IScience is tbe Pursuit 01 tbe Unexplained'

Journal of SITU
The
Society for the
Investigation of
The Unexplained

See "Possible

Levitatio~

of Peter Sugleris," page 2.

Volume 20

Number I
Whole No. 77
First Quarter

1987

- -

---------

The Society For The Investigation Of The Unexplained

Mail: SITU/PURSUIT, P.O. Box 265, Little Silver, NJ 07739-0265 USA Tel: (201) 842-5229
SITU (pronounced sit'you) is a Latin word meaning "place." SITU is also an acronym referring
to THE SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED.
SITU exists for the purpose of collecting data on unexplaineds, promoting proper investigation of individual reports and general subjects, and reporting significant data to its members.
The Society studies unexplained events and "things" of a tangible nature that orthodox science,
for one reason or another, does not or will not study.
You don't have to be a professional or even an amateur $cientist to join SITU.
MEMBERSHIP
Membership is for the calendar year, January-December: in the United States, $12 for one year; $23
for two years: $33 for three years. Membership in other countries is subject to surcharge, to cover higher
cost of mailing. Amount of surcharge, which varies according to region, will be quoted in response to
individual request. Members receive the Society's quarterly journal PURSUIT plus any special SITU
publications for the year of membership. Original "back issues" and reprints (issues of PURSUIT dated
prior to the current publishing year) are available for all past years. Send check or money order for total
amount with request identifying issues desired by Volume, Number and Year. Price i.s $3.00 per copy,
postpaid within the U.S. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery.
SITU welcomes members' participation. Articles, photographs, newspaper and magazine clips, book
reviews and other contents including "letters to the editors" should be sent to SITU/PURSUIT at the
above address if they are to be considered for publication in PURSUIT. The Society assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material and will not return unaccepted manuscripts unless provided with an
addressed return envelope bearing sufficient return postage.
All mail, including changes of address, library orders, postal errors, back-issue requests, renewals,
gift memberships and donations, should be sent to SITU /PURSUIT at the post office box address at
the top of this page. To avoid being charged our forwarding cost, please allow six or more weeks'
advance notice of change of address.
OPERATIONS AND ORGANIZATION
SITU has reference files which include original reports, newspaper and magazine clippings, correspondence, audio tapes, films, photographs, drawings and maps, and actual specimens. Reasonable
research requests will be answered by mail, but because of the steadily increasing demands upon staff
time, a fee for research will be charged. Members requesting information should enclose an addressed,
stamped envelope with the inquiry so that they may be advised of the charge in advance.
The legal affairs of the Society are managed by a Board of Trustees in accordance with the laws of
the State of New Jersey. The Society is counselled by a panel of prominent scientists designated the
Scientific Advisory Board (see inside back cover).
IMPORTANT NOTICES
The Society is unable to offer and is not obligated to render any services to non-members.
411 The Society does not hold any political, religious corporate or social views. Opinions expressed
in PURSUIT concerning such matters, and any aspect of human medicine or psychology, the social
sciences or law, religion or ethics, are those of the individual member or author and not necessarily
those of the Society.
411 The Society's membership list is restricted to mailing the journal PURSVlTand special SITU publications, and as necessary to the administration of SITU's internal affairs. Names and addresses on this
list are not available for sale, rental, exchange or any use except the foregoing.
o Contributions to SITU, but not membership dues, are tax deductible to the extent permitted by
the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and in some states as their taxing authorities may permit.
411

PUBLICATION
The Society's journal PURSUITis published quarterly. In each year the issues are numbered respectively from 1 through 4 and constitute a volume, Volume I being for 1968 and before, Volume 2 for
1969, and so on. Reduced-rate subscriptions to PURSUIT without membership benefits, are available
to public libraries and libraries of colleges, universities and high schools at $10 for the calendar year.
The contents of PURSUIT is fully protected by international copyright. Permission to reprint articles
or portions thereof may be granted, at the direction of SITU and the author. upon written request and
statement of proposed use, directed to SITU/PURSUIT at the post office address printed at the top
of this page.

..

THE QUARTERLY
JOURNAL OF THE

ISOCIElY FOR THE

-t
~TlGATION
r.SUI

OF

UNEXPlAINED

'SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED'

CODteats

P.ge
Possible Levitations of Peter Sugleris
by Berthoid E. Schwarz. M.D.
The Gospel According to a Metal-Bender
a related SITUation
Abductions in Perspective
by Hilary Evans
The Talking Crosses of Southern Mexico
by George A. Agogino
Weeping Icon Proves the Power of Artworks
"a related SITUation
More On Stone Spheres
by Michael T. Shoemaker
Nicaraguan Idols and Turkish Stone Heads
related SITUations
The Bakken Library of Electricity In Life
by Dennis Stillings
The Colonel Had a Ghost!
by Dr. Arlan Andrews
Ghost Hunter Checks Out Bernardsville Library
. a related SITUation
" Bigfoot Update
a SITUation
UFO Update: Clouding The Superpower Nuclear Scene
by Harry Lebelson
Fohn Clouds
a related SITUation
Sunken Cities and Lost Lands of the Baltic
by Jon Douglos Singer
Unknown Passageways
by Lucia Pena Giudice
Search For The Last Stronghold Of The Incas
And Hidden Treasure
a related SITUation
Book Reviews
Letters to the Editor
SITUations
The Notes of Charles Fort
Decip~ered by Carl J. Pabst

8
9
12
12

13

19
20
23

2S
26

27
31'
32

37
39
40
42
43

46

With this issue PURSUIT begins its twentieth year

of publication. SITU's officers like to believe that
Ivan Sanderson, founder of SITU, would agree that
his efforts have not been in vain.
From a four-page flyer for a couple of issues to
the present forty-eight page, advertisement-free, internationally respected journal, PURSUIT has not
occured by chance. A great deal of enthusiasm
coupled with hard work and sacrifice has become
part of all those in the past and present who put this"
publication together. Thanks to persistant and often"
exhausting efforts, we are now producing a quality
journal.
Like any group that is enthusiastic about its product or like parents "proud of their baby" we want to
see SITU's PURSUIT improve, and grow, and prosper.
Happily, during this twenty-year period we had to
increase our membership fee only one time, despite
ever-rising costs of printing (PURSUIT is commercially-computer typeset), paperstock, postage, etc.
In the past year we were pleased to upgrade the
quality of the journal's paper and to purchase some
needed new office equipment. More improvements
are being planned, but improvements generally do
not come free.
To this end, we are making tentative plans to increase our staff in a larger office facility to handle
the increase of new members - thanks to our improved quality of subject matter in PURSUIT and
the enthusiasm expressed by our members and readers.
As all improving organizations require, we need
strong financial support and to do this, one program
we plan to propose is the introduction of a $5,000
annual scholarship fund for students interested in
unexplained phenomena.
Anyone wishing to offer their particular talent(s)
such as legal advisor, experience with a scholarship
committee or soliciting financial support for special
projects will be welcome.
If you are interested please let us know.
- The Editors

Pu15uit V~1. 20.. ~o. I, Whole No. 77 First 9uaner 1987: Copyright 1987 by The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained. ISSN 0033-4685. No
pan of thiS penocilcal may be reproduced without the wntten consent of the Society. Roben C. Wanh, Publisher and Editor, Nancy Wanh. Production
Editor, Manin Wiegler, Consulting Editor, Charles Berlitz, Research Editor and Oceanographic Consultant.

First Quarter 1987

Pursuit 1

Possible LevitatioDs of Peter Sagleris

by Benhold E. Schn, M.D.
Instances of reputed human levitation are rare. However,
there are reports about the lives of saints, allegedly possessed
people, mystics and mediums indicating that this
phenomenon did occur. Outstanding representatives in this
last category are the Rev. Stainton Moses, D.O. Home, and
Eusapia Paladino. I Aside from Rogo'sZ chapter on levitation,
claims or even anecdotal accounts of modern examples in the
serious literature are almost non-existent. A search of articles
indexed in the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE
database from 1966 to 1986 yielded no articles on levitation in
the medical literature, and only a few articles in parapsychological journals where human levitation was, for the most
part, mentioned in reference to other aspects of telekinesis or
only in passing. The database indexes more than 3,000 journals.
I have seen many patients during my training and in numerous general and psychiatric hospital settings, including
having sporadically attended, for over forty years, numerous
psychiatric hospital staff meetings. Specifically, in th~ last
thirty-one years, I have seen 4,731 patients in private psychiatric consultation, and thus, I have spent thousands of hours
with many patients in their psychotherapy. In all this experience, I heard of only one example of alleged levitation, and
that pertained to a young man whose great-uncle in Lebanon,
a Maronite priest of saintly reputation, supposedly levitated
on several occasions. Therefore, it would seem to'me that in
medical practice in general, and in psychiatry in particular,
this singular event is almost non-existent.
Omitting Devereux's speculations, 4 and Eisenbud's superb
commentary on St. Joseph of COpertino,5 there has been a
paucity of psychodynamic attention to this extraordinary
,psychosomatic phenomenon. Two recent examples of levitation, with an abundance of surrounding data of fascinating
possible psychodynamic significance, can be found in Richards' account in which (1) "Dr. Neihardt's chair levitated
with him seating in it and floated approximately three feet
toward the bay window in the south wall of the living room.
He cried out in surprise and gratification, and the chair
floated gently to the floor before anyone could take a proof
photograph,'" and (2) "the chair in which Joe was seated
began to vibrate. It rocked back and forth, then levitated
straight upward approximately three inches. It slowly rotated
on a horizontal axis until Joe tumbled gently to the floor. '"
In contrast to human levitation, there is a growing body of
data on closely related telekinetic phenomena. As in Richards' observations, the English psychologist, Batcheldor,7 has
brilliantly pioneered innovative group experiments where he
lucidly defined the apparently relevant psychological
substrates for spectacular successes.
During investigations of gifted telekinetic sensitives,8,9.lo I
heard about Peter Sugleris, a twenty-two year old man who
had, according to newspaper accounts, on numerous occasions during public performances psychically bent and snapped tableware; bent twenty-five cent pieces; and telekinetically stopped and started allegedly defective time-pieces; moved
a' compass needle; levitated wooden pencils; turned the pages
of a telephone book; and raised a box of food items. I observed many of these claims during a public performance on Au-For felicity in communication, Sugleris and his wife will often be refe!Ted to by their flJSl
Peter and Esther,

1UIIIIIiS:

Pursuit 2

gust 28, 1985. At no time in these successful instanceS of presumed telekinesis did Peter supply the various objects or appaiently use'confederates or resort to the magician's familiar'
techniques of "distraction and switch." In many cases, he
never touched the items. As a possible personal example of
Peter's skills and the psychic nexus, when my wife and I
found out where we could buy the tickets for the public performance, we immediately drove to purchase them. HoweVer, when we stopped on the way for gasoline, we were
shocked to learn that when the tank was full, the motor'
wouldn't start. An experienced auto mechanic informed us
that our new battery was dead and he could not determine the
cause. The battery was replaced under the manufacturer's
, warranty. Simultaneously with this, my wife's battery-powered wrist watch also failed. Two weeks later, she brought the '
non-functioning watch to Peter's performance at the Westmont Country Club in New Jersey. She and the gentleman
sitting next to her, along with several others with broken watches, subsequently went to the stage while Peter went into a
trance-like state and made his clonic clenched (1St passes over
my wife's, and the gentleman's and others' timepieces. Both
my wife's and his watches started to run. The gentleman later
told us that he took his wife's anniversary wrist watch from
her jewelry box and, prior to Peter's effort, the watch had not
run for several years. Apparently the other watches, which
Peter did not handle, also started.
During their honeymoon, Peter and Esther came to Florida
and visited my office for some videotaped experiments from
October 5 to 9, 1985. 10 With minimal effort, Peter bent two
heavy metal keys and on thirteen occasions he moved a compass needle up to several degrees. He and his wife were disappointed that the needle did not do a 360 0 spin. During these
videotaped interviews, Peter also told of other psychic eXperiences that occurred to him in both public aDd private, sometimes spontaneously. He recalled how he developed his
psychic abilities as a boy of eight; recounting numerous
telekinetic experiments, including induction of apparent
spontaneous combustion, in addition to countless telepathic,
clairvoyant episodes and some alleged precognitive experiences. He detailed some of these events and occasional attempts at healing, people. His other alleged psychic experiences, which are beyond the purview of this study, are being
prepared for future publication. II He also mentioned past
episodes of levitation. His wife, who was present throughout
many of the interviews, supported her husband's claims and,
furthermore, said that she witnessed, photographed, and
videotaped some of the episodes. Esther was not completely
unfamiliar with levitation, not to omit other forms of possible
spectacular psi, since she had heard accounts of ,these from
her father and his brother, a Roman Catholic priest, who had
allegedly witnessed their mother levitate under rather unusual
circumstances. This was con(1I1lled by the father and his
brother.
Peter's levitation experiences were further, reviewed on
August 4, 1986, when I visited Peter and Esther in their New
Jersey home. I also met their five-month-old daughter and interviewed Peter's mother, father and father-in-law. I had previously ptet and questioned Peter's brother, Angelos, and his
friend, Martin Ridder, and several of Peter's cousins, one of
whom recalled once seeing the paint brush move over an oil
First Quarter 1987

First Quarter 1987

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

Pursuit 3

,painting, totally unaided and out of Peter's hands, while

Peter stood back in an apparent trance. During my home
visit, Peter, while being videotaped, bent a quarter and did
some telepathic stunts. The television camera also caught, in
the corner of the frame, the apparently spontaneous telekinetic flight of an empty beer can. Peter showed me a composite
of videotaped possible psychic data including bending several
keys and a thick rectangular metal key tag; he also showed
taped sections where he allegedly levitated a brass key several
seconds for five times in a sealed glass jar, and over a pro- ,
longed sequence, allegedly levitated a personally signed dollar
biD three times.
Peter also showed me and let me make a videotape copy
for scientific purposes, two of his alleged total human levitations. The following accounts summarize the previous related
phenomena and the claimed instances, including a levitation
which occurred ,in the winter of 1986, after I had met Peter
and shown an interest in his unusual abilities.
The following material is based on audiotaped and vid~
taped interviews of Peter and Esther Sugleris, and experiments conducted at my office in Vero Beach, Florida, on October 6, 7 and 9, 1985, and later at Peter's home in New
Jersey on August 4, 14, 18,23 and' 30, 1986, when Peter, his
wife, Peter's mother and father, brother Angelos, Aunt Aime
and cousins, and close friend, Martin Ridder, were also interviewed.
I. Through Peter's English-Greek interpretive skills, his
mother, Mrs. Toula Sugleris, told me that her maternal
uncle had levitated twice in Greece when he was sixteen
and eighteen years of age. Although Mrs. Sugleris did
not witness these events, she had heard about them from
her grandfather and other members of her family. Peter
said that he never knew about this until our interview.
2. Peter's mother recalled how Peter was call~ "Hercules"
as a baby: "Once when Peter was three years old and lying in bed, his whole body went up except his head." In
response to this, as well as other possible psi-related
feats, the maternal grandfather said that Peter was "go- '
ing to be something." ,
3. When Peter was approximately twelve years old; one day
he went to visit his girlfriend and future wife, Esther. He
brought a bicycle given him by a neighbor lady for
Esther's younger brother. However, Peter was disappointed to learn that the high fence and steel wire gate
door was locked. Peter could not lift the bicycle over the
fence; and Esther recalled that "Peter flew over the
fence." The fence was (and is) approximately ten feet
high.
4. One time when Peter was a teenager and visiting his
maternal Aunt Georgia (Drakolias), he asked her to
come into the kitchen with him while the rest of the fami, ly remained in the living room. He claimed that he
levitated before his Aunt the estimated height of an ouzo
[wine] bottle (about one foot) for approximately five
seconds. His Aunt said, "Wow, some day you wiD fly to
the moon." She told her sisters and other members of the
family. The Aunt, who was not interviewed, wrote from
Greece and confirmed this. Peter, who is five feet, ten
and one-half inches taU, said he weighed approximately
one hundred sixty-five pounds at this time.
5. Shortly afterwards, Peter was visited by two "self-,
professed psychics" who asked him what was the most
spectacular thing that he ever did. He told them "levitation," and then allegedly proceeded to rise from the floor
approximately two inches for what he estimated to be a
Pursuit 4

few seconds. Unfortunately, Peter did not have a record

of who the "psychics" were or a written account of
what happened.
6. Once, when a teenager, Peter went bowling and become
infuriated, he said, when some young men in an adjacent,
alley shouted obscenities. Peter went outside to the parking lot and lifted the front end of their Fiat automobile
askew in the parking lanes, in such a way that he made it
difficult for them to drive away.
7. One day, when nineteen years of age, Peter and Esther
went to MiD Pond, Milltown, New Jersey. Esther
brought her Polaroid "One Step" camera with her.
While courting Esther, Peter was interested in impressing
her with some of his unusual talents and, in particular, to
him the rarest of all events: levitation. While dressed,in a
sweat suit and black sneakers, he allegedly levitated two
feet above and approximately five feet from the water's
edge. 3 In seconds, he "slowly came down into the
water." Esther continued, "I thought I was seeing
things ... he got mad for thinking that I felt he was faking
so he did it again (minilevitations) three or four times. I
said, 'Peter, you are up next to the trees above the branches. When you were going up I snapped the picture.' He
didn't talk when he went up. I was screaming. I took pictures when he was going down but then I ran out of
film." That same afternoon, Peter and Esther went to
another part of the park where there were gardens surrounded by stacked railroad ties. Peter again levitated
and Esther took some Polaroid photographs (see Figures
1,2). Obviously, it would be more desirable to have had
professionally made photographs, but because of the
uniqueness of the event, this impeifect data should not
be overlooked. Possibly computerized' enhancement
could clarify some of the relationships: i.e. Peter's bodily
parts in reference to the tree and so forth. One photograph seems to show what looks like a double exposure
and is similar to known "control" double exposures
made with' a Polaroid camera. However, when a distinguished expert on thoughtography was consulted, he
could offer no explanation for the possible levitation
without more data. It was impossible to locate a woman
who, with her baby, allegedly witnessed this event in the
park that day. Esther said, "The lady was terrified turned around and looked,at Peter's feet and body."
When visiting Peter and Esther, we all w~t to the site of
the alleged levitations and reviewed the sequences.
8. Towards the end of August, 1981, Peter, during the middle of the day and in broad daylight, attempted.1evitation
in his parents' backyard. He prepared for this experiment
by losing seventeen pounds over a period of several
weeks (he weighed approximately one hundred fifty-five
pounds). In the daylight, he positioned himself an
estimated eight feet in front of the grapevine on the wire
fence while his brother, Angelos, who is two years
younger than Peter, and his friend, Martin Ridder (also
the same age as Angelos) videotaped the whole procedure. They also took, using cousin Nick's camera (make
not specified) while the television camera ran uninterruptedly, 'five thirty-five millimeter frames of this,levitation as shown in Figures 4-7.
Martip recalled, "He showed me how to use the video
camera. I never used one before. He was concentrating.
Then he rose up. My God! Right in front of my eyes he
lifted up. It was terr,ific. He did it twice that day. He had
lifted Oevitated) pencils in front of me and once a signed
First Quarter' 1987

Figure I

Figure 1

dollar bill."
Angelos said, "I'd seen him trying it many times.
Once, when I was about eight feet away, he went up two
inches."
Peter said, "(It was) like walking a tip.htrope. Your
feet want to stay on the ground and your head wants to go
up."
From scrutiny of the videotape, it appears that Peter
was approximately fifteen inches in the air for eight
seconds. His mother witnessed the entire event and his
father, who was working close by, also saw much of the
feat~ The paternal grandfather, who was in his late seventies and who lived with Peter's parents, might also have
seen the eleVation. Unfortunately, he died a few days
before I got to Peter's house for the interviews. A visiting
teenage neighbor girl allegedly saw the levitation and
started screaming. Peter showed me the videotape and
permitted me to copy the levitation sequence for study.
Figure 3 is one of the photographs of Super 8 motion picture film of the videotape which shows that Peter was up
in the air as he said he was, which tends to support the
authenticity of the televised levitation.
His account, as presented, was confirmed on detailed
interviews of Angelos, Martin and Peter's parents. There
were no discrepancies in their narratives and no attempt
was made by anyone to exploit this phenomenon. The
parents are warm, outgoing' and friendly people. The
father, a technician for a corporation, denied any psychic
faculties for himself or any of his relatives. He proudly
recalled several feats that Peter had performed and he
was particularly impressed by his son's once bending and
snapping a mechanic's small "unbreakable wrench" that
was brought to him by his body-builder cousin, Perry,
and tested beforehand and which, until Peter took it,
.
could not be bent.
9. The most recent episode of reputed levitation happened
near the end of February, 1986. Peter, in New Jersey,
telephoned me (BES) in Florida shortly afterward. He
had prepared, himself for two months by generally following a vegetarian diet and even resorted to eating baby
First Quarter 1987

Figure 3

food. (peter haS a history, like his father, of possible

duodenal ulcer. He uses no drugs, but on occasions has
consumed small amounts of wine or beer. He infrequently smokes cigars.)
This levitation episode was videotaped by Esther, who
had never handled a television camera before. Because of
the distance between the wide-angle camera lens and
Peter (five feet, ten and one half inches tall; approximately 160 pounds), it was impossible to frame the picture of his whole body and surrounding room articles.
It was approximately 8:00 p.m. All the electric lights
were on and the videotape clearly shows the alleged
levitation. Although not scientifically valid, it still seemed
possible that study of the videotape might have some
merit by providing possible clues to this rare event, in
view of the previous videotape recording which did show
Peter's whole body allegedly levitating in relation to the
surrounding structures. Here, Peter's alleged kitchen
levitation was approximately eighteen inches above the
floor and laSted forty-seven seconds, judging from the t. v.
camera timet which was "on" during the recording. The
event was also witnessed by Peter's paternal cousin, Nick
Bouloubasis, age seventeen, who said, "I was next door
with Angelos and Martin ... ready to leave. I came over to
get Peter and as I was walking in, Esther put her hand up
and I looked up: Peter was suspended in air.
Shocked ... after I walked in, he was suspended ten to fifteen seconds. I tried to talk to Peter (immediately after
the levitation) but he couldn't for one to two minutes. I
never saw anything like it." Martin arrived shortly after
the alleged levitation. Seconds of the videotape alternately showed Peter's lower extremities, his trunk, or his
head and neck and upper extremities. As in the
videotaped out-of-doors levitation, Peter seemed to sway
a few degrees from side to side. He said, "It felt like there
was a wind. I'd blow this way and that." His extended
fingers seemed to be alternating in clonic and spastic
positions. The contractions of his platysma and superficial facial muscles might have given him the grotesq\J:e
expression (not seen here) that frightened Esther: "I
Pursuit 5

thought he would burst, he was so inflated," she said.

.His feet were dorsiflexed (not seen here) apPfoximately
ninety degrees "so they could not say that I was faking,"
Peter said later.
.
Following this event, Peter claiined that he was
nauseated, exhausted and drowsy. He had generalized,
profuse perspiration and "drank lots of water, and ate
two or three potatoes. It took ten to fifteen seconds to
recover . my consciousness. I realized I was falling
down... as if it was eight feet from the ceiling when it was
only a little over a foot. I was confused, dizzy and I felt
that I'd black out. This was done out of-anger. I wanted
to prove I could do it."
.
.
Although anecdotal and anticlimactic in comparison
with the alleged kitchen levitation, all possible clues; no
matter how seemingly inconsequential, should be checked. One day, in approximately the same.month, Esther
found Peter sleeping on the bed. "She touched me and I
flew up and out and landed on the floor on my (partially
. ~tended left upper and lower extremities) hand and
foot," Peter said, and he demonstrated this event with
his right extremities extended upward.
Peter unsuccessfully attempted levitation at a municipal
park in Little Silver, New Jersey, on August 23, 1986, in the
presence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Warth, publisher of SITU's
PURSUIT, their young friend Marisa, Angelos, Martin, my
wife, and myself, and a changing group of curious onlookers.
The unsuccessful levitation attempts were r~orded by three
television cameras and numerous thirty-five millimeter
cameras, too.
Peter offered no excuses for his failure, but he was deeply
disappointed. He had stayed up much of the previous evening
with his infant daughter. His brother was also exhausted having had little sleep the night before. Peter was demoralized
with recent events in his life which may have affected him
emotionally to feel he could not levitate. Earlier in the day he
was weighed (I98Ibs.) and he also. attempted to levitate then,
although under less than desirable conditions, while his feet
were placed on portable spring scales.
During Peter's attempts, Angelos developed two punctuate
hemorrhagic areas without apparent cause: One was on the
right terminal phalanx of the middle fmger and the other on
.his left terminal phalanx index fmger. Angelos did not knowingly prick his fingers with a needle, any sharp object or plant
thorns .
. Peter concluded the four hours of attempted levitation by
bending a dime in the hands of a thirteen-year-old boy and,
later, he bent a quarter held in the fingers of a boy approximately nine years of age.
Likewise, more recent attempts at levitation in Vero Beach,
Florida, on December 11, 1986 were unsuccessful. Professional videotaping during the study period, sometimes under
excellent clinical conditions, shows Peter moving compasses,
making coins bend (at times in the hands of others), making
spoons bend and snap, causing cracks on the inner surface of
a sealed glass jar and apparently bending, to a minimal extent, a spoon inside that jar and to cause clinking sounds to
issue from the same jar.
Also during his visit there were alleged spontaneous
phenomena including the apparent blistering of a ping pong
ball in a glass jar sealed with Duco cement and human hair.
He presumably caused a light bulb to explode inside another
jar sealed with Duco and wax with impressions and made a
methylene blue tablet break in half.
Although coincidence obviously cannot be ruled out, it is
Pursuit 6

of interest that an outside office bulb, which was new, blew

out during Peter's visit, and the .thermostat switch, that he
manually adjusted for the comfort of his room, also ceased to
properly function for a few days during his stay ..
Once again, Peter was dejected over his failed attempts to
levitate either himself or material objects. Both these New
Jersey and Florida trials were preceded by extreine stress and
frustration: as for instance in Vero Beach, Peter had long
since "peaked" in his hypothesized energies and was
demoralized by the inexcusable delay of two hours waiting
for the t.v. cameraman to arrive. And, by then, instead of
warm sunshine the sky became clouded and the air cool. Also
when he wanted to levitate objects with the collaboration of a
compatible telekinetic paragnost, Katie,IO and it seemed as
though matters were ready to succeed judging from past
observations, the experiment was abruptly terminated by the
take-over, bull-in-the-china shop behavior of one of the
onlookers.
Discussion
As purported data should not be uncritically accepted, it

also should not be rejected out-of-hand because of a priori

notions that "it is impossible; it is a trick, an obvious hoax."
Certainly when alleged psychic events occur in the matrix of
other clinically well-documented and -recorded (presumed
telekinetic or levitation) material, the possibility of associated
human levitation becomes more attractive. Furthermore, for
a hoax or conscious deception to occur means that not only
the protagonist, Peter Sugleris himself, but his wife, mother,
father, father-in-law, brother, relatives and friends would de
facto have to be part of the conspiracy of lies and supposed
spurious videotaped data. If that were so, I ask, "What is the
evidence for this supposed deception? What have they gained? How did they technically accomplish this? And, if fake,
why are there no cognitive-affective discrepancies in their accounts of what they have either observed or learned shortly
afterwards? "
It is my impression that the Sugleris family, relatives and
friends, whom I interviewed, have expressed integrity~ Their
accounts do not change. They independently support one
another for various particulars. If there has been any material
or fmancial gain from Peter's efforts, that is not demonstrable. On the contrary, Peter Sugleris has won no awards
and scant recognition. In an interview, Esther once said:
"Peter is raised like the ancient Greeks. If he is told he did
something bad, he will feel guilty for the rest of his life."
In the course of his budding public career, Peter Sugleris
has also jousted with a self-proclaimed "charlatan, a liar, a
thief and a fake altogether'; 12 and despite the latter's possible
panic over losing his proffered monetary challenge to those
who could demonstrate genuine psi, Peter came close l ], 14 to
winning and overcoming this so-called, self-proclaimed
charlatan's harrassment. 15
The questionable and often sad role of magicians in serious
scientific investigations of psi has been intriguingly documented by Brian Inglis. 12 As ~ example, when Harry
Keller,16 the most celebrated magician of his time, according
to his peers and Joseph Dunninger, tried to prevent the
medium William Eglinton from levitating, he had to admit he
found himself carried up with Eglinton to the ceiling. IZ If the
evidence is what it appears to be, human levitation is a most
noteworthy achievement and merits serious consideration and
a continuing, intensive investigation.
.Editor's Note: Does a "performance" before BII audience that contains nonfriendly per.
SOlIS afflict the poIeIIIiaIlevilator's altitude?

First Quarter 1987

It should be stressed that Sugleris' alleged levitations were,

in most instances, consciously planned for demonstrations.
One videotaped levitation in the daylight took place outside in
his mother's back yard with multiple witnesses. His subjectively important confidence was at a high pitch and he had
prepared by fasting. Presumably, he was in excellent physical
condition and could focus all his concentration on this feat.
Like D.O. Home, more than a hundred years ago, Peter
Sugleris specifically knew what he was going to do beforehand and allegedly proceeded to achieve the "impossible."
Despite the admitted shortcomings of limited recorded observations, the rarity of the levitations justifies speculations
on its possible effects. It would be helpful to have, concomitant with his levitation, solid data of noninvasive telemetered
physiological measurements of possible changes and effects in
cardiovascular and neurophysiological function: electrocardiographic and electroencephalographic studies. 17 ,18 It would
also be a splendid opportunity to attempt finding any correlates for supposed chemical and endocrine changes that accompany the dissociative paranormal parameters.
Peter's post-levitation physiological response is, in some
ways, similar to the space adaptation syndrome l of nausea,
vomiting, anorexia, headache, malaise, drowsiness and
lethargy. His levitation facies might also partially resemble
. the space travelers' characteristic response: a puffy face,
often with distended veins and "bird legs." Could modern
technology measure possible acute, short-lived levitation effects of psi-induced microgravity? Are the similarities and
differences accountable?
Would there be clues for the study of antigravity? Peter's
post-levitation symptoms and signs might be, in some
aspects, post-ictal, and they also are reminiscent of body image and physical changes observed in a gifted telekinetic
paragnosf and in a gifted male subject studied by Naumov
and Michalchik. 20
In summary, it cannot be "proven" here that. Peter Sugleris levitated but, if it can be assumed that he might have, certain speculations are in order. How did he do it? How might
his feat be correlated with his presumed affirmative possibly
genetic. history, aI).d specifically psychodynamically permissive family attitude toward levitation, his "belief" system,
supreme self-confidence, relative fearlessness, lack of
derogatory or superstitious viewpoints, and his str~ng ego
and lack of self-consciousness when confronted with critical,
"non-believing" witnesses? And, in conjunction with this,
how can his levitation be viewed as part of the whole psychic
nexus: the interrelationships of the various forms of psi involving many significant people and life events that are richly
demonstrated in his case from infancy to the present, and extended into his marriage? How did Peter choose and fall in
love with a lifemate who is not only supportive and understanding of his unique skills, but whose own family background is also positive for levitation, as in the example of
Esther's father and priest uncle who witnessed their mother
allegedly levitating?
What cells or particular areas of the brain might be activated? Contrariwise, what cellular aggregates, nuclei and
tracts are inhibited, thereby releasing hypothesized
mechanisms for levitation? What is the "force" outside the
body which can seemingly defy direct measurement or, contrary to the laws of physics as they are known, defy being part
of the electromagnetic spectrum? Why is levitation so rare
when so many people seem to fulfill criteria that are similar to
those in Peter's case? What variegated factors impede or
cause resistance to levitation? Can everyday telekinesis, like
First Quarter 1987

the telepathy of everyday life, be part of a continuum ...the

psychic nexus ... which is in front of our noses but, which, like
the Emperor's new suit of clothes, escapes our attention or
conscious awareness? Can telekinesis (and its sine qua non
levitation), like telepathy, be part of a broad spectrum acting
like an airplane that must first taxi along the well-marked
runway (by analogy, use of sense organs for seeing, hearing,
subliminal factors and so forth) before gaining sufficient
speed and almost imperceptibly lifting up into the air (levitation or telepathy)? Can relatively paltry everyday telekinetic
examples be expanded, as Peter has done, from induced perturbations of small objects to mass movement of himself?
How does Peter, in the literalness and focused concentration
of his mind-set and from his experiential past share with, or
how does he differ from, better known and recognized saints,
mystics, allegedly possessed people and physical mediums in
their contemplative states, ectasies, raptures and trances?
What might the role of suppressed and repressed anger and
related fantasies have to do with his proper mind-set? What is
the source and significance of this human, or extra human
(for example, dissociated independent entity[DIE)?) force for
the understanding of gravity, antigravity and its myriad extra.polations to many fields of science and to medicine?
Although the observations are few, have many. obvious deficiencies, and are perhaps sometimes even quaint, if levitation is genuine it is a faculty that might be profitably
cultivated and studied, for as Camille Flammarion has stated,
"the unknown of today is the truth of tomorrow. "
Peter Sugleris is cooperative and curious about the
measurement and mapping out of any possible psychic effects
on himself, thereby chipping away at the mysteries of the
mind-matter interphase. Something new might be learned
about mind-body mechanisms that could have bearing on
theoretical and practical problems in health and disease. The
opportunity for correlating psychodynamic, psychic,
physiological and psychosocial events with the near-perfect
psychosomatic paradigm - human levitation - begs for exploration.
Acknowledgments
I thank Peter Sugleris, his family and friends for their excellent cooperation and indispensable help. My gratitude is
extended to my friend and Fortean photographer, August C.
Roberts, who alerted me to Peter's possible levitation by
sending me staff writer Judy Voecola's article "Powers that
be" (The Herald-News, Clifton-Passaic Edition, Thursday,
July 18, 1985).
References and Notes
1. Fodor, N.: Encyclopedill 0/ Psychic Sciences, University Books,
New York, 1966 (194-202)
2. Rogo, D. Scott: Miracles, a Parascienti/ic Inquiry Into Wondrous Phenomena, Contemporary Books, iQc. Chi~o, 1983.
3. Ibid: See footnote on page 7 about Christ's ability to walk on
water and reputed modem example of St. Zachary of Russia (d.
1936).
4. Devereux, G.: "Psychoanalytic Reflections on Experiences of
Levitation," International Journal 0/ Parapsychology, 1960
(Spring) 2(2), 34-60.
S. Eisenbud, J.: "The Flight that Failed," Christian Parapsychologist 4:211-217, 1982.
6. Richards, J.T.: SORRAT -A History o/the Neihardt Psychokinesis Experiments, 1961-1981, Scarecrow Press, Inc.,
Metuchen, NJ 1982.
7. Batcheldor, K.J.: "P.K. in Sitter Groups," Psychoenergetic
Systems, 1979, Vol. 3, pp 77-93.
8. Schwarz, B.: "K: A Presumed Case of Telekinesis," International Journal 0/ Psychosomatics 32(1): 3-21, I98S.

