Twilight Language

Forza Ambush

2009-11-29T14:31:00.007-05:00

Forza is an Italian word that means "force" or "strength." It is used in shouting yells at football (soccer) games in Europe, loosely, as "Forward," as in "Forward *name of team*."

Update

Police in Seattle have shot and killed the AfricanAmerican man suspected of executing four Lakewood, Wash., police officers.

ABC News has confirmed that Maurice Clemmons was killed after police followed leads to a city address where he was hiding, after gunfire was exchanged. Seattle police had been watching several homes, with officers assigned to watch each location.

Clemmons, 37, had been the focus of an intense two-day manhunt that included a systematic raid of the homes of his friends and family, who were believed to have been helping him evade capture.

Police said Monday, November 30, that Clemmons was believed to have been armed while on the run, possibly with several guns. Calling him "dangerous," they said, was an understatement.

Police said on Tuesday, December 1, that they believe Clemmons' friends and family had been providing authorities with false leads all along. It was those misleading tips, they said, that led police and SWAT members to surround a Seattle home for 11 hours Sunday night into Monday.

The standoff in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood ended Monday morning when a police robot and SWAT members confirmed that Clemmons had been able to flee the area undetected.

Authorities say Clemmons had no ties to the house he was believed to have been hiding in and that they believe he was dropped off in the neighborhood Sunday evening.

The area was described as hilly and wooded, providing lots of hiding places.

Pierce County Sheriff's Department spokesman Ed Troyer told ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV that the raids Monday were being carried out "to collect evidence against him and against those helping him evade us."

Clemmons suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen in a brief shootout with the Lakewood officers he ultimately killed as they sat in a coffee shop Sunday morning, preparing for their next shift.
+++++++
On November 29, 2009, an ambush of police officers occurred at a Forza coffee shop in the USA.

The four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at the shop. The Forza Coffee Company is near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington State, specifically in Lakewood, about 60 kilometres south of Seattle.

Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says that the officers were in a coffee establishment, near 116th Street and Steele Street, on the east side of the Air Force base at about 8:30 a.m.

(In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting, no media speculation has occurred as to the relationship to this location and the previous multiple shooting. The military backstory to this incident, however, might turn out to be significant.)

Troyer says the officers were preparing for their shift when a suspect or suspects "walked in with a handgun, opened fire multiple times and then fled the scene," said Troyer. Police are searching for a male suspect (maybe two?) and interviewing witnesses.

Troyer called it an "ambush."

"We hopefully will have answers, but there is nothing more we can tell you," Troyer said. "That's as cold-hearted as it is."
Troyer would not say what agency the officers were from until families could be notified.

The suspects are an AfricanAmerican male and a Caucasian male. Troyer said one of the suspects are 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10, 20s to 30s, scruffy appearance, with one seen wearing a black coat and blue jeans.

He said they are looking to see if there is any surveillance cameras that may have caught the suspect or suspects on video.

Morgan & Sturgis?

2009-11-26T07:45:00.002-05:00

So you are unaware of the name Bob Morgan in conjunction with that of Frank Sturgis, Watergate burglar, CIA operative, and Bay of Pigs player?

People who study Bigfoot understand the history of Robert W. Morgan and his involvement in the search for the elusive creatures. Few realize that Morgan has a rich legacy, as well, cryptopolitically. This will all change in January 2010 after Morgan's new book Citizen Spy is published.

Robert Morgan

Canton reporter Diana Rossetti recently interviewed Morgan, and wrote an interesting overview of the man's life:

At 74 years old, Robert W. Morgan still muses, only half joking, about what he wants to do when he grows up.

Until he narrows the possibilities, here is what the 1954 Lincoln High School [Canton, Ohio] graduate already has under his belt:

Morgan led the first expeditions in search of what he now calls “forest giant people” and others variously dubbed Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti and the Abominable Snowman.

He still believes the hairy, strong-smelling giants exist, and plans a private expedition to Washington in June [2010].

He was commissioned by developers of a multimillion-dollar condominium project on Maui to search for the world’s most beautiful fountain.

One of life’s proudest moments, aside from the birth of his only child, a daughter, was being adopted by the then-100-year-old Nino Cochise, grandson of the original Cochise, nephew of Geronimo and the last Apache born free.

Morgan was on a movie set when a hanging scene featuring screen actor Harold “Oddjob” Sakata, best known for his role in “Goldfinger,” went awry, leaving the 270-pound thespian actually dangling by his neck.

