The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  Address:

  c/o SETI Institute

  2035 Landings Drive

  Mountain View, CA 94043

  U.S.A.

  E-mail:

  seth@seti.org

  POSITION STATEMENT: The belief that UFOs have an extraterrestrial connection is persistent and widespread. Polls taken since the early 1960s consistently show that roughly half the American populace is con vinced that alien spacecraft are buzzing the landscape. At the SETI Institute, I regularly receive calls and other communications from people who have witnessed something that they interpret as confirming this belief. However, while such claims are clearly sincere, I’ve yet to hear of any evidence that would withstand the most rudimentary scrutiny. One can be open to the idea of visiting aliens, in the same way that one can be open to the idea of ghosts (also believed to exist by a sizeable fraction of the populace). But being open to the idea hardly serves to augment its chances for being true. What I find appealing about SETI is that, unlike the UFO phenomenon, a claim that we had found evidence of extraterrestrials would be verifiable by anyone with a radio telescope. The proof would be fixed in the sky, and not simply flitting across it for the momentary amazement of a few lucky viewers. It is my expectation that a confirmed SETI detection, by its obvious reality and its promise of additional information, would suddenly make a half-century of UFO sightings rather uninteresting.

  —G. SETH SHOSTAK

  Sirius mystery, The In 1976, Robert K. G. Temple received wide attention for his book The Sirius Mystery, which claimed to present evidence of extraterrestrial visitations to Earth some 5000 years ago. It even attained the status of a semi-scientific work, as many were impressed with the scientific-looking train of logic of the book. Temple stated that the Dogon, a tribe in Africa, possessed extraordinary knowledge of the star system Sirius, the brightest star in the sky; the star which became the marker of an important ancient Egyptian calendar; the star which according to some is at the centre of beliefs held by the Freemasons; the star which according to some is where the forefathers of the human race might have come from.

  Temple claimed that the Dogon possessed knowledge of Sirius B and Sirius C, companion stars to Sirius that are, however, invisible to the naked eye. How did the Dogon know about their existence? Temple referred to legends of a mythical creature “Oannes,” who might have been an extraterrestrial being descending to Earth from the stars, to bring wisdom to our forefathers. In 1998, Temple republished the book with the subtitle “New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 years ago”.

  Sirius B is the small dot to the lower-right of the bright star Sirius.

  The book’s glory came crashing down in the summer of 1999, when Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince published The Stargate Conspiracy. That book stated Temple had been highly influenced in his thinking by his mentor, Arthur M. Young. Young was a fervent believer in “the Council of Nine,” a group of channelled entities who claim they are the nine creator gods of ancient Egypt. “The Nine” are part of the UFO and New Age and many claim to be in contact with them. “The Nine” also claim to be extraterrestrial beings, from the star Sirius.

  In 1952, Young was one of the nine people present during the “first contact” with the Council, where contact was initiated by Andrija Puharich, the man who brought the Israeli spoonbender and presumed psychic Uri Geller to America. It was Young who, in 1965, gave Temple a French article on the secret star lore of the Dogon; an article written by Griaule and Dieterlen.

  In 1966, Temple, at the impressionable age of twenty-one, became Secretary of Young’s Foundation for the Study of Consciousness. In 1967, Temple began work on what would eventually become The Sirius Mystery. As Picknett and Prince have shown, Temple’s arguments are often based on erroneous readings of encyclopaedic entries and misrepresentations of ancient Egyptian mythology. They conclude that Temple very much wanted to please his mentor. It is, however, a fact that the end result is indeed a book that would have pleased Young and his beliefs in extraterrestrial beings from Sirius very much, whether or not this was the intention of Temple.

  Though Temple’s work is now therefore definitely challenged, the core of the mystery remained intact. At the center of this enigma is the work of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, two French anthropologists, who wrote down the secret knowledge on “Sirius B” and “Sirius C” in their book The Pale Fox. But now, in another recent publication, Ancient Mysteries, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe, this “mystery” is also uncloaked, as a hoax or a lie, perpetrated by Griaule.

