by Glen Johnson
On March 13th 1989, armature radio enthusiast, Donald Ratsch picked up a transmission from space shuttle pilot Cornel John E. Blaha, USAF – who had been on five different missions, logging up 161 days in space – which announced: “Huston, this is Discovery, I still have the alien spacecraft under VFR.” VFR or Visual Flight Rules means object is visible by eye.
On the Apollo mission of 11th July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin witnessed UFO’s firsthand. The radio broadcast states: “These ‘Babies’ are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn’t believe it! I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They’re on the moon watching us!”
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was the second American astronaut to Orbit Earth in 1962. On May 24th of 1962 he stated: “At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFO’s.”
Carpenter, along with Astronaut John Glenn, also called them, ‘living critters,’ on a TV interview in 1999.
Colonel Gordon Cooper, a Mercury and Gemini Astronaut, said on January 14th 1997, in an interview with the National Enquirer: “I know other astronauts share my feelings... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs.”
On January 25th 1994 NASA’s Deep Space Science Experiment, named Clementine launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The unmanned probe sent back 1.8 million digital images of the moons surface, between February 26th and April 22nd 1994. Hundreds of thousands of these images have never been released. The images that were released on the World Wide Web had one slight problem; thousands of the images had been digitally smudged to cover over objects and artifacts that NASA didn’t want the general public to see, and it wasn’t subtle, it was blatant.
But NASA didn’t edit everything, some objects were missed. Straight lines thousands of miles long, vast and small circular (floating) objects, geometric patterns, and what can only be described as vast structures, some that rise over a mile and a half from the surface, all unnatural to the terrain.
Astronaut James A. Lovell, who was on the first lunar orbit flight, Apollo 8 in 1968, stated, when ask by Huston what the surface looked like from sixty miles up: “The moon is essentially grey, no colour. Looks like plaster of Paris.” In stark contrast, the United States Geological Survey website has some startling photos of the moons surface, all in vibrant spectral colour, reds, greens and blues. So why have we been lead to believe it’s a dull grey colour? Does colour suggest life – possibly artificial life – the book asks?
There is also SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) set up in 2007, which is a scientific research collaboration with a collection of forty-two twenty-foot-wide radio telescopes spread across a field three hundred miles north of San Francisco. The goal, as it states on the website, is: ‘To detect intelligent life outside Earth.’ Known as Radio SETI, it uses the radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. Such signals are not known to occur naturally, so detection would provide evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Famed Physicist Michio Kaku said that if SETI gets ET contact the information would not immediately be released to the public. The government would have to consider the implications for ET contact, because there are protocols in place for handling this kind of information.
Has SETI already found the elusive signal, the book asks? We may never know, because SETI has had many set backs and had even been closed down, due to lack of government funding for a while.
The United States annual budget for 2011 was set at 3.83 trillion dollars, so the mere 1.5 million to keep the SETI program afloat seems insignificant. Or is it just inevitable, with the vast amount of eyewitness and photographic evidence that the huge radio satellite telescopes are just not needed; the world governments already know the answers?
The book was full of information I had never heard of before, kept from me by supposedly concerned governments, to save me from worrying.
Almost every country has an organization to monitor and collect information concerning UFO’s. Europe for example has an umbrella-organization aimed to connect more than a hundred UFO researchers from eighteen European countries.
America had Project Blue Book, a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects, starting in 1952 and ending in 1969 (which took over from two previous projects named Sign and Grudge). Project Blue Book had two goals: 1) to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and: 2) to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
All this from a government that doesn’t officially recognize UFO’s.
Regulation number 146 – which was passed on December 1953 from the Joint Army-Navy-Air Force –made it a crime for military personnel to discuss classified UFO reports with unauthorized persons. It carried a two year prison sentence. It seems strange that they would pass a law concerning something that doesn’t – supposedly – exist.
Due to the Freedom of Information Act, The Project Blue Book Archive has been released to the general public, via free online access. Over 50,000 official US Government documents relating to the UFO phenomenon are on this site. Of course – the book states – it goes without saying, only the information they want you to see is available.
The book goes on to say UFO’s have been around a lot longer. As well as government cover-ups and ancient wall paintings there is ancient documented, written proof for all to see.
Ancient Sanskrit from India describes flying machines, calling them Vimana’s in the Shakuna Vimana. Not only did the ancient Sanskrit text perfectly describe the aerodynamic flying ships and the way they moved through the sky, but also it had pages of ancient drawings that depict the flying machines; images that could be out of a modern day Haynes manual, with its cut out sections and intricate diagrams. These Sanskrit’s date back over 6,000 years.
