Are UFO sightings linked to sci-fi films?

An article over at the BBC makes a connection with UFO sightings and SciFi films. We here at Paranormal Searchers made a similar connection in our UFO sightings in Britain post.

In 1996, the Earth was under attack from an alien mothership. Do you remember?

Fortunately, Will Smith was on hand to save the planet. This did happen. At least in cinemas.

Independence Day was the blockbuster film of the year, but the fiction it portrayed may have had an impact on the real world - a huge jump in the number of reported sightings of UFOs.

Documents from the Ministry of Defence released by the National Archives show the department recorded 117 sightings in 1995 and 609 in 1996.

This was also the year when television series The X-Files, about attempts to find extra-terrestrial life, was at the height of its popularity in the UK.

David Clarke, an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University, believes there is a link between sightings and science-fiction.

"The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet.

"Maybe what they are seeing is ordinary, like an aircraft, but because they are looking for a UFO, they think it is one."

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Cave complex may lie beneath Giza Pyramids

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.

Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.

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Scientist Admits To Study Of Roswell Crash Debris

A research study that has recently been obtained through FOIA offers stunning confirmation that Wright-Patterson Air Force base contracted Battelle Memorial Institute to analyze material from a crashed UFO at Roswell in 1947. Remarkably, the co-author of this very metals study is the same scientist who decades ago had confessed that he had examined extraterrestrial metal from a crashed UFO while he was a research scientist at Battelle! This just-received document also reveals that another one of its metallurgist authors reported directly to a Battelle scientist who was conducting secret UFO studies for the USAF. It appears that the study represents first-ever attempts in creating highly novel and advanced Titanium alloys. Some of these alloys were later associated with the development of "memory metal" of the type reported as crash debris at Roswell.

This 1949 Battelle research study had never before been publicly available until earlier this month. Its release was compelled under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.) It was sought because references to it had been found as footnotes within later military-sponsored studies on shape-memory alloys such as Nitinol. It was previously believed to be "missing" because both Battelle and Wright historians were unable to locate it. Earlier research had revealed a paper trail that led from Roswell to Wright Patterson, to the doors of Battelle- and to this 1949 study.

Once received, investigators were astounded to learn that the sought study was in fact co-authored by none other than Elroy John Center. Center was a Battelle scientist who -in June of 1960- had privately related that he had analyzed metal from a fallen UFO when he was at the Institute. Citations that had been found to this Battelle report had not listed Center as a co-author. When the report was finally received, Center was revealed to be an "et al" or "and others" author of the study. Center's story about examining ET debris was first publicly told in 1992. But it was not known that Center was the co-author of this Battelle study until it was obtained under FOIA in August of 2009!

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Terrifying 'Sleep Paralysis' Needs More Attention

Sleep paralysis can be a terrifying experience for the near 50 percent of people who have had an episode. It's the middle of the night, your eyes are open, dark shapes are gathering around you, something has grabbed your feet, and you can't move. You can't even scream.

A new article by British researchers calls for more attention to be paid in the medical community to sleep paralysis, also known as "night terrors."

"Sleep paralysis is a period of transient, consciously experienced paralysis either when going to sleep or waking up," wrote the researchers from the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. "During an episode the individual is fully conscious, able to open their eyes but aware that it is not possible to move limbs, head or trunk." The person might have trouble breathing and, "the individual might experience hallucinations."

Scientists are aware that the phenomenon is related to stress and involves a disconnect between the brain and the body during the dreaming, or REM, portion of sleep.

"Putting it simply, wakefulness has occurred, but the body and part of the brain is still in REM sleep," the researchers wrote in the journal The Psychologist. "Most urgently, there is a need for greater awareness of the nature of the sleep paralysis amongst the general public and, particularly, amongst health professionals in order to minimize the anxiety and distress that often results from such attacks."

[LiveScience.com]

How to Create a Ghost

IS IT POSSIBLE to create a ghost? Consider these familiar types of ghost experiences:

• A group of teenagers gathered around a Ouija board receives mysterious messages from a person's spirit who claims to have died 40 years ago.
• A paranormal society conducts a séance where they contact a ghost that communicates though table rappings.
• The residents of a century-old home continually see the spirit of a young child playing in the hallway.

What are these manifestations? Are they truly the ghosts of departed people? Or are they creations of the minds of the people who see them?

Many researchers of the paranormal suspect that some ghostly manifestations and poltergeist phenomena (objects flying through the air, unexplained footsteps and door slammings) are products of the human mind. To test that idea, a fascinating experiment was conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR) to see if they could create a ghost. The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena - perhaps even an apparition.

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God on the brain? Finding the god spot

God on the brain at Penn’s Neuroscience Boot Camp

Neurotheology - the study of the link between belief and the brain - is a topic I’ve hesitated to write about for several years. There are all kinds of theories out there about how progress in neuroscience is changing our understanding of religion, spirituality and mystical experience. Some say the research proves religion is a natural product of the way the brain works, others that God made the brain that way to help us believe. I knew so little about the science behind these ideas that I felt I had to learn more about the brain first before I could comment.