  To recapitulate, Griaule was initiated in the secret mysteries of the male Dogon, who allegedly told him the secrets of Sirius’ invisible companions. Sirius (sigu tolo in their language) had two star companions. This was revealed in an article that was published by Griaule and Dieterlen in the French language in 1950.

  In the 1930s, when their research occurred, Sirius B was known to have existed, even though it was only photographed in 1970. There was little if no possibility that the Dogon had learned this knowledge from Westerners that had visited them prior to Griaule and Dieterlen.

  Griaule and Dieterlen published their findings on the Sirius companions without any reference or comment on how extraordinary the Dogon knowledge was. It would be others, particularly Temple in the sixties and seventies, who would zoom in on that aspect. To quote Ancient Mysteries: “While Temple, following Griaule, assumes that to polo is the invisible star Sirius B, the Dogon themselves, as reported by Griaule, say something quite different.” To quote the Dogon: “When Digitaria (to polo) is close to Sirius, the latter becomes brighter; when it is at its most distant from Sirius, Digitaria gives off a twinkling effect, suggesting several stars to the observer.” James and Thorpe wonder—as anyone reading this should do—whether to polo is therefore an ordinary star near Sirius, not an invisible companion, as Griaule and Temple suggest.

  The biggest challenge to Griaule, however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. He points out that Griaule and Dieterlen stand alone in the world in their claims on the secrets of the Dogon. No other anthropologist supports their opinion or claims.

  In 1991, Van Beek led a team of anthropologists who declared that they could find absolutely no trace of the detailed Sirius lore reported by the French anthropologists. James and Thorpe understate the problem when they say that “this is very worrying”.

  Griaule had stated that about 15 percent of the Dogon tribe knew about this secret knowledge, but Van Beek could, in a decade of research with the Dogon, find not a single trace of this knowledge. Van Beek was initially keen to find evidence for Griaule’s claims, but had to admit that there may have been a major problem with Griaule’s claims.

  Even more worrying is Griaule’s background. Though an anthropologist, Griaule was interested in astronomy, which he had studied in Paris. As James and Thorpe point out, he took star maps along with him on his field trips as a way of prompting his informants to divulge their knowledge of the stars. Griaule himself was aware of the discovery of Sirius B and it is quite likely that he overinterpreted the Dogon responses to his questions. In the 1920s, before Griaule went to the Dogon, there were also unconfirmed sightings of Sirius C. Was Griaule told by his informants what he wanted to believe? It seems, alas, that the truth is even worse, at least for Griaule’s reputation.

  Van Beek actually spoke to the original informants of Griaule, who stated: “though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius], they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that through a different position appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule.”

  So whatever knowledge they possessed, it was knowledge coming from Griaule, not knowledge native to the Dogon tribe. Van Beek also discovered that the Dogon are of course aware of the brightest star in the sky, which they do not, however, call sigu tolo, as Gri
aule claimed, but dana tolo. To quote James and Thorpe: “As for Sirius B, only Griaule’s informants had ever heard of it.”

  With this, the Dogon mystery comes to a crashing halt. The Sirius Mystery influenced more than twenty years of thinking about our possible ancestry from “forefathers” who have come from the stars. In 1996, Temple was quick to point out the new speculation in scientific circles on the possible existence of Sirius C, which made the claims by Griaule even more spectacular and accurate. But Temple was apparently not aware of Van Beek’s recent research. With this new research of both Van Beek and the authors of Ancient Mysteries, we uncover how Griaule himself was responsible for the creation of a modern myth, which, in retrospect, has created such an industry and almost religious belief that the scope and intensity can hardly be fathomed. Nigel Appleby, in his withdrawn publication Hall of the Gods, which was, according to Appleby himself, tremendously influenced by Temple’s book, Appleby spoke about how Temple believed that present-day authorities were apparently unwilling to set aside the blinkers of orthodoxy or were unable to admit the validity of anything that lies outside their field or offers a challenge to its status quo. He further wondered whether there was also a modern arrogance that could not countenance the possible scientific superiority of earlier civilisations. It seems, alas, that Griaule, a scientist, wanted to give earlier civilizations more knowledge than they actually possessed. And various popular authors and readers have since been led into a modern mythology: the “Age of the Dark Sirius Companion.”