“Bill Shatner ran up and lifted him up by his legs, and another guy and I climbed up and cut the rope,” Morgan recalled. The rope that nearly took Sakata’s life is on Morgan’s desk today.

“When Sakata was dying of stomach cancer in a Honolulu hospital, his nurse was Nancy Thomas. She was from Canton. It turned out, I had dated her sister, Gwen,” he recalled, adding that there is a “special lady” in his life these days.

The late Frank Sturgis, sometimes remembered as one of the Watergate burglars but also as a decorated World War II U.S. Marine, enlisted Morgan in a Miami-based, CIA-funded paramilitary group training to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

The kid with the piercing blue eyes who grew up on Prospect Avenue in Canton’s southwest end is a successful screenwriter and filmmaker, having worked around the world, including a stint in the former Soviet Union.

He recently completed a two-year radio blog and remains a popular radio talk show guest in the Pacific Northwest.

Currently, Morgan is burning the midnight oil at his home, where bears wandering his deck are the only visitors. He is steaming toward a publisher’s deadline for his latest book, “Citizen Spy,” due for release in January.

The nonfiction thriller reveals Morgan’s own story of teaming with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration to foil a drug-trafficking ring operated by the Mafia....

See here for the entire article.

Robert Morgan
“Life’s too short to dance with nasty ladies,” jokes Robert W. Morgan, who says his favorite Friday nights are spent at the Grizzly Den in Whitefish, Mont., drinking Obsidian Stout, a brew the bar ships in from Bend, Ore., just for him. Here, he works on a movie set.

Robert Morgan
Nino Cochise (front), grandson of the original Cochise and nephew of Geronimo, poses with his wife and adopted son, Robert W. Morgan. Cochise gave Morgan the name “Not Afraid.”

Thank you!

JFK C2C

2009-11-22T17:57:00.006-05:00

On the 46th anniversary of the JFK assassination, thus matching the age of 46 for the young president at the time of his death, a comprehensive conspiracy overview of the event was broadcast on Sunday night's "JFK Special VII" on Coast to Coast AM from 10 pm - 2 am PT (1 AM to 5 am ET).

My good friend conspiracy expert Kenn Thomas, along with award-winning journalist Jim Marrs (whom I have served with on JFK mystery death panels), and TV producer and critic John Barbour joined George Knapp to discuss their theories about the tragic day 46 years ago when the world lost John F. Kennedy.

Update: The C2C summary notes ~

George Knapp presided over the 7th annual JFK Special, featuring three acclaimed Kennedy assassination researchers. He was joined by award-winning journalist Jim Marrs along with TV producer and critic John Barbour in the first half of the program as well as conspiracy expert Kenn Thomas in the latter half of the show.

"It only seems controversial," Marrs said of the Kennedy assassination, because there is a such a glaring difference of opinion between those who believe the government's version of events and "those who have actually studied the case."

Barbour and Marrs cited a myriad of suspicious elements involving the Kennedy assassination, such as the FBI's handling of evidence following the murder and issues with the veracity of the gunpowder tests administered to Lee Harvey Oswald. Barbour noted that the spent shell casings, allegedly from the shooting, were found on the book depository's 6th floor window sill sitting "one inch apart and facing the street."

An amused Marrs observed that such a scenario was would be impossible because, when discharging a spent shell from that type of gun, "it flings it over your right shoulder."

They also discussed the nature of the enduring mystery surrounding the murder of Kennedy. Marrs explained that much of the confusion about the event has been created on purpose. "The cover-up has been based on obfuscation," he observed, noting that all the various suspects and factions blamed for the assassination only serve to make the case harder to truly solve.

"All the facts were there, they were just never investigated," Barbour concurred.

Ultimately, Marrs mused, the true story of what happened on that day in Dallas will never be "officially" known because it is simply too troubling to be revealed by the government.

In the second half of the program, Kenn Thomas focused on the connection between the JFK assassination and infamous esoteric figure Fred Crisman. Thomas explained that he emerged as Jim Garrison's suspect for the infamous Grassy Knoll shooter after the prosecutor received an anonymous letter implicating the enigmatic Crisman.

Additionally, Thomas cited a report, called the Torbitt Document, written by a lawyer in Texas, that also independently advanced the same theory as to Crisman's role in the assassination. Potentially placing him at the scene of the crime, Thomas said, is the "three tramps" photo where the character known as "Frenchie" is a "spitting image of Crisman."

