UFO Con #3, Part Two

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.

UFO Con #2

Second day of UFO CON Santa Clara.

First, a correction: Today I got a better look at the “aura” camera and talked to the owner a bit about how it worked. It’s called the AuraCam 600/Coggins Camera, (http://www.auraphoto.com/products/auracam.shtml?close) and it’s not based on Kirlian principles after all. It uses a conventional “instant” print analog camera, mounted inside a large box, and two, hand-sized boxes with electrodes on the top, to create a double exposure on the film. The first exposure is of the subject, then a mirror flips down over the camera lens that directs the camera’s gaze onto a white screen, inside the box. Then the electronics “paint” the aura on the screen with LEDs. The subject places her hands on the electrodes and the biofeedback is used to generate the auraic image. Exactly how that’s done is a secret, but I’m told that the image is calibrated to match what psychics see. Who knows what that actually means, but it’s not impossible that the image is related to the person’s physical and/or psychological state, and thus could be used as a quick, non-invasive, diagnostic or monitoring tool.

I signed up for this conference mostly to market myself to the “experiencer” (abductee, contactee) community, as a therapist, and what I found there surprised me. What I expected to see, was a few relatively serious researchers mixed with some spiritual people of different kinds, leavened with some wild-eyed fanatics with views too far out for me to entertain. (I guess everyone has their limits.) What I got was a large number of people asking questions. Isn’t that odd. It’s not what I was told to expect, by all the news casts, TV shows and movies the include UFO types, but there it is. Many, perhaps most, had interesting stories to tell, some of them very far out, but they almost always ended in questions: What really happened? Why did it happen? What does it mean? Why me? And in a surprising number of cases: How can I make it stop?! Interestingly, the speakers that acted like they had the answer or answers, were the ones that attracted the most, we’ll call it, skepticism. The U.S. political system could learn a lot from this group, where wildly different and contradictory points of view are politely tolerated, with none of the posturing and overheated rhetoric that seems to enter any public discussion these days.

What I saw was a group of disparate people, from all walks of life, from military contractors to Ph.D.s to house wives to spiritualists, all drawn together, or maybe pushed together, by common experiences and by a society that refuses to recognize their problems are real, and, effectively, spits on them for having them. A very common theme I heard was “I was as hard core an unbeliever as you can find, until…” And, you must realize that, this must be just the tip of the iceberg. For every person who speaks up, how many hundreds that keep quiet and say nothing. Like the LGBT community, not too long ago, where you absolutely had to keep quiet and pretend to be straight. (Under penalty of death, in some cases, even today) The UFO community faces enormous pressure from every direction to shut up and go away. I find it fascinating, and amusing, that it’s much more academically respectable to research demons and spirt possessions than UFOs. I can’t help but wonder if any of the hard-core disbelievers have questioned why it is so important to insist that everything related to UFOs must be complete crap. I can only infer that, like the preacher some years ago that predicted the downfall of western civilization if gay marriage was allowed, these people are certain of some horrible catastrophe, if any portion of the UFO phenomenon turns out to have any factual basis.

It seems to me that the UFO community is slowly grown and gaining political power. Sort of like the gay community, they are beginning to organize, flex their collective muscles and slowly, haltingly, starting to insist on recognition and acknowledgement of the blatant and unquestioned discrimination they receive from every quarter. The movement is still just starting to find it’s legs, but it is growing. And they have a real advantage over the LGBT community, because they don’t have to overcome the deep-seated, hatred and fear that weighs the LGBTs. So, the tipping point could come much faster than anyone expects as the UFO community sweeps up the vast numbers of people with beliefs or experiences that are marginalized by our society. Brace yourself, my friend, as every movie and every TV show that deals with UFO and paranormal themes makes it just a little more normal to have “experiences.” I hope to live for the day when UFO deniers are as ridiculed in the popular press as the climate-change deniers are today.

UFO Con #1

First day of UFO CON Santa Clara.

I met quite a few interesting people. Most of them have a view of the world that is definitely not to be found at your average party or church social. That isn’t necessarily bad, or even all that unusual, if you think about it: I’ve met any number of “Christians” with views that are at least of wacky and divorced from my version of reality as some of what I met there. Funny how you can walk around all day talking about angles and demons, or describing your conversations with dead people or non-material beings and nobody bats an eye, IF the name of that dead person is “Jesus,” or that being is “God.” Otherwise, you are ten different colors of crazy. That being said, some of the view I heard I have no trouble, if not dismissing completely, at least setting aside with a, “I can kind of see where this person is coming from, but they’ve taken this way too far for my taste.”

