The UFO Event at the National Press Club

After following up on the National Press Club event about UFOs from last week, it seems as though there was at least some coverage, and perhaps even some new information that came out of it. In the clip featured here, you can get an idea of what the press conference was about, and how it happened.

Looking around the 'net, I have to admit that I'm surprised at how many people are still talking about this event. Not only that, but so many blogs and sites have comments from people saying "I never thought that there was a chance that UFOs were real, but now I have to stop and think about it." I guess that's more than anyone could hope for from such an event.

It also seems like people are suggesting that there were some new pictures of the O'Hare UFO incident featured, one of which is below.



I actually thought I'd seen that before, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

The mocking continues for many out there, however. In the clip below, the CNN correspondent seems like he's really trying to cover the subject in a professional manner when the anchor, who honestly seems a little on the air-head side, giggles and says that when she thinks of people who believe in UFOs she thinks of freaks.



Not exactly professional, but, just the fact that CNN had the Larry King Live special, and then covered the NPC event speaks volumes to where the UFO enigma seems to have gone over the past few years. It's not a "career killer" anymore, like it used to be, for a news person to speak about in a serious matter.

After reading some of the testimony, parts really stand out in my mind, and I'll try to hit on the highlights of the discussion and comments from most of the attendees below.

I was glad to see Fife Symington, the former Governor of Arizona, apologize for his mockery of the Phoenix lights previously when he was the current Governor. For those who don't remember, he called a press conference claiming that he solved the mystery, and then presented a man in an alien costume. To set the record straight, he now claims that not only did he make serious inquiries into the event, but that he was also an eye witness. He's not making fun of it anymore, and he claims to be upset by the insinuation of the local Air Force that all he saw were flares. He called it a "silly explanation."

An interesting point was made by Roy Bower, a pilot from the UK. He claims to have seen two UFOs while flying a passenger jet. The UFOs were observed by passengers and another plane as well, and he says a radar hit may have been recorded as well. His point was that in the UK there's a system for reporting such incidents, and they are investigated. He was surprised to hear that the O'Hare incident seems to have never been investigated, and he feels that had that happened in the UK it would have been handled differently. He called it his "duty" to report what he saw in the sky, and says he's faced no ridicule for doing so. He urged pilots from the US to report what they see and what they've seen, and not let the FAA obstruct a real investigation into it.

Rodrigo Bravo Garrido followed that up by saying that in Chile, where he has investigated UFOs for the military, there's also a system for investigating UFOs. He made the point that he feels there can be dangerous consequences for an unknown object in the skies hovering around airplanes. He cited the case of a 737 coming into an airport to land, only to find that a "large white light surrounded by green and red" was in its way. The pilot had to make a steep turn in order to avoid a collision.

Next up, Wilfried De Brouwe, a retired Major General of the Belgian Air Force, added to the conversation by saying that investigating UFOs is no easy task. He talked about a "UFO wave" over eastern Belgium when he was in active service which included "a majestic triangular craft with a span of approximately 120 feet, powerful beaming spot lights, moving very slowly without making any significant noise but, in several cases, accelerating to very high speeds" which was witnessed by hundreds of people. That was followed up by hundreds of possible sightings over the next year of UFOs. While the local Air Force attempted to make contact by scrambling jets multiple times, they were ultimately unsuccessful.

Former Chief of Accidents and Investigations for the FAA, John Callahan, then followed with a personal story and an interesting discussion he claims took place with the CIA during the Reagan administration. He told the story of a Japanese cargo plane that was shadowed and "chased" by a UFO over Alaska. The pilot and the crew stated that they saw it with their own eyes and it was about four times the size of a 747. When he received the information, he not only received the radar information, but also the discussion amongst the crew inside of the plane and all of the related data. He found that the radar confirmed what the crew was saying, and so they relayed the data to a scientific staff from the FAA and CIA members. At the end of the briefing he claims that the CIA confiscated all of the data for their people to analyze, and when he suggested that they tell people about the incident, one of the CIA guys told him, "No way, if we were to tell the American public there are UFO's they would panic."

I hate the idea that one of the reasons incidents like this are withheld is because of fear of people's reactions, but, that's been discussed at length recently here.

After that, other pilots continued to tell their stories before Charles Halt told his. He is a retired US Air Force Colonel who was stationed in the UK in 1980 when he witnessed lights in the woods outside of his base, and found some interesting effects from what he witnessed. Shortly after finding three 1 1/2" indentations in the ground, he, and others, witnessed a "bright red/orange oval object with a black center" which he thought looked like an eye. There were broken branches and mild radiation present, and when they approached it "it receded and silently broke into five white lights which quickly vanished." They stepped out of the woods and watched the lights change shape and then several other objects approached. One of them "sent down a concentrated beam near our feet" while another object "sent down beams into the weapons storage area." This incident went on for about an hour while they had trouble communicating using their radios the entire time. He finished his statement by saying that he's sure what he saw was under intelligent control.

