the Vatican.  (1998, Novenber-December)  UFO Magazine.
Good, Timothy  (1996)  Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat.
Heart of the Matter.  (1999, February 14)  Compass.  Australian Broadcasting Commission Television.
Marrs, Jim  (1997)  Alien Agenda.
Peebles, Curtis.  (1994)  Watch the Skies.
Sagan, Carl.  (1995)  The Demon-Haunted World.
Strange But True.  (1997, July)  Independent TV, UK.  (reviewed in Legg, M.  (1998)  'Battle Lines', Journal of Alternative Realities, Volume 6, Issue 1, p.9).
Vardy, Peter.  (1994)  The Puzzle of Ethics.
Vardy, Peter.  (1995)  The Puzzle of God.
Vardy, Peter.  (1999, January)  Late Night Live.  Australian Broadcasting Commission, Radio National.
 
 
 

Spirit Possession
A Malay Experience
By Judy Bryning

After midnight and a seafood banquet on the beach, several of us still sat around the table, animated by talk and laughter.  Immersed in the sudden depth of holiday friendships were Malaysians Ghazzali and Unku from London with Pakistani friend Karim, and the only local resident, Ali from Kuala Lumpur.  Right out of our idyllic here-and-now context I was absorbed in hearing first-hand accounts of the world of theatre and fashion in London.  So I didn't at first look around when Ghaz interrupted with sudden concern.  Seeing one of the motel staff running to the beach, he exclaimed "She is possessed!"  Possession was just a figure of speech to me, rather than its original and literal meaning.  I still didn't take him seriously, but Malaysian-born Ghaz had recognised the signs instantly.
The girl who was running like a professional athlete from the fluorescent glare to the blackness of the ocean seemed unimpeded by her long nightgown.  Several of the kampong (village) men were in pursuit, but had no chance of catching up with her.  Luckily, before she reached the water's edge, someone managed to head her off, and she disappeared up the beach into the night.  The appalling screams and howling coming from the blackness were hard to relate to the charming, intelligent eighteen-year-old girl who enjoyed our exchange language lessons in brief interludes when free from the kitchen.  More extrovert than any other girl on the staff, her inquiring mind and strength of personality had impressed me at the outset.

By this time every available man from the kampong had joined in the chase.  Ma't Nur the local bomoh (village healer) was there, but it was hard to see who was who down near the water.  There was much alarm that she could climb and jump from the rocks, killing herself.  They explained that if she were allowed to rush into the ocean with "double power" she would swim and swim and only become conscious when the spirit left her.  She would then drown from panic and exhaustion.
I had thought that the problem would be resolved within the hour.  An hour and a half later, the screaming and struggling were continuing.  Twice at least she was brought up to the well-lit area and laid on the sand.  On one occasion her legs were bound up with a sarong.  Her eyes were gleaming, but unseeing.  Ghaz cautioned me not to look into them, and to move back.  I took this warning very seriously indeed, having once had a very nasty experience from innocently looking into the eye of a Westerner with occult training.  It took several men to hold the girl down.  One man found blood down the front of his sarong, but no wound on anyone could be found.  Next morning I saw that one young boy had little red crescent marks from her nails all over the left side of his chest.

Sometimes she would appear to calm down and said to them "Why are you holding me?  I'm not going anywhere."  Immediately they released her, she made a wild dash for it.  The next time she was captured, the local bomoh was holding her and achieved a dramatic if temporary effect when he pressed behind her ears.  As if from a strong sedative, her head dropped to one side and her body sagged.  When it seemed that she was calmer, the spirit reasserted itself in a screaming snarl and convulsive kicking and writhing.

At this stage it was established from what she was saying that the possessing spirit was a hantu air laut (ocean spirit).  "I don't belong here – I live there", she had claimed, pointing to the sea.  The second bomoh to try his abilities was a dark, wizened little man.  He sat on his haunches, right arm extended in a rigid gesture.  This had no apparent effect, as he was also equipped to deal only with land spirits.
Someone went by motor bike to another kampong to bring back an older woman bomoh who could handle sea spirits.  The proceedings then continued in a room at the back of the restaurant.  A little while later we heard that the girl was responding to treatment.  The screaming and superhuman strength of this tiny eighteen year old had lasted two hours.  Actually it had started well before midnight, when she was depressed and crying in her room.

At about three in the morning the crisis was over, and we could get some sleep.  Next day Ghaz reported that when the girl came to, she had asked why there was sand all over her arms and nightdress, and in her hair.  She remembered nothing of the incident.  Soon after, her parents arrived to take her back to her kampong.  She was very tired and bruised.  "How long do you think she will be away?" I asked.  "Maybe two days, maybe one week" was the reply.  She was absent only for one day, and resumed work the following day.  She had been made aware of what happened, and it was accepted by all as an incident without any ominous implications.  Emphatic cheerfulness in her response to my anxious enquires contained no trace of shyness over the episode.  "Baik, baik" (good), she smiled with positive confidence.

As her cheerful demeanour was resumed, my perplexity began.  Two days later Ghaz reported that another possession incident had occurred that morning, and it had been worse in a way.  Another girl had been growling like a dog.  This time it had not been a hantu air laut (sea spirit), but a hantu darat (land spirit), so the local bomoh had been able to deal with it.  These two cases recalled the contagious element in the medieval religious hysteria in convents, notably in the famous 'Devils of Loudun' episode.  However, the psychologists' explanation of hysteria seems as incomplete as the terms used by anthropologists — mana meaning supernatural or magical power, and semangat meaning vital force or spirit; labels which leave the underlying questions on possession unanswered.
On the other hand, some words do give clues to our understanding.  In another originally animistic culture, that of Java, the most common terms for spirit possession are kesurupan (to forget) and ndadi which means not only to trance, but also simply to happen or to become.  This illustrates the smooth transition between the unconscious trance state, and the acceptance of it as a happening, as with any event which succeeds another in the phenomenal world.

My grasp of Malay and the girl's English did not permit communication at more than a superficial level.  Yet I felt her to be a much stronger personality than the other waitresses, as she approached the guests with assurance, showing interest in their nationality and occupation.  Observing my efforts to learn some of the language with a small dictionary, she had taken every chance to join me in an exchange language lesson; how to ask the guests what they would like to eat or drink, etc.  Pleasant efficiency characterised her attitude.  Essentially she was a typical Malay girl, with all the dignity of her culture, with or without head covering.

