

Crop Circles in the Fields,

Objects in the Skies,

and

Creatures in the Bedroom

Linda Pendleton

Author of

UFO Odyssey: Off-Earth Beings to the Rescue?

Pendleton Artists

California
Copyright © 2008, by Linda Pendleton. All rights reserved. Articles within used with permission.

Revised edition, Copyright © 2018 by Linda Pendleton, All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781370403097

Smashwords Edition, January 2018

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Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although it is a free ebook, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or noncommercial use or purpose. If you enjoyed this book encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords and where they can enjoy other works by Linda Pendleton. Thank you for your support.

This book may not be copied, in whole or in part, or transmitted, passed on or in any way given or sold to any third party by any means. Linda Pendleton asserts her right to be identified as the intellectual property holder. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this book, it is a condition of purchase or readership, that no liability is accepted by the publisher or author for any inaccuracies, errors, or omissions.

Cover idea by Linda Pendleton, designed by Judy Bullard.

Matinsell Crop Circle, UK, Photo purchased from Lucy Pringle's Crop Circle Collection.

In Appreciation

My thanks and gratitude to the following people for giving me permission to include their research in this book:

Danny Mack, and the John E. Mack family, and Will Bueche of the John E. Mack Institute, for use of an article by the late, John E. Mack, M.D.;

Nuclear Physicist and UFO Researcher, Stanton Friedman;

Nancy Talbott, Crop Circle Researcher;

Lucy Pringle, aerial photographer and Crop Circle Researcher;

Newspaper reporter Stephen Coan;

Contactee, channel, medium, author, Athena Demetrios;

Trance channel, lecturer, author, Shawn Randall, and Torah.

My thanks to author Richard S. Prather, for sharing his UFO sighting; and to Thomas Clark Jacobson, Trance Medium, Spiritual Teacher and subject of Don and Linda Pendleton's book, To Dance With Angels, for his review of this book.

Dedicated to all those who question. Don't stop!

and

Dedicated to those who already know.

~Linda Pendleton

"Whoever the aliens are, from wherever they come and wherever they've been, it appears that we all sail the same cosmic sea, carrying common needs, desires and destinies, struggling to chart a course that will carry us Home."

~Don and Linda Pendleton, Whispers From the Soul

1"There is something inconsistent about our past...which lies thousands and millions of years behind us...teemed with unknown gods who visited the primeval earth in manned spaceships. Incredible technical achievements existed...a mass of know-how which we have only partially rediscovered today. I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these 'strangers' annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens."

~1Erich Von Däniken, 1The Chariots of the Gods?

Book Review

I just finished reading "Crop Circles in the Fields, Objects in the Skies, and Creatures in the Bedroom" by Linda Pendleton. I had a great time. Photographs are crystal clear. I loved Nancy's [Talbott] story with their diagram and home photos. I was absolutely fascinated by the herringbone weave crop formation. My God! And that apparent crop circle sketch or etching from the seventeenth century. Hmm.

While I am familiar with nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman I had not previously read his counter argument to skeptics regarding UFOs and crop circles. Outstanding! Loved it.

May I say, very nice work Linda! You not only help we, the readers, become all the more fascinated by crop circles, you provide us with the intelligent framework to consider and reconsider. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

~Thomas Clark Jacobson, Trance Medium, Spiritual Teacher, and subject of Don and Linda Pendleton's book, To Dance With Angels.

Matinsell Hill, Wiltshire, UK, July 2007. Photo courtesy of Lucy Pringle

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Phoenix, Here We Come Again—and Again!

Chapter Two: Designs in the Crops

Chapter Three: Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

Chapter Four: A Psychiatrist Studies Other Realities

Chapter Five: School Bell Ringing and Dinging

Chapter Six: Flying Saucers and Science

Chapter Seven: From the Skies

Chapter Eight: The Cosmic Sea

Chapter Nine: The United States and Space

Suggested Resources

Related Books by Linda Pendleton

About the Author

Introduction

In this book you will find a collection of articles related to the ideas that extraterrestrials may exist and periodically make visits to earth, and have done so, not only in our immediate lifetimes, but since the beginning of recorded human history. Many of those events have been depicted in prehistoric cave drawings, and later in a variety of art such as early drawings, paintings, carvings, statues, through cultural beliefs that have been handed down from generation to generation, with recalled memories of abduction experiences, and sightings in the skies of unidentified flying objects considered to be beyond the present day technology known to man at the time.

I've always believed that crop circles are messages to mankind, almost a symbolic notification that we are not alone, and I sense the reason for the messages has to do with our treatment of planet Earth and the environmental and nuclear threats that we create for the universe.

If aliens possess the technology to transcend time and space, then what would be so unusual for them to have the ability to create crop circles? I hope there will be more emphasis placed on deciphering and decoding the messages because I believe that is what we are being given–messages.

My initial reaction when I saw early crop circles, more than two decades ago, was that they resembled the ancient petroglyphs found in caves and elsewhere. Of course, they have moved far beyond the simple carvings of ancient times. Are they presenting us with profound messages? Time will tell.

It has been an innate human instinct since the beginning of time to look beyond and above for answers to universal questions: What is this all about? Why are we here? What is beyond?

Maybe at some time in the not too distant future all of us will know the answers about life beyond this planet, and our connection to it.

We may think of ourselves as the "new kids on the block," but within the vastness of the cosmos could be far older civilizations active for millennia, greatly predating the human experience on planet Earth. And if we look at our own advances in technology over the last few decades, it only makes sense that "others" could be far beyond us in understanding how all of this works.

Presently, it appears it is up to us as individuals, communities, and countries, to halt and reverse the apparent man-made damage and destruction that the world population seems to be inflicting on the planet.

Many have come to an understanding that if the aliens are communicating with us, it may be a warning that we may be in danger of doing irreparable damage to our home.

Although each of us is here for a relatively short time, we still have a unspoken responsibility to leave a gentle imprint behind.

I believe the research and writings of the professionals I've put together to share with my readers, is of significance value to suggest a new understanding of possibilities that we are not alone.

I published this originally ten years ago as a gift that went with my book, UFO Odyssey: Off-Earth Beings to the Rescue?.

It is still my gift to you. Enjoy.

-Linda Pendleton

2018, Northern California

Chapter One: Phoenix, Here We Come Again!—and Again!

In late 2006, I did an interview with mystery writer, Richard S. Prather. It turned out to be his last interview as he passed away February 14, 2007 at the age of 86. Prather was a best-selling novelist and wrote more than forty books in his long career which began in 1950. For a number of years his Shell Scott, Private Eye books were published by Fawcett's Gold Medal Books. When I did my own research on the Gold Medal imprint, I discovered something I wanted to discuss with Richard Prather. Here is an excerpt from our interview.

Linda: Richard, in doing a little research on Fawcett's Gold Medal early books of the 1950s, and their authors, I was surprised to see that they had published The Flying Saucers Are Real by Major Donald Keyhoe, after the January, 1950 publication of his article in "True Magazine" caused such a sensation. I believe I read the book years ago, I would guess during the 1950s as my Dad would have had it in his paperback collection. My Dad and I often discussed the possibility of alien life and UFOs. And as you know, my interest in UFOs, and the government cover-up, still holds my interest all these years later. Of course, having my own sightings has enforced the belief that they are out there. Did you read Keyhoe's book during those years, Richard?

Richard: Yes, I read Keyhoe's book in the 1950s, and during that decade and the next I read a lot of articles and books about Flying Saucers/UFOs, and extraterrestrial visitors and "aliens" (to whom, of course, we're the aliens...just as the only difference between a "terrorist" and a "Freedom Fighter" is which side you're on...

So, perhaps because of all that reading, I somehow never doubted that Earth might have been visited by extraterrestrial beings many times during recent millennia (some of those visitations even being colorfully described in our own Bible), or that "aliens" might on occasion be right here among us real people. And I believed in the existence of UFOs, even if I didn't know what they were or where they came from, and even though the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice cabal of that day, along with a lot of pundits and experts "of like mind," kept telling us they were all weather balloons.

In other words, I believed in UFOs, even without real evidence to support that belief. But I really believed when I saw one myself. Yes, I did, Linda. I don't think I've mentioned this experience before; but I know you've seen UFOs yourself, and have written convincingly about them. Well, here's what happened to me.

It was a bright, clear summer afternoon in the late 1960s (probably '68 or '69). Tina [his wife] and I were in our car driving around Scottsdale, Arizona, accompanied by a lovely lady named Sandra Bonnar. Sandra was a remarkable psychic and clairvoyant, who early on had done some on-the-mark "readings" for Tina and me, since which time we'd become good friends. As the phrase goes, I didn't have enough psychic ability to stick in your ear, but Sandra was a powerful psychic/clairvoyant, and we were sitting together in the car's front seat, sort of blending our individual auras together into one glob so to speak—which may account for what then happened.

On the way back to our home in Paradise Valley, I had driven about halfway up Mummy Mountain to a level area off the road, where we could park with a splendid view over Scottsdale to the buildings of Phoenix, half a dozen miles or so away as the crow (or UFO?) flies. I'd turned off the engine, ready to enjoy again that wonderful unobstructed view, when somebody, I think it was Sandra, said, "What's that in the sky over Phoenix?"

We all saw it at about the same time. Couldn't miss it. The thing was huge. It was some kind of aircraft, circular in shape, metallic-gray or dull-silver in color, motionless, just hanging in the air over downtown Phoenix. To me it looked almost exactly like the Daddy of all Flying Saucers, as captured in fuzzy photos or depicted in more detail by science-fiction artists—shaped much like two aluminum pie pans pressed together, one upside-down over the other, with a clearly-visible row of ports or windows around the circumference of the craft. I was awe-struck.

I—or rather all three of us, confirmed by the bubbling of words from us then and in later conversation—knew that what we were seeing was some kind of UFO or Flying Saucer unlike anything we'd ever seen before. One reason is that this thing was ten times the size of any commercial airliner or any craft I'd ever seen in the air or even on the ground at airports or anywhere else. Another thing: I'd always been puzzled that nearly every photo or video of "UFOs" I'd seen had for some reason been fuzzy, indistinct; it was difficult to be sure of exactly what it was you were looking at. Not this time. This craft was as clearly visible as the buildings of Phoenix below it, or the homes nearby on Mummy Mountain.

After a few minutes it moved, to our left, away from Phoenix and away from us, but in a long slow arc that—more excitement—was bringing it closer to us. After two or three minutes it was actually over Paradise Valley, almost over Mummy Mountain, when it stopped moving again. It didn't do anything, just hung there in the air, about a mile up in the sky overhead, motionless and completely silent. I would have sworn then, and would swear today, our "UFO" was several hundred feet, perhaps several hundred yards, in diameter, maybe a quarter mile wide. I repeat: it was huge.

After about five minutes it moved again, and went out of our sight behind Mummy Mountain. I drove home, where the main topic of conversation was, of course, the remarkable experience we'd shared. Curiously, I never saw anything on the television news, or any stories in the Arizona Republic, about The Giant UFO Over Phoenix, so I don't know if others saw what we'd seen.

But "you only have to see one white crow to know that not all crows are black," and Sandra and Tina and I knew we'd seen some kind of UFO/Flying Saucer, that it was enormous, and that it was as solid and real as anything we'd seen before in our lives.

So I can't tell you for sure what that great craft was or where it came from, but I can personally say with absolute certainty what thousands of others have said: It wasn't a weather balloon.

Linda: And it wasn't flares, either! Your experience in the late 1960s is so similar (location) to the now-famous Phoenix Lights incident in the early evening of March 13, 1997, when a huge triangular-shaped craft was seen by commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, and thousands of citizens, over parts of Northern Arizona, (to the west of Sedona, a few short miles in the Cottonwood area), over Prescott, then Phoenix, and on south to Tucson. At least the media gave that sighting a lot of coverage, and interviewed a number of credible witnesses.

It's interesting, Richard, that one valuable witness, a physician, Dr. Lynne D. Kitei, lived in Paradise Valley, where you had your sighting thirty years earlier. She was able to get some excellent photographs and video of the Phoenix Lights and she then did a documentary of her investigation, and published a book, The Phoenix Lights. She has numerous photographs of the orange orbs, she has seen over the area prior to the March 13, 1997 event and since. Orange orbs, just like the two orange orbs I saw one evening at dusk over my home in Sedona. And I had a witness, too. My cat saw the orbs out the window at the same moment I did!

It sure makes one curious as to why the extraterrestrials seem intent on making their presence known over the Phoenix area, along with the numerous sightings that have been reported in the Sedona area for years. Those areas seem to be "hot spots" for UFOs.

Of course, as you recall, the local government and the military made a joke out of the Phoenix Lights incident—Or at least tried to brush it off, calling the lights, flares, and/or weather balloons. Yeah, sure. How gullible do "they" think citizens are?

And I really identify with you being "awe-struck" by your UFO sighting. That is exactly how Don and I felt when we had the huge triangular craft moving slowly, and very low, over our home in West Covina, (Southern California) in the late 1980s. I recently received an email from a woman who had read my article on my website and identified with our sighting. The huge triangular craft she and her husband saw low in the sky over the Palm Springs area (east of us) sounded exactly as our sighting, which she believed to be in the same time frame (possibly the same evening?).

Chapter Two: Designs in the Crops

One of the earliest crop circles to receive attention happened in Tulley, Queensland, Australia in January 1966. A farmer was working a field with a tractor when he heard a loud hissing sound coming from the direction of a nearby lagoon. George Pedley claimed that he looked up to see an object rising up from the swamp and at tree level. He described it as large, gray, saucer shaped, convex on top and bottom and measuring about 25 feet across and 9 feet high. As he watched, it rose another 30 feet, spinning very fast, made a shallow dive and then took off with tremendous speed and climbed at an angle of 45 degrees and disappeared within seconds.

When Mr. Pedley checked the area where the object had obviously sat, he found in the lagoon a large, round area with mashed down reed vegetation, and water circling around the area as if disturbed.

In the 1970s, crop circles seemed to appear in farmers' crop fields in the UK most commonly around ancient sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill, all in southern England. In the beginning, the circles/designs were simple but as the years passed, they became more intricate and elaborate. Admittedly some are man-made but the authentic ones are known to have molecular changes to the stalks of wheat or other crops, and researchers have also found energy changes within the designs.

Martinsell Hill, Wiltshire, UK July 2007, courtesy of Lucy Pringle.

Although England has been the hot spot for crop circles they do appear everywhere, usually within crops, but at times in sand, mud, for example.

Based on the scientific and photographic information and evidence being gathered in recent years, it appears to many that we are not alone, and the crop circles may indeed be messages from another dimension, or....?

We may also ask: why are we being given these complex designs?

Where are they coming from?

**And from who?**

**Hopefully we will know someday in the not too distant future.**

**This is what spirit, Torah,** a multidimensional consciousness channeled by Shawn Randall has to say about crop circles:

"Crop circles are heralding and harbingers of great change that has already begun. It's not that they are bringing the change - they are simply expressing it. It is happening anyway. By expressing the change, crop circles are able to focus on the change. Think about it, contemplate it, ponder the shift in dimensionality and the new paradigm of perception. Crop circles can help people to focus on a new way of approaching quantum thought and quantum theory. Crop circles can help people to focus upon contemplation of many things: mathematical, alchemical, archetypal, mythic, historic - even future technology. Crop circles can help people to focus upon care for the planet, love of the earth, love of the crops and love for humanity." ~ Torah, channeled by Shawn Randall.
** **

**Chilbolton, Hampshire UK, August 2000**

The Chilbolton Observatory, radio telescope is nearby this crop formation and several others that have appeared other years.

The main research carried out at Chilbolton is concentrated in three main areas: radiowave propagation, dynamical meteorology and cloud physics.

I recently had a long and interesting telephone conversation with Nancy Talbott of Cambridge, Massachusetts regarding crop circles. Nancy is President of BLT Research Team Inc.

The BLT Research Team Inc.'s primary focus is crop circle research - the discovery, scientific documentation and evaluation of physical changes induced in plants, soils and other materials at crop circle sites by the energy (or energy system) responsible for creating them and to determine, if possible, from the data the specific nature and source of these energies. Secondly, the intent is to publish these research results in peer-reviewed scientific journals and to disseminate this information to the general public through lectures, mainstream articles and the internet.

