The next installment of my visit to UFO Con 2015: Jonathan Nolan’s presentation, part II.
As I mentioned before, Jonathan Nolan is working to create a documentary on the unexplained mysteries of the South Pacific. (https://www.truthfunders.com/projects/mysteries-of-the-south-pacific/.) This project on TruthFunders is now closed, but he doesn’t seem to have given up on the idea, which led to the second part of his story. (Note: The recordings of this talk, and all the rest of them, are supposed to be available for purchase on the UFO Con web site: http://ufocon2013.com)
Jonathan has been collecting material for his documentary, but is waiting for the proper funding before he begins in ernest. What happened next was the result of his deciding to go ahead and do some investigation early. He blames himself and that decision for the tragic outcomes, but I don’t see any reason that it would have turned out much different, even if he did have a lot of funding. As I see it, his team would have gone in with the same set of assumptions and the outcome would have probably been about the same. Assuming he would have been allowed to go in at all.
Apparently, there were persistent rummers of “underwater UFO bases” around these islands. One was “commonly” known, as such things are, but he got wind, from people he trusted, that there was another one on or under, uninhabited part of another island. There were stores about that area that said that people, even natives, who tried to go there were chased off by “frogmen.” Jonathan didn’t lend much weight to these stories, thinking that these were most likely navy divers or they had some other prosaic explanation. But he had information that there was something interesting in a certain lagoon, so he gathered up a team and equipment and they set off.
They arrived on one day, set up camp for the night, then set out for the lagoon the next morning. One of the pieces of equipment they brought along was an underwater mapping drone, used by the mining industry, in order to map the seafloor of the lagoon, so if anything did turn up, they would have a context to put it in. One thing they noticed when they got to the lagoon, was a concrete “rail” (I think he said) that ran down the beach on one side, into the water, then up onto the beach on the other side. Obviously something had been built here at some time, perhaps WWII?
He got a little vague at this point, probably because he wasn’t speaking from notes, but just speaking as it came to him. It seems that they mapped the lagoon, and at some point, noticed a hexagonal hole or tunnel, fairly deep. I think he said that the concrete led to the tunnel. They put on diving gear to have a look. I got the impression that it was too deep for them to reach without special arrangements, but they could get a closer look and better pictures.
At this point something happened that caused them all to get out as fast as possible. They returned to camp, packed everything into boats and left, save one native, who intended to go back to his village and then meet them on the other side of the island. For some reason, this fellow carried all the film footage they had shot.
When they reached the meet up point, they found out that the fellow that was supposed to meet them had been intercepted and hacked to pieces with a machete. Jonathan was, in his words “really pissed.” You have to realize that these islands run under their own laws and traditions that have nothing to do with our ideas of justice. There, revenge is not only common, it’s expected, and for a crime like this, friends and relatives expected blood. Jonathan, for his part, sent in a “security team” to go to this man’s village and see what they could find out. When they got there, the village was empty. Everyone had “melted into the jungle.” But when they search his house they found a backup copy of the footage, well hidden. But, shortly after that discovery, they were ambushed by Fijian mercenaries. (Apparently, the inhabitants of Fiji and the Solomon islands hate each other. So when you want some dirty work done on or around these islands, you hire thugs from Fiji.) The leader of the team was killed and the second copy of the footage was stolen.
Now Jonathan is, well “pissed” doesn’t quite cut it, but he also knows that there simply isn’t much he can do about it, which makes it all the worse. He’s not the type of person that often loses and he doesn’t like it much. But he also knows when to cut his losses. Two of his friends are dead already and he doesn’t want to risk any more. His philosophy about any stories is: Don’t bother me with your stories unless you have proof. And he had no proof or evidence of any kind about the important parts of this story.
Here is another place where the chronology is a bit confused, but I think that next is when the MIB show up (Men In Back). No, they didn’t have black suits, but you get the idea. One day, a suit shows up at his door and tries to get him to lay off looking into the wrong places. He gives him so real attitude, and so a second suit gets out of the car and identifies himself as CIA.