Mr Adam, one of the staff, repeated with quiet insistence that her faith had not been strong enough, which was why the spirit had been able to enter.  I could not comment on this, but her strength of mind seemed to be an obvious character trait.  One incident which had drawn mild disapproval from the small village community was one which would have passed without much reaction in modern Western society.  One night she had gone into the town with friends and returned rather late.  The extended family/kampong lifestyle did not approve of such completely independent behaviour.  I conjectured that such a strong-willed girl could possibly feel the frustration of being in an Islamic culture which allowed less social mobility to women of less sophisticated families.  The safety that this restriction afforded to young kampong women was generally not resented by more conforming personalities.  The stress of waiting for her school exam results could also have contributed a definite anxiety.  In the West, we would call her personality type a 'free spirit'.  But in the Malay language the term 'free spirit' has a precise meaning – that of a wandering hantu (ghost)!  An interesting coincidence.

Here it is appropriate to quote from K. M. Endicott's book An Analysis of Malay Magic, "the most powerful essences are only vaguely defined, while the more clearly defined essences are more vulnerable to the constraint of material boundaries.  Free spirits, corresponding to vague anxieties, are much more powerful than semangat, which are bound to the physical bodies from which their clear definition is largely derived." (Endicott, p.132)  Vague anxieties could by this definition account for the powerful effects we had witnessed.  But also the openness of an inquiring mind could have admitted an uninvited guest inadvertently.
Russian-American psychic Olga Worrall, quoted in Realms of Healing by Krippner and Villoldo, states that in a true case of possession, a discarnate spirit "will occupy the body of a person who is easily influenced."  Certainly this girl was unusually demonstrative and open to new experiences.  Even recalling her extravagant farewell embraces, I was unprepared for the intensity of her welcome, six months later on my return.  In the interim I had sent her a photo of herself.  As soon as the taxi stopped at the back of the restaurant, she rushed out and dived in on me through the open car door, hugging me wildly.  There had been no return of the hantu in the intervening time.  She now had a boyfriend, and seemed just as bright, confident and cheerful as before.

There is a lot to be learnt from this encounter.  In any Western country, a young girl who exhibited similar violently disruptive behaviour would have been restrained by medical personnel and/or police.  Committal to hospital and the administering of strong sedatives would be routine treatment.  Dulled and quietened behaviour would have been the result, and a quick return to the community unlikely.  The patient would not be made to feel that the episode had been acceptable, although they would certainly not be held responsible.  Dismay and embarrassment would be felt in the family concerned.  After return from hospital, prolonged counselling would attempt to assist reintegration with the family and the community.  This Western approach to handling such a situation contrasts less favourably with the more humane kampong method.  I am not suggesting that one type of treatment, developed in a certain culture, can be transferred unmodified to another, just like that.

Each culture produces the corrective mechanisms to cope with the aberrations which occur in that particular culture.  So, the age-old way of the bomoh in Malaysia, called the dukun in Indonesia, both answer the psychological and spiritual needs of that culture perfectly.  In our society, the disturbed behaviour just described which could appear similar, might well include an element of psychosis, or evidence some extreme degenerative condition.
But the problem is that in the West, options in treatment are not open to the individual in the initial stage.  After such an episode, picking up the pieces will include the pieces which come from an iatrogenic jigsaw set, as well as the individual's own fragmented picture (iatrogenic means caused by medical treatment).

The Malay example above illustrates the problems of a syncretic religious tradition, where an overall and traditional stress is created in attempting to synthesise the indigenous forces of animism with Islam.  The earlier skilful integration of this legacy with Hindu tradition and Islam was made over the centuries in Java, but even so, the resulting mix forms a precarious balancing act.  This has been forced into the political arena for legitimation in the last twenty years.

Central Java being the bulwark of Javanist tradition, a centralised focus had been formed for those beliefs and that way of thinking to persist.  Recently, since the colonial period, there has been politically unrestricted access to a unifying common language, Indonesian.  The exclusion of all but the highest class of Indonesians from learning and using Dutch was a device to maintain control by the Dutch colonialists.  The Javanese situation had the effect of reinforcing and strengthening the Javanist way of thinking of the masses.  In Malaysia on the other hand the English language was freely used by everyone.  Also, since the fifteenth century, Malaysia has had a far greater concentration of heterogeneous influence from Chinese and Indian communities.

Despite these differing influences on the outlook of the Malay and the Javanese, the similarity in behaviour, in a predisposition to entering trance states, shows a distinct family likeness.  The economic progress of the last twenty years, together with growing Islamic fundamentalism, would have provided a similar cultural overlay for both countries.  It could be argued that modernism itself adds to the inherent stresses of a syncretic religion, or any religion for that matter.  This interpretation would probably be strongly resisted by adherents of Islam.  Dr Paul Stange would contend that an "inner Islamisation" has been achieved in many instances.  He warns against simplistic interpretations of the polarities of Javanism and Islam.  "Each pole is continually redefined through the process of their interaction" (Stange, p.43).  The stormy episode which I witnessed is more easily understood in the light of the dialectic of Islam and indigenous beliefs.
To change focus to a Western context, modern orthodox psychology seems unduly limited in its mode of dealing with aberrant social behaviour in comparison with the methods used in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Spirit possession and exorcism was the theme of a Commission convened by the then Bishop of Exeter in the United Kingdom in 1965, and an expanded version of the proceedings was published in 1987.  The participating English clerics who were frequently involved with day-to-day cases of exorcism show a similar alignment with the Malays and Javanese in their recognition of paranormal manifestations of social or personal unease and spirit presence.
As an addendum to the above, it is worth noting the term used in Java, kesurupan which denotes both trance and forgetting.  This implies an ancient awareness which Western cultures have either forgotten or have not considered important to emphasise in this way.  From the evidence of UFO abductees, it seems that the connection between trance and complete loss of memory  is not simply a socially-sanctioned form of behaviour common to a few remaining animist-based societies.  Instead it may be the product of a neuro-physiological mechanism common to human kind.
There are others who are able to control and exploit the trance function which we see as a random 'ethnic' aberration.  Instead of considering it as such, and treating the experiencer's account as being of doubtful credibility, researchers would do well to study the cultures where the trance phenomenon can still be seen in action, and relay their observations to those directly concerned with testing brain function for more subtle states of consciousness than we have yet been able to determine. 