BLT Inc. is composed of several hundred trained field-sampling personnel in the U.S., Canada and Europe who collect plant and soil samples at crop circle sites for analyses by a number of scientists such as Geologists, Physicists, Chemists, Astrophysicists, Aeronautical Engineers. A list of some of these scientists and their impressive credentials are on the BLT website, www.bltresearch.com

To learn more about the scientific findings of the BLT Research group please be sure to visit their website to read and see some very interesting information on the crop circle phenomena that had become so prevalent in wheat fields and other crop fields around the world.

**EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF CROP CIRCLE**  
 **BEING FORMED IN THE NETHERLANDS**

**by Nancy Talbott**

**©** **2008 Nancy Talbott**

Witnesses: Nancy Talbott  
(from 2nd floor bedroom)

Robbert van der Broeke  
( from 1st floor kitchen)

Event Date: Monday, August 21, 2001

Time: 3:15 am

Location: Field directly behind v/d Broeke home, Hoeven, Holland

Weather: Temperature high-70's, sky overcast, no precipitation

Crop: String-beans (approx 1-1/2' to 2' tall, and mature)

On August 8, 2001, I arrived at the v/d Broeke home in southern Holland to begin a 2-week research project in conjunction with U.S. parapsychologist Dr. William Roll and the Parapsychological Services Institute, Inc. Dr. Roll, whose work with recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK) phenomena had led him to question whether there might be a human consciousness element involved in the crop circle process (similar to that documented by him in multiple poltergeist and haunting cases), wanted to gather geomagnetic and electromagnetic data at the v/d Broeke home and at recent crop circle sites when Robbert v/d Broeke had had pre-cognitive intuitions of their arrival.

For my first 10 days in Holland Robbert and I visited several formations in the area which had occurred prior to my arrival, gathering the baseline data which Dr. Roll's protocol required. During the nights we bicycled out to the fields with the night-vision camcorder and several flash cameras, in order to carry out photographic experiments.

For years Robbert has been taking flash photos at night inside crop circles which, when developed, show single or multiple strange semi-opaque orbs and other light phenomena not usually visible to the naked eye. He has found that such experiments are most productive in new crop circles, but that--in some cases--unusual lights/orbs can be photographed even weeks or months after the initial event. More recently he has discovered that the can actually see quite a few of these light objects before they are photographed and has also noted that many of the objects now being caught on film are not only much brighter and more dense, but are much more complex in structure. I, too, seem to have become more sensitive to the presence of the objects, often seeing brief flashes of light which—when I can get off a shot or two in their direction quickly enough—result in the objects apparently being caught on film.

View of v/d Broeke's back garden & field beyond from balcony of NT's bedroom. **Photo** **:** Nancy Talbott

On the night of August 20-21, 2001 Robbert and I had decided not to go into the fields and were at his parents' home. Mr. and Mrs. v/d Broeke had retired to their bedroom on the first floor at the front of the house at around 11:30 pm. Robbert's younger sister, Madelon, had gone to her bedroom on the second floor at the back of the house around this time also, leaving only Robbert and me in the kitchen downstairs. The kitchen window was open and looks out over the 80'-long back garden, at the end of which is a chain-link fence and a 4'-deep trench which runs along the edge of the farm field immediately beyond.

By 3 am Robbert and I had been in the kitchen discussing the crop circles, their possible causative mechanisms and origins, what they might mean, etc. for several hours. I was tired from weeks of tromping about the fields during the days recording data and then nights of flash photography and videography, and realized that I felt pretty much like I was—or might have been—chasing my tail. I recalled my first visit with Robbert and his family back in 1998 and the incredibly dramatic light display I had witnessed with Mr. and Mrs. v/d Broeke on my second night in the house. And I thought about all of the other really peculiar incidents on return trips, occurring with increasing frequency--and all of the work that has been done to document and attempt to understand these events--and it suddenly seemed to me that the phenomenon was just too complex, too elusive, too difficult to study. I suppose partly out of fatigue and partly out of frustration I decided to go up to bed, telling Robbert that I was tired of all this "pussy-footing" around and asking, "why can't this phenomenon be more obvious, more direct?"

**Back of house:** kitchen windows on left, Nancy's  
2nd floor bedroom w/balcony on right.  
**Photo** **:** Robbert v/d Broeke

I was sleeping in Robbert's old bedroom which is on the second floor at the back of the house, over-looking the garden and farm field. The bed is placed so that it faces directly out through two floor-to-ceiling glass doors which go out to a small balcony overlooking the garden and farm field beyond, and there are thin, gauzy curtains hanging at these glass doors. The farm field is clearly visible from the bed. Robbert was still in the kitchen downstairs.

Once upstairs I pulled the curtains closed (leaving one of the doors open), changed into my nightgown and propped myself up with pillows to read in bed for awhile. The lights were on and the room was well-lit. At about 3:05 am I heard a few cattle nearby bawling raucously, as cattle do when they are disturbed. From years of talking with farmers and ranchers who have had crop circles (and other unusual events) occur on their properties, I immediately realized that this bawling might be a sign that something strange was afoot and, in the back of my mind thought "I should go to the windows and pull back the curtains because I might see something." Whether because of fatigue or some sort of intuition, I stayed in bed and did not pull back the curtains. The cattle quieted down for a few minutes but, at about 3:10 am they started up again. And again I thought I should go to the windows and open up the curtains....and, again, I stayed put (in my notes from that night I have written that I was "scared"). After a minute or so the cattle were quiet again.

Then, at about 3:15 am, a brilliant, intense white column, or tube, of light--about 8 inch to 1 foot in diameter from my vantage point--flashed down from the sky to the ground, illuminating my bedroom and the sky as brilliantly as if from helicopter searchlights. My room was so bright I can't, in retrospect, understand how I could so very clearly see the "tube" of light outside—its distinct edges—but I could for about a full second, and there seemed to be a slight bluish tinge along the sides of the tube. Then this tube of light disappeared and both my room and the outside went dark. While the tube of light was there it was so bright I couldn't see exactly where it was touching down and wasn't sure how close it was.

Artist's Illustration of the beam of light.  
From http://www.invisiblecircle.de/uk/

Approximately one second of total darkness elapsed and then a second tube of the same brilliant white light, slightly edged in a bluish tint, appeared slightly to the left of where the first tube had been. Again the room and the outside lit up spectacularly, somehow leaving the intense tube of light clearly visible for about one second. Then, after another second's darkness the third and final tube descended to the ground. There was no sound at any time during the light incident (the neighbor's cattle were now quiet), nor did I smell anything out of the ordinary at all. There was also no physical sensation of exposure to increased electromagnetic energy (such as the tingling I had experienced a few years prior in this same house during an earlier encounter). The entire light display took 5-6 seconds; if the bawling cattle are considered to be part of this situation the total time would be about 10 minutes.

By the time the third tube of light flashed down to the ground I was half out of bed yelling to Robbert, who was still downstairs in the kitchen. He, at the same time, was running up the stairs to get me, having witnessed the event from the first-floor kitchen windows. From the kitchen he could see that the tubes of light had hit the bean-field, just beyond the fence at the back of the garden, and he reported also that the sky had lit up like daylight when each column of light had occurred. He however had seen only two tubes of light, apparently because he had jumped up after the second one, leaving the kitchen to come and get me upstairs. He further indicated in the drawing he made immediately afterward that these tubes of light were spiraling down to the ground. [Actually, when I got out the drawing I had made shortly afterward, I had also indicated a spiraling motion inside the tubes of light.] Robbert had perceived the tubes of light as being smaller in diameter than I had, but he also saw them as definite, contained, columns which remained the same width all the way down. Neither of us saw anything in the overcast sky from which these tubes of light had originated. Later that night Robbert reported that he had heard the dog next door barking furiously just prior to the appearance of the light-tubes.

New crop circle in stringbean field (looking west), photographed from balcony of Nancy's bedroom. Photo: Nancy Talbott

Our yelling back and forth to each other up the stairway had awakened both Madelon and Mrs. v/d Broeke, who both emerged into the hallway in excited states. Robbert and I were equally agitated, due to our shared impression of the stunning force of the energy involved....and our mutual, clear, impression of its purposefulness. All four of us went immediately to the glass doors at the back of the house off the dining room (directly underneath my bedroom's doors) somewhat timidly, not certain of what else we might expect.

Looking out these glass doors we could see nothing up in the sky and after a minute or so Robbert went to the back door off the kitchen and stepped out; I joined him and, tentatively, also went outside. So far as we could tell everything seemed oddly normal and very dark—looking up we could see only and overcast sky. We headed for the back fence and the farm field and there, just over the fence about 15ft. into the bean-field—just barely visible in the darkness—was the new crop circle. When we turned my flashlight onto the field we could see that half of the crop in the downed area was laid away from us and the other half was laid toward us, and I thought I could faintly see steam rising from the freshly downed beans (which I attributed to the interaction of the tubes of light with a heavy night-time dew covering the crop).

Field diagram of new crop formation in bean-field showing crop lay (all measurements by Peter v/d Broeke). Diagram: Nancy Talbott

At dawn the next day, from my bed, I could clearly see the new circle--which turned out to be, in fact, an ellipse of about 35 ft. in length (running East/West) and 20 ft. in width (North/South diameter), with a 20 ft.-long pathway adjoining the northern edge which ended in a crossbar (like the capital letter "T").

The epicenter of the ellipse was considerably West of the actual center, and the northern half of the stringbean plants (heavy with beans) were swept counter-clockwise in what looked to be one wide sweep all the way around the ellipse and back along the southern edge. The eastern and western edges or the ellipse were slightly squared, ending abruptly at a row of beans on either side and leaving the plants in these rows along the edges totally unaffected. The pathway off to the North was laid away from the ellipse to its end, the crossbar at the end being laid left (West) and right (East) in simple single sweeps. The width of all the pathways was one row of beans only, about 1 - 1/2 feet wide.

New circle, looking West: plants in North half are flattened away from the camera. South half flattened towards the camera, producing variation in light reflection from downed plants see in photo. Photo: Nancy Talbott.

We were unable to go into the field until the evening, due to the need to obtain permission from the farmer and to our lack of a ladder to help us negotiate the fence and the steep ditch on the other side. On the evening of the 21st, at about 6 pm, we did go in and carried out a number of procedures.

The compass showed no deviations within the laid crop (nor at control locations outside the new event) and the electromagnetometer registered a steady 0.2m, the same reading I obtained at the control locations and at all of the other crop circle sites I had tested in the past two weeks. No EM spikes were noted. Examination of the plants showed them all to have been bent over at the base and no broken or split stems were seen. There was no visible trauma to the stems or leaves, or the very healthy-looking beans beneath them. The soil appeared relatively dry both inside and outside the laid-crop area and was fine-grained and dark in appearance (mineralogical characterization of the soil in this field a year previously by BLT Inc.'s consulting mineralogist, Dr. Sam Iyengar, had indicated that this field is very well maintained and high in organic content and very low in clays.

Near the center of the ellipse, plants in the northern half a laid away from the camera and plants in the southern half are laid towards the camera, showing more of their leafy tops. Photo: Nancy Talbott

Measurements and photographs were taken and a visible difference in leaf color inside the downed-crop areas was observed to be due to the fact that some of the plants were laid toward us showing us only the tops of the leaves, thus reflecting the light differently. Along this flow-line near the center of the formation plants growing immediately next to each other were cleanly bent over at their bases in opposite directions, with no visible damage to either the plants or the beans. There was a slight swirling of the plants in the "epicenter" area which, in this case, occurred in the southeastern quadrant, considerably away from the actual geometric center of the ellipse.

Because of the hoof-and-mouth disease which has been prevalent in Holland (as well as in other eastern European countries) during the summer of 2001, and the subsequent likelihood that US customs would not allow importation of either plants or soils from Europe into the U.S., no attempt was made to take soil or plant samples. I did, however, harvest a few handfuls of beans and enjoyed them at dinner a few nights later. So far, I've noted no sequelae.

That night, following our routine examination of the new formation, Robbert and a friend and I went back over the fence and into the field to take night flash photos. Because the ellipse was not yet 24 hours old we anticipated getting some strange light orbs and/or objects on film, and we were not disappointed. Every roll of film (4 or 5) produced numerous photos of light orbs, usually fairly close to one of the three of us. Some of the light objects were quite large (4-5 times larger than a soccer ball) nearly transparent orbs; some were much smaller (about grapefruit-sized) and more dense, and appeared to be relatively high over our heads. In many of the more interesting photos these much denser, brighter objects were down close to the crop surface or just over our heads.

8-21-01 (about 10pm):  
Robbert (background) and friend inside new ellipse accompanied by two bright light balls of a type photographed fairly regularly in and near crop circles. [Small yellow light in background is from farmhouse at end of field.] Photo: Nancy Talbott

Two of the dense, multi-orb lights,  
again with apparent movement.  
[Small yellow lights are from farmhouses.]  
Photo: Nancy Talbott

Robbert's friend and Nancy, with light object overhead which appears to be moving.  
Photo: Robbert v/d Broeke

Interestingly, a number of photos taken of the formation by leaning over the fence (10-15 ft. away from the downed-crop) very shortly after it had formed showed no photographic anomalies at all. I shot only about a half roll of film immediately after the ellipse had occurred, mostly because it was so dark and I wasn't sure that the flash was reaching the new circle; perhaps if I had shot more film I might have gotten one. Now, however, I am wondering if it may be the presence of people inside the formation, the presence of some part of the human energy field, perhaps in interaction with residual energies from the formation event, which has something to do with producing these light anomalies...in future studies we will have to try photographing new circles from outside them, before any people have been inside the flattened areas.

In preparation for one new BLT, Inc. study, which will evaluate the effects of various energies on normal (non-crop-circle) plants and soils, I have had many discussions with microwave and laser experts who are convinced that the crop circles and at least some of the associated light phenomena are simply either "mistakes" by the military and/or industrial research community and/or perhaps pranks by one or another of these groups on the citizenry. If they are "mistakes" it would seem--particularly in light of the recent ghastly events in New York, Washington, D.C and Pennsylvania--that we are all in more trouble than was immediately apparent. And the idea that they might be pranks strikes me as perhaps even more frightening, and for the same reason: idiots at the helm are hardly a comforting image. What I suspect, instead, is that these highly trained and proficient microwave/laser engineers just aren't really "tracking" the available facts yet...like the majority, it seems, of the rest of the population.

On the other hand, in recent conversation with one of the new scientists participating in ongoing BLT, Inc. studies, a man highly regarded by his academic colleagues, the idea that we are instead perhaps dealing with a "new kind of energy", something not seen before, has been discussed. I suspect this idea is much more reflective of reality than is the notion of an inept or adolescent military/industrial research group gone amuck.

Was the occurrence of this crop circle related to my frustration over the elusiveness of the phenomenon and my wanting a more obvious indication of the agency involved? It did occur within 10-15 minutes of my having stated my disgust and it did occur in the closest growing plants (stringbeans, the first time a circle has been reported in this crop) to my physical self--the whole incident clearly visible from my room--in fact the very bed I was sleeping in. It was also placed dead-center between the north and south boundary lines of the v/d Broeke property and about as close to their perimeter fence as possible.

Back of v/d Broeke home with new ellipse in stringbeans in foreground. Photo: Nancy Talbott

Robbert and I, from our slightly different vantage points, were each quite convinced of both the intense power and the precision of the light "tubes"—both of us perceiving the incident as "deliberate, on purpose." Are our perceptions—not just of this current event, but of multiple crop circle experiences over many years—simply anthropocentric? What are the chances that this recent amazing display was just coincidental? And if it was, why have similar events—the crop circles and all the stunning light phenomena associated with them—been occurring for the last 25-30 years, with increasing frequency and complexity, all over the world? And why repeatedly in fairly precise locations? Why don't they occur everywhere? And what are the light objects? Are they in fact becoming more complex too, perhaps mirroring the evolution in design of the flattened plants?

Are Robbert and I (and, apparently, many other people) victims of our imaginations? Or is it possible that human faculties are capable, at least in some situation, of recognizing external consciousness and/or purpose in energy-forms or life-forms currently unknown to us and un-named? Robbert and I perceived these light tubes as "on purpose." Was there a consciousness in those light columns? Or, was there a consciousness directing them? Was it our sub-or unconscious? If not ours, was it Jung's collective unconscious? Was it a consciousness inherent in Nature? Or was it from another dimension, galaxy or, perhaps, directly from the Almighty? Robbert and I don't know. What we suspect is that the answers to these questions--in fact the actual pursuit of these answers—will greatly affect human awareness. What we hope is that 21st Century humanity will recognize this possibility soon and join in the effort to uncover new aspects of reality we may currently only faintly imagine.

