Fort Hood Shootings

Breaking: Alleged Fort Hood lone gunman -- U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- is alive and in custody, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone.

And so while the news also was that there were two suspects in custody, another still on the run, and another dead, by Thursday evening, the military said "one shooter, still alive" and the earlier report of a dead law enforcement officer is wrong too. It's a female and she is still alive too.


Updated earlier.

Remember, remember the 5th of November: Today is Guy Fawkes Day!

The dead suspect has been identified as a mental health professional, Army psychiatrist Major Malik Nadal Hasan, who had voiced objections to being deployed to the Mideast. It is not known if Hasan was Muslim.

Hasan was born in Virginia and got a bachelor's degree in biochemistry at Virginia Tech, where he was a member of the ROTC, in 1997. He received his medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine in 2001.

He completed a residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed in 2007 and a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry, also at Walter Reed, this year. He also did his internship there.

Ten years after Hasan's graduation, Virginia Tech was the scene of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior English major, killed 32 people and wounded dozens of others in two attacks before killing himself.

Fort Hood, located just 60 miles north from Austin, is the largest U.S. military installation in the world, and has suffered the greatest number of casualities of all American bases in the war on Iraq.

The base is a 340 sq. mile facility located in Killeen, Texas (Bell County) and is home to the 1st Cavalry Division, which was one of the first groups of soldiers deployed to Iraq.

On October 16, 1991, George Hennard murdered 23 people and then died by suicide in Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen (known as Luby's Massacre).

Earlier///

Latest figures are that 12 are dead (including one shooter), 31 wounded, one of the dead includes a civil law enforcement officer; one shooter was said to be a "major" with an "Arab-sounding name." Two other suspects are in custody.

Earlier///Earlier///

Breaking news out of Ft. Hood, Texas, is that upwards of 9 soldiers have been killed and about 30 others were injured by one, two, or three uniformed individuals shooting at post personnel.

One uniformed suspect (an "officer") was in custody, another "cornered" suspect may have also been arrested, and rumors of a third shooter are being heard.

Other locations on or near Ft. Hood are also reporting gunfire.

President Obama addressed these events at 5 pm Eastern.

===
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd (or by God's mercy)
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

Zamora Dies

Former Socorro, New Mexico police officer and close encounter eyewitness to one of the most well-known UFO cases in history, Lonnie Zamora died Monday night, November 2, 2009, of heart failure. Socorro investigator Ray Stanford widely informed the ufo community Wednesday afternoon. Stanford received direct confirmation from the Socorro Police Department.



Lonnie Zamora (1933 - 2009) was a New Mexico police officer who reported a close encounter of the first, second and third kinds on Friday, April 24, 1964, near Socorro, New Mexico.

Zamora’s account received considerable coverage in the mass media, and is sometimes regarded as one of the best documented, yet most perplexing UFO reports. It was one of the accounts that helped persuade astronomer J. Allen Hynek that some UFO reports represent an intriguing, unsolved mystery.



The Encounter

Zamora had been a police officer in Socorro for some years. He was generally regarded as a competent, honest man, though perhaps humorless and overly strict. He was especially known for being tough on speeding motorists.

On April 24, 1964, about 5:45 p.m., Zamora was in pursuit of a speeder. Not long after that pursuit began, he heard a loud sound, which he first thought was an explosion, perhaps from a nearby dynamite storage shack. He abandoned the speeder to investigate.

Southwest of the dynamite shack, Zamora saw what he described as a bright, blue-white “cone of flame”, accompanied by a continual loud roaring sound. He drove towards the light over the rough, dirt road. By the time he crested a tall hill, the flame and sound had both stopped. Zamora said the roar was unlike that of a jet and lasted about 10 seconds from when he first heard it. It went from a high frequency to a low frequency before it stopped.

About 150-200 meters away, he spotted a white, shiny oval object on the ground at the bottom of an arroyo. His first thought was that it was an overturned car. Zamora then noticed two human-like figures near the object. Zamora later wrote that the two figures wore "white coveralls" and were "pretty close to the object on its northwest side, as if inspecting it".