References
Endicott, Kirk Michael.  (1970)  An Analysis of Malay Magic.  Oxford University Press, London.
Krippner, Stanley & Villoldo, Alberto.  (1976)  The Realms of Healing. Celestial Arts, California.
Perry Michael, (Editor, 1987)  Deliverance: Psychic Disturbances and Occult Involvement. SPCK, The Christian Exorcism Study Group, Great Britain.
Stange, Paul.  (October 1979)  Configurations of Javanese Possession Experience in Religious Traditions, Vol.2, No.2, WAIT, Western Australia.
Stange, Paul.  (1985)  Indonesian Religious History,  Asian Studies Programme, Murdoch University, Western Australia.

This article is based on one first published in the Proceedings of the Western Australian Intervarsity Barebones Symposium (1992), Postgraduate Student Association, Curtin University of Technology.
 
 

Uri Geller:
On Spoons & Saucers
By Kym Bidstrup
 

"Keem, you can do eet.  Concentrate.  Anyone can do eet!"  Uri Geller's accent was as broad as his encouragement.  He had hold of my wrist and was willing me to succeed.  But in my hands, the cutlery simply would not budge.  Moments later, I was witnessing the spellbinding spoon-bender do what has baffled and divided people around the globe.  He held the same spoon out from his body and began to stroke it lightly.  I had earlier examined the spoon carefully for signs of trickery, I could not have been closer to him, as a young man I had studied sleight of hand for five years, and my then eighteen years as a professional journalist had brought with them a healthy scepticism, but I can only tell you what I saw.  Uri furrowed his brow and directed my gaze to just above the bowl, and the spoon suddenly flopped as though molten.  He stopped stroking it, and the motion continued effortlessly for a second or so.  He then autographed the spoon and presented it to me.  I still have it, and I still don't get it.

In order to explain how I came to become friendly with Uri Geller, it's necessary to tell you a little about myself.  During the late 1980s, I was stationed in London as the Bureau Chief for Australia's Seven television network.  Arranging an interview with Geller was a routine, albeit exciting, assignment.  He was cordial and co-operative, proudly showing off his sprawling mansion in the picture postcard village of Sunning-on-Thames in Berkshire, complete with Uri memorabilia and artworks, including priceless original sculptures and drawings by the Spanish surrealist, Salvador Dali.  It is just one of the houses he has dotted around the world.

Clearly, Geller did not have to curve any more cutlery if he didn't want to.  But it was metal of a different kind that had made his fortune, he said, and there was an Australian connection.  Geller told me that for the past ten or so years he had been travelling the world for mega-mining corporations dowsing for minerals.  His starting price, he insisted, was in the region of two million dollars – plus royalties (remember, this is the late 1980s!) and he had been extremely successful in finding gold, copper, oil, even diamonds in exotic locations including the Amazon jungle and the Solomon Islands.  It had all begun, he said, with the Australian firm, Zanex Limited of Melbourne, and its pioneering CEO, Peter Sterling.

Geller was characteristically forthright about his dowsing success: "When I say very successful, from all the times that I did go and look for oil or diamonds or copper et cetera et cetera and minerals, I failed most of the time!  But  I am on a much higher success rate than conventional exploration.  So chairmen of the board who were daring, hired me on an unconventional way to look for minerals.  And literally I found oil and I found gold and that made me millions."  Geller said he worked initially from detailed maps, circling places he felt were promising, and then visited the actual location for a more accurate assessment.  It was not, he admitted, an exact science: "I could be wrong!  But there is nothing that I hide because every contract that I do says that it's a risk, and I don't guarantee.  I mean, I'm not a robot.  I'm not a machine that I can guarantee things to happen."

I was fascinated by my first meeting with this energetic and enigmatic character, but a busy work schedule left little time to reflect on individual assignments.  But within a week I began to have the persistent feeling that I should make contact with Uri Geller again.  And soon.  I suppressed the notion as some sort of ego reaction at hobnobbing with the rich and famous.  That is until it became urgent.

The feeling reached a peak one day at home when I was trying to fix a troublesome bathroom tap.  My mind was suddenly flooded with rainbow images and the compelling desire to telephone Uri.  Feeling extremely foolish and mentally speculating that I was the victim of a post-hypnotic suggestion, I rang.  Uri expressed surprise but said there was obviously some "psychic link" between us that should be explored.  When we met again he greeted me jubilantly at the front door and led me to one of his many bathrooms.  There he proudly displayed a vivid rainbow shower curtain.  It was the curtain, he insisted, that he had been installing at the time of my urgent vision.  I admit the possibility of an hypnotic prompt planted at our first meeting, and I see no reason why Geller could not have rushed out and bought something in rainbow colours as a stunt.  Two things though.  Let's face it, I am an obscure journalist from an obscure country and he is a wealthy world identity with little to gain by impressing me.  And secondly, while I told Geller about the rainbow colours, I did not mention where the vision had occurred.  I find it significant that we were both in bathrooms when this 'link' was forged.

Our 'connection' was to manifest itself many times over the several years I spent in England.  On one occasion, I remember arriving at his huge house to find Uri opening the mail and suddenly being struck by the idea that someone should make a movie about his amazing life.  No sooner had I voiced the notion than he handed me a letter from a world-renowned playwright with whom Uri had been negotiating to write a screenplay.  It had arrived that very day.  Another time Uri invited me to draw a simple diagram and try to transmit it psychically to him.  Aware that old music hall magicians had developed a technique of recreating drawings by watching their subjects' hand movements and inverting them, I was careful to cover the sweep of my pen.  Within seconds, Uri had produced an almost identical drawing.  On another occasion, I watched bewildered as he sucked in his breath and clenched his fists, then moved a large nautical compass out of alignment, first one way, then the other without touching it.