© Copyright 2008 Nancy Talbott. Reprinted herein with permission of Nancy Talbott.

Nancy Talbott, also reports this unusual United States formation in the state of Ohio, and although it seemed not to be a "typical" crop circle, the BLT team, states: "In the absence of several of the scientifically documented plant changes which can be expected in crop circles (elongated apical nodes, expulsion cavities) and since the soil work will take time to complete--and given that this is the first time a crop formation with squared edges and an interlacing herringbone pattern in the crop has been observed--we are not certain if this is a crop circle or not. The circles have, over the years, evolved from their original state, and perhaps this Greene County, Ohio event is revealing a brand new aspect of the ongoing phenomenon.

Here are excerpts from the BLT Research article of July 24, 2005:

RE: Herringbone "Weave" Found in Greene County, Ohio Crop Formation [photos: BLT Research Team Inc.]

On July 5, 2005 a Greene County farmer found what may be the very first crop formation of its kind in the world. The farmer, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered an approximately 44' x 35' rectangle of downed wheat as he was harvesting his field, at first thinking the downed-crop area had been caused by deer. Upon closer examination he realized there was a distinct design to the manner in which the plants were bent over, resulting in a "woven" or interlaced herringbone pattern throughout the flattened crop.

Photo taken by farmer on July 5th showing one straight edge of formation & beginning of herringbone pattern; cut chaff (on right) lies on top of the flattened crop.

A neighbor and his wife report a strange lighted object in the sky on the same afternoon that the formation was discovered—a cloud-like object which seemed to be "flickering" in a manner similar to a fluorescent light—which both husband and wife took at first to be lightning, although there were no storm clouds present and no thunder or rain. For 20 minutes or so they observed multiple flashing incidents, with very intense colors appearing for 2-3 seconds, the colors becoming more and more intense as the incidents continued. The husband, who works as a lineman for the local power company, stated that there was no "blue color, as in a transformer going off," but that the flashing looked more like an "ignition of some sort" inside the cloud.

And the farmer reported that he observed that his farm dog (which does not live in the house) had suddenly exhibited very strange behavior, refusing to go outside as was its custom, attempting instead to stay inside the family's garage as close to the steps into the house as it could. This behavior began the day the crop formation was discovered and continued for the following 2 weeks.

The field examination revealed that a majority of the plants were bent over at the base, with the stems unbroken. No expulsion cavities were found and no visible node elongation was apparent. Although the farmer had cut the rest of the field, some seeds were obtained from control areas as well as seed-heads from within the formation so that germination studies can be conducted. Geiger-counter checks revealed nothing anomalous and there were no compass irregularities observed. Soil samples were taken to check for magnetic particle content, as well as soils for chemical analyses and a mycorrhizal fungi examination.

Close examination of each row of flattened crop revealed that the first 4 rows were laid in one distinct pattern, the next 4 rows in a different pattern, and that these two complex pattern sets repeated across all 60 rows.

Close-up taken on July 19th which suggests that the herringbone pattern has been created more by an interlacing of plants than an actual weave.

This has been reprinted with permission of Nancy Talbott, BLT Research website: http://www.bltresearch.com/index.html

There are a large number of books of the crop circle phenomena and aerial photographs available at bookstores.

Chapter Three: Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

My late husband, Don Pendleton and I met Athena Demetrios in 1987 at the "Gathering Place" in Southern California where public channeling sessions were held by Thomas Jacobson, trance-medium for spirit guide, Dr. James Martin Peebles, who lived from 1822 to 1922.

Soon after, I interviewed Athena for our book, To Dance With Angels. The story of her spiritual journey of healing is quite dramatic. She had been sexually abused as a young child by a boarder in her home, and struggled for years to move out of the darkness of those events into the spiritual light and healing. And it was Dr. Peebles, as channeled through Thomas Jacobson, who set her on the path to healing. You can read her story of healing and forgiveness in both To Dance With Angels and my Three Principles of Angelic Wisdom. Athena is a medium and trance-channel and is a contactee.

Athena Demetrios' professional work with spirit guide, Dr. James Martin Peebles, more than twenty years ago is an extension of her personal spiritual search. Athena studied with international channel and teacher, Shawn Randall, and with Thomas Jacobson, the well-known former trance-channel of Dr. Peebles.

Shawn Randall, also a friend, is known for her tours of the England crop circle formations and sacred site explorations, and as channel for Torah, an interdimensional being.

Athena and I have become close friends over these years and I was pleased to interview her for my website. Here is an excerpt from my interview with Athena regarding her contact with extraterrestrials.

Linda: I know you've had alien abductions, and have even appeared on UFO Television show or shows in Los Angeles and written articles about it, but before we get into that, have you ever seen a UFO, from the ground up? I mean without being taken up into one. If so, when and where?

Athena: My first encounter, and I have had many, took place in broad daylight, when I was about seven. Now, were we taken up? I believe the experience I am about to share did result in being taken up. Here is what happened. I was going to the beach with my sister Judy who was seventeen at the time. Her friend was driving the car and I remember how special I felt because they took me along. I was sitting on the right side of the car hanging my head out the window like a kid will do. I saw a gun-metal gray round pie shaped disc hovering low, directly above our car. This thing was close and it was huge. I remember the car stopping, and getting out and I have a vague recollection of my sister Judy standing by the hood of the car but that is all that I remember. Judy had no recollection of that event. I can still see it clear as a bell. Dr. Peebles said that I did have a visitation when I was a child and that they had done something to my hip. I have no doubt that was the experience he spoke of. I cover my UFO experiences quite extensively in my book, [A Seasoning of the Soul] and there have been several encounters with several different species. At this stage in my life, I am saying ahh hell with it! I am out of the closet on these experiences.

Linda: Athena, as you've had several alien abduction experiences as have thousands, if not millions, of people, do you have an opinion as to what the off-earth beings' personal agenda might be? Do you believe it might have a spiritual purpose?—Or about inter-breeding?—Or an experimental purpose as if we were guinea pigs in a laboratory? From your personal experiences what conclusions, if any, have you reached on that?

Athena: "Yes, I have had several experiences with alien consciousness. Let me state it here for the record that I do not feel as a victim, but see myself as a contactee. These experiences opened up for me as a result of an invitation on my part for communication and it came from my heart. I had always looked at the heavens and stars at night and felt homesick. At one point I said, "If any of you are out there and can hear my thoughts, I'd love to communicate with you." About a month later, the communication began. One would have to be a moron to look at the heavens and not think that life exits beyond the planet earth. With billions of universes, why would we be the select one with life?—and we don't hold that in very high reverence—look at how we destroy life."

"Once while staying at my sister's house, I woke up and saw a small grey in the hallway. I bent down so that I was the same height and tried to take the feeling of love from my heart and said to him, "See, this is what love feels like." Did it register? I doubt it, but that was my experience. The next day my sister told me she had the strangest dream that seemed so real, that an alien was in the house. I never said anything to her as she is fearful of them. I am not."

"I am sure that we have been part of a seeding on this planet eons ago, and that our interactions were most likely that of experimentation depending on the consciousness, collective consciousness, and evolution of off planet beings, and their evolutionary process. We are all gods in the makings. But good lord, we think they are strange looking? Look in our own backyard first. We have rings attached to our noses and genitals, bald, hairy with beards and tattoos all over our body, and Mohawk hair spiked with gel and sprayed hot pink. Yah...I'd say they might find us an interesting study. I don't find that strange at all. What diversity and a melting pot we are."

"My own conclusions are this. I have none. The more I know this, the more I know nothing. I am a student of life as we all are. I believe we are part of collective consciousness that is making a huge shift and that no man is an island, that all life is a part of life. We are waking up to the fact that there is more life out there than what we have been taught is the only form of existence. The veil is thinner and other realities are making themselves known to us. Not to come forward and save us, but helping us wake up to the possibility of other life forms in existence. More life to explore. UFO—the unidentified foreign object within ourselves. Identify that, as Doctor Peebles says, and life will take on a different color and a different vibration."

"I have received countless communications telepathically, drawings and encounters. For the greatest part, I have tried my best to approach these experiences with a sense of wonder and awe; as a result, it has taken me in a complete different direction than fear."

"I am not saying out of the many experiences I have not experienced some that were frightening, but for the majority it has been one of wonderment. Again, this is information that I go into in depth in my book."

Athena Demetrois wrote an article for the UFO Magazine under the pen name, Sophia Larsen, which appeared in the April/May 2004 issue. Recently she started decided to come out of the "UFO closet" with these words about the use of a pen name:

"Since then, I have said "to hell with!" It's time to drop my own cover-up and go public with my extra terrestrial encounters of a most diverse and unusual kind. I was contacted by an individual who knew of some of my experiences and after much contemplation agreed to appear on a Talk show, hosted by Ron Reagan along with another contactee, Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallee, Buzz Aldrin and last but not least, the well known debunker, the late Philip Klass. Doctor Peebles told me some years back that I was bound and determined as a soul to understand the larger universe as family. That makes perfect sense to me."

Here is the opening to her article, titled, Friends in High Places.

"It was late at night; I sat up in bed and stared at the two intruders in my bedroom. Their milky skin and black luminous eyes caused the adrenaline to pump through my veins. The fear was paralyzing and it felt as if my heard was going to pound out of my chest. 'You have nothing to fear' I heard telepathically as one walked towards me."

"I swung my legs around to get out of bed, I heard the words of my spirit guide in my head. 'You must meet them with equality the voice said. You must see yourself every bit as wonderful as they see you.' At that moment, I made a very conscious decision to go with the wonder, the mystery and the awe of the experience."

© Copyright 2004 by Athena Demetrios.

I've only seen UFOs in the night sky and hearing of the contacts that many millions have had very similar to Athena, does not seem like anything I want to experience in such a close and intimate way.

But Athena seems to have let go of fear and moved into the experience, one of many contact experiences she has had. And she is not alone in letting go of fear, as apparently many who have had alien contact have set aside fear and have found the event to be a moving and spiritual experience and have come to an understanding that the connection was a mutual agreement of some kind.

To learn more about Athena Demetrios, please visit her website at www.iamwithin.com

To read my full interview with Athena: http://www.todancewithangels.com/athena-demetrios-interview.html

Her book, The Seasoning of a Soul, is at Amazon, Kindle and Audible.

Chapter Four: A Psychiatrist Studies Other Realties

Dr. John E. Mack (1929-2004) was an American psychiatrist, Professor of Medicine at Harvard and a best-selling author. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 biography of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and was a leading authority on extraterrestrial encounter experiences. In 1993 Dr. Mack founded the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER), and the research program was funded early on by philanthropist, Laurance Rockefeller.

The late Mr. Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, was responsible for the UFO Disclosure Initiative during the Clinton White House whose main request was that all UFO information held by the government, including from the CIA and US Air Force, be declassified and released to the public.

The PEER research foundation has been replaced by the John E. Mack Institute whose mission is to explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity.

In 1992, Dr. John E. Mack wrote in Why the Abduction Phenomenon Cannot Be Explained Psychiatrically: "There is some evidence from my own work that when abductees can overcome their terror and accept fully the reality of what they are undergoing the phenomenon shifts to one that is less traumatic. A relationship with the alien beings that is more reciprocal, and even loving, evolves. Information about fundamental ecological and other global dangers is passed on to the abductees who may experience profound emotional and spiritual growth. More studies of these dimensions of the phenomenon, undertaken with an open mind, are very much needed."

Dr. Mack published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens in 1994. The book's dedication was to Budd Hopkins "who led the way." His next book was Passport to the Cosmos published in 1999. A commemorative edition has just been released in October 2008.

John E. Mack and Budd Hopkins

The article below by Dr. Mack was published by the Noetic Science Review two years before his Abduction book.

Other Realties: The Alien Abduction Phenomenon

By John E. Mack, M.D

Noetic Sciences Review Autumn 1992

Even though over the past 25 years thousands of individuals throughout the United States and in other countries have reported abduction experiences to UFO investigators and mental health professionals, the phenomenon appears to be more widespread than anyone might have expected. A Roper poll of "unusual events", for example, conducted between July and September, 1991, suggested that hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals in the United States may have undergone abduction or abduction-related experiences.1 The fact that a phenomenon defies conventional explanation, or even challenges our notions of reality, should not permit us to ignore its existence or prevent us from exploring its dimensions and significance. At the very least, mental health clinicians should be familiar with a condition that causes so much anguish among their potential patients or clients. Furthermore, the sheer extent of the phenomenon, and its unusual psychological and physical features, indicate that the problem may be of considerable socio-cultural, scientific and philosophical importance. In this article I describe the basic features of the UFO abduction experience, the impact these experiences have on the abductees, and the implications of the phenomenon for our profession and society.

There are other investigators who have had longer experience with abductees, but because of the unusual or controversial nature of this material, I will depend whenever possible upon my own work so that I may take personal responsibility for the observations and experiences reported. In light of the uncertain ontological or "reality" status of what abductees report has "happened" to them, there is an issue of what might be called the narrator's attitude or point of view. Rather than using quotation marks to indicate that something is what an abductee believes happened, I have related abductee accounts "straight", without quotation marks if, to the experiencer, what is being related really occurred. This does not presume a viewpoint on my part regarding the reality status of the event -- only agreement that the abductee is sincere and that to him or her what is reported really happened. –J. M.

When a psychologist friend and colleague in the fall of 1989 offered to introduce me to Budd Hopkins (whose name and work were unfamiliar to me), describing him as an artist who took the reports of abductees seriously*, I dismissed the idea, assuming that both he and his clients must share some sort of delusion or other mental aberration. When out of curiosity I visited Hopkins on January 10, 1990—one of these dates that tend to be remembered—I was impressed with his sincerity, depth of knowledge, and deep concern for the abductees, who had often been incorrectly diagnosed and inappropriately served by mental health professionals. But what affected me even more was the internal consistency of the detailed accounts by different individuals from various parts of the country who would have had no way to communicate with one another and whose stories had emerged only with difficulty, accompanied by distressing emotions.

* It has been the pioneering research of New York artist and sculptor Budd Hopkins, over two decades with hundreds of abductees, which has established the essential consistency of the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins' first book, Missing Time 2 published in 1981, documented the unaccounted-for time periods and associated symptoms which may indicate that abduction experiences have taken place and their characteristic details. In his second book, Intruders 3 published in 1987, Hopkins defined the sexual and re-productive features that have come to be associated with the abduction phenomenon.

Soon after this initial encounter I met with several abductees in Hopkins' home and again was impressed by the consistency of the narratives, and also with the absence of any obvious mental illness or emotional disturbance other than the traumatic sequelae of the abductions themselves. No obvious explanation that could account for the abduction reports was apparent then, nor has any emerged in the subsequent two years. I felt that this group of people was in need of understanding and help and reflected a mystery of more than purely clinical interest. I determined, therefore, to work with abduction experiencers myself.

By the beginning of June 1992, I had seen more than 56 possible abductees. Of these, 41 fulfilled the basic criteria of full-fledged abduction experiences: recollections, with or without hypnosis, of being taken against the subject's will into some sort of non-normal enclosure by small humanoid creatures where medical and surgical-like procedures were performed. Although I offer support and counseling to abductees, my role has been as much that of a co-investigator as a therapist. Since October, 1990, I have also been holding monthly group support meetings in my home, which have been attended by 15-30 individuals. My first cases were referred by Hopkins. Later I was referred people through the network of individuals interested in UFOs or the abduction phenomenon, or people called me self-referred who learned of my interest in the subject by word of mouth or saw me on television programs about UFOs or abductions. Of the 41 I am calling abductees, there are 24 women and 17 men. Two are children under eight. I have done one to five hypnotic regression sessions with 20 of the 41 and have been present during hypnosis sessions with three others. The adults range in age from 19 to 57.

