Strangeness

My interest was peaked when MUFON received a report of unusual occurrences on a farm in Hancock County, Indiana. The report referred to a large formation of black helicopters, strange lights, ghosts and other phenomena I decided to take on at least the initial investigation myself because the farm was only ten minutes from my house.

A little more than a year ago I presented at several speaking engagements in the Central Indiana area to promote membership in MUFON. The Central Indiana area has been a hot spot of reported UFO activity of all varieties but I was the only field investigator. My efforts resulted in the formation of the MUFON Indy Group, a unit of MUFON based in Indianapolis. In very short order six members became certified field investigators and that number is growing.

Our group has become very interested In the events at the Skin Walker Ranch in Utah. I wondered if a similar area of activity might be located in Indiana. This has happened before. Lucky Point was a location of intense activity in southern Indiana in the 70s. This included balls of light, UFOs of several types, big foot sightings, and other things. It was investigated by Past State Director, Jerry Seivers and a link to the details of this investigation can be found on the MUFON Indiana web site.

Unfortunately the farm in Hancock County does not appear to be quite so promising, at least so far.

The initial report referred to strangely deformed trees, ghost activity, sightings of strange people, possibly spirits, who appeared out of place in the modern world and vanished mysteriously, and on one occasion, a fleet of black helicopters.

The trees were quickly explained. My wife is a certified master gardener. She recognized the appearance of the trees to be natural tree growth formation and grape vines. While they had an interesting and somewhat spooky appearance, there was nothing unusual or unnatural about them.

My intention was to visit the farm with field Investigator, Roger Pingleton. Roger is far more interested in ghost phenomena that I am and I wanted to keep this balanced. Frankly, while I try to keep an open mind about everything, I'm pretty skeptical about the whole concept of an afterlife. Roger arrived for our appointment at the farm on time. I was running late so instead of taking the county roads I decided to save time by using I-70. A Fed-Ex tandem rig crashed ahead of me and spilled all of it's fuel. I was trapped in traffic for the next seven hours and never made it there that day. I could see the farm from the interstate and couldn't get there. At my request Roger surveyed the area with a Geiger counter and magnetometer. I was hoping that if there was any UFO activity at the farm, trace radiation or magnetic anomalies would remain. He concentrated on the locations the owner identified as places where strange sightings had occurred over the years. The results were negative.

He was, however, very impressed with the ghost activity the owner reported.

I was able to visit the farm about a week later. The owner had lived on the farm most of her life. She showed me several sites. There was the tree where a lynching had allegedly occurred possibly by the KKK who were powerful in Indiana in the 1920s, the location of a suicide, a place by a stream, now quite close to I-70, where an Indian village was believed to have been massacred by white settlers, and the place over the farm where she had recently seen a formation of ten black helicopters hovering stationary over her farm.

There was no UFO activity reported.

This investigation is ongoing. Since MUFON Indy has a significant group interested in spiritual phenomena I will leave most of this investigation to them. Historical records can be searched for references to the Indian village, the suicide, and the lynching to see if they can be verified as historical events.

I have to say I'm not impressed with the helicopters. While I have heard many reports of black helicopters they are not mysterious. Black is a popular color for privately owned helicopters. Ron Ursay, owner of the Colts, used to own a black Bell 222. LifeLine, Indiana's oldest medical helicopter service now flies five black and red EC-145s. I have also seen Army helicopters literally hundreds of times. Shelbyville, Indiana is only a few miles south of the farm and it is the home of a National Guard helicopter base. Against a bright blue sky or in gray overcast army green helicopters will appear black and unmarked. Their markings are black. So will almost any other color. The bright sky will cause your iris to contract. The farm is also very close to Indianapolis Regional Airport where the Mount Comfort Air Show is held every year. This is the scene and many military demonstrations and war reenactments. If ten attack helicopters were flying in the area it would be unique but not unusual.

Investigators with MUFON Indy will continue to monitor the farm. We've discussed having an overnight session at the farm. We'll see.

Cogs and Artifacts

I've been familiar with the theory of aliens visiting Earth in ancient times and influencing humanity for most of my life. I read Chariots of the Gods in the 70s. Now with the Ancient Aliens TV series the idea is growing in popularity.