The Uri Geller I came to know was a complex character.  On the one hand he was renowned as a single-minded, even ruthless, businessman with the Midas touch.  He traveled regularly to Europe and the United States in his capacity as a one-man corporation, a kind of Uri Inc.  Among other things, he was an inventor – the Diamontron and Moneytron were particularly successful – an author many times over, psychic dowser and, of course, performer.  He even had a Geller board game.  Yet he spent unpaid hours poring over the first draft of what was, in retrospect, my pretty awful attempt at a first novel.  He generously offered to write a foreword.  He devoted many more hours suggesting agents and publishers who might be able to help me with my writing career.

He opened his heart and home to entertain a desperately-ill friend of mine who was recovering from a heart transplant operation, just because I casually mentioned her plight.  He was devoted to his wife Hanna and their two children, Natalie and Daniel, and yet I never saw him spend much time with them.

The Geller legacy seems assured though.  According to Uri, Daniel has now developed powers far beyond his own at the same age.  But the person I saw constantly at Uri's side was Shipi Shtrang, a combination of manager, agent, business adviser, confidante and permanent house guest.  He is also Hanna's brother and the man most often cited as Uri's partner-in-deception.  Shtrang has been with Geller since the start.  As a teenage entrepreneur, it was Shipi who arranged Uri's first performance at a Tel Aviv school hall in 1969.  Uri was twenty two, Shipi just fourteen.  Both have always denied they are accomplices.  In one of our on-camera interviews, Uri made it clear he didn't need outside help to produce what he liked to call "the Geller effect":
Question: No chemicals?
Geller: Of course not.
Q: No mechanical devices?
G: Of course not.
Q: Sleight of hand?
G: No.
Q: No assistants?
G: No.  Everything that has been said about me in the past, of these chemicals and assistants and laser beams and all that, is nonsense.  I mean, listen Kym, let's face it, if it was not real don't you think I would have been caught by now, after fifteen years?  It's ridiculous.  I mean, come on!
Q: No trickery whatsoever?
G: No.
Q: Have you ever used trickery?
G: Never.  The only time that I used something that you could call trickery is in my book, I reveal it.  I have nothing to hide.
Q: Uri, a lot of people would say, why don't you just go to a reputable laboratory, sit down, do all their tests and let them decide, let's get this controversy over once and for all.
G: Look Kym, I don't want to start pulling out books here, but I have done all that in the past.  I've done it!  I've sat in Stanford Research Institute, I've sat in Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab., I've been in Kent State University, I've been in the University of London.  How long, how many times can I do it?

For a man who has been involved in a string of sometimes bitter lawsuits to protect his reputation, Uri could also appear downright cavalier about his image as a jet-setting super-psychic, more interested in show than substance:
Question: If that's all true, why do you insist that you're a showman?  It conjures up the image of ...
Geller: Well, I am a showman!  I am a showman!  I was born a showman!  I mean, look, everyone who appears on stage is a showman.  Don't you think that President Reagan (then US President) is a showman?  You think he is a showman and so do other people.  But he's also a president.  Everyone that can talk to people on the stage and entertain people is a showman.  If there are people who are against me because of that it's their problem.  There is no law that a person that has certain abilities has to live on a mountain and eat herbs in a cave!
Uri certainly didn't live in a cave.  But there's some truth in the herbal reference.  I don't believe it's generally known that he is a strict vegetarian, telling me on many occasions that it 'amplified' his powers.  He is also an exercise devotee.  At the time we were seeing each other, he would rise early, jog around the village and surrounds for an hour, enjoy a massive vegetarian breakfast, then adjourn to his exercise cycle for another punishing hour and a half while he opened his mail, dictated anything he might be working on, and answered calls from around the world.  It was an awe-inspiring sight.

Throughout history, charismatic figures have been said to influence people, events, the very space around them.  An apparently tireless self-publicist, Uri would sometimes amaze me by playing down astonishing reports about himself.  I was once present when, furiously pedalling on his exercise bike, he fielded questions from first Time magazine and then Newsweek on a story that was sweeping the US.  Allegedly, Uri had given a secret briefing to high government officials in a top security Washington bunker after agreeing to beam 'positive thoughts' to the Russian negotiating team at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.  The prestigious news agencies wanted to know – understandably – whether an Israeli entertainer was bending Russian minds and American arms policy?  Later, I questioned Uri about the story and found him uncommonly coy:
Question: Can you confirm that this meeting took place?
Geller: Part of the question, I can say, yes it's true the meeting did take place.
Q: And did it take place, as reported, in a sealed room, 'The Vault'?
G: Yes, it was because we were worried, or some people were worried that somebody could eavesdrop.  It was a de-bugged room and so forth.  The rest of the question, I cannot comment who was there.

Subsequent US reports claimed American security chiefs, US arms negotiators and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were all present at the so-called 'psychic briefing'.  As for Geller, he would only add that he had performed "sensitive security work" for several international security agencies.  He declined to name them or the countries involved, but assured me it had always been "positive and not destructive".

During our talks, Uri also laid to rest one of the greatest myths surrounding his long and controversial career.  While he has an enormous and educated interest in the UFO phenomena, he was not visited or controlled by extraterrestrial forces in flying saucers.  At least not as far as he was aware.  He admitted to embarrassment about the claims in Andrija Puharich's 1974 book Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller.  They apparently arose from dreamlike hypnotic sessions during which Geller gave his imagination full rein.  His fascination with space and space travel, going back as far as primary school, when he would entertain classmates with vivid sci-fi odysseys, is well-documented.  Today, Uri admits there is a slight chance that "some of my energies do have some kind of extraterrestrial connection", but nothing more.
So what are we to make of Uri Geller?  I have my own opinion.  Many disagree.  For millions around the globe the jury is still out.  And Uri is wise enough to know that there's longevity – and a tidy living – in mystery: "Remember Kym, I told you in the beginning, that I need a safety device.  I don't mind staying controversial.  I would rather stay, sort of mystical – is he real or is he not?" 

References
Puharich, Andrija.  (1974)  Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller.
Geller, Uri & Playfair, Guy Lyon.  (1986)  The Geller Effect.
 
 

My ET Experiences
By Tracey Taylor

From a young age strange occurrences became almost routine in my life.  I would wake up some mornings feeling exhausted and dazed after wild dreams of being taken aboard spaceships where many bizarre things occurred.  I was unable to accept that these were anything more than the crazy imaginings and dreams of my overactive mind, as those close to me would often put it.  At primary school I had an invisible, giant friend to whom I would talk, and to this day I can vividly remember the warm, large hand that used to guide me around the play-yard, telling me jokes.  At night I would sometimes have another visitor, whom I named Father Christmas, who made me feel uneasy and frightened as he entered my room.  But by hiding myself deep down under the blankets, too scared to breathe, a strong sensation of calmness and security would suddenly come over me.  I would then find myself floating in the night sky looking at the millions of shining stars around me.