Who are the Abductees? Psychopathology and Personality

Few generalizations can be made at this time about this important question because of a paucity of research data and the unusual nature of the phenomenon. None of the abductees with whom I have worked have revealed obvious psychopathology, such as schizophrenic psychosis, severe depression, or other major psychiatric disturbances. Indeed, what has struck me most has been the "ordinariness" of the population, including in my sample, for example, a restaurant owner, secretaries, a prison guard, college students, and several housewives. Several demonstrated resentment, slight suspiciousness, a sense of victimization, and other post-traumatic symptomatology. Most seemed burdened in their lives by their abduction experiences.

Some, though not all, of the abductees I have seen report troubled relationships in childhood with one or both parents, alcoholism in the family, and childhood or adolescent abuse. Several report personal isolation, troubled adult relationships, and problems related to conceiving and bearing children and to parenting. But in other cases these disturbances are not present. In some cases, attitudes toward sexuality and decisions relating to having or not having children seemed to be affected by the abduction history. In no case so far have I found a way of tying the non-abduction aspects of these individuals' histories to their abduction stories, nor have I found convincing psychodynamic links between the specific narratives of the reported abduction experiences and other aspects of the personal histories or emotional lives of the abductees.

Alerting Symptoms, Signs and Memories

There are a number of symptoms, signs and memories found in my cases and also reported by Hopkins, David Jacobs4, and eleven other abduction investigators, including six physicians and mental health professionals whom I consulted in preparing this report, that suggest an abduction incident or case. By "history" likely abductees tell of having seen "little men" or other beings, or feeling a "presence" in their room as a child. They have often felt they were "different" or have led a "double life". They may have had close-up sightings of strange craft or objects in the sky during the day or night, or have seen unexplained intense or bizarre bright lights in their living or bedrooms. In association with a UFO sighting, and at times independent of it, they report unexplained time lapses of an hour or two or more, or have found themselves dislocated to a place yards, or even miles, from home and cannot explain how they got there. Abductees may not have been interested in UFOs, but some have been strangely drawn to abduction-related books, react with terror to their content, especially to pictures of aliens ("I saw that face on the book and I almost fainted," one experiencer said to me), cannot finish them and often seek help as a consequence.

They may recall awakening during the night feeling a dread, "numb" or paralyzed with the sense of a physical presence, or even seeing small beings with large black eyes in their room. Other symptoms include a strong sense of vulnerability, generalized anxiety, fear of hospitals, flying, elevators, animals and insects, and sexual contact. Sounds, smells, images, or activities that are disturbing for no apparent reason may later prove to be associated with the abduction experience. Insomnia, fear of the dark and of being alone at night, covering windows against intruders, sleeping with the light on (as an adult), disturbing dreams and nightmares, especially associated with flying craft or "alien ships" taking the person away, are common. Odd rashes, marks, cuts, or scars may appear overnight, or unexplained bleeding from the nose, ear, or rectum, which by itself might not draw attention, but attains significance in association with the other phenomena. Other symptoms include uro-gyn complaints, including unexplained pregnancy changes, and persistent gastro-intestinal symptoms.

Physical Features

The physical features which accompany UFO sightings and landings 5,6, and, in relation to this report, alien abductions, are among the most interesting and compelling aspects of the phenomenon. They provide a seemingly objective corroboration of reports that are otherwise so bizarre as to defy our credulity. With or without accompanying physical manifestation, as a psychiatrist, I credit as valid psychological data from the abductees whom I find to be reliable as informants or suffering from no evident mental illness, other discoverable historical trauma or motive for distortion—even if this leaves me mystified as to what, indeed, did actually occur. However, it is clear that such physical evidence would, if corroborated, relieve abductees of the burden of persuading themselves and others of the actuality of events which are so powerfully real yet defy accepted notions of reality, and would focus attention and resources on the needs of abductees and the meaning of the abduction phenomenon.

Physical manifestations at times frighten abductees, who do not want to believe that their experiences are real, and at other times reassure them of their sanity. For the abductee population, physical manifestations are elusive and inconsistent. Some are not by themselves pathognomonic of an abduction, but gain their significance by appearing in conjunction with, or immediately following, an abduction.

Abductees may tell of their surprise on waking on top of the covers or upside down on the bed, in a room of the house other than the bedroom, or sometimes even outside the house. Their clothes may be removed, folded by the bed or nowhere to be found. Abductees describe their confusion and disbelief on coming to the realization while driving that they are many miles from their location just moments earlier, sometimes finding themselves closer to their destination, at other times completely off their intended path.

Abductees sometimes find nosebleeds or fresh cuts on waking or returning from an episode of missing time, which are later traceable to alien interactions. Many abductees display scars that fall into one of two characteristic types: straight-line or scalpel, and depressions or scoop marks. Human reproductive functioning and sexuality appear to be at the core of the abduction phenomenon 3, 4. Women and men report a great range of experiences related to reproduction and sex which includes gynecological probing, removal and reimplantation of ova, removal or disappearance of fetuses, forced taking of sperm samples, extrauterine incubation of embryos on spacecraft, human nursing of hybrid fetuses with observation by aliens, alien-human sexual intercourse and "bonding", and human intercourse observed by aliens on and off the spacecraft.

Residual Experiences of Abductees  
Painful, Disturbing or Traumatic Sequelae

Whatever may ultimately be found to be its source, for abductees their experience is profound, lasting and inescapable. They suffer from a complex traumatic picture—it would be incorrect to call it "post" traumatic, as the threat does not become a matter of the past.

Abductees may learn, with or without help, to live with, even transform, their experiences. But they have suffered, and sometimes continue to suffer, from the residua or sequelae of their disturbing or traumatic experiences. Psychologically they feel "different". Nightmares and other disturbing dreams are regular sequelae of abductions. Abductees suffer from a great range of physical pains and fears which seem to correspond anatomically and physiologically to the locus of invasive procedures experienced during abductions. In addition to sexual/gynecological sequelae, symptoms include headaches, nasal sinus pains, limb pains, gastro-intestinal pain and distress, intense fears of needles and, commonly, of doctors and hospitals.

Abductees suffer from a complex traumatic picture. It would be incorrect to call it "post" traumatic, as the threat does not become a matter of the past.

There are four dimensions to the trauma:

1) The disturbing experiences themselves;

2) The personal isolation that grows out of the difficulties of talking to others about the experiences;

3) The inconsistency between these experiences and the consensus reality which abductees have learned; and

4) The fact that the experiences can happen again at any time to them and their children.

Other dimensions of the trauma need also to be stressed. A distance often develops when abductees tell their parents or others what they have seen or experienced. They are most frequently told that they have been dreaming, having nightmares, are "lying", are "too imaginative", "making up things", or, as one woman put it, "they just kind of tried to humor me." But to them the experiences are real and clearly distinct from dreams. They learn not to talk with their parents or siblings (some of whom do not want to hear, despite or because of being experiencers themselves) about these experiences, which creates an intense sense of isolation and alienation that continues in adult life among friends and peers.

Children may feel angry or let down by parents when they fail to protect them from abduction experiences. In addition abductees parents are deeply troubled when their children are involved and anguished that they cannot protect them.

Although they may come to accept that their experiences are "real", at least for them, abductees struggle intensely with what this means for their lives. The problem for them is not only one of ontological threat and confusion. It also means that they are unable to dismiss their experiences as easily as they could a dream or fantasy. Finally, abductees must live with the fact that their experiences, whatever their source, can recur at any time, even after years without "activity".

Personal Growth and Transformation

But there is more to the abduction experience than trauma, pathological sequelae and victimization, especially when the experiencers investigate their experience, struggle with its meaning for them and their worlds and try to come to terms with it. Abductees may learn, with or without help, to live with, even transform, their experience.

Confronting their terror and helplessness has been an important aspect of the personal growth they have experienced. Many abductees seem to become more intuitive or "psychic", and develop philosophical interests which they believe are an outgrowth of the abduction phenomenon. One of the most striking results of the abduction experience for many abductees, especially those who work actively to integrate their experiences, is a strong sensitivity to environmental desecration that sometimes leads to various forms of ecological activism. On the ships, abductees are frequently shown visions of nuclear and, especially, ecological destruction, sometimes as if on a television screen. Sometimes abductees feel they have been given a special mission—for example, to commit oneself to leadership in environmental responsibility. Even the "breeding" phenomena, some abductees feel, may in some way be serving a life-preserving function.

Whether spiritual growth and ecological commitment are secondary by-products of their experiences—the expanded consciousness that follows the stretching of the consciousness that may follow any extended painful or traumatic experiences—or are more intrinsic aspect of the whole process is a question that needs further exploration. One abductee believes that the aliens "have been sent as engineers of evolution to do repair work, come to show our consciousness has moved down the wrong track . . . It's like the butterflies have come back to stop the caterpillars from denuding the bushes of food."

Phenomena That Need to be Explained

Any adequate theory of alien abductions, even a useful hypothesis, must account for a broad range of puzzling phenomena. These include at the least:

1) Narrative consistency. The stories which abductees tell vary in their details, but they have a hard edge of narrative consistency. It is sometimes argued that abductees influence one another, that is, they "get" their experiences from what others tell them, visual media or reading. My impression, however, is that what more often happens is that when abductees communicate with each other about their abductions or watch television or film versions of abductions, they find support from one another or fill in details of what they have already experienced or are trying to clarify.

2) The absence of diagnosed mental illness. The majority of abductees do not appear to be deluded, confabulating, lying, self-dramatizing or suffering from a clear mental illness. This does not mean that abductees cannot also be psychotic. I have encountered, though not worked directly with, at least one probable experiencer who was clearly psychotically decompensated.

3) Association with UFOs. Even though many abductions seem to occur independent of UFO sightings by the abductee or other witnesses, a close association between UFO encounters and abductions has been consistently observed.

4) Bizarre physical effects. Whatever may prove to be the ontological status of such accounts, a convincing theory needs to account for the more unusual or difficult to believe physical effects described above.

5) The reports of young children. Parents can, of course, influence their children's experience. Nevertheless, for a theory of the abduction phenomenon to be complete we must find a way to account for the emotionally intense and seemingly authentic, detailed experiences of even very young children whose exposure to outside sources of information has been limited.

What's Going On? Current Theories

Current theories include psychiatric, psychosocial/cultural, extraterrestrial explanations, and what might be called the hypothesis of "other dimensions of consciousness".

Psychiatric: No clear pattern of mental illness has emerged, though psychiatric disturbances may exist among abductees, related or unrelated to the abduction history. I have been struck by how little mental illness manifests among abductees, considering the often lifelong nature of the abduction phenomenon and its disturbing intensity. Many abductees suffer from the symptoms of a post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it is not clear, other than what abductees report, what the traumatizing event might be. It is difficult to conceive of a post-traumatic clinical picture which arises entirely from within the psyche. Child abuse, including sexual abuse, has been considered as a possible source, but does not appear to account for the syndrome in any of my own or other researchers' cases.

Psychosocial/Cultural: Initial confrontation with stories of abductions onto UFOs by alien beings raises in many listeners' minds the idea that this is a form of mass hysteria or collective madness. Arguing against this idea, however, is the fact that abductees are rarely in communication with one another before they are brought together by support groups or somehow find one another because of their common experiences.

It has also been suggested that abductees pick up the details of their experiences from the larger culture, especially the mass media. This is an appealing possibility, but does not hold up to careful scrutiny. UFO phenomena have been reported in the mass media at least since 1947, and abductions have been on the scene since the Barney and Betty Hill case8 was widely reported in 1966. But most media depictions, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET, are general, inaccurate, superficial, and crude, and do not provide the intricate, consistent detail that is found in so many abduction narratives. Even the 1975 documentary film of the Hill case, Interrupted Journey, lacks the level of detail of most of the cases I have seen. A few recent documentaries have been more faithful to the realities of the abduction experience, but many abduction reports have preceded them and these films too are quite general and lack the richness of the accounts that abductees provide. Others have applied Jung's idea of the collective unconscious and "psychoid" phenomena to the shared experiences of abductees 9,10,11.

Jacques Vallee linked modern UFO abductions to historical and mythic accounts of visitation by small beings, contact with flying craft, and kidnappings or abduction onto space vehicles 12,13. As Bullard 14 has written, "The search for parallels is dear to the hearts of folklorists. This is a complex question, leading us deeply into the nature of reality as perceived by particular cultures."

In a discussion of my work with historian of science Thomas Kuhn and his wife Jehane, she asked, "How could a rich stereotype coagulate out of a shared soup of affectively laden imagery without being directly passed on?" This question presses us to stretch or reformulate our notions of the collective unconscious. She is posing the same basic question which philosopher W. V. Quine asked at Harvard a few days later when I presented this material, namely, how could a complex, detailed and traumatic set of ideas and events, some of which lie outside of our notions of reality, that are experienced by otherwise sane people as literally happening, arise spontaneously in thousands of minds of human beings geographically separated and not, as far as one can tell, in contact with one another? An explanation based on such an expression of the collective unconscious would surely stretch our notions of the psyche or how the mind works. Again, the physical phenomena associated with UFOs themselves and the experiences of young children are not accounted for in any such explanation.

Abduction research does have a shattering impact on one's views of the nature of the cosmos. In an attempt to explain the phenomena some have turned to alternative notions of the nature of the cosmos, more familiar to Eastern religions and philosophy, that depict the universe and all its realities as a vast play of consciousness with physical manifestations. We in the West seem, for reasons perhaps as mysterious as the abduction phenomenon itself, to have cut ourselves off almost totally from awareness of any form of higher intelligence or an anima mundi.

Extraterrestrial Hypothesis: Almost as if by a process of elimination many investigators, at least in the United States, have come to the conclusion that UFOs are spacecraft navigated by extraterrestrials and that these beings exist in our material reality and perform the abductions. As Bullard has written, this hypothesis "squares with shared experience better than with personal fantasy or cultural learning.... Never mind the whys and wherefores, the extraterrestrial explanation works. It satisfies believers with a systematic, internally rational account of the abduction phenomenon all for the price of buying a single premise: alien origins" 15. Jacobs seems to be correct when he states "no significant body of thought has come about that presents strong evidence that anything else is happening other than what abductees have stated" 4. Yet there are problems with the extraterrestrial hypothesis as well, especially as literally formulated. Professor of Natural Sciences Michael Swords explores some of these in his article "UFOs as Time Travelers" 17. Why have we not seen better photographs of UFOs landing, for instance, in populated areas, and none of the beings themselves? Why, with the possible exception of the controversial Roswell incident 18, 19, do we have no artifacts that confirm an alien presence?

Penetration of Other Dimensions: Any theory, then, faces virtually irreconcilable contradictions. If the abduction phenomenon is considered from the standpoint of the psyche, we are faced with extremely bizarre material reported sincerely by otherwise sane people, and we cannot account thereby for the accompanying physical manifestations. On the other hand, a literal extraterrestrial hypothesis stretches our notions of the physical universe and its properties to and beyond conventionally accepted limits of reality.

Faced with this dilemma some ufologists, especially Jacques Vallee and Karl Brunstein, are writing of the penetration into our reality of parallel worlds, even other universes 20, 21, 22. Vallee, for example, now states, "I believe that the UFO phenomenon represents evidence for other dimensions beyond spacetime; the UFOs may not come from ordinary space, but from a multiverse which is all around us ... "23. Interestingly, the abductees themselves, who are often scientifically unsophisticated and largely unfamiliar with such writings, speak, including under hypnosis, of the sense that they have of the penetration into their consciousness of other dimensions beyond our familiar space/time reality. Many of the abductees I have met with have the sense of the operation of some other intelligence beyond our own which they feel is responsible for breeding new life forms, changing their own consciousness and affecting basic human notions of reality. One man, for example, says, "When we witness their coming it is like scrim [a piece of fabric used in a theater to create the illusion of a solid wall or backdrop], or a movie screen. When they arrive you are looking at ordinary reality as a movie screen in the optic nerve. When they come it is like someone shines a bright light behind the movie screen and obliterates the scene. What we perceive as the movie screen, what we call reality, they burn through, proving it's only a construct, a version of reality."

Summary and Conclusions

The abduction phenomenon confronts us with an authentic and disturbing mystery. But perhaps, as Edmund Bolles has written, "it is important to confess when something is mysterious" 24. For there is no way, I believe, that we can even make sense, let alone provide a convincing explanation, of this matter within the framework of our existing views of what is real or possible. Our psychological theories do not include a way of accounting for the simultaneous occurrence among thousands of people, unacquainted with one another, including small children, of complex, elaborate, and sometimes overwhelmingly powerful experiences that resemble one another in minute detail, accompanied by a variety of equally peculiar physical phenomena. At the same time our understanding of physical reality cannot explain the technology whereby a population of beings from some other space/time realm can enter our world with such limited detection and affect so many people.

