Four Stooges of the Apocalypse

Gosh gee whiz, 2012 fever is hot out there.  I know because I recently made a passing joke about 2012 and the end of the world in a film finance blog piece (sort of my day job) and got various responses from assorted religious types who were stocking the bunkers.  Guess they were not sure how solid they were with the Lord.

Of course, the ancient Mayans did not predict the end of the world in 2012.  They only predicted the end of this current age.  Maybe, depending upon your interpretation, the end of this period of civilization.  But that is about it (except for a little detail we shall get to later).  But that hasn't stopped the true believers from bracing for everything from Rapture to alien invasion (and lots of stuff in between).

For example, take the recent buzz on various UFO and end of the world sites concerning the report of Strange Metal Boxes on the Coast of Oregon (I put it in caps so you can quickly run it through Google).  The story started around Feb 8 as the boxes began appearing up and down the Pacific shoreline.  Continued on Feb. 14 as Dr. Bill Hanshumaker of the Hatfield Marine Science Center arrived to examine the boxes and announce that he had NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE!  Then, the boxes began to glow and buzz and you would think that they would all be running for the hills.

OK, maybe there are some problems with the story.   Little details like the fact that Dr. Hanshumaker has never seen the so-called boxes (I know, because I asked him via email).  Sure, he sent some young volunteers over to Bray's Point to look at the boxes but there were no boxes.  In fact, nobody could be found who had a clue what they were talking about.

OK, maybe this story has some really big problems.  Considering the fact that the tale is just a single source story, completely lacking in any basic form of confirmation and the one and only expert witness quoted in the piece is telling everybody that he hasn't seen anything, we might just have to suspect a hoax.  A really, really big hoax.

Though the stupid tale doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny, it has traveled across the internet like lightening.  At some sites, UFOs have been added to the story with dark hints of an impending invasion.  At others, these boxes are clear signs of the 2012 Apocalypse (though I can't recall anything in the Book of Revelations that referred to the Holy Gift Boxes of God).  Increasingly, as the bogus reports pump up the tale with a buzzing sound, a few bold folks have linked it to the strange sky sounds that are a major hit on YouTube.

At any moment, someone will decide that these boxes must contain President Obama's real birth certificate.  The assumptions mount.  And yes, assumptions can also make an ass out of you and me.

But notice the quick linkage between this completely bogus story and the sky sound reports.  These many reports are a trickier lot.  Some, such as the incident in Costa Rica are confirmable.  A few odd incidents even received national broadcast, such as the "noise" during several baseball games at Tropicana Field.   So there really is something going on, but it is hard to truly evaluate as numerous hoaxes have been uploaded onto YouTube.  It becomes a bit hard to see the forest due to all of the plastic Christmas trees.

I have a bad feeling that the many hoaxes are doing a major disservice to the general public.  Especially if I am half-correct in my hunch that some of these noises may be related to unique freak upper atmospheric winds caused by radical climatic change.  Who needs the Four Horsemen when you have that going on.  Unfortunately, the hoaxes simply make it easier for many folks to doubt the whole thing and that may not be a good idea.

Many of the YouTube videos are single source presentations and are lacking in any form of confirmation.  A few have voice overs that attempts to misdirect the viewer.  For example, in one tape that I've seen, a woman claims to have been awaken in the middle of the night by the mysterious noise and has gone out to her backyard to tape it.  At one point, she describes how her neighbors are also waking up to this scary noise and their lights are coming on.  In reality, the lights were already on at the start of the tape.  She is just claiming otherwise.  Oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be any sign of anybody stepping out to even see what is going on.  In fact, it looks like a pretty quiet neighborhood (except for the so-called racket from above).

I have noticed that many of the most suspect videos often share something in common.  They all have the same noise, the so-called Trumpet of the Apocalypse.  Many of these videos have virtually the same (or even the exact same) sound.  Most are presumably duped from the same master tape.  Ironically, they all resemble the climax from Kevin Smith's movie Red State (starting at the 32 second mark).  It is not the exact same sound (though extremely close), but it is the exact same idea (minus the explanation in the movie's wrap up).

Coincidence?  Yea, sure.  To be honest, I don't think God gets His ideas from Kevin Smith movies.  But if He does, then He must be a more fun fella than we have given Him credit (and I bet He loves comic books).