The figure nearest Zamora "must have seen me, cause [sic] when I turned and it looked straight at my car it seemed startled--almost seemed to jump somewhat." He also described the beings as “about the size of boys” but essentially "normal in shape". They were shorter than the small bush they were standing next to, later measured at being about 5 feet high.

Zamora went on to write that he drove closer to the object, intending to offer aid. He radioed police dispatch to inform them he was on the scene of a "possible 10-40" (an auto accident). He would later report that as he got closer to the object, he realized it was not an automobile, nor any kind of conventional craft. He thought the object was perhaps some kind of experimental military craft from White Sands Proving Ground, not far away.

He drove closer to the object, parked it at the edge of the arroyo, less than 100 feet from the craft, then got out of the car for a closer look. Zamora heard two or perhaps three loud thumping sounds, "like someone hammering or shutting a door or doors".

Zamora started to descend on foot down the slope of the arroyo. He noted a red logo or insignia in the middle of the oval object, about 2-1/2 feet wide by 2 feet tall. He also saw what he described as two "legs" supporting the craft. The bottom of the object cleared the ground by maybe 3-1/2 feet.

When he was less than 50 feet away, the object began making a loud noise and a blue-white flame shot from the object’s underside. He later noted that the flame was different from an ordinary flame, lacked smoke, and seemed to penetrate into the soil instead of being reflected off. The flame was tinged orange at the bottom.

The roar started out low frequency and loud, then rapidly increased in pitch and became very loud. He wrote, "Thought, from roar, it might blow up." He dove to the ground and covered his head with his arms. The roar continued, but there was no explosion.

Zamora got up, turned around, and ran panicked back his car, but shot glances over his shoulder to keep an eye on the object as it rose higher. Still quite startled and "afraid of the roar" Zamora ran into his car, stumbled and fell, temporarily losing his glasses. He got up and ran maybe another 50 feet across the dirt road and dove down behind the rise. As he was running and about 25 feet from the car, Zamora glanced back and saw that the object had risen about to the level of the car, or 20-25 feet above the arroyo bottom.

The object continued its ascent as Zamora watched crouched down. He wrote, "The object seemed to lift up slowly" and then flew away. Once it was airborne and began its departure, the roar stopped; it didn't emit any flame, smoke, or sound.

After the craft went silent and started to leave, Zamora quickly ran back to his car, keeping the object in sight. He retrieved his glasses, got into the driver's seat and called in on his two-way radio, all the time watching the object. It initially departed horizontally about 10-15 feet above the ground, rapidly picked up speed, then went into a steep climb as it approached the mountains, fading from view about 6 miles distant to the southwest.

The entire encounter--from his first noting the "explosion" as it landed to the object's flying away over the horizon--had lasted about two minutes. The entire departure--from the time the object cleared the arroyo, went silent, and finally disappeared in the distance-- lasted maybe 10-20 seconds. The latter time can be used to compute an approximate departure speed and has important implications about the nature of the craft.

Not long after the object disappeared, one of Zamora's colleagues, Sgt. Chavez, arrived at the scene. He thought that Zamora was quite disturbed; his face was "white, very pale." Chavez said, "You look like you've seen the devil." Zamora replied "Maybe I have."

Zamora related his account of what had happened, then he and Chavez examined the scene. There were four rectangular impressions in the sand where the object's landing pads had been, plus smaller impressions that Zamora presumed were footprints of the occupants. Some of the nearby shrubs were scorched and smoldering. One of the shrubs near the center of the craft had been sliced cleanly in half. The ground under the craft center was blackened in a circle and some of the sand and rocks had been vitrified.

Though Chavez had known Zamora for years, and judged him a sober, reliable police officer, the story seemed too much to believe. Chavez briefly entertained the possibility that the affair was a hoax, and secretly examined Zamora's car for tools or equipment he might have used to create the physical evidence at the scene (he found nothing of the sort).

A few minutes after Chavez had arrived, several other officials came to the scene after hearing Zamora's call on the radio: Police officers Ted V. Jordan, James Luckie and Cattle Inspector Robert White.

Jordan had a camera and took extensive photos of the scene starting about 10 minutes after the craft left. Jordan would later comment, "The flame from that damn thing just sliced that greasewood bush in half, just burned it off clean like a blade of fire had cut right through it."

