Monday, 7 December 2015
Someone Just Queried....
....my stance on confidentiality. I'll make it clear. You report ANYTHING to me then your name, exact location and any identifying material is never ever given out to anyone without your express permission.
There are things in my files that could net me more than a little money - maps, names of very important people I worked with or who were witnesses and much more- and I need the money. But it will never happen. If I reach the point and feel it better to destroy correspondence than let it fall into public domain then I will burn everything.
Whether the AOP Bureau work (despite betrayals by the authorities there) or exotic fauna I say "it's confidential" that is how it stays. It goes with me to the grave.
Clear enough?
There are things in my files that could net me more than a little money - maps, names of very important people I worked with or who were witnesses and much more- and I need the money. But it will never happen. If I reach the point and feel it better to destroy correspondence than let it fall into public domain then I will burn everything.
Whether the AOP Bureau work (despite betrayals by the authorities there) or exotic fauna I say "it's confidential" that is how it stays. It goes with me to the grave.
Clear enough?
"Swansea University Says You Are Lying---"
That immediately meant that I was a liar. Apparently, Swansea had never heard of me. So,I explained to both parties that there had been such a study and I had numerous documents to prove this -including university headed note paper, compliments slips and my name on documents along with those involved. The immediate response was "So you think this is a cover-up by the university -is DEFRA involved? Followed by "What is your response to the university cover up and calling you a liar?" If you have dealt with journalists you'll know how it works.
Did I have to copy all the documents and submit them as proof I was not a liar?
You see, I have always treated my work as private and correspondence as confidential and I have never ever breached that rule in over 40 years. I had bad experiences with two universities before Swansea but I was promised that those involved followed strict protocols and data is fully credited and acknowledge and they would not give me cause for complaint: this was a serious project.
So I agreed.
I even (and I could smash my head into a wall repeatedly over this) handed over field maps, documents and rare books -none were ever returned. Replacing the books cost me around £400 when I eventually managed to find copies. The other material -lost.
My phone calls and messages to the project supervisor at home and the university -never responded to. Letters -never responded to. This happened suddenly and without explanation and considering that I had publicly defended the professor in charge when her credibility was challenged online -and had been there to listen and offer advice on attacks on this persons own livestock you can imagine that it was not just a betrayal but a really hard kick to the stomach. I contemplated just stopping the work. As it was, the original Red Paper: Felids had to be scrapped because it included photographs,maps and data from the people at Swansea that I could not use without permission.
Even after a few years that still hurts.
I could have given the sort of publicity no university wants. But, no, you see, I abide by clear-cut and professional behaviour. All I did was give the reporters the details below from the University of Swansea website.
I have had two other universities contact me since that time and I have refused outright to have any dealings with them. Three times "academics" have used me, my data and then back-stabbed me. If you see anything in the press now -you know the facts. I am tight-lipped.
-
Folk demons or exotic cats: patterns and perceptions of predation in rural Wales (awarded 2009)
Student name: Alaric SmithPhDSupervisor: Professor Alayne Street-PerrottOther supervisor: Dr Pyrs Gruffudd
Sunday, 6 December 2015
Haunted Skies -A National Treasure
Interesting to hear from John Hanson, one of the compilers of Haunted Skies. John noticed, as did I, that online (Amazon and Ebay) copies of volume 2-11 are on sale for £6-7,000 (that's $13-15,000) a copy. There are also copies for £350-700.
NOTHING special about them. Just con-man prices being asked.
These books are a national treasure and will be the historical reference archive for historians in future who are looking into the UK UFO scene.
I cannot recommend these highly enough!
As an historian and bibliophile I only tend to recommend or purchase books that I think will contribute to my own knowledge or to add to my own data base.
If you read the "About" at the top of this page you'll see I've been involved with the strange and unexplained and this started before I had even reached the age of ten because of personal experiences. At school I got involved in a couple of mysteries. And while at Greenway Secondary Boys School, Southmead, Bristol, I decided that I had heard enough family talk and ghost stories -I wanted to learn more and the paranormal eventually led to my getting involved in UFOs in 1974.
So, I have read a lot. I have seen a number of "UFO Encyclopaedia" over -too many- years. They were so-so and generally focussed a lot on the United States -or were just pot-boiler explain-it-all-away type books that tended to have the author(s) heavy slant to them.