And by the way, what the ancient Mayans predicted for 2012 was the return of the heavy duty super god Bolon Yokte.  On Dec. 21, he is scheduled to descend from the sky and kick start the world into a new age.  Almost sounds like a job for The Ghostbusters.

Update: Email just received from Dr. Bill Hanshumaker:

The "boxes on the beach" are merely floats that were originally built to support docks. After a recent flooding event, some docks were destroyed and their floats drifted downriver and subsequently deposited on the beach. A colleague from a local state agency had the opportunity to examine one and confirmed this explanation.

William Hanshumaker, Ph.D.
Public Marine Education Specialist
Oregon Sea Grant Faculty

In a World of Speculation

Hallelujah!    Roswell has finally been solved!  Again.  Well that seems to be the main hot item getting splashed across the news services with the release of Annie Jacobsen's book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base.

Before I say anything else, let me put all my cards on the table.  The book has just come out.  I have not had a chance to read the book (though I will be looking at it as soon as I find a copy - most of the material should be extremely interesting).  Everything I have to say about this one part of the book is based solely upon the numerous news stories that have poured out during this past weekend.  Further, I have no doubt that Annie Jacobsen is a solid reporter, superb investigator, and extremely reliable and insightful writer, irregardless of what either Homeland Security or the U.S. Marshals might think (follow this link to Snopes.com for a pretty concise analysis of her Terror in the Skies story).

In a nutshell, Jacobsen argues that what really happened at Roswell was a psychological warfare attempt by Stalin and the Soviet Union to create mass panic in the U.S. by "invading" the country with deformed children disguised as outer space aliens who were piloted out of South America into New Mexico on a captured Nazi made Horten Ho 229.  The children were made to look unearthly by Josef Mengele who did it in exchange for laboratory space from the Soviets.  Stalin was inspired to try this stunt by the panic in 1938 caused by the Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds.  For all I know, Orson Welles was Joseph Stalin.


Surprisingly enough, this completely harebrained theory has flown through the media without anyone catching the "minor" problems in Jacobsen's thinking.

A.  Nobody really knows if the Soviets ever got their hands on a Horten Flying Wing jet because we were too busy grabbing them for ourselves.  I know a little bit about this because my late father-in-law was a member of the mechanical team whose job it was to dismantle the darn thing for shipment back to the States.

B.  Since it is a safe bet that the Russians knew that we had one of these suckers, you can also be sure that they wanted one for their own research.  If they had one, they would be too busy trying to test and develop the flying wing for their own use.  They would not be wasting the device in pursuit of a half-baked practical joke on Truman.  Stalin can be accused of many things, but stupidity wasn't one of them.

C.  It is extremely unlikely that the Soviets would stage such a stunt in New Mexico.  We had a ton of top secret work going on down there.  The Russians had agents working very hard at basing themselves in the area.  Why would they want to create a wild security scare that would threaten every other operation they had going in the area.  Again, Stalin was not stupid.

D.  Josef Mengele was not available in 1947.  He was busy laying low as a farm-hand in Germany while avoiding arrest by Allied authorities.  He didn't make it to South America until 1949. 

Otherwise, Jacobsen's theory is swell. 

Basically, her thinking sounds like an elaborate reworking of Nick Redfern's book Body Snatchers in the Desert, minus the plausibility.  Redfern's book is a must read.  I don't really buy his theory either, but he works harder at it.  Privately, I suspect that Redfern was being led into a weird dog-and-pony show by several people working together (his inside sources seem to tell the exact same story, which is normally a tip off to most investigative reporters that there is something funny going on).  Likewise, the timeline of events is not at all smooth.  But at least it sounds almost half possible.

So maybe Jacobsen would like to rework the last part of her book.  Then again, maybe not.  She still seems to be convinced that the members of a Syrian rock band on their way to Vegas were really terrorists plotting a hard trip to paradise and still sounds miffed that every federal investigator who dealt with the case said otherwise.

 And you can skip what I said about Orson Welles.  He was much too tall to pose as Stalin.

Update:  Sometimes you need to quit when you are looking as if you are ahead.  Annie Jacobsen has given an interview to Popular Mechanics which pretty much tells you all you need to know about how good her source must be.