The men discussed the encounter, and determined the likeliest explanation was that the craft was from White Sands Proving Ground, though Zamora insisted the craft's occupants were far smaller than adult men. They all left the scene by 7:00 p.m.

Media Reaction and Investigations

Within hours, word of Zamora's encounter had reached the news: many people had heard the radio traffic, including a few reporters. Within days, reporters from the Associated Press and United Press International were in Socorro. Members of civilian UFO study group APRO were on the scene within two days, as were officers representing the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book. NICAP investigators appeared the following Tuesday. The first NICAP investigator was Ray Stanford, who would later write a detailed book account of his investigation, Socorro 'Saucer' in a Pentagon Pantry (Blueapple Books, 1976).



Other Eyewitnesses

Several independent witnesses reported either an "egg" shaped craft, or a bluish flame in roughly the same time and area that Zamora reported his encounter--some of them within minutes of their encounter, before word of Zamora's had spread. Unfortunately, others of these are of limited value, as they were not reported until years after the fact.

Stanford wrote about a number of corroborating witnesses in his book, including two tourists named Paul Kies and Larry Kratzer, who were approaching Socorro in their car from the southwest, less than a mile from the landing site. They apparently witnessed the landing and reported seeing the flame and brownish dust being kicked up. Their story was reported in the Dubuque, Iowa Telegraph-Herald a few days later after their return.

A family of 5 tourists from Colorado headed north also saw the oval object as it approached Socorro at a very low altitude, going east to west just south of town. It passed directly over their car only a few feet above it. After the encounter, the tourists stopped for gas in Socorro. Their identity was never discovered, but the story was learned from the service station operator, Opal Grinder, who signed an affidavit in 1967. According to Grinder, the husband told him "Your aircraft sure fly low around here!" and that the object almost took the roof off their car. The man thought it was in trouble since it came down west of the highways instead of the nearby airport. He saw the police car headed up the hill towards it, he thought to render assistance, wrote Stanford, see p. 16.

According to Stanford, another witness called an Albuquerque television station around 5:30 p.m. to report an oval object at low altitude traveling slowly south towards Socorro, as per Stanford, p. 82.

Stanford also noted that there were a large number of hearing witnesses to the object's loud roar during takeoff and landing. One member of the Socorro sheriff's office told him that "hundreds of persons" on the south side of town had heard it. Stanford said he personally spoke to two women who heard the roar just before 6 p.m. They said that there were two distinct roars, maybe a minute or so apart, according to Stanford, pp. 85-87.

In addition to the above witnesses, Stanford said there were three other persons who called the police dispatcher immediately following the incident, before it was ever publicized.

U. S. Air Force Investigation

The evening of the encounter, Army Captain Richard T. Holder (then the senior officer at White Sands, as the higher-ranking officers had gone home for the weekend) and FBI agent Arthur Byrnes, Jr. together interviewed Zamora. Zamora related the speculation that the object was some kind of newly-developed craft being tested at White Sands or at nearby Holloman Air Force Base. Holder shot down this idea, and was later quoted in a Socorro newspaper as saying, that there was in military custody "no object that would compare to the object described ... There was no known firing mission in progress at the time of the occurrence that would produce the conditions reported."

After interviewing Zamora, Holder and several military police officers went to the scene. Using flashlights, they cordoned off the site, took measurements and took samples of the sand and the scorched bushes.

The next morning--a Sunday--Holder took a telephone call from a Colonel at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As a young Captain, Holder was surprised and nervous to be speaking to such an important high-ranking officer. At the Colonel's command, Holder gave a report of his investigation, over a secure scrambled line. Even years later, Holder would wonder about such important U.S. military officials, "why in the world were they so interested?"

Astronomer J. Allen Hynek (Blue Book's consultant) arrived in Socorro on Tuesday, April 28. He met with Zamora and Chavez, and interviewed them about the encounter. In a memorandum Hynek wrote that "Zamora & Chavez were very anti-AF (Air Force) " The Air Force was suggesting that the affair was a hoax, but Zamora was "pretty sore at being regarded as a romancer" and it took over half an hour for Hynek to "thaw him out" and hear the account from the only eyewitness.

