Quote For The Day: Albert Einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

800 UFO sightings released by the Ministry of Defence to the UK National Archives

A former chief of defence staff warned Margaret Thatcher's government in 1985 that its "perfunctory" dismissal of UFO sightings near an RAF base shared with the US Air Force in Suffolk could turn into a political "banana-skin" because it was unexplained.

In a letter to Michael Heseltine, Mrs Thatcher's defence secretary at the time, the late Lord Hill-Norton said the sightings of unidentified flying objects in Rendelsham Forest by USAF personnel in December 1980 had "puzzling and disquieting" features that have never been satisfactorily explained.

The letter, written on 1 May 1985 is among official government documents on UFOs released today by the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives. Fourteen files containing more than 4,000 pages spanning 15 years between 1981 and 1996 have been placed online.

Lord Hill-Norton's letter covers perhaps the best-known British UFO incident of the period when the USAF twice reported mysterious lights and a metallic flying object in the woods at the perimeter of the base. They said a triangular-shaped object had left radiation traces and three visible markings in the ground.

Colonel Charles Halt, the USAF deputy base commander, who saw the lights himself, wrote a short report on 13 January 1981, but the Ministry of Defence denied all knowledge of the events until the colonel's memorandum was released in June 1983 under the US Freedom of Information Act. The MoD's public response was that the incident had no defence interest.

"My personal view, having considered the fragmentary but compelling evidence brought to public knowledge by the media, is that the case cannot be disposed of in these rather perfunctory terms," Lord Hill-Norton wrote. "If the report made by the USAF authorities in January 1981 is accurate, there is evidence that British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree.

"If, on the other hand, the report of the deputy base commander must be dismissed ... then we have evidence – no less disturbing, I suggest – that a sizeable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception, the consequences of which might be grave in military terms."

The MoD reply repeateded that if there were sightings of unidentified flying objects they did not have any defence significance. A "final position statement" was prepared in 1985 by officials for the defence minister, Lord David Trefgarne. "It is highly unlikely that any violation of UK airspace would be heralded by such a display of lights," the file continues. "I think it equally unlikely that any reconnaissance or spying activity would be announced in this way.".

Other MoD documents released relate a UFO incident in Belgium in 1989 and 1990 when Belgian Air Force F-16 fighters were scrambled to intercept strange, brightly-lit, triangular-shaped flying objects reported by police and others. A statement sent to the MoD in November 1993 by General Wilfried de Brouwer, chief of operations in the Belgian Air Staff, confirmed that the fighters had locked-on to something with their radar but were unable to explain what it was.

The MoD said there had been no threat to the UK and that it has never detected a "structured craft flying in UK airspace that has remained unidentified".

The files contain UFO reports of 800 sightings between January 1993 and August 1996, but in 1996 alone 609 incidents were logged, three times more than all the previous three years together.

The Masonic Myth, by Jay Kinney -- a no B.S. history of Freemasonry

Just in time for the release of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol", comes The Masonic Myth:

Freemasons have been connected to the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill, the French Revolution, the Knights Templar, and the pyramids of Egypt. They have been rumored to be everything from a cabal of elite power brokers ruling the world to a covert network of occultists and pagans intent on creating a new world order, to a millennia-old brotherhood perpetuating ancient wisdom through esoteric teachings. Their secret symbols, rituals, and organization have remained shrouded for centuries and spawned theory after theory. The Masonic Myth sets the record straight about the Freemasons and reveals a truth that is far more compelling than the myths.

The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry

Music Break: Elton John Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds

Occult Profiles: Japan's Next First Lady: Introducing 'Mrs. Occult'

With hair that sometimes reveals a shock of white, sometimes goes all black, Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, is striking enough in person. That she is visible at all is a surprise. In Japan, the wives of politicians are often neither seen nor heard. But Miyuki Hatoyama has become something of an international media phenomenon because of remarks in a book she once wrote — and, oh yes, because her husband, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, is assuming the office of Prime Minister after what many are calling one of the most important elections in post-war Japanese history.