Pursuit 7

9. Schwarz, B.: "Paranormally Linked Sealed Rings," PURSVnVo1.19, #3, pp. 102-105, 1986.
10. Schwarz, B.: "Presumed Physical Mediumship of UFOs," flying Saucer Review, Vol. 31, No. 6:1S-22 (October), 1986.
11. Schwarz, Lisa Thyra: "The Miracles of Peter Sugleris," unpublished manuscript.
12. Inglis, Brian: The Hidden Power. p. 252; p. 259, Jonathon
Cape, 32 Bedford Square, London, 1986.
13. Serrill, Ted: "Local Youth to Try for Psychic Award," The
Home News. Sunday, September 6, 1981.
14. Serrill, Ted: "Mind-reader Fails $10,000 Test But May Get a Second Chance," The Home News. Thursday, September 10,
1981.
IS. This fascinating subject has, surprisingly enough, received little
in-depth attention by any top notch investigative reporter. For
example, when the charlatan was asked about his receiving the
MacArthur Foundation $272,000 tax-free "genius grant," he
commented .....You don't even have to continue in the same
field. You can announce that you are a communist, transvestite
child molester and no one can touch the money." In the same
interview, he boasted about his skill in debunking phoney
mediums and mentioned how at a public perfonnance he was
identified despite his outlandish disguise. When the security
guard went to report the charlatan's spying, the charlatan went
into the men's room, took off his wig and ridiculous clothes; he
donned his own suit and returned to the demonstgltion where
he went unrecognized (See Bartlett, K.: "Honest Charlatan To
Use Grant to Battle Phonies," The Arizona Republic. Sunday,
September 14, 1986, p. 6). As the psychiatrist has profitably
researched other medical specialists who presumably have great
intuitive and interpersonal skills in addition to their technical
prowess in treating various ailments, in contrast to some of their
colleagues who do not have the same successes and presumably
might lack the more beneficial communication skills, the
psychiatrist in view of the charlatan's amazing statements about
himself and related material niigbt fmd that careful probing o[
the life of such a person might reveal major psychopathological .
material and perhaps unforeseen clues on ways to negatively in-

Related SITUation

ne GotIpei Acc:ordIng
to Metal-Bend.

In the 19705, Uri Geller displayed a seeming

ability to bend metal through mental energy.
In the '80s, some say, anybody can do it.
The idea has come to the East Coast and
found an ardent teacher and proselytizer in
Diana Gazes, an energetic, 40ish New Y~rker
who calls herself a futurist.
Gazes, a former CBS television executive, is
spreading the gospel of the fork and spoon.
She says that metal-bending will prove to be
vital for coping with the world.
Skeptics say metal-benders just respond to
a charismatic personality who so-energizes
them that th~y believe they are drawing on a
cosmic force, when they are simply exerting
the pressure themselves.
Gazes speaks regularly on radio and has a
cable-television show, Gazes Into the Future,
in which she reports on future trends and "the
cutting edge of the paranormal." But it is
through frequent workshops that she most
dramatically spreads the word.
Pursuit

16.
17.
IS.
19.
20.

fluence psi experiments and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (See Geller, Uri and Playfair, Guy Lyon: The Geller E;ffect.
Jonathon Cape, London, 1986, and Inglis, Brian: The Hidden
Power. Jonathon Cape, London, 1986). Therefore, in contrast
to the magician's commendable work in exposing dishonest
mediums, there is the overlooked aspect where the charlatan, in
his apparent compulsive drive for notoriety, can reprehensibly
sabotage honest paragnosts and scientists by his deceptions and
frame-ups. Can it be that sometimes charlatans, themselves, do
not know reality or when they are telling the truth? Therefore, if
the work of the magician can ever be seriously considered, his
own credentials should be available on the same footing as the
scientists and the paragnosts for all to scrutinize. And if he feels
he can duplicate the alleged feats of the supposed paragnosts
and rushes to the media, he should not be listened to unless he
fmt agrees to enter the scientific arena and be tested under the
exact. precise conditions that prevailed during the origifUll
studies. In the case of the genius award winner, to the best of my
knowledge, this has never been done and, for example, to the
contrary, the charlatan has allegedly refused a rematch experiment with Peter Sugleris and he had also allegedly refused to appear on the popular t.v. show "Lie Detector" with the renowned lawyer, F. Lee Bailey. Also in past years he never accepted an
eminent scientist's challenge to duplicate Polaroid thoughtography under the exact conditions that prevailed during the
original experiments.
Dunninger, J.: Personal communication to author.
Hogan, Michael J., ed.: "Ambulatory EEG Monitoring,"
Mayo Clinical Update. Vol. 2, No.2, 1-2, Spring 1986.
Gilliland, Sara C.: "EEG at Mayo - A SO Year Milestone,"
The Mayo Alumnus, Vol. 22, No.4, 28-32, Fall 1986.
Men, Beverly: "The Body Pays a Penalty for Defying the Law
of Gravity," lAMA (October 17, 1986), Vol. 256 (No. IS):
2040-2043, 2052.
Naumov, E.K. and Mikhalchik, A.A.: "Some Aspects of Practical Application of PSychotronics in the USSR," Psi Resetlrch.
1983, Sept. Vol. 2 (3) 3444.

In New York, Gazes holds the workshops

in her Upper East Side living room, which is
dominat~ by an enormous pyramid. hung
with "powerfully energizing" crystals. Workshop participants, who pay $SO apiece, are invited to sit under the pyramid whenever they
feel their energy lagging.
"High technology is speeding along on a
high-speed track. We're recognizing that we
can be buried in all that information unless we
continue to develop the finest computer on
this earth, which is the human mind."
Gazes, who said she used to see auras
around her colleagues while giving boardroom presentations ("a little distracting"),
thinks of metal-bending as just the beginning,
in terms of what mental power can accomplish.
Th~ idea behind metal-bending, she said, is
to harness and direct psychic energy onto a
spoon or fork with such intensity that a "window in time" opens up momentarily. During
that moment, the metal becomes warm and
malleable enough to bend.
To reach that point, doubts and preconceived notions must be released, Gazes said.
To get the workshop into the right frame of
mind, she started "white light" exercises:

"Imagine a ball of white light coming down

from the heavens, pouring around and
through you, clearing away, washing away
any resistance, any stress that may be in your
body. Feel that ball of energy in your fingers,
take a breath and really pump that energy
up."
Gazes, who said she would soon be traveling to Australia, New Zealand and other distant lands, .also imparts her philosophy to
several corporations as a consultant.
Bending metal is just one technique she
uses in self-exploration. She also uses a pendulum to help her make important decisions
and is not above calling on angels (..the spirit
guides") in times of need.
She believes in meditation, psychic surgery
(no implements - just hands) and psychic
dentistry.
"The reason I've explored all these things, "
she said, "is, if anyone on this planet can do
any of these things, I can do it. And if I can
do it, you can do it. And the fmt step toward
doing these things is bending forks and
spoons."
SOlJRCE: Anna Sobkowski in The Inquirer.
Philadelphia, PA 1/6/S7
CREOrr: H. Hollander
First Quarter 1987

Abductions in Perspective
by HUarv Eva..
Abduction reports are the most dramatic manifestation of
the UFO phenomenon. If they are valid - if abductions are
really taking place as reported - we need look no further for
an ~planation of the UFOs and their visits to our pl8net.
They would be clearly seen to be part of a larger scenario of
extraterrestrial contact.
What is more, they would be, quite simply, the most important event in the history of mankind. So there's a lot depending on the answer to the question: are abductions taking
place as reported?
There can be no doubt t~at something is taking place. That
the abductees are having an experience of some sort is something we need not question; but we may question their interpretation of their experience. In one sense or another, abduction reports are real: what is in doubt is whether that reality is

the everyday reality of the physical world, or the private reality of the witness's mind.
Like many other anomalous phenomena, abduction
reports have a compelling plausibility. Reading an account
such as Hopkins' Intruders,Bb we find a bewildering assortment of elements which, at frrst sight, seem, like the pieces of
a jigsaw puzzle, to be capable of being put together in only
one way. It is only when we stand back, and view the puzzle
in a wider perspective, that we start to wonder whether there
may be an alternative picture?
.
Abductions in the UFO Perspective
If we are to accept that abductions occur, the problems
raised by their association with UFOs must be resolved.
Abductions are by definition related to the UFO phenomenon, for it is in UFOs that the abductors travel to our planet,
and onto UFOs that most abductees are abducted. Every abduction case, therefore, involves a UFO, whether or not one
is actually reported.
But the moment we recognize that accepting the abduction
story involves accepting the UFO without which the story
cannot take place, we are faced by the UFO paradox in all its
horror. For if physical human beings are being abducted onto
UFOs, unless we are prepared to premise some temporary
metamorphosis of the material substance of the abductee's
physical body, those UFOs must be physical flying machines
and the abduction act must be a physical act involving a fleshand-blood human body being carriedlbeamed up/teleported
through the air.
Yet though abductions are alleged to have occurred on
hundreds if not thousands of such occasions,8a not one

abduction-related UFO has been conclusively detected by an

independent witness, nor has anyone seen an abductee in the
act of being taken on board or returning from a UFO.
Nor have the abductees themselves been more successful in
obtaining material proof of their experience. Every attempt to
procure mementos and souvenirs has unfortunately been prevented.
Abductions in the Contaetee Perspective
If we are to accept that abductions occur, it must be shown
that they are different in kind from contactee experiences,
which are ostensibly similarin many respects but almost certainly do not really occur.
The UFO phenomenon in its current form was only a few
years old when it was "enriched" by the claims of the contactees to have met their occupants, who were for the most
part benevolent Space Brothers or Cosmic Guardians. Con-

First Quarter 1987

cerned for the well-being of our planet, these beings selected

from the entire human race a George Adamski, a George
King or an Orfeo Angelucci, and entrusted him with a mis.sian to save the world. The world, for the most part, found
these claims unconvincing.
But then came the abductees, who have a more plausible
story to tell. We are not asked to believe that abductees like
Barney & Betty Hille or Kathie DavisBb were chosen because
they were remarkable people, only because they were suitable
- for physical examination or for genetic experimentation.
This certainly makes their stories easy to believe. We canand many of us do - devise plausible scenarios, in which the
visiting ETs reach a point in their study of Earthpeople where
they find it necessary to conduct physical examinations and
breeding experiments with specimen humans.
But it is not enough to show that the abductees are more
believable than the contactees, it must also be shown that they
are different in kind. If the abduction stories are true, why
were they preceded by a spate of contact stories, likewise offered as true but manifestly spurious?
Until such time as these questions are answered, the suspi-

cion will remain that today's abductees are simply yesterday's

contactees in an updated, more sophisticated form. And if we
are inclined to explain the contactee wave on psychosocial
grounds, the possibility will remain that the abductee wave
can be explained in the same way.
Abductions in the Perspective of Imaginary Abductions
If we are to accept that abductions occur, it must be shown
that they are distinct from other, similar "experiences" which
are known to be imaginary.
Alvin Lawson's "imaginary abductee" experiment' showed that subjects in a suitable state of mind are capable of concocting an elaborate, detailed and dramatic "encounter"
story - yet which is entirely fiction. Moreover, these stories
are strikingly similar, not only in outline but in specific detail,
to the stories told by the "true" abductees.
Because neither Lawson nor anyone else has replicated or
developed these experiments, we should not draw more than
preliminary conclusions from them. But the central finding is
unequivocal: while the experiments do not prove that the
"true" abductees are fabricating their.accounts, they do sug-

gest that anyone who subconsciously wishes to do so canflnd

within himself the necessary resources to fabricate a detailed
and coherent abduction story.
The Lawson experiments did indicate one major area of
difference between the "imaginary" and the "true" abductees: the emotional effect, and sometimes the physiological
. effect, on the witness. The volunteers were not in a strongly
emotive state, they had no psychological aftereffects such as
amnesia, dreams, nightmares, or psychic experiences; "true"
abductees are liable to have all these things, including physiological effects. .
This is often interpreted by critics of the experiment as a
demonstration of the reality of the "true" experiences. But it
demonstrates .nothing of the kind. True, it demonstrates that
the "true" abductees are in a truly emotional state; but it is

just as likely that the abduction experience occurs as a result

of the emotional state as that the emotional state is the consequence of an abduction experience.
Nobody will question that the abduction witness has a genuinely emotional experience; no one who sees the video-

Pursuit 9

------

tapes of Yorkshire policeman Alan Godfrey's recall of 'his

alleged abduction experience under hypnosis could be in any
doubt ofthat.'o But while this shows that he had something to
be emotional about, we must not jump to the conclusion that
the abduction experience was the cause; it may have been part,
of the cure. The abduction experience may be a means
whereby the individual externalizes an internal psychological
problem. 26
Abductions in the Perspective of Psychological States
If we are to accept that abductions occur, it must be shown
that they are distinct from the imaginary experiences characteristic of persons in altered states of consciousness. '
: The ,storytelling capability to which the Lawson experi'ments'dI:ew attention are just one of the astonishing rap.ge
of' ','abnormal" abilities manifested by people in exceptional
circumstances. Hallucinations of various kinds, enhanced
"psychic" awareness, ,roleplaying, as in "possession" and
"dissociated personality" scenarios - these are just some of
the manifestations triggered in people who are, for whatever
reason, in the appropriate state. 2
'Jerome Clark wrote, recently in International UFO
Reporter:' "Every professional who has participated in this
kind of direct investigation asserts that there is no known psy,chological explanation for these experiences." But any
behavioral scientist 'knows that, there are inany forms of
human behavior for which no formal explanatory model is
available: amnesia, precognition,the seeing of "crisis apparitions, " dissociation of personality - many explanations have
been offered for these experiences; but there is certainly no
consensus. So the fact that there is no consensus'model for
abduction 'experiences is merely an indication that it is
another of the many facets of human experience of which our
understanding is incomplete.
The literature of psychology - the case reports of Pierre
Janet for example - not to mention the literature of parapsychology, are full of experiences comparable in many, ways to
the abduction experience. Before we are ready to accept that
abduction experiences are different in kind from, say, the
hysterical illusion of diabolical possession; we need a lot more
evidence than we have.
Abductions in the Perspective of Traditional BeUef
If we are to accept that abductions occur, it mus~ be shown
that they are different from similar events which have been
claimed or reported throughout human history.
,
. ,The 'existence of a folklore tradition of kidnapping. :by
fairies and other' otherworldly. entities3: '4 shows that, the idf!!1
of abduction' is widespread' and deeply rooted. While this is
not an objection to the abduction claims per se, it reminds us
that it is a mistake to think of the abduction experience as a
novel phenomenon born of the Space Age. Abduction has
served as the basis for fantasy experiences in the past, and it
may be doing so again.
UFO abductions are not the only kinds of experience in
which an apparent internal plausibility is balanced by an external implausibility. Other examples include "possession,"
believed by fundamentalist Christians to involve molestation
by the Devil, but interpreted otherwise by others; "poltergeist" experiences, once thought to be the work of "noisy
spirits" but currently attributed to subconsciously manifestmg psychokinetic powers; and witchcraft, once believed to be
the devil's work, but today regarded as a manifestation of induced hysteria.
It is noteworthy that the traditional explanations for all
these phenomena gained their force from a specific belief
system. We must consider the possibility that the same thing
Pursuit 10

--------------------,--

may be 'happenipg, wit,h, the ,ab,d~c.tion, experi~~ce.: :If :so, lYe

should consider some such alternative scenario as this:
At any given time there are a number of individuals who
are, as it were, shopping around for a suitable framework into which to project a private psychological hang up. Such a
framework would not only have to meet their personal need
but also conform to ,current socially acceptable beliefs. In
former days diabolical "poSsession:' witchcraft, lycanthropy
and the like offered a suitable framework; later came
communications with spirits of the dead; today the
"authorized myth" is one of extraterrestrial visitation, derived from science fi~tion, ~pace-age;thinl,<:ing and a millenarist
"Cosmic : G~!iian':' ,alternative to traditional religiou,s,
belief. 2
, ' , ' (, ' ;
"
'
, Since the myth is shared by the com~UQity" not c;>nly do the
a~ductees; find,i~ easy
"believe themselves intQ'; QJ.~ story,
but others fi,nd it ~asy to believe the~.
; : , ',;,
For and'AgainSt,th~ Abduction ~perience
,
Abduction experiences, then, offer, us only stories '- told'
in good faith; no doubt, \:lut npne the, less sUbjectiv:e and
substantiated, and with mu~h, in ,'commpn with other
categories of story which ar~ kno~n tc;> hav~ no b~s in, exter-:
nal reality. An4 as every psychologist and ,every schQolteacher
knows, and as Lawson has shown to be, no less true in this
specific context; everyone, can tell a story; " '
Nevertheless, those .wllQ, like Hopkins, feel ihat ~e weight
of the evidence is jn ;favor of. real ,experience have persuasive
grounds for their belief that in, this case the stories are true:
-The abduction ~o,.i.p'its most,elaborate Corm"':"" for.
example, in the Kathie pav~8b or Whitley ,St,rie~erl3, cases offers an internal plausibility whic):J. gives ~s the, best,~plan~-,
tion yet for t~e ~,:rfO phenom~oQ., ".. ,c':; > . '
-Abduction expen<;:es are ~ponlaneously: reported by
witnesses who are nQt ostensibly ,seeking material advantage.
-They involve a genujne ,emotional response. Lie-detector
, '.
tests confirm ,thatthe !stress, is real enough.
-In m~ltipl~ abductions the a~countJ! ,t~y. close enough to
persuade us that the witnesses participated in the same ~xperience; : " ,: :
"
, ' I, '
- Recurrent features, repor:ted by witnesses who could not
be aware of others' testimQ~y, suggest ttJ,at ,the sam~ exteqtai
process is, happeni,Qg' ~o many people.; The qi~very of ~i
related to chjldhood ,in~dents ;-+- ,oft~ ~rauma~ic, - is just
one recurring exaJnple .
, I~Ipd.ep~nden~ t~~~~ :~~ve, s~o~ tJ::!.i!-~ i1"..d.u~~Qq ~tl}~
have no obvio~:pat):J.oIQgic.a,l ib~kgr91:mp;0~ pjs~er~bl~'p'r~~
disposition to pa,ranor~ :experien,~. : ,
, ' :' !,." I j! '
- Abductees often report a change in lifestyle and outlook.
The Gansbergs, who carried out follow-up investigation of
several American abduction witnesses, reported that in
almost every case the witness felt his life had benefitted:' the
same was true of the Aveley case in England. 12 Such real
benefits suggest a real event.
This is a formidable challenge; however, the objections are
hardly less forceful:
-The stories of ET/UFO visits are improbable in themselves - it defies reason that so many spacecraft should successfully avoid detection while visiting our planet, particularly
si~ce 1;10 ;two ET crews seem. to be the saI!l~, implying a: ~ast
~~ber. ,of ~ints Qf origiQ.,, "
" i . ' '"
!
"', r
-The behavior of the abductors towards the, witness '.is in
many respects illogical, despite an overall plausibility. Clearly, we must allow for the possibility that ET logic may be different from ours. But how, for example, can we reconcile
such contradictions as their frequently stated ipt~tjon, that

to,

,un-.

First Quarter 1987

the witnesses wiU riot tecan their experiences, with their apparent ignorance of recall under hypnosis? Or their detailed
telepathic monitoring of witnesses with their ignorance of
such basic facts as that a witness destined for genetic experiments has undergone a vasectomy?8b
-There is a total lack of hard evidence. When witnesses try
to retain souvenirs, they are always prevented. There are no
convincing photographs of spaceships, not to mention tlte entities.
-No abduction has ever been independently witnessed. The
c.1osest we come to it is the 1975 Travis Walton case, but no
one saw Walton actually go aboard the craft. The investigation of this case has in any case been criticized and the findings remain ambiguous. 1Z
-Though psychological tests suggest that abduction
witnesses are normal people who are telling the truth as theY
know it, they also indicate that they suffer from "a mild
paranoia - hypersensitivity, wariness etc.'" Hardly enough
to build a case on, admittedly, but a reminder that we rarely
have psychological data on witnesses be/ore their experience.
We do often have anecdotal testimony, however, and this
often pOints to some kind of predisposition. Both Betty Hill4
and Charles Hickson 7 have testified to anomalous experiences
previous to their abduction.
-Not only do we know little about witnesses' psychological
state, we are often not weD informed about the outward circumstances of their lives, though these could weU have a bearing on their attitudes and behavior. John Rimmer ll noted
that out of eleven abduction witnesses whose personal circumstances are known, eight were widowed, divorced or having sexual or mantal difficulties at the time. He suggests that
this would make them particularly vulnerable to suggestion.
-Apart from psychological factors relating to abduction
witnesses as individuals. there is little indication that those
who write about these experiences are familiar with the enormous range of behavior which can occur t() anyone who,
through whatever circumstances, is in an altered state of-consciousness.
:' .
.
-The discovery of scars, and other such recurrent features,
is at first sight a formidable challenge. Psychologist
Aphrodite Clamar says: "The question persistS: is the UFO
experience genume, or ate those who claim to have been abducted the victims of hysteria or their own delusions? After
spending more than fifty hours with a dozen subjects under
hypnosis, I stiU caMot- answer- that question .. :It is the curious
sUriiWity oftheir:experienees that Jives pause.'~Sa.5 { .. '.!
The fact that one witness after another; who:eould1not be
aware of one another's experiences, comes up with similar
stories containing similar bizarre details, is probably the most
impressive feature of the abduction experience. It is this
which seems to have convinced Budd Hopkins that abductions are physical and literal fact:
For me, the conclusion is inescapable: They (the ETs) are
already here ...Though I do not want to believe this, and
feel decidedly unnerved by it, I believe it is true: extraterrestrials have been observing us in our innocence for many
years. Sa
Apart from the similarity of the stories, he believes we have
more tangible evidence. For instance, he finds that a great
many of his subjects have inconspicuous scarS; usually ori
their legs, andthat these are often assOciated with some rather
mysterious incident in childhood. The implication is that they
relate to some kind of surveiUance, and may indicate the implant of a monitoring device, or be the result of a blood test
or some such.
First Quarter 1987

Hopkins has more than once been able io successfully predict that a witness will find a scar on his body that he didn't
know he had, and this certainly points to the reality of the
phenomenon. But difficulties remain. If ETs are putting implants in substantial numbers of children, surely by now some
doctor somewhere, examining a child, would have come
across one? Again, our earthly surgeons can make incisions
which leave virtually no scar: surely we could expect these advanced beings to have found a way of carrying out their tests
without leaving teU-tale traces?
What alternative explanations are on offer? Coincidence;
have you ever examined your body to check whether you,
too, have such a scar.you have forgotten or never even noticed you, had? A form of stigmata, subconsciously created by
thewitness himself to back up his story? Or could it be that
we have it back-to-front: was it the discovery of such a scar
that prompted the witness to fantasize an abduction story?
Admittedly, these suggestions are only speculative, but they
show that it would be premature to abandon the search for
alternative explanations.
-Sociologist Ron Westrum has noted a "contagion effect"
whereby a rash of abduction reports occurs immediately after
the publicizing of a story like that of Barney & Betty Hill.'
This is Ii complex sociological phenomenon which can be interpreted in different ways; but one of the possibilities is that
the abduction experiences has become as much part of
American folklore as the phantom hitchhiker. That virtually
every abduction encounter occurs in the Americas may simply
relate to the social acceptability of being an abductee, but
there could be a deeper explanation.
Setting these two sets of factors side by side, it is evident
that neither adds up to a clear case for or against the reality of
the abduction experience. Nor are they likely to until more
satisfactory evidence is offered us.
Meanwhile, though, there is one simple consideration
which .may outweigh all others. Here we have accounts
which, if they really occurred as we are asked to believe, are
the most extraordinary and most significant events which
have taken place throughout the history of mankind. Yet how
do we learn about them? By purchasing commercial books
published by commercial publishers and sold in neighborhood bookstores!
i This incongruity between the events on the one hand, and
how we learn of those events on the other hand, must induce
doubt, if not outright disbelief, .that abductions occur anywhere outSide the imaginations of those who, for whatever
reason, experience them, and of those who, with whatever
motive, report them.
REFERENCES
1. Clark, Jerome, "Abductions: the Case for a Rational Approach," in International UFO Reporter 12:1, 1987.
2. Evans, Hilary, [a] Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors, 1984 [b]
Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians, 1987.
3. Evans-Wentz, W. Y4 The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 1911.
4. Fuller, John G., The Interrupted Journey, 1966.
5. Fund for UFO Research, Final Report on the Psychological
Testing 0/ UFO "Abductees, "1985.
6. Gansberg, J.& A., Direct Encounters, 1980.
7. Hickson & Mendez, UFO Contact at Pascagoula, 1983.
8. Hopkins, Budd, [a] Missing Time, 1981 [b] Intruders, 1987.
:9.: Lawson, Alvin. H.; The Hypnosis of Imaginary UFO "Abductees" in Journal 0/ UFO Studies, CUFOS, ca 1983.
10. Randles, Jenny, The Pennine UFO Mystery, 1983.
11. Rimmer, John, The Evidence/or Alien Abductions, 1984.
12. Story, Ronald D., The Encyclopedia 0/ UFOs, 1980.
13. Strieber, Whitley, Communion. 1987.
14. Vallee, Jacques, Passport to Magonia, 1969.
~
Pursuit 11

The Talking Crosses of Soath~rn Mexico

by George A. Agoglao
Talking crosses have periodically occured in Mexico, but
they seem to have first been discovered and are most prevalent in the south state of Chiapas. In 1841, talking crosses
gained prominance when a Mextizo working with a local ventriloquist convinced the local Mayan Indians that the cross
was actually talking and encouraged the Maya Indians to
continue a hopeless struggle with the Mexican government
over control of Chiapas. Thousands of Indians died in this
one-sided conflict before the Federales destroyed the talking
cross and s~lenced its voice forever by also executing the ven..
triloquist that made the cross speak..
The fad, however, has not died. Even up to the present,
talking crosses still influence the Maya Indians. Today they
need not even be crosses, for often it is a talking box or doll
house that speaks the truth to those seeking advice. Some are
cheap contraptions, with a ventriloquist producing the voice.
Others are more elaborate electronic devices using cheap
microphones and a small FM radio as a receiver. Both of
these objects can be pur~ased for less than thirty dollars in
the United States at Radio Shack, which now has outlets in
Mexi'.). The charge for advice is small, usually only a few
pesos, less than a dime in our currency. Two people with one
of these simple "boxes" can make a good, but unethicalliving. The new electronically rigged crosses or doll houses are
very impressive to the Indians, since they can perform out in
. the open fields where it can be clearly shown no ventriloquist
is even present. The scam is so successful that the Department
for the Protection of Mexican Natives confiscates these talking objects whenever they are found.
It must be understood that Mexico is a land where people
believ': more in magic than religion. There
more shrines
that will protect the worker, traveler, even thieves and murderers than anywhere else on earth. The churches are utilized
largely by the women as their only outlet from an unfair life
determined by the dominant male society. Males, on the other
hand, usually attend church only when they want to make a
"deal with the Lord." A shrine is quicker in most cases and in
their eyes just as effective as a visit to church for most of life's
problems. Some taxi drivers in Mexico can be as dangerous as
Kamakazi pilots and they become even more dangerous

are

..

Related SITUation
Weeplag Icon Prow_
the Pow... of AltwOl'b
On the morning of Dec. 6, the feast day of
St. Nicholas, a free-standing canvas painting
on wood of Mary holding the infant Jesus was
seen to emit fluid from the eyes of Mary.
Mary appeared to weep and has continued
to do so, on and off, ever since. Tears brimmed up in her eyes and flowed down the painting to pool in the wooden fqune below and
drip onto the floor.
Thousands stood in lines that maked
around the parish hall, out into the cold and
down the block. Some saw the droplets on the
icon; others just saw the aftermath, a moist
residue that streaked the painting.
Church officials arrived from New York a
few days later and declared the event "a
miraculous sign."
The church in question is the St. Nicholas
Pursuit 12

because they crowd their windowshields with countless

religious statues as added security for their reckless driving.
Perhaps the most flagrant use of religion as a tool to control the people, it supposedly serves, is connected with the
famous cross of Chan Santa Cruz in Chiapas. Frances Toor,
in her 1985 book, Mexican Folkways (pp. 107, 108), indicates
that the priesthood of that community has turned renegade.
One of the Fathers claimed to be able to enter Heaven at will
and confer with the Lord. The crosses under his control,. three
in number, were clothed with Maya huipls, ~d kept inside
an elaborately decorated small roOIQ called La Gloria. No one
but the priests and patrons of the crosses are Permitted to
view the ''sacred" crosseS. Even on fiesta days they remain
sechrded and proxy replicas are paraded before the natives in
the procession. The crosses supposedly have the ability to
write, presumedly in the hand of Christ, and letters from the
cross are shown to the public. They were signed I, Jesus
Christ of the Holy Cross, Son of God, or Creator of Christians. The local Caciqaues of the area utilized the priesthood
and the crosses to create letters to the Maya Indians that increased their control over the superstitious Indians. .
Religion can be used for both good and bad and the "talking and writing crosses" are; in my opinion, among the most
cruel uses of religion to be found today. They are used for the
exploitation of the people and to increase the power and
wealth of a few. That the PIjesthood may.be involved is not
unusual in Mexico." The leaders of the Mexican Revolution
that freed Mexico from Spain were two priests, Father's
Haldalgoa and Morales .. both of which admitted to having
fathered several children. In 1914, in the village of Canon de
Torreon, the priest there. openly admitted having "rlrSt night
privileges" with all the young girls being married in the
village. Apparently, from experience, he claimed "the girls of
his village are very passionate." At the same time, however, I
know priests of rural Mexico who represent the best in Catholicism, men of poverty and dedication, sometimes serving a
dozen villages in the depths. of the Sierra Madre mountains.
These dedicated men are the backbone of Mexican Catholicism.
.~

comes:from
Albanian Orthodox Church, 270]. N. Narra- .pOwer all their own, a ~~
gansett, and the painting is the now-famous the wiarfected sincerity or" their
Art is supposed to move people, to' jar
weeping icon, the crying madonna of t"'e
them, to make them feel deeply and to express
Northwest Side of Chicago.
As the doors open to receive the faithful a coherent world view. This does.
To the suspicious and the merely curious,
and the curious, an odd ~llision occurs.
Exhaust-laden air rushes in to mix with the the church will seem foreign and gaudy. The
heavy smell of incense. Cold sunlight pours phenomenon of the weeping icon may seem
into a place where the dark atmosphere is grotesque or silly or bizarre, an embarrassing
lighted by votive candles and tinted by the joke or a cruel hoax. To the faithful, though,
it all makes sense. The images that rill the
stained g1ass that rills its windows.
The church is rilled with art. Outside is a church annotate and simplify beliefs that are
shell, but inside every surface is covered with otherwise ineffable.
The weeping icon in the midst of all this
images of Christ, Mary, the saints. It is as if
the entire memory of a tradition of worship is doesn't seem extraordinary and the nonrecOrded on the walls, windows and ceiling. chalant'acceptance of the parishioners is part
oHhe mysterY.
.'
...
No surface is left uncovered.
For the record, the icon didaPPear to be
These images are about piety, suffering and
.
faith. They are clumsily made, many of them, crying.
neither as graceful as the best of their kind nor SOIJIICE: Margaret Hawkins in the
Sun-Times. Chicago, IL 212187
as garishly striking as their slick, neoexpressionist knockoffs. But they have a CREOII': Steve Guadagnoli

that

PurPOse.