Hynek also wrote that "The AF is in a spot over Socorro:" they were suggesting that the encounter was due to Zamora's having seen an unidentified military craft, though, as noted above, no craft could be matched to Zamora's report. Hynek agreed with many others that this explanation "won't go down" as plausible.

Hynek further wrote "I think this case may be the 'Rosetta Stone' ... There's never been a strong case with so unimpeachable a witness." Also noting his growing frustration with Blue Book, Hynek wrote, "The AF doesn't know what science is."

Eventually, Zamora so tired of the subject that he eventually avoided both ufologists and the Air Force.

The Air Force issued their formal report on June 8, 1964. Jerome Clark in The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial (Visible Ink, 1998) suggested the report is "riddled with errors," including the claim that there were no other witnesses (several reported their sightings within minutes of Zamora's encounter), and the claim that there were no disturbances to the soil (manifestly false, based on Jordan's photos of the scene taken less than an hour after the encounter). Noting that they made no conclusion as to the object's origin (other than to rule out the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis), the "Air Force was continuing its investigation, and the case is still open."

Blue Book Conclusion

Project Blue Book's director, Major Hector Quintanilla (sometimes criticized for a perceived debunk-on-sight approach) said regarding the Zamora case, "There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora's reliability. He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw and frankly, so are we. This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic," according to NICAP's report on the case.

Name Game

The name "Zamora," in Spanish, means "from Zamora"; the name, in Hebrew, is translated into English as "praised."



Zamora is a city in Castile and León, Spain, the capital of the province of Zamora. It lies on a rocky hill in the northwest, near the frontier with Portugal and crossed by the Duero river, which is some 50 km/30mi downstream as it reaches the Portuguese frontier.

During the period of Moorish rule the settlement became known by the names of Semurah or Azemur. After the establishment of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias, the settlement became a strategic frontier post and was the scene of many fierce military engagements between the Muslims (the Moors) and Christians. Control of the town shifted between between the two sides a number of times from the early eighth century to the late eleventh centuriy. During this period it became heavily fortified.

The most notable historic episode in Zamora was the assassination outside the city walls of the king Sancho II of Castile in 1072. Some decades before, king Ferdinand I of León had divided his kingdoms between his three sons. To his daughter, Doña Urraca, he had bequeathed the "well fortified city of Zamora" (or la bien cercada in Spanish). All three sons warred among themselves, till the ultimate winner, Sancho, was left victorious. Zamora, under his sister who was allied with Leonese nobles, resisted. Sancho II of Castile, assisted by El Cid (Spanish article + Arabic, sîdi or sayyid = English, the Lord), lay siege to Zamora.

King Sancho II was murdered by a duplicitous noble of Zamora, Bellido Dolfos, who tricked the king into a private meeting. After the death of Sancho, Castile reverted to his deposed brother Alfonso VI of León. The event was commemorated by the Portillo de la Traición (Treason Gate). Zamora was also the scene of fierce fighting in the fifteenth century, during the conflict between the supporters of Isabella the Catholic and Juana la Beltraneja. The Spanish proverb, No se ganó Zamora en una hora, literally, Zamora wasn't won in an hour, is a reference to these battles. It is the Spanish equivalent of the English proverb "Rome wasn't built in a day."

Zamora, thus, was a fortified city well-known for its resistance to alien invaders, the Moors and others.

The Fourth Kind



Finally, it is to be noted that the movie The Fourth Kind opens on Friday, November 6, 2009. It is a science fiction/thriller/horror film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, and starring Milla Jovovich. The film is purported to be a documentary reenactment set in Nome, Alaska, and deals with alien abductions. The film's promotional material says the title is derived from J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind denotes an alien abduction.

As researcher S. Miles Lewis points out in personal correspondence, this is technically incorrect.

A close encounter of the fourth kind is said to be when a "human is abducted by a UFO or its occupants." But this type was not included in Hynek's original close encounters scale.