After his Democratic Party of Japan displaced the Liberal Democrats from more than half-a-century in power, her words in a 2008 book entitled Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered made it around the world and momentarily overshadowed his victory. In the book, she claimed that in her sleep aliens took her soul to the planet Venus, which she described as being very green. The headlines around the world were shocked, shocked, in a predictable way, with bad puns from London to New York, and even in neighboring South Korea, China and Taiwan. (See the top 10 colorful first spouses.)

But the Japanese weren't surprised. They know her as a regular contributor to Mu Magazine, a publication that explores such subjects as UFOs, the possibility that the world may end in 2012 and the esoteric mysteries of the giant heads of Easter Island and the lost sun-worshipping civilizations of South America. (She speaks openly of "eating" the morning sun for energy.)She is sometimes referred to as "Mrs. Occult," because she wrote a monthly spiritual column in Mu,. Never shy about her opinions, she propagates them with gusto on television, discussing everything from religion to cooking, with the authority of a lifestyle guru or "life composer," as she describes herself. One day, she has said, she would like to direct an Oscar-award winning film starring Tom Cruise, whom she claims to have known in a previous life, when the actor was Japanese.

Her husband approaches her beliefs with support and measured skepticism. "I can understand to a degree [ the existence of UFOs]," the incoming Prime Minister has said, according to a Japanese blog. "But being told by your wife 'I've gone and returned from Venus,' still bewilders me." But he is clearly devoted and has also said in interviews how much he is invigorated by being with her (allowing her, it is said, to style his hair, which, with its pompadour-like height, defies the slicked-down look Japanese politicians are used to sporting.) (See pictures of Japan from 1989 to today.)

Already unconventional with her outspokenness, Miyuki Hatoyama can claim a background uncommon for most Japanese women: she was born abroad and has lived overseas for more than 10 years in her adulthood, she has had more than one career, and she is in her second marriage. Born in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, she returned when she was one year old and grew up in Kobe. By 18, under the name Miyuki Waka, she was acting with the all-female Takarazuka Theater troupe, a traditional Japanese revue with a style somewhere between a glitzy Las Vegas spectacle and a Pyongyang parade to celebrate Kim Jong Il's birthday. (See pictures of the rise of Kim Jong Il.)

After moving to the U.S. with her first marriage, she was working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco when she met Yukio Hatoyama, who is a veritable Japanese Kennedy (his grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, was Prime Minister and his father served as Foreign Minister). At the time, Hatoyama was getting his graduate degree in engineering at Stanford University. In a recent interview in the weekly Japanese magazine Aera, Miyuki said Hatoyama was surprised by his own passionate side when he met her; she said that he stayed on in America to do his Ph D. because of her. After she divorced her first husband, the two married in San Francisco in 1975. They have a son, Kiichiro.

In her interview with Aera, she recalled the time when Hatoyama first won public office, in 1986 to represent a constituency in the northern island of Hokkaido: "People seemed surprised to see flashy clothes and shoes, but I don't like to change myself." Indeed, she has her own flair when it comes to fashion: from a jacket made with her husband's old ties cut and sewn at the cuffs and hemline; to a hemp sackskirt of her own design. When she and her husband cast their votes on Aug. 26, he wore a suit, she wore jeans. (See the fashion looks of Michelle Obama.)

Meanwhile, Japanese reaction to her burst of global fame has been overwhelmingly positive, if low-key. (There had already been one unofficial fan site for her even before the UFO quote got out.) And, in the afterglow of her husband's epoch-ending victory, there is talk about how her honesty and outspokenness are symbolic of what many hope will be a new, less constricting era. She certainly believes his ascension to power is a sign of change in Japan, one that she is happy to be a part of. "I think he will be a completely new style of leader..." she told Aera. "I think that the time has arrived and that his ideas are understood." (See pictures of a UFO congress.)