While I believe you should keep an open mind on such matters It's also very important to be careful not to jump to false conclusions. We must try to be as informed as possible about what you’re looking at and try to interpret it within the correct context.

I learned this unexpectedly in the 1970s when I visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art with my niece. Both of us had recently read Chariots of the Gods. We went to the museum on an impulse with no idea what exhibits might be on display or prior conception of what we might see.

The IMA is a world class museum. Today it's several times larger and houses one of the finest permanent collections in the world. If you visit Indianapolis you must spend a couple of days at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

My niece and I walked into the gallery that usually contained the traveling exhibits and noticed that it appeared to be a display of very ancient artifacts. A map on the wall illustrated an archeological dig at the site of a possibly prehistoric civilization. Plaques described the location of this lost culture, the habits that were so far known of its people and how the site was discovered. Around us were the objects that were unearthed from that site. Plaques described them as thousands of years old. Most of these were votive forms, objects of art crated as an offering or tribute to the gods in return for a favor. Essentially a three dimensional prayer.

We looked at the objects at first in fascination and then stupefaction. The objects could not be votive forms. They were parts of machines. There were obvious gears and cogs. Machined parts suggested a purpose that could not quite be discerned. It was if archeologists had unearthed clearly advanced devices with no concept of what they had found. Wheels and levers fit perfectly together as they were created by an advanced civilization. Certainly not by a prehistoric culture as they are understood today. Either a civilization with a technology rivaling our own once existed on Earth, almost all traces of which have now vanished or the ancient astronaut theorist were right. At that moment nothing else seemed possible.

The moment passed.

As we intently studied the objects new details emerged. On the side of one cog I could clearly read the inscription in English lettering “Kawasaki”. Other modern names could be found. Then we listened like flies on a wall as a museum official explained the exhibit to another visitor. This was an art project. A college teacher had created an imaginary civilization that had been unearthed by a fictional dig. The artifacts had been created with found objects by his students. This was not a hoax. It was art.

It is undeniable that there is evidence that suggests that at least some of the ancients were more advanced than we give them credit for or they had access to higher technology. Damascus steel was forged by a process that may have been duplicated only recently. Greek fire continues to be a matter of debate. The Peri Reis Map remains unexplained. Medieval and Renaissance art contains many images that appear to be space ships or flying craft. These suggests that we have been visited by aliens in medieval and perhaps ancient times but whether or not these visitors had any influence on our development remains speculation. Even Erich Von Daniken states that he is only suggesting a possibility and asking if perhaps it could have happened that way.

Do Microbe Swarms Form OBOLs?

Orange Balls Of Light (OBOLs) are by far the most common of UFO sightings in Indiana. I’ve written about them before. They appear and then go away. They don't behave like other UFOs, or for that matter like other Balls of Light in other states or other parts of the world. Here they appear singly or in numbers, float leasurly across the sky usually at an altitude of at least 1500 feet, and then vanish. In other parts of the world they have been reported to chase people, approach within a few feet of an observer, appear in colors other than orange, such as red and blue, and sometimes have been known to impart a physical, electrical shock to the observer. (Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah, Colm A. Kelleher, George Knapp ). They have also been reported to be associated with crop circles, cattle mutilations, and virtually every other UFO phenomena.

So what are these and are they all the same phenomena?

The other day my wife, Robin Brunner, and I were kicking the subject around and she came up with an amazing idea. Suppose at least some of the OBOLs are bioluminescent airborne microbes?

We know that microbes exist and live in the atmosphere. They are even thought to affect the weather. (See Cloudy with a Chance of Microbes. Microbe Magazine, March 2012.) We also know that many lifeforms on planet Earth are bioluminescent Could a species that is normally microscopic and therefore invisible gather together in a swarm occasionally and on this special occasion become bioluminescent as a group creating an OBOL that floats across the sky as the swarm is perhaps mating or fissioning. A spere would be a common shape for such a swarm. The Brownian motion like movement of a colony of glowing microscopic creatures might produce an effect that appears very much like a ball of fire. although it would be cold.

J. Allen Hynek and other famous UFO researchers have considered the possibility that some UFOs could be living creatures. I would like to suggest this as one possible theory for that hypothesis.