Yet it may be precisely from those phenomena which do not fit into our established scientific categories, like near-death experiences or the "old Hag" (or nightmare) as described by David Hufford 25, from which we may learn most, even if it forces us to change our views of reality.

These individuals—the abductees themselves—are deeply affected by their experiences, which may be emotionally and physically disturbing and traumatic. They need empathic, intelligent diagnostic and therapeutic interventions by individuals who are familiar with the details of the phenomenon and willing to suspend belief about its source or cause. In fact, a little help often goes a long way in these cases. For these are generally not deeply disturbed individuals in need of extensive psychotherapy. When they encounter someone who listens, takes their accounts seriously and does not, as has so often happened to them in the past, try to fit their stories into familiar diagnostic categories, there is usually great relief and improvement in their mental status, although they are troubled initially to have to face the actuality of experiences they have preferred to dismiss as dream, fantasy, or even delusion. Some abductees wish to explore more deeply through hypnosis or other means the buried memories of their abductions. More intensive work of this kind requires the development of standards of care, which some abduction researchers, especially internist David Gotlib in Toronto, are seeking to establish 26. Also proving to be of great value for this population are support groups, led by someone who does abduction treatment and research, through which abductees can meet each other and share their histories and experiences. For, as has been noted, abductees often live in a kind of self-enforced isolation, fearing, with justification, that they will meet, as in the past, not only disbelief but ridicule or dismissal as "crazy" if they talk about this aspect of their lives.

In summary, the abduction phenomenon is of considerable clinical and scientific interest. No convincing explanation of the experiences abductees report is currently evident. We may learn from further research a great deal about the nature of the human psyche and expand our notions of psychological and physical reality. The phenomenon may deliver to us a kind of fourth blow to our collective egoism, following those of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud. For we may be led to realize that not only are we not physically at the center of the universe, transcending other life forms and rational masters of our psyches—we are not even the preeminent or dominant intelligence in the cosmos, in control of our psychological and physical existences. It appears that we can be "invaded" or taken over, if not literally by other creatures, then by some other form of being or consciousness that seems able to do with us what it will for a purpose we cannot yet fathom.

John E. Mack is Professor of Psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director of the Center for Psychology and Social Change. His publications include A Prince of Our Disorder, a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of T. E. Lawrence.

**  
**Footnotes

1 Roper Organization: "Unusual Events Survey Findings". Conducted for Bigelow Holding Company, July-September 1991

2 B. Hopkins: Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions. Richard Marek Publishers, 1981

3 B. Hopkins: Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods. Random House, 1987

4 D. Jacobs: Secret Life: The Structure and Meaning of UFO Abductions. Simon & Schuster, 1992

5 M. Verga: "Traces of UFO Landings?" In Spencer, J. and Evans, H (eds): Phenomenon: Forty Years of Flying Saucers. Avon Books,1988

6 E. A. Faruk: "The Delphos Case: Soil Analysis and Appraisal of a CE-2 Report". Journal of UFO Studies 1:41-65, 1989

7 T. E. Bullard: "Why Abduction Reports Are Not Urban Legends". International UFO Reporter 16(4):15-20,24, July/August 1991

8. J. G. Fuller: The Interrupted Journey. Dial Press, 1966

9 C. G. Jung: Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959

10 K. Thompson.: "The UFO Encounter Experience as a Crisis of Transformation". In S. Grof and C. Grof (eds): Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1989

11 K. Thompson.: Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1991

12 J. Vallee: Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Henry Regnery Company, 1969

13 J. Vallee: Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Contemporary Books, 1988

14 T. E. Bullard: "The American Way: Truth, Justice and Abduction". Magonia 34:3-7, October 1989

15 T. E. Bullard: The American Way: Truth, Justice and Abduction". Magonia 34:3-7, October 1989

16 D. Jacobs: Secret Life: The Structure and Meaning of UFO Abductions. Simon and Schuster, 1992

17 M. Swords: "UFOs as Time Travelers". International UFO Reporter 15(5):18-21,24, September/October 1990

18 C. Berlitz and W. Moore: The Roswell Incident. Avon Books, 1988

19 K. Randle and D. Schmitt: UFO Crash at Roswell. Avon Books, 1991

20 J. Vallee: Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Contemporary Books, 1988

21 K. Brunstein: Beyond the Four Dimensions: Reconciling Physics, Parapsychology and UFOs. Walker and Co., 1979

22 F. A. Wolf: Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds. Simon and Schuster, 1990

23 J. Vallee: Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Contemporary Books, 1988, page 53

24 E. B. Bolles: A Second Way of Knowing. Prentice Hall Press, 1991, page xv

25 D. J. Hufford: The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982

26 D. Gotlib: "Who Speaks for the Witness? Medical and Ethical Issues in Abduction Research". In W. Andrus (ed): MUFON 1990 International UFO Symposium Proceedings. Seguin, Texas, Mutual UFO Network, Inc., 1990, pages 24-35

"Other Realities: The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon" by John E. Mack first appeared in Noetic Sciences Review (No. 23, Autumn 1992, pp. 5-11), the quarterly publication of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). © Copyright 1992 John E. Mack.

Reprinted herein with permission of the John E. Mack Institute http://www.johnemackinstitute.org

Chapter Five: School Bell Ringing and Dinging

In 1995, Dr. John E. Mack, gave a lecture in Sedona, Arizona, which my husband Don and I attended. We had the opportunity to personally speak briefly with Dr. Mack following his lecture and he kindly autographed our hardcover copy of his Abduction book. Dr. Mack had recently returned from Ruwa, Zimbabwe with his research associate Dominique Callimanopulos, where in November 1994, they interviewed a number of children, sixty-two, who, while on recess outside their classrooms, had witnessed a landed space craft and alien beings.

Sadly Dr. Mack's credible and passionate research into the UFO abduction phenomena and other explorations of human experiences were cut short when he was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the streets of London in 2004, there to attend a T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium.

But Dr. Mack's work is not over. Producer Dominique Callimanopulos and filmmaker Randall Nickerson are working on a documentary on the Ruwa school event. Newspaper reporter, Stephen Coan published this article in the Pietermaritzburg, South Africa newspaper, The Witness, recently.

The day the aliens landed

By Stephen Coan

16 Apr 2008

Stephen Coan

The Witness Newspaper

Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Randall Nickerson, American Filmmaker

American filmmaker Randall Nickerson is currently visiting southern Africa making a documentary that follows up an incident that happened at the Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, in 1994 when 62 children aged between eight and 12 reported seeing a UFO and "strange beings" during their morning break.

Those children are now young adults scattered around the globe. Nickerson is tracking them down and interviewing them about the experience. "Their stories are not at all changed," he says. "Which is not what you would expect if they had made it all up."

So what exactly happened on that day in 1994. "It was morning break and they were out in the schoolyard playing," says Nickerson. "They saw one main silver craft that had four others around it," says Nickerson. "It came down on a hill beyond the schoolyard that was out of bounds. The boundary was the edge of the schoolyard, then it was bush and the hill."

"They ran to the edge of the schoolyard to see what this thing was. They saw this small creature walk around on top of the craft while another came down to check out the children. He was all in black, with very tight suit. The children said he had big eyes 'like rugby balls'."

"The children had direct eye contact with this alien -- or whatever it was -- and there seems to have been some kind of communication with the children about the state of the world -- what we are doing to the planet, the destruction we are causing. But not all got this message. Some of the kids were traumatised, others were excited. The young kids were the most traumatised, they were at the front of the group."

"They all went screaming back to school to the teachers. The teachers didn't believe them at first. But then they went home and told their parents who then came to the school and wanted to know what had happened."

Soon afterwards the children were asked to draw pictures of what they had seen. "They did this separately. The drawings were all the same."

A BBC television crew were first on scene to follow it up. A couple of months later, in November 1994, Harvard Professor of Psychiatry John E. Mack visited the school and filmed interviews with the children. He was assisted by South African producer Nicky Carter who already made a short documentary on the subject for the SABC. "I had a half-brother at the school. He was off sick on the day it happened but the children told him all about the next day and he contacted me."

Carter has no doubt the children were telling the truth. "When they interviewed by John Mack with all his professional skills, their voice tone, their body language -- I am 100% certain they were telling the truth. They were so consistent, they told their stories with such conviction, such seriousness. And they told the story in their own language. One child recalled being told by the alien that we should not to be so 'techknowledged' -- why make up something like that?"

Mack, a Pulitzer-prize winner for his biography of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) titled A Prince of Our Disorder (1976) was a highly respected psychiatrist. However when he began researching the phenomenon of reported alien abductions his fellow academics looked askance. In 1994, when his book Abduction appeared, a committee was appointed to review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him. According to the BBC "It was the first time in Harvard's history that a tenured professor was subjected to such an investigation."

After fourteen months of inquiry Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had "reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment," concluding "Dr. Mack remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine."

In 2004 Mack was killed by a drunk driver while visiting London to lecture at a T.E. Lawrence conference.

Mack was guarded in his interpretations of the abduction phenomenon. To one interviewer who said that Mack seemed "inclined to take these [abduction] reports at face value". Mack replied by saying "Face value I wouldn't say. I take them seriously. I don't have a way to account for them."

In a BBC interview he said: "I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry."

Nickerson sees himself as taking that inquiry further when he was commissioned by the John E. Mack Institute, along with producer Dominique Callimanopulos, to make a documentary incorporating the interview footage shot in 1994 with follow up material shot in the present.

"I want to present the story objectively," says Nickerson. "To show the original raw material. That's what initially interested me about this case. These children, one after another, all describing seeing the same thing. You can tell they are not lying. But having seen this footage I thought: 'I need to go to this place, to talk to people, I need to investigate it for myself. Did this really happen?"

"The subject has to be approached as scientifically as possible," he says. "There are questions that we need to ask. It's a case of presenting the evidence just like court."

Despite this rigourous approach isn't there a danger he will simply encounter the lunatic fringe? "I have found those are the people who have all the answers but people to whom something like this has really happened don't. They have millions of questions. There is a humility about them, they realise it's not about them."

At the beginning of the project Nickerson set about contacting those who had been among the 62 children who had witnessed the sighting. "They are mainly students in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Britain." Tracking them down hasn't been that difficult. "They are contacting us because of what we put up on the John E. Mack Institute website. What is interesting is that their stories remain the same as back in 1994."

"They were affected profoundly," says Nickerson. "At the time one girl was told by her parents not to talk about it, that she had imagined it all. But then along came the internet and she found other people's stories and she got in touch with them and realised 'O my God, that was real'."

"Others I've met never doubted it. They say the experience opened up new horizons for them; that at a young age they were made to look at the world differently."

Nickerson cites two students who are now studying in the U.S. "Their father said they would never have done that, but after their experience the kids were totally changed, that's what convinced him that something really happened."

Nickerson's first stop during his visit to southern Africa was the Ariel School in Zimbabwe. "I interviewed teachers and workers who were there at the time." He also came across people from two different schools in the area who had similar sightings on the same day.

Nickerson is now in South Africa trying to track down those living here who were children on that day back in 1994. He will be here until the end of April following up leads resulting from two radio interviews he has already given. "I haven't found any of the original students here as yet," he says. "But I'm sure they are out there."

Article and photograph, Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Coan.

Reprinted with permission of Stephen Coan.

Check out the websites: www.johnemackinstitute.org

Note: The documentary is nearing completion in spring of 2018.

Chapter Six: Flying Saucers and Science

The UFO Challenge

December 1997

By Stanton Friedman

As a nuclear physicist who has had a serious interest in flying saucers since 1958, I have reached four major conclusions:

  1. The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not.

  2. The subject of flying saucers represents a kind of Cosmic Watergate, meaning that some few people in major governments have known since July, 1947, when two crashed saucers and several alien bodies were recovered in New Mexico, that indeed SOME UFOs are ET. As noted in 1950, it's the most classified U.S. topic.

  3. None of the arguments made against conclusions One and Two by a small group of debunkers such as Carl Sagan, my University of Chicago classmate for three years, can stand up to careful scrutiny.

  4. The Flying Saucer story is the biggest story of the millennium: visits to Planet Earth by aliens and the U.S. government's cover-up of the best data (the bodies and wreckage) for over fifty years.

Since 1967 I have lectured on the subject "Flying Saucers ARE Real" at more than 600 colleges and over 100 professional groups in all fifty US states, nine Canadian Provinces, twelve cities in England and nine in other countries, with only eleven hecklers. I have also appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows. Overall, I have probably answered about 35,000 questions about UFOs and secrecy.

It's clear that over 97% of the people have NOT read any of the five major scientific studies I discuss, and are unaware of the mountains of evidence that support my conclusions. They are also unaware of the scientific data, as opposed to tabloid nonsense. However, it is also clear from the Opinion Polls and from my own experience that indeed most people accept the notion that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. The greater the education, the MORE likely an individual is to accept this proposition. In an October 25, 1995, Oxford University Debate on the resolution "Planet Earth is being visited by intelligent extraterrestrial life", the affirmative side, of which I was a part, garnered 60% of Debate Union Member votes on the question. Ninety-two percent of 100,000 people calling during a TV Debate in London on June 27, 1997, said Earth has been visited by aliens!

The problem is NOT that there is not enough evidence to justify my conclusions; but that most people, especially the noisy negativists, are unaware of the real, non-tabloid evidence.

Debunkers seem to employ four major rules:

  1. What the public doesn't know, we certainly won't tell them. The largest official USAF UFO study isn't even mentioned in twelve anti-UFO books, though every one of those books' authors was aware of it.

  2. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.

  3. If one can't attack the data, attack the people. It is easier.

  4. Do one's research by proclamation rather than investigation. It is much easier, and nobody will know the difference anyway.

Many major media people will concede that if indeed aliens are visiting earth, that would be a major story. But because they take great pride in their KNOWLEDGE of major stories, if this were happening they would know about it. But they don't. Therefore, anybody who says visits are real must be a crackpot.

I have noted four major reasons why the big names in science and journalism haven't jumped on the pro-UFO bandwagon:

  1. Ignorance of the data. Scratch a debunker and one usually finds somebody who is putting down what he is not up on.

  2. Fear of ridicule in sponsoring a thesis (only about ten have been submitted relating to UFOs) if a professor, or sponsoring a detailed reportorial investigation if an editor. I check all my audiences and find that, while in agreement with polls, 10% have had a sighting but only 5-10% of these witnesses have been willing to report what they saw. Biggest reason? Fear of ridicule.

  3. Ego. If aliens were visiting Earth, they would call a press conference or ask to talk to the National Academy of Sciences. They haven't, so aliens must not be visiting. Flying saucers finish the job Copernicus started in taking man out of the middle of the universe. Priests fought Copernicus's ideas. Today guys in lab coats, rather than priestly robes, fight alien visitations.

  4. Failure to use our knowledge of technology to understand UFO behavior. They say "It is impossible," rather than "I don't know how." Despite the absurd claims of certain ancient academics and fossilized physicists, it is clear on the basis of solid engineering studies that trips to nearby stars are feasible with round trip times shorter than the average person's lifetime -- using, for example, staged fission and fusion propulsion systems. I have worked on both. It's clear that technological progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way. The history of science is littered with challenges, leveled by people who know nothing about the job at hand, against traditionally "impossible" claims.

The cult of S.E.T.I. (Silly Effort To Investigate) with its crazy notions that nobody would travel -- but that aliens, stuck at the level of radio, are trying to attract our attention -- mocks the notion of flying saucers, not by dealing with the evidence, but by proclamations about the ABSENCE of evidence. This ignores science.

I prove at every lecture that the NSA and CIA are withholding UFO data. Having worked under security for fourteen years, visited seventeen document archives, and having become aware of the huge black budgets of the NSA, NRO, CIA, DIA, etc., I know how easy it is to keep secrets. My nineteen years of study about crashed saucers, and thirteen years on the Majestic-12 documents have convinced me these are real. The challenge for us all, as we enter the new millennium, is to recognize that while our future is in space, we are not alone. I truly hope we qualify for admission to the Cosmic Kindergarten.

-Stanton Friedman

© Copyright 1997 by Stanton Friedman.