Jacques Vallee, Hynek's associate, argued in "Physical Analysis in Ten Cases of Unexplaind Aerial Objects with Material Samples." (Journal of Scientific Exploration. Vol. 12, No. 3., pp. 359-375, 1998) that a CE4 should be described as "cases when witnesses experienced a transformation of their sense of reality," so as to also include non-abduction cases where absurd, hallucinatory or dreamlike events are associated with UFO encounters.

Lonnie Zamora had encounters of the first, second, and third kind.

Funeral

Rosary for Lonnie Zamora is Friday at 7:00 PM, San Miguel Catholic Church, Socorro, New Mexico. Mass for Zamora will be at 9:00 AM Saturday, same church, with burial to follow.

The funeral arrangements are by: Steadman-Hall Funeral Home, 309 Garfield Ave, Socorro, N. M.

Mystery Death: Mac Tonnies, 34

Why do some people die so young, and all we hear is that they passed away of "natural causes"? The two pieces of information do not compute.



Mac Tonnies, 34, a rising intellectual presence in Fortean thought, the "Posthuman Blues" blogger, and the author of the forthcoming book, The Cryptoterrestrials (Anomalist Books, tentatively 2010), has departed this plane. He was found dead in his apartment on Thursday afternoon, October 22, 2009. Reports indicate that there was no foul play or suicide involved, and "natural causes" are being blamed for his sudden and unexpected death. There is some indication that he may have been feeling "faint" in the days leading up to his death.



I never met Mac, but he did correspond a few times with me. In April 2008, he was curious about a mysterious graffiti artist that had popped up in his town, who was leaving iconic Nessie stencils around and about. He wrote me and asked if I'd heard about any other incidents like it happening around the country. I posted a brief note on Cryptomundo about the cryptoart.





The title of Mac's forthcoming book, The Cryptoterrestrials, also, of course, interested me. In talks I had with his publisher, Patrick Huyghe, I understood it would be a book that extended the thoughts of John Keel's ultraterrestrials. I looked forward to seeing what new take Tonnies had on it all, and was open to hearing if cryptozoology played into his intellectual ponderings.

Mac Tonnies had the potential to ask some challenging questions. That seemed to have scared some people.

Strangely, Mac's name appeared at the end of the "death list" of people that a group of extremely youthful ufologists placed in their infamous posting of March 22, 2008, exactly a year and a half before the day of Tonnies' death. The so-called "RRRGroup," in their "UFO PROVOCATEUR(S)" blog entry entitled "Death(s) will clean the UFO palate," listed the names of people whom they almost seemed to be wishing would die more quickly so the "future" of the field could dawn more quickly.

They wrote:

When ufology’s old-guard passes on – Dick Hall, Stan Friedman, Kevin Randall, John Schuessler, and even the 60ish Jerry Clark to name a few – taking hangers-on and sycophants with them (and you know who they are), the UFO palate will be cleansed.

That is, the mummified concepts of ufology will be washed away, and new paradigms will be allowed to flourish.

Standing in the wings already is a group of middle-agers who, while not particularly astute about the UFO history and inclined to be cavalier with their observations and characterizations of ufology and UFOs themselves, think they are the news faces of ufology, which is a mantle they hope to change.

Those people include Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and Mac Tonnies.

...Once the old-guard is gone, and the mid-lifers dismissed because of their foolishness, the young crop of UFO mavens’ newer ideas will hold sway with the public and media....

Blood mixed with ink.

I wrote in their comment section at the time:

It seems incredible to really read these words: "...the young crop of UFO mavens’ newer ideas will hold sway with the public and media, because this new generation isn’t conscripted by former old-think about UFOs, presenting instead original thought and pursuit of the UFO mystery..."
Being a radical Fortean observer watching the coming and going of all matter of writers, researchers, and theorists in the last four decades, you have given me a good chuckle.

Every "new" generation sees themselves as having the "real" solutions or the next best outside-the-box suggestions. Of course, it will only be something you will reflect upon when the next generation after you, the new group of "Young Ones" start nibbling at your aging heels, [and] says something similar to you.

It's always been that way, and it will continue so into the future.

Besides being intellectually dishonest, such a critique as the one from the RRR group has no sense of history or reality. But in terms of karma, frankly, I think it is bad form to put names out there of people you almost seem to be wishing were dead. I am shocked, therefore, to see that Mac Tonnies, the last name on the RRR list, along with Dick Hall, the first one, both now have died. Sad indeed.