First Quarter

19a7

More On Stone Spheres

by Mlch.eI T. Shoem....
Mlchael T. Shoemaker, 1986

j
Editor's Note: In "Strange Stone Spheres" (pURSUIT, Vol.
19, No.4) Mr. Shoemaker discussed in some technical detail

existing in/ormation and present theories regarding the origin

and possible intended purpose of the nearly perfect, round .
sculptured stone spheres found in Costa Rica. Dr. Stone and
Dr. Lothrup independently investigaied these massive objects
there. Now, in'lhisarti~/e, Mr. ShoemakermovesfromCoSta
Rica to other countries where similar spheres have been found
and reports his findings to us.

II
z

ParallelS
Stone spheres of such enormous size, perfection, and quantity are found nowhere else in the.world. Some comparable
balls do exist, however, at many locations. Both Dr. Stone
and Dr. Lothrop listed these parallels without discussing them
or drawing any conclusions. This neglect has inhibited the
search for the spheres' purpose and meaning. The parallels
actually tell us a great deal, including the probable origin of
. Dr. Smith inspecting a 5 \11 foot stone ball from Costa Rica now in
the sphere-sculpting tradition.
. the permanent coUection of tbe National Geograpblc Society.
In considering these parallels, we run the risk of equating
completely unrelated balls. This is especially true of the small
balls, by which I mean those that can be held in the hand, say,
One wo~ders whether these spheres once sat on the top of
6 inches or less. Such balls could have been used for several
the columns. Such a decorative device is found at the entrance
to many old mansions in Europe, where it derives from
purposes not connected with the larger balls: in games or divination, as weapons, or as tools for smoothing and grinding.
Medieval symbolism in which the orb represented "the Infinite and Perfect One," according to antiquarian Harold
But as we shall see, the bulk of the data suggests that there
often is a link between the small and large balls, so I think this
.Bayley.
justifies considering all of them.
In any case, the association of spheres with animal heads
Deciding whether the parallels are the result of cultural difpoints to a totemic significance. The heads are certainly
fusion; or of independent invention, is also problematic.
totems serving as guardians of the houses, for we know that
Those balls found throughout Central America and Mexico
the Indians throughout Costa Rica had an animistic religion
could have resulted from direct or indirect trading contact
in which alligators and jaguars had a special place.
with the Diquis culture. Those that are farther away are more
No real parallels are found in eastern Costa Rica because
. . .... the mountains were an effective barrier to cultural contact.
likely to be examples of independent invention.
"Many siteS i~ 'Costa Rica: have small- and' m~ium-size; . Only crude balls used as smoothing or grinding tools were
spheres. The moSt. interesting is at Papagayo, on the penin- .
found at Las Mercedes, a plantation on an affluent of the Rio
de la Reventazon. These are easily distinguishable because of
sula beside Culebra Bay, in northwestern Costa Rica. Between 800 and 1200 A.D., this region supported the Nicoya
their very small size and mediocre workmanship. Other small
culture, an independent group of tribes whose language and
balls found in northeastern Costa Rica are considered slungtradition had southern roots. Nicoya pottery has been found
shots.
.
The highland plains of the Cartago province hold genuine
in the Diquis delta, so trade between the two is a certainty.
parallels, however. The site of an ancient settlement was
At Papagayo, four large foundations for houses show
discovered on a coffee plantation at Orosi, about 18 miles
identical characteristics that indicate a general style. They are
southeast of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. At the turn of the
circular and were constructed with uncut stones. Resting on
century, C.V. Hartman excavated several stone-lined graves
peg bases, stone sculptures of a single jaguar head and of
and an oblong mound found here in a grassy meadow surmultiple alligator heads surround each foundation. Highrounded by mountains.
relief sculptures of columns (Dr. Stone called them "monoThe mound, about 12 feet high, . stood beside a
li~s~') are intersp~rsed between the heads. (Similar decorative
columns are found in the late Mayan ar~hitectural style.) Two
"courtyard" enclosure of ground-level stones. Treasure
or more medium-size stone spheres were found in close assohunters had dug into it and uncovered seven stone balls which
ciation with these SCUlptures. It is not clear whether two
discarded, lay scattered in the grass below. Hartman dug
spheres were found at each foundation (making eight in all),
deeper into the undisturbed layer and, in the process,
or only two altogether. Nor are the spheres' precise locations
discovered ten more balls along with potsherds and charcoal.
He also found a skeleton in another part of the mound.
clear.

First Quarter 1987

Pursuit 13

I
I

A 12-ton gnmitie globe is mellSUred by Dr. Stirllnl and bIB wife

Marion DellI' Palmar Sur, Costa Rlea.

The largest balls had diameters ranging from 6 to 12 inches. Hartman offered no explanation for them, but noted,
"In several other localities in th~ Cartago Valley similar stone
balls have been found near the settlements of the ancient inhabitants." This area was occupied by the Guetar people,
another distinct group of tribes contemporary with the Diquis
culture.
The graves were undistinguished, but since the mound
covered both a house site and a skeleton, it may be an example of a special memorializing custom. Perhaps when a chief
or shaman died, a mound was raised over his house and body
as a monument. We see again that spheres are associated with
both house sites and death.
Large and small balls have also been found in Honduras,
and were apparently brought there by the Leoca people. The
Lencas may be either immigrants from Costa Rica who came
during the early centuries A.D., or another colony from
South America. They are different from the other Honduran
tribes, and their language is closer to the Chibchan dialects of
Costa Rica and Colombia than to the Mayan and Nahuatl
languages of the north.
At Tenampua, 2S miles northeast of Tegucigalpa, the I.:en!.
cali established a fortified village on a flat promontoryoverlooking the Comayagua River. Dorothy Popenhoe, who excavated the site, found numerous red sandstone balls in
various places. Without giving an exact size, shesaid they are
each nearly equal in size, fit into one's hand, and weigh about
three to four pounds. She discovered a large concentration of
them a third of the distance down the hillside. The balls had
clearly been hurled in defense of the fort, either by hand or by
sling.
Popenhoe, writing before the Diquis spheres were found,
thought the balls had been naturally formed in a river bed,
but admitted that the stone was not of local origin. This led
her to make the lame suggestion that the balls had been transported from another area. But who would transport mere
stones for throwing unless the stoneS had some added magical
significance? Knowing what we do today, it is probable that
the stones were both carved and transported. Water action is
not likely to produce such a large quantity of relatively
uniform, sandstone balls. The sandstone would probably
crumble completely, or cleave along planes.
Pursuit 14

An esPecially intriguing detail is the red color of the stone.

Could it be that this was meant to symbolize blood, perhaps
in the hopeof magically drawing blood from the enemy?
Another Leoca site has also yielded spheres. Dr.: Stone
found a large stone sphere (no exact size was given) at
Travesia, on the Ulua River, some 90 miles downstream from
Tenampua. It rested on the right side of the terrace of the
Temple of the Carvings" the most important building at the
site. Smaller balls, similar to those at Tenampua, were found
inside the Temple.
Contact between the Lencas IlI;ld the Mayas may account
for two spheres found at the Mayan city of Benque Viejo.
This city lies on the Belize River, in Belize (fonnerly British
Honduras), near the Guatemalan border. The trip. from
Travesia to Benque Viejo is not far and can be made entirely
by water, which was usually the easiest highway for travel in
the ancient world. At this city, J. Eric Thompson found two
granite spheres that both had a diameter of 1 foot, .10 inches.
Since there is no local sourceof granite, these spheres must
have been made somewhere else. As we would expect of a diffused artistic tradition, these spheres were carved more crudely than the Diquis spheres. Thompson found them on an artificially leveled area, so he attributed an unspecified ceremonial purpose to them., But: given the likelihood that these
spheres were imported, which is enhanced by the fact that no
others have been found in the area, they may actually be
nothing more than decorative souvenirs from a foreign land.
A single quartz ball, little more than an inch in diameter,
was found in Chichen Itza when the Carnegie Institution excavated and restored the Caracol, the famous Mayan ,"observatory." This ball, "too, co~d have come from trade with the
Lencas. It is also possible that the Toltecs brought- it from the
west; where they in turn may have acquired it from the
Pacific Coast Mixtecs~ The Toltecs conquered Ghichen'ltza in
about 1000 A.D;, and most of the buildings, in the City' were
built after this time. 'The Lower Platform on, which the
Caracol stands is dated to 800 A.D., but the dating for the
Caracol itself is later.
The astronomical aspects of the Caracol have long overshadowed an intriguing fact about the structure. Its foundation is actually a kind of layered cemetery. The Lower Platform has about twelve burials within its embutido (the earthen fill inside the platform). And about 24 burials are in the
Upper Platform's embutido.
Other buildings adjoin these platforms and form a single
complex with th~ Caracol. In one of these, the West Annex, a
quartz ball was found. The inner chamber of the West Annex
has a dais with niches along.the front base. Along with the
ball, pottery fragments were found in these niches.. .. ,
The ball is easily distinguished from the large quantity of
stone beads found in the embutido graves. The beads are
roughly round with a hole through the middle, but the ball is
superbly spherical and lacks a hole. The ball was not naturally formed, for it shows signs o~ human workmanship.
First Quarter 1987

No one has speculated on the purpose of the West Annex,

but I would guess that it had a funerary purpose. Perhaps the
body lay-in-state on the dais, while the niches held offerings
to the dead.
A funerary connection is explicit for the rest of the Mayan
spheres. Thirteen balls have been found at two sites that are
only 30 miles apart in southwestern Guatemala. Although
they span hundreds of years, all of the balls were found in
graves.
At Zaculeu, four roughly spherical balls were found in
some graves of the Atzan Phase (500-700 A.D.). They had
been sculpted by pecking, and their diameters were 3.9, 5.5,
9.1, and 14.6 inches. A fifth ball, 2.4 inches. wide, was found
in a Chinaq Phase urn-burial (800-900 A.D.) .. Woodbury and
Trik, the archeologists who excavated the site, also noted that
river-worn pebbles were occasionally found in bowls in Atzan
Phase burials. They believed these pebbles were ritual offerings and suggested that the smallest balls served a similar purpose.
Actually, the two larger balls are even more likely to have
had a ritual significance, because they are too unwieldy to
have had the ordinary practical uses that are often attributed
to the smaller balls. The largest of these balls weighs 125
pounds.
.
Practical uses have indeed been attributed to the eight balls
found at nearby Tajumulco, which is dated to 1000-1250
A.D. These balls are all small, with.the largest only 5.6 inches
wide. They were found in a tomb with'grave goods including
mortars and other tools, and several of them have flattened
and abraded surfaces consistent with tool use. Ironically,
however, the.one ball actually found in a grinding mortar had
a very smooth surface that was not flattened. This does not
sound like a tool, and its location in a mortar could be accidental. Two of the six mortars further confuse the question,
for they have, cavities that are too deep for use with a grinding
ball.
Zaculeu and Tajuniulco are close enough' to the Pacific
coast to have acquired sphere-sculpting directly from the
south. But even if these spheres resulted from cultural diffusion, rather than from independent invention, the idea behind
them obviously never became very, popular. :
The Olmec site of Cerro de las Mesas, fifteen miles east of
the Bay of Alvarado, in VeraCruz, haS two of the largest
spheres. outside: of Costa Rica. The site :was apparently. 'a
cerem9nial centet:"for,it has the only. stone monuments in'the
vicinity~ These monuments were erected over a'long period 'of
time, probably by more than one culture. Two spheres are
among the monuments found on a stone plaza. One is slightly
oblate, and the other rests on a flat spot reminiscent of Costa
Rica's coquina spheres. Matthew W. Stirling, who described
the site, did not give sizes, but a photo shows that these
spheres are about the size of a machete, perhaps 2 feet in
diameter.
These spheres are presumably the work of the Mixtecs, a
people from Oaxaca who were eventually conquered by the
Aztecs. The Mixtecs occupied this site at some late time and
erected groups of mounds throughout the area. Although the
diffusion theory may apply to the Mixtecs, it is peculiar that
no spheres have been foundin.Oaxaca, where we would ~ost
expect them.
Could sphere-sculpting have originated with the Olmecs (c.
1200-0 B.C.), as so much else in Meso-American culture did?
Spheroid head-sculptures similar in size to the two spheres
were also found at Cerro de las Mesas. These call to mind the
First Quarter 1987

.:1

II
z

Matthew w. StirUng beside the largest of the colossal, basalt,

"olmec:" beads found at La Venta.

Olmecs' famous, gigantic head-sculptures, which have a scale

and general rotundity comparable to the Diquis spheres.
Although the notion is rather fanciful, spheres could have
been either the first stage of head-sculpting, or maybe an
abstract style that grew out of head-sculpting.
Even if the Olmecs made spheres before the Diquis culture
began - and keeping in mind that they probably did not the tradition may still have derived from South America. Recent discoveries have shown that the bar-dot, vigesimal
system of mathematical notation, which was first attributed
to the Mayas and then to the Olmecs, was really .invented in
the Andes.
There is also a possibility that the spheres at Cerro de las
Mes!ls have an altogether differ:ent origin than the other
spheres cons~d~rel;l thus far. Pepend~ng 9n the type of rock
that composes them - for Stirling did not identify their composition - these spheres may be either naturally formed, or
else inspired by naturally formed spheres.
Several hundred naturally formed, stone spheres lie on the
slopes of the Sierra de Ameca, about 50 miles from Guadalajara, in Jalisco, Mexico. These spheres have diameters between 2 feet and 11 feet; but many of them are lopsided, and a
few are even shaped like dumbbells (caused by the fusion of
two spheres). Unlike the polished Diquis spheres, their surfaces are quite rough.
Dr. Robert L. Smith, of the U.S. Geological Survey team,
examined the Jalisco spheres in 1968 and concluded that they
"were formed du,ring the Tertiary geqlogical period, by cryst~lization at high temperatures .in a matrix of hot ash-flow
tuff." Based on other ash-flows, it is supposed that volcanic
glass composes 800/0 of the spheres' weight, while air pores
account for more than half their volume. The discovery of a
sphere still encased in consolidated ash confirmed this hypothesized formation process.
Pursuit 15

This process cannot explain the Diquis spheres, however,

because according to Dr. Smith, "Granitic rock never occurs
naturally in large perfect spheres." Moreover, the polished
surfaces of the Diquis spheres, and of the other spheres in
Central America, indicate human workmanship.
Although the J alisco spheres may be related to those at
Cerro de las Mesas, and may have inspired the Olmec heads,
it is doubtful that they exerted any influence outside of Mexico. The Diquis spheres would stiU be mysterious, however,
even if their creation was inspired by natural spheres, because
their purpose would remain unknown.
Stone balls, most of them small, have also been found at
numerous sites in the United States: Considering the general
lack of larger spheres, most of the small ones probably served
one of the practical purposes already mentioned.
Four Hopi mounds near the central Petrified Forest, in
Arizona, have yielded' some sandstone balls. These balls are
small, but very spherical and well-made. Walter Hough, who
excavated them, said they were "probably used in games,"
but that is nothing more than a guess.
In the Burton Mound, at Santa Barbara, California, many
elongated spheroids were uncovered. They had a groove, for
a rope, around their long axis, and had .,een used as sinkers
for fishing lines. Also found were "several worked 'spherical
stones" that lacked a groove. These balls were about 2 inches
wide and made of gray sandstone. In contrast to the sinkers,
they had a smooth surface and excellent rotundity. The ex:
~
cavator offered no explanation for them.
Gerard Fowke, in an 1891 survey of "Stone Art," classified many of the small spheres as "hammers" or "hammerstones." He said they "show every stage of work, from the
ordinary pebble ... with its surface scarcely altered, to the
highly polished round or ovoid 'ball. '" According to Fowke,
they were used to fashion other implements and "were assigned to specified purposes when brought to a better finish or
form." He gave as an example a superbly spherical granite
ball from Ross County, Ohio.
Fowke's blanket classification is not satisfactory. While
some deformed balls may have served as hammers, a polished
spherical stone such as the Ohio ball could hardly have been a
hammer unless it was never used. One of his observations is
interesting, however. He said that the balls "seem to be of
more frequent occurrence in the northern districts than in the
southern states, though found everywhere." Unfortunately,
he did not give a list of sites or numbers.
Fowke also reported two additional original uses for small
spheres. The Shoshoni and Ojibwa Indians made a weapon in
which the balls were "wrapped in leather, attached by a string
of 2 inches to a handle 22 inches long." And the Indians of
Queen Charlotte Island, British Columbia, Canada, used
"elaborately carved round stones, mounted in handles as
clubs."

Figure

-llIICrlption (actual size) on

u.s. baD (after Wilson).

Most o( the small U.S. balls seem to bear no relationship to

the Diquis spheres. We have, however, one slight indication

Pursuit 16

that some of them may have had an esoteric purpose. In Prehistoric Man, Daniel Wilson quoted (without reference) from
the American Ethnological Transactions, in which the
pioneering ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft described a
stone ball from an unspecified Indian mound. The ball had a
diameter of 1.4 inche$, and a flattened circular spot with an
inscription appearing on it (see Figure 1). Wilson said the circle had a 0.8 inch circumference, but he undoubtedly meant a
diameter of the circle.
Schoolcraft identified a Greek delta in this inscription, but
that is ridiculous, I feel, since the symbol referred to is connected to a long stem. In truth, the inscription is indecipherable. The signs are probably magical, rather than alphabetic
or arithmetic. The ball certainly must have had some special
significance.
A few large spheres have also been found in the U.S.,
although there is some question about their authenticity.
A.C. Nelson, of Palisade, Minnesota, described some in a
1952 letter to Fate. He reported that in Mandan, North
Dakota, he had seen some "perfectly round" sandstone balls
that had diameters of about 10 to 12 inches. He was told'that
Cannonball, North Dakota, had similar stone balls, and that
the balls had even inspired the town's name. Some people,
probably referring to Indian legends, said that giants had
made the balls, while others attributed the balls to the action
of glaciers. Mr. Nelson made an acute observation when he
said that "because of their round form and uniform size" he
believed humans had made the balls.
J.S. RusseU, of Orlando, Florida, wrote to Fate, a few
months later insisting that such balls resulted from stones
,roUing down streams and rivers. He said he knew of many
stone balls at GraysViUe, Tennessee, between Lone Mountain
and the Cumberlands. Their diameters range from a few inches to 6 feet. He admitted, however, that some of them are
not round. This leaves us wondering whether any of them are
truly round, or whether Mr. Russell lumped together manmade spheres with water-rounded boulders.
Mr. RusseU's letter is really irrelevant to the question of the
North Dakota spheres. If these spheres have been accurately
reported, they must be of human origin for the reason that
Mr. Nelson stated.
The existence of at least one huge sphere in the U.S. is supported by a more authoritative source. Jacob ,Green, writing
in the American Journal of Science in 1822, described a rocking stone located on the farm of Mrs. McCabbe, of Phillips
Town, Putnam County, New York. (fhis rock should not be
confused with the more famous "Putnam Rock," which once
stood on the Hudson palisades near West Point.) Mr. Green
provided an illustration that shows a hemisphere that looks
exactly like half an egg balanced somewhat off-center. The
curved sides are perfectly smooth, but the "flat" side is very
jagged, exactly as though a former sphere had broken in half.
Mr. Green said the stone was granite and was 31 feet in circumference. It rested on a "pedestal" that rose 1.5 feet off
the ground. The stone could "be rolled a little by the hand
and with a small lever it can be moved with great ease; notwithstanding this, six men with crowbars have been unable to
roU it ,down from its pedestal."
I have been unable to determine ~hether this stone still exists, but there is no reason to doubt that it once did. Britain,
and ,many other countries, formerly had numerous rocking
stones, a few of which can still be seen. According to Harold
Bayley's The Lost Language of Symbolism, "The Celtic
Clachabrath, or rocking~tones, where spheres of enormous

First Quarter 1987

size, balanced with such nicety that the slightest touch caused
them to vibrate." Uncut boulders served as rocking stones in
Cornwall, where such a stone is called a logan. Bayley says,
"There is a town near Cambourne called IUogan, and the
word logan seems to imply that the tilting-rock was regarded
as il-og-an. 'our Lord the Mighty One.'"
The rocking stones suggest the existence of an earth-magic
cult and may have been idols to an earth goddess. They may
also be related to the practices of erecting dolmens (huge
boulders resting on peg-stones), which served as grave
markers and sometimes as commemorative monuments.
In Malta, we find the best example of small balls used
either for a game or for a divination ritual. Some of the
earliest and most colossal megalithic temples were constructed by an indigenous civilization on the Maltese archipelago. The temple at Tarxien, built before 2200 B.C., has a
stone kiosk that stands by an outside corner near the entrance. Small holes cover the kiosk floor, and stone balls, also
found at the site, fit into the holes. The temple has within it
several sculptures of fat women, believed to represent a fertility goddess, which is usually associated with the earth. So
we see again a possible link between stone balls and a cult of
earth magic.
Some spheres that can be eliminated from consideration
should also be mentioned. In the Sahara, elongated, mediumsize "balls" have been found at many sites, but these were used, and are still used, to grind grain. Small balls, probably used as weapons, have also been reported from Haiti and Puerto Rico.
We come lastly to South America in our search for
parallels. Although it has never before been pointed out, the
roots of the Diquis sphere-sculpting tradition, like the roots
of almost all Diquis culture, lie in South America, I feel.
Throughout the Andes of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, holy sites called huacas were formerly marked by cairns. The
Spanish destroyed most of them, or erected crosses in their
places, but some still remain. Each cairn held a large sacred
boulder, or huancauri, on top. The huancauris are also referred to as willka, or vilca, ~tones. Willka meant "sun" in the
old Quechuan language, and it had connotations of
"ancestry," "lineage," and "descent."
This relationship between the sun and stone is not as puzzling as it may seem. The sun was the supreme object of worship, the giver of life, in the Andes. Because sparks can be
produced when a stone is struck, it was believed that part of
the sun resides in rocks. The Andean myth of human origin
reinforced this relationship. Kon Tiki Viracocha, the incarnation of the sun-god, is supposed to have fashioned the first
man out of stone. Building on this myth, the Incan
mythology said that three eggs (often symbolized by stones)
descended from the sun and gave birth to the three districts of
the Inca empire. (The "ancient astronaut" school of interpretation regards this as a visitation by spaceships.)
The vi/ca stones were not in themselves worshipped. They
held the spirits of the dead and acted as oracles. This comes
close to a totemic function; and indeed, Villca is a tribal
name, indicating that the vilca stones probably did serve as
totems occasionally.
Willkapampa, known to us as Vilcabamba, meant "Plain
of the Sun." Old Vilcabamba (to distinguish it from a
modern town of the same name) was the famous "lost city"
to which Manco II and the Incas retreated after Cuzco fell to
the Spaniards. Machu Picchu was once believed to be Old
Vilcabamba, but this was wrong. Explorer Gene Savoy
First Quarter 1987

discovered the true site in 1964.

Among the ruins, Savoy found an immense boulder that
looked like an egg sitting on a platform. As more of the city
was uncovered, huge uncut boulders were found everywhere.
He then realized that Old Vilcabamba was literally a city of
vilca stones.
In 1965, while exploring the Amazonas and San Martin
provinces of northern Peru, Savoy discovered extensive ruins
of the Chachapoyas culture (c. 800-1480 A.D.). At the ruins
of Gran Pajaten, he found many circular, stone buildings,
some as small as 3 feet in diameter. Some of these buildings
contained pure white boulders shaped like an egg and as big
as a basketball. These boulders were worshipped according to
local tradition, and they can probably be likened to the vi/ca
stones.
The Chachapoyas culture probably derived from the
Chavin culture (c. 2000 B.C.). This provides a possible origin
of the reverence for boulders; one that is old enough to
antedate the Diquis tradition. We will never know precisely
where or when this practice began, but it clearly originated in
the Andes, where it remained strong and widespread, and was
exported to the Diquis delta, where it became a high art.
Theories and Conclusions
Although the preceding paragraph foreshadows my general
conclusions, a review of the theories about the spheres will
strengthen and clarify my position. Ivan T. Sanderson, the
late eminent zoologist and writer on scientific anomalies, first
set forth the seven general purposes that the spheres could
have served. The categories are: astronomical, mechanical,
topographical, frivolous, artistic, economic, and religious.
The astronomical uses (sight-lines or sky maps) are the
most often proposed, but they are, ironically, the least likely.
In fact, I think we can definitely rule them out. The forest
and terrain make sight-lines impossible and sky maps doubtful today and probably then, as well. The size variations appear to have no special meaning (such as representing different star magnitudes), but probably reflect the sequence of
production. If the balls formed sky maps, we would have to
believe in several maps, some with only one or two balls, in
order to explain their wide distribution. Most damaging are
the positive clues - the associations with death and house
mounds, and the evidence from Peru - which are absolutely
inconsistent with the astronomical theory.
The mechanical theory includes using the spheres like
steamrollers; or as weights, either for weighing, or for storing
potential energy. Most of the balls are too small to serve as
rollers, and they would not be of much use in a flood delta.
As weights for weighing, the large balls far exceed the Indians' requirements for, I am sure, there is nothing that big to
be weighed.
In an energy storage system, the balls could have been roIled up hills and released when needed. Such a system would
offer the following advantages: control over time (like a battery), the accumulation of small amounts of force (if many
balls are released together), and the steady application of an
untiring force (in a ball's controlled descent). Delivery of the
energy would require some attachment such as an axle,
however, and there is no evidence of any high-energy work
having been done (except for sculpting and moving the
spheres themselves). Furthermore, the positive clues do not
support a mechanical explanation either.
According to the topographical theory, the spheres could
have been a system of boundary markers, or surveying tools
that simplified the geometric calculations. But their distribuPursuit 17

tion and range of sizes cast doubt on these uses, and an

elaborate boundary system, with the markers often under
water, is hardly believable for a fishing culture such as that of
the Diquis delta. And the positive clues contradict this theory,
too.
Although sphere-sculpting probably involved artistic
motives, it is not likely that the spheres were made to be
primarily ornamental. Art generally evolves, but the spheresculpting appears to have continued unchanged for centuries.
Nor is it believable that such a laborious art could have continued through the long period of warfare after 800 A.D.
A frivolous, or gaming, use of the spheres is not as outlandish as it sounds. The Tarahumara Indians of northwestern
Mexico, for example, play a marathon kickball game that
often covers up to 200 miles. Although we cannot disprove
that these balls were pushed around in some kind of game,
the religious explanation is far more convincing.
Seemingly the strangest of. all is the idea that the spheres
were a form of money. But large stone money shaped like
millstones has been used in some Pacific islands. In fact, this
form of money has several advantages over our own. It has
an intrinsic value (the labor to produce it), it cannot be
counterfeited, and it is virtually impossible to steal or to conceal (thereby eliminating tax evasion). This theory offers an
excellent explanation for the huge number of spheres, but
there is no specific evidence in its favor, and it does not seem
consistent with the existence of alignments.
Only the religious interpretation fits all the facts while re-.
maining reasonable. Archeologists (including Dr. Lothrop)
have often suggested that the spheres had religious significance, but none has ever attempted to explain what that
significance may have been.
It is ironic that Dr. Lothrop refused to believe the Boruca
Indians when they told him that the spheres represented the
sun. His reason was that the sun is usually symbolized in the
New World by a gold disk (as we see among the Aztecs and
Incas). But multiple symbols may have existed for a variety of
reasons. For example, the gold disks are valuable and rare;
they would be suitable for the Emperor's priests, but hardly
likely to be possessed by the poor mountain peasants. Or the
disks may have been evolved symbols of later origin.
The Boruca Indians were indeed correct. As we have seen,
the huancauris were vilca (sun) stones. Colonists apparently
carried this tradition to the Diquis delta. Their attempt to
perpetuate the tradition with river boulders and coquina proved unsatisfactory, so they began quarrying granite in the
mountains. To them goes the credit for creating vilca stones
that were perfect spheres. This development could have had
an artistic or a philosophical motivation.
The association with death is perfectly natural. Sun symbols throughout the world are usually linked to the cycle of
birth and resurrection, because the sun dies and is reborn daiIy. The spheres at the eastern and western boundaries of the
Changuina cemetery are powerful examples of this symbolism.
As I have indicated, the vitco stones probably served as
totems for some tribes in Peru. In the Diquis culture, the
spheres appear to have been a tribal or supratribal totem; in
other words, a totem that applied to everyone in the culture.
Archeologists tell us that the Indians' religion was animistic
(i.e. totemic), and the association between spheres and house
mounds is also suggestive. The best supporting evidence
comes from the Papagayo site, where spheres and totemic
animal-heads were found together.
Pursuit 18

This interpretation accounts for the wide distribution and

large number of spheres and for the small spheres, too. Just
as crucifixes are found in most houses of a Catholic country,
so the spheres are found on the house mounds (upper-class)
and on the ground at stilt-house sites Oower-class). And just
as some people wear crosses, so the ancient Borucas may have
carried with them the small spheres in pouches.
Some questions are still unanswered, of course. The
psychology underlying such a prodigious and single-minded
enterprise is hard to comprehend. Why are the rest of the Diquis sculptures so crude? Did the alignments have a magical
significance? Were the Old World dolmens similar to vi/co
stones; and if they were, did the idea spring from a fundamental of human consciousness, or from trans-Atlantic
diffusion? Unless we invent a time machine, these questions
will probably remain forever beyond .science.
BmLlOGRAPHY
Bayley, Harold. The Lost Language of Symbolism (London: Ernest Benn,
1974 reprint from 1912), pp. 181-2.
.
Dutton, Bertha P. & Hobbs, Hulda R. Excavations at Tajumulco,
Guatemala (Univ. of New Mexico: Monographs of the School of
American Research, #9, 1943), p. 48.
Fowke, Gerard. "Stone Art," U.S. Bureau of Ethnology: 13th Annual
Report, 1891-2, pp. 94-5. .
Green, Jacob. "Notice," American Journal of Science: 5:252-3, 1822.
Harrington, John P. "Exploration of the Burton Mound at Santa Barbara,
. California," U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology: 44th Annual Report,
1926-7, p. 90.

Harrison, James O. "Riddle of Costa Rica's Jungle Spheres," Science

Digest, June, 1967, pp. 14-16.
Hartman, C. V. Archeological Researches in Costa Rica (Stockholm, 19(1),
pp. 13, 166, 185.
Hough, Walter, "Archeological Field Report in Northern Arizona,"
Report of the U.S. National Museum, 1901, p. 322.
Kolosimo, Peter. Timeless Earth (New York: Bantam, 1975), pp. 126, 183.
Lothrop, Eleanor. "Mystery of the Prehistoric Stone Balls," Natural History, September, 1955, pp. 372-7.
_ _ _ . "An Enigma from the Jungles of South-West Costa Rica: Stone
Sphere which may be Astronomical Markers," Jltustrated London News,
December 17, 1955, pp. 1054-5.
Lothrop, Samuel K. Archeology of the Diquis Delta, Costa Rica (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum Papers, vol. 51, 1963).
.
Nelson, A.C. Letter, Fate, April-May, 1952, p. 122.
Popenhoe, Dorothy Hughes. "The Ruins of Tenampua, Hondurus,"
Smithsonian Institution: Annual Report, 1935, pp. 569-71.
Reader's Digest. The World's Last Mysteries (pleasantville, N.Y.: The
Reader's Digest Association, 1978), p. 73.
Renfrew, Colin. Before Civili1.lltion (New Y9rk: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973),
pp. 147-52.
Ruppert, Karl. The Caracol of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute, Publication #454, 1935), p. 267.
Russell, J.S. Letter, Fate, September, 1952, p. 116.
Sanderson, Ivan T. "Things" (New York: Pyramid, 1967), pp. 59-71.
Savoy, Gene. Antisuyo: The Searchfor the Lost Cities of the Amazon (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).
Stirling, Matthew W. Stone Monuments of Southern Mexico (Bureau of
American Ethnology, Bulletin #138, 1943), p. 45.
_ _ _ . "Solving the Mystery of Mexico's Great Stone Spheres," National Geographic, August, 1969, pp. 294-300.
Stone, Doris Z. Archeology of the North Coast of Honduras (Cambridge, Mass.: Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, vol. 9, #1, 1941),
pp. 63, 94.
_ _ _ . "Flood Plain of the Rio Grande de Terraba," American
Antiquity, 9:1, 1943, pp. 78-9, 82-3.
_ _ _ . Introduction to the Archeology of COsta Rica (Museo
Nacional San Jose, Costa Rica, 1958), pp. 45-9.
_ _ _ . Pre-Columbion Man in Costa Rica (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody
Museum Press, 1977).
Wilson, Daniel. Prehistoric Man (London: Macmillan, 1862), vol. 2,
pp.189-90.