Reprinted with permission. Photograph supplied by Stanton Friedman.

Home Web Site: www.stantonfriedman.com

I attended a MUFON meeting in Sedona, Arizona in the late 1990 when Stanton Friedman was guest speaker. His presentation was very interesting.

Chapter Seven: From the Skies

Lucy Pringle, of Hamshire, England, is a Founder member of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies. She is an international authority on crop circles and the pioneer researcher into the effects of electromagnetic fields on living systems, including the physiological and psychological effects reported by people after visiting or being in the vicinity of a crop formation. Also animal behaviour, remote effects, luminosities, mechanical failures and audio effects. Her research shows measured changes in the human hormones following short exposure to the circles, also changes in brain activity. She is an aerial photographer and over the years has taken beautiful photographs of crop circles. She also writes, appears on TV and broadcasts extensively on the crop circle phenomenon, including shows on BBC and appeared on U.S. programs such as those on The Discovery, Learning and History Channels, and TV programs in Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Spain,Mexico, Canada, Slovinia.

She has written three books on crop circles, illustrated with her spectacular photos, and has yearly calendars and other items using her crop circle photography available on her website.

http://cropcircles.lucypringle.co.uk/

I found this article by Lucy, written in 2002, to be rather interesting.

The Mind of God

by Lucy Pringle, ©2002

Everyone has heard of crop circles but what are they? The most striking features of these depressions in the crop are the neat swirling and flattening of the crop, and the sharp cut-off point between the flattened crop and the standing crop. Not only have these events appeared in arable crops but in fields of potatoes and sugar cane, also in heather, sunflowers, rice paddies, snow, ice and sand.

Are they a recent phenomenon?

There are reports going back to 800 AD and the famous woodcut depicting the `Mowing Devil` dated 1687 tells the story of a Hertfordshire farmer who had a field of oats. When they were ready to be reaped he approached a mower who clearly charged such an exorbitant price that the farmer was heard to say that he `would rather the Devil took his oats` and with that he stomped away. We are told that during the night strange sounds were heard and strange lights were seen (this is particularly relevant as it coincides with the numerous reports of `luminosities` and reports of animals being disturbed by noises on the nights formations appear), and the following morning when the farmer went into his field, he found part of the crop lying in round circles. He was very frightened and took to his heels and fled.

Clearly it was considered such a strange and unusual happening that it was recorded and that record has been passed down to us through the ages.

In more recent times I have come across numerous cases of people still living who played in crop circles as children in the 1920's and 1930's.

The circles were often looked upon with suspicion by farmers who either feared that they might not get the full price for their crop if the grain merchants heard about it or in other cases they were thought to appear only `when bad times were about`. Today many farmers are concerned by the damage inflicted by thoughtless visitors who instead of walking down the tramlines, march straight across the field.

Could these events have with us forever?

Our Neolithic ancestors some 2/3000 years BC lived very close to nature and understood the sequential fall of the seasons and its implications. If anything strange or unusual had happened would they not also have recorded it, not only for their own survival but also for the survival of future generations? How would they have done this? They would have used whatever means or tools they had to hand such as stones or wood. Is it not possible that the complex stone structures such as Stonehenge could have been constructed as markers of commemoration?

Indeed not only are there complex stone structures all over the world, not just in Great Britain alone, nor is this phenomenon based in the British Isles alone; it is now a universal occurrence.

How widespread is this phenomenon?

We have eye witness reports of crop formations from over 40 different countries including Russia, Japan, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Norway, Finland, South Africa and Israel. It is a worldwide enigma with Britain playing the leading role.

How many have been recorded.

Since serious records began in the late 1970's, it is estimated that between 4/5000 have been noted. However many escape notice as farmers are reluctant to report them.

Over the years not only have the numbers increased but also the complexity. Scholars of the arcane liken the shapes to Celtic, astrological and astronomical symbols, whilst others see pure examples of medical, musical, engineering or biological forms. Each year has produced its own masterpieces.

There is no doubt the mathematical and geometric precision is huge and awesome. The shapes have progressed from five, six and sevenfold geometry to elevenfold in 2000 and thirteenfold in 2001; we have now moved from elementary to university standard maths. Latterly the completely unambiguous "Face" and the "Arecibo message" formations at Chilbolton, Hampshire were a totally new departure, having no mathematical basis and the images depicted in standing instead of fallen crop.

How are they made?

Are they miracles or works of the Devil? Are they all man made or is there an unknown intelligence working behind the scenes? Could they be made by atmospheric conditions such as plasma vortices or could the spinning blades of hovering helicopters be held responsible? Could they be the result of whirling dervishes, rutting hedgehogs or imprints left by UFO's?

The fact that these forms simultaneously represent perfect aspects of many disciplines could lend credence to the participation of an external intelligence. Alternatively could they be manifestations of our own subconscious?

Where is research leading us?

Whereas we have no definitive answer to this enigma as yet, there is increasing scientific evidence that when the `force` hits the target there is a huge electrical discharge measuring hundreds of thousands of volts per metre lasting a nanosecond, which in the case of crops, softens the plants at the base allowing them to fall: this `force` then traveling upwards breaks down the molecular structure inside the stems. When the `force` is too great it escapes through expulsion cavities in the nodes along the stems. The effect is similar to a baked potato exploding in a microwave oven when the energy is excessive.

It has also been found repeatedly that the seeds collected from inside a formation germinate faster and need less water than those gathered from outside the formation.

From my findings to date it would appear that research should be based in the infrared, microwave area of the electromagnetic spectrum and the latest results indicate that the endocrine system and the pineal gland are being affected whilst tests on brain activity have consistently shown Alpha blocking whilst inside the formations. More research is needed to evaluate the link between these subtle energies and living systems.

Close to 600 personal reports have been amassed from people, describing the effects of electromagnetic fields on living matter, i.e.: humans and animals, also the malfunction of electrical and mechanical instruments, after visiting crop formations or being in their vicinity.

What happened in 2001? Biblical Times?

2001 was an interesting year. Charles Dickens might have found that it contained the both the best of times and the worst of times.

We started off with the worst of times. Floods, pestilence and fire! Had we returned to the biblical age or were we reaping the devastating rewards of our mismanagement of the planet?

There was no doubting that the effects on people whose lives were caught up in these events, were terrible beyond belief. The floods across almost the whole country left people without homes and many of those in the worst hit areas who had mopped up after the first deluge were often flooded out again within weeks, bringing renewed untold misery and despair.

This was a dire reminder that despite all warnings, Councils throughout Britain were recklessly granting permission for houses to be built on known and existing flood plains.

But worse was to come. In February 2001 the first case of the dreaded Foot and Mouth virus was discovered in Northumberland. Before long the disease had spread like an invasive tentacle across the land, striking without warning and leaving farmers, many with herds of irreplaceable stock, facing ruin. Granted they were paid compensation but that was the monetary aspect, nothing could compensate them for the human desolation and the terrible slaughter of their animals. I dread to think of the gigantic karmic debt we owe the animal world. Farms remained eerily silent, even the birds had lost their song; no animals sounds were to be heard and the farmers now had no reason to get up in the morning to continue routines that had been in place since they could ever remember. Everything was still and empty.

The countryside was closed off and heavy fines ranging up to £5000 could be levied on people going onto banned land.

Many questions need to asked and answered regarding the handing of this whole affair and how we control the importation of meat into this country. An enquiry behind closed doors will not suffice. It seems to me that the `townies` know little about the country and its husbandry.

There were a few counties that escaped the holocaust, Hampshire fortunately being one of them.

Can we think of anything positive behind this terrible human and animal suffering, repercussions of which are still felt today some nine months on? I like to try and think of these shocking events acting as a catharsis. A cleansing if you like. Surely some good must result, even if it means we have only leant some valuable lessons?

So how did it affect the crop circle phenomenon?

Despite the mutterings of the Doom and Gloom merchants who suggested that since all circles were man made, we would not see any events until the ban was lifted, we had a greater number of circles during the closed period than is previous years! The best of times

2001 was indeed a good year for crop circles. The events in 2001 were varied and complex, without any particular theme running through the diverse shapes, yet as always captivating the beholders with their beauty and at times, quixotic humour.

As in so many previous years, the `Wessex triangle` was the predominant nesting ground, Wiltshire proudly boasting the greatest numbers. Hampshire was not to be outdone: it had been the cradle for this phenomenon when it came to the public notice in the late 1980's and just as it seemed appropriate that the first formation of 2001 should appear in Hampshire under the ancient iron age hill fort of Winchester Hill, so it was equally appropriate that Hampshire should produce two of the final most evocative and elaborate masterpieces of the season, namely the remarkable Chilbolton Face and Arecibo Message. They appeared respectively on the 14th and 20th August.

The village of Chilbolton in Hampshire lies in the Test Valley situated between the A3057 Stockbridge - Andover road and the B3420 road from Winchester to Andover. It is about 15 miles north of Winchester and 5 miles south of Andover.

Like so many English villages, Chilbolton is rich in history ranging throughout the ages. Axe heads and flints left by Stone Age man (250,000 - 8,000 B.C.) tell us that this part of England was active in prehistory. A long barrow dating back to our Neolithic ancestors, some 4,000 - 1,800 B.C was discovered in 1924 on the Chilbolton - Leckford boundary.

In addition several bowl barrows dating from 1,800 - 800 B.C have been found indicating that Bronze Age man also settled in and worked this area. Exhibits of the earliest dated flints from Chilbolton can be seen in the British Museum.

This area is also rich in ancient hill forts, Danebury and Woolbury ring Forts being close by.

How they brought the Good News (with apologies to Robert Browning. "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix". 1848)

A woman riding her horse along the public footpath bordering onto the field kindly notified me of a single formation. When I flew over the field I was surprised to see two formations not one. One was a large rectangle (90 x 265 ft) and my first impression was that it was some kind of communication, probably a computer chip?

The second formation, a smaller rectangle measuring 145 x 165 ft was completely indecipherable from the air; I could see no meaning to it.

It was not until I was at the photographic lab later that day that my printer said `Oh, there's a face!` The picture has to be viewed at a particular angle for the 3D face to become startlingly apparent.

I immediately scanned the pictures and emailed them to computer expert Paul Vigay (http://www.cropcircleresearch.com) requesting his identification of the `computer chip`. Within minutes he telephoned to say that it was not a computer chip; he had instantly recognised the `chip` as having a striking resemblance to the Arecibo message sent to globular star cluster M13 in 1974 by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).

The message was pulsed by the radio telescope in binary form, consisting of 1679 pulses. 1679 in a unique combination of two prime numbers, 23 and 73. Binary being the universal language used when attempting to communicate with other intelligences. This message, found on the 20 August, contained a large amount of encoded information about life on planet earth and its inhabitants.

Paul identified several discrepancies, notably in addition to the five atomic numbers that consisted of the necessary elements for life on this planet of Phosphorus, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Hydrogen, a sixth atomic number, namely no 14, depicting Silicone had been added.

It has been suggested that if there are other intelligences, they could well be silicone based as opposed to us earthlings who are carbon based.

Furthermore there were discrepancies in the DNA, in particular an additional strand on the left of the double helix. The height of the humanoid was not only considerably smaller (approx: 5ft 9ins in the original message, now approx 3ft 4ins) but had a larger head. The population figure had increased quite markedly and the solar system instead of highlighting only the third planet from the sun, Earth, also highlighted Mars and Jupiter, the fourth and fifth planets.

Are you receiving? Over and Out.

These unique rectangles were a totally new departure from anything we had seen before. Firstly the images were in the positive, the image being depicted in standing rather than flattened crop; secondly there was no mathematical basis to either and thirdly they were completely unambiguous in their interpretation.

Both events lay within feet of the Government owned radio and field station, close to where the spectacular 2000 `Indian Necklace` formation had lain. - the Observatory was unmanned at the time; no trace of any happening during the times they appeared, was found on their radar screens.

Had communication been established?

These formations met with a mixed reception; whereas the media attention given to these formations in the US was intelligent and long lasting, the interest in the UK was intense for 48 hours, then everything went dead. Why was this? My belief is that they were too disturbing and close to home for comfort. What if there was no other explanation than extraterrestrial communication? It is one thing to read about other intelligences and see films on the subject but--to have confirmation of outside intelligences arriving on your doorstep is quite another matter. Did they have a physical body or were they disembodied intelligences consisting of unknown electromagnetic particles? Did they resemble us in any way? Where did they live? Clearly they knew what WE looked like as portrayed by the Face in the field, but what did THEY look like? Were they material or immaterial? If they are material, are already amongst us? Are they able to change from the material to immaterial forms by rearranging the electrons in their bodies?

From whence were they transmitting and how?

All these questions and more must have raced through the minds of the media.

Certainly they were both disquieting and alarming and this was brought home to me by the reaction of an unusually intelligent friend of mine who is taking a university degree in theology. Over the years he had been trying to persuade himself that, although unlikely, it was just within the realms of possibility that the hoaxers were becoming more and more adept each year, and that all the formations were therefore man-made.

However when I confronted him with the Face lying in the field with the Arecibo message alongside and the Chilbolton Radio telescope close by, he noticeably blanched and became quite distressed. In order to try and preserve his sanity and theological beliefs, he had to persuade himself that I had never shown him the photograph at all; he had to persuade himself he had never seen it. There was no rational explanation of any kind; I could not have faked the photograph to any degree of satisfaction and the complexity of the lay of the formation was such that human involvement had to be excluded. No, there was no remedy to his confusion. Help!

Maybe he could not accept that this phenomenon is within the Mind of God? God is beyond all religion, and theology is like a library of religious beliefs and dogmas placed there for the comfort and security of its readers.

I believe this troubled reaction is a more common than we realize. Clearly there are certain `no go` areas in deeply rooted beliefs systems and if these are threatened, they endanger the whole core of the person's fundamentals ?

However we cannot attempt to limit the Mind of God? As the Creator of all things His Mind encompasses this phenomenon.

Whatever the answer, it is evident we are entering new and previously unexplored areas of research and learning due to these beautiful and enigmatic creations in the landscape.

It is also evident that there is a progression taking us into advanced areas of physics, mathematics, and medicine. These majestic shapes touch the heart as well as the mind as they lead us into new realms of mystery, along paths of fresh understanding, engrossing and delighting us.

That the crop circles have acted a catalyst in bringing together people of all disciplines, races and creeds, could be deemed testament enough of their purpose. In this alone they have brought happiness to many.

Not everything can be explained within the existing tried and tested laws and parameters of science. As Einstein so aptly puts it `There comes a time when the mind touches a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there`.

Article Copyright © 2002 by Lucy Pringle. Reprinted herein with permission of Lucy Pringle. Her website: http://cropcircles.lucypringle.co.uk/

Here is a reproduction of the English Woodcut Pamphlet (printed August 1678), which Lucy referred to in her opening to her article. It is the story of a farmer, refusing to pay a laborer to mow his field, and he apparently swore that he would rather have the Devil mow it than pay the fee the laborer requested. According to the story, that night the field appeared to be in flame, and the next morning the field was found to be mowed. "...next Morning appear'd so neatly mow'd by the Devil or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like."

This if often cited as among the first recorded cases of crop circle appearances but others believe there has been indication of "cosmic gods" going back centuries earlier.

Crop circles not only remind me of early cave drawings but also of the Nazca Lines of Peru. The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches between the towns of Nazca and Palpa in southern Peru. Etched in the surface of the desert pampa sand are about three hundred figures made of straight lines, geometric shapes, most clearly visible from the air. The aridness of the desert have apparently helped to preserve the markings.

The Nazca Lines are a mystery, as no one knows who made them or why. It is believed they were created between 200 BC and 700 AD. Since their discovery, the Nazca Lines have inspired various explanations such as they were made by ancient gods, made by aliens, is a landing strip for returning aliens, a celestial calendar created by the ancient Nazca civilization.

Chapter Eight: The Cosmic Sea

"What the hell is it?!"

Don and Linda Pendleton, spoken in unison

Some years back, my late husband Don Pendleton and I had a mysterious UFO sighting that was extraordinarily awe-inspiring, and an experience I will never forget.

From the best I can recall on the time frame of the sighting, I believe it to have been in early April of 1989, and on a Sunday or Monday evening, although it could have been April of 1988. We never made note of the exact date. I am sure of the time, though. It was shortly after dark at about 8:15 in the evening and it was a balmy evening as we had our patio doors open.