I initially read volume 2 (1960-1965) of Haunted Skies with the ennui that decades looking at these things bring. But I was impressed. There is a mass of information in the book and a lot of fresh information dug up by the authors -Dawn Holloway and John Hanson. Photographs, maps, sketches and more. When I finally put the book down I decided that I really had finished a good book -and I am buying the rest!
Haunted Skies has been set the challenge to be "The Encyclopaedia Of British UFOs" and with eleven volumes to date it certainly is turning into that. Have I written that I highly recommend the books yet? Well, I do!
Now if you are interested then visit the Haunted Skies web site and buy through that -there are unauthorised copies being sold by others and the authors get no money from those sales!
http://www.hauntedskies.co.uk/index.html
John Hanson is a retired CID Officer in the West Midlands Police and first became interested in the UFO subject in January 1995, after colleagues sighted a UFO hovering over some trees. This was the trigger for his curiosity; prior to that the very mention of UFOs and ‘flying saucers’ was impossible for him to accept as having any reality in the modern world. The publication of ten Volumes of Haunted Skies which painstakingly catalogue thousands of reports of UFO's/Close Encounter experiences by the public from 1940 onwards, is a project that John and his partner Dawn Holloway have been working on for many years.
Their objective is to educate the public and therefore have published the books at their own expense since the inception of the project.
Notable cases covered in the ten published volumes to date include:
The David Daniels case in which a man who alleged he was an alien actually met up with Admiral Lord Hill-Norton and Ralph Noyes, former head of the MOD.
An investigation into the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980, including amazing photographic anomalies from Rendelsham Forest itself.
The Rendlesham Forest incident will also be the subject of a future book looking at events from Colonel Halt's angle.
Eventually, Hanson and Holloway will have provided valuable historical volumes showing that Britain truly had Haunted Skies!
NOTHING special about them. Just con-man prices being asked.
These books are a national treasure and will be the historical reference archive for historians in future who are looking into the UK UFO scene.
I cannot recommend these highly enough!
As an historian and bibliophile I only tend to recommend or purchase books that I think will contribute to my own knowledge or to add to my own data base.
If you read the "About" at the top of this page you'll see I've been involved with the strange and unexplained and this started before I had even reached the age of ten because of personal experiences. At school I got involved in a couple of mysteries. And while at Greenway Secondary Boys School, Southmead, Bristol, I decided that I had heard enough family talk and ghost stories -I wanted to learn more and the paranormal eventually led to my getting involved in UFOs in 1974.
So, I have read a lot. I have seen a number of "UFO Encyclopaedia" over -too many- years. They were so-so and generally focussed a lot on the United States -or were just pot-boiler explain-it-all-away type books that tended to have the author(s) heavy slant to them.
I initially read volume 2 (1960-1965) of Haunted Skies with the ennui that decades looking at these things bring. But I was impressed. There is a mass of information in the book and a lot of fresh information dug up by the authors -Dawn Holloway and John Hanson. Photographs, maps, sketches and more. When I finally put the book down I decided that I really had finished a good book -and I am buying the rest!
Haunted Skies has been set the challenge to be "The Encyclopaedia Of British UFOs" and with eleven volumes to date it certainly is turning into that. Have I written that I highly recommend the books yet? Well, I do!
Now if you are interested then visit the Haunted Skies web site and buy through that -there are unauthorised copies being sold by others and the authors get no money from those sales!
http://www.hauntedskies.co.uk/index.html
John Hanson Dawn Holloway
John Hanson is a retired CID Officer in the West Midlands Police and first became interested in the UFO subject in January 1995, after colleagues sighted a UFO hovering over some trees. This was the trigger for his curiosity; prior to that the very mention of UFOs and ‘flying saucers’ was impossible for him to accept as having any reality in the modern world. The publication of ten Volumes of Haunted Skies which painstakingly catalogue thousands of reports of UFO's/Close Encounter experiences by the public from 1940 onwards, is a project that John and his partner Dawn Holloway have been working on for many years.
Their objective is to educate the public and therefore have published the books at their own expense since the inception of the project.