At the age of five I was playing outside in the street with my friend from next door, when we saw what we presumed to be a plane heading towards us from the distance.  It rapidly approached, descending at incredible speed, halting in the sky directly above us.  Thinking it was going to hit us, we ducked down low as it descended below the telephone poles, before shooting off in the other direction.  Frightened and crying, I ran home to my mother who asked me what had happened.  I frantically tried to explain to her about the strange plane.  Not understanding the seemingly wild story, she comforted me telling me that it was illegal for a plane to fly so low.

From the moment I could hold a pencil I would draw.  It was my passion and my gift.  I started attending private art tutoring at the age of nine and began painting still life and landscapes.  Spending so much time looking at my subjects, which were usually nature and people, I developed the ability to see auras.  I believed this to be a fault in my eyes, until I came across a book on the subject a few years later.

In 1992, at the age of fifteen, I experienced a rapid onset of psychic and intuitive healing abilities, feeling a strong urge to heal people using my hands.  However I had never before heard of such a thing, and those around me thought I was just excessively imaginative.  With a deep sense of sadness I repressed those abilities for many years.  I dealt with the opposition from those around me by continually believing their opinions about my seemingly outrageous imagination.

Unable to express myself freely or communicate to others about what was occurring in my life, I fell into a deep dark crevasse of doubt and confusion.  The more I would try to fit in at school and elsewhere, the bigger the tear became within me.  I attended a rather hostile public high school in Geraldton, Western Australia, as a very shy girl who tried to keep to herself as much as possible.  If I was asked to express my so-called 'ridiculous' point of view about the world, I felt very isolated when I was ridiculed by the other students and sometimes the teachers.  My English teacher was mistakenly convinced that I was taking drugs because of the extraordinary short stories and poems I would write for assignments, often telling me in front of the whole class that I must be on something to come up with such crazy tales.
It all became too much for me, and by my final year of high school I had changed from a shy, gentle 'A' student, with my own way of thinking, into a rebellious, confused 'D' student who tried to fit in as best as she could with the other students.  I denied my inner truth, so that I could feel accepted by others and not to have to put up with the cruel teasing and pranks I had endured since primary school.

In 1996 I was catapulted into the fashion world as a model after winning a competition.  Having experienced so much previous invalidation and ridicule, the anxiety and insecurity of who I was inside was now overlaid with the acknowledgment of who I was on the outside.  I felt accepted and loved for the way I looked, which was validated by others.  Underneath, the secrets in my life were building, and my insecurity growing.  I was living a lie and it seemed there was nothing I could do about it.
I moved to Sydney to embark on a professional modelling career, which proved to be a constant struggle, emotionally and physically.  In the house where my partner and I were living I began to see spirits and other strange looking beings, usually possessing awkward bodies and non-human faces.  My dreams were becoming increasingly intense and obscure.  Some nights I would not sleep, in fear and anticipation of what was to come.  When I did sleep my dreams were bizarre, of undergoing physical examinations, or being in strange looking classrooms.  Grey beings with large black eyes would sometimes telepathically teach me to draw and write symbols in the form of holograms.  These would often extend from my hands via static-like beams of electric-blue light.  I lacked energy, my self confidence suffered greatly and it became almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning because I was so tired.  The model agency became increasingly suspicious and displeased because I was constantly calling in sick.  I didn't know what to say to them.  I could hardly tell them that I was up all night being abducted by little grey men and undergoing strange operations – I'm sure they'd have been really sympathetic!  I couldn't even tell my partner what was happening, let alone my new employer.

It became increasingly difficult to cope, I felt devastated and guilty about what was happening.  I honestly thought that I was going crazy.  My worried boyfriend talked me into seeing a doctor and immediately made an appointment.  I tried to explain to the doctor the effects that my horrible dreams were having on me.  After less than five minutes he told me I was just depressed, and wrote out a prescription for antidepressants and sleeping tablets.  Although I wasn't comfortable about taking the drugs, it was a relief to be able to have a decent night's sleep without such overwhelming dreams, and my experiences seemed less intense for a short while.

At Christmas in 1996 I travelled home to Western Australia to take a break and visit my family.  I was staying at my grandmother's house in Perth when one night I was suddenly overcome by an intense sensation to do some writing before going to sleep.  This was unusual for me, but, as there happened to be a pen and paper next to the bed, I decided to go with the feeling.  A page of information, over which I felt I had little control, seemed to flow from my hand without my knowing what was being written.  The next morning as I read it, I couldn't comprehend how I had used such large words to write something beyond my understanding.  To my astonishment and disbelief, contrary to everything I had ever been taught about evolution, there I was reading a paragraph stating that the human race had been created by extraterrestrials!  It also contained information about genetic manipulation, with the use of human and extraterrestrial DNA to create another species.

For me this was totally mind boggling and confusing to say the least.  I had never read, seen or heard anything about extraterrestrials doing experiments using DNA, let alone that we were created by them.  I just couldn't understand how it was possible for me to write information that went against every belief I had.  I had heard of channelling, but my knowledge of such things was extremely limited.  After trying to convince myself that this must have been a one-off occurrence, I started feeling more strange urges to put pen to paper.  More information seemed to flow through me of human-alien interaction, implants, dimensions, spirituality, the raising of consciousness and the creation of humanity.  If this wasn't enough, I sometimes found myself involuntarily writing or speaking another language.