1.  Her anonymous single source (which from a journalist perspective is a really bad way to precede) claims he was out there to reverse engineer the Soviet Horten flying wing.  Really?  We already had them.  Why in the heck would we need to reverse engineer the thing?

2.  He learned part of the story from personal conversations with the surviving "child."  Really?  Since the little nipper would not have a thing to do with reverse engineering and since these type of secret projects work on a need to know basis, why was he having these lovely chat fests?  It just doesn't add up.

3.  The project started in 1951 which is why it is called Area 51?  WTF!!??  The origins of Area 51 predates World War One.  It started into extensive use by the US Navy as a secret gunnery range during World War One.  The number 51 was used on the map as they were sectioning off the area for use.

What does this tell us.  Well, it strongly suggests that Annie Jacobsen isn't exactly into research and fact checking and all of that hard stuff.  It also strongly suggests that her single source is either deranged or pulling her leg.  No matter what, this story is a crock. 

Folk Tale or Not

Both the high and the low of the paranormal field (if we can even call it a "field") is the strange degree to which it lives as a vast minefield of folkloric reports. There are numerous accounts that sound good, really really good, that are simply nothing more (nor less) than snippets from a campfire tale.

Take for example the so-called Mudhouse Mansion that was recently presented in the Forbes online magazine story about the nine scariest abandoned mansions in America. This place has several really scary stories that are widely repeated on various regional ghost hunter sites..  It looks really creepy and seems to be a spook house delight.  Too bad most of the tales are bogus and few people have even bothered to do the slightest check on the house's history.

According to the folklore, the mansion was once the home of some sort of government official (an oddly nameless chap who seems unclear about both his position and exactly what type of government he served - federal, county?).  It was right after the Civil War and he had slaves hidden away on his estate (which is a pretty bold move for someone living in an anti-slave state better known for its links to the Underground Railroad).  He was a cruel slave driver (no pun intended) whose slaves finally rose up and killed him (presumably on a dark and stormy night).  If you are familiar with the real case of the Hickory Hill Slave House in Equality, Illinois, you will sense a strong case of deja vu.  This story appears to be a displaced, revised version of that incident.

Then, some years later (maybe in the 1870s or 1880s), a family moved into the Mudhouse Mansion.  According to this tale, a husband, wife, and three children happily settled in and were never seen to come back out.  For days, neighbors saw the solitary image of a woman in white standing in a window on the second floor of the mansion.  After many days, the police were asked to check in on the family.  To their shock, they discovered all five family members hanging by their necks from the ceiling on the second floor.  The wife, wearing a white dress, was hanging in front of the window where the neighbors thought they saw her standing.

To this day, there are those who swear that they have seen the ghost of this woman, still staring out of this window.  Some have even drawn pictures of this haunting sight.

Too bad the place wasn't built until 1900 (according to the Fairfield County Ohio Auditor's site).  Likewise, the mansion was never known as the Mudhouse (except by recent ghost hunters).  The actual Mudhouse was a more primitive structure across the road (built around the 1840s) that had largely functioned as a stagecoach inn and tavern.  It would fit the dates for these tales but there seems to be no association in the stories to this structure.

What is being called the Mudhouse Mansion is actually better known by local historians as the Hartman House.  It was built and lived in by a couple named Byler until sometime around 1910 when they sold it to the Hartman family.  Years later, the Hartman's daughter inherited the mansion.  Though the folklore insists that the place has been abandoned since 1931,   the daughter simply became a somewhat reclusive old woman who lived there until her death in the late 1960s.  Then the house was inherited by her nephew who has not taken much interest in the property and has pretty much left it alone.  At the Grave Addiction web site, a comment has been left by a local that presents a pretty accurate account of the house:

"I have some information that you might find interesting. I became interested in the house a few months back due to a friend who drives by it everyday. So I started doing my research, and the best book that I found was my father. My father's name is Emmett Pinkstock, and he grew up in the Lancaster region his whole life. He actually lived in the white house next to the "Mudhouse" house, while he was a young boy (it burnt down in a fire a few years back.). His father and the last owner, Helena Hartman, were good friends. He gave me some really great info on the house and the stories. The house was still in order until the late 1960's when Helena passed away. She had inherited the house through her parents, who were farmers at the time they passed. Dad told me of the beauty that was in the house. There were 22 rooms with 10 bedrooms all upstairs...he told me that all the windows upstairs were all stained glass. The outhouses outside held different things. One building behind the back, he explained, was a generator room where they made their own electricity. Another building was divided into two sections for their carriages and a blacksmith shop. Helena was never married, and was a farmer who raised cows on the property. Dad remembers going up as a young boy and helping with the animals and farm. She was famous for her onion gravy that she fixed (Gross, I know!). She was a very simple woman and was a sweetheart by all means. She wore simple dresses and looked like she didn't have a toilet to pee in. He explained to me that when she died, the house was left the way it was. She was never married and had no kids. The house went over to her nephew who already had a fortune of his own. And also with the name of the house, he referred to it as theHartman-Mast House. Mudhousebreakins for the furniture that she kept inside. He explained she had silver everything and clocks throughout the house that were encrusted with rubies. And as far as the current owner, Jeanie Mast, she really isn't that mean old lady that everyone takes her to be. She's in her early 80's who lives right down from the house. I've been able to talk to her about the history, that house is AMAZING! But there is no Bloody Mary's or war general with slaves. Just rumors that came about. The house was one of the first brick ones in Lancaster and was one of the finest. So of course, like she said, you're going to have legends and stories about it."

No slaves, no hangings, no ghosts, no nothin'.  Just a basic set of facts and a remarkably straight forward history.  And it only took about ten minutes to locate the information online.  
 

The Neverending Story

Leslie Kean's book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record is now a best seller. Various retired military men have gone public with their reports of UFOs disabling nuclear missiles . A growing list of countries are releasing documents confirming that alien objects are real. All in all, it seems to be pretty earth shaking stuff.

So naturally the national press is more focused on Lindsay Lohan's most recent arrest. After all, everyone is bound to be shock that she might be doing drugs.

So basically, aliens could launch a full scale attack, blow up half the cities on Earth, and generally wreak the kind of havoc seen mostly in Michael Bay's films and nobody will report it. Well, maybe a small report at the end of the news hour (mostly using another pointless interview with some debunker who will balance the story with another round of "it was only the planet Venus" jibber jabber).

I mean heck, most of Kean's book is packed with material that has actually been available for a few years, is pretty well documented (mostly by the U.S. military itself) and is widely known within UFO circles. But to the public at large, it is new and mysterious.

The attraction that UFOs have for nuclear missiles (both ours and the old Soviets) is also well known and documented (by both us and the Russians). Nothing exactly new. It is a topic that might be considered of some deep concern (at least if you are kind of concerned about global security and stuff), but it isn't actually new. Of course, a lot of the media isn't exactly paying attention because...well, just because.... Heck, this story is only going to get attention if you can someone factor in a drunk and drugged Lindsay Lohan (maybe doing wheelies around the silo while aliens shoot heat beams at her or something like that).

Heck, I just watched a news story on CNN about a farmer in Georgia trying to catch the mystery intruders who have killed and mutilated 20 of his cows over the past year. It is a classic "mute" case and it is also quite obvious that the reporters covering the story haven't a clue as to what they are chasing.

Despite ample evidence that these cases represent something extremely unusual (and there has been lots of evidence gathered over the years, mostly by honest-to-god police investigators - the FBI have even posted online the material), the cattle mutilations are still blown off as freak acts committed by elusive lone nutcases (I think they are second cousins to the equally odd lone gunmen types). Very little investigation has gone into these cases (and they don't even have to involve the UFO theory - in fact I have often leaned toward the "black op" notion). But the evidence strongly suggests something extremely serious is going on and it most likely involves something that just might be darn serious to public health and safety.

So obviously it is doomed to a small piece on the back page, surrounded by uninformed quotes from whatever dingbat the reporter can find on his speed dial.

After all, they have to save the front page for ol' Lindsay. She is about due for court again.

What If...

Let's say you are the president of the United States and you are having a pretty lazy afternoon, just hanging around the Oval Office catching up on your soaps or whatever. Suddenly, all the phones start ringing as everybody from the State Department to the Joint Chiefs and even the D.C. police are calling about a large saucer shaped craft that just landed on the National Mall. What are you going to do?