Clearly this cannot explain all OBOL phenomena. We cannot have proof of this idea until a microbe has been isolated. But this might explain some of the OBOL phenomena as it has been reported so often in Indiana.

New Moons

The other day I was listening To Morning Edition on NPR. The story that caught my interest was about captured moons orbiting the Earth. These are essentially are passing space rocks that are captured by Earth's gravity and fall into orbit around the Earth. Previously it was believed that our planet's gravity was too weak to do this very often but now, with improved detection devices and telescopes more are being found and astronomers and scientists are admitting that from time to time that Earth may have many more moons than familiar Luna. That is until the object is perturbed by Luna's gravity or swings out to a point where the Earth can no longer hold it and it continues on it's way.

We've known for decades that Deimos and Phobos, the moons of Mars are likely captured bodies as are probably all the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

The part of the story that struck me was a description of the discovery of one of these “mini-moons”. This object was initially believed to be a piece of space junk left over from our space program, perhaps some part of a vehicle used by the Apollo program. Analysis of its orbit however proved that it could not be left by Apollo, or any other human source so it was determined that it was a captured asteroid. At that moment I realized that they couldn't tell what it really was. They were inferring that if it wasn't man made space debris then it had to be an asteroid. Nothing else could be considered. Apparently the astronomers had no way of determining if this object was composed of a few dozen pounds of magnesium and aluminum or a couple of tons of nickle and iron, ...or an alien ship.

There have been hundreds of reports of huge craft, often called “Mother Ships” due to their size. They are reported to be many times the size of aircraft carriers and come in all shapes. We hear about them in well documented observations from highly reliable sources such as airline pilots and scientists. Often they are simultaneous tracked by radar. But when these huge craft are not in our skies where do they go? Perhaps they simply move to a high orbit around the Earth where we can't distinguish them from a space rock.

Fiery Serpent

Serpent Mound is an impressive and massive earth sculpture of a snake biting an oval, possibly eating an egg or biting the world.  Located in Adams County, Ohio, it has been a place of controversy since it was discovered. The effigy is built on the top of a high ground referred to as a plateau by the timid. Even the early scientist in previous centuries knew it wasn't formed by the forces that shaped the rest of the Midwest. They refereed to it as a “Crypto-geologic Uplift”.   A long winded term meaning “We don't know what happened.”

The controversy was a result of the conservative scientists' determination to attribute it to vulcanism when there was no evidence of volcanic activity in the region. They couldn't accept the idea that rocks can fall from the sky , and this had to be a very big rock.

Serpent mound has been constructed on the center uplift of a very large meteor creator. It is estimated to be less than 320 million years old.

The age of the mound itself is a little contested. Originally it was believed to have been constructed by the Adena culture (We don't know what they really called themselves.) at about 1000 to 100 years BCE or about as long as 3000 years ago. Recently, improved radiocarbon dating of two samples of wood charcoal taken from undisturbed parts of Serpent Mound both yielded a date of ca. A.D.1070, about 2000 years more recent than previously believed. This makes it likely that it was built by the Fort Ancient culture. Both of these culture have been linked to the Mounds at Anderson, Indiana.

The image however, is hard to deny. An effigy that has been described as a fiery serpent taking a bite out of the Earth is sitting on top of a place where an object that would have been seen by ancient peoples as a fiery serpent did take a bite out of the Earth. Of course it did this over 300 million years before the effigy was built.

Is it possible that a precolumbian genius watched the streaks of meteors in the sky, occasionally saw them impact, and made the connection with the landscape surrounding Serpent Mound? This seems more likely than other explanations.

If you have the opportunity to visit Serpent Mound its worth the trip.  Directions can be found easily on the internet.

So, Why do They Look Like Us?

Reported abductees and contactees have consistently reported only a handful of alien types. The Reptilians, the insect like Mantis variety, the Nordics who look so much like us that they would not be noticed on the streets of Oslo, and the classic Grays. All of these have the same basic configuration that they share with us. Each has two arms and two legs. The head is placed on a moveable neck at top. Each has two eyes offering binocular vision that are placed on the head close to the brain. There are other similarities. Why should they resemble us so closely?