Another military incident was relayed by Parvis Jafari, a retired general of the Iranian Air Force. He told a story of a UFO event in which he personally piloted a fighter jet in which he attempted to intercept and engage a UFO. He described it as an "intense red, green, orange and blue light so bright that I was not able to see its body." He locked onto it with radar and says that it had a signature equivalent with a 707 tanker. Shortly thereafter, four objects broke off of the main one. He claims to have attempted to launch a heat seeking missile, fearing he was under attack. Not only did his missile instrumentation go out when he attempted, but he says that whenever the objects came close to him his weapons jammed and his radio communication went out. There was physical evidence also, as one of the objects landed in the sand and left a mark.

James Penniston, formerly of the United States Air Force, then told his personal story about the now infamous Rendlesham incident. His story is actually much like that of Charles Halt. He said that when he went into the forest to investigate what he thought was a downed aircraft he actually found a "ilhouetted triangular craft about 9 feet long by 6.5 feet high..." He also reported problems with his radio as he got close to it, also reported bright lights "swirling" around the outside. He reported that he felt like the air around him was electrified, and that he felt it in his hair and clothes. Interestingly, the team then took the time to attempt a full investigation of the craft. They took photographs, took notebook entries and studied symbols on the side of the craft which were approximately three inches high, and went two and a half feet across the outside. The largest was a triangle in the middle, and the rest were pictorial in design. After 45 minutes the craft lights brightened and it took off at a speed which he called "impossible" and disappeared. All of the photos came back to them overexposed.

At the event he had his actual original log book with the drawings of the symbols on it, but I haven't seen any pictures of that around the 'net. If anyone knows where they might be, I'd love to take a peek.

Shortly thereafter Nick Pope gave his accounts of what he knows. In case you don't know, Book of THoTH did a DVD interview with him which you can purchase here from Amazon. He was formerly with the British Ministry of Defense, and he certainly seems to know exactly what he's talking about.

To end the conference, Oscar Santa Maria Huertas presented his experience as a retired pilot of the Peruvian Air Force. His tale should be a cautionary tale as to the futility of attempting to attack a UFO(as the US military found out when they thought they were shooting at Japanese planes). His unit commander witnessed what they called a "balloon" which was in restricted airspace and refused to communicate or leave the area. The decision was made to take it down, and despite firing sixty-four 30mm shells, at it his "wall of fire" didn't do a thing. He feels as though the shots that were direct hits were actually absorbed by the UFO. He chased it for a while, locked onto it a few times, but was never able to get another shot at it. He did get within 300 feet of it, and described it as "30 feet in diameter. It was an enamelled, cream-colored dome, with a wide, circular, metallic base. It had no engines, no exhausts, no windows, no wings or antennae. It lacked all the typical aircraft components, with no visible propulsion system."

At the end of all of that, I still find it interesting that so many people poke fun at the UFO enigma. No matter what it is, no matter who has seen UFOs, no matter what anyone says, there's something going on, and it would be a major injustice not to take the time to make a legitimate study of the enigma.

Book of THoTH articles have really been piling up on me here, but there's been a couple of really great exclusive articles this week that I think deserve some attention.

Nick Pope wrote a very interesting article for BoT on The Cosford Incident.

For those who aren't familiar with it, here's the intro that Mr. Pope has written for his article:

On 30 and 31 March 1993 there was a series of UFO sightings in the UK involving over a hundred witnesses. Many of these were police officers and military personnel. The UFO also flew directly over two RAF bases. What follows is the extraordinary story of what has been dubbed The British UFO Mystery.

Overview

The first sighting took place on 30 March at around 8.30pm in Somerset. This was followed by a sighting at 9pm in the Quantock Hills. The witness was a police officer who, together with a group of scouts, had seen a craft that he described as looking "like two Concordes flying side by side and joined together". The reports came in thick and fast and when I arrived at work the following morning I received a steady stream of reports ........

...... It was soon clear that I had a major UFO event on my hands. One of the most interesting reports came from a member of the public in Rugely, Staffordshire, who reported a UFO that he estimated as being 200 metres in diameter. He and other family members told me how they had chased the object in their car and got extremely close to it, believing it had landed in a nearby field. When they got there a few seconds later, there was nothing to be seen. Many of the descriptions related to a triangular-shaped craft or of the lights perceived as being on the underside of such a craft. Indeed, in an apparent coincidence these sighting occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in Belgium that had led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO being tracked on radar.