Notable cases covered in the ten published volumes to date include:
The David Daniels case in which a man who alleged he was an alien actually met up with Admiral Lord Hill-Norton and Ralph Noyes, former head of the MOD.
An investigation into the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980, including amazing photographic anomalies from Rendelsham Forest itself.
The Rendlesham Forest incident will also be the subject of a future book looking at events from Colonel Halt's angle.
Eventually, Hanson and Holloway will have provided valuable historical volumes showing that Britain truly had Haunted Skies!
Well, That 1930s Incident DOES Exist....But Braemar...
I asked for help in tracking this case down:
1930 (approx date) - 2130 hrs
TOMINTOUL (BANFFSHIRE : SCOTLAND)
TOMINTOUL (BANFFSHIRE : SCOTLAND)
Alexander Irvine and a friend were walking in Smiddy Lane when they saw a white light like a meteor. This light brightened and in it a number of figures could be seen moving around. It was regarded locally as the prevision of a nun’s death.
Note (TH): book published
1937 so contemporary not modern take on event.
Awaiting copy of book.
- MacGregor 1955 p200.
Well, no help. But what can you expect? It seems everyone was quoting IntCat or Jerome Clark, and Clark got his info from IntCat. Dogma repeated is still dogma.
So,I put my hand in my pocket and bought a copy of the only book it might possibly be since the reference cited by IntCat is all that is given.
Book arrived. It IS the source though interpretation of what happened is open. What book? What are the details? You will have to wait until MY book is published.
This week alone I have corrected -by going to the original sources- 30 reports from Ufology to "cryptozoology" and the reason I know the 'experts' have never read the sources cited is because in the same paragraphs of some are even more events that they would have jumped on.
Do you know how many Ufologists/"cryptozoologists" and others want me to tell them what I find out -these are people who CONSTANTLY quote the sources- thirty (30) all of whom have spouted in word and writing the same incredibly inaccurate 'facts' for decades.
So we know they DO NOT carry out real research.
Oh, and the 1958 Braemar, Deeside CE IIIK incident seems to have been a hoax...by someone at FSR who never thought anyone would check. And the bat-winged entity from Kent in 1963...in my book I'll show just how complicit FSR was in misleading readers over that one.
We haven't been lied to by World Governments" on UFOs all these decades: we have been lied to by the false "truth-seekers" and still are.
***************************************************************************
Oh,liked the illo above of the 1963 Hythe "Bat Winged Beast" (though it is inaccurate) but no idea who drew it. If you do please let me know!
Saturday, 5 December 2015
Photographs from a séance with Eva Carrière (1913)
It is interesting to read and see this. Back then, cutting paintings of faeries from a book and propping them up around you and taking a few photos (Cottingley Fairies) got national -international- press attention. Chop up a couple photos of dinosaurs and rephotograph those and there is your proof that dinosaurs still existed in the 1920s-1930s (Kasai Rex , etc.).
This site is worth visiting anyway and I love it: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/photograps-from-a-seance-with-eva-carriere-1913/
****************************************************************************
This remarkable series of photographs are from a book entitled Phenomena of Materialisation
by German physician and psychic researcher Baron von Schrenck-Notzing.
The book focuses on a series of séances that Schrenck-Notzing witnessed
between the years 1909 and 1913 involving the French medium Eva
Carrière, or Eva C. Born Marthe Béraud, Carrière changed her name in
1909 to begin her career afresh after a series of seances she held in
1905 were exposed as a fraud. Her psychic performances as Eva C gained
the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes
mystery series, who believed she was genuine, and also Harry Houdini,
who was not so convinced. Another researcher who became interested in
her case was Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. A series of tests he devised
between the years 1909 and 1913 convinced him that Eva C was the real
deal and in 1913 he published his Phenomena of Materialisation detailing the sessions and the reasons for his belief.
It has been noted that these sessions with Schrenck-Notzing verged on the pornographic. Carrière’s assistant (and reported lover) Juliette Bisson would, during the course of the séance sittings with Schrenck-Notzing, introduce her finger into Carrière’s vagina to ensure no “ectoplasm” had been put there beforehand. this would be followed by Carrière stripping nude at the end and demanding another full-on gynaecological exam. Whether the audience members were obliging is up for debate, but reports that Carrière would run around the séance room naked indulging in sexual activities with her audience suggests perhaps so. One can imagine that this deliberate eroticisation of the male audience might go some way to explaining the ease with which these “investigators” believed the psychic reality of the seances. A decision of fraud on their part would distance their involvement somewhat from the special and heightened context of the séances and so cast their complicity in, or at the least witnessing of, sexual activities in the sober (and more judgemental) cold light of day.