According to the ancient sacred book of the Ethiopians, the Kebra Nagast, even King Solomon had a flying craft and had airports all over the world.
The Hakatha is the ancient written law of the Babylonians. There it states quite clearly: The privilege of operating a flying machine is great. The knowledge of flight is among the most ancient of our inheritances. A gift from ‘those from upon high’.
In a famous set of 3,000 year old Egyptian hieroglyphics, from Abydos, there are images of what appears to be what looks like a helicopter and other futuristic flying vehicles.
Is there another dimension running parallel to our own? Beings finding a way to crossover, and have been doing so for as long as man has been on this spinning ball of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Some helping, teaching, and leading mankind. While others taking what they want.
The book questions whether these visitors, as the ancient Sumerians believe, created our civilization. The Sumerian cruciform script is the worlds oldest know language. In one of their ancient city’s, called Nineveh, over two hundred clay tablets were discovered, describing in detail how a powerful godlike race called the Anunnaki, meaning Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came, took what was then upon the earth – a primitive stone age man – and made him into something far superior. Was Homo sapiens neanderthalensis the subspecies of humans? Did they use what we would call DNA gene splicing to genetically enhance neanderthalensis into us?
Why hadn’t any real research gone into this? Only a collection of men taking it seriously, writing books to inform the populace. Books that are shuffled to the back of the bookshelves.
Thousands of UFO’s are sighted worldwide yearly. Have they been scouting for the right location for the next Harvest? Were millions about to fall victim once again? Would the entities make it look like a virus? Like back in 1918 when they collected almost a hundred million. We called in the Spanish Influenza. They called it the Harvest.
I tossed the empty chocolate wrapper into the passenger footwell, falling to join with the rest of the litter.
I knew where the smoker and the others were. I know what they are capable of. What was I going t
o do about it? What could I do?
I started the engine.
31
The Light
I drove reluctantly along the narrow lane, the sky now dwindling to a shadowy grey. I always found it hard to drive during this light, everything seemingly blurring together. The ancient legends say dragons are supposedly blind burring this time, the merging of night and day – the twilight hour.
I took the left turn next to the green bench. Taking a quick glance up at the embankment. No Indian.
The narrow lane was just as empty. The high hedgerows making it seem much darker. Parts of the hedges looking like long gnarled fingers leaning down to grasp hold of the car. At some points the branches scraped along the roof, a strange metallic sound, sounding completely alien in the stillness of the night.
As I rounded the next corner the engine spluttered and jolted, then died.
For fucks sake.
For the first time I moved the photo of the twin children aside and looked at the fuel gauge. Empty? No, it was still quarter full.
Then it hit me. The book talked about incidents when UFOs were active in certain areas, cars went dead. Cameras didn’t operate. Phone lines died, along with mobile signals.
I had no idea how close the farm was. Had I been moving around in a large circle, finding myself only a short distance from it? Maybe I should take up baguazhang.
Only one way to find out. I couldn’t sit in the car all night. Even though my mind was screaming at me to do so. Just curl up on the back seat. So comfy, so tempting. Wait for the sunlight. Everything seems better in the light of day.
I popped the boot, seeing if there was anything I could use. A car-jack. Better than nothing. I grabbed the L. shaped solid metal bar in one hand. No torch. A Tesco’s green six-partitioned cardboard drinks holder, containing five cheap empty wine bottles. A plastic container of engine oil and a half empty bottle of coolant and for some reason a tin of hairspray. I pushed the hairspray into my wide baggy pocket on the front of the tracksuit top. Then I remembered the fat woman’s large top-heavy haircut, possibly needing quarter of a tin a day just to keep it in position.
I returned to the front of the car, rummaging through the glove compartment. A few CDs, ABBA’s Greatest Hits, Adele 21 and Birdy. A collection of paperwork for the car. An old rag. A plastic disposable lighter. I pushed the lighter in my other pocket. I even ran my hand through the litter in the footwell, to see if there was anything useful hidden below.
I found nothing.
I stood staring down the lane into the tree-covered darkness. A chill ran up my spine. I put one foot in front of the other and headed off down into the belly of the beast. Sun Tzu once said: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
The wind picked up slightly, making the trees and bushes lining the lane gently sway from side to side. Large droplets hit my head and shoulders.
Branches could be heard creaking and scraping together. The wind was rustling around the fields beyond my sight. No owls hooted. No bats somersaulting around in the air above. No foraging rodents. Everything was deadly silent, as if everything was dead or knew there was a larger predator on the prowl.