OK, after you have taken that stiff drink, what do you do next? It's a good question that doesn't seem to have an actual straight forward answer. Most likely, there is some form of protocol in place. Experience suggests that it will go something along the same lines as what happened in similar situations.

When NASA was about to present the possibility that they had found fossils in a Martian rock, the results were first taken to then President Bill Clinton in order to prepare him to prepare the nation for the shocking discovery of...well, of like maybe dead Martians (by the way, so far the world has pretty much been capable of dealing with this discovery - much more so than some geologists). Naturally, Pres. Clinton admittedly told the news to his main spin doctor, Dick Morris. In turn, Morris made a quick retreat to a hotel room and blabbed the whole story out to a call girl. OK, this isn't exactly much of a protocol. According to most reports, the call girl wasn't even all that impressed by the story. Guess she wasn't into geology.

In 2004, an asteroid appeared to have been heading toward the earth. President George W. Bush was immediately alerted and for the next nine hours the White House held phone briefings with various other foreign heads of state in order to prepare them for an impact. Oddly enough, while all of this chatting was going on, nothing was actually done that might have suggested any kind of attempt at the most basic level of public preparedness. The debate was kept secret and, I suspect, was mostly about who got to race for the bunker first. Screw the public.

So the known track record for certain types of events isn't exactly fantastic. One would hope that the current administration might do a better job. The current farce with the Gulf oil spill suggests otherwise. President Obama might be tempted to simply form a committee and then move on to something else.

Which is too bad. Alien contact is not such a strange possibility. It is even possible that it has already happen, the so-called Wow signal being just one of several distinct moments. Unfortunately, the known details of such events suggest that if it were left strictly to the scientific community, they would simply dick around with the issue for a few decades and then, maybe, publish a paper.

At the political level, the only known decision concerning aliens appears to be the infamous order by Harry S. Truman to shoot them down. Who knows, maybe the aliens need to be taught a lesson or two. But an itchy trigger finger doesn't exactly set the stage for a very productive greeting.

It also doesn't help that no real public effort has been made to prepare the world for this highly plausible moment. Sure, a long history of Hollywood movies and TV shows have sort of prepared the general public for alien contact. But the effort has been, at best, a little half baked and poorly defined. The main upside is that most of the general public is half-equipped to deal with the concept, contrary to the panic-inducing notions of the old Brookings Institute report.

Ironically, the general public may now be in better mental condition to deal with alien contact than most of the so-called intellectual class. For the past fifty years, the subject of aliens has been successfully treated with scorn and ridicule. A sizable amount of the intellectual class (academics, scientists, etc.) have largely treated the subject as a goofy idea and are extremely ignorant of the current situation. In turn, they are the people most invested in an intellectual understanding of reality that will be at best sorely tested (if not torn asunder) by the process of alien contact. They have the most to loose. In all likelihood, they will be the ones who will be least capable of grasping the issues if, and when, events unfold. In many respects, first contact will be the end of the world as they know it. Likewise, the higher the intellect, the greater the fall. Many of them will never recover from the blow and I suspect that an entire generation will go missing from the shock. The average person will most likely do OK, but the tenured faculty folks can simply cash it in the minute the first craft publicly lands.

Which is too bad. They are also the same people whose help in understanding the situation will be critically needed. But they are unprepared for this event. They have had a lifetime of denial and denial is a hard habit to easily break.

Take Me to Your Leaders

At the opening of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Stilll, the alien had the common decency to plop right down on the Capital Mall and make himself known. OK, he got shot for his effort, but it was a nice enough of a straight forward gesture.

But in reality, these critters from so far away just don't seem very interested in making such a grandstanding stunt. Not once have they popped up at noon in front of the White House demanding a photo op with any of our elected officials. Heck, the only world leader known to have even gotten close to an alien was Richard Nixon (or at least according to the Jackie Gleeson story)and that was only a dead one. Otherwise, our outlandish visitors seem quite disinterested in dealing with representatives of our ruling class.

Of course the history of many modern presidents has been laced with UFOs. Harry S. Truman ordered them to be shot down. Jimmy Carter spotted one. Ronald Reagan chased them. But only Tricky Dicky had hands-on experience.