Woodbury, Richard B. & Trik, Aubrey S. The Ruins of Zaculeu, Guate:mala (United Fruit Co., 1953), pp. 224-5.
~

First Quarter 1987

aelated SITUation.
......... hIo.. Evoke
_ AacIeat NIc:ana_
A coHection of massive stone idols carved
by Indians as long as 1,000 years ago has
quietly gone on display in this stately colonial
toW1l of Granada, Nicaragua.
The brooding statues, which range from
about five to ten feet in height, were discovered by early Spanish explorers who visted the
volcanic islands in Lake Nicaragua. But they
were largely forgotten for centuries, and little
is known about them or the people who made
them.
,
Uke the even larger idols on Easter Island
in the Pacific, the Nicaraguan flgUfe5 have inspired a variety of theories.
The fl1"St person to study and catalogue
statues from the Nicaraguan Islands was E.G.
Squier, who was the United States minister to
Nicaragua in the mid-19th century.
"They are plain, simple and severe, and
although not elaborately finished, are cut with
considerable freedom and skill, " Squier
wrote. Some of them, he added, "conveyed
so forcibly the idea of power and strength that
they might have been used as a study for a
Samson under the gates of Gaza, or an Atlas
supporting the world. It
Later in the 19-century, the Swedish Society
of Anthropology and Geography sponsored a
scholarly expedition led by Carl Bovallius,
who identified more statues. Bovallius
developed the theory that many of the statues
had been used as pillars to support the roof of
a large temple.
TIme and mistreatment have taken their toU
on the statues. Sketches made by Squier and
BovaIlius show much more detail than is now
visible. "Being buried out on the islands for

"
:.'

'. '-. -..

centuries protected them," said Rigoberto

Navarro, an official of the culture ministry
who has conducted excavations on Zapatera
Island, where most of the idols were found.
"Jesuit priests brought them to Granada and
displayed them in a schoolyard where they
were exposed directly to the elements. The
priests also chopped off the genital organs so
as not to disturb the children."
Although
Nicaragua's
archeological
heritage is not normally considered as rich as
that of other Latin American countries like
Mexico, Guatemala or' Peru, the statues
displayed in an eerie double me behind an ancient convent here are unusual if not unique.
Mr. Navarro said they were probably carved between 800 and 1200 A.D. by tribes that
migrated from Mexico. "The only way we
will be able to teU their age for sure is to
discover one buried with some, biological
waste that can be reliably dated," he said.
Research expeditions to Zapat~a are conti-

Sto. . H_............
AadeatKiag
On top of this 7,ISO-foot mountain in
eastern Turkey a dozen gigantic stone heads
guard the tomb of an ancient king who didn't
want to be forgotten.
Antiochus I, ruler of the small but strategically important Kommagene region in the fl1"St
century B.C., built himself a showy funeral
monument on the highest peak in his king-

dom.
He claimed descent from Alexander the

Great, who conquered the, district 300 years

earlier, and from King Darius, the Sth century
B.C. Persian monarch.
In summer, tourists travel 70 miles by jeep
from the town of Adiyaman to see the eightfoot-high stone heads turn pink at dawn.
But no one knows whether Antiochus,fmally
was buried beneath the 160-foot-Jiigh mound
of loose, fist-sized chunks of limestone that
forms the centeipiece of the sprawling monu-

ment.
Americ8n archaeologists digging at
Nemrud Da&i 30 years ago tunneUed into the
mound but found no trace of a tomb chamber.
Archaeologists probing other funeral
mounds around the ancient Kommagene

First Quarter 1987

kingdom on the Euphrates River had found

burial chambers and skeletons.
Nemrud Dagi's remote location near the
Turkish-Syrian border and the logistical problems of excavating on a bleak mountain peak
discourage archaeologists from digging.
The American teams cleared two broad terraces east and west of the mountain-top
mound. Each was 'overlooked by a line of
identical seated fIgUres, about five times life-

size.

nuing sporadically, under the culture

ministry's jurisdiction. During an 11-day stay
on the island in November Mr. Navarro and
two American specialists found four previously unknown sites containing important relics.
Experts are not certain whether the statues
were carved on the islands, which are of
volcanic origin, or whether they were brought
from elsewhere. Some have suggested that
idols from various places might have been carried to the islands to protect them from
destruction.
Accounts of the conquest of Nicaragua
mention sprees of vandalism by Indians who,
after conversion to Christianity, believed they
were showing the sincerity of their new convictions by mutilating pagan artifacts.
Other investigators, such as the contemporary Nicaraguan writer Jorge Eduardo
AreUano, speculate that the statues were used
for religious ceremonies on Zapatera Island,
which some believe had a ritual importance to
ancient tribes.
While some of the statues on exhibit here'
are of simple human fIgUres, the most intriguing ones are human-animal combinations.
In some cases, the animals seem to be towering over or standing on the heads of crouched
humans.
Because these mysterious stone titans form
such a central part of Nicaragua's heritage, it
was inevitable that the country's most famous
literary figure, the poet Ruben Dario, who
died in 1916, would have reflected on them.
"The great idols have the air of oriental stone
gods, I t Dario wrote. "They represent supernatural beings, coarsely sculpted in obscure
basalt monoliths by the hands of fetishists."
SOlJRCE: Stephen Kinzer in The Times. NY
1130/87
CREOrr: Jon Douglas Singer
Antiochus, shown as a clean-shaven young
man, was flanked by eagles, lions and ancient
gods: Zeus, king of the gods in ancient Greek
mythology; Hercules; ApoUo the sun god,
and Tyche, goddess of fortune.
All but one of the 14 colossal heads were
toPPled by earthquakes. The American team
set them upright and recorded dozens of
Greek inscriptions engraved on the statue
bases.
The inscriptions gave detailed instructions
to ensure that future generations would worship Antiochus as a god.
Priests were to crown the stone heads with
wreaths of gold and ~ve musicians would
perform as pilgrims gathered for sacrifices on
the mountain top.
Anti:lchus was overthrown by Rome around
34 B.C. after apparently using some of hiS
funding to supPort a local rebellion backed by
the Persians.
And some scholars argue that Antiochus'remains will never be found beneath the
Nemrud Dagi mound because the Romans
would have forbidden a disgraced ally's burial
in such a grandiose monument.
SOIJBCE: AP in The Beaumont Enterprise
TX 11/22/86
CREOrr: Scott Parker via COUD-I
Pursuit 19

The Bakken Library of Electricity In Life

by Dennis Stillings

Tbe Bakken Library of Electricity in Life, Minnea~olis, Minnesota.

It has been said that many great British.institutions have been

created as an afterthought. While neither British nor very large,
the Bakken Library of Electricity in Life, located in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, came into existence in much the salT!e manner as an afterthought. But more on this later.
".
.
The current Bakken Library collections contain some 12,000
rare books and manuscripts dealing with the subjects of electrotherapy, electrophysiology, biomagnetism. m~smerism,
neurology and, in short, virtually everything of a historical
nature that can be found written on the subject of the wiring
and electrification of living organisms. The books and
manuscripts date from 1270 - the date of a manuscript of Vincent de Beauvais - the "Speculum naturale" - to an 'approximate cutoff date of about 1920.
:
Although the Iibmry was collected as a resource for research.
purposes, it contains some outstanding mrities: in addition t?
a number of incunabula. there are copies of the first three edItions of Gilbert's De magnete, the mre offprint of Galvani's' "De
viribus e/ectricitatis, "and a fine and complete copy of Robert
Norman's The newe attractive ...of 1581. Many other volumes
of compamble rarity and importance are in the collec~ion, ?1~st
discussing biomagnetism or bioelectricity; but many are sImply major classics in science, technology. and medicine. .

,..:':. . ;:}::.'. >:"",:)'>;:,-:::,:<:~~j

:::

..... .

: ..: ~ ...:
....... :..:.::

.:...

...

"

Greek pinax (c. 4th century B.C.) showing tbe torpedo or "electric
rlSh" between two larger fish. Tbe torpedo served as the only
medical electrical stimulating "device" from at least the lst century
A.D. untO the time of Haubbee.
FOOlnOle: Bakken is pronounced as Bockin.

Pursuit 20

Portable Electric kit (Nairne and Blunt, London, betwe4ln 1773 and
1793). Globe-type electrostatic generatoR are now almost Impossible to obtain.

Special collections include a number of superb Mesmer and

animal magnetism manuscripts and, from a century later. a large
selection of manuscript material of Albert Abrams, the founder
of the Radionics movement. Over two hundred ephemeral items
(advertisements, programs, broadsides, circulars, and instructional pamphlets of an electrotherapeutical character) and some
three hundred trade catalogues round out this very colorful aspect
of the collections.
.
There are also several complete runs of significant early journals including the Philosophical Magazine, the Opuscoli Scelti,
the Anna/en der Physik, and the Royal Society's Philosophical
Transactions and Proceedings.
.
In 1969, Earl Bakken, then president of Medtronic, Inc:!.the
major cardiac pacemaker manufacturer in the United States , asked me if I could find "some old medical electrical machines."
I was a technical librarian at Medtronic at the time and had acquired something of a reputation for finding very difficult items
in a short time. I set about to find these machines, but had very
little luck at the start. There was no market among antiquarians
for medical electrical devices, hence few were available. and
those were of mediocre quality and desirability. Noticing that
Mr. .Bakken had requested a number of photocopies of material
by Aldini (the nephew of Galvani) and by Duchenne de
Boulogne. the father of modem electrotherapy, I suggested that
it would be possible to obtain the original first editions of these
researchers and build up a library that represented the history
of developments in the use of electricity in medicine and biology.
This was agreeable to him, and I began collecting in earnest.
'. There was little market in those days for this material, thus
. several prime items were available at nominal cost, and we were
~oon on our way to building a very nice library on . 'electricity
In life."
. The problem of finding old medical electrical instruments still
remained. Fortunately, I became aware of the outstanding collections gathered by Bern Dibner and then housed in the Bumdy' Library in Norwalk. Connecticut. I visited Mr. Dibner and
was generously provided with several leads as to where I might

First Quarter 1987

begin to look for old electrical machines. At the beginning, it

turned out that dealers in rare books on science and technology
were the best source. Very often those from whom they purchased their stocks of rare books also had a number of old pieces
of equipment. When it was clear that I represented a market
for such items, the dealers began to pay attention to these
homeless devices and to notify me of their availability - at a
price.
The typical European rare book dealer is a sophisticated and
urbane connoisseur of elegant and beautiful things. Old electromedical equipment, rare though it may be, did not always
excite the aesthetic sense of rare book dealers, and they would
apologize for offering to me what they really considered to be
junk. Of the first two "junk" items, one was the table-top glassplate electrostatic generator of de Saussure illustrated in Bern
Dibner's Early Electrical Machines.
Nearly two years passed before I began to be offered significant early electrical devices. In the meantime, of course, the
rare book collection had grown considerably, and this "afterthought" was beginning to resemble a decent research library.
I put my full energy into this activity, backed by generous funding from Earl Bakken. My basic idea was to put together a
library where one could do research in the areas of electricity
and magnetism in life without leaving the premises. Of course,
this was an unrealistic expectatio~, quite impossible to do, but
with that ultimate carrot in front 'of my nose, I proceeded to
gather together as much primary and secondary material as I
could find. In the early 1970s there was little competition. and
the collection grew rapidly at reasonable cost.
The acquisition of the electrical devices, however, was the
greatest adventure. If one harbors even a small tendency toward
superstition, it soon appears as if the machines are seeking you
as determinedly as you are seeking them. One concentrates on
finding the object, then relaxes and does something else, and
a few days later there is a phone call or a letter.... The energetic
collector will recognize this pauern.

Large-cased Holtz-Toepler generator of U.S. manufacture (c.

1_), retrieved from Mexico. Used to power X-ray. An air-core

hlgb-frequency solenoid, also from c. 1900, on the rigbt.

The two largest single lots of rare electrical devices to be added

to the collection were gathered under quite unusual circumstances. In 1974, I received a call from a curator at the
Smithsonian who informed me that there was a certain self-styled
'Tropical Trader" in Miami Beach who had a good collection
of medical electrical devices he wanted to get rid of. I went down
to see "Trader Joe," as I began to refer to him, and sure enough.
he had some excellent things including a large Holtz-Toepler
First Quarter 1987

Neurisco E.N.T. (eye, nose and tbroat) macbine (c. 1910).

Discovered in Morelia, Meldco. In good working condition and
complete.

machine and a very early EKG unit. But the story - and the
old instruments - did not end there. Trader Joe informed me
that he had acquired his collection from a doctor living in
Morelia, Mexico. This doctor was a descendant of the last Mexican Emperor, Iturbide. This scientifically enlightened monarch,
deposed in 1815 by Santa Ana, had early set about collecting
a private cabinet scientifique, importing many scientific instruments from Europe. including a Volta pile contemporary
with Volta. The Morelia doctor owned the remains of this collection and, in addition. had quite a collection of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century medical electrical devices of his own.
He was over 80 years old, very vigorous, and had a wife of
about 30. He used his two small children, about 8 and IO years
old, for purposes of demonstrating all the functions of his
Neurisco E. N. T. (eye, nose and throat) machine. Among these
functions were light diagnosis, high-voltage "violet-ray" treatment, and low-voltage stimulation. I obtained this machine along
with several others. After two days of socializing, Trader Joe
closed the deal, and we went on to other parts of Mexico. On
the way to Morelia we had gone over fog-shrouded mountain
passes overlooking sheer drops to rock piles, which more than
once constituted the last resting place of a broken-backed Mexican bus. On the return trip we ran into major flooding. major
enough so that it was reported world-wide in the news. Within
a few hours after my plane left Mexico City for Minneapolis,
an earthquake struck, causing considerable damage to the Puebla
area. We had felt tremors almost a week earlier, and my Mexican friends would then tell me why doors sometimes swung
mysteriously on their hinges. If one were looking for archaeological treasures, one might expect to experience such an
Indiana Jones-style adventure, but when looking for old electrical machines? The next, much bigger haul occurred under circumstances almost as strange.
Pursuit 21

Glass hlll'lllonlca, buDt by Benjamin FnnkDn In England and ship

ped to Paris. Before his retUrD to America, FrankUn gave the device
to Mme. BriUon de Jouy, in whose famDy It remained until ac
qulred by the Bakken Library In 1975.
.

About the same time as I was secuiing the Mexican material,

I was contacted by the late great antiquarian Heinz Norden of
London. Heinz had located an extraordinary col1ection of electrical devices of all kinds, owned "by a gypsy in Peckham"
who had '.'rings in his ears and long, greasy black hair" - your
average colIector of rare antique electrical instruments, I thought
to myself. This col1ection was housed in an ordinary, very rundown three-story house of which only the top floor was inhabitable. The rest of the bUilding was occupied by a junky looking antique shop (junky looking, perhaps, but full of great items
of every kind) - and by a col1ection of over 400 electrical
motors, generators, coils, electric toys, and other pieces, all in
superb condition and dating back into the eighteenth century.
I gasped at the sight of it. The owner of this collection, who
did not deviate markedly in appearance from Heinz's description, was himself a collector. Consequently, nearly two years
passed before I could negotiate the acquisition of the material
I wanted. Eventually we obtained 80 or more of the devices,
just those that had something directly to do with electrotherapy
or electrophysiology or that demonstrated some significant
development in the history of biomedical instrumentation.
In addition to these two important "found" col1ections, certain dealers played significant roles in the history ofthe development of the BLEL collection of instruments. Most notable among
these was, of course, the late legendary Alain Brieux of Paris.
The bulk of the instruments in the col1ection are of either French
or English origin, and Alain energetically searched out the
fonner group of instruments. He located and offered to us classic
devices of great rarity including a D' Arsonval induction cage,
a Guilleminot spiral, a signed coil of Duchenne de Boulogne,
a glass hannonica made by Benjamin FrankJin for his French
mistress Madame Bril1on, and a wide variety of instruments he
considered of special importance in understanding the history
and development of the biomedical use of electrical
instrumentation. A number of significant and especially fine
devices were obtained through Harriet Wynter of London and
two of our best rare book dealers, Jeremy Nonnan of San Francisco and Jacques Vellekoop (E.P. Goldschmidt, Ltd.),. also of
Pursuit 22

London, made it their business to keep a sharp eye out for a

chOIce item. A. smal1 number ~f good finds may be added to
their credit.
As .w~D . Hackmann said of the Bakken Library, one may
be able to put together something like it by combining the relevant matenals from the libraries at Cambridge, Oxford, and the
Wel1come,.but nowhere but at the Bakken Library can you find
a single resource of such richness for research into the history
of medical and experimental uses of electricity in life. I have
often, with considerable vehemence, encouraged hi~torians to
visit the facility. They have politely indicated their desire to see
the Library. but have put it off, as we all do, for months and
years. When they final1y do come, I find myself the target of
quite serious reproaches for not having emphasized strongly
enough the scope and importance ~f the collection. "If I had
known this was here, I would have been here much earlier!" .
The task of collecting material in such a narrow subject area
has led to several discoveries, some of them original. One learns
that D. C. defibrillation was used in the 1770s, that electroacupuncture and low-voltage stimulation for bone-healing
were well-known modalities throughout most of the nineteenth
.century, and that electrical control of the heart rate was accomplished by direct stimulation of the myocardium in the
1860s. That electricity might playa role in the functioning of
the cardiovascular system was suggested at the time of Harvey.
These and other similar facts were reported regularly in columns
initiated by me in Medical Instrumentation (" Artifact' ') and in
the now-defunct international journal Medical Progress through
Technology (' 'Retrospectrosc9PY' ').

This arrangement consdtates the 0....... IlllCeltor of the audile

paiemaker. The aI....,1ate aenentor WIll used to create a _tie
field on the silk drape lII'Oand the padent. An Increase In heart rate
of abont eight beats per minute was observed. French appandas
from aboat 1775.

Important educational programs have been held at the Bakken such as demonstrations of the nature and operation of
historical instruments by Samuel Devons of Columbia University. Fellowships and grant programs have been made available
to qualified historians. Those interested in such programs, or
those who simply wish to visit the Bakken Library and examine
the holdings should contact the current Director of the Bakken
Library, John Senior, at The Bakken Library of Electricity in
Life, 3537 Zenith A venue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota
55416.
.
First Quarter 1987

The Colonel Had a Ghost!

by Dr. Adan Andrews
"Would Joyce be willing to go investigate a haunted house
in Washington, D.C., tomorrow?" the caller asked. "We'll
send up a private plane to pick her up and she would only be
gone about a day."
"I'll ask her," I replied. Mr. William Roll, Director ofthe
Psychical Research Foundation of Durham, North Carolina,
seemed satisfied with that answer to his request and shortly
hung up.
Joyce Sammons was my fiancee at the time of that call,
back in May 1976, operating a psychic counseling service out
of a downstairs room in my large house in Greensboro, North
Carolina. When she finished her evening's counseling sessions
I passed on Bill Roll's question.
"I don't know, Arlan, I wouldn't want to go around some
dangerous ghost. Besides that, I've never been on a small
plane." I asked her to check out the situation ahead of time
by a psychic reading and she reluctantly agreed.

~.~----~--------~t1ZSF~7.;,'
. :.. :.: ....
.........:.. :..~ ...
~

--------

..

along the twilight-darkened streets of Washington, D.C., still

with no idea of what lay ahead. Although Joyce and I told
Bill Roll of her advanced reading on the trip, he refused to
comment and advised her to save her energy.
We were both surprised when the van turned in through the
gates of the Old Soldiers and Airmen's Home. We couldn't
have imagined a haunting investigation on a U.S. Government base!
The subject house was an old two-story white frame home
with a large screened-in porch, and we met with P .R.F. investivator Dr. Jerry Solfven, who was coordinating the visits of
many prominent psychics to investigate the haunting. We still
had no idea as to the events that had brought us to the place.
Blue Harary was the first psychic to enter the house. He
took along a clipboard with a graph paper map of the house,
which he was to mark for various observed phenomena. A
portable tape recorder was to be used to record visual obser-

..

J....,

~:

Colonel ~r's "haunted house" - the Old Soldlen aDd AInoeu's

Home In WasbiDgton, D.C.

Dr. Andrews aDd Joyce.

After an hour's meditation she came out of her consultation room and told me what she had learned from her session.
"There was a gift from a dark couple at a far distance to an
official, maybe a military man, a gift having to do with death.
The ghost is associated with that situation. It is a foreign
ghost and it wants to go home. It's not dangerous, just
unhappy. I'll tell Bill Roll that I'll go investigate it."
About the private plane? "Oh, that? Well, I might be
scared, there might be bad weather, but it won't really be
dangerous. I'll go."
The next afternoon we stood waiting at the small Burlington, N.C., municipal airstrip near Joyce's apartment. A twinengine Cherokee lit down and Bill Roll came down to greet
us. With him were the famous astral projectionist Keith
"Blue" Harary, and the pilot, our friend Frank Auman, a
contractor and patron of paranormal research in North
Carolina.
Bill Roll explained they had had one psychic cancel and invited me to come along to fill the empty seat on the airplane.
Within three hours we were in a van, twisting and turning

vations. Mr. Roll had Joyce relax in meditation on a front

porch seat while Blue went about his business inside. He
briefed her on what was expected.
When Blue was done, Joyce entered alone and spent twenty minutes investigating the house by herself, carrying a clipboard and cassette recorder. When she came out, Mr. Roll
asked Frank Auman and me to walk through quickly and
record our impressions. As controls, our observations would
provide a baseline. Being non-psychics, if we thought a place
looked spooky, the psychics' reactions could be attributed to
purely psychological factors.
I entered through the living room and on my right was a
large tabletop collection of various Oriental vases and statuettes. I roamed the basement, which did seem a bit scary in the
semi-darkness and alone, and the upper floors. In one bedroom, at the foot of a bed, I felt a distinct coldness which was
not the result of any wind draft I could find. Except for that
place, the house was not creepy nor did I see anything that
looked like a ghost.
After we were all through and Mr. Roll had collected our

First Quarter 1987

Pursuit 23

'?~~~~
.J .

i.I: :~,..

~: >: .;.'; ., :\' ; .

..

:Keith "Blue" Harary on porch of house after his walk-through tour.

William Roll (left) awaits the outcome of Joyce's "tour.".

maps and tapes, we gattiered in the kitchen in the rear, where

within minutes a fiftyish man came in and introduced himself
as Colonel Albert Miller, present occupant of the house and
Assistant Quartermaster of the Old Soldiers and Airmen's
Home. He brought in fried chicken and several bottles of
Scotch to reward the psychic investigators.
Turning to Joyce, he asked, "And what do you think of
my haunted house, young lady?"
"Well, Colonel, it's like a reading I did yesterday in
Greensboro, before we even came up here. The ghost is from
a foreign land and wants to go home. When I closed my eyes
I could see it, a little old lady in black clothing, all bent over
and scrawny. It originates from a statuette or a vase you have
among the artifacts on the table in your living room."
The Colonel's eyes opened wide in surprise. Finally he said,
"Let me tell you my side of the story, then." We all followed
as he took Joyce into the living room. At his request she
pointed out the pottery that she felt was the origin of the
ghost. It was a statuette of a little Oriental man with a very
large load of grain on his back, bent over nearly double by the
weight of the load.
"That's where it emanates from," Joyce reiterated. "And
she looks a lot like that figure."
Colonel Miller then told us the following story. When he
was in Viet Nam years before, he had helped protect one
village and when he left the village headman and the headman's wife gave him that statuette in gratitude. It had been
part of funerary pottery, once used to stopper a large vase
which had held the remains of a distant ancestor.
Once the Colonel had returned to the U.S. and unpacked
the artifacts for display,.strange poltergeist phenomena had
erupted about the house.
An active bachelor, the Colonel had more than once been
surprised by doorbells ringing at inopportune times, doors
opening and closing by themselves, lights flickering on and
off. "And the ghost I saw," he told us all, "was that of a
small Oriental man in black clothing, peeking around the
doorsills. "
Joyce laughed. "Then what I envisioned as a tiny old lady
in dark clothes was actually a tiny old man!" She realized
Pursuit 24

that in her upbringing in the American South, a person so

small and scrawny would at first be thought to be a female,
not a male.
After she had absorbed the Colonel's story, Joyce remarked, "We could have saved ourselves the trip, honey. My
reading yesterday covered just about the whole thing!"
I asked Colonel Miller what he planned to do, since Joyce
had said the ghost wanted to return to Viet Nam. "No, I'm
going to keep it," he said. "Now that I have independent
verification of what it is, I'm not worried about it harming
me, so I think I'D let it stay."
A year later, when I was writing a shorter version of this
report for Beyond Reality Magazine (see the May-June 1978
issue) I called Colonel Miller again and asked what had happened since our visit. "I've still got the ghost and it's still acting up," he said. "Why don't you drop by the next time
you're in the area ~nd see it for yourself?"
During the on-site investigation I had asked several of the
parapsychologists if they had thought of instrumenting the
house to determine if the apparition could be responsible for
temperature differentials, as is often reported in hauntings.
They replied that such a project would require thousands of
thermistors and would be impractical. I responded that there
existed a video instrumentation camera capable of translating
infrared emissions - heat radiation - into visible colors, the
colors representing different temperatures. They had not
heard of such a device but were interested. Because there had
been such repeatable phenomena at the site, I contacted a
representative of a national tabloid newspaper and requested
that the publication rent the device, called a Thermovision
camera, to video-record the temperature fields around the
Vietnamese statuette, in order to photograph the ghost. There
was no response.
In a short correspondence to the Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research in 1977, I proposed that such
an instrument (marketed by AGA Vision, a New Jersey-based
company under the name Therrnovision) be utilized to record
the temperature fields that are reported to occur in and
around haunting, poltergeist, and experimental PK (psychokinesis) phenomena. By generating images in various colors
First Quarter 1987.

that correspond to infrared heat output, I believed the camera

could photograph a ghost and determine its temperature,
shape, and materialization characteristics. The expense of the
camera at the time (rental of over $3000.00 per month) precluded me from financing the work myself.
Years later, when I finally had access to an IR instrumentation camera, I tried to locate Colonel Miller again, but he had
moved from the Old Soldiers' and Airmen's Home and I was
unable to locate him.
As a final postscript to the investigation, Bill Roll of the
Psychical Research Foundation finally published a short note
about the research and mentioned that "only one psychic
determined an origin for the phenomena that was consistent

Related SITUation
Ghost Huater Checks Oat
BenaarclsvUle Ubrary
Phyllis Parker is quite a favorite at the Bernardsville Public Library. She has been issued
a library card, although she has never been
known to use it. Several years ago, she was responsible for the library's raising several
thousand dollars.
And more to the point: Phyllis Parker is a
great conversation piece. Not that libraries
welcome conversation all that much, but
Phyllis is an exception.
Phyllis is the library's resident ghost.
Though she didn't show up, she was the star
of the library's fund-rasing Ghost Ball several
years ago. People occasionally wander in and
inquire about Phyllis. Library director Geri
Burden figures that any entity that entices
people away from their TV sets and into
libraries is useful. Despite the fact that in her
15 years a director she has never personally
encountered Phyllis, she'll not discourage the
ghost from making her presence felt.
So Burden was happy to play hostess to
Norm Gauthier, a 58-year-old ghost hunter
from Manchester, N.H. Gauthier had heard
about Phyllis - word gets around the psychic
world - and wanted to spend the night in the
library with his tape recorder just in case
Phyllis talked.
Gauthier says he has recorded other ghosts
in other houses. They have made such statements, according to Gauthier, as, "I'm
here," "Who's the person?" "He should
have got something" and "Are you sleepy?"
Gauthier has compiled several of these voices,
mixed with commentary in his own voice, on
a 3D-minute tape he has entitled, "Listen, the
Dead Are Speaking." He sells this for $9.95.
Despite his spiritual business enterprise,
Gauthier regards ghost chasing as simply a
hobby, kind of like collecting stamps or coins.
He earns his living, he says, with his one-man
advertising and public relations firm in Manchester. Previously, he worked as a private
detective, a bill collector and a radio ialk show
host. He is founder and director of something
called the Society for Psychic Research of
New Hampshire.
It is now 11 p.m., two hours after the
library has officially closed for the night.
Gauthier is setting up his tape recorder in the
First Quarter

1987

with the known facts." Joyce was somewhat satisfied that she
had outperformed all the well known "name" psychics in her
one competitive test.
She still feels sorry that the Colonel did not send his
statuette back to Vietnam to let the ghost rest in peace!
REFERENCES:
I. "Yes, The House Is Haunted!", Arlan Andrews, Beyond Reality.
Magazine, May/June 1978
2. "The Use of Instrumentation to Detect Temperature Fields in
Haunting, Poltergeist and Experimental PK Investigations," ArIan Andrews, Journal of the American Society for Psychic Research, July, 1977.

Reading Room, which fronts on Route 202.

This is a pleasant room, light and white, filled
with magazines and books and a grandfather
clock. It is also one of the "original" rooms
of the structure.
"Whole houses are never haunted," says
Gauthier. "Only areas where the ghost made
a habit of being during his life. A ghost won't
roam an entire house."
Well, this is the place for Phyllis. During
the Revolutionary War, this portion of the
building was a small pub, the Vealtown
Tavern. Phyllis was the daughter of the
owner. As a teenager, she had a little fling
with a Dr. Byram, a tavern tenant. Byram was
a British spy, who stole plans belonging to
another guest, Gen. Anthony Wayne, known
as Mad Anthony.
Byram was ultimately captured and hanged; his body was brought back to the tavern in
a box. Phyllis opened the box and screamed
for quite some time.
The historians don't know what became of
Phyllis, but the tavern went out of business
and was converted to a private home. No
ghost was recorded until 1877, whena woman
living in the house reportedly heard Phyllis
opening and closing a box and screaming.
This incident was not written down for 25
years, when, in 1902, the building was converted to a library. Accounts of the conversion spoke about Phyllis.
Phyllis subsided until about 10 years ago. A
high school library page thought she saw Geri
Burden in the closed building just before it
was to be opened. When Burden pulled into
the parking lot, the girl got frightened; how
could the director be inside and outside at
almost the same time? The girl's mother told
Mrs. Burden she was convinced her daughter
. had ESP. The girl later married a minister and
moved to England, where she still sees an occasional ghost, says her mother, who still lives
in Bernardsville.
Once a psychic brought a class to the
library. She felt "vibrations." It didn't phase
her when she was told she was in a portion of
the building which didn't exist until more than
100 years after Phyllis had her breakdown.
Six people are in the library late this night:
Gauthier, four reporters and Martha Hamill;
Geri Burden has gone home. Hamill has been
a library employee for 10 years, and about
five years ago, while working on a report in

the library's kitchen - a space added about

10 years ago - heard voices, the kind of muttering one might hear in a Revolutionary War
tavern.
Gauthier explains his procedure. He will
record five minutes at a time. Everyone must
be very quiet when Phyllis is given an on-theair invitation. He will then rewind the tape
and listen through earphones.
". don't care about squeaking noises that could be the heat," he says. "I'm looking
for voices or footsteps." He adds that sounds
made by ghosts often cannot be heard by
humans; they are implanted on the tape not
electronically through the microphone, but
"magnetically. "
The first five-minute sessions produces
nothing. An occasional car passing. The tape
machine itself squeaking. But about halfway
through the second, the replay heats up. The
noise is only a few seconds, and Gauthier
passes the earphones around. I think it sounds
-like a little shuffling. Others believe it more
resembles bumping into furniture, a rattling
of a door or window or a "buzzing or cracking noise."
"It could be a door opening and closing,"
declares an excited Gauthier. "It is a definite
sound that none of us has heard, so it must
have come from another dimension." This
kind of reasoning will not win the Nobel
science award, but Gauthier does concede he
cannot be certain it's Phyllis herself.
Over the hours, several more tapes revolve.
Nothing much. The main sound on number
four is when I inadvertently cough. We pass
the earphones around to listen to me cough. It
sounds like a cough.
It is now 2 a.m. We adjourn to the kitchen
for brownies (baked by Martha Hamill's husband), cheese, crackers and soda. Gauthier
isn't sleepy at all; he is full of ghosty chatter.
"If you renovate a house that's haunted,
the ghost becomes more active," he says.
But I'm becoming less active. Phyllis could
bellow in my ear, and I could see myself faIling asleep. I leave Gauthier to his very-openmike show, and say goodnight. I wonder idly
what book Phyllis will check out when she
finally gets around to using her library card.
Probably something by Stephen King.
SOlJRCE: Mark Finston in The Sunday
Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ 211/87
CREDO': Martin Wiegler
Pursuit 25

SITUation Update
The following is an update on a SITUation
that was printed in PURSUIT Volume /9, #4.