The tributes for Tonnies, as often happens in a surprising death like this are pouring in from his deep friends. I recommend those of Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and many other of his true friends.

Mac's last tweet was on October 18th, 2009, and he pointed to "sculptural manifestations of audio footage."

I want to leave you with Mac's own words, as he has summed up his own life, here below, from his self-authored biography. Good-bye, Mac:

I'm a Kansas City, Missouri-based author and essayist. I blog daily at Posthuman Blues and tweet religiously. My latest book is After the Martian Apocalypse (Paraview Pocket Books, 2004), a speculative and generally well-received examination of extraterrestrial intelligence on the Red Planet. I'm presently at work on a new non-fiction book titled The Cryptoterrestrials: Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us, excerpts of which I've posted on my blog. If you're in the mood for a multiplex Fortean anthology, my essay "The Ancients Are Watching" is included in 2008's Darklore Vol. II. (My first book, Illumined Black, is a collection of naively "Blade Runner"-ish science fiction short-stories. It can still be found in used-book stores and on Amazon.com.)

I've been a guest panelist at ConQuest, Kansas City's premiere science fiction convention. More recently, I've lectured in the United States and Canada on subjects ranging from exoarchaeology to transhumanism and have appeared on programs such as Coast to Coast AM, Strange Days . . . Indeed, 21st Century Radio, The Paracast, Binnall of America, and Radio Misterioso. My first play, produced and directed by Paul Kimball, debuted in Halifax, Nova Scotia in late 2007. In early 2009 I appeared as the "investigator" in an episode of "Supernatural Investigator," a Canadian program covering fringe beliefs and esoteric science. I also make an appearance in "Best Evidence," an award-winning UFO documentary.

I spend an inordinately large portion of my time pursuing unpopular ideas and esoteric theories with what I sincerely hope is balanced skepticism. I'm a member of the Society for Planetary SETI Research, a group that seeks to use scientific methodology to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial artifacts in our solar system. I read voraciously; preoccupations include cosmology, nonhuman intelligence, UFOs, consciousness studies, and futurism. Writers I admire include William Gibson, Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs.

I tend to think in the future-tense. I'm a skeptic, agnostic and existentialist; I perceive reality as a kind of consensual hallucination that forces us to define our sense of identity without recourse to faith or superstition. I have a deep affinity for 80s pop music; some of my favorite bands are The Cure, R.E.M., Portishead, Talking Heads, and The Smiths. Favorite film-makers include David Cronenberg and David Lynch. I can regularly be found haunting the Country Club Plaza, taking pictures, reading cyberpunk novels, and marinating my synapses in espresso. And I'm a voracious doodler.

Statement:

Consciousness is a potential technology; we are exquisite machines, nothing less than sentient patterns. As such, there's no convincing technical reason we can't eventually upload ourselves into matrices of our design and choosing. It's likely the phenomenon we casually call "intelligence" will cease to be strictly biological as we begin to merge with our machines more meaningfully and intimately. (Philip K. Dick once wrote that "living and nonliving things are exchanging properties." I suspect that in a few hundred years, barring disaster, separating the animate from the inanimate will probably be an exercise in futility.) Ultimately, we have two options: self-mutate by venturing off-planet in minds and bodies of our own design, or succumb to extinction.

Heenes Are UFO Family

It is not a coincidence that the balloon that supposedly abducted Falcon Heene to nowhere looks like a flying saucer. Now it turns out, the Heenes are a media-aware family that allegedly may be obsessed with UFOs and ETs.



Yes, there is a happy ending. He was hiding in a box in the attic of the family's garage. But the chasing of the balloon dominated the news all afternoon and early evening.

The six-year-old boy who was thought to be in a mylar balloon speeding high across Colorado on Thursday, October 15, 2009, was on the ABC series "Wife Swap."

Falcon Heene, 6, is the son of Richard and Mayumi Heene of Ft. Collins, Colorado. His parents are stormchasers, and their "chaotic parenting style" was criticized by their "Wife Swap" swap family, according to Fox News.