As they await his formal assumption of office, the Hatoyamas live in the affluent Denenchofu neighborhood in western Tokyo, appears idyllic. The two are often seen taking walks together. In the Aera interview, she says that her husband always dons rubber gloves and washes the dishes after dinner. "No matter how busy he is," she says. "He says 'I feel bad if you make something and you also have to wash the dishes.'" She indicates she will still watch over his style and appearance, perhaps dressing him a little more conservatively dressed than before. She told the magazine that she won't make him wear what the Japanese call "cool biz," a casual summer look that she finds inappropriate for the role of Prime Minister. Nevertheless, when she becomes Japan's next first lady, she has said that nothing much else will change about how she goes about her life. "I'll take trains just like I used to." She may refrain, however, from mentioning any future voyages on UFOs.

— With reporting by Yuki Oda
-Time Magazine

Movie: House Of Bugs

2005 J- Horror House of bugs is from Kazuo Umezz's Horror Theater: Vol. 1 (2005),Koji confesses to his lover, that his wife who has been cheating on him is not a human being anymore.

Is the bug in your head, or is it in my head? What is real and what is not? Who is the one who has lost their mind?

Part 2

Haunted Stanley Hotel EVPs, energy readings and more

UFO Hacker Hacker Gary McKinnon Appeals to Supreme Court

Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker with Asperger's syndrome who broke into the Pentagon's computer systems in his search for proof of UFOs, is likely to discover this week whether his appeal against extradition to the US will be heard by the UK's highest court.

His legal team claim the new supreme court of England and Wales must hear the appeal under the European convention on human rights. They argue that because the court has agreed to hear an appeal against extradition to the US brought by Ian Norris, a businessman who has prostate cancer, that ruling should apply to their client.

The civil rights group Liberty, which supports McKinnon (pictured below), said there may be "compelling personal reasons why a defendant should not be sent abroad for trial".

Janis McKinnon, Gary's mother, said her son was suffering from depression and friends were concerned he may be suicidal.

[Guardian.co.uk via Phantoms & Monsters]

Flu Pandemic and El Nino Connected?

Washington family witnesses multiple UFOs; then spots a 'grey' in backyard

An eastern Washington family claims they have been seeing UFOs in the skies over their town, with unusual helicopter traffic, then a "grey shape" running through their backyard, according to witness testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The reporting witness first describes unusual air traffic in a town where they "never have flight traffic." The helicopters seem like they are searching for something.

During the time the helicopters are in the air, the witness claims hearing an odd sound - described as a "very low decible hum, which made a kind of whum, whum, sound (higher to lower range and back again)."

The family witnessed pulsing lights in the sky, a stench in the air, and a bright object in the sky that moved 25 miles toward them in seconds, stopping just three blocks from their location and hovering just 200 feet off of the ground.

The object was "shaped like an orb with spikes coming out and seemed to have a compainion light under it to one side." The family watched the light for about two hours from inside their home. Then at 3 a.m., their daughter looked out a kitchen window and some a grey shape, "about 4ft tall, grey colored from top to bottom, in an approximate human form moving rapidly across the yard from south to north."

[Read More at Examiner.com]

UFO Sighting Belfast Northern Ireland

Patrick Swayze, favorite movie ghost, dies at 57

Though it was not his first film or even his breakthrough -- he'd already had that three years earlier with "Dirty Dancing" -- my favorite memory of Patrick Swayze came in 1990 with the romantic thriller "Ghost" with Demi Moore: He played a man whose love was so strong that, despite being gunned down in the street, he refused to leave this life until he knew she was safe.

Like countless other women around the country, I suddenly wanted to buy a potter's wheel, slip into a guy's oversized white shirt and work with clay, the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" playing in the background.

As he was in "Ghost," Swayze tended to be cast as the noble sort, the decent one, whether as the leader of a band of Colorado teenagers fighting evil forces in 1984's "Red Dawn," or the post-apocalyptic warrior of 1987's "Steel Dawn." Even when society had labeled him a bad guy, when anger and outrage came it was because someone else had stepped over a line and it was up to him to make things right, as he did as a bouncer-drifter in the gritty 1989 flick "Road House."