If that was an excuse for procrastination, I don’t have it anymore. For all this week and half the next, I’m attending a “Neuroscience Boot Camp” at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This innovative program, run by Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Director Martha Farah (photo below), aims to explain the latest research in neuroscience to 34 non-experts from fields such as law, business, philosophy and religious studies (as well as to a few journalists). The focus is not only on religion, but faith and issues related to it are certainly part of the discussion.

martha-head-shot1After only two of 8-1/2 days of lectures, one takeaway message is already clear. You can forget about the “God spot” that headline writers love to highlight (as in “‘God spot’ is found in Brain” or “Scientists Locate ‘God Spot’ in Human Brain”). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot.

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Apocalypse watch: Killer Asteroids May Escape NASA's Notice

Aug. 12, 2009 -- NASA is charged with seeking out nearly all the asteroids that threaten Earth

but doesn't have the money to do the job, a federal report says.

That's because even though Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes, the new National Academy of Sciences report says.

Specifically, NASA has been ordered to spot 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space by 2020.

Even so, NASA says it's completed about one-third of its assignment with its current telescope system.

NASA estimates that there are about 20,000 asteroids and comets in our solar system that are potential threats to Earth. They are larger than 460 feet in diameter -- slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. So far, scientists know where about 6,000 of these objects are.

Rocks between 460 feet and 3,280 feet in diameter can devastate an entire region but not the entire globe, said Lindley Johnson, NASA's manager of the near-Earth objects program. Objects bigger than that are even more threatening, of course.

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Are ESTies back? Cult-lite?

AFTER NEARLY 40 HOURS inside the basement of Landmark Education's world headquarters, I have not Transformed. Nor have I "popped" like microwave popcorn, as the Forum Leader striding back and forth at the front of the windowless gray room has promised. In fact, by the time he starts yelling and stabbing the board with a piece of chalk around hour 36, it's become clear that I'll be the hard kernel left at the bottom of this three-and-a-half-day Landmark Forum. I have, however, Invented the Possibility of a Future in which I get a big, fat raise, a Future I'll Choose to Powerfully Enroll my bosses in, now that I am open to Miracles Around Money.

My reluctance to achieve Breakthrough Results is clearly not shared by many of my fellow Forum attendees. Even on day one, most seem positively elated to have plunked down 500 bucks for a more efficient, passionate, powerful life. "Hey, it's cheaper than therapy," a therapist-turned-real estate agent tells me. He ponders how to persuade one of his employees to pony up for the Forum. She's going through a rough patch, he explains—the recession, her marriage.

Not that being broke or brokenhearted would make her a minority in this room; several attendees talk about being between jobs, and one woman says she's on welfare. In the scribbled shorthand of my furtive notes, PW stands for "incidents of public weeping." I lose track after the PW count hits 65.

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Zombaritaville, your one blog stop for zombified songs

Zombaritaville, your one blog stop for zombified songs.

Runnin' From A Fiend
To the tune of Runnin' Down A Dream by Tom Petty

Well their skin was grey, they groaned so loud
Strapped my ammo on, I was survivin'
Tryin' to keep alive, me and Ben were hidin'
But to our dismay, they were undyin'

Yeah runnin' from a fiend
That never stops hunting me
Gonna be history, when he catches me and he feeds
I'm runnin' from a fiend

I felt so scared, like escaping was impossible
I'm so afraid, they'll eat my eyes
For 28 days, the horde was unstoppable
There were billions that lost their lives

Yeah runnin' from a fiend
That never stops hunting me
Gonna be history, when he catches me and he feeds
I'm runnin' from a fiend

What a Wonderful World as a zombie soundtrack

Louis Armstrong meets zombies in this machinima clip that sets the brilliant zombie game Left 4 Dead to the "What a Wonderful World."

Donny Dirk's Zombie Den

When one of the Twin Cities' most notorious bars, Stand Up Frank's, closed earlier this year, I wouldn't have believed in a million years it would be reopened and reimagined as something called Donny Dirk's Zombie Den. Real zombies could dig themselves out of the ground and eat my brains before that would happen, because that would be crazy.

But crazy has happened.

The buzz roaring throughout the local blogosphere last week centered on this reopening (better yet: resurrection) of a north Minneapolis bar infamous for its stiff drinks and scary shootouts.

The new owner, Leslie Bock, of Psycho Suzi's and Saint Sabrina's, has totally transformed the tiny bar into something best described as classy kitsch.

The stunning new interior comes straight out of a 1950s Las Vegas lounge (the classic part). The zombie stuff (i.e. the kitsch) is hilarious, and more nuanced than you'd expect from a bar named Donny Dirk's Zombie Den. In the corner, a small chainsaw sits inside a glass case that reads "In case of zombie attack, break glass." The bartenders all dress like Simon Pegg in "Shaun of the Dead" -- white button-up, red tie and blood stains. The friendly female servers wear long black gowns. Again: This is a classy zombie joint.

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