Or at least until now. In a recent BBC news report, the president of Russia has been asked to personally investigate the claim by a regional president that he has been in contact with aliens. This claim by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalmykia, was made during a TV interview and has provoked concern about both his sanity and, just on the off chance that this is real, what exactly is the government protocol for dealing with it.

OK, by all account Ilyumzhinov is a tad eccentric. He appears to have an interest in being a Buddhist styled dictator who believes that he is able to influence people through ESP and has a couple of aides who were convicted of murdering one of his political opponents (not that he knew anything about it - guess the ESP was off that night). So his bio is just weird enough to suggest that alien contact is pretty normal for this guy.

But the totally weird thing is that he is not the only one. In some strange way, the world of alien encounter is creeping into the mainstream political culture and it is a global event. Not that long ago Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of the current prime minister of Japan confided to the press about her ride to Venus with her alien friends. Though her story sounds like a retread of George Adamski, she is quite serious and her husband seems to support her belief.

Then there is Fife Symington, the former governor of Arizona. During the Phoenix Lights sightings in 1997, Symington staged a press conference primarily to make fun of the numerous UFO sightings. Ten years later, he came public with his own sightings at the time and become quite upfront that there was something from another planet whizzing over Arizona that night. Of course, with Arizona's current laws, I doubt if they will ever want to try landing.

The list goes on. It is almost like a fad. It is also extremely interesting. It doesn't matter if the various stories are either real or phony, the concept of alien encounter is making a slow but steady creep into high office. It is almost as if we have gone beyond disclosure without any disclosing along the way. It is simply becoming a given.

So it may be fair to ask: When Obama talks about illegal aliens, which kind is he talking about?

Katie Bar the Door

Stephen Hawking has just done the world a great favor. With his comments published today in the London Times the so-called smartest man on earth has just made it so of official that aliens exist and are lurking somewhere nearby. OK, he claims this on the basis of math and probability, but this is his area and he seems quite confident in his statement.

Which means we can now get down to the real issue: Do we greet them as space brothers or Help! Murder! Police! and Katie bar the door and tell grandpa to get out the shotgun!!!!!

These have always been the two main schools of thought on the matter. Kind of limited and certainly very simplistic, but this is about the best anyone has ever come up with concerning the issue. Each view is driven by obvious human needs. The aliens must be feared school is obviously rooted in human fear of the unknown. Well that, and our own long history of treating other cultures in various nasty and brutal manners. Gee whiz, why wouldn't an alien race do to us what we did to the American Indians (and the Africans and the Asians and on and on).

Likewise, the Space Brothers school is a strong extension of the I-Love-You-And-You-Love-Me childlike need for "adult" approval. We want them to be space brothers because we need their acceptance in order to bolster our own sense of low self-esteem.

Either way, we are hopelessly focused upon our own nightmares and dreams and want to project that upon the alien "other." Too bad. Since they are aliens, they may not be all that incline toward either enslaving us or patting our heads. Most likely, they will be rooted in their own psychology and social values and we can only hope to figure out what any of that means. They will operate according to their own needs, social values, and cultural traditions. It may or may not be good from our viewpoint. It will be up to us, as humans, to try and figure that out as fast as possible.

We will have no reasons to believe that any alien visitors love us. Nor do we have any reasons to believe that they are here to enslave us. The truth will be somewhere in the murky middle. It will be up to us to establish the means of handling contact and analyzing the intent of any such visitors. Each case will be different and every instance must be approached in a manner that is neither friendly nor hostile.

Hawking seems to suggest that we should turn off the lights, bolt the door, and not answer the phone. Tempting thought. Too bad this is a completely pointless notion. They already know that we are here and if any body out there is interested, they will find us quite quickly. So we need to be dealing with the best ways to prepare for global contact. The hiding option is no good.

And by the way, so is the hostile option. It's a safe bet that any alien race that is capable of getting here (and undoubtedly, there are some) will also be advance enough to blow our butts off if they are so inclined. No matter how advance some of our weapons may be, we will still end up looking like a pack of cave dwelling nitwits waving some sticks in their face (if they have one).

So what we need is less hardware and more rational, clear-headed thinking. I suspect we need to do this now. Actually, we should have been doing this many years ago.