It was that decency and dignity, along with that defiance, that he would bring to his final challenge as he fought the pancreatic cancer that would fell him at 57, too soon. Rising above the denial and diffusion that characterizes so much of Hollywood, Swayze told Guy Adams in Britain's Independent in January after he'd gone through a difficult round of chemotherapy, "Yeah, I'm angry; yeah, I'm scared," as if to say otherwise would be insane.

[Read More]

British Scientists Search for Indonesian Yeti

A group of British explorers and scientists from the Devon based Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), the world’s largest mystery animal research organisation, are about to embark on an expedition in search of a yeti-like creature in Indonesia. The four-man team will search the jungles of Sumatra for what locals call the ‘orang-pendek’. The powerfully built, upright-walking beast may be related to both the orang-utan and the much larger yeti of mainland Asia. In the same island chain remains of the tiny hominid known as Homo floresiensis were unearthed in 2003.

The Kubu people - an ancient race who were the first inhabitants of Sumatra - will aid the team. The tribe and their chief have seen the creature in their poorly explored jungle homelands.

Westerners have sighted the orang-pendek too, including Englishwoman Debbie Martyr, now head of the Indonesian tiger conservation group, and wildlife photographer Jeremy Holden.

Also reported in the same jungles are huge horned snakes said to be ten metres long, and a savage, golden cat with a stubby tail and large canine fangs.

[Read More]

UFO Spheres Drop from Sky

PHUKET: A family in Phuket had a close encounter with unidentified falling objects at the weekend when about a hundred small spheres 'dropped from the sky' onto their roof and garden.

The family of six said the transparent balls fell on their home in Wichit about 9am on Sunday directly after a rain shower.

“After the rain had stopped, we heard the sound of things falling on the roof,” said home owner 52-year-old Paweenarak Boonsiew.

Her son then went outside and discovered more than a hundred small, transparent balls on the ground.

The spheres each measure about one centimeter in diameter and are soft and pliable. They have no coloring and do not give off any odor.

Officials from the the Phuket Medical Sciences Center later collected some of the spheres for further examination, leaving the rest with Ms Paweenarak, who said she would keep them for good luck.

A spokesperson for the center told the Gazette that the collected spheres had been sent by plane to the Department of Medical Sciences in Bangkok.

“The findings will be announced as soon as possible,” said the officer.

The appearance of the balls has stirred much excitement among villagers, one of whom was tempted to chew one of the balls, before being reprimanded by Ms Paweenarak and told to wait for the results of the science center’s findings.

Many locals also see the event as a fortuitous omen and are making lottery predictions based on numbers surrounding the phenomenon.

[Phuket Gazette]

The Starchild Skull, human-alien hybrid?

THE DARK and forbidding storm clouds had been building all afternoon. It hadn’t rained for months in this dusty corner of north west Mexico and the sky promised a deluge of biblical proportions.

As the wind whipped at her skirt, young Maria made a momentous decision. She would take cover in the entrance tunnel of the old copper mine. Maria shivered as she remembered the stories of strange creatures that stalked the abandoned mines, but she had no choice. She needed shelter from the approaching storm.

With a huge intake of breath to fortify her quailing spirit, Maria plunged into the tunnel. Before long, the outside world was no more than a pin-prick of light behind her. She fumbled in her pocket for a box of matches and struck one against the wall. For a few moments, the whole tunnel was bathed in an eerie phosphorescent glow. And then she saw a spine-chilling sight, a child’s skeletal hand was poking upwards from the dusty floor. She was horrified and mesmerised in equal measure.

Maria crouched down and began brushing aside the thick layer of sand that covered the cave floor. She quickly unearthed a tiny boney arm, then a torso - and finally, a skull. A bizarrely misshapen skull that looked like that of an alien.

The skull stared at her with huge blank eye-sockets that were at least three times bigger than normal. The almond-shaped head was huge and must have housed an enormous brain. Equally strange were the tiny holes where the ears, nose and mouth should have been. Maria could only imagine what the creature had looked like when it was alive. But one thing was certain, it clearly wasn’t human.

[Read More]