Bigfoot H.... Wodb $400,000

C..... Pou....,..
Four strands of hair now gaining fame
throughout the nation and being referred to
as the Cacapon Bridge hairs or the West
Virginia hairs have become a center of attention in the Bigfoot controversy.
Moreover, current possessors of the hair
alleged to have come from a Bigfoot have
placed a minimum price tag of $400,000 on
the specimens;
A minimum acceptable bid of $50,000 for
one-half of any of the four strands of coarse
black hair about one to two inches long was
unexpectedly announced when The Advocate
conveyed to the possessors a request asking
that they be donated to a California museum.
"We know that we have the only Bigfoot
hairs known. They are valuable, and we don't
intend to give them away," said the father of
a father and son hunting team who claim to
have recovered the hairs after an alleged Oct.
2S encounter with two Bigfoot in a mountain
forest near this small, rural community.
The two men; both Maryland residents and
fmancial executives in the Washington, D.C.
area; have steadfastly refused to be publicly
identified, on the grounds that publicity
would harm their reputations and careers.
They say they fIrSt reported their story to The
Advocate because of a sense of "responsibility to warn the public."
Since November, through a series of news
reports and related investigations, The Advocate has attempted to determine whether
their claims are part of a hoax.
Investigations seemed to have reached a
stonewall after the alleged witnesses announced in January that results of an analysis of the
hair "proved it came from a Bigfoot."
Conversely, The Advocate interpreted the
laboratory report has being inconclusive.
Moreover, the witnesses - again claiming
fear of notoriety - reneged a prior agreement
to allow The Advocate to have a second
analysis done.
For many reasons, some understandable,
many persons who become involved in the
Bigfoot controvery decline to be identified by
the press. Such was the case of the wellknown, reputable research center in a
Maryland suberb of Washington that
reportedly did the analysis.
Director of the center, however, did agree
to be interviewed. (See January issue of The
Advocate).
"We carefully studied the hair samples ...
and can only conclude that they came from
some primate species," the director said.
The Advocate: Would you say that the hair
came from some unknown species or some
previously unidentified species?
Director: "No. We cannot state that

Pursuit 26

because it could have come from some

primate species that is not common."
The Advocate: Therefore, you are saying
that you determined the hair was not from a
gorilla, monkey, or a non-rare similar species?
Director: "We do not have samples of hair
from every species of monkey, of which there
are hundreds. We do know that the hair did
not come from a gorilla or from one of the
more common species of monkey. It certainly
did not come from a human or non-primate. "
The Advocate: What's your best guess as to
what the hair came from?
DIrector: "We don't know, and I don't
wish to publicly speculate. We did note thin
the hair had lice and flea eggs on it. This indicates that it probably came from a live animal
or an animal not dead for long. Soil found on
the hair was of a type usually found in a
forest."
During February, Jon Erik Beckjord,
director of the Cryptozoology Museum in
Malibu, Calif., and founder of Project
Bigfoot in Seattle, Wash., contacted The Advocate at various times by telephone and by
letter, after reading the newspaper's reports.
According to Beckjord, he has four different samples of alleged Bigfoot hair; from
Maryland, Washington, Oregon and California; which have been analyzed by reputable
scientists. Analysis findings regarding these
hairs are strikingly similar to those of the
Cacapon Bridge hairs, he said.
"I "believe that comparative analysis will
probably show that the Cacapon Bridge hairs
are of the same unknown type as the four
samples we now have," Beckjord said.
He asked The Advocate to contact the
possessors of the hairs and request that they
donate them to the museum for further
analysis and public display.
When first contacted by The Advocate, the
possessors of the Cacapon Bridge hairs were
only asked if they would donate them to the
museum. They were not told of the existence
of the other samples, and the plan for comparative analysis. At that time, they unexpectedly announced they would sell the hair to
the highest bidder and would accept minimum
bids of $50,000 for each hair or $200,000 for
all four strands.
When recontacted, in an attempt to persuade them to provide the museum with a
sample of the hair, if only on a loan basis, the
alleged witnesses were then told of the other
samples and the possibile findings that a comparative analysis might produce. It was then
that they announced they had decided they
would probably cut the hair to produce eight
samples with a starting bid of $50,000 each.
The Advocate: That's ridiculous. The hair
you have has not been proven to be of any
significance. How can you place any value on
it at this time?
The Father: "We know that it is of great
value."
The Advocate: I can't help wondering
whether this entire situation is not part of a
well-planned hoax. Now, it's beginning to appear as an innovative con scheme.

The Father: "That's the way a reporter

would think. Let me ask you this - if you
had what you knew were the only Bigfoot
hairs known, would you be willing to give
them away?"
The Advocate: If I could conclusively prove
the hairs were genuine - which you have not
been able to do, and I doubt that you ever will
- I might think differently.
The Father: "We know that they are real.
We were there, you weren't. We saw the creatures. We know the hair came from them."
The Advocate: There is no proof that what
you claim is true. You are asking people to
believe extraordinary claims solely on your aCcount, and now you are attempting to make a
fortune from some hairs that might be fake.
The Father: "You read the lab report. You
talked to the director. Now, you say this guy
in California has four other sets of hair that
came from Bigfoot, and that they are the
same as what we have. What does that tell
you?
The Advocate: Nothing. Beckjord is in the
same position as you. He can't conclusively
prove what the hair came from, and he is not
unequivocally claiming his samples came from
a Bigfoot. Reportedly, analyses of his samples
were inconclusive. the same as your claimed
analysis is.
As you previously agreed, will you loan The
Advocate a sample of the hair you have; so
we can have it analyzed by a laboratory or
laboratories of our choice?
The Father: "No. It's too valuable. We
know what it is, and we have proven it. You
can think what you damn well please. I told
you our terms, and they stand. Don't contact
us again. We'D take care of anything that has
to be done. There is no need for further discussion," he angrily said and slammed the
receiver of his telephone down.
SOURCE: The West Virginia Advocate
March,I987
CREDrr: Warren E. Duliere

Related SITUatioD
yett.: A Snow .lob?
Villagers in the Indian Himalayas are reporting new sightings of the yeti, or Abominable Snowman.
A night watchman on a mountainside
sheep farm said he heard the Yeti - a shaggy
manlike beast rumored to inhabit the mountains - clearly calling his name and the names
of other workers on the farm in the night. He
said when he and the workers rushed outside,
they saw a hairy flgure about four feet tall
running away.
A health worker also heard the Yeti calling
out from a mountain, the United News of India news agency reported. The Yeti distinctly
asked for medical treatment.
Some folks want to go look for the possibly
ailing creature.
SOURCE: The Inquirer, Philadelphia. PA
1125/87
CREDrr: H. Hollander

First Quarter 1987

UFO Update:
Clouding The Superpower Nuclear Scene
bv Hanv Lab_oD
On November 28, 1986, the United States violated the
limits of the Salt 2 Strategic Arms Treaty. By introducing into
active service a B-52 bomber modified to carry nuclear-tipped
cruise missiles, the U.S. breached the ceiling of 1,320 nuclear
weapons allowed each superpower. As a result of this action
the Soviets, poised with 818 land-based missiles with multiple
warheads aimed at Western Europe, decided to deploy a new
missile early in 1987. This additional step will be taken in spite
of the fact that a large number of Soviet nuclear submarines
already patrol our oceans armed with missiles aimed at the
United States. This escalation, as well as the impending contention for nuclear parity by the People's Republic of China,
already equipped with ICBMs and submarine-Iaunchable
missiles, brings the world closer to the precipice of nuclear
confrontation.
In their quest for bigger and better bombs and missiles, the
three superpowers today dot their landscapes with governmental and military nuclear facilities necessary to accomplish
their goals. From the United States' Pahute Mesa, Nevada
test site, to the Soviet's island test range at Novaya Zemlya, to
China's Lop Nor nuclear test installation, the proliferation of
these weapons continue to spiral as the rest of the international community watches and waits.
Recently released government reports from each of the Big
Three countries provide documentation that these bureaucracies have taken notice of an unidentified threat to their
nuclear security. It now appears certain that others also watch
and wait.
UFOs, apparent masters of deceit and camouflage, have
recently been observed over sensitive nerve centers and
nuclear test ranges of this triad of superpowers. Using among
other methods, as a mode of operation based on concealment, they have been documented by reliable eyewitnesses as
having been seen generating their own cloud cover. In addi. tion to frrst-person accounts, photographic evidence also exists to validate this method of operation.
While the United States involvement in investigating UFOs
began in earnest in 1948, when it was unable to explain the
"green fire-ball" phenomenon over U.S. military bases,
China's baptism occurred much later. Although sporadic
hauntings of strange aerial phenomena were seen in various
provinces throughout the years, it was an October 23, 1978
overflight of UFOs across eight provinces, including the
restricted airspace of Peking, that caused much concern. On
that date, at approximately 8 p.m. Peking time, astronomer
Chang Chou Shang of Yunan Observatory, sighted an ovalshaped, bright, aerial object resembling a whirlpool galaxy.
With a brilliantly lit core, one-sixth the size of a fun moon, it
emitted continuous rings of white clouds and fog. "The object, inclusive of the fog-like clouds, appeared to be many
times the size of the moon," stated Chang Chou Shang. Once
fully materialized, the phenomenon moved from east to west
and was visible to the astronomer for up to fifteen minutes.
This incident, among others, prompted the Peking government to take action. At the behest of high-ranking members
of the Chinese Academy of Science, an official study of
UFOs was launched in 1980.
First Quarter 1987

fElBl!:I'Jllltl' .do",
1/; a:"'~~~!lfI'lilli!!,!!
..,e~IItIl.,

IlUi:ir-

1IIl'tIl"'fl.i!I!ilil'J!!"'t.""
1It,""ildll&ilnll~(l;JIR"lIT.

"fl;j;"lI!A. iU41lU:
fhU'i!Ifi!T
.Il"EI'J"lrritilllllllll*
-e"'.I:-*II-"lJl!l;.
(fl fIa lis) , -tII",Ol!.Jt
''''II'Js!''l>j)( 18 ~ fE i!

r-

.. '... ._',

U:.
..
8r.tiior..
*1OIi~
UFO ",.,. II . J:. !:!
WiJII;/;
II!!: JII ..
. ." ...
.1Ii.-;e:
II. ft I!il B. 1I.~.1f.
. IIlR. !3:'II!IIII~II'JJ!j~. iEII
w. 'JIll. ,..iUOIUJ ~.*
:till f'.;(.IfI:xIt:fr III "'.r-! ji.
fl. ll_nillu~pq::lfI~
n. JI;:::fI"l'j".UUfJUI-}..C:J
Rill) MI!!. lJjtHIl1!ilti __ '. fUf'RHr. ,H,"lIIfrtn/I'i!"
tJl=+l!!Illl!t'l.ld+tt1.:~. . -.'!JB'.J iII:It. .ii!a. 1.\.-"''''IfI''fj",~~IIIJL J9tk.'eJ 1\,llIl\lf.tJ*.tI!""lt:fl"~UI'O
!il!ii:st ... 1jll4llitt. of. :1J~tf;Ilt'ifJ=Jj~ fl +;i'

,,.;r,". -..
"I".

';ii

-.it.

-t.tU. aa1tEl=-.-.ltiUi: :tIm. ;!C1Il IIHlili.l1lk

1t 'HI'J.-~~R'E :lti:l:=l'ifl. iUIA,'JUU!!t;l:

&. 'l>.c.llfE 'U:I'J:fr+~~ ,.ia2i:R. '''!I'JUFO ~ii!!~n

flo. ,.fi ,"-MR.".nn If.
..
lIIIill:""'~. ;t"fj~il1lJ"l!lle
IIU ...... 11I.,,'UIl.,
:iE:lttir.'iJ.jf.('~l!iltllnrr RM
.1

c.I.'.,

"~:It.nl'l1it.J. n~n,fjttliJ
I'JA~~.

.w~'U4ila.

~
~

-:h.ttlf.

til =+i'i Rft+ '+i~. IR..,l:

2l1!lII1!i:I: UFO. I<IflllIlI!. iIIIi
It UFO I'llllil. "'lIll<lfiilll*tII
III. tlXIIlIlU!'J:2filRW. ~iilJlII

.~;
it
!I

-------------------

Document A

Due to the fact that the Chinese government now took

UFO phenomena to be a serious threat to its security, a
similar incident on July 24, 1981 was carefuny documented.
A 1200 word article distributed by the New China News
Agency to two major mainland newspapers (Document A)
detailed how a disc-shaped UFO was observed on that date,
producing cloud-like spiral formations. Seen in over 12 provinces, a Peking astronomer, Wan Sichao, determined that
the object was of totally unknown origin.
The Soviet Union, perhaps the most secretive of the three
countries about the comings and goings of UFOs over its territories, fmally acknowledged officially in 1967, that unidentified flying objects were of great concern to them. So great
was that concern that in early December of '67, a retired Air
Force general, Porfiry A. Stolyarov, announced on television
that an official commission had been formed to study UFO
reports.
Pursuit 27

IIAIID.I. 'ItLl .....

L---.... .......I _ . . .

1.........

OBSEiriATIOliS- OF A!lOllALOUS I.':KOS?lI::lilC 1'r.l::~;O:':ii:!IA I!l Th.1': USSR.

.
:iTA'l'IS~'!CAL ANALIS.IS
.
RelUilt ... or Proct!salr..;: Pi !"st .5aPO.Pl~ o( ObaeJ"ultlo:1:a.l "Data
L.. N.. CJncI11i.G,. tI.A; Kenkov,.

I.a.

.. ,............ OBSERYATIDIIS OP AirOftALOUS

ATPI03PHERIC PIlEUQIE:1A II THE USSR~
STATISTICAL JaAL!SIS

r. _ .... ". OlncllUa, D.A. ft.nkov. 1.0.

trovat.,a, Sht.rnb.rs State Altronam.
Inat., "alaow En51neerlns .brllcslnsc.,

....................1_ . . . . . ...

II........, . . . .

rotel,;:-pvuk .. ,a
.~ .~Ol~ .... _~

L.o~ann.r

.........

A 001.t

Ia.."... ., ............... c-....

Recl"ool'l CUr. Cauromla 9"'06]

'lrandaUan

Ia. ...~..... ...-._ .........

Aeronaytlca and Space AdmlnlltratlGn, V.lhlnston, D.C. 205116

lat~onal

'.ranslatlon .:t "I:e!)l)'uc!er.:.yCii II:f;'(I::t.t.l'nykl\ at:.,oe.fer:aykt.. 'Avl~:"'I'.,

.

l!SSR, SUU.. Ucheak11 8:1811:,

I,.,&ul'tllt)" ol:l~ahotk.l ~erv"7

\"yborlcl

nabl,IIc1at:el'n,t'.,h dannyk..I<a.=- ussa ;lc~c:c!JY of' Scl:ncer. I:!:st:!.tut.e or

.
SP.Ree itese ..rc..... 1I.~ort I'r ~i3. 1~7~ . pp. 1-7~
.

..............._ .c...

Translatlon Or.abl~Ydenlr. anoaal'nrkh at.osre~'kh

,avlanlr v SlSR. Stat1atlcbelklr analla. RezYl'taC,
obrabotkl p.r.-or v,,"orkl nabl,,,clacel'nykh dann,kh," USSR
Acade.,.orSclenoa. lnatltute or Spaae Relearch. Report Pr 117].
1979.pp. 1-7.
..
.
..
..

...........

A .t.U~tlc.l analrals or lnto ..... Uon In 256 ~por~ . or ob.ervatlona at ano..lo... atDOlpherlc .phenomena (UPO) In the
USSR 1. pre.ented. Certaln statlltlcal reS"l.rlt1e. "r ~hese
pheno~en. ~re broYsbt o .. t~ some characterl.tlci or wblch are
.~ll.r

to tbo obta1ne4 In oCher

It 11 concluded

.eo~trl~

that thar. il at,pe or phenomenon wl~ leable leatl.tlcal

fhefurther development of &ethod. or obtainlng
_re roU.lile deta anl'l the expanslon of the lnit1al lnfoMllat1on
propert~e

tile and 'cI per'.ta";J'.tlc'al .n.1,sl. or'

par..eten are

. ..

cll.~sed.

..

.0..
'

ph.nopaenon

..

'1. DI ......._ .........

...

Unclasslfied-Unllmlted

--- - ------.--.
- -. .-- - ._-- -_ .. .

It. ...... " , ....... 1"

~:A'l'IC:U,,!. i''''~nC:U~t.:TIC!i ,'!.:~~

\iASHItIGTCI:. n~c. 2'c-~:iG

S?A::E." ,\C:1I!aS:;V,TI:""U
j"T.a?,1;.F.~t

:II.

,",III, CI ....... f.1 ..........1

Vr.cla~s

lrl.:d

1980

NASA trIIIIsIatioo of the Soviet report (orillo" size

A team of scientists and specialists was convened to systematically study this phenomenon. The result of that probe
was a 74-page report published by the General Physics and
: Astronomy Section of the Presidium Academy of Sciences
USSR. The 1979 statistical analysis of information in 256
reports of observations of anomalous atmospheric phenomena (UFO) was authored by L.M. Gindilis - Shternberg State
Astronomical Institute, D.A. Men'kov - Moscow Engineering Physics Inst. and I.G. Petrovskaya - Institute of Space

Research.
In February 1980, a translation of the Soviet report was
made by NASA. This unclassified study, according to
NASA's title-page abstract, produced "certain statistical
regularities of these phenomena, some characteristics of
which are similar to those obtained in other countries." One
classification of these phenomena studied was the type of object observed; type in this case referring to the aspects of
. transparency, shape and defmition. Under the term "definition," were included three types of objects:
A, Cloudlike objects with indistinct, blurred edges.
B. Objects with distinctly outlined edges ("body"').
C. Intermediate type objects.
Of the total number of cases contained in the report,
statistics showed that in 68 ofthem, UFOs either were observ: eel emerging from clouds or the shape of the UFO itself, was a
. cloud-like form. .
.
According to reports coming out of the Soviet Union,
China and the United States, some photo documentation of
, "cloud-like" UFOs do exiSt to support this theory of
: clandestine observation. Although none were available to the
author, two photos were obtained from sources other than
Pursuit 28

1......

Unelasait1ed

reduced bere).

. government which illustrate this aspect. Photograph 1 was

taken by M. Lauersen at Viborg, Denmark.on November 17,
1974. Photograph 2 was taken 18 y~s earlier on a clear
August day near Natal, Union of South Africa, by Mrs.
Elisabeth Klarer, a meteorologist.
Due to the fact that the Big Three superpowers keep a tight
lid on not only this type of photo but all other UFO photographs, as well, rele8$C to the public of these photos is rare.
However, a strange and perplexing phenomenon observed
recently by United States weather satellite cameras may
ultimately prove to be the work of these strange visitors.
!\. Cox News Service article in t~e July 22, 1986 Miami
News described in detail the events leading up to this unusual
discovery. Since 1983, analysts from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) working at the
National Weather Service in Anchorage, Alaska, have been
. studying mysterious Cloud formations appearing over Arctic
islands. The clouds, observed over the past four years over
Novaya Zemlya, the Arctic island long used by the Soviet
Union for nuclear weapons tests, vanished as mysteriously as
they appeared. First picked up as infrared images from
NOAA satellites and then computer enhanced, the mystery
clouds caused much consternation. According to the Miami
News article, the Central Intelligence Agency was so intriguied by the phenomenon that it ordered it high-speed surveillance plane to the area to take a look. What the CIA deter.mined has not been published.
Also seen over Bennett Island, a companion island of
Novaya Zemlya north of the Soviet Union, the clouds, appearing to be independently produced, have been detected as
originating in three distinct areas. Once produced, however.
First Quarter 1987

J.

w :teII........ wtW

....t:

N.

~1~}/~~. .~;
-<

..t;

~.,r"'"

.. '

"",

"

\
Novay~

Voh.'ilI"1U Is~

M"r~'2-'i ~l"d

.,' ~ilWl!"'l"",

_~_._ _ _ _. ,:.::-~,:::::::::::,:::::;;,,::.~\.::~ "';';~:L... _

Map iUustrating route taken by Japan AirIbIes CIII'JO jet which encountered UFO near Arctic Circle.

First Quarter 1987

Pursuit 29

they form plumes of gargantuan proportions, some as wide

as six miles.
Officials and scientists at NOAA in Washington, D.C.
have ruled out a multitude of causes usually associated with
unfamiliar cloud development. Michael Matson, a
hydrologist at NOAA, determined that the mystery clouds
were not produced by ice, weather or volcanoes. He stated
"the Novaya Zemlya plumes appear different from other
mysterious clouds that have been sighted in other coastal

. -v.-r

areas."

Soviet nuclear test sites at Novaya Zamlya and Semipalatiask.

Photograph 1 - Photo taken by M. Lauersen, Viborg, Denmark

on November 17, 1974.

While the mysterious happenings over Novaya Zemlya

continue unresolved, a November 17, 1986 incident appears
to lend plausibility to a UFO connection. According to
Newsweek of January 12,1987, while flying a Japan Airlines
cargo jet across the Arctic circle enroute from Reykjavik,
Iceland to Tokyo, a veteran pilot and his three-man crew encountered an enormous UFO. During his flight, one which
took him near the vicinity of both Novaya Zemlya and Bennett Island, the UFO kept pace with the plane. The object,
confirmed on radar by the FAA, was so enormous that, according to Capt. Kenju Terauchi, it dwarfed the jet.
Whether this incident is related to the clouds of unknown
origin looming over the Soviet nuclear test site can only be
determined by more extensive probing. This responsibility lies
solely in the hands of the United States government and that
of the Soviet Union. Even if this continued research comes
about, the chances of us knowing the results of their investigations are slim at best.
I:

Editor's Note: Lt. Col. Thomas E. Bearden (ret.) wrote

several technical articles that appeared in past .issues of
PURSUIT about Soviet weaponry and their use of Tesla's
scalar energy theory to possibly be developing new thermal
energy producing equipment. He also feels these new-type
massive cloud formations over Soviet test areas, and perhaps
elsewhere, are a result of Soviet testing, whereas the cloudprotected UFO phenomenon has been on-going for a much
longer period as Mr. Lebelson discussed above.
Photograph Z - Photo taken by Mn. FJisabeth Kaarer near Natal,
South Africa, August 1956.

Matson went on to say that the Zemlya clouds were seen to

appear and a few hours later disappear, as many as eight
times since 1984. He ruled out volcanic activity and forest
flres as a cause for the Novaya Zemlya clouds since the island
is permanently covered with ice. Andre C. Change, a Washington seismologist, who studies unexplained phenomena for
the federal government, ruled out methane gas as a cause
because "the rock formations of the islands !lre too old to stiD
hold methane."
Pursuit 30

REFERENCFS
1. The New York Times, November 29, 1986.
2. China and The Bomb, 1984.
3. Scientific American, January 1987.
4. The Four Mqjor Mysteries oj Mainland China, Paul Dong, Prentice Hall Publishing Co.
5. The Chinese UFO Studies, Unpublished manuscript, Paul Dong.
6. The New York Times, December 10, 1967.
.
7. Observations oj Anomalous Atmospheric Phenomena In The
USSR, (A Statistical Analysis) USSR Academy of
Sciences, NASA Translation.
8. The Miami News, July 22,1986.
9. The Miami Herald, December 30, 1986.
~
10. The Miami Herald, January I, 1987.
~

First Quarter 1987

Related SITUation

Fohn Clouds
Dear Editor:

Perhaps SITU members are interested in the enclosed photographs of Fohn clouds. It has for long been my suspicion
that we don't understand, in the real sense of the word, all the
processes of cloud formation, e.g. these lenticular or quasicircular Fohn clouds looking like a fleet of ships, or the other
ones, lonely, also lenticular and in spite of heavy wind, standing more or less motionless for a long time. To this kind of
suspicious phenomena may also belong the formation of
wave-like structures, etc. in certain clouds ... Does anyone
associated with SITU study these abominalia?
Sincerely,
H. Friedrich

First Quarter 1987

While Dr. Horst Friedrich of West Germany is-not making

the same inference as Mr. Lebelson in the preceding article,
the relationship between UFO-shaped clouds and UFO-made
clouds is worth considering.
These types of lenticular-shaped clouds have been observed
since the phenomenon of UFOs received international attention beginning in the mid 1940s.
However, I might note, if we can rationalize our own intelligence with one of a possibly extraterrestrial origin of
unknown capacity, it would (combining the theme of these
two items) seem ridiculous for a UFO to core a cloud of nearly identical shape, white against a blue background and many
times larger in order to conceal itself as some readers' might
conclude.
Editor

Pursuit 31

Sanken Cities and Lost Lands

of the Baltic
by JOD Douglas Singer, M.A.
19&5 Jon Douglas Singer

The Baltic Sea is yet another region with an unusually large

number of sunken city legends. In fact, after the Celts, the
Baltic nations have the second largest number of such tales in
all of Europe. Whereas there is little archaeological evidence
for sunken Celtic cities, there does appear to be evidence for
submerged metropoli which had been built by various Baltic
ethnic groups. One reason for the plethora of such tales may
be the fact that one of the major ethnic groups of the area,
the Slavs, had a large number of cities, fortified towns and
fortresses which have been destroyed by wars or natural
disasters throughout the Dark and Middle Ages. Horrendous
floods or storm tides struck many coastal areas of the Baltic
during the Middle Ages particularly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These deluges devastated towns which were
never rebuilt, and thus legends about them arose. The
number of such stories may be due to the fact that the Slavs
alone had as many as 2,000 forts of great size. Most of those
were on dry land but the ruins of a few have been found
beneath the frigid waves of the Baltic.
The Baltic Sea is in a state of flux. In the Ice Age its shape
changed every few thousand years as the mighty glaciers advanced or retreated. Melting of the glacial ice and the floods
which resulted caused risesin sea levels. As coast areas were
flooded the settlements of early man were submerged, thus a
look at the geological history of the Baltic is in order if we are
to understand the existence of its sunken city legends.
The Geological History of the Baltic
There are two excellent books on the ancient appearance of
the Baltic Sea. 1224 In 12,000 B.C., the Baltic did not exist. It
was covered by vast sheets of glacial ice. There was a narrow
gulf-like arm of the Atlantic Ocean surrounding what is now
northern Denmark. The Danish islands were joined to the
Danish Jutland Peninsula and much of the North Sea was dry
land. The ice-covered Scandinavian landmass is called Fennoscandia by modern geologists after a combination of the
names Finland and Scandinavia. No native name is known as
no legends or inscriptions have come down from that time
with the ancient placenames. At that time primitive
"cavemen" lived in Scandinavia.
Archaeologists led by Danish expert Soren Andersen found
stone artifacts dating back 45,000 years ago.17 It was suggested that people could hilVe lived in East Jutland as early as
60,000 to 100,000 years ago. They were hunters and
fishermen, a fact implied by the discovery of artifacts or food
remains. Prior to Andersen's expedition, it was thought that
people had lived in Denmark only as early as 15,000 years
ago, contradicting Scott who thought that the oldest primitive
settlements in Scandinavia (Sweden, at least) dated to about
7,000-5,000 B.C.20 We will not discuss the oldest Stone Age
tribes since we are looking for submerged settlements and I
have not found any reports of sunken Ice-Age sites.
In 8,000 B.C. the glaciers were melting and the retreating
iceflows left a great landlocked inland sea or huge lake
which geologists calls the Baltic Ice Lake. Most of Scandinavia was still covered by ice but the Baltic now began to form.
Part of it passed Denmark via the Kattegat and tire Sound.
The Danish islands were still united to the Jutland Penin-

Pursuit 32

.... Glacier 7000 BC

_Glacier 6000 BC

sula and the North Seas was still dry land. The coasts of what
are now northern East Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia
and Livonia were different and offshore islands were connected by solid shorelines which extended many miles north
of the modern coasts.
A thousand years later there were more changes on a time
scale which, for geologists, is so short that it could be called
an almost catastrophic event. The ice continued to retreat
although vast fields of glaciers still stubbornly clung to the
heartlands of central Sweden and eastern Norway. Sweden
had not yet been fully formed while Norway was scarcely
recognizeable. Finland had not yet taken shape but was mostly submerged. It is curious that while much of the western
Baltic land area was sinking, the eastern portion was rising!
Modern geologists named the Baltic of 7,000 B.C. the Yoldia
Sea. The Yoldia Sea was connected to the North Sea and
Atlantic Ocean by means of the Niirke Sound.
After another millenium and more cataclysmic changes
altered the shape of the Baltic, most of the glaciers had
melted and the Baltic was now land-locked. Geologists call it
the Ancylus Lake. I should note that even as seacoasts changed, so did the climate, the flora and the fauna. Periods of
cold or warmth gave rise to new conditions which invited or
repelled different types of animals, trees and edible plants.
The details again are relatively unimportant as they have little
to do with sunken cities but readers should be aware that the
environment was still in a state of flux. The type of available
foodplants and game determined the nature of the culture of
primitive tribes and whether they remained hunters or
developed more advanced settled societies which became true
civilizations.

First Quarter 1987

,I

\..,

,...

Norway

,01

,,

Sweden

Finland

Gulf of Bathnia

Baltic Sea

_..
;.

".

,"-

E. Gennany

During the era of the Ancylus Lake (or Sea, as Franklin

Scott termed it) birch trees, oaks, pines, lindens, alders,
aspens, hazels, maples, and elms spread to Scandinavia and
their branches replaced the tundra vegetation of the Ice Age.
Beavers, wildcats, lynx, red fox, badgers, polecats, red and
roe deer as well as bears roamed the ancient woods and provided game for the primitive tribes then gradually moVing into the land. There were larger animals as well, such as urox
and elk. Crude settlements were founded at this time and
must have consisted of wooden or bark huts of some sort.
Scott reported that at about 5,000 B.C. a catacylsm of
gigantic proportions submerged even more land and the
waters of the Ancylus Sea or Lake rushed out into the Atlantic Ocean, drowning the landbridge connecting Denmark to
Norway and Sweden. The catastrophic deluge formed the
Oresund between Denmark and Sweden, the Great Belt, the
Little Belt and the Danish Islands. The floods were caused by
water from remaining glaciers which were still melting.
In the next era, the Baltic was called the Litorina Sea, again
a modern name invented by scientists; Around 4,000 B.C.
portions of Uppland in Sweden were still submerged and
Finland had not yet assumed its modern shape. Parts of land
now beneath the North Sea were still above the waves and
those now-vanished regions extended westward from the occidental shores of the Jutland Peninsula. Some of the
First Quarter 1987

.... ,
\

"
w. Gennany',

Poland

USSR

primitive tribes of Denmark practiced cannibalism and it is

tempting to suggest that legends of man-eating humanoid
trolls or goblins might be based on this fact. After the era of
the Ancylus Lake or the Ancylus Sea ended, the new period
'of the Baltic began. Geologists dub the Baltic of around 4,000
B.C. the Litorina Sea. Some portions of Denmark which are
now drowned beneath the Baltic and the North Sea were still
above the waves. P. V. Glob wrote that at the end of the
Fourth Millenium there were more submersions and some settlements in what is now Denmark were plunged under the
waters. Glob noted that one sunken settlement was actually
found in Kolding Fjord at the town of Kolding on the east
coast of the Jutland Peninsula, but he gave no details about

the settlement's architecture. 7

A few tantalizingly terse notes on other sunken towns of
the Stone Age era Baltic were reported on by Alexander Kondratov. He said that a 7,OOO-year-old settlement was found
underwater in a strait between Sweden and Denmark but he
did not give the exact location. II He added that other Stone
Age villages were found beneath the waters of the Danish and
South Baltic coasts but again gave no details as to the locations and ages of the ruins. One example of a Stone Age settlement found beneath the Baltic at the harbor of what is now
Rostock, now in East Germany, was found by accident during a dredging operation. It consisted of a burial vault and
houses but again no other details are available.
Pursuit 33

Kevin Crossley-Holland gave a detailed account of Aegir,

Viking god of the sea, and Ran, wife of Aegir. 2 These
mythical deities had an undersea hall or palace located at
Hlesey Island, now spelled Uso or Laesji', off the northeastern tip of the Danish mainland. It is curious that this is
approximately the location of the sunken settlement mentioned by Kondratov. However, the remote ancestors of the Vikings did not arrive in Scandinavia until about 2,000 B.C. or
later so it is probable that the myth of Aegir and Ran is not
derived from a tradition preserved from thousands of years
ago. But it is not implausible to suggest that the ancestors ~f
the Vikings could have heard the tale of submerged buildings
from the aboriginal people and translated the myth into their
own language. As further evidence for such a theory, we have
a report that Stone Age settlements were found off many
areas of the Danish coast. 3 No exact locations of those
sunken towns were given and no methodical archaeological
excavations had been conducted at their ruin sites. The ruins
were found in depths of 20 to 30 meters. The report noted
that Neolithic cemetaries and settlements were found underwater in southern Denmark and off the coasts of northern
Germany.
.
The Baltic seems to have become more stable since about
2,000 B.C. and finally achieved its pre*nt form at about that
time. There were some localized minor fluctuations of sea
level which gave rise to legends about lost lands. Since the
changes occurred in 'more recent times, writers preserved
some accounts of them.
One of the best-mown deluges in the early history of the
Baltic is the Cymbrian or Cimbrian Flood. It is named after
the old name of the Jutland Peninsula, the Cimbrian Promontory. The warring tribes called Cimbri and Teutones
migrated south and gathered other folk to their forces by conquest or alliance. The federated tribes then attacked Rome
but were ultimately defeated in 101 B.C. by the Roman
legions. Herbert Schutz noted that these nations actually had
tales about floods which drove them from their own country
to new regions. 23 It is too bad that no native sagas of those
deluges are preserved, only Roman summaries.
A few brief notes on the Cymbrian flood, state that the
great tempest took place in two stages and was actl,u;illy a
series of marine transgressions. 13 The first phase to<* phlce \n
350-340 B.C. while the second series of storms took place in
aboui 120-114 B.C. Wide ar~as of Jutland and northwestern
Germany were affected but, tHat's allwe know.
;
. Great floods conoo1ied to swallow land;iIl' medieval times:
The island of Rugen, off the coast of East Germany, lost half
of its territory to the waves during a deluge of 1044 A.D. That
isle suffered again in an even greater disaster which struck in
the night of All Saints' pay in 1304 A.D. At that time, according to Hermann and Georg Schreiber, a portion of land on
RUgen which was called the Ruden was actually separated
from the island. 22 Also, during the same flood, areas of land
at the mouth of the Oder River and the northwestern end of
the island of Usedom at the mouth ,of the Peene River were
submerged. A few historians as well as students of folklore
have noted that Usedom Island is the traditional location of
the lost city of Vineta. Vineta could be called the Atlantis of
the Baltic because it is one of the best-known sunken cities of
that sea. It is possible that Vineta existed and that It sank during one of the early medieval floods. (I will discuss Vineta in
another article). The Baltic lost much land to the waves and a
few primitive sunken settlements have been found by archaeologists but so far, only a couple of sunken cities have
been located.
Pursuit 34

While there were many geological changes after the glaeier (that
covered the entire map area shown here) melted, only those areas on
the present coast HDes that are discussed in the tellt are indicated
(darkened) as now under water.