For a further overview of the program, links to the guests' websites, identification of the bumper music, and the guests' JFK assassination recommended reading list, visit the archival site for the show here.

Saipan: 5 Dead

2009-11-20T06:32:00.010-05:00

Saipan will forever be remembered as the site of one of World War II's deadliest suicidal melodramas. Now a new incident has unfolded on the island, beginning and ending near those past cliffs of suicide.

Saipan is often recalled as the setting where thousands of Japanese soldiers and local civilians jumped to their deaths from the island's cliffs as the American assault drew to a close in July 1944. As the battle of Saipan reached its final days, Japanese soldiers and panicked civilians made their way north to the cliffs. The civilians and soldiers leapt from the island's Marpi Point and other cliffs, dying on the rocks or drowning in the sea.

Now a shooting spree that began near one of those points has ended in suicide near another of those same cliffs. A gunman went on a rampage on the Pacific resort island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on Friday, November 20, 2009, killing four people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself, officials said.

Public Safety spokesman Jason Tarkong said two men, a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl were killed in a half-hour of violence. The dead were all local residents.

The six wounded included a 4-year-old local girl and five visitors from South Korea.

"The lieutenant governor and I are monitoring the situation closely and working with officials from (Public Safety) and the FBI and we will continue to keep everyone informed," Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said.

Authorities said the suspected shooter is a contract worker in his 30s or 40s from Asia, but did not provide his name or home country.

The shootings occurred in two different areas of the island, starting at 11:21 a.m. local time with a popular tourist spot in Marpi where the gunman fired a barrage of bullets from his white van at the Koreans. A 39-year-old man was critically injured with a gunshot wound to his back.

The suspect then drove to the Kannat Tabla Shooting Range where he killed two men in their early 20s and the two children. He also shot a 4-year-old girl, who suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and was in critical condition.

His white van was discovered at Banzai Cliff, where police recovered three rifles.

Officials said the gunman's body was found along the edge off the cliff line near the vehicle with a .22-caliber rifle strapped around his shoulder.

"I want to assure the people of the commonwealth and all of our visiting tourists that the Department of Public Safety has the situation under control and that the individual responsible for these tragedies took his own life," Fitial said, in a summarized report from Gemma Casas and Kwang-tae Kim of the Associated Press.

Saipan is a popular tourist destination among South Koreans, with more than 111,000 South Koreans visiting the island in 2008, according to the Marianas Visitors Authority. The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is located about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

During World War II, as the Battle of Saipan raged, despite repeated calls by the U.S. military to surrender, civilians chose death by jumping off cliffs or drowning themselves in the sea. They had been led to believe that surrender would mean murder, rape and torture at the hands of U.S. forces. Captured soldiers and civilians, instead, were treated with respect and confined at Camp Susupe.

According to a report on PBS, "On July 9, [1944] organized resistance on Saipan ceased. The costs were high. Americans suffered more than 14,000 casualties including 3,426 killed or missing. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended Saipan, less than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Although exact numbers are not known, it is believed that close to 1,000 civilians perished at Marpi Point."

Wicker Man's Woodward Dies

2009-11-17T07:03:00.006-05:00

Edward Woodward, 79, the central leading actor in The Wicker Man, died on Monday, November 16, 2009.

The Wicker Man is a 1973 British horror film, combining thriller, existential horror and musical genres, directed by Robin Hardy and written by Anthony Shaffer. The film stars Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland. Paul Giovanni composed the soundtrack. The film is now considered a cult classic.

Based on David Pinner's 1967 novel The Ritual, the story is about a Scottish police officer, Sergeant Neil Howie (played by Woodward), visiting the isolated island of Summerisle to search for a missing girl (named, significantly, "Rowan") whom the locals claim never existed. Police Sergeant Neil Howie is sent an anonymous letter recommending that he investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Rowan Morrison, on the remote Hebridean island of Summerisle (a fictional island apparently inspired by the real-life Summer Isles of the Inner Hebrides).

The inhabitants of Summerisle all celebrate a reconstructed form of Celtic paganism, which upsets the devoutly Christian Sergeant. In the original uncut version of the film, he witnesses couples copulating in the church yard, in addition to finding a naked woman sobbing on a grave. He angrily threatens to involve the authorities after discovering the school mistress (Diane Cilento) is teaching young girls about the phallic importance of the maypole.