Richard and Mayumi Heene of Ft. Collins, Colorado have two other sons, Bradford and Royo.

Richard Heene created his own indie video series, and sells the DVDs online as "The Psyience Detectives." Episodes have included "ROTATING STORMS AND MAGNETISM," "DUST DEVIL CHASING," and "TORNADO SEEKING ROCKET." The program is described as "The Psyience Detectives, a new documentary series investigating the mysteries of science and psychic phenomena."

The family was invited back by ABC to appear on the 100th episode of "Wife Swap," where Mayumi Heene switched places with Sheree Silver, a psychic.

A Los Angeles Times story documented the "Wife Swap" show by saying "The Heene family, with its three rowdy boys, is anchored by father Richard, whose anger arrives in sudden bolts between his fringe science projects."

The description of the episode from ABC that appears on their website said "[The swapped wife] is shocked as the Heene kids jump off banisters and run wild, and appalled by Richard's attitude to women."

The Heenes reportedly allowed their children to accompany them as they tracked Hurricane Gustav.



According to the ABC "Wife Swap" website, the family sleeps in their clothes so they can leap from bed and run after a storm at any given moment. The site also describes a "flying saucer" that sounds like the one that ultimately came back to earth Thursday.

"When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm," says the site.




They're also apparently shooting music videos. An amateur rock/rap video called "Not Pussified" starring the three boys was posted on Youtube, showing the brothers shooting off rockets, throwing rocks at stuffed animals, and riding some sort of hovercraft that looks eerily like the saucer thought to be carrying Falcon on Thursday.



As far as the name game, the history of "Heene" originates from an unknown background.

MLB Suicide: Brian Powell

Brian Powell, a former major league baseball pitcher, has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a sheriff's official in Georgia has reported. He was 35.



Captain Liz Crowley of the Decatur County Sheriff's Office said Powell died Monday, October 5, 2009, at a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida. Powell was from Bainbridge, Georgia.

The Bainbridge native was a three-year letterman for the Bulldogs from 1993-95, going 19-14 with a 3.80 ERA. He ranks second in school history with 17 complete games, 352 strikeouts and five shutouts. In 1995, he led the Southeastern Conference in strikeouts (138); innings pitched (147) and was second in complete games (seven).

Powell was a second-round pick, the 41st overall selection, of the Detroit Tigers in the 1995 MLB draft and reached the majors in 1998.

Powell was 7-18 with a 5.94 ERA in 59 games for Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. He last pitched in the majors with the Phillies in 2004, and spent 2005 in Triple-A for Washington.

Funeral services were held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 8, 2009, in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Powell is survived by his wife and three children. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and former teammates.



The timing of Powell's suicide, at the end of the regular season of 162 games (despite the one tie-breaker that was played on Tuesday, October 6, 2009), does not appear to be a coincidence.

I wrote the following concerning what my study of such suicides revealed about their timing:

Baseball players were most likely to die by suicide during the off-season, if the individual was a recent player, within three years of an active involvement in the majors, or after age 65, after a "retirement" from a post-baseball career. For some former players, the end of March to the April opening days seemed to be a specific temporal black hole.

That a suicide should occur so close to the end of the regular season should not be a surprise.

Chapters on my findings regarding baseball players' suicides are to be found in Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond (2003) by Edward J. Rielly, in my own book The Copycat Effect (2004), and in other sources now quoting those books.

This year, 2009, is the 20th anniversary of my research and call for suicide prevention efforts among Major League Baseball players. There was a cluster of baseball suicides in 1989, which I had predicted. Donnie Moore was the individual MLB player who died of suicide receiving the most publicity, but there, sadly, were others.

Illustrated Guide to The Lost Symbol

Coming soon is a synchronmystic tome of some significance from the twilight language gods. An Illustrated Guide to The Lost Symbol, an anthology edited by John Weber, could end up being better than the original Dan Brown novel. (Find it online for USA and UK.)

The lavishly, well-texted opus will be an important contribution to examining the facts behind The Lost Symbol, supported with multiple details, and arcane and current images.

The book, from Random House, is being held under a tight grip of secrecy, for the contents shall be very revealing.


Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.