When the shape of the Baltic Sea had stabilized and reached its modern boundaries that body of water attained a length
of about 960 miles and a width of abOut 400 miles. It seems
that the oldest known Written accourits of the Baltic were fli'st
penned by Greek and Roman authors.
The Baltic was not always known by its present-day name.
In ancient Greek and Roman times it was called the
Amalcium Sea. This is a Latin form of a Greek ~ word,
malkios. which meant freezing. according to Fridtjof.
N8nsen.'~ The Romans also called it the SuebiciumMare.or
Suebian!Sea after the.Germanic tribe of the Suebi. Sometimes
it was called the Sarmatian Ocean in the mistaken belief that
the pagan nomadic Iranian-speaking tribe of Sarmatians had
territory extending up to the Baltic; in actuality Sarmatia extended across southern Russia. Alternatively, the Baltic was
known as the Germanic Ocean. In the Dark Ages it was
known as the Morimarusa or Dead Sea because of its lifeless
appearance when it was frozen over during the horrid nor~
thern winters. That name may be of Celtic or very old Germanic origin: scholars are not certain.
In Anglo-Saxon times the famous King Alfred the Great of
England (849-901 A.D.) knew of the Baltic as the East Sea or
Ost-s82 as it was called by his folk. That name is almost identical "to the modern Scandinavian and German name for the
'Baltic. The Vikings also called the Baltic the' East Sea,
Austrimarr. The Byzantine Greeks and medieval Russians
called the Baltic the Varangian Sea after the Swedish tribe or
society of Vikings called Varangians, as George Vernadsky
reported in Ancient Russia. Even far-traveling Arabs knew of
the Baltic as Bahr Warank, Nansen noted.
First Quarter 1987

Sweden

Denmark

Baltic Sea

West Gennany

The name Baltic, Sea was popularized in the eleventh century by the German scholar, Adam of Bremen. In his book,
Description oj the Islands of the North (c" :1070; A.D.) he
wrote that the name Baltic was derived from the medieVal
Latin word baltei, which meant belt.
.
Legends and Evidence
. P.rofessor .H.H. Johnson wrote tha~ the region of Posnania
in northwest Poland has a large number of tales .about sunk.en
cities, :drowned towns'and submerged castles.or villagesStie
did not discuss the. reasons for the large number: of ,rq:o~s
and did not present much evidence for the reality of those inundated metropoli. In fact, he appeared to be highly skeptical
of most of those tales.
One nameless sunken city is in Lake Marcinkowo. Allegedly, its people did not give food to Christ who came disguised
as a beggar so they were punished by an old-fashioned, Noahstyle deluge. A second Posnanian drowned town is located at
Zakrzewo. It, too, is anonymous (once again, as is the case
with the French and Celtic lost cities, few of the bames of
these Baltic vanished towns are preserved). It appears that a
holy man reading a Bible called a curse upon his town when
he was interrupted by the visit of a boy who bothered him.
That.sounds like an. extremely. harsh punishmentJor interrupted reading . .A third' nameless sunken town is Posnania
was doomed when nobleman killed his extravagant wife.
His castle and the adjoining town sank into a lake at
Swierkowice. Yet another Posnanian sunken town is at
Ritschenwald but, again, Johnson gave neither its name nor
details of its legend.
'

First Quarter 1987

East Gennany

,,

Poland

These sunken Polish towns or cities may have existed. Once

we dismiss the fabulous from the tales it is possible to suggest
that great storms could have submerged the wooden buildings
of Dark Age and early medieval metropoli, Marine' archaeologists have, however, actually found submerged
,bqildings and part of a fortress in 'the harbor of the great
,seaport of Gdansk!
; S~epien Wieslaw reported on t~e discovery of medieval pottery and ruined wooden buildings including portions of a
citadelwhichr dated from the. beginning of Polish history. 2'
Sin~ 1977 sporadic discoveries of potsherds and constructions arranged in regular rows were found in Puck Harbor
near Gdansk, which is on the western side of the Gulf of Danzig. The style of the artifacts and structures was similar to
known artifacts and ruins found on dry land and which had
been dated to the age of medieval Gdansk. The constructions
proved to be from timber ramparts and the ceramic material
dated to the tenth through the thirteenth centuries A.D.
The Museum of Puck Region and Centre of Studies and
Documentation of Monuments in Lodz organized regular archaeological expeditions and excavations of the site after
1979. Wieslaw w~ put in charge of the excavations and his
crew brought up oak beams, potsherds and animal bonC$,
among other remains, from the watery depths. The relics
were dated by the carbon-14 method (a chemical test which
determines the age of organic materials) to about 980 A.D.,
the very beginning of the fIrSt Polish kingdom. The site was
large, about 12 hectares wide and it was 100 meters from the
shore. The ruins were found at a depth of about I.S to 3
Pursuit 35

meters. The northeast end of a rampart, composed of paving

stones, was found. Potsherds of pagan Poland were located
and dated from about the seventh up to the thirteenth centuries. Granite quem stones were also discovered. WieStaw
characterized this sunken settlement as a large one. '
A number of similar folktales are preserved in the lore of
three regions now dominated by Russia; i.e. Livonia,
Courland and Estonia. Courland is to the southwest of Latvia
extending roughly from Memel (now called Klaipeda) north
to Riga Bay's west coast. Professor H.H. Johnson asserted
that there was a sunken city or town at Gross Eckau. It is told
it rises every 300 years and if somebody guesses its name it
will remain above the waves. So far, nobody had learned the
metropolis' name. Johnson did not describe the city and did,
not say why it sank. It is fascinatng to learn that there is even
a Courland "spell" to ressurect sunken cities. *
Moving to the northwest, we arrive at the land of Livonia.
There, the city of Maalin has a rather complicated story
about a drowned town. One day, in medieval times or even
earlier, the peaceful folk of a prosperous, city were taken
unawares as treacherous invaders sacked thm city. The invaders had disguised themselves as merchants, thereby gainjng easy access to the place. Only the prince of Maalin escaped
and he prayed to God for revenge, which was granted. The city
was plunged into the watery depths. The present city of
Maalin was later built near the sunken ruins of the old city.'
, At some time in the Dark or early Middle Ages, a ghostly
woman prophecied that Old Riga would sink. It did a century
later. New Riga was built near the site but there is no data on
sunken ruins in the area.
Estonia has at least one sunken city legend. According to
H.H. Johnson, the tale took place at Eheweraggi. A town
called Wesenberg was punished for its inhabitants' !lins by
submersion. Many years ago a woman claimed that she saw
houses under the water where drowned Wesenberg had once
stood. That assertion is not too incredible as ruins of actual
sunken cities have been seen in the Gulf of Corinth in Greece,
for example, at the sites of the classical Greek cities of Helice
and Boura. However, the story is less believable when we read
that the witness heard the neighing of horses from the underwater town. That detail might dissuade some consc;rvative
researchers from accepting the possibility that the story is based on fact but, if we dismiss it as an embellishment added by
imaginative folktale tellers, ~hen the legend remains credible.
The woman ran to tell her friends about the, wondrous's~t.
Alas, when the lady returned with her neighbors, the
submerged buildings were gone and only water was visible.
I did not find any sunken city legends near Finland proper
but perhaps the tale of Wesenberg could be considered part of
Finnish folklore if we include Estonia in a region of "Greater
Finland." However; John Crawford mentioned Ahto, the
pagan Finnish water god. I Ahto's dwelling was called Ahtola,
which sounds distantly like Atlantis, but that is only speculation. It was Ivar Paulson who located the pagan Finnish
kingdoms of the dead (Tuonela, Manala and Hiiela) beyond
forests and oceans in the north and west: 19 If these lands were
not in Norway or Sweden perhaps they were the vanished
sunken lands which once existed above the B!Iltic waves.
-Legend says, recite Psalm LXXXVII three times to praise the Holy City of Jerusilem.
but I do not think that this speD has worked, at least, in HYing memory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Crawford, John, The Kalevala, New York, John B. Alden,
Publisher, 1888; Note: This epic is actually a modem compila-

Pursuit 36

tion of tales from one part of Finland but the elements and
many of the quasi-mythical plaamames in it data back to antiquity.
2. Crossley-HoOand, Kevin, The Norse Myths, New York, Pantheon Books, 1980. Glowing gold lit up the undersea hall of
Aegir and Ran.
3. 'Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole, "Under the Icy Seas of Northern
Europe," UNESCO Courier, May, 1972.
4. Davidson, H.R. Ellis, The Viking Road to Byzantium, London,
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd, 1976.
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Baltic Sea," Chicago, William BenSOD and Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1959.
6. Georg, Eugen, ,The Adventure '0/ Mankind, 'New York, E.P.
Dutton & Co. Inc., 1931.
7. Glob.. P.V. Denmark, Ithaca, New York, Comell University
, Press, 1971.
8. Johnson, H.H., 'Professor, ~'Submerged Cities;" Celtic Review,
Vol. III, 1907.
:
9. Jones, Gwynn, A History 0/ the Vikin&S, New York, Oxford
, University Press, 1968. He wrote that the Danes called the Baltic
the estersaIt in the Viking Age.
10. Kendrick, T.D. A History o/the,Vikin&s, New York, ~es &
Noble, Inc. 1968.
,
'
11. Kondratov, A. The Riddles o/Three Oceans, MoScow, ProgieSs
Publishers, 1974. "
,
'
12. Kurten, Bjam, The Ice Age, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons.

1972.
'
13. Liritzis, Y.; Miserlis, E.; and RigopoUIos, R., '''Aerial
Photography of some Greek Coastal, Regions and its ArchaeologicaJ. Implications, International Journal 0/Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration, August, 1983; 'pp.
191-202. .

14. Nansen, F., In Northern Mists, New York, AMS Edition,

reprint edition, .1969.
,
'
15. ,Nash, E. Gee, The /fanso, New York, Dodd, Mead and Company,I929. "
,
16. The New Atlanteon JOUI7IQI, Summer, 1982, p. 51, "Lost
Cities."
,
17. The NeW' York Times, "Jutland Find Puts
of Man
Back 45,000 Years," Sunday;June 4, 1972.
'
18; The New York Times, ''Tremor Hits 'South Poland," This article tells about damage to buildings and injuries to a'few people
during an e8rthquake in Poland. Thus, ~hquakes could have
damaged cities in ~edieval times or started tires which swept
across and ruined ~li. Or tremors could have started tidal
waves. Although' mOst quakes iii northern 'Europe today ale
rather weak and rare, this 'article shaws that they d9 OCCur, S,UD~
day, June 6, 1982, p. 11.
19. r Pa~son', :Ivar, 'The Old Estonian Folk Religion, B~,
IildiankJ Indiana Uriiversity Preis, '1971:! ':
' ,!
20.: Peisker, J.",Ph.D.; "The Expansion of'the Slavs~", Ch., XIV in
The Cambridge Medieval History, 'ed. by H. Gwatm and J.
Whitney, Cambridge, England, At. the University Press, 1967.
21. Rackl, Hans-Wolf, Diving Into the Post, New York, Charles
Scribner'S Sons, 1968.
'
.
22. Schrieber, Georg and Schreiber, Herman, Vanished Cities,
New York, Alfred A. Knopf" 1951.
23. Schutz, Herbert, The Prehistory 0/ Germanic Europe, New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1983.
24. Scott, Franklin, Sweden: The Nation's History, Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1977.
25. Wieslaw, Stepien, "Archaeological Excavations in Puck Harbour, Gdansk District, Poland," International Joul7llll 0/
Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration, November,
'1984.
, '
26. Wilson, David, ed., The Northern World, New York, Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1980.
27. Zimmern, Helen, The Hanso Towns, New York, ,G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1889.

Presence

,~
First Quarter 1987

Unknown Passageways
by LaJa P.... GlacUce
A trip to Ecuador is always an attraction, not only for its present-day life style, but for its past. Nevertheless, few
know little of the existence of traces of an era lost in time - of elements of that era created by intelligent beings that
we no longer reproduce today - nor of strange materials employed in some of the objects and constructions of that
period. Such is the case of the Tunnels of Los Tayos in the province of Morona-Santiago.
A step-by-step expedition into the interior of the tunnels is difficult and would require much time. To explore all of
them is impossible here. When one speaks of hundreds of entrances, few are known and fewer still are studied,
In 1965, Juan Moricz, Hungarian by birth and now an Argentirre citizen, rediscovered these subterranean passages.
His rediscovery was first made public in 1969, years qj'ter the exploration of.many kilometers of tunnels in Ecuador
and Peru.
In 1972, Erich von Diiniken met Moricz and visited some of the tunnels. The result is in his book The Gold of the
Gods.

An English-Ecuadorian expedition, whose honorary advisor was the astronaut Neil Armstrong, visited Los Tayos in
1976. He said, ..... Signs of human life underground were
found in what could be a major global sci~tific and archaeological event," Quito, July 21, 1976 (Latin).
.. To this day, Moricz and von Diiniken are accused of fraud.
We go now to take a closer "look" at these signs to see if this
is, in fact, the term to adequately classify that which exists
below.
To better appreciate the event, the guides made us travel
the last 40 kilometers on foot. Thus, we were soaked by the
trail and in sweat. The tropical elements exhausted us. We arrived at a hill in which many accesses to the depths of the
Earth are found.
Slyly hidden among the vegetation is an entrance we explored. It is wider than a railroad station. We began to route
a tunnel that is approximately 40 meters wide. and whose
smooth ceiling showed no visible construction joints.
The entrance is near the base of that hill and after at least
the fIrSt 200 meters it follows a continuous angle of descent
directing itself to the center of the JiiaSs.~ The heigtit of this
tunnel is of some 2.30 meters, and'the floor is found,
although covered in part by the droppings of birds and bats
that inhabit it, ~o be of a thickness of about 80 centimete~~.
The de8rlng on the floor .was made in careful fll$hion.
Among the droppings, there still appears metallic and r stone
figures. The part already cleaned, initiates us into its marvel.
The floor is of tooled stone. Thousands upon thousands of
animals, some extinct for millions of years, seem to live on
the floor and walls of Los Tayos.
We illuminated our way with carbide lamps. Outside air is
conducted to the exterior by an unending duct system, but
there was talk of a possible power failure of the lamps. For
that reason, even flash photography was prohibited. .
There were no traces of soot in these caverns. It is said that
they were able to illuminate the ~y by means of gold mirrors
that reflected solar light or with a system of concentrating
light by means of emeralds. This last solution reminds us of
the principle of the laser.
The walls are covered with perfectly tooled stones. The awe
caused by the buildings of Machu Picchu diminishes in the
light of this work. The stone is highly polished and of straight
edges. The borders have not been rounded off. The joints
were hardly visible to us. Later, they explained to us the conFirst Quarter 1987

structjon system of the walls, but as suggested by observing

some tooled blocks found on the floor, there was no cave-in
since the surrounding walls are complete and are in perfect
shape. Were the constructors of this so disorganized that they
left behind pieces of stones after finishing their work? Were
they going to be doing further work? The construction is a
three-dimensional puzzle. Each block is worked horizontally
and vertically. Perhaps whoever discovers the key will
disregard it and thus, the secret of all these tunnels of
America will be lost.
The walls are covered almost completely in relief with
figures of various living and past animal forms. Dinosaurs,
elephants, jaguars, crocodiles, monkeys, crabs, etc., direct
themselves toward the center. We found a different engraving, a square with rounded comers of some 12 centimeters per
side. Groups of geometric figures varied between two and
four units of different longitude appear located in vertical or
horizontal form. The order is not repeated from one to
another. Is it a numerical system? A computer program? We
are reminded of printed circuit boards.
The expedition carried an oxygen-supply system in case of
an accident but it was never necessary to use it. Even today
the ventilating ducts that are cut into the hill vertically are in
good shape and fulfill their function. Some are partly covered
\:Vithl roots. on their exit at the surface. It is difficult to fmd
these from above. Occasionally there appears, among a group
of rocks, a bottomless well. The ceiling to the tunnel is low
and without relief. It seems to follow a certain wave in long
segments. Its appearance is of a rugged tooled stone. Nevertheless, it is soft to the touch. But, it can't be! We touched it
again. A transparent disguise stopped us from touching the
stone that we saw. We began to realize that we were in a different atmosphere. Heat and humidity disappeared making
the route easier. We came upon a wall of chiseled rock that
divided our way. In each extremity of the wide tunnel, which
we descended, a vein gave way to the opening of a narrower
passage. We crossed over to the one on our left. Later we
found out that the other passage led to the same destination.
Upon completing our run through these passages, we walked
about 1,200 meters, only to find a wall of stone that closed
off our way. "Observe" they told us. We looked carefully at
the wall seeing nothing more than engravings. Our guide leaned a hand on a point without effort and simultaneously opened two doors of stone of 3S centimeters in width. Although,
aware of their location, we approached to about 20 cenPursuit 37

timeters in order to observe a famt line that coiTesponds: to

drawn with' ink. lit ,appears :that theY were1prinied by:a roller,
but a roller to make one single copy of every one of the
the union of the two leaves of stone. We entered into a
"Great Living Room."
millions of pages that are found here? Or is this the under, Breathless, we stopped at the discovery of an enormous
ground depository of just one cosmic library?
cavern with dimensions impossible to appreciate with the
Pages in these volumes are divided into various squares
with rounded comers. Here perhaps it is much easier to begin
naked eye. The height alone was SOUle five meters. It was said
that this area is about 110 by 130 meters, although its form is
to comprehend the hieroglyphics. They are abstract symbols
not actually rectangular.
but, also, stylized human figures - heads with rays - hands
The guide gave a whistle and various shadows crossed the
with three, four and five fingers, etc. Among these symbols
some seem to be similar to the great engraving found in the
"living room." Birds and bats fled, no one knew where to.
Various tunnels opened up here and their doors remain closMuseum of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Health in
ed; No one discovered the ducts that ventilate this area and
Cuenca..
",
ther~, are no: traces of droppingS or of dust here. Our gUide,
: It belongs to the objects of-gold supposedly taken from :Los
Tayos. It is S2 centimeters long, 14 centirileters wide and four
said that this Great Room always remains' clean; The aniJilals'
and the
are'on
the' walls; and' always extend in'the'
centimeters in dep~ ,with,~6 c:Ufferen~ signs that could very
Same direction in such a'way that the latter is joined 'with: the
well, b~; an :~ptJ.abet., Som~ 1?eliev:e ~t the, writing ,of the
former, i.e. the "serpent bites its' tail." This time the figure:s
books 'in: this :library o~ght to be r~ in group~ o~ p~~
seemed to vanish and were in low relief: They' are always the
formed ,by each square 'and in zig-zag. Following th~ system
same height on the wall as in a planned or thought out
of the computer and of some printed primitive writings.
disOrder. Some parts' of the 'wall are smooth, but there are
The covers of ~h, volume ~ a dj(fer~t inscription and
spaces, almost evenly dist.rj.buted, apparently without aD
togetlter they are found to be only four great squar~ wi~ difestablished order. ' ,
ferent ,symbols, in their centers. It was easy to recall h~ ,thfi'
In the center of the Living Room there is a table and several
description t~t, the; ,Lam~ Gelo~, and, ~e ,Mongol, Prince
chairs. The men sat down, leaning their'shoulders against the
Chultun Beyli. ~ade ~l?out the su1;ltCJTanean reign of the
baCks of the chairs; but these cluiirs were fashioned for men
Great ~ of the,w'or:ld; ;:
,,','.
,
much taller. 'TheY, had been designed for statures of about
~~s lcingdom is: t\gh~. It, exten~s throughout ill th,e,
two meters. At first glance, the table and chairs are of simple
subterranean acces~ :Qf the c;nt~ worl4 .. I have heard Qf l:be_
stone. However, upon touching, they seem to be made of, :, wise Lama, telling Bogd,Q Kap that all the; undergroPAA
plastic material almost worn and absolutely smooth. The
caverns of America are inhabited by ancient towns that disaP-:
i
table is approximately three meters wide and six meters long
peared from Earth although the footprints
siill found on
held only by a cylindrical base 'of 77 centimeters in diameter.! :' :the; face of the country. T)tese towns in subterranean spaces
The thickness of the top is 30 centimeters. The chairs number
depended upon a leader who knew the wisdom of the King of
five on one side, six or seven on the other, three at th~ head,
the World. His great WiSdom was nothing of sutprise. We
and one at the other.
know that in the two 'major oceans of the East and of the
West~ there were two continents. The waters swallowed them
Touching the interior part of the table top, one feels the
t~Ure and the cold of the stone, making one think that it Can' and their inh~bitants passed'ihio the subterranean Idhgdom. ,;
only, be covered by an 'unknowp material.
'
And a1x?ut th~ d~ents ,of the, King of.the World, "One of
At fll'st, believing our visit complete, the guide then conour Buddhas and one of 'the Tuhi Lamas reCeived from him
dueled us to another hidden door. Again, without effort, two
a message 'Wri~en in
cJt~acterS 'and uppn
sections of stone opened giving us passage to another living
gold. 'No one was able to read the document." (From Beasts.
area, only this one being much smaller. Twenty-five meters
Man and, Gods. Fernan~o Ossendowski, Tavel .Memras,
1980). ;'
.,
wide but what we were noting was its length., It was full of '
Shelves that gave way to a center passage as in any modern~
The viSit to Cuenca was'inValuable for seeing the objects
that father Crespi iri Our Lady' of ~erpetual Health has' oil
day book depository. 'These shelves too were, of. a cold
material, soft with edges that illmast 'cut the skin. Stone,
~bit, and also for ih~ oppbrtunity to ,learn' aoout die native
petrified wood, wood; or 'metal?" It is difficult to fmd out. " I w.hiies, blonds and bhie..eYeds itiat.:Visft'this bityl(roni tim.~ 'ui
More urgent was 'the need to touch arid to take out volumes
tiine: They-arc So reSPected \"iy ilie
'of the native,popuiathat are there hidden away. '
tion, such that all step out of their way taking with them any
Each volume is of 90 centimeters in height and 4S centiobstacle to their path.
With their white tunics they look like North American
meters in depth, containing some 400 tooled gold pages.
Stacked, among which it is easy to lose one's self, there are
"hippies" except for the beardless faces. The place they live
has not been discovered though it is supposedly an unknown
approximately 200 volumes. Long live the relics of the codes
of men!
city near Cuenca. Although the darker natives believe that
These books have metallic covers four millimeters thick
they bring good luck, they are fearful of their mental powers
and of a color darker then the sheets they contain. They are
since they practice telepathy and according to what is said,
not sewn or fastened. The imprudence of one of the visitors
they can levitate objects without touching them. Their
made us aware of another detail. He grabbed an open
average height is 1.8S meters for the women and 1.90 meters
volume, taking out one of the metallic pages that, inspite of
for the men. They definitely would be comfortable in the
,c,I:\airs ofthe Oreat Li"i.ng Rpom of,Lo~T~y~s ..(Viaje c!~ d.on,
its depth of a fraction ofa millimet~, was solid ~d; even.
The sheet fell to the floor _and, ~pon trying to pick :it up, ::" Guillermo, Valdeavel,an(). 1979},. .':'.,' .
..:' ,
wrinkled like paper. Believing the archaically piece ruined,
Tunnels In Peru
our guide spread it out over the other pages and grazing it
Francisco Pizzano discovered entrances to deep caves
with the back of his hand, he stretched it without leaving a
about Hascaran in about 6,800 meters above sea level. In
trace.
1'171, Peru began in expedition that gave shocking results ..
Each page is engraved. The depth is so slight that it apPe8rs'

sc:iuares

au

are

pages of

unkIioWo

rest

Pursuit" 38

First" Quarter 1987

Starting in Otuzco,at\62 meters below ground, closed caves

were found with hatches made of gigantic slabs of stone,
eight meters high, five meters wide and 2~ meters deep. Only
with the help of four men were they able to be moved and the
bearing system of balls of stone remained intact. From here
they followed tunnels with a slope of 14"'0 and a floor of
channeled pavement.
Nearly 100 kilometers later, where the tunnels were closed
in by a landslide, they found themselves 25 meters below sea
level. Perhaps they lead to the island of Guanape off the
coast.
The magazine, Bild der WissenchaJt, reported about the
expedition and its findings. Were they ,made by tbe same
builders from Ecuador?
Thousimds of KUometen ,
. In recent years, Professor Kanjibal of Calcutta; has .identified a great portion of the symbols that appear on the
erigravings that are exhibited in the Museum of Our Lady of
Perpetual Health in Cuenca, Ecuador. They correspond with
an ancient writing used by the Brahamanes in India. .
With reference to E. von Diniken, The Answer 0/ the
GOds, the mag8zine, Geo Mundo, tells us of another strange
coincidence. The CUnas Indians of Panama know how to interpret the religious Syrian and Babylonian drawings some
4,000 years old. They express the existenceof one pOwerful
God that punished the sin of man' with a universal deluge,
and they also mention demons and evil spirits similar to those

believed by the worshipers of the Goddess Asiria, of love, fertility and war, with reference to Ishtar.
These coincidences, and the persistence with which the
Cunas Indians have maintained their traditions intact, have
made several noted anthropologists think that these tribes
originated from the Euphrates Valley in Mesopotamia at
more than 13,000 kilometers away.
During the construction of the Transamazonica Highway
and the Perimetral North in Brazil, numerous discoveries
were made that seemed to confirm ancient legends, such as
the Indian of white skin and blue eyes that the Brazilian
Welfare Services ~vered in the region of Altamira, state
of, f~a near the Rio Xingu. In another area, Acre, a state
bor~ering Peru, ~etenaJ:lts w~ attack,ed by Indians. They
were, "tall; well-built, ,very b~utif~and of white skin."
(Refer:encetP.newspaperman, l{ . .I~rugger in the Chronical oj
~ka~or).

From the Lima Daily Express, August 25. 1979, we are

told, "A French-Peruvian expedition discovered a tribe of
savages of great stature, white col9r in the jungle of Southeast
Peru."
, ,
. It was noted that, '''these people were nomads roaming
completely nude, knowing nothing of frre and, eating raw
meat who occupied an area on the banks of the Rio Tono
River in the state of Madre de Dios bordering Bolivia and
Brazil. These savages, 2 meters in height, are extremely
ferocious and live in the Stone Age."
~

Related .ITUatloD "

. , Search F~r The La.t ~troDghold Of The IDca. ADd HlddeD Trea.ure
The Incan city Machu Picchu was rediscov- .
of years; particularly because many persons
ered in 1911 by the American explorer Hiram
claim that the famous lost treasure of the Incas
~ingham; set 7,000 feet up in the Andes, ,in a
was buried there.
saddle of the hiUs above the Urubarilba River .
Gene Savoy, an Ameriean archaeologist took
in Peru.,
"
"
..
up where Bingham left off. He recently
Originally, it was thought to be the city of '
discovered another Inea city. Indians who live
Vileabamba, which is presumed to be the last
in the valley call these ruins Hatun Vileabamrefuge of the bica empire. Modem researcherS,
ba, which means Great, or High, Vilcabamba.
however, are divided over the questions of when
Still another set of ruins is suggested as the
Machu Picchu was built and what purpose it
site of Vileabamba. Knowledge of these ruins
served.
eame to light when a Peruvian anny brigade,
, Some, researchers beli~e Machu Picchu is . .
crossing the area between the Apurimac and
the lost city of Vilcabamba, which, according
Uru~ba rivers some, _
ago,. had llJI:unusuaI
~ ,a ~panis~ missionary of the, 15QOs, was a . I :.. I ,', I . " .
.experie~~. , ' .
I .
veriiabl,( ~ 'imiversity ,o'fidOI8trY:' SorcererS !liKJ i '
~'.,'... ~ Urns
. . They' were forbidden access to a group of imsOothsaye~."-- ':masters bf ~~miriatio~:' :-. ~tIBn~ii: .O~n: ...'
. .' "posing 'rumS by 'hoStile IiKlians of the Paiicapuris
were supposed to officiate there, joined in their
. ,
Mach. P,cch.
tribe, who kept guard over all the road and river
secret rites by the Virgins of the Sun, "who
I
entrances to the site. .
worshipped before a fabulous golden disc. "
On the morning of June 24, 1572, the
The Indians claimed to be the legitimate heirs
Bingham described stonework at Machu Pic- Spaniards forced the gates of Vileabamba but of the Incas and, since the fall of the empire,
chu as being "fine as the finest"stonework in they found only the smoking ruins of a guardians of Vilcabamba. According to them,
the world." He found that not just a few struc- deserted town. Tupac Amaru and the last of the priceless treasure of the Incas lay at the bottures but the whole city was so well preserved his followers had fled into the dense vegeta- tom a lake which only they could approach. :
"that only the reed and straw roofs needed to tion of the Amazon jungle.
.Researchers are eautious regarding identificabe replaced and it could again come to life."
Some Indians infonned on Tupac Amaru, and tion of the last eapital and last stronghold of the
In 1967, archaeologists discovered Gran Pa- he was taken prisoner. Weak with exhaustion, Incas. Theireaution is understandable, fur there
jaten, another lost city of the Incas. Today, ex- he was led back to the city of Cuzco with a are still a dozen or so remote, splendid ruins
pens debate whether Gran Pajaten, Machu Pic- golden chain about his neck. There he was which have not yet been studied. If anybody
chu, or the rediscovered city Choqquequirau, beheaded before a huge crowd of prostrate In- knows the truth about the last sanctuary of the
or the city of Espiritu P8mpa is Vileabamba. dians who wept for days over his death:
Incas, he is keeping the secret to himself, as
The throne of Tupac Amaru, last ruler of the
No maps of ~ Spa~ish colonial era ~o.wed: . the Indians did sO many centuries ago -- and
Incas, was at Vileabamba. He, as his brothers the exact location ofVilcabamba, and, m tune, as some might still be doing.
before him, was a staunch defender of the Inca knowledge about the location of the city was SOURCE: The West Virginia Advocate
crusade against the hated Spanish con- lost.
12/8/86
quistadores which his father, Manco Inea, had
The search fur the last refuge of the Incas has CREDIT: Warren E. Duliere
in~ scholars and adventurers for hundreds
launched three decades earlier.