I started jumping at every screeching branch. Leaves scuttled down the lane twisting around my trainers. The smell of wet leaves and damp grass was prominent. I walked around fallen branches that had broken and been scattered about like old bones.
Then something lit up the darkness. Off over the top of one section of dense trees was a glowing radiance. So bright it blotted out the moons waxy light that was peeking through the clouds.
I continued along the road, jumping up to see if I could get a better view.
Once or twice I tried climbing up the embankment that the hedges clung too. But it was to steep. Even though there was plenty to grab hold of. I soon gave up after grasping a bramble in the darkness. Sucking my bleeding hand I walked along the dark narrow lane, which now had numerous shadows reaching from the effect of the powerful illumination.
A gate.
A farmer’s gate gave an opening into a large field. The light in the distance now easily seen, it was a large ark of pure light. The shadows from the woods cascading across the empty field, like the shadows of men standing to attention.
Was it the farm?
I climbed the wobbly gate and stumbled across the field. The grass was wet from the rain, my trainers squelched, getting caught in the wet furrows.
A couple of times I tripped over, as I looked out across the field trying to work out what the light meant. It was way too bright to be a street light of any kind, or even a farmyards strong halogen light. It sort of pulsated on and off every now and then. It had a kind of rainbow pattern around its edge. It looked like the end scene in ET, when his ship came to take him home. I expected to see someone walking around in thick white containment clothing, with Geiger counter in hand, their breath steaming up the facemask.
Had something settled down behind the trees? Or had they excavated their craft?
I reached the tree line. I was cold, wet and muddy. Needing sleep to straighten out my thoughts and to think of a possible plan. My head started to pound from lack of sleep and decent food. My sugar level was shot to hell.
Walking through the trees was difficult. I was being slapped by branches and grazed by thorn bushes. The bright light welled through the trees, blinding me. I headed directly towards it. I met no meandering scientists along the way. The woods were completely devoid of life. Not even walking into any sticky spider webs that had been stretched from branch to bough.
I could hear sounds for the first time. Metal scraping along something. The noise of many bodies jostling for position. A loud squeaking – a kind of large rodent type sound.
Pushing though a dense section of undergrowth I saw the rear yard of the farmhouse.
A light drizzle had started, partly blurring everything into what looked like a bad hazy watercolour painting.
In the distance, partly obscured by the trees and misty rain, was some sort of large crane that had been erected and was reaching down into the pit.
Obviously trying to extract their crashed ship. At the moment it was still and silent. Only the cranes lights showed that there had been any activity. Had it been there when I had been standing besides the hole? Possibly, with the darkness and my heightened stress from the bus crash, I could have missed it, when its lights had been switched off.
In the foreground the light was almost blinding. It was issuing from a large metallic looking circular gateway of some kind. A panel work of overlapping metal plates made up its circular entrance. It reminded me of the Stargate, from the movie and TV series of the same name, but much thicker and rougher looking. Light welled from the open portal, silhouetting the tall dark figures standing before it.
The light from the gateway was vibrating – there is no other way for me to describe it. It was as if it was on a different frequency than my eyes were a custom to seeing. A kind of mechanical oscillations – completely unnatural.
An opening to the next world? Was it a portal they had used to bring across the reapers? Ten dark outlines of the mothmen, I had seen in the field, stood shoulder to shoulder in the wet courtyard. Steam rising off their tall dark bodies. Here and there large ten-foot wingspans unfolded, as if stretching from a long sleep or tiring journey, or from their restlessness.
Off to one side was the old couple, both working around some kind of apparatus that was linked to the gateway. Above, standing on the utmost arch was the son, looking down at the gathering below, pulling something up by a thick rope.
The smoker was nowhere in sight.
Where had the portal come from? Had they been carrying the components in their crashed craft and had now only just got it together? Or had it been turned off, and I had simply run past, ignoring it, presuming it was the side of a building?
Another group of people emerged from the barn on the right, all carrying metal sheets in their arms. Who were these new fi
gures? More like the smoker? As they reached the light I could see they were small, the size of children and oriental in features. Even though they were short they were thin, long tapering fingers and pointed chins and foreheads. They all wore a kind of overall, reflective grey in colour.
Had they come from the ship? Was it their job to construct the portal? Hadn’t the book mentioned small oriental looking beings?
Then came a humming sound as hovering lights appeared from out of my line of sight. Small floating machines with spotlights pointing to different locations on the large metallic gateway. They seemed pointless because of the bright light welling from the portals surface and opening.
The mothmen were becoming agitated.