Now one of Jonathan’s projects is recording and translating the written language of the Solomon islands, which he believes may be the oldest written language in the world. The CIA suit offered him time of one of their supercomputers to scan and cross-correlate the glyphs, and when he made this offer, he casually mentioned details of the work that nobody else was supposed to know. Subtly informing Jonathan that “we know everything about you,” in a effort to intimidate him. The catch was that he could make is documentary about anything he wanted, as long as he stayed away from that lagoon. Jonathan doesn’t seem to take very well to those kinds of tactics, so he gets an idea.
His idea is that he will go back to that lagoon and get some proof, essentially on his own. The short version of this trip is: He and a couple of friends, including a young Eagle Eye girl as a guide, took a canoe to the lagoon, where he planned to swim across to where they had been before. (At this point he said something like “I don’t know what I was thinking.”) Once they arrived, he slipped into the water and start swimming. At this point the sea crocodiles started closing in. The story is that these crocodiles are bad news with a capital B. See Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile) Long story short, the Eagle Eye girl started screaming to him to return, which he eventually did, making it before the crocks closed in, and they left. At that point he was, in his mind, done with the story. He had no proof or evidence of any kind, and despite his position with the natives, he was not a local and there are simply some things he can’t do.
About this time he headed for Santa Clara to discharge his responsibility to the priests and deliver their warning. The flight was awful, and, when he arrived, he got word that the Eagle Eye girl he had worked with had been murdered, drowned in alcohol. There seems to be a serious taboo about spilling Eagle Eye blood, so someone kept pouring alcohol down her throat until she died.
Now he’s seriously angry. As he put it, he took his bag and ripped everything out of it and tore it apart. Eventually, he calmed down and when he did, he noticed something. There was a memory stick in his bag that he didn’t put there. And on the stick was one picture from the lost footage. Somehow, his friend had managed to back up this one picture and slip it into his bag. Now he had some proof and he could tell his story.
Here are the parts of that expedition to that lagoon that he left out, the first he told the story. The night they were camped on the island there was a “light show:” They watched as lights came down from the sky and into the water, and out from the water up to the sky. Then, the next day, when they were underwater, approaching the tunnel, they saw, and filmed, a creature pop up from behind some rocks on the sea floor. That was what was in the picture he found. (It’s not a very good picture, I grant you, so you still have to go by his word. Heck, any picture can be faked, these days.) It resembled “the creature from the black lagoon,” but the head and face looked much more like a deep sea predator than some guy in a costume. It had big fish eyes on either side of its head and a mouth full of long, spiky teeth. They also had massive shoulder muscles. I say they because, after the first one appeared, it waved some kind of signal and six more popped up. That’s when they “GTFOed,” as he put it.
Later, Jonathan decided to find out a bit more about those “frogmen” that he had discounted before. The priests told him that, unlike the islanders, the frogmen used metal. (The islanders don’t, traditionally, have any mining or metal crafting industry) They used metal like the Outsiders do, for weapons, canoes and outboards. “What,” he said, “They use outboards?” No, he was told, they have metal canoes with tops on them that can go underwater….and up in the air.
Another thing he mentioned about the tunnel in the lagoon, was it looked like it was cared-for. Coral “grows like a weed” in those parts, but the area around the tunnel was clear of overgrowth. There as basic algae and minor greenery around the tunnel but it wasn’t overgrown as you would expect of a natural formation. Someone was keeping it clear.
So there you are. Take it as you want. Watching his demeanor as he spoke and especially afterwords, during questions, and while others were speaking, he seemed more like someone committed to a course that he knows will cause him problems, than someone deluded or looking for attention. But that’s my opinion, you are free reject whatever doesn’t fit your worldview.
Final note: He would, probably, never have found that memory stick in his bag unless he had made this trip. A trip that he was required to make because his obligations to the priests as a chief of their tribe. They wanted the story to be told, and this is how they made it happen.
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