First Quarter 1987

Pursuit 39

Books Reviewed
MONSTER WRECKS OF LOCH NESS AND LAKE
CHAMPLAIN, by Joseph W. Zarzynski, 1986, M-Z Information (P .0. Box 2129, Wilton, NY 12866), 112 pps., iUus.,
$8.95.
Reviewed by Robert Barrow
If we took all of the books and articles ever produced
about sea monsters and laid them end to end bet\\:een Loch
Ness and Lake Champlain, how many of them would "hold
water?"
Joseph Zarzynski's would. Many people have written
about scary water monsters, but Zarzynski's wqrk has performed a far more noble service than protecting us from these
creatures of the deep: He successfully prodded legislators of
areas bordering Lake Champlain to pass laws protecting the
Lake's alleged "Champ" from us.
His previous book, Champ: Beyond the Legend (1984),
outlined this respected cryptozoologist's efforts on behalf of
evidence firmly in support of Champ's existence, findings
which lead him to conclude that Lake Chainplain, Loch Ness
and other substantial bodies of water support huge unidentified creatures.
Monster Wrecks, however, shows another side of the
author's concerns - mystery-related aspects of lake and
loch.
This book can be read quickly, but its pages glitter with
pieces of history. For instance, each location boasts its share
of shipwrecks, and ZarzYnski's sui>ple~entation of several
accounts with side-scan sonar '~photographs" of ancient and
contemporary sunken vessels is quite interesting.
Of course, water craft do not suffer alo~e with the distinction of being swallowed up. A high point is Zarzynski's
report of a rare British Wellington Mark lA twin-engine
bomber, discovered deep in Loch Ness during what was intended as a hunt for "Nessie." The plane, a veteran of 14
combat missions which included a 1939 daylight raid on the
Germany Navy, had plunged into the Loch in 1940. The
author's description of a subsequent 1985 salvage attempt is
like opening a time capsule.
An opportunity to learn the non-monster heritage of Lake
Champlain and Loch Ness is certainly refreshing. In fact, one
wonders what Nessie itself must think of its 30-40 foot long
"movie double" prop of steel and leather, constructed in
1969 at a cost around $25,000, to be used in the filming of
Billy Wilder's elaborate production, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - an outrageous creation which promptly sank
in the Loch and remain.s there, abandoned by a highly upset
film company which was forced to "make do" with a small
Ne::~ie model and the magic of special effects instead.
We are also informed of various Champ and Nessie expeditions, and of the exotic equipment used, from a Goodyear
Blimp to diving suits and submarines. Water creatures
possibly related to the larger enigmatic life forms are also examined briefly.
Zarzynski expresses himself wen, and the reader should be
particularly impressed with his integrity regarding the whole
issue of investigating unidentified aquatic creatures. In
essence, he says study them, but cause no injury or death, and
permanent capture would be out of the question.
Whales and dolphins may not be Zarzynski's current pursuit, but I have a feeling that Greenpeace would like this guy.
Pursuit 40

COMMUNION by Whitley Strieber, Beech Tree Books

(William Morrow & Co., Ny), 299 pps., $17.95.
Reviewed by Dennis Stacy
Whitley Strieber fans, long accustomed to the author's
best-selling science-fiction and supernatural novels, may find
his latest offering even more outre than usual. Subtitled "A
True Story," Communion is Strieber's first-hand account of
his alleged abduction by, and contact with, "the visitors,"
bizarre beings from the Twilight Zone who inhabit a realm
somewhere between everday awareness and the shadowy substance of the subconscious.
Wherever the largely nocturnal visitors hail from, Strieber
argues, they lie outside the pale of contemporary psychological and scientific theory. For the unwitting" percipient,
however, they are as utterly real and vivid as a barbed wire
fence in the middle of the night.
Scoffers ar~ likely to wonder whether Strieber hasn't been
abducted by his own over-active imagination. After all, isn't
this the same man who gave us were~olve:s (The Woljen) and
vampires (The Hunger) dressed in contemporary sheep's
clothes?
"
Well, yes and no. Strieber is the first to admit he makes a
very nice living off what he caDs "imaginative thrillers." But
he's also quick to note his last two novels, War Day and
Nature's End, co-authored with Austin's James Kunetka,
eschewed supernatural themes altogether. Bo~h were rigorously researched and critically-acclaimed treatments of nearfuture apocalypse brought on by lirilited nuclear war and
environmental pollution, respectively. "I know when I'm
running away with my imagination," Strieber says, "and
when it's running away with me."
On the surface at least, Communion recounts a classic case
of UFO abduction, if anything about being bodily lifted
aboard some kind of flying machine and subjected to a grueling physical examination can be considered "classic." Victims typically describe their anonymous abductors as frail,
diminuitive creatures who bear an eerie resemblance to
human embryos, or fetuses. A huge, bulbous head is often
supported by a fragile physique. Facial features like nose,
ears and mouth are said to be vestigial, while the eyes are
large, black and sometimes slanted. The stark countenance of
one of the more unforgettable "female" creatures Strieber
said he encountered graces Communion's cover.
Whatever the root causes of the experience, the consequences can be bewildering, even to one steeped in Strieber's background milieu. His own conscious recall of events began
shortly after Christmas Day of 1985, and came only in fitful
bits and pieces. Aroused from sleep in his upstate New York
cabin, Strieber found his bedroom invaded by dwarflike beings who carried him outside into the" woods, where he was
lifted aboard what appeared to ~e some sort of flying craft.
Inside, he was subjected to a complete physical examination
that included tissue sampling, some sort of "operation" performed on his head, and both nasal and r~al probes.
Strieber writes he awoke the next day, exhausted and sore
from where he had been handled, his memory apparently
partially blocked by hypnotic suggestion. Admittedly a UFO
skeptic at the time, Strieber first feared for his sanity. His
writing suffered, and so did his relations with his" wife and
child. An undefinable fear gnawed at his gut.
First Quarter 1987

While still trying to make sense of events, he came across a

book that mentioned the work of New York abstract artist
Budd Hopkins, a UFO researcher specializing in alleged abduction cases. Hopkins assured Strieber his terror and confusion were hardly unique, that in fact he belonged to a small
but growing category of bewildered "abductees" from all
walks of life who claimed strangely similar experiences.
Strieber later took part in a group discussion with his feUow
abductees. The transcript of that colloquy takes up a chapter
of Communion.
In the meantime, Hopkins arranged for an objective third
party, Dr. Donald Klein, Chairman of the New York State
Departme~t of Psychiatry, Columbia Univeristy, to serve as
Strieber's therapist and hypnotist. A series of hypnotic regressions followed in which he was able to delve deeper into the
abduction experience. Hypnosis "stimulated Strieber"'s conscious recall to the point that he remembered a sequence of
troubling episodes stretching back to his San Antonio
childhood and college days at the University of Texas. Others
occasionally present when he was "taken," including his wife
and feUow writer Annie Gottlieb, were also interviewed for
their corroborative testimony.
Communion, then, is Strieber's earnest attempt to make
sense of what, on the surface, appears absolutely unbeliev-

able. It includes the results of his own polygraph examination, and a statement by Dr. Klein, who administered a battery of standard psychological and neurophysiological tests,
including checks for temporal lobe epilepsy, a brain disorder
which frequently results in vivid hallucinations. Strieber
received a clean bill of mental and physical health.
Does the evidence presented in Communion add up to
proof of extraterrestrial intervention? Not everyone will be
convinced. "I realize there are only two approaches to the
book you can take," Strieber said on the eve of a two-week,
sixteen city promotional tour. "If you're a skeptic, naturally
you're going to think none of it ever happened."
" Still, he hopes the book's straightforward reportage and
the information it contains wiU attract serious attention.
Something is happening to hapless humans, Strieber says,
even if it can't be clearly categorized within the UFO abduction experience. Maybe the invasion is taking place in some as
yet unexplored domain of the mind, perhaps in Jung's coUective unconscious. "What I do know," he said, "is that the
universe is a much, much stranger place than we realize."
Meanwhile, Strieber's publisher, William Morrow & Co.,
obviously anticipating a favorable terrestrial reception for
Communion ordered a first-run printing of 150,000 copies.

Upcoming Conferences
The U.S. Psychotronics Association Annual Conference,
"The Missing Link in Physics: Consciousness" "will be held
July 29-August 2, 1987 at the Colorado School of Mines in
Golden, Colorado. Some of the expected speakers are: Dr.
Robert Beck, Thomas Bearden, Thomas Valone, Ed Skilling
and Elizabeth Rauscher. For further information contact:
Bob 8eutlich, 2141 Agatite, Chicago, IL 60625, (312)
275-7055.

World Conference of the Ancient Astronaut Society

September 10 through 12, 1987 to be held at the Hotel Lisanj
in the Adriatic resort town of Novi Vinodolski, Yugoslavia.
Members in the U.S., Canada and Mexico may contact the
Society Headquarters for details. All other members should
write to Ancient Astronaut Society, Baselstrasse I, 4532
Feldbrunnen/SO, SWITZERLAND.

The American Society of Dowsers, Inc. will hold a "MidWest Dowsing School & Conference" on August 12-16, at
Regis CoUege in Denver, Colorado. Some of the expected
speakers will be: Bob Ater, Bill Cox, Earl Fruedegger, Jack
Kumpf, Bob & Charmion McKusick, Greg Nielsen and Greg
Storozuk. For further details please contact: Greg Storozuk,
5729 W. 26 Avenue, Edgewater, Colorado 80214 or call (303)
237-1184.

Omega Communications is presenting "The UFO Experience" on November 7-8, 1987 in North Haven, CT. Expected speakers are: John White, David Menke, John Timmerman, Lawrence Fawcett, Phillip Imbrogno, Marianne
Shenefield, Patricia Sable, John Donoghue, Ellen Crystall,
Betty Andreasson Luca, Bob Luca and Budd Hopkins. For
further information please contact: Omega Communication,
PO Box 2051, Cheshire, CT 06410.

CORRECI10NS
Mr. Luis Schoenherr has kindly sent us the following corrections to his article ' 'Self-Starting Engines, UFOs and High
Dimensions" which appeard in PURSUIT volume 19, no. 3.
p. 112, right - the correct reference number for Berger
should have been 1 and not 7.
p. 118, upper right - "Yet he was unable to keep his
position on the vehicle" should read "able to keep his
position. "
p. 120, right - ... rather a priori assumption ...should
read ...rather an a priori assumption.
First Quarter 1987

Notice
If you are planning to move, please notify SITU as soon as you
know your new location (preferably 6 weeks in advance). Fill out
change-of-address cards obtainable at your post office, or write a
note giving your name the way it appears on your PURSUIT
envelope and include both old and new address; mail to SITU, P.O.
Box 265, Little Silver, NJ C11739 USA. Regrettably we must charge a
fee for every returned PURSUIT journal due to change of address.

Pursuit 41

'

Letters to the Editors

Dear Editor:

Dear Editor:

Mr. Lebelson's research in "Who's Watching Us?" (PURSUIT 1fT3), reminded me of the 1) .S. Air Force reactions to
the incident which triggered military interest in UFOs. The
Air Force needed to determine if the phenomena was a threat
to the U.S. and if the saucers were an enemy secret weapon.
I have enjoyed Forteana for half a century, including Ivan
Sanderson and PURSUIT magazine. It has been natural for
me to expand my horizons and "earth mysteries" have been
an enjoyable hobby. Charles Fort and his heirs showed us a
different, but not new, window to the Universe or "reality."
But the long-time base of his explorations showed that history
repeats itself; and those who do not know their history may
repeat the same coverage.
In 1947, as a result of that graphic report from a pilot, the
Air Force established Project Blue Book, an intelligence
gathering and analysis function. I participated in some of the
high level Pentagon meetings. At one of these, the gong in my
mind went BOINO; I recommended that they investigate the
works of Charles Fort who had collected many similar reports
and might have a better data base than they did. If they
would accept that such phenomena and anecdotes had a
history of many centuries, their perspective and their attitudes
would change. It would elirninate the earthly "enemy weapon" theory, and reduce the anxiety associated with the
"outer space" theory.
I don't believe anyone listened. Project Blue Book continued dutifully but was never given the broad resources that
a real scare would have demanded. Little real advance was
made; eventually the Air Force wanted to get off the hook, so
there was convened a committee of scientists who swept it,
more or less, under the rug.
Now I am skeptical about the StanseI/Wemer "evidence"
in the story "Kingman, Arizona - UFO Enigma, PURSUIT
volume 76. While I was not privy to all classified information, if an intact saucer and body of an astronaut had been
found it would have galvanized Washington, D.C. and set the
Air Force on a new course. The walls of the Pentagon would
have cracked under the pressure. Such secrets cannot be kept
for long; certainly not 30 years. This and similar stories about
crashed UFOs locked in a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, and little green men locked in the freezer, are
suspicious for this reason. Granted that the President or the
Secretary of Defense could have decided that the "people"
were not ready for the story; but surely later there would have
been another President or Secretary of Defense who would
have believed they dare not hold it from the people, the scientific community and the research-development industry. By
now, everything including photographs would have leaked
one way or another.
Forty years have passed and we aren't much more knowledgeable in spite of good men and resources devoted to the
subject. Our ancestors didn't understand it either, if Fort was
reporting sirnilar "visitations;" and some believe UFOs were
mentioned in the Bible. Perhaps we aren't asking the right
questions? Or perhaps we aren't ready to believe the theories
of those researchers who are closest to understanding the

This rebuttal letter was written to clarify the "incorrect

statement" Dr. Willy Smith found in my past article, "The
Astounding UFO Invasion of Brazil."
.
The description "colored ping pong balls" came from a
direct quote attributed to Otto Nogueira, an Embraer civilian
pilot. Had Dr. Smith read the UPI dispatch of May 24, 1986,
he would have known this. Since I did not interview. the pilot
personally, I assumed the quote was correctly transcribed.
To propose, however, that a plot of deceit exists, is ridicu~
lous. Dr. Smith would have readers believe there was some
sinister ulterior motive behind this simple identification label.
There is no "debunking" symphony being played out by
nebulous MIB's, except in the minds of those obsessed with
the "conspiracy syndrome."
-Fred Bobb
Dear Editor:
I have a question and a comment about the article by
Harry Lebelson in the volume 19, #4 issue of PURSUIT on
the "Kingman, Arizona - UFO Enigma."
In several places he mentions Mr. William Moore's involvement and investigations into a 1953 incident concerning
an alleged UFO crash. I was surprised when he fIrst mentioned Mr. Moore that he introduced him as being co-author with
Charles Berlitz of The Philadelphia Experiment. I think it
would have been more appropriate, especially to establish
background credentials, to have introduced him. as co-author
(also with Mr. Berlitz) of The Roswell Incident which dealt
with their investigation of another alleged UFO crash in 1947
in nearby New Mexico. Was there any reason for this? ..
According to the information related to Mr. Lebelson by
William Moore concerning Mr. Moore's investig8tlon into
the alleged Kingman incident, it was Mr. Moore's opinion
that the occurrence was quite dubious: The editor of the local
newspaper at the time "never heard of the incident, .. the
former deputy sheriff "also knew nothing of the incideni ahd
said she doubted that it had ever occurred," a lieutenant in
the Arizona Highway Patrol "claimed he knew nothing of
the incident" and Dr. Ed Doll, who allegedly supervised the
whole investigation at the time, told Mr. MoOre "he knew of
no incident of any sort involving crashed UFOs ... " HaVing
presented this non-corroboratory evidence from a credible
source is quite contradictory to Mr. Lebelson's last sentence
in his opening paragraph, to wit: " ...we focus on one particular documented incident and present direct proof of it
having happened ......
From an objective point of view, I see no direct proof and
do not concur with Mr. Lebeison's statement. To the contrary, although he has a sworn affidavit by an a,leged participant, that is all he has - pure hearsay. In his own words he
presents testimony which completely contradicts this !Jriginal
statement. It is laudable to present both sides of the story but
to claim that the uncorroborated written statement of one individual is "direct proor' stretches the limits of credibility
and is not very tenable.
-Prof. Theodore O. Benitt

enigma.

-A. Maxwell
Pursuit 42

First Quarter 1987

In this section. mostly contempor.ry curious and unexplained events

StoIv of V.....hlD. Hltchh

WODtD...pp....

A couple of months ago, Dan Barnmes,

news director of Salt Lake City radio station
KRSP, asked me to tape an interview for
broadcast. Among other urban legends, I disc:ussed a story I call "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" - a classic ghost story that has been
updated to modern times - and probably believed by many of its listeners.
A young girl wearing a light party dress hitches a ride with a motorist coming into town
late on a cold rainy night. She gets in the back
seat, and the driver, noticing she is shivering,
lends her a sweater. When they reach the address she wants, the driver turns around and
sees, to his astonishment, that she has disappeared, along with the borrowed garment.
The motorist knocks at the door of the
house and tells the man who answers what has
happened. The man (who often turns out to
be the girl's father) tells the driver that his
daughter died some years ago in an auto accident, on this very date, and that he is the
(sixth, seventh, eighth, etc.) person who has
picked her up. Her identity is verified by a
ponrait on the wall. Later, the man visits her
grave - and finds his sweater draped over the
tombstone.
The story is usually told as having happened to a "friend of a friend," on some local
road, or in a nearby cemetery. Sometimes, the
teller will even give the name of a tombstone
and say "Go look for yourself," as proof that
the story is true.
The same story was told as long ago as the
turn of.the century, with the ghost then hitching a ride in a buggy. When the auto
became common, the story changed to fit the
times. Many other versions, including some in
which the driver himself is the ghost, are told
around the world.
Recently the story was modernized in
several ways, including a "Jesus on the Freeway" variation. In this version, a hippie-ish
male hitchhiker (perhaps looking like youknow-who), often dressed in white, predicts
that Judgment Day is coming soon, then
vanishes from the back seat. This one is alleged to have happened on the New York
Thruway (toll collectors have heard this a lot,
apparently), ona back road in Arizona, and
any number of other places.
Another version was collected by Seattle
folklorist Elizabeth Simpson in September
1980, shonly after the eruption of Mount St.
Helens. She told me:
"I stopped at a gas station in Centralia
[Wash.], and one of the attendants told me
not to pick up any hitchhikers on my way
south. I told him I wasn't in the habit of do-

First Quarter 1987

ing that, and he said, 'Well, especially a

woman in white. There's been a woman in a
white dress hitchhiking her way up and down
Interstate S. She gets into the back seat, predicts that the volcano is going to erupt again
between Oct. 12 and 14, and then she disappears.'"
Although these predicted eruptions failed
to occur, hitchhiking ghosts remain in the
folklore of the Northwest. Some people say
that a hitchhiker had also predicted the earlier
eruptions. I'm skeptical of this; no such
stories were collected before the actual eruption.
Around the same time, when I was doing
research in Romania, a controversy sprang
up in a literary journal there concerning two
versions of the hitchhiker story appearing in
popular novels by different contemporary
Romanian authors. What seemed at fD'St to be
possible plagiarism turned out to be simply
that both had heard the story in Bucharest
and then incorporated it into their plots. I expected legends about Dracula in Romania,
but not about The Vanishing Hitchhiker
(which, incidentally, is the title of my f~
book on urband legends).
Anyway, back to my radio appearance:
When I tuned in to KRSP' for the broadcast
of my interview a few days later, I was amused that the song aired immediately after was
Dickey Lee's 1965 "Laurie," which tells the
vanishing hitchhiker story. The last chorus
goes, "Strange things happen in this world!"
I sent a note to Dan 8ammes, complimenting him on digging out this appropriate
golden oldie. But, friends, it seems the selection wasn't intended; the announcer on duty
had just picked this song as next up in the
regular rotation, without knowing anything
about the interview. Perhaps strange things
do happen in this world!
Professor Jan Harold Brunvand of the
University of Utah writes for United Features
Syndicate..
SOlJRe: The Morning News,
Wilmington, DE 3/2/87
CREDrr: H. Hollander

T.....aattlag Tnmcated
oDGh...... 1load
Saratoga's famous Bragg Road ghost will
continue to have a spooky road to haunt.
Champion International, a paper products
company, has pledged not to cut the trees it
owns along the din road and has f1l'ed a contractor who did cut some of the trees.
The straight, narrow road is a local landmark. Many people have reponed seeing an
eerie light on the road. .
Some people say the light is an unearthly

lantern carried by a train brakeman decapitated years ago when the road was a railroad
spur line.
Others say it is the spirit of murdered railroad workmen or anyone of several other
kinds of ghosts. Still others say the light looks
a whole lot like car headlights.
Whatever the light is, the trees hanging over
the road give the place an atmosphere that
would make any ghost feel at home.
Hardin County Justice of the Peace Kenneth En10e and other local residents consider
the road one of the county's natural resources
and when he heard in late January that trees
were being cut along the road, he went into
action.
Enloe went to the scene and found a couple
of Champion International technicians and
some pine tree stumps and he hauled the
workers into his Batson office to get things
straightened out.
"I thought the county owned the right-ofway all along the road," Enloe said. "But we
can't prove it does."
The road cuts through the northeast corner
of a 640-acre section owned by Champion.
The company owns the trees straddling the
road for about a quarter mile of the road's
eight-mile length, said Joann Meyer, Champion's district land manager in Cleveland.
Even though the company owns the trees, it
has no plans to cut them down near the roadway, Meyer said.
"We recognize the unique character of the
Bragg Road," she said Wednesday.
The company hadn't authorized cutting
any trees along the road, she said.
A contractor had been hired to cut trees far
from the road. Instead, he cut trees adjacent
to the road when rainy weather made it too
hard to get equipment into the area, Meyer
said.
When Champion found out about it, the
contractor was fll'ed and Champion technicians went to clean up the scene of the cutting.
. "We were dealing with it and the next thing,
I knew everybody was down at the JP's office," Meyer said.
Enloe said the cutting wasn't enough to
ruin the spooky atmosphere of the road and
he's glad Champion has promised to keep it
that way.
Enloe, who sells cemetery monuments
when he's not being a justice of the peace, has
lived near the road all his life and has never
seen the ghost light. .
"There's plenty of people out there every
Saturday night looking for it," he said.
SOURCE: Richard Stewart in the Houston
Chronicle, TX 3/19/87
CREDrr: Scott Parker via COUD-I

Pursuit 43

FAA Beo...... P1vbe

lato UFO IDdcleat
The Federal Aviation Administration has
reopened its inquiry into what happened the
night a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 cargo
crew reported seeing UFOs over Alaska, an
FAA spokesman said yesterday.
FAA investigators interviewed Capt. Kenju
Terauchi, the pilot, for a second time Friday
and are reviewing all radar records from the
evening of Nov. 17 when an unexplained blip
appeared on radar screens as the JAL crew
"reported seeing mysterious lights.
An unknown object appeared on radar
screens monitored by the Anchorage "Air
Route Traffic Control Center, the Alaska Air
Command at Elmendorf Air Force Base and
in the cockpit of the JAL plane.
Only one object appeared on radar, but
Terauchi said he believed there were two small
brightly-lit objects and one enormous" object.
SOURCE: The Sunday Times, Trenton, NJ

114/87
CREOn: E.J. Toner, Jr.

PUot Agala Beportla.

"

EedeSight

A Japan Air Lines pilot who said his cargo

jet was shadowed by a huge unidentified flying object over Alaska in November has
reported another encounter of the eerie kind.
Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi and his co-pilot
reported the sighting of lights Sunday morning while on a flight from London to a refueling stop in Anchorage.
"His statement to the controller was 'irregular lights, ' looks like a spaceship, "
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman
Paul Steucke said. He explained Sunday's
sighting as possibly light reflecting off ice
crystals in the atmosphere.
Terauchi, a veteran pilot, told the FAA he
saw the lights twice Sunday, once for about 20
minutes and again for about 10 minutes as his
plane flew at 37,000 feet, Steucke said.
The plane's co-pilot reported seeing the
lights, Steucke said, but the flight engineer,
who sits further back in the cockpit, "indicated he was uncertain whether he saw any
lights at all."
Both the November sighting and the Sunday sighting were near Fort Yukon, but there
were few other similarities, Steucke said.
On Nov. 17, Terauchi reported that two
bright lights and an object as wide as two aircraft carriers placed end-to-end followed his
JAL Boeing 747 cargo plane for more than
300 miles as it flew to Anchorage from
Iceland.
In the sighting this weekend, the pilot said
that in both cases, the lights approached from
the front of the Boeing 747, went beneath the
aircraft and reappeared to the rear.
In November, the object showed up on the
plane's weather radar and may have appeared
on FAA radar, but there was nothing shown
on radar Sunday, Steucke said.
SOIJRCE: AP in the Inquirer,
Philadelphia,"PA 1/13/87
CREOrr: H. Hollander
Pursuit

44

jungle, and there have been reports and

sightings and stories of it since that time,"
Spaceship suspense is hovering over South said Culberson, 36.
The elusive aquatic giant is described as
Devon after a second UFO sighting within a
having a body like an elephant, stout thick
week.
" On Tuesday the Herald Express reported legs, a very long neck with a small head and a
that two Paignton men saw a mysterious ob- long tail, he said.
"There have been so few expeditio~ into
ject floating across the night sky of the resort.
The story prompted Joe Burrows, of the region that it's not inconceivable that
Newton Abbot, to ring in about the strange somet~ing as large as this has been missed,"
craft he saw exactly 24 hours after the Cul~son said.
And there's more proof of the dinosaur
Paignton sighting.
Joe, secretary of Newton Abbot Athletic than the doubting scientific corntnunity will
Club, says he's totally baffled by what he saw. acknowledge, he said.
"There are fresh dinosaur tracks in th~
"It passed very slowly across the sky without making a sound. I thought it could be mud in the Congo. I've seen pictures of that,"
some sort of airship. There were two disc- he "said.
"The tracks are about as large as frying
shaped objects with vaguely colored lights.
They were very bright. I've never seen any- pans, with three toes out front. The only
thing like it before," said Joe, who lives at tracks they match are found in fossil stream
beds from severlil million years back."
Mile End Road.
But he said it was ~he eyewitness aocounts
He first saw the object as he was driving in"
of area natives that convinced him he was on
his car towards his home.
The phenomenon was also witnessed by his the right track.
"The stories corroborate. You can go from
son and daughter before it disappeared in a
village to village and talk to people who've
northerly direction.
Hugh Merrick, one of the PaigntOn wit- had no social interaction over" this whole area,
nesses, said the object looked like a cruise and the stories are the same and the descriptions [of the dinosaur] all match," Culberson
liner illuminated at night.
"
"There were about ten rows of parallel" said.
The next expedition is organized for 1988.
lights with about SO lights in each row. It was
much bigger than any aircraft could possibly SOURCE: George White in the Sunday
News Journal, Wilmington, DE
have been," said Hugh, of Penwill Way.
3/8/87
SOIJRCE: Herald Express, England
CREOrr: H. Hollander
2127/87
CBEDrr: David Rossiter via COUD-I

South DevoD UFO

Pope Up AgaIa

V....hla. Cata BafIIe MODtNai

Explorer Follows TaIee,
Footpdata Ia om..... QueR

This city's cats are disappearing.

Hundreds of them - mostly black-andThe quest for the unbelievable - a live white" ones - have vanished in the last few
dinosaur - is a goal adventurer-photogra- months, reports the Canadian Society for the
Prevention of Crudty to Animals. And no
pher Jim Culberson does not taugh off.
Culberson, a 1975 graduate in marine one seems to know who's taking them or why.
"My cat just vanished into thin air. We
biology from Florida Institute of Technology,
recently risked it all in the African jungles of have no clues," said one Montreal woman
" .
the People's Republic of the Congo on a who didn't want to be identified. "
three-week $20,000 expedition aimed at prov"We've got a 50 percent increase in cat disappearances,"" said "Cynthia Drummond,
ing accepted science wrong.
After returning last week, Culberson said "CSPCA coordination director. "I'm getting
he spoke with people who told tales of en- 10 to 20 reports a day. It's really biZarre."
What's also bizarre, said Drummond, "is
countering Mokele-Mbembe - a 4O-foot
modern dinosaur thought by many to live in a that "SO to 90 percent of the cats are black
land that time forgot, the rugged 60,000- and white."
Drummond said the majority of stolen cat
square-mile Likouala Swamp.
Even after battling hostile natives, poison- reports came in late October and in Novemous snakes and government bureaucracy in ber, but the disappearances continue.
"My fl1"St reaction was they were being
the communist country, Culberson said he
can't wait to go back for another try.
snatched for research, " said Drummond.
The purpose of the trip was "to further "But now we don't think this is the case with
substantiate the existence of the creature and, the cats."
hopefully, of course, to get a sighting and
She said dogs are usually used for research.
photograph it," he said.
And besides, she said, "there are lots of cat
The idea of modern dinosaurs, while breeders who breed specifically for this purastonishing to most Americans, is taken for pose."
granted in many secluded areas, he said.
" She now suspects two other unsettling posUntil the expeditions in search of the crea- sibilities: "Fur or food."
As for pussycat fur coats, a Montreal furture, no American had ventured into the
region, he said. But its story is not new.
rier told local reporters it was unllkdy. The
"Back in the 1700s, some French mis- fur is too soft, he said. In addition, it would
sionaries spotted very weird tracks in the take more than 60 house cats to make a coat.
First Quarter

1987

While there have been reports of catnap-

pen at work, no one has been arrested.

Drummond said that "a tall, heavy-set man
driving a gray van" was spotted stealing cats
in a suburb.
And a Montreal woman saw a young man
trying to lure a neighbor's cat with a piece of
meat attached to a string. He ran away when
he saw the woman watching him.
Another city woman reported finding her
cat tied with a length of string to a bush. She
rescued it, but a week later it, too, vanished.
Police say this is not enough to go on. They
can only suggest that owners keep a closer eye
on their pets.
SOIJRCE: Gerald Vo!genau in The Inquirer
Philadelphia; PA 1/18/87
CREOrr: H. Hollander

Sden..... TeD of Dog'. Life

AfterF......

Is also could pave the way for placing someone in suspended animation and using
powerful medication, which otherwise would
damage healthy body parts, on cancer-ridden
portions of a patient's body.
SOIJIlCE: AP in The Asbury Park
Press, NJ 3/31/87
CREOrr: Nancy Warth;.

FInt Dog Rex

Maw BeHne Ia Gholltll

First dog Rex might believe the old story
that Abraham Lincoln's ghost is in the White
House, says his master, the president.
Giving a Lincoln's Birthday talk to junior
high school students from the Washington
area, President Reagan noted the legend of
Lincoln's ghost.
He told the students that Lincoln's bedroom is just down the haD from the room
where he and first lady, Nancy, sleep.
"Now. haven't seen him myself," Reagan
said, "but every once in a while our little dog,
Rex, will start down that long haU toward that
room just glaring as if he's seeing something
and barking. And he stops in front of Lincoln's door, the bedroom door."
Reagan, during his appearance Thursday,
said that once when this happened, he walked
down the haD and opened the door, then stepped into the room.
... turned around for him to come on, and
he stood there, still barking and growling and
then started backing away and would not go
in the room."
Reagan then told the students that, "if he is
stiD there, don't have any fear at aU. I think
it would be very wonderful to have a little
meeting with him and probably very helpful. "
SOURCE: AP in The Chronicle,
Houston, TX. 2114/87
CREOrr: Scott Parker via COUD-I

Scientists froze a beagle and successfuDy

thawed out the dog in an experiment that
might one day lead to bloodless surgery and
human suspended animation, the researchers
say.
Dr. Paul Segall, an associate professor of
physiology at the University of California at
Berkeley, and his feUow researchers are reporting the results of their work this week at
the annual meeting of the Federation of
Americim Societies for Experimental Biology
in Washington, D.C.
J"he project was supported by the American Cryonics Society, Life Extension Foundation and Trans Time cryonics company.
Similar freezing experiments have been
done on hamsters and dogs, but the other
dogs have suffered debilitating side effects,
SegaI1 said.
"After nine months, the dog is happy,
spunky and shows no signs of poor health,"
SegaI1 and his associates said in a paper.
Last June, the dog named Miles was given
anesthetics, cooled in a crushed-ice bath,
hooked up to monitoring devices and surgicaDy prepared for cardiopulmonary bypass.
The dog's normlil body temperature of
. . . . FOUDdby P8Ycbic
about 101 degrees Fahrenheit was lowered to
Ventnor police said yesterday that they had
68 degrees, and his circulating blood was re~ discovered who pawned the ring that the
placed with a blood substitute, the scientists owner said was found by a psychic in an
said.
Atlantic City pawnshop, but that the owner,
The animal's body temperature was then Joan Siracusa, 46, of Ventnor, had declined
lowered to 37 degrees, his circulation stopped, to sign a complaint against the suspect.
and the life-support pumps turned off about .
''The case has been referred to the [Atlan20 minutes. Miles then was warmed up and tic] County prosecutor," said Ventnor police
the blood substitute was replaced with his own Lt. Anthony Librizzi. A spokeswoman for
blood, which had been refrigerated during the the prosecutor's office said yesterday that the
'procedure.
case had not yet been reviewed.
Additional research is planned on monSiracusa told police that on Dec. 27 she
keys, and Segall said he hoped to extend the found that her $6,000 diamond ring was missfreezing time to three hours.
ing. She consulted a psychic friend who per"We think that wiD give us more time, so if formed "automatic handwriting" during
the surgeon needs five or six hours to get a which the name of an Atlantic City pawnshop
tumor out, they'D have it," he said in a recent was psychicaUy transmitted, Siracusa said.
interview.
The ring was later found at Smith's Gold
Such capability also could aUow doctors to Mine pawnshop.
store donated organs for transplantation, or SOURCE: The Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA
preserve someone needing an organ transplant
In/87
until one is available.
CREOrr: H. HoDander
First Quarter

1987

SOD Oia Father Old

A man died of a possible heart attack while
playing basketbaU on the same playground
court where a heart attack kiDed his father a
decade. earlier, a relative said.
Rodney Harris, 18, was pronounced dead
at 4:36 p.m. Friday in Bernard MitcheD Hospital, said Anne Duggan at University of Chicago Hospitals.
Harris' aunt, Tina Harris, said Harris and
his father, Willie "Sonny" Harris, "died
practicaUy identically the same, on the same
playground."
SOURCE: Asbury Park Press, NJ
2/9/87
CREorr: Nancy Warth

Tug Mining 4 Moat'"

Reappears Like Ghollt
When a tow line snapped and the unmanned tug Gordon GiD vanished in a raging North
Pacific storm in Anchorage, Alaska last October, the crew of the tow vessel thought it
was gone for good in the huge waves and
fierce winds.
For six days, searchers found no trace of
the 6O-foot Gordon GiD. Its owner, Arctic
.Offshore Ltd. of Edmonton, Alberta,
chartered planes to search the stormy seas 320
miles southeast of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Patrolling Coast Guard aircraft
also came up empty. The Gordon Gill seemingly had vanished.
Then, on Tuesday night, like a ghost, the .
Gordon Gill came back.
Coast Guard spokesman Mark Farmer said
yesterday the skipper of the fishing vessel Sea
Star had spotted the tug 25 miles southeast of
Dutch Harbor and was towing it there.
"It was in perfect shape after spending four
months on the North Pacific," Farmer said of
the tug, "and there's some bad weather out
there."
SOURCE: AP in The Plain Dealer,
Cleveland, OH 3/1/87
CREOrr: Wayne Cermak

19 Old CItI..
FouDd ia China
Nineteen ancient cities have been uncovered
in an area of China's far north previously
thought to have been an uninhabited marshland.
.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Jan.
21 the discoveries challenged ideas that the
area in Heilongjiang province had been a noman's land for thousands of years.
The ruins, discovered on land reclaimed for
farming, appear to have been occupied by the
Yilou people 2,000 years ago, Xinhua said.
One city had two parts linked by roads,
with 89 cave dwellings between them. The
outer city of one part was surrounded by a
2O-foot wide moat and the inner city by a
1,545-foot long wau and a 52-foot wide moat.
SOURCE: AP in the Sun, Baltimore, MD
3/1/87
CREorr: H. Hollander

Pursuit 45

The Notes of Charles Fort

Deciph..... by Cad d. Pabst
ABBREVIATIONS "
A
abo
Ac to

Am J. Sci
An Reg
Ap pf Madonna
Astro ReS

BA
BCF
B.D.
Bel
B of Cygnus
Cas.
C.et.T
(Ch)
Co. Donn
C.R.
(Cu[t))
0-209
o News
Del met
dif.
Edin N. Ph. J.
Ent.
Ext. whirlwind
(F)

F of I.
(Fr)
Frgs
inciend.