The spiritualist debunker Harry Price wrote that the photographs taken by Schrenk-Notzing, rather than proving the reality of Carrière’s mediumship, in fact did just the opposite. In 1920 Carrière was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research in London and an analysis of her ectoplasm revealed it to be made of chewed paper and the ghostly faces as cut from the French magazine Le Miroir. Back issues of the magazine matched some of Carrière’s ectoplasm faces, including Woodrow Wilson, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the French president Raymond Poincaré. This is something Schrenk-Notzing tries to address in his book, but with not much success. A 1913 newspaper article explained how “Miss Eva prepared the heads before every séance, and endeavoured to make them unrecognizable. A clean-shaven face was decorated with a beard. Grey hairs became black curls, a broad forehead was made into a narrow one. But, in spite of all her endeavours, she could not obliterate certain characteristic lines.”
Visit our post – “Phenomena of Materialisation” – in the Texts section of the site to see the English translation of the book in it’s entirety.
It has been noted that these sessions with Schrenck-Notzing verged on the pornographic. Carrière’s assistant (and reported lover) Juliette Bisson would, during the course of the séance sittings with Schrenck-Notzing, introduce her finger into Carrière’s vagina to ensure no “ectoplasm” had been put there beforehand. this would be followed by Carrière stripping nude at the end and demanding another full-on gynaecological exam. Whether the audience members were obliging is up for debate, but reports that Carrière would run around the séance room naked indulging in sexual activities with her audience suggests perhaps so. One can imagine that this deliberate eroticisation of the male audience might go some way to explaining the ease with which these “investigators” believed the psychic reality of the seances. A decision of fraud on their part would distance their involvement somewhat from the special and heightened context of the séances and so cast their complicity in, or at the least witnessing of, sexual activities in the sober (and more judgemental) cold light of day.
The spiritualist debunker Harry Price wrote that the photographs taken by Schrenk-Notzing, rather than proving the reality of Carrière’s mediumship, in fact did just the opposite. In 1920 Carrière was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research in London and an analysis of her ectoplasm revealed it to be made of chewed paper and the ghostly faces as cut from the French magazine Le Miroir. Back issues of the magazine matched some of Carrière’s ectoplasm faces, including Woodrow Wilson, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the French president Raymond Poincaré. This is something Schrenk-Notzing tries to address in his book, but with not much success. A 1913 newspaper article explained how “Miss Eva prepared the heads before every séance, and endeavoured to make them unrecognizable. A clean-shaven face was decorated with a beard. Grey hairs became black curls, a broad forehead was made into a narrow one. But, in spite of all her endeavours, she could not obliterate certain characteristic lines.”
Visit our post – “Phenomena of Materialisation” – in the Texts section of the site to see the English translation of the book in it’s entirety.
 |
Housed at: Internet Archive | From: Boston Public Library |
 |
Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights |
 |
Download: Right click on image or see source for higher res versions |
Friday, 4 December 2015
Meet "Tayna," the faintest galaxy in the early universe, spotted by Spitzer and Hubble
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/45/image/a/
December 3, 2015: Hunting for faraway galaxies that existed long, long ago is like a fishing trip for astronomers. So far only the "big fish" have been found, bright galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the big bang. Now, using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have caught a "smaller fish," a very compact and faint early galaxy that was forming 400 million years after the big bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago.
As there are many smaller fish than big fish in the sea, the new finding is evidence for an underlying population of dim galaxies that must have been common in the early universe. Hubble's upcoming successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, should be able to survey this population. But for now, Hubble can do some pioneering work by exploiting a "zoom lens" in space that captures a galaxy that would otherwise not be detectible. The phenomenon is called gravitational lensing, where the intense gravity of a cluster of galaxies magnifies the light of fainter background sources.
Astronomers needed the infrared sensitivity of both the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes to measure the galaxy's great distance through its color, which is affected by the expanding universe.
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