For example, there was one presenter who was very entertaining, but seemed to have no connection with any reality that I’m familiar with. I kept thinking that his stuff would make wonderful alternate-history fiction, but is way too paranoid for me to want to enter his world. Though there was a certain fascination with the way he wove his narrative, touching down, at times, on historical fact, but then soaring off into his own interpretations. I can see where he’s coming from, in a way, but I feel that he’s on a journey that doesn’t have much relevance for me.

I had my aura photographed. That was an interesting experience. It used a special camera that I have seen advertised in the internet, but it’s really expensive, and there doesn’t seem to be any details about how it works available. Judging from what I could see, it appears to be descended from Kirlian Photography. I was able to get a look at the auras of some other people, to compare with mine. Two people had auras that looked almost the same while others were very different. Mine was the only one that was markedly asymmetrical, which the operator told me had to do with the difference between the energy I was receiving and the energy I was putting out. Even though I told her almost nothing about myself, she said that the picture showed that I was taking in a tremendous amount, a good listener, and I was emitting almost pure healing energy. Nice to hear, anyway.

It is my feeling that all too many people there have “vision, through a glass, darkly.” There is a number that see things in a positive light, but I am saddened by all those who see nothing but a huge, dark, hopeless conspiracies in everything. I don’t agree with any of that, but this isn’t my first BBQ, so I see that these people draw some comfort from that, in their own way. I like to think I’m matured enough to not feel the need try and fix them and bring them around to a “saner” position. They will get what they need when the time comes. As I see it, might as well try and convince a Baptist that there is no such thing as Hell.

At one point during a presentation, I noticed the woman next to me making notes after certain comments by the speaking. Afterward, I offered her my card and told her what I did, and she said that she was looking for a hypnotherapist. We had a short, but interesting, conversation and she seemed interested enough that I expect to hear from her soon. I also spread my cards to anyone else that seemed involved with “experiencers,” as they are now called. That’s a new term for me, though it seems to have been in use for at least twenty years. Just another sign, I suppose, of just how little of what goes on in this community filters out into the rest of the world. You would think that an epidemic of people suffering debilitating trauma would produce some ripple in the media. Does it really matter if they believe the cause is “abduction,” or “contact,” rather than IUDs in Afganistain? Suffering is suffering, why should they be ignored?

Comforting a Lonely Spirit

Today I had an interesting meditation. I did it while listening to The Crossing Point of Light A Workshop with Dr Steven Greer Maybe it’s odd to do that. Perhaps I should listen to music or just silence. I find that different things trigger different experiences, like when I watched that documentary about the oldest cities in the word and it triggered memories of living in them. This, not so much. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A lot of these UFO things focus on fear and conspiracies. This one, less so, but it was still pretty dry and not too interesting to me.

When I meditate, it seems that I go through a period of calming down, then a blank time, then a part where it seems like my body is asleep but my mind is awake. Today, nothing interesting happened until I was in the third part.

I have generally found the third part to be a bit frustrating. It seems to me that since my body is in this really relaxed state, I should be able to go on some amazing mind trips. But I can’t, as a rule. Today was no exception, though I can’t be sure why, since odd things have been happening or not happening of late.

For lack of anything better to do, I set about doing some healing of my left leg. There’s really nothing technically wrong with it, but lately it I’m getting really odd vibes about it. It feels like the foot want to curl under when I’m not looking, causing twisted ankles if I’m not careful. And, from time to time, I gett the feeling that it’s not there. Like I’d lost it at some point. This makes me a little nervous, I don’t know what this might mean. What it might cause to happen. At any rate, today I was letting the energy flow into my leg and trying to do something about, what looked to me like “stuck” energy, when I felt someone next to me.

That someone was sad and lonely and seemed to be crying. It could have been someone I know, maybe not. I had no idea what to do except give her all the comfort and love I could. It seemed like a “her.” I tried to make her feel loved. I did everything I could for a while, and then she was gone. At the point I decided it was time to wrap it up and get on with my day.

I wonder if I just make this stuff up. This entity shows up, from time to time, sometimes very affectionate, sometime aloof. This is the first time it was sad. It seems like a woman, but not always. There are periods when it disappears for a time. At those times, if I look very carefully, I can sometimes just make it out. It’s very faint. No way to know if I’m just imagining it or not. Perhaps it’s attention is somewhere else. This is the first time I’ve see it sad. And it was very sad. I could feel the despair and loneliness as strong as my own. I want to think I helped, but I expect I’ll never know. I’ll never know if it’s even attached to a living person. And so we’re back to that annoying question of, Is this real?