We were at our home in the South Hills area of West Covina, California. Our two story hillside home faced north, overlooking San Gabriel Valley, a well-populated Southern California area. The San Gabriel Valley is about ten miles across to the base of the San Gabriel Mountain Range. From our home, on a clear day, we could see the city of Pasadena and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (JPL), slightly to our northwest.

We were watching television in our family room on the north side of the home, upper floor. At approximately 8:15 P.M., our attention was diverted to a strange sound approaching from the south, coming over the hills. The best way I can describe the sound was that it was a very low-pitched hum. Within moments, the sound was over our house, although the low hum was not louder; still a soft, low frequency hum. We both jumped up from the couch and moved to our patio doors and outside onto the upper deck. To our surprise and shock, directly above us was the leading edge of a huge triangular shaped object. It appeared to be 100 to 150 feet above us. This object was moving very, very slow, almost as if it were gliding or floating. The noise that it generated, the low, unique sound, was a sound that neither of us had ever heard before from any helicopter, military helicopter, or any airplane. Our home was approximately 100 feet long and this object was wider than our house!

The leading edge of the triangle was moving very slowly northward. The belly, bottom, of the object was solid, dense and dark. It blocked out the sky above. We could not see through it to the stars in the clear night sky. On the outer points or edge of the triangle were white lights, possibly four to six. The lights were not flashing, just a constant glow.

Both of us said, at the same moment, "What the hell is it!" We were in awe. As it continued to move slowly northward, it was directly over us for what seemed like a minute or more as it moved beyond us. We heard a male voice across the street from us and to our east, shout to someone, "What is it?"

We watched from our balcony as the object continued its slow, floating movement across the San Gabriel Valley at the same low altitude, nearly at our eye level, and well below the height of the mountain range, which is at least 6,000 feet. As it reached the foothills at the base of the mountains in the vicinity of what is called the San Gabriel Canyon area (above Azusa), the lighted object made a sharp, instant right turn, and continued its movement eastward along the base of the mountains. Due to the terrain from our vantage point we lost sight of it shortly after it made the turn and headed eastward.

It took several minutes for the object to reach the opposite side of the valley. It would be my guess that from the time we first observed it directly over our house until it was out of our sight was nearly four to six minutes or more.

What Don and I found most interesting, was two nights later, approximately one half hour earlier, at about 7:30 to 7:45 P.M., just at the end of twilight, we heard the loud roar of military helicopters approaching from the south. We were familiar with military helicopters that occasionally flew through our area, as well as the occasional police helicopters and could tell the difference of the sound of the two. What we now heard on this second night, was definitely the sound of approaching military helicopters. We went out onto the deck and observed three (may have been five) large military helicopters flying at normal flight speed, with the usual aircraft lighting. They were in close formation and at a higher altitude than the triangular object had been. They flew over our house, and north across the valley in nearly the exact path as the triangular craft. When they reached the opposite side to the San Gabriel Valley, they turned to the east, but that turn was not the sharp, quick angled turn that we had observed from the large triangular object. Even as they moved above us, there was no mistaking that they were military helicopters in fairly close formation. They were individual helicopters, and did not block out the sky above as the huge triangular craft had. Nothing about the sighting of the military helicopters was close to our observation of the triangular UFO.

The following evening the military helicopters flew over again, on the same flight path, but this time, just at dusk. If I recall correctly, either the next evening, or the one after, the helicopters flew over again, and again, on that same flight path. At present, I cannot recall for sure of the number the first night they flew over, but from the best I can recall there were five on that night, and three on subsequent nights.

About three days after our observation of the triangular craft, and following either the second or third appearance of the military helicopters, our local newspaper, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, had a small article stating that El Toro Marine Base in Orange County had military helicopters on training maneuvers related to night desert exercises. The desert is to the north on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountain Range. This news article also seemed unusual as I don't recall other times of announcements of El Toro maneuvers in our local paper.

It was our belief then, and is still my belief, that the military helicopters were deployed following the appearance of the unidentified triangular craft to divert attention away from what was not one of our known aircraft.

The San Gabriel Valley area of Southern California is a highly populated area. If you have ever seen the views of the surrounding area during the Rose Bowl Parade or Game, you will have seen the extent of the populated area I am speaking of. It seems that the population could have been at risk from the close formation flight of military helicopters flying at what appeared to be a lower altitude than they normally flew in the area. We had never seen them fly in such a tight formation ever before.

Another strange thing about the sighting and the flight path of the triangular craft is that it crossed the normal flight path of Ontario International Airport, only a few miles to the east. Of course, the object was much lower than the airline path would be. The flight direction of airliners into and out of Ontario would at times be reversed due to high Santa Ana winds.

As I look back on the event, I am really sorry that we did not record the exact date of our sighting. We did not report it to anyone as we assumed it would be ignored as most UFO sightings are. The next day we called several friends and family living in the immediate area and were disappointed to discover that none had seen the UFO. We never contacted the neighbor who yelled out as we did not know him.

I'm proud to say that my article about our UFO sighting now appears in a middle school text book in Norway. The text book, Crossroads 8, written by teacher, Halvor Heger, is in English. Within the chapter that has my eyewitness account, is a quote that former President Jimmy Carter made during his Presidential campaign: "If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and scientists, I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one."

Apparently he tried, as did President Bill Clinton, and neither were able to make much of a gain in releasing information. President Obama has joked a little about it and seemed to indicate that nothing new would be released.

It does make one wonder why their hands are tied so tightly. But the bigger question might be, who has the Presidents' hands tied and is keeping information from the public?

My experiences with UFO sightings did not end with the Southern California sighting. I had another sighting, and this time it was two UFOs, best described as amber orbs.

On the evening of April 4, 2001 at approximately 7:10 P.M. at home in Sedona, Arizona, I was in my study, seated at my computer desk. A large window behind my desk faced in a westerly direction. I was observing an on-line chat room discussion of a writers' group and was not actually taking part, just nonchalantly observing the on-line comments.

I had spent the afternoon reading and editing the manuscript of my novel, The Unknown. The book is a mystery/suspense novel about the disappearance of several gifted children and the intrigue of UFOs and alien abduction, remote viewing, and government cover-up. The book has a message to Planet Earth from a fictional alien being. I knew when I wrote it, that his words were channeled and came from beyond me. An alien? Yes, I was sure of that. After giving his message quite a bit of thought after my reading, I had put the manuscript away, grabbed a bite of dinner and had gone into my study.

My cat, Snickers was sitting on my desk beside my monitor and looking out the window. Bored with the on-line chat, I had watched the sunset which had been quite beautiful with some clouds touched with pink and orange colors. It was now dusk and still enough light to see the outline of the Sedona rock formations.

Suddenly two large bright, shimmering amber orbs appeared and streaked across the sky, low on the horizon, seemingly over the field next to my home. My cat saw them at the same instant I did and both our heads moved across the frame of the window as the orbs streaked south to north, nearly side by side and moving horizontally. I shouted, "What was that!" and jumped out of my chair and ran to the living room where I could see the north view. My cat followed right behind! I saw nothing in the sky near the outline of Wilson Mountain and Steamboat Rock to my north view. They were gone. And I must say, much to my disappointment. It appeared from their trajectory that they would have passed along side or over the mountain peak.

Within a few moments I had the distinct feeling that the UFO fly-by was the alien I had channeled for the book, and that he just came by to say hello and verify for me that his words did come from beyond.

Within two hours I called Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington to report my sighting. I believe he became somewhat frustrated with me when he asked, "How many degrees above the horizon?" and I hesitated in my answer. Because I was sitting down and looking through the window, I had a hard time deciding what the answer would be.

The amber orbs were very bright, shimmering orange/yellow, and moving at such a rate that a small trail or streak was behind each of them. It appeared they were close together with one slightly higher and in front of the other, but side by side and moving horizontally and with a slight rise. If I were seated at my desk, holding a quarter in my hand with my arm outstretched they each were bigger than a quarter but not quite as big as a fifty cent piece.

After Peter Davenport took my report he mentioned that my sighting sounded very much like sightings in Puget Sound, Washington a few weeks before.

I followed up that report the next day with a call to the local Sedona chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. MUFON investigator Bill Hassel came to my home and we filled out an extensive report form. When he asked if I had any witnesses, I laughed and said, "Just my cat. He saw them, too." Much to my surprise he said there was a place on the form for animal reaction. He observed my study and the position I had been at the computer at the time of the UFO sighting. We discussed the angle, the trajectory, degrees on the horizon, size, color, and time in view. He also had a topographic map of the Sedona area and had me identify the path I believed the UFOs followed.

A few days later I spoke with Tom Dongo, Sedona UFO researcher and author, regarding my sighting. He informed me that my sighting closely matched a report about four months prior in the Village of Oak Creek, adjacent to Sedona. A local dentist had observed three amber orbs and by all accounts it appeared to be very similar to my sighting.

Even today I can see the UFOs in my mind's eyes with the same intensity and vividness, although it is difficult to describe the orbs in words: the intensity of the color, the shimmering and swirling of the light emitted. They were an alive, solid mass of energy. They did not put out light; they were a ball of light and swirling energy. It appeared that the UFOs were close by, not off into the vastness of the sky. When I state that it seemed the orbs passed over the empty lot next to my home that is how it appeared to me. It was not like watching a meteorite streak through the night sky. I've had lots of opportunity to see meteorites of various sizes in the open and dark night skies of Sedona, Arizona.

It seemed as if these orbs had pierced the veil into our dimension from another dimension and then returned to that dimension. Of course, it is possible that others saw them on their journey northward through the Arizona sky and did not disappear as I felt they had.

It was much later when I noted that several witnesses to the Phoenix Lights had observed and identified some of the lights as amber orbs, or amber balls of light. Many saw the UFO as an object nearly a mile long and triangular in shape, and most of the photos or video I saw televised appeared to be in that precise shape. But others claimed to have only seen one to three amber orbs and had seen amber orbs in the area at times other than March 13, 1997.

These amber orbs were not the first UFOs I had observed in Sedona. On the 4th of July weekend of 1994, my husband, Don and I were at an outdoor evening concert of singer, Emmylou Harris. I was enjoying the music and a strange thought went through my head as I looked up at the night sky. I wondered what aliens flying over in their UFOs might think of the sounds of music filing the area. It couldn't have been more than three minutes later when I spotted high in the sky a white light moving from the south to the north. What really caught my attention was the erratic and zig-zag movement of the object. The following night, Don and I had parked on the mesa near the Sedona airport waiting to watch the fireworks show at the school below and across the main highway. We were standing outside, leaning against the car when Don's eyes caught the movement of the UFOs first. It was similar to what I had observed the night before only this time there were two, some distance apart, but moving erratically and zig-zagging from south to north. A few minutes later we saw another moving through the sky with erratic movement. These were white lights, appearing like a very high altitude airplane or even a satellite, but obviously not either of those. Before we left the hillside that evening we both had observed three UFOs, each with the same erratic behavior.

Sedona has the reputation for many UFO sightings. Rumor even has it that there is a secret military base in the Secret Canyon area and black helicopters have been seen in that area. I'm not sure I give any credibility to that rumor. But Sedona is a special, mystical place, no doubt. Considered by Native Americans as sacred holy ground long before the arrival of white man, it has been said that warring tribal enemies honored the sacredness of the area and battles were never fought there, although many battles took place in territory surrounding Sedona. In recent years much publicity has been given to the Sedona vortices. I do give credibility to that idea that there are energy spots around Sedona, including the airport mesa where we had our 1994 Sedona sighting.

Chapter Nine: The United States and Space

UNCLASSIFIED

U.S. National Space Policy

The President authorized a new national space policy on August 31, 2006 that establishes overarching national policy that governs the conduct of U.S. space activities. This policy supersedes Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-49/NSTC-8, National Space Policy, dated September 14, 1996.

1. Background

For five decades, the United States has led the world in space exploration and use and has developed a solid civil, commercial, and national security space foundation. Space activities have improved life in the United States and around the world, enhancing security, protecting lives and the environment, speeding information flow, serving as an engine for economic growth, and revolutionizing the way people view their place in the world and the cosmos. Space has become a place that is increasingly used by a host of nations, consortia, businesses, and entrepreneurs.

In this new century, those who effectively utilize space will enjoy added prosperity and security and will hold a substantial advantage over those who do not. Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power. In order to increase knowledge, discovery, economic prosperity, and to enhance the national security, the United States must have robust, effective, and efficient space capabilities.

2. Principles

The conduct of U.S. space programs and activities shall be a top priority, guided by the following principles:

• The United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity. Consistent with this principle, "peaceful purposes" allow U.S. defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests;

• The United States rejects any claims to sovereignty by any nation over outer space or celestial bodies, or any portion thereof, and rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space;

• The United States will seek to cooperate with other nations in the peaceful use of outer space to extend the benefits of space, enhance space exploration, and to protect and promote freedom around the world;

• The United States considers space systems to have the rights of passage through and operations in space without interference. Consistent with this principle, the United States will view purposeful interference with its space systems as an infringement on its rights;

• The United States considers space capabilities -- including the ground and space segments and supporting links -- vital to its national interests. Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests;

• The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space. Proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or other activities in space for U.S. national interests; and

• The United States is committed to encouraging and facilitating a growing and entrepreneurial U.S. commercial space sector. Toward that end, the United States Government will use U.S. commercial space capabilities to the maximum practical extent, consistent with national security.

3. United States Space Policy Goals

The fundamental goals of this policy are to:

• Strengthen the nation's space leadership and ensure that space capabilities are available in time to further U.S. national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives;

• Enable unhindered U.S. operations in and through space to defend our interests there;

• Implement and sustain an innovative human and robotic exploration program with the objective of extending human presence across the solar system;

• Increase the benefits of civil exploration, scientific discovery, and environmental activities;

• Enable a dynamic, globally competitive domestic commercial space sector in order to promote innovation, strengthen U.S. leadership, and protect national, homeland, and economic security;

• Enable a robust science and technology base supporting national security, homeland security, and civil space activities; and

• Encourage international cooperation with foreign nations and/or consortia on space activities that are of mutual benefit and that further the peaceful exploration and use of space, as well as to advance national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives.

4. General Guidelines

In order to achieve the goals of this policy, the United States Government shall:

• Develop Space Professionals. Sustained excellence in space-related science, engineering, acquisition, and operational disciplines is vital to the future of U.S. space capabilities. Departments and agencies that conduct space related activities shall establish standards and implement activities to develop and maintain highly skilled, experienced, and motivated space professionals within their workforce.

• Improve Space System Development and Procurement. United States space systems provide critical capabilities to a wide range of civil, commercial, and national security users. The primary goal of space system development and procurement must be mission success. Achieving this goal depends on effective research, development, acquisition, management, execution, oversight, and operations. Toward that end, departments and agencies shall create an environment that enables mission success, including, but not limited to, creating a common understanding of realistic and stable requirements and operational concepts; clearly identifying and managing risks, including system safety; setting and maintaining realistic and stable funding; delivering space capabilities on time and on budget; and providing acquisition managers with the tools, responsibility, budget flexibility, and authority to achieve this goal.

• Increase and Strengthen Interagency Partnerships. The challenges of the 21st century require a focused and dedicated unity of effort. Interagency partnerships provide opportunities to jointly identify desired effects, capabilities, and strategies. Departments and agencies shall capitalize on opportunities for dynamic partnerships — whether through collaboration, information sharing, alignment, or integration.

• Strengthen and Maintain the U.S. Space-Related Science, Technology, and Industrial Base. A robust science, technology, and industrial base is critical for U.S. space capabilities. Departments and agencies shall: encourage new discoveries in space science and new applications of technology; and enable future space systems to achieve new and improved capabilities, including incentives for high-risk/high-payoff and transformational space capabilities. Additionally, departments and agencies shall: conduct the basic and applied research that increases capability and decreases cost; encourage an innovative commercial space sector, including the use of prize competitions; and ensure the availability of space related industrial capabilities in support of critical government functions.