I won't say more than to note that I am one of the contributors among reportedly nearly a score of authors who will share their unique insights on the various twilight/synchronmystic threads running throughout The Lost Symbol, already seen and others as yet unseen.

Stay tuned.


Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Enigmas of Ansbach

A Bavarian town famous for its werewolf and site of the death of the mysterious Kaspar Hauser has been hit by a school attack.


Kaspar Hauser

An 18-year-old student armed with an ax, knives and Molotov cocktails wounded eight fellow students and a teacher at his high school in the Bavarian town of Ansbach on Thursday, September 17, 2009, the German police said. The police arrived at the scene minutes after the rampage began, opening fire on the attacker, who was not identified, and arresting him.

Two children were seriously wounded, as was the 18-year-old attacker. Seven other children were slightly wounded.

Ralf Koch, a spokesman for the Bavarian police, said between 600 and 700 students attend the school, which includes grades seven through 13. The attacker was in the 13th grade.

Police said they received an emergency call at 8:35 a.m. (2:35 a.m. ET). When they got to the school, they immediately smelled smoke in the building, and they then encountered the attacker in a hallway.

The teenager had lobbed two Molotov cocktails into classrooms, one of which caused a fire, said Udo Dreher of the local police. He had also attacked several students with the ax and knives.

Police shot the teenager several times because he threatened the police officers, said Joachim Herrmann, the minister of the interior for the state of Bavaria, where Ansbach is located. The siege ended at 8:46 a.m.

The attacker suffered life-threatening wounds and is now being treated at a hospital.

(See here for Todd Campbell's straightforward take on this event.)

Apocalypse Today

Ansbach State Prosecutor Juergen Krach said the attacker remained hospitalized after he was shot by police during his arrest. Doctors plan to bring him out of a medically induced coma on Friday, September 18, 2009.

Krach said a search of the student's home turned up the calendar on which he had marked September 17, 2009, with the words "apocalypse today," and a handwritten will.

State Prosecutor Gudrun Lehnberger said the will was dated September 11, 2009. She added that the search turned up no threats against specific students or people. The attacker's motive remains unclear.

"I can confirm that the perpetrator was undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment," Lehnberger said. The teenager's name has not been released because of German privacy laws. Krach said police have questioned the student's parents.

The episode was the second attack at a German school in less than a year.

In March 2009, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer fatally shot 12 people (mostly females) at his former school in the southwestern town of Winnenden, a town near Stuttgart, Germany. He fled the building and killed three more people before turning the gun on himself.

Ansbach: A place of strange wonders

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and children.



The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf. After it was killed, a human mask was placed on the carcass. The wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum.

Kaspar Hauser (30 April 1812? – 17 December 1833) was a mysterious "lost child" found in 19th century Germany famous for his claim to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, raised like a half-wild human, in the tradition of feral or wolf children. Hauser's stories, and his likewise mysterious death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Hauser lived in Ansbach from 1830 to 1833. He was murdered in the palace gardens there.



Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, in Latin, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious." A monument to him was later erected in the Court Garden which reads Hic occultus occulto occisus est: "Here a mysterious one was killed in a mysterious manner."

Forteans have been interested in the mystery of Kaspar Hauser for some time. Fortean Society member and famed science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, in his 1943 novel Sinister Barrier, described Kaspar Hauser as a person who originated from a non-human laboratory. Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1963 Glory Road, referred to "Kaspar Hausers" as an analogue to persons popping in and out of metaphysical planes.

In the 1966 film Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist Guy Montag discreetly puts a copy of a book entitled Gaspard Hauser into his bag before the rest of the books in that residence are torched.

In the American TV series "Smallville," (2001) Clark Kent finds a boy who does not to remember who he was or where he came from, except his name. Chloe refers to the boy as a "modern day Kasper Hauser."

In the Japanese horror movie Marebito (2004), the lead character Masuoka refers to a girl he found chained up underground as his "little Kaspar Hauser."

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser



In 1974, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog made Hauser's story into the film, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man for Himself and God Against All). In English the film has become known by that translation, or by the title The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

The bizarre nature of the movie is a metaphor for the human condition, the mystery of the Hauser melodrama, and, as it turns out, the strange things that still happen in Ansbach.