  —FILIP COPPENS

  Sitchin, Zecharia (b. 1922). Zecharia Sitchin is one of a small number of orientalists who can read the Sumerian clay tablets which trace events from the earliest times. Sitchin was born in Russia and grew up in Palestine, where he acquired a profound knowledge of Semitic and European languages, of the Old Testament, and the history and archaeology of the Near East.

  Zecharia Sitchin

  He graduated from the University of London, majoring in Economic History, having attended the London School of Economics and Political Science. After a writing career as a journalist, he began writing “The Earth Chronicles”—a series of books that combine the latest scientific discoveries with textual and pictorial evidence from antiquity to form a cohesive and fact-based record of what had really happened on our planet in the past 450,000 years—a tale of visitors to Earth from another planet who created mankind through genetic engineering and shared with mankind more and more of their knowledge and technology. In that record of the Past, Sitchin sees clues to our future.

  Zecharia Sitchin is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Oriental Society (AOS), the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and the Israel Exploration Society (IES), He was the recipient of the 1996 “Scientist of the Year Award” by the International Forum on New Science.

  He has been featured on numerous television and radio programs and written about in journals, magazines, and daily newspapers around the globe.

  His books, which have been translated into fourteen languages, include: The 12th Planet (1976), The Stairway to Heaven (1980), The Wars of Gods and Men (1985), The Lost Realms (1990), Genesis Revisited (1990), When Time Began (1993), Divine Encounters (1996), and The Cosmic Code (1999).

  Address:

  P. O. Box 577

  New York, NY 10185

  U.S.A.

  Web site:

  www.sitchin.com

  POSITION STATEMENT: I was fortunate to have studied the Old Testament in its original Hebrew language—fortunate because all translations are in reality interpretations. An incident from my school days will illustrate what I mean:

  We reached chapter six of Genesis, which tells the story of the Deluge; but it precedes the tale with seven enigmatic verses that describe the events preceding the Deluge, for those were the days when the “giants” took the daughters of Adam as wives and had children by them. And I raised my hand and asked the teacher why he renders the verse as “giants” when the word the Bible uses is Nefilim—which does not mean giants at all, but “those who had come down,” and in context from heaven to Earth. Instead of being complimented for my linguistic acumen, I was reprimanded for “questioning the Bible.”

  Who were the Nefilim? The exchange with the teacher raised this question in my mind to an encompassing obsession. The Bible described them in the same Genesis verses as the “sons of the gods” (plural!)—odd in a Bible devoted to monotheism. It also stated that they were part of the Anakim (a term taken to mean “giants”); but who were the Anakim? Studies of ancient Near Eastern languages, civilizations, and archaeological discoveries confirmed that the seven enigmatic verses were a remnant from a pre-biblical “myth.” Indeed, the whole tale of the Deluge has been found written on clay tablets, in a script called cuneiform, millennia before the Hebrew Bible was composed. In fact, the whole tale of Creation in Genesis was based on a much longer Mesopotamian tale written on seven tablets. And in time it became evident that the answers to the questions, “Who were the Nefilim? and “Who were the Anakim?” were to be found in the excavated records of the first known civilization—the Sumerians—which blossomed out in what is now Iraq some 6,000 years ago.

  In their writings the Sumerians referred to their gods as Anunnaki, literally meaning “those who from heaven to Earth came”—clearly, the biblical Anakim—and stated that they had come to Earth from another planet called Nibiru. The texts are considered to be “myths” by the archaeologists and scholars who have found, deciphered, and translated them; but what if they are true and factual records of the past? They are too numerous, too detailed, too full of sophisticated technological and scientific knowledge, to have been the product of imaginative primitives; and they are accompanied by thousands of pictorial depictions—not only of the Anunnaki, but also of their space and aerial craft, the UFOs of antiquity.