5. National Security Space Guidelines

United States national security is critically dependent upon space capabilities, and this dependence will grow. The Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, after consulting, as appropriate, the Secretary of State and other heads of departments and agencies, and consistent with their respective responsibilities as set forth in the National Security Act of 1947, as amended, Title 10, U.S.C. and Title 50 U.S.C., the National Security Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, and other applicable law, shall:

• Support the President and the Vice President in the performance of Executive functions, and senior Executive Branch national security, homeland security, and foreign policy decisionmakers; other Federal officials, as appropriate; and the enduring constitutional government operations and infrastructure;

• Support and enable defense and intelligence requirements and operations during times of peace, crisis, and through all levels of conflict;

• Develop and deploy space capabilities that sustain U.S. advantage and support defense and intelligence transformation; and

• Employ appropriate planning, programming, and budgeting activities, organizational arrangements, and strategies that result in an operational force structure and optimized space capabilities that support the national and homeland security.

To achieve the goals of this policy, the Secretary of Defense shall:

• Maintain the capabilities to execute the space support, force enhancement, space control, and force application missions;

• Establish specific intelligence requirements that can be met by tactical, operational, or national-level intelligence gathering capabilities;

• Provide, as launch agent for both the defense and intelligence sectors, reliable, affordable, and timely space access for national security purposes;

• Provide space capabilities to support continuous, global strategic and tactical warning as well as multi-layered and integrated missile defenses;

• Develop capabilities, plans, and options to ensure freedom of action in space, and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries;

• Have responsibility for space situational awareness; in this capacity, the Secretary of Defense shall support the space situational awareness requirements of the Director of National Intelligence and conduct space situational awareness for: the United States Government; U.S. commercial space capabilities and services used for national and homeland security purposes; civil space capabilities and operations, particularly human space flight activities; and, as appropriate, commercial and foreign space entities; and

• Establish and implement policies and procedures to protect sensitive information regarding the control, dissemination, and declassification of defense activities related to space.

To achieve the goals of this policy, the Director of National Intelligence shall:

• Establish objectives, intelligence requirements, priorities and guidance for the intelligence community to ensure timely and effective collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of national intelligence;

• Ensure that timely information and data support foreign, defense, and economic policies; diplomatic activities; indications and warning; crisis management; treaty compliance verification; appropriate civil, homeland security, and law enforcement users; and perform research and development related to these functions;

• Support military planning and satisfy operational requirements as a major intelligence mission;

• Provide intelligence collection and analysis of space related capabilities to support space situational awareness for: the United States Government; U.S. commercial space capabilities and services used for national and homeland security purposes; civil space capabilities and operations, particularly human space flight activities; and, as appropriate, commercial and foreign space entities;

• Provide a robust foreign space intelligence collection and analysis capability that provides timely information and data to support national and homeland security;

• Coordinate on any radio frequency surveys from space conducted by United States Government departments or agencies and review, as appropriate, and approve any radio frequency surveys from space conducted by the private sector, State, or local governments; and

• Establish and implement policies and procedures to: classify attributable collected information and operational details of intelligence activities related to space; protect sensitive activities; and declassify and release such information when the Director determines that protection is no longer needed.

6. Civil Space Guidelines

The United States shall increase the benefits of civil exploration, scientific discovery, and operational environmental monitoring activities. To that end, the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall: execute a sustained and affordable human and robotic program of space exploration and develop, acquire, and use civil space systems to advance fundamental scientific knowledge of our Earth system, solar system, and universe.

The Secretary of Commerce, through the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shall in coordination with the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, be responsible for operational civil environmental space-based remote sensing systems and management of the associated requirements and acquisition process as follows:

• The Secretary of Commerce, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in collaboration with the Secretary of Defense through the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration will continue to consolidate civil and military polar-orbiting operational environmental sensing systems in accordance with current policy direction;

• The Secretary of Commerce, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shall continue a program of civil geostationary operational environmental satellites with support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and

• The Secretary of Commerce, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall ensure to the maximum extent possible that civil space acquisition processes and capabilities are not duplicated.

The Secretary of the Interior, through the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, shall collect, archive, process, and distribute land surface data to the United States Government and other users and determine operational requirements for land surface data.

The United States will study the Earth system from space and develop new space-based and related capabilities to advance scientific understanding and enhance civil space-based Earth observation. In particular:

• The Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall conduct a program of research to advance scientific knowledge of the Earth through space-based observation and development and deployment of enabling technologies; and

• The Secretary of Commerce and the Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and other departments and agencies as appropriate, in support of long-term operational requirements, shall transition mature research and development capabilities to long-term operations, as appropriate.

The United States will utilize government and commercial space-based and related capabilities wherever feasible to enhance disaster warning, monitoring, and response activities; and take a leadership role in international fora to establish a long-term plan for coordination of an integrated global Earth observation system and promote the adoption of policies internationally that facilitate full and open access to government environmental data on equitable terms.

7. Commercial Space Guidelines

It is in the interest of the United States to foster the use of U.S. commercial space capabilities around the globe and to enable a dynamic, domestic commercial space sector. To this end, departments and agencies shall:

• Use U.S. commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent; purchase commercial capabilities and services when they are available in the commercial marketplace and meet United States Government requirements; and modify commercially available capabilities and services to meet those United States Government requirements when the modification is cost effective;

• Develop systems when it is in the national interest and there is no suitable, cost effective U.S. commercial or, as appropriate, foreign commercial service or system that is or will be available when required;

• Continue to include and increase U.S. private sector participation in the design and development of United States Government space systems and infrastructures;

• Refrain from conducting activities that preclude, deter, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public safety;

• Ensure that United States Government space activities, technology, and infrastructure are made available for private use on a reimbursable, non-interference basis to the maximum practical extent, consistent with national security; and

• Maintain a timely and responsive regulatory environment for licensing commercial space activities and pursue commercial space objectives without the use of direct Federal subsidies, consistent with the regulatory and other authorities of the Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation and the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

8. International Space Cooperation

The United States Government will pursue, as appropriate, and consistent with U.S. national security interests, international cooperation with foreign nations and/or consortia on space activities that are of mutual benefit and that further the peaceful exploration and use of space, as well as to advance national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives. Areas for potential international cooperation include, but are not limited to:

• Space exploration; providing space surveillance information consistent with security requirements and U.S. national security and foreign policy interests; developing and operating Earth-observation-systems.

The Secretary of State, after consultation with the heads of appropriate Departments and Agencies, shall carry out diplomatic and public diplomacy efforts, as appropriate, to build an understanding of and support for U.S. national space policies and programs and to encourage the use of U.S. space capabilities and systems by friends and allies.

9. Space Nuclear Power

Where space nuclear power systems safely enable or significantly enhance space exploration or operational capabilities, the United States shall develop and use these systems. The use of space nuclear power systems shall be consistent with U.S. national and homeland security, and foreign policy interests, and take into account the potential risks. In that regard:

• Approval by the President or his designee shall be required to launch and use United States Government and non-government spacecraft utilizing nuclear power sources with a potential for criticality or above a minimum threshold of radioactivity, in accordance with the existing interagency review process;

• To that end, the Secretary of Energy shall: conduct a nuclear safety analysis for evaluation by an ad hoc Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel which will evaluate the risks associated with launch and in-space operations; assist the Secretary of Transportation in the licensing of space transportation; provide nuclear safety monitoring to ensure that operations in space are consistent with the safety evaluation performed; and maintain the capability and infrastructure to develop and furnish nuclear power systems for use in United States Government space systems; and

• For government spacecraft, the head of the sponsoring Department or Agency shall request launch approval and be responsible for the safe operation of the spacecraft in space.

• For the launch and use of non-government spacecraft utilizing nuclear power sources, the operator will be responsible for the safe operation of the spacecraft in space, including nuclear power sources. To that end:

• The United States Government shall designate a point of entry and develop procedures for reviewing non-governmental missions that use space nuclear power systems;

• The Secretary of Transportation shall be the licensing authority for U.S. commercial launch activities involving nuclear materials, including a payload determination, subject to the requirements described above;

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will license activities prior to launch that involve utilization facilities and nuclear materials not owned by the Department of Energy;

• The United States Government will conduct safety analysis, evaluation, and nuclear safety monitoring on a fee-for-service basis, to the extent allowed by law, where the operator will fully reimburse the United States Government entity for services provided; and

• The Secretary of Energy shall establish and implement policies and procedures to protect sensitive information regarding the control, dissemination, and declassification of space-related nuclear activities.

10. Radio Frequency Spectrum And Orbit Management And Interference Protection

The use of space for national and homeland security, civil, scientific, and commercial purposes depends on the reliable access to and use of radio frequency spectrum and orbital assignments. To ensure the continued use of space for these purposes, the United States Government shall:

• Seek to obtain and protect U.S. global access to the radio frequency spectrum and orbital assignments required to support the use of space by the United States Government and commercial users;

• Explicitly address requirements for radio frequency spectrum and orbit assignments prior to approving acquisition of new space capabilities;

• Consistent with current approaches, assure, to the maximum practical extent, that U.S. national security, homeland security, civil, and commercial space capabilities and services and foreign space capabilities and services of interest to the United States Government are not affected by harmful interference; and

• Seek spectrum regulatory status under U.S. domestic regulations for United States Government owned and operated earth stations operating through commercial satellites, consistent with the regulatory status afforded commercial operations and with the allocation status of the satellite service.

11. Orbital Debris

Orbital debris poses a risk to continued reliable use of space-based services and operations and to the safety of persons and property in space and on Earth. The United States shall seek to minimize the creation of orbital debris by government and non-government operations in space in order to preserve the space environment for future generations. Toward that end:

• Departments and agencies shall continue to follow the United States Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices, consistent with mission requirements and cost effectiveness, in the procurement and operation of spacecraft, launch services, and the operation of tests and experiments in space;

• The Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation, in coordination with the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, shall continue to address orbital debris issues through their respective licensing procedures; and

• The United States shall take a leadership role in international fora to encourage foreign nations and international organizations to adopt policies and practices aimed at debris minimization and shall cooperate in the exchange of information on debris research and the identification of improved debris mitigation practices.

12. Effective Export Policies

As a guideline, space-related exports that are currently available or are planned to be available in the global marketplace shall be considered favorably.

Exports of sensitive or advanced technical data, systems, technologies, and components, shall be approved only rarely, on a case-by-case basis. These items include systems engineering and systems integration capabilities and techniques or enabling components or technologies with capabilities significantly better than those achievable by current or near-term foreign systems.

13. Space-Related Security Classification

The design, development, acquisition, operations, and products of intelligence and defense-related space activities shall be classified as necessary to protect sensitive technologies, sources and methods, and operations, consistent with E.O. 12958, E.O. 12951, and applicable law and regulation as amended.

• The Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence shall establish and implement policies and procedures to protect, disseminate, and appropriately classify and declassify activities and information related to their respective responsibilities outlined in this policy. Where appropriate, they shall coordinate their respective classification guidance.

The following facts are unclassified:

• The United States Government conducts: satellite photoreconnaissance that includes a near real-time capability; overhead signals intelligence collection; and overhead measurement and signature intelligence collection; and

• United States Government photoreconnaissance is used to:

• Collect intelligence; monitor compliance with arms control agreements; collect mapping, charting, and geodetic data that is used to support defense and other mapping-related activities; collect scientific and environmental data and data on natural or man-made disasters; and the foregoing categories of information can be provided to authorized federal agencies;

• Provide information for indications and warning and the planning and conduct of military operations; and

• Image the United States and its territories and possessions, consistent with applicable laws, for purposes including, but not limited to, homeland security.

UNCLASSIFIED

-end-

Suggested Resources

The John E. Mack Institute

The mission of the John E. Mack Institute is to explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity. The Institute is named in recognition of  Dr John Mack, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School.. http://www.johnemack.org

National UFO Reporting Center, Seattle, Washington http://www.nuforc.org/

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Center for UFO Studies http://www.cufos.org/ The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) is an international group of scientists, academics, investigators, and volunteers dedicated to the continuing examination and analysis of the UFO phenomenon. Our purpose is to promote serious scientific interest in UFOs and to serve as an archive for reports, documents, and publications about the UFO phenomenon.

Stanton Friedman, nuclear physicist, UFO researcher and author.

http://www.stantonfriedman.com/

Lucy Pringle, an award winning Crop Circle photographer and researcher.

http://www.cropcircles.lucypringle.co.uk/

MUFON, Mutual UFO Network, Dedicated to the Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity. http://www.mufon.com/

Nancy Talbott, BLT Research Crop Circle Science http://www.bltresearch.com/

Colin Andrews Research, Circles Phenomenon Research International.

Crop Circle Researcher. http://www.colinandrews.net/

Dr. David Jacobs, International Center for Abduction Research

Straight Talk About UFO Abductions. http://www.ufoabduction.com/

Eric von Däniken, For over 45 years, Erich von Däniken has pursued the theory which postulates that Earth might have been visited by extraterrestrials in the remote past. Erich von Däniken, the world's most successful non-fiction writer of all time, has written 26 books on the topic and has sold over 63 million copies worldwide. His books have been translated into 32 languages. http://www.daniken.com

AThe Phoenix Lights,@ Lynne D. Kitei, M.D.

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Athena Demetrios, Medium and Trance-channel, www://iamwithin.com

Shawn Randall, Center for Personal Transformation http://www.shawnrandall.com/

Linda Pendleton, Author

http://www.lindapendleton.com

Related Books by Linda Pendleton

Nonfiction

UFO Odyssey: Off-Earth Beings to the Rescue? by Linda Pendleton

Are we alone in the universe? Most people believe that we are not. Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the government is not telling us all they know about UFO activity. Could the Earth's much needed healing be part of another planet's mission? Are off-earth beings here to help, or to hinder the human race? Can we unlock the long held secrets and mysteries about extraterrestrial life? Research and polls indicate that at least one in seven persons have had a UFO experience of some kind. Abductions, sightings, crop circles—messages from beyond? And why are we being denied disclosure? What has science, technology, professional investigations, and history, revealed?

Whispers From the Soul. The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton

Whispers From the Soul synthesizes the most meaningful elements of human understanding and spirituality from the most ancient days to the present in an exploration of the profound wisdom of the ages through the arts and sciences, philosophies, religious and spiritual expressions, which have fashioned human consciousness and covers a wide range of what is considered by some to be the paranormal, while many others consider these experiences to be extraordinary and awe-inspiring but within the norm of the human experience.

A thoughtful and illuminating study of "Who are we?" "Why are we here?" "What is life all about?"

Fiction

The Unknown, A Novel by Linda Pendleton

AExtraterrestrials,@ said President Daniel Fitzhugh softly to no one but himself. AGod help us all.@

AA dark hand of our government had just come crashing down around John Warren and fear clutched at him, centering deep in the pit of his stomach.@

Nine young gifted children and their parents are gathered from around the world for a research conference at a private foundation at Lake Arrowhead, California. International tensions arise as the children mysteriously disappear on a trip to Disneyland. John Warren and Denise Fellini, single parents of the two American children, find themselves drawn together as they are pitted against a mysterious agency and led into a labyrinth of intrigue, government cover-up, UFOs, and the paranormal.

What they discover, not only shakes their own personal sense of reality, but that of their own government and the world.

An intriguing novel perfectly suited for the public=s growing fascination with UFOs, alien abduction, remote viewing, and government cover-up.

AThis one delivers with romance, white-knuckle suspense and a plot more stunning than The X-Files.@ ~Stephen Mertz, author of Night Wind

I really enjoyed The Unkown. The author brings you in quickly the way she writes about her characters and sets up her story. I felt the story was interesting and very intriguing. There was always new twists and turns, and I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. This was a real page turner. Thanks again Linda, you've done it again. A big fan! ~Anne Boss, CA

About the Author

**Linda Pendleton** , award winning author, has written in a variety of genres: nonfiction, mystery novels, comic book scripting, and screenplays. She coauthored nonfiction and fiction with her late husband, renowned author, Don Pendleton, including their popular nonfiction books, To Dance With Angels, and Whispers From the Soul. Her other nonfiction books include A Walk Through Grief; Three Principles of Angelic Wisdom, the Spiritual Psychology of the Grand Spirit, Dr. Peebles; Meditation, Connecting Body, Mind and Spirit. One of Linda's websites, To Dance With Angels, explores the spiritual psychology of Dr. James Martin Peebles - from both his terrestrial life and his life on the Other Side - along with other facets of spirit communication. A native Californian, Linda, devotes her time to writing and family genealogy.

For More fiction and nonfiction books by Linda Pendleton and Don Pendleton. please visit the websites:

http://donpendleton.com

http://lindapendleton

http://bunchofebooks.com

http://todancewithangels.com