In 1997 I signed a contract to work in Japan for three months.  It was the first time I had travelled overseas alone and with all that was happening it was quite frightening to leave the security of my family and boyfriend in Australia.  However, being alone was really a blessing in disguise, as it gave me the chance to confront my fear of these experiences and open up to them more than ever.  My dreams in Japan were the most vivid and frightening that I had had yet, but living on my own allowed me to delve deep into them, mustering up enough courage to ask the beings questions about why this was happening to me.  To my amazement I received answers in the form of dreams, writing, and from a voice within my mind.  From the answers I received, it seemed that I had chosen to be a part of an evolutionary cycle in the creation of a new and more spiritually advanced species, which will eventually inhabit planet earth.  I also received information about the raising of human consciousness and a dimensional shift which is now occurring on earth, assisting us to access other realms more freely and increase our spiritual understanding.  At the time this was the most bizarre information I had ever heard and I still did not know what significance it had for me.  The answer I kept receiving was, "Be patient, all will be revealed."
I kept a diary of my experiences while in Japan, and one morning felt the urge to draw a symbol which I had seen in a dream during which many spaceships were moving around in a starry night sky.  Then the stars moved into a configuration of a bird.  As I was drawing this, my hand seemed once again to take over and I ended up completing a geometric symbol that was more detailed than the one seen in the dream.  Over the next two years other similar drawings and interpretations have been completed, with what feels like hardly any input from my conscious mind.  The less I concentrate on what I am doing, the easier the information and symbols seem to come through.  This was all totally bizarre and I had no idea why I was doing this or what I was supposed to make of it.

After arriving home from Japan, modelling no longer interested me as a career.  I found it was too superficial, as I was now prepared to look more deeply within myself beyond my known reality, having conquered many of my fears about it while I was away.  At the end of 1997 my boyfriend and I headed home to Geraldton before moving to Perth.  My time in Japan had given me a new understanding of reality.  I could no longer deny my experiences, yet I had an even greater fear to overcome.  I was gradually integrating the intensity of my experiences, although I had yet to overcome the barrier of what others would think of me if I were to tell them of my findings.  New information and personal understandings were being realised daily.  Physical evidence of this reality began appearing in the form of strange marks on my body.  I could now consciously recall how they got there, and my many previous interactions with alien beings.  I found my watch would continuously play up while wearing it, but work perfectly while it was off my body.
For the first time I decided to tell my family and boyfriend about the bizarre experiences that had plagued me for so many years.  My honesty was confronted with disbelief and the opinion that I was in need of attention, and was using these crazy stories as a way of deflecting responsibility from the 'real' world.  My attempts at explaining my situation became more and more hopeless and again I questioned the validity of my experiences and the state of my mental health.
The isolation and embarrassment I felt became so hard to bear that I sometimes had thoughts of ending my life.  No one could understand what I was going through, and I honestly believed that I was going mad.  I decided to visit a psychologist as a last resort to try to find why my mind would play such horrible tricks on me.  My questions remained unanswered, the psychologist telling me that I was perfectly sane, and putting my experiences down once again to my creative imagination.  I felt unfulfilled and totally devastated, falling into a deep depression of doubt and confusion about myself.
While browsing in a bookshop one day, I came across Secrets, Truth & Destiny about the UFO abduction experiences of a Perth lady, Elizabeth Robinson, and the ways in which she coped.  I felt a strong urge to buy the book, even though I could not really afford it at the time.  For the next two days, I sat glued to it in amazement at how closely the words expressed exactly what I was going through.  A spark of hope reignited within me with the realisation that I was not alone after all.  Soon after, by an amazing coincidence, I met Elizabeth in a shop.  I felt that it was part of some predestined plan to head me in the right direction and give me the guidance I had been searching for.  It was such an amazing relief finally to have the chance to speak with someone who understood my experiences.

I was put in contact with Mary Rodwell, who co-directs the Australian Close Encounter Resource Network (ACERN) in Perth.  Meeting this wonderful lady has changed my life.  Sharing her wisdom and guidance with me has allowed me to open up and accept my experiences, realising that I am far from alone in this.  I was invited to an abductee support group which gave me the chance to speak to others who had had similar experiences.  I felt so nervous not really knowing what to expect but was delighted to discover that every one of the people at the support group seemed totally normal and sane, with ordinary jobs and otherwise ordinary lives.

Before attending the meeting I had had a dream telling me to place the symbols, that I had been drawing over the past two years, onto transparencies and that they would fit together in different configurations.  To my utter disbelief and amazement they did fit together as though they were all connected.  These were shown at the support group meeting which seemed to mesmerise those looking at them.  They all felt a strong connection with the symbols, as though they had seen them before, some even remembering seeing the symbols during their abductions.  One young man had some of his own symbols to show from his interactions with ETs aboard a spacecraft, which were remarkably similar to some of mine.  A lady who studies ancient symbols, sacred geometry, and sacred sites also looked at the symbols.  I sat there captivated as she was able to recognise and interpret many of the symbols.  They apparently exist inside ancient temples and pyramids around the world, many of which are related to different star systems such as Sirius.  I was also reminded that the symbols illustrate the link that many people now believe exists between ancient cultures and extraterrestrials.

One of the symbols was similar to a crop-circle that appeared two years prior to the meeting, which triggered the memory that it was exactly that long ago that I had begun writing and drawing the symbols.  I was later informed that a lady from France, who studies the phenomenon and assists abductees, was very interested in the drawings.  She had been sent copies and had found some connections with designs found in the Aztec pyramids.  The fact that they are on transparencies and fit together was also significant.
This was a groundbreaking experience for me, as up until then I had no way of validating the symbols as anything more than images from my imagination.  The fact that I have never before seen any of the symbols or ever been to any sacred sites made it even more credible for me.  During a more recent interaction with the alien beings, I was told to make them into a three dimensional form on a computer, which I am now endeavouring to have done.  What the reason for this may be, I have to wait and see.
At the abduction support group meeting I met another young lady who writes and sometimes speaks involuntarily in another language.  We compared copies of our writing, and found that the only difference was that hers went down the page and mine across.  When I turned mine to go downwards I realised that they looked identical.  We were both amazed at the bizarre coincidence especially as she told me that she had formerly written across the page until it felt more natural to write downwards.  So much was shared by everyone and I have now been guided, learning to trust my experiences beyond the boundaries and limitations of three dimensional reality.
It has taken me twenty-two years of enduring events such as visiting outer space in alien craft, feeling paralysed, and watching alien life-forms undertake complicated surgical procedures on me, to realise the connection between my experiences and those of other UFO abductees.  Unable to find a logical explanation for these experiences, I realised the need to search beyond the confines of conventional thinking.  This has forced me on a journey of gigantic proportions.  My life has changed forever since I have realised that I have had a life-long interaction with non-human beings. 