Aurora
about
According to
American Journal of Science
Annual Register
Apparition of Madonna
Astronomical Register
Report of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science
"
The Books of Charles Fort
The Book of the Damned
Belgium
(1)
Cassiopeia
Ciel et Terre
CluJos [Fort's working title for New Lands)
County Donn
Comptes Rendus

illustrated
The Book of the Damned, page 209
London Daily News
Detonating meteorite
different
Edinburgh New Philosophictzl Journal
Entomology /?J
Extraordinary whirlwind
Fletcher's List
Friend of India
France
Frogs
incendiary

Intro to Met
It
La Sci Pou Tous
LeMon. Un.
LT
~et or metite
mt
MWR
Niles Nat. Resister
N.M.

NQ
obj
phe
Polt
P.P.
q
Rept. B. Assoc
Revue et Mag. Zool.
(S)
"
S.C.

ScAm
Simq's
Spon Comb
Symon's Met
(th. stone)
tho storm
TImb's
volc

Y.B.

Introduction to Meteorology
Italy
La Science Pou Tous
Le Moniteur Universel
London Times
meteorite
mountain
Monthly Weather Review "
Niles' National Register
No More
Notes and Queries
object
phenomena
Poltergeist
[1]
earthquake
Report of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science
Revue et Magasin de Zoologie"
[1] Sea
South Carolina
Scientific American
Simultaneous [1] earthquakes
Spontaneous Combustion
Symon's Meteorological Magadne
thunderstone
thunderstorm
Timb's Year Book
volcano
Year Book of Facts

(Continued from PURSurr Vol. 19,

1846 June 16 I 2:30 p.m. I Derby I

14, page 192)

Several wason-loads of hay caught up seen to fall at Richland, S.C., during stranse arrivals."

peculiar meteoric stone, which was

from a field and held suspended near- a violent

ly Ih hour. I Times 20-7-6.
[Reverse side] th!Jndergust in the
1846 June-July I England / Spon 1846 J
In I Rh 'sh Pr'
/ summer of 1846," ac to Prof.
"
_
_
trees
/
Til'mes,
1846,
July
une
7
em
ovmces
"
Comb D'-"
FiIball
SA 60
Shepard. / A.J. Sci: 2/10/127 /
rI e
.
17/8/d.
almost perfectly round, 2\1,. inches in
1846 June 20 / 8:30 p.m. / Autun, diameter I
1846 June 3 I Great det met I
France I Fireball / BA 60.
[Front side] glazed outside - inside,
Moreton Bay, Austrw / SA 60.
1846 June 7 I Darmstadt / Stonefall, 1846 June 21 I Belsium, Baden, the appearance of firebrick.
&c. to Poggendorff's Annalen, 4-377 Bavaria I Large met / N to S / SA 1846 summer I Great numbers of a
60.
rare hawk moth I Symon's Met.
/ SA 60.
"
1846 June 7 I Darmstadt I "not a 1846 June 21 I Smyrna, Asia Minor I 27/144.
1846 summer / Stone was seen to fall
stonefall, only slas I SA 67-416 I q III [medium] I SA 'II.
0-69.
1846 June 25 / q. I Smyrna I L.T., at- Richland, S.C., durins a violent
thundergust. I described in A.J. Sci.
July 2O-8-a.
[BCF, p. 71:
2/10/127
Something that was said "to have 1846 June 27 / Vesuvius especially
[Reverse side] by Prof. Shepard I
fallen at Darmstadt, June 7, 1846; violent. I Leeds Times, July 25.
almost perfectly round I 2 \1,. inches
Hsted by Greg (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1846 June 291 Parma / Fireball/SA in diameter. Coated by a dark reddish
1867-416) as "only slas. "]
60.
brown Slaze / inside like ordinary
1846 June 8-16 I Great q. I Greece I
firebrick.
1846
last
of
June
I
fross
I
River
SA 'II.
Humber, England I MWR 4S1221 I 1846 summer / Ent. I See back, May
1846 June 14 or 7 I Ext. whirlwind at L. Times, July 711846.
9.
Greenheys, ac to Manchester Guar1846 June 2S I "Hull Packet," July 3 1846" summer I See to birds. Oct.
dian before 20th /
17-18, 1846.
[Reverse side] At to Notts Mercury / Little frogs fell upon vessels in the
before 27th I another peculiar whirl Humber. The seacoast was "covered 1846 June / Frgs / Brief mention I
L.T., July 7-7-b.
near Derby / hay taken up and held with myriads of them." Near Hull.
suspended half an hour.
1846 summer / Dumfrieshire I great 1846 June 25 / In heavy th storm, ac
1846 June 16, at least to / Shocks in numbers of the rare Convolvulus to Hull Packet, July 3, fross dropped
upon vessels
Greece, though less violent, stiD con- moth I
[Reverse side] Symon's Met 27-144.
[Reverse side] in the river Humb[er],
tinuing. I
[Reverse side] D. News, July 4.
1846 summer I (th. stone) I "A very and the coast near Kilingholme Light

Pursuit 46

was "covered with myriads of the

1846 July I I [L1], 80d / Hecla.
1846 July 3 / Clouds of gnats at Man"chester I Zoologist 4-1444.
1846 July S / Great thunderstorms in
England. (See Times). At ShQlver,
near Oldham, "large quantities" of
hay were carried up by the whirlwind,
and entirely disappeared. Similar phe
in another place. I Leeds Times, July
11-8-1.
"
1846 July S / Tremendous migration
of Painted Lady, at Dover.
[Reverse side) Supposed from Calais.
/ LT. 1879, Aug. IS-I2-4.
1846 July" S I From France to Dover
- vast swarms of painted lady
butterflies I L.T., Aug. IS, 1879/
[Reverse side] Darkening the air and I
after them, an hour or so, a gale from
their direction.
"1846 July 7 I Invasion of coast of
Kent, by white butterflies. I Zoolosist, 4-1443.
1846 July 9 I Extraordinary flight of
butterflies across the
[Reverse side] Channel from France
to England - a cloud of them that
obscured the sun. I An. Reg.
1846 July 12 / Paris / 10:IS p.m. I
Meteor /"BA 60.

First Quarter 1987

1846 July i3 I Between Cologne and

Ostend, prodigious numbers
[Reverse side) of butterflies of the
Pontia rapae. I Gardeners' Chronicle, Aug. I.
1846 July 13 I 9:30 p.m. I Va., Del.,
N.J., N.Y., Conn. I great met I full
details in Am. J. Sci. 2/41/347.
1846 July 17 I [L7]. 8-d I Spon.
Comb.
1846 July 18 I Leeds Times of I A
black swan and an American horned
owl shot in dif. parts of England.
Also a great flight of butterflies over
the Channel. An hour after their arrival in England, though it was calm
when they came, came a great gale
[Reverse side) in the direction they
travelled in.
1846 July 23 I Bolide at Toulouse I
C.R. 25-259.

meteor from B of Cygnus I C.R. [Reverse side) Cherson and Tauris. I

23-!i5O.
D. News, Sept. 10.
1846 Aug. 14 I q - Italy I BA 'II. 1846 Sept. 121 Gardener's Chronicle
1846 Aug. 141 Leghorn I qs to 21st I of I Large flight of locusts
D. News, Sept. 1 II At Pisa before [Reverse side) over Hendon. Settled
the q., heat was suffocating. I D. on hedges and attracted a crowd to
watch them.
News - Sept. 4.
1846 Aug. 141 q. I Tuscany I preced- 1846 Sept. 19 I Ap of Madonna, La
ed by suffocating heat I details of q. Salette I France I L Times, 1873,
Aug. 22/3/[note crumbling).
in Niles Nat. Register, Oct. 3.

1846 July 29 I q. I Bel I C. et. T

B/3B.

1846 Aug. 14/It I Pisan Hills I great

q I [BA) 'II.

1846 Aug. 1 I N.M. I Great hail I

London I Symons' Met M. 12-82.

1846 Aug. 171 Dijon I N.W. to S.E.

I FirebBll1 BA 60.
1846 Aug. 13 I Iskatsk I q I BA 'II.
1846 Aug. 24 I Aurora I brilliant I
Boston, Mass. I D. News - Sept. 16.
1846 Aug. 24 I Dordogne I E to W I
great met. I BA 60.
1846 Aug. I great q's in China I [SA)

1846 Aug. 14 I 12:!i0 p.m. I q. I

Leghorn. I boiling water cast up from
earth I "There was a
[Reverse side) thick haze, which did
not fail to make a sinister
impression." I D. News, 25th.
1846 Aug. 14 I q in Tuscany I had
been prec:ede[d) by a great drought all
summe[r] I C.R. 23/476 I 468 I
especially in Naples and Tuscany.
1846 Aug., sept. I Many locusts in
1846 July 2!i I Gardeners' Chronicle England I Zoologist !111678.
of I Black swan shot on the river
[Reverse side) Eden, near Niddry 1846 Aug: 14 I The Red Sea volc I
Mill. Believed to be the only oc- smoke from I Zebayer Islands I Red
Sea I Athenaeum 1846-1226.
curence in Great Britain.
1846 July 25 I B. swan I Chronicle, 1846 Aug. 141 12:!i0 p.m. I Leghorn,
Aug. I, said should be Niddic Mill. Italy I disastrous shock I sky clear
Cor had written believed it was an but a
[Reverse side) thick mist I L. T., Aug.
escaped black swan - said that '
[Reverse side) on a previous evening it 2!i-!i.e.
been seen on river near Clayton, 1846 Aug. 14 I Men in mines felt no
"perfectly tame."
shock. I [L7]. Sept. 1~. I But
1846 July 25 I [L7]. !i.e I Many' fissures opened in the ground.
1846 Aug. 141 Smoke from supposed
meteors III
extinct volc mt on Saddle
[Reverse side] 181 1646.
1846 July 25 I (Ch) I (Cut) I [Reverse side) Island, Red Sea, time
Gloucester I Opening cloud - thing ~f Sq.ually weath[er), thunder and
size of moon fall[s) and returns to IIghtmng. I L. T., Sept. 23-3-d.
doud. Brit. Assoc. 18!i2l1BB I 1846 Aug. 14 I Cape Girardeau,
Missouri I Met I (F).
C-29 + .

1846 Aug. 11 One of the mostterrific

tho storms in Kent, England. I
Galagnani's Messenger, May 7-3-3,
i849.
1846 Aug. 1 I Day of tremendous th
storm in London and other parts of
England I a tidal wave
'II.
[Reverse side] several feet high at
1846 Aug. 2!i I 5 a.m. I q I Mass. I
Penzance, Cornwall I D. News Niles Nat. Reg., Aug. 29.
Sept. 10.
1846 Aug. 3 to Sept: I q's I China I 1846 Aug. 25 I 2:30 a.m. I Meteor I
7-9, 14 - Italy I 17 - Switzerland I Dordogne I C.R. 23-!i49.
18 - Siberia I q's I BA 'II.
1846 Aug. 26 I 4:" a.m. I Boston
1846 Aug. 3 - to Sept. I China I q's and other parts Mass I q. I D. News,
Sept. 16.
I 7-9 - Italy I 14 - Italy I 17 Switzerland liB - Siberia I q's I BA 1846 Aug. 27 I 9:50 a.m. I Another
'Ill
damaging shock I Leghorn I D.
[Reverse side) Sim q's I Feb. IB, News - Sept. !i.
18B9.
1846 Sept. I About three pages of
1846 Aug. 10 I Few mets I at Dijon I records of captures of locusts in
14 in one hour I BA 47-16.
various parts of
1846 Aug. 10 I !i p.m. I Met. iron I [Reverse side] England I Zoologist
Co. Donn, Ireland IA.J. Sci. 40mB.
2111/37.
1846 Sept. I I [L7]. 6-b I Wild man
1846 Aug. 12, 13 I Sept. 12, 191 Oct. of the prairies.
24, 28 II It I Sounds I Sound phe I 1846 Sept. 10 I D. News of I Russia?
Italy I See IBI6.
I Immense swarms of locusts in the
1846 Aug. 13 I 10:47 p.m. I Paris I districts of

First Quarter 1987

Details in La sCi Pou Tous. 1-127.

Came all at once, after an uninterrupted rain of several days - like
drops of blood and decomposed like
the separation in a drop
[Reverse side) of blood of the serum
from the red corpuscles. According to
analysis by a chemist, it was earthy
matter.
1846 Oct. 16, 17 I Vast red rain and
birds fell in streets. I France I 0.239.

1846 Sept. I About 20 captures of

Vanessa antiopa (C. Beauty),
[Reverse side] various parts of [BCF, pp. 251-2!i3:
Tremendous red rain in France,
England. I Zoologist 4-1!i06.
1846 Sept. 23 I [L7]. 3-d I Volc in Oct. 16 and 17, 1846; great storm at
the time, and red rain supposed to
Red Sea.
have been colored by matter swept up
1846 Sept. 2!i I London, etc. I Met. ,from this earth's surface, and then
det. I BA 60.
precipitated
(Comptes
Rendus.
23-B32). But in Comptes Rendus.
1846 Sept. 2!i I 10 p.m. I London 24-625, the description of this red rain
meteor light so powerful
[Reverse side) like daylight I 30 differs from one's impression of red,
sandy or muddy water. It is said that
seconds I D. News, 26th.
1846 Sept. 261 Gardeners' Chronicle this rain was so vividly red and so
of I At Stowmarket, 4 specimens of blood-like that many persons in
France were terrified. Two analyses
Sphinx convolvuli,
[Reverse side) an exceedingly rare are given (Comptes Rendus. 24-812).
One chemist notes a great quantity of
moth at Stowmarket.
corpuscles - whether blood-like cor1846 Sept. 27 I City in sky over Liver- puscles or not - in the matter. The,
pool - supposed to be mirage of other chemist sets down organic matEdinburgh.
ter at 35 per cent. It may be that an
[Reverse side] There was at the time a inter-planetary dragon had been slain
panoramic mod[el) of City of Edin- somewhere, or that this red fluid, in
burgh and a party at Liverpool, which were many corpuscles, came
perhaps suggesting the "identifica- from something not altogether pleation." I Rept B. Assoc. 184712/39. sant to contemplate, about the size of
the Catskill Mountains, perhaps - '
[BCF, p. 421:
Sept. 27, 1846 - a city in the sky of but the present datum is that with th4
Liverpool (Rept. B.A., 1847-39). The substance, larks, quail, ducks, and
apparition is said to have been a water hens, some of them alive, fell at
mirage of the city of Edinburgh. This Lyons and Grenoble and other
"identification" seems to have been places.
I have notes upon other birds 'thilt
the product of suggestion: at the time
a panorama of Edinburgh was upon have fallen from the sky, but unaccompanied by the red rain that makes
exhibition in Liverpool.]
the fall of birds in France peculiar,
1846 Oct. I Russia I polt in pile of and very peculiar, if it be accepted
logs.
that the red substance was extra-mun1846 Oct. I I [L7]. 6-f I Comrie I dane. The other notes are upon birds
violent.
that have fallen from the sky, in the
1846 Oct. 9 I 8:0!i p.m. I bolide at midst of storms, or of exhausted, but
living, birds, falling not far from a
Dijon. I CR 231986.
storm-area. But now we shall have an
1846 Oct. 9/B:45 p.m. I 10th, B p.m. instance for which I can find no
I great mets at Fene-sous-Jouarre I
parallel: fall of dead birds, from a
[Reverse side) CR 23-71B.
clear sky, far-distant from any storm
1846 Oct. 9 I 9 p.m. I Great to which they could be attributed detonating meteor at Chartres I
so remote from any discoverable
[Reverse side) C.R. 23-814 I and storm thatTroyes I Said that at Loiret, ab 10
My own notion is that, in the sump.m., great met.
mer of IB96, something, or some be1846 Oct. 9 I Paris, Orleans, etc. I ings, came as near to this earth as
they could, upon a hunting expediMet. det. I B.A. 60.
tion; that, in the summer of IB96, an
1846 Oct. 9 I 9:15 p.m. I Paris I expedition of super-scientists passed
bolide size of moon I C.R. 23-71B.
over this earth, and let down a drag1846 Oct. 10 I It I Sounds I Orciana net - and what would it catch,
(Toscana) I "subterranean rumbl- sweeping through the air, supposing
ings" I See 1816.
it to have reached not quite to this
1846 Oct. 11 I Destructive hurricane earth?
In the Monthly Weather Review,
I Cuba I N.Y. Herald, Nov.
May, 1917, W.L. McAtee quotes
23-2-3+ .
from the Baton Rouge correspon1846 Oct. 16-17 I Many birds with the dence to the Philadelphia Times:
dust storm. I C.R. 24-625.
That, in the summer of 1896, into
1846 Oct. 16 and 17 I Southeastern the streets of Baton Rouge, La., and
France I Rain of organic substances. from a "clear sky," fell hundreds of

**

Pursuit 47

dead birds. There were wild ducks

and cat birds, woodpeckers, and
"many birds of strange plumage,"
some of them resembling canaries.
Usually one does not have to look
very far from any place to learn of a
storm. But the best that could be
done in this instance was to say:
"There had been a storm on the
coast of Florida."
And, unless we have psycho-chemic
repulsion for the explanation, the
reader feels only momentary astonishment that dead birds from a storm
in Florida should fall from an unstormy sky in Louisiana, and with his intellect greased like the plumage of a
wild duck, the datum then drops off.
Our greasy, shiny brains. That they
may be of some use after aU: that
other modes of existence place a high
value upon them as lubricants; that
we're hunted for them; a hunting expedition to this earth _ the newspapers report a tornado.
If from a clear sky, or a sky in
which there were no driving clouds,
or other evidences of still-continuing
wind-power - or, if from a storm in
Florida, it could be accepted that
hundreds of birds had fallen far
away, in Louisiana, 1 conceive, conventionally, of heavier objects having
fallen in Alabama, say, and ofthe fall
of still heavier objects still nearer the
origin in Florida.
The sources of information of the
Weath!!r Bureau are widespread.
It has no records of such falls.
So a dragnet that was let down
from above somewhere Or something that I learned from
the more scientific ofthe investigators
of psychic phenomena:
The readers begin their works with
prejudice against telepathy and
of
psychic
everything
else
phenomena. The writers deny spiritcommunication, and say that the
seeming data are data of "only
telepathy." Astonishing instances of
seeming clairvoyance _ "only telepathy." After a while the reader finds
himself agreeing that it's only telepathy - which at first, had been in
to Ierable to h1m.
So maybe, in 1896, a super-dragnet
did not sweep through this earth's atmosphere, gathering up all the birds
within its field, the meshes then suddenly breaking Or that the birds of Baton Rouge
were only from the Super-Sargasso

Sea Upon which we shall have another

expression. We thOUght we'd settled
that, and we thought we'd establish
that, but nothing's ever settled, and
nothing's ever established, in a real
sense, if, in a real sense, there is
nothing in quasiness.
1 suppose there had been a storm
somewhere, the storm in Florida,
perhaps, and many birds had been
swept upward into the SuperSargasso Sea. It has frigid regions
and it has tropical regions - that
birds of diverse species had been
swept upward, into an icy region,

Pursuit 48

where, huddling together for warmth,

they had died. Then, later, they had
been dislodged - meteor coming
along - boat - bicycle - dragon don't know what did come along something dislodged them.)
1846 Oct. 16 and 17 I Fr I Drome and
Isere I fall of sand I C.R. 24-625,
810.

I.e Mon. Un. 27-2-1.

1846 Oct. 19 or about I At Bourgoin,

a rain of substance colored like
blood. Switzerland?
(Reverse side] AJso at Grenay, Le
Verpilliere and several other communes. Usual attempt to explain that
probably in a water-spout from the
(Front side) ferrig (what for iron-like)
1846 Oct. 16, etc. I Nothing in soil around Bourgoin. I
(Reverse side) Le Monireur Universe/,
Sydney Morning Herald.
Oct. 26-1-3.
1846 Oct. 17 - to Dec. 17 I Mets uncommonly abundant at Whitehaven. 1846 Nov. I A I Am. J. Sci. 213/126.
The
1846 Nov. 3 I Deluges from previous
(Reverse side) most remarkable were rains and 2 shocks of quake. I
Oct. 17 and 26, and on Nov. 10, 11, Algeria I
12.
(Reverse side) D. News, 14th.
1846 Oct. 17 I (S) I At Bourg- 1846 Nov. 6 17:30 p.m. I Met. train
Argental (Loire), at ab 11 :30 a.m., a I 15 minutes I Dijon I C.R., 23-985.
fog appeared suddenly. I C.R. 24-811
1846 Nov. 9 I 7:30 p.m. I Dijon I
[Reverse side) Then a red substance in Meteor with intense light. I
rain. To the touch it was oleaginous. (Reverse side) Report upon same or
It ceased at 12:30. At 2, fell again. I another met at Dijon for 8:05 p.m. I
but other places not current.
C.R. 23-986.
1846 Oct. 17 I hot winds, etc. I 18<t(jNov. 1()'12I Metsl See Oct. 17.
Grenoble I Sky covered with
brownish, dusty vapor all day. No 1846 Nov. 19, etc. I Nothing in N.Y.
rain, but
Herald.
[Reverse side] blasts of hot wind with 1846 Nov. 19 I Novas 1M. Jelenski
the thunder and lightning, like the saw, at Avranches, a luminous point
sirocco (spell right?). Ab 1 p.m., tho in Cassiopeia about the
storm of rain. Many water birds [Reverse side) magnitude of Sirius. I
thrown into houses by the wind. C.R. 23-986 I The diameter increased
Found morning of 18th. I
(accroitic) but the light diminished.
[Front side) "Le Moniteur Universel Visible 20 minutes. I At same point in
26-1-3.
Cas.
1846 Oct. 17 lAb. 6:15 p.m., at Di- 1846 Nov. 23 I (Ln, 2-4 - Girl in
jon, met size of Jupiter. I C.R. Wrenham, Mass., sent to jail for at23-985
teni.pting
"
.
1846 Oct.
I At. Ardeche, reddish (Reverse side) to pass herself off upon
matter unlike. soil there. I C.R. her employer, a physician, as possess23-832 I ~so ID Isere..
ing supernatural powers.
[Reverse side) In all ~Iaces, It. was the 1846 Nov. 24 I A little before midcolor of blood - said had fn~ten~ night of 24th I Comrie I at Crieff I q"
many. Repor~ed from Burgom. Said I LT, Dec. 1-6-f.
was a ~errugmous clay common to 1846 Nov. 25 I Lowell - obj seen
that region.
".
coming as a meteor seemed larger
1846 Oct. 17 I DIJon I ~:15 p.m. I than the sun. Names given in Times
thr(ou]gh sky covered With clouds I are Bostic, Dayer, Balicost, Collins.
C.R. 23-985 I
1846 Nov. 261 Mrs. Adam's father's
(Reverse side] A great meteor. I name was Joel Powers. I Nature
Duration said been 5 to 8 minutes. I 84-106.
(verified) I at Hanau.
1846 Nov. 261 New volcano in Chile,
1846 Oct. 18 ( 2 p.m. I ~mart shock I "30 leagues from Talca. I BA 5()"82.
Calcutta I Fnend of India, Oct. 2211 1846 Nov. 261 Lowell I Substance I
(Reverse side) Severe at Mymensing, See July 28, 1910.
BengalI F of I., Oct. i91 BA 'II = I
(minor shock].
1846 abo Nov. 261 Lowell I Mass (?)
1846 Oct. 17 I (Ardeche) I Isere I I Luminous object in sky. Fell "a
several places, rain reddish earth I most fetid jelly, about 4 feet in
C.R. 23/832 II
diameter, which
(Reverse side] South East France I (Reverse side) weighed 442 pounds."
241625, 810, 822.
I LT, Dec. 18, 1846 I (See July 28,
1910.)
1846 Oct. 17-181 night I Great storm
along Loire. Bridge carried away. 1846 Nov. 26 I Great gale I New
England I N.Y. Trib I blizzard.
Many
(Reverse side) houses overthrown. I 1846 (Dec 5] I Metite I Gergenti, in
Le Moniteur Universel, Oct. 20 I See Sicily I Le Moniteur. p. 27441 P.P.
943l.
"
24th.
1846 Oct. 17-18 I At Valence 1846 Dec. 5 I Girgenti, Sicily I At
(Drome), tremendous thunderstorm. least says "il y a quinze jours". I See
Feb. 10, 1853. I Not said was found.
Considerable number
(Reverse side) of birds of different I
species driven into the town by the (Reverse side] Moniteur Universe/,
storm. Grives, macreuses, canards. I Dec, 14 I Aerolite had fallen. A

I?

yellowish cloud mark!!d the "place of

explosion in the sky.
1846 Dec. 5 I (L71. 8-e I 1O-6-b I
9-5-f I Dif incend. fires.
1846 Dec. 11 / (L71. 2-e I Singular
delusions.
1846 Dec. 12 I Whirl on land and
pillar of fire seen at sea. / L. T., Feb.
19/1847, 3/f I

(Reverse side] Edin N. P,"J 45/1111

B Assoc 18/41 I See Feb. 19.
1846 Dec. 21 I (It) I morning I
Remarkable met I panna I B.A.
6().84.
1846 Dec. 24 I q. I Java I BA 11.
1846 Dec. 25 I (F) I Minderthal,
Bavaria I Metite I BA 6().84.

1847
1847 I Rain of frogs I Cahors I
L' Astro 6-273 I
(Reverse side] Had been another, abo
1818.
1847/48 I Scotscraig, near Tayport I
Charles B. Baxter, in Glasgow
Herald, July 21, 1894 I small frogs
fell I ground covered with I fell on
his clothes I
(Reverse side] NQ 8/6/104.
(BCF, p. 426:
Beacon-like lights that have been
seen upon the moon. The lights have
been desultory. The latest of which I
have record was back in the year
1847. But now, if beginning in the
early 60's, though not coinciding with
the beginning of unusual and tremendous manifestations upon this earth,
we have data as if of greatly
stimulated attempts to communicate
from the moon why one
assimilates one's impressions of such
great increase with this or with that,
all according to what one's dominant
thoughts may be, and calls the product a logical conclusion. Upon the
night of May 15, 1864, Herbert Ingall, of Camberwell, saw a little to the
west of the lunar crater "Picard, in the
Mare Crisium, a remarkably 'bright
spot (Astro. Reg., 2-264).)
1847 Jan. 8, 11, Feb. 2, 14, 19, 21,
Ap. I, June 9, Aug. 8 I qs I New
England I See Nov. 9; 1810.
1847 Jan. 10 I Vienna I met train /10
.
I BA 6().16.
mlDutes
1847 Jan. 14 I Aurora I C.R. 24-89.
1847 Jan. 19 I Severe q I Copiapo I
BA s()'82.
1847 Jan. 2S I Fr I Lucon (Vendee) I
qIBA'Il.
1847 Jan. 30 lin the Eifel, mountains"
near Blankenheim, (and] "Bavaria,
larvae fell with
(Reverse side] snow. I Revue et Mag.
Zoo\. 1849n5 I (B.D.-93).
"
(BCF, pp. 96-97 I See 1806 winter.]
1847 Feb. 7 I Vole Java I severe q Ap. 81 A.J. Sci. 2/5/422/ln March,
a mountain sank in a q.
1847 Feb. 191 (L71. 3-f I Whirlwinds
I Land's End.

(to be continued)

" First Quarter 1987

The Society For The Investigation of The Unexplained

Mail: SITU/PURSUIT. P.O. Box 265. Little Silver. NJ 07739-0265 USA Tel: (201) 842-5229
GOVERNING BOARD
Robert C. Warth President; Gregory Arend, Vice-President; Nancy L. Warth, Secretary
and Treasurer; Trustees: Gregory Arend, Marie Cox, Frank Tiewski, Nancy L. Warth.
Robert C. Warth. Martin Wiegler. Albena Zwerver.
SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. George A. Agogino, Distinguished Director of Anthropology Museums and
Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern New Mexico University (Archaeology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato, Director, The Institute for the Rehabilitation of the Brain Injured, Morton, Pa. (Mentalogy)
Dr. Stuart W. Greenwood, Operations Manager, University Research Foundation,
University of Maryland (Aerospace Engineering)
Dr. Martin Kruskal, Program in Applied Mathematics and Computational
Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell, Professor of Biology, Rutgers the State University,
Newark, New Jersey (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic, Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology,
University of Alberta, Canada (Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Michael A. Persinger, Professor, Department of Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada (Psychology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury, Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture, Utah
State University (Plant Physiology)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz, Consultant, National Institute for Rehabilitation
Engineering, Vero Beach, Florida (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Michael D. Swords, Professor, Department of General Studies Science,
Western Michigan University (Natural Science)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott, Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology,
Drew University, Madison, N.J. (Cultural Anthropology and LingUistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight, Chief Geographer, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey,
Washington, D.C. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck, Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, N.J. (Botany)
ORIGINS OF SITU/PURSUIT
Zoologist. biologist. botanist and geologist Ivan T. Sanderson. F.L.S:. F.R.G.S . F.Z.S .. in association with a number of other distinguished authors. established in 1965 a "foundation" for the exposition and research of the paranormal - those "disquieting mysteries of the natural world" to which
they had devoted much of their investigative lifetimes.
As a means of persuading other professionals. and non-professionals having interests similar to
their own. to enlist in an uncommon cause. the steering group decided to publish a newsletter. The
first issue came out in May 1967. The response. though not overwhelming, was sufficient to reassure
the founding fathers that public interest in the what, why and where of their work would indeed survive them.
. '
Newsletter No.2. dated March 1968, announced new plans for the Sanderson foundation: a structure larger than its architects had first envisioned was to be built upon it. the whole to be called the
Society for the Investigation of The Unexplained. as set forth in documents filed with the N.ew Jersey
Secretary of State. The choice of name was prophetic. for Dr. Sanderson titled one of the last of his
two-dozen books "Investigating the Unexplained." published in 1972 and dedicated to the Society.
Another publication was issued in June 1968. but "newsletter" was now a subtitle; above it the
name PURSUIT was displayed for the first time. Vol. 1. No.4 in September 1968 ("incorporating
the fourth Society newsletter") noted that "the abbreviation SITU has now been formally adopted as
the deSignation of our SOCiety." Issue number 4 moreover introduced the Scientific Advisory Board.
listing the names and affiliations of the advisors. Administrative matters no longer dominated the
contents: these were relegated to the last four of the twenty pages. Most of the issue was given over
to investigative reporting on phenomena such as "a great armadillo (6 feet long. 3 feet high) said to
have been captured in Argentina" - the instant transportation of solid objects "from one place to
another and even through solids" - the attack on the famed University of Colorado UFO Project headed
by Dr. Edward U. Condon - and some updated information about "ringing rocks" and "stone spheres."
Thus SITU was born. and thus PURSUIT began to chronicle our Investigation of The Unexplained.

Printed in U.S.A.

ISSN 0033-4685