Well, I’ve spent most of my life saying that anything that made me uncomfortable, didn’t exist, was just my imagination. Now I’m just going to go with it. It is what it is and it means what it means, and someday I’ll find out what that is, or I won’t. Fine either way.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder...

I’m going post this here because there’s nowhere else I can talk about it.

Today I was doing my meditation. I am trying a new technique that consists of, essentially, throwing out rules and expectations and letting my mind wander and imagine whatever I like. After an unknown period of doing, I don’t remember what, I found myself in an industrial setting. I was watching an open metal cage, shaped like I slice of bread, but large enough to hold two people side by side, coming toward me on some kind of assembly line. All around there was industrial equipment, pipes, wiring and boxes. The cage had a person strapped in on right side and the space on the left was half-full of equipment.

Next, I was down, next to the cage, at eye level. I could see the persons’ head and shoulders right next to me. I was looking for something. Right then I realized I had no idea what I was doing there! This wasn’t anywhere I had ever been, it wasn’t from any movie I’ve seen. I wasn’t even asleep! As I pondered that, the scene faded.

After a bit, I had the idea to imagine a spaceship. The inside of a space ship. And I came up with a control room that was a mashup of details from Start Trek TOS, Star Trek, The Menagerie, and UFO stuff I’ve read. Everything was white and roundish and curvy. I was looking at my scene and thinking about all the Star Trek similarities when a Grey somehow appeared in the center of my view, then walked off to the left. As he left, he raised he raised his left hand in a awkward wave and said “Hello.” Right then I felt a mild shock and my whole body jerked.

I was really not expecting this. The scene, never very clear, came and went. I figured I’d play along and ask questions. I tried for a while, but things kept wavering in and out and my mind kept wandering. It was sort of like the old days of analog TV, when you were watch a distant station and the picture was awash in static and it would fade in and out. Every now and then I’d get what felt like real contact with someone, for a few seconds, and then it would all wash out again.

I wasn’t able to learn much, but here’s what I did get: The reason contact was so bad was that I wasn’t yet “tuned” properly, “we” were currently working on that. Right then I felt strong tingling over my upper body and a pressure/pointy feeling in my head, bordering on pain. It didn’t last too long. The other piece of information I got was this: I, apparently, am conducting, or are part of, some kind of “research project.” Things got really fragmented by this point and right then our cat insisted that I get up. It’s pretty unusual for her to yowl at my bedroom door like that. I think she wants my attention and is waiting, not too patiently, for me to stop typing this and give her my full attention. I really wanted to get this down before I forgot it.

I honestly don’t know what I should make of this. Should I just accept it at face value, keep going to see what more I can find out?

UFOs are crazy!

I've now finished Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington, and I think I largely agree with the author: 99.9% of everything you hear about UFOs and invading aliens is misinformation, disinformation, confusion or plain fiction. Pinkington's idea that intelligence services around the world have found the whole UFO underground a way too convenient cover for anything they want to hide and dumping ground for anyone or anything they want to discredit, is way to plausible to discard.

The whole denial freight train got started during the cold war and continues to this day for several reasons, aside from what I said above, including embarrassment, bureaucratic inertia, and the problem that, if they did come clean, there would be the incidents that they either still can't explain, or don't want to, because the subjects are still secret. And there is another theory, the "inoculation," where all the TV shows and movies from X-Files through Superstition and Vampire Dairies, with all their evil and fear, are subtly encouraged so people get so used to the evil-alien-conspiracy idea that, when the truth actually comes out, it will seem plain-jane boring by comparison. Maybe. There are a lot of people that are genuinely terrified of aliens and UFOs, so perhaps that's a good idea?

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a truth buried under all the wacko, fear-mongering, alien-invasion, evil-genetic-reptile-hybrids-going-to-take-over-the-world stories, and it's substantially less interesting, and at the same time more profound, than what grabs all the attention at UFO conventions. It's my opinion that UFOs, spirits and psychic phenomenon are part and parcel of the same thing, and it will all come out when we're ready for it to come out. Each UFO camp doesn't want to give up their pet theories, so they ignore the subtle evidence and just focus on the big, juicy, exciting stuff. Who, really, wants to admit that they are just plain wrong and vast underground bases and evil invading reptiles really don't exist? I mean, what would you do with your Saturday afternoons?

I have no trouble accepting what I have seen and experienced and the readings that resonate with it. Once, I was afraid of the unknown, but now things like ghosts are interesting, but not particularly exciting. Pretty much everything that comes of the the UFO community is just plain silly, all designed to make you afraid. Because, I suppose, that's what sells. No one want's to see a lecture about sweetness and light, so that won't change anytime soon. There are some truly wonderful and exciting things going on, you just won't find anything about them at a UFO convention or website.