Reference
Robinson, Elizabeth.  (1998)  Secrets, Truth & Destiny.

Australian Close Encounter Resource Network (ACERN) directors Mary Rodwell and Elizabeth Robinson can be contacted at PO Box N1083, Perth, Western Australia 6843.
 
 

Flying Saucers & Sonic Booms
By Simon Harvey-Wilson

One of the most puzzling technical questions about UFOs is why they do not appear to make a sonic boom when they break the sound barrier.  A sonic boom is caused when any normal flying object, even a meteor, starts to move faster than the speed of sound.  The speed of sound varies with altitude, humidity, temperature and pressure.  At sea level under normal conditions the speed of sound is 1,220 kilometres per hour (760mph), but because the earth's atmosphere gets thinner the higher you fly, at 10,000 metres above the ground it is only 1,080 kilometres per hour.  Something is therefore said to be breaking the sound barrier or flying at supersonic speed, when it flies above the speed of sound for the prevailing conditions.  An aircraft flying at that speed is said to be flying at Mach 1.  Saying that a jet fighter is capable of flying at Mach 3 means that it can fly at three times the speed of sound (about 3,240 k /h).  With advancing technology aircraft designers are now starting to talk about 'hypersonic' flight speeds which refers to speeds above five times the speed of sound or Mach 5 (about 5,400 k/h).

Sound and air pressure are both transmitted through the atmosphere by air molecules bumping into each other like rows of billiard balls.  As a subsonic craft, doing less than the speed of sound, moves through the air it sets up a field of air pressure that informs the air in front of it to get out of the way.  This forewarning travels ahead of the aircraft at the speed of sound.  But once the craft itself reaches the speed of sound, it catches up with its own air pressure bow wave.  This creates a shock wave of sound and pressure shaped like a large sideways cone that moves parallel to the ground with the plane at its apex.  The lower part of this conical shock front leaves a swathe of noise and air pressure that moves along the ground behind the aircraft.  This sonic boom causes windows to rattle or break and makes a loud disturbing noise.

The legal ramifications of the extensive noise and repeated window damage that would be left in its wake is the major reason that the world's only supersonic passenger aircraft, the Concorde, is generally restricted to flying across the Atlantic on the London–New York route.  There are no windows beneath to worry about.  While over built-up areas, Concorde has to fly subsonic which makes flying on it rather pointless.  This sonic boom problem is one reason no modern supersonic replacement has been built for Concorde.
With the enormous growth in modern air travel, any aerospace company that builds a supersonic passenger plane that does not make a sonic boom will probably make buckets of money.  It is interesting to speculate as to why this has not yet been done given that UFOs are reported to have been flying around silently at supersonic speeds for at least fifty years.

In an article on UFO propulsion theories, nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman writes that: "Substantial research, much of it classified, has been done showing that a magneto-aerodynamic (MAD) system would be capable of solving all the problems of high speed flight by controlling lift, drag, heating and sonic boom production – all electromagnetically rather than mechanically or chemically.  The system would be symmetric, highly manoeuvrable, relatively silent, would often have a surrounding glow, and would be capable of sudden starts and stops."  Unfortunately he then tells us that research on MAD propulsion systems is classified because they have some relevance to the flight aerodynamics of ballistic missiles.

In his book Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis the late Paul R. Hill, who spent his working life as a rocket scientist at NASA's Langley Research Centre in the USA, devotes two detailed chapters to an analysis of why UFOs can break the sound barrier without making a sonic boom or overheating.
Hill points out that with regard to sonic booms, in supersonic flight the air ahead of an aircraft does not know that the craft is coming whereas in subsonic flight it does.  In other words, once the speed of forewarning the air in front of the plane becomes slower than the actual speed of the aircraft, you have a problem.  The solution is simple.  If you are flying faster than the speed of sound, you have to transmit the information that you are coming to the air ahead of the craft at a speed that is also faster than the speed of sound.  This gives the air time to get out of the way, thus helping prevent a noisy shock wave.  How can this achieved?

Hill claims that UFOs radiate a force field a short distance ahead of the craft that is capable of repelling air molecules.  This force field travels at the speed of light and is therefore easily able to stay ahead of the craft even at hypersonic speeds.  By giving the air sufficient prior warning to get out of the way, no bow shock wave is created no matter how fast the UFO is flying.  Hill even points out that rain, small bugs, dust and sand particles would be repelled by this field and would flow around the craft instead of hitting it.  The UFO would not even need windscreen wipers he claims.
However that is not the complete solution.  The shape and length of a plane affects what sort of shock wave it creates as it breaks the sound barrier.  Some long planes make two sonic booms, one from the front and one from the back.  This distinctive double bang is well known to those watching NASA's Space Shuttle as it prepares to land after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.  Coupled with this is the problem of aerodynamic drag and the overheating of a craft as a result of being buffeted by the atmosphere as it increases speed.  The outside surfaces of the Space Shuttle for example "reach a blinding-white heat, of the order of 1,300 degrees centigrade" on re-entering the earth's atmosphere (Hill, p.208).  To attempt to counteract these problems, most supersonic aircraft are long and thin with sharp points at the front, yet the average UFO is saucer shaped, which would seem to be a highly unsuitable shape to minimise overheating and aerodynamic drag.

To solve these additional problems Paul Hill produces pages of calculations to show that in addition to putting a repulsive force field facing its direction of travel, UFOs would need to put another repulsive field at the back.  To put it simply, any air that meets the UFO in supersonic flight would be repelled sideways from the front, sucked along the sides and then pushed away from the back.  This has the amazing result of enabling the UFO to fly with no wind resistance, no turbulence, and no sonic boom.  It also gives the UFO's propulsion system a higher level of energy efficiency and helps explain why these craft come in so many unaerodynamic shapes.