  But if all those tales were factual, what planet was Nibiru? It took additional decades of research and study, of both ancient and modern astronomy, to reach a startling conclusion: There is one more planet in our solar system, a post-Plutonian planet with a large elliptical orbit that brings it to our vicinity (passing between Mars and Jupiter) every 3,600 Earth-years; it is then that the comings and goings between Nibiru and Earth take place.

  I have put together the textual, pictorial and scientific evidence in eight books, six of which make up “The Earth Chronicles” series. In the quarter of a century since my first book (The 12th Planet) was published in 1976, every new discovery in astronomy, geology, biology, genetics, computer sciences, etc., has corroborated the ancient data. There is thus no doubt in my mind that not only are we not alone in the universe, but we are not alone in our own solar system.

  The “UFO enigma” is but a modern version of what people in antiquity had seen, witnessed, and recorded. As a Vatican theologian, Monsignor Corrado Balducci agreed with me at a public dialogue in Italy in April 2000—“Extraterrestrials” exist; we are only catching up with their knowledge.

  —ZECHARIA SITCHIN

  Situation Red: The UFO Siege (Doubleday, 1977). Leonard Stringfield became the first author to draw connections between reports of cattle mutilations, Bigfoot sightings, phantom helicopters, and UFOs. He believes extraterrestrial visitors are behind these phenomena and may possess psychic powers to manipulate witnesses into trances as a way of disguising their true reasons for visiting Earth.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Sky People, The (Neville Spearman, 1960). Brinsley LePoer Trench details examples of how diverse human cultures preserve legends of space visitors who used genetic engineering to create geniuses and prophets. By reinterpreting the Bible he concludes that the Garden of Eden once existed on the planet Mars, and that Noah built a great ark—or spaceship—to escape a flood, which destroyed the Martian civilization. Survivors fled to Earth, and we are now under a galactic quarantine imposed by the more advanced Sky People.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD
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br />   sleep paralysis Sleep paralysis as defined by Dr. David J. Hufford is “a period of inability to perform voluntary movements, either when falling asleep or when awakening, accompanied by conscious awareness. This condition has been ascribed both to hypnagogic and hypnopompic states.” (Hufford, 1982)

  Hypnagogic hallucinations, often accompanied by the belief that something, or someone, is in the room, occur as the person is falling asleep. Hypnopompic hallucinations occur upon waking and can contain the same horrifying imagery found in hypnagogic hallucinations. These images and imaginary experiences can be completely recalled afterwards.

  Hufford, as well as other researchers, learned that sleep paralysis is fairly common in the general population. As many as 15 percent of those surveyed claimed to have experienced an episode of sleep paralysis. Hufford wrote that “the entire experience seems to be common, as well as too consistently patterned to be pathognomic.” (Hufford, 1982)

  What Hufford was suggesting was that his own research had suggested that a significant part of the general population had experienced some form of sleep paralysis and/or a hypnagogic hallucination. Most people, however, were unfamiliar with sleep paralysis and began to search for an explanation for their experiences in other arenas. One of those arenas was that of alien abduction.

  Dr. David Jacobs described in his book, Secret Life (1992), what he considered to be the classic abduction scenario. Of that typical abduction, he wrote: “An unsuspecting woman is in her room preparing go to bed. She gets into bed, reads a while, turns off the light, and drifts off into a peaceful night’s sleep. In the middle of the night she turns over and lies on her back. She is awakened by a light that seems to be glowing in her room. The light moves toward her and takes the shape of a small ‘man’ with bald head and huge black eyes. She is terrified. She wants to run but she cannot move. She wants to scream but she cannot speak. The ‘man’ moves toward her and looks deeply into her eyes. Suddenly she is calmer, and she ‘knows’ that the ‘man’ is not going to hurt her.” (Jacobs, 1992)