Skeptics point out that any being that evolved on another planet, or another dimension would have had an entirely different evolutionary history than us. They should then look entirely different from us sharing no characteristics at all. Certainly Science Fiction never had this problem. H. G. Wells began the tradition of truly alien appearance in The War of the Worlds. He described his aliens as about the size of a bear with an array of tentacles and a strange V shaped mouth. No arms or legs. More recent movie and TV Science Fiction has only deviated from this concept when cost and the need for actor recognition forced them to resort to makeup.

But reported genuine aliens continue to have the same basic configuration as ourselves. Why?

Evolution.

The basic process of evolution is random, the reconfiguring of genes and modifiers in the DNA molecule. The execution of the process is not random any more that the path of a drop of water is random after it falls as rain. The drop makes its way through aquifers, rivulet, streams, creeks and rivers to return to the ocean without any direction at all. Evolution creates species that fill niches, predators, herbivores, insect eaters, fliers and so on. Those which work survive and reproduce. Those which don't work, do not survive.

We see this every day. Occasionally a negative trait is introduced and medicine has to work to assure the survival of the individual. We call these genetic disorders. They have names like Huntington’s disease and Cystic Fibrosis.

The successful niches are filled by millions of species adapted to them. The shark comes in a variety of forms but each is so perfectly evolved as an aquatic hunters that they have remained in their current form for millions of years.

The Wolf is a mammal predator found over much of the world. It's a perfect hunter. But one continent it did not evolve on was Australia. There the niche filled by the wolf in North America, Asia, and Europe was filled by an entirely different creature, The Tasmanian Wolf. This predator isn't even a mammal like the wolf. Its a marsupial. Its appearance however is strikingly like a wolf. It has four legs for long distance running and rapid sprints to chase down prey, a highly developed olfactory sense, eyes and ears set high on the head that can be focused on a target. Its appearance is strikingly canine but it isn't even remotely related. It gains its appearance and characteristics from the predator niche it fills.

A sentient being fills a niche too. If it is to survive before it finally develops a technology to dominate its world it must stand upright to see potential predators, it must have hands to manipulate its environment, It must have binocular vision and have those eyes close to the brain to reduce time from vision to understanding. This list goes on. The basic upright form of humanity is as far as we know the best configuration for a sentient being and seems to have no evolutionary requirement except for the niche it fills.

The Troodon is a small bird like dinosaur from the Cretaceous period. In 1982 Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa decided to theorize what this dinosaur might look like if the killer asteroid had not hit and it had been allowed to evolve into a sentient being. What he came up with looks strikingly like the lizard beings and a little like the Grays yet Russell used only evolutionary logic and had no interest in UFOs whatever. He extrapolated a being that fills a niche, presently occupied by us, and then conjectured how it must look.

It should not therefore come as a surprise that upright bipedal beings are being reported aboard space craft. They are probably more common than we imagine.

Black Triangles

In April I've had two frustrating reports pf black triangles. All reports of black triangles are frustrating but in both of these cases the witness has filed an extensive report with detailed description of the object and related events including in one case mentioning additional witnesses, then makes themselves unavailable for interview. Without an interview it is impossible to validate a sighting.

These two are interesting in that both were sighted in the Bloomington/Bedford area just south of Indianapolis in mid April of this year within days of each other. Could this be the same object?

The most interesting Case was near SR 67 and SR 37.. It was seen by an entire family.

Almost all sightings of black triangles are frustrating in that they just sightings. A person looks up and there it is, big, dark, and triangular in shape. Often the object is lighted at the corners with red and white lights. Most sightings are at night and details are usually hidden by the darkness. Then the triangle fly's away leaving the witness stunned and often frightened. Certainly some of these are common aircraft. On approach to an airport a huge jet with its flaps deployed can appear to almost float in slow motion. But many of these sightings by their appearance and flight characteristics are clearly not of known aircraft.

in recent years there have been dozens of black triangle sightings. Explanations range from extraterrestrial craft to Air Force stealth aircraft. I don't like the latter explanation because the triangles are reported to be silent, capable of hovering and capable of suddenly accelerating TO unbelievable speeds. I know of no technology that would make that possible.

(The picture is a generic black triangle from files.)