Mr. Pope will be featured in at least one upcoming DVD from Michael Bourne and the Book of THoTH, so I think that we can all look forward to more information from him in the future.

Also on the BoT front page, Michael Bourne, aka THoTH, has written an article on recent scientific investigations into telepathy.

Interestingly, recent tests in the UK and the USA have shown intriguing results which seem to confirm the possibility of the ability to send and receive signals using only the human brain.

They were then taken to separate rooms and wired up to EEG machines, which detect activity in certain parts of the brain.When in these rooms, the subjects were exposed to the sounds of rhythmic drumming to bring their levels of consciousness to a similar state. Whilst in this state, random light flashes were beamed at the "sender". This triggered activity in the visual cortex of the brain (the area which activates with signals from the eye). Their startling discovery was that the visual cortex in the "receiver" also responded in a similar fashion, despite them not being exposed to any light flashes.

These are certainly fascinating results, and they should bear further looking into since they passed peer review and have been published in upstanding scientific journals.

THoTH promises an update to the article with findings from a recent related study in Italy, so keep an eye out for that one!

Paul Kimball's got two more short previews of his upcoming documentary, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases, both with Nick Pope. Check them out here and here or watch them below.

Some big news from author Philip Gardiner was released at Book of THoTH on Wednesday. It seems that the Forbidden Knowledge Conference UK(FKCUK) will be expanding beyond the UK this year. On December 12th to the 15th, 2007, there will be a Forbidden Knowledge Conference in the US, specifically in California. So far the only names which he's released as confirmed speakers are Ellis Taylor, Clinton Deyer and Nick Pope, but he promises there are many big stars yet to be named on board. I'll be sure to post more info on this as I get it. I'm sure this is going to be a big event, and one to look forward to! I know I'm going to do my best to be out in California in mid-December next year.

I've basically got a bunch of interesting articles, and news, from Book of THoTH today, so I thought I'd wrap it all into my 200th post.

Have I really babbled that much in such a short time? Apparently I have...I hope everyone's enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it so far.

First up, IlluminatusRex, a BoT member, has written a new article titled "Why Are Aliens So Shy?" This articles takes a look at the extraterrestrial hypothesis from the stand point of them visiting, but not revealing themselves to people as a whole, and then explores the implications. IR did a nice job on this one and whether you agree with him or not, give his article a read and see what you think.

In the realm of extraterrestrial study there are few questions asked as often as the most natural one: "Why don't they reveal themselves?". Many theories have been created as an explanation for why this hasn't happened.

These 3 are probably the most prevalent ......

1. Revealing themselves would cause mass hysteria amongst us and/or we'd attack them.
2. Mankind is too unevolved and disappointing for them to associate with us.
3. They don't want to interfere with our natural course of development as a species.

Next up is Sol's new article "The Players of Null-A" which takes a look at philosophy, thought patterns, utopian society and auto-suggestion. This is a thoroughly researched article which is really quite enlightening. A must read.

Towards the middle of the 20th Century a novel and original system of thought arose, which was to have far-reaching implications on today's thinking patterns. It was a philosophical theory whose precise didactic argumentation was not readily accessible to laymen, which caused it to remain in the musky realm of scholars and tenured Humanities professors. It had furthermore been criticized as being an incomplete and distorted picture of our reality, and has been largely discounted in its original form by the philosophy establishment, except as a curious historical trend.

Thus the influence of this theory has largely escaped public notice. And yet from its inception, it had been used by its proponents for such a wide range of pursuits as treating shell-shocked soldiers or stopping college riots. It has also spawned several very interesting "cult-like" doctrines, such as Dianetics. Most curiously, many of this theory's tenets have been accepted for granted in the New Age era, though in an entirely different way than what its creator envisioned.

Such was the theory of General Semantics, as outlined by Count Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book, "Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics."

There's also some new news on Philip Gardiner and Michael Bourne's upcoming documentary which I wrote about before. The new article includes quotes from Phil and Michael, along with the official announcement of Nick Pope's involvement.

Last up, but certainly not least, is the official launching of Beyond the Cosmos, which Philip Gardiner and I accidentally broke the news of a little early a couple of weeks ago.

Beyond The Cosmos is the brainchild of Philip Gardiner and THoTH from the Book Of THoTH. The site itself belongs to Angela Davies (Angel) and Philip Gardiner. In here you will find plenty of things to keep you informed and entertained, whilst being able to directly purchase items specifically geared to your interests.

The new site will focus on articles ranging from the paranormal to Ufology, from the esoteric to ancient mysteries. The internet is today's voice of the people. No longer do we need to impress the publishers or agents, now we can share our knowledge with the world. The team behind Beyond The Cosmos want this to be a portal for everybody so come along and join in. Bring your thoughts, your ideas, your knowledge and share with the rest of the world.