The last benefit of UFO airflow-control force fields that Paul Hill discusses is of "aerodynamic heating" (p.208).  Hill's calculations suggest that by diverting the atmosphere from the front of the moving craft, allowing it to flow along the sides and then pushing it away from the back, no thermal energy is imparted to the UFO's surface.  Not only does this prevent the UFO from heating up, but Hill suspects that the opposite may be the case.  He claims that air repelled from the front of the UFO will experience "a big pressure drop" causing it to expand and drop in temperature as it goes along the sides of the craft (p.326).  "The temperature gets so low that even with boundary-layer friction the air at the UFO surface is below ambient atmospheric temperature …. Under these circumstances, the UFO is cooled at various flight speeds, not heated.  This would be true at any speed for which the UFO can maintain the high field strengths needed." (p.326)
There have been a few UFO close encounters where evidence suggests that the UFO somehow significantly cooled the surrounding area.  I recall a case where a witness who had seen strange lights at night while returning home from driving in the country, was unsure whether he had had a close encounter or not.  What he did know was that a water bottle that had been in his vehicle was frozen solid when he got home later that night.  This was very puzzling because the weather was warm, so what he wondered had frozen the water in the bottle?  Paul Hill's calculations about aerodynamic heating and cooling may have provided an answer.  "In a surprise fallout it was found by this theory that if a UFO left such an air-control mechanism turned on while hovering low over water, air temperatures near the machine could get cold enough to create ice" (p.327).
If these well informed calculations about UFO aerodynamics are currently available in the public domain from a NASA scientist, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that the United States military has known about the matter for years and has probably had time to conduct the appropriate experiments and test fly various prototypes of their own versions of this technology.  If this is the case, one wonders for how much longer air travellers are going to have to endure the tedium, cost and inconvenience of travel by outdated subsonic passenger jets. 

References
Friedman, Stanton T.  (1980)  UFO Propulsion Theories.  The Encyclopedia of UFOs.  Ronald D. Story (editor),  pp.281-284.
Hill, Paul R.  (1995)  Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis.
Scott, Andrew.  (1990)  Acoustics.  The Guinness Encyclopedia,  p.31
 
 

Western Australian Sightings
With Overseas Observations
Compiled by Brian Richards

It seems that the enigmatic flying triangles won't go away.  They continue to be seen in many parts of the world often flying very low, silently, and at speeds that would stall a conventional aircraft.  Lights are often observed at each point and beneath the craft.  Sometimes a beam of light from the triangle scans the sky above, or the ground below.  Witnesses have been filled with mixed emotions.  Are these alien craft keeping one step ahead of our own technology, or at least appearing to?  Such claims were made when alluding to the great airship flap across the United States from November 1896 to April 1897, when scores of intelligently controlled 'dirigibles', more often than not flying against the wind, caused much concern and fiery debate fuelled by the popular press of the day.

If the flying triangles of today are our own secret advanced technology, then the secret is out.  Flying such test aircraft over heavily populated areas would risk a mishap.  The repercussions from such an accident would be hard to contemplate.  No such incident has yet been reported.  If these craft are so safe as to be accident proof, then a really advanced propulsion system is being operated – so advanced in fact that further manufacture of conventional aircraft should be stopped immediately.  This cutting edge technology must be introduced now for the benefit of all.  But don't hold your breath!
Peru is in the throes of a UFO flap.  Hundreds of reports are coming in from all over the country and UFO buffs everywhere are trying to secure the videos which show numerous flying objects.  Thanks to Mike Farrell, director of Project GUFONE '99 for the following reports which are just a few of the many compiled:

Wednesday 3rd March 1999.  For forty minutes, five glowing discs flew over Lima, the capital city of Peru.  Two OVNIs (objeto volante no identificado: the Spanish acronym for UFOs) flew off by themselves and performed manoeuvres whilst the remaining three darted away to the east.  Home videos taken of the overflight were broadcast on Canal (Channel) 2 Television Frequencia Latina following the incident.

Tuesday 2nd March 1999, 6.30pm.  Two OVNIs flew over Pucallpa in the Amazon, 600km north-east of Lima.  "Plenty of witnesses saw them cleave through the cloudy sky", Alfredo Mendiola reported.  "They were bright enough to shine through the mists.  In the sector of the city, they appeared as a bright dot.  Others reported seeing the light change colour from white to yellow, red and blue."
Home videos were aired on the local TV station in Pucallpa.  "The video showed an object in the form of a spinning and humming top with a surrounding light (aura) and clear brown colour tones.  Another showed a cone with a point coming to a rise.  A helicopter of the Policia Aeria tried to chase the OVNIs, but the pilots lost radio contact with the ground, which seems impossible because they have high frequency radios."
Towards the end of February in Andacolla in the Neuquen district south of Lima, residents watched glowing UFOs "that moved in a zigzag.  We watched them cross the sky with lights in the front.  There was also another OVNI like a great luminosity that pulsated as well."  In Lindera, 440km south of Arequipa near Peru's border with Chile, local residents were astonished to find several crop circles in a field of wheat.  The crop circles were described as 'tripods' (three circles joined by straight lines).  There were sections of the circles where the grain was squashed flat but not broken.

Six UFOs Seen By Hundreds Near Monterrey, Mexico.  Sunday 28th February 1999.  Canal (Channel) 12 of the city of Monterrey, (924km north of Mexico city) in Coafiuila state, aired home video of six UFOs flying over the La husteca section of the city, heading for Las Pampas mountain.  Hundreds reported the overflight which lasted several minutes.  The video showed six luminous triangular objects flying westward in formation, with the camcorder focus set on 'zoom'.  (Thanks to Marco Reinoso Ballesteros y Guillermo Alarcon for this report).

Flying objects of the unidentified kind remain a fascinating area of study, but such studies remain forever shallow because of the very elusive nature of the objects.  UFO experts there are not, but UFO case study experts there are.  What is generating much interest at this time are the accounts/experiences of ordinary people, or personal contact experiences (PCEs).  Brave individuals are coming forward without fear or favour, and recounting extraordinary stories of personal interaction with unknown life-forms or 'energies'.  The events are often recalled without hypnosis and invoke fear and loathing, love and adoration, confusion – a whole range of emotions.  To get regular reports of such accounts, e-mail 'Citizens Against UFO Secrecy' in the USA at: CAUSupdate@caus.org  or go to their website:  http://caus.org/feedback.htm

WA SIGHTINGS UPDATE
There are no earth-shattering sightings to report, but there are some interesting ones.  Accounts are down on previous years, but February 1999 appears to have been a busy month.  I was diving on the Pandora (1791) wreck in far-north Queensland for the four weeks, so thanks to Mike Jordan for dealing with the all-hours phone calls and compi