The character played by Woodward (an intriguing name, in and of itself) finds himself attracted strongly to Willow (Britt Ekland), the sexually liberated daughter of the landlord. In the restored director's cut of the film, Lord Summerisle refers to Willow as Aphrodite when presenting her with a young male adolescent to seduce. The police sergeant cannot help but overhear their passionate lovemaking. To compound matters, Willow tries to seduce him the following night, dancing naked and beating upon his bedroom wall, but he resists the torment with some obvious physical discomfort.

(The uncensored version is difficult to view online, but the pagan passion of "Willow's Song" is clearly evident even in what is to be discovered on YouTube.)

Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) clearly is a match for Sergeant Howie. During a May Day festival, Howie attempts to learn more about what is occurring there by dressing at Punch. But that backfires, to say the least and perhaps to state so as a pun.

Lord Summerisle and his followers explain to the good Christian Sergeant that his sacrifice will be effective because Howie came to them of his own free will; as a virgin; with the power of a king (by representing the law); and as a fool ("You are the Fool, Mr. Howie: Punch, one of the great fool-victims in history! For you have accepted the role of King-For-A-Day, and who but a Fool would do that?" asks the school mistress, referring to the way that Howie has conducted his investigations).

Howie in turn admonishes them, claiming that killing him will not restore their fertility and that they all would be guilty of murder. He argues that if the crops fail next year they will have to sacrifice Summerisle. Lord Summerisle asserts that Howie's sacrifice will have the desired results.

The policeman is dragged screaming into the belly of a large hollow wicker statue of a man which is subsequently ignited. In the final scene of the film, the islanders surround the burning wicker man and sing the Middle English folk-song "Sumer Is Icumen In" while the terrified Howie shouts out Psalm 23. The film ends with the Wicker Man engulfed in flames, and collapsing in front of the setting sun.

Woodward, who also starred in Breaker Morant and in the "The Equalizer" on television, died in a hospital in Cornwall after an illness, said Janet Glass of the Eric Glass Ltd. agency in London.

He won an Emmy Award in 1990 for "Remembering World War II" and a Golden Globe in 1987 for "The Equalizer," which ran for 88 episodes from 1985 to 1989 on the U.S. network CBS.

In a career that began in 1946 in a regional production of "A Kiss for Cinderella," Woodward played roles in productions ranging from the popular British soap opera "Eastenders" to productions of Shakespeare, and at least 40 films for theater or television.

His last film appearances were in 2007's Hot Fuzz (an ironic name, considering The Wicker Man role) and Congregation of Ghosts, now in post-production.

"I think I've probably more television than any actor living," Woodward said in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press. "I've done over 2,000, could be 3,000 now, television productions."

"I suppose there is also the feeling that it is the largest medium by far for information, education and above all, entertainment," he added. "And after all, that's what an actor's life is all about. Getting work and entertaining people."

At the time, Woodward was promoting a U.S. television film of Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which played the wicked slave owner, Simon Legree. He found the role strangely refreshing.

"If you are a British actor, you do lots of Shakespeare and lots of classical work. There is always a great actor who has just played your character," he said.

"Lucky for me, Simon Legree has not been done very often," he added.

Woodward is survived by his second wife, actress Michele Dotrice, their daughter, and two sons and a daughter from his first marriage.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

In The Wake Of Fort Hood

2009-11-10T22:49:00.011-05:00

There has been some foolish news articles in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting deaths discussing Islam, ignoring the underlying similar nature of that shooting to "rampage killings" and not understanding that in its wake copycats would naturally occur.

Indeed, people should open their eyes and look, yes, merely look, at the faces of the victims and the shooters to find some overlaps that are striking in those killed and the killers. Lost in all of the talk of the Fort Hood alleged shooter's Muslim background is the fact that he targeted mental health professionals in the group he fired upon. Did the Fort Hood shooter aim at some who most reflected parts of himself that he hated ~ even down to shooting at bald or short-haired men and mental health personnel?

The Fort Hood victims.

The Fort Hood shooter.

The Orlando killer.

The New York Hostage Taker.

Note the similar facial features, and overall appearance of these men. The suicidal "rampage" individual tends to identify with one another in a cycle on many levels, including visually.

We need only let the facts be recorded and the unfolding history of such events speak to the reality of behavior contagion occurring.

On Friday, November 6, the day after the Guy Fawkes Day shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, authorities in Orlando, Florida, said a debt-ridden man Jason Rodriguez, 40, who believed his former employer was interfering with his unemployment benefits was blamed for a workplace shooting. Rodriguez was fired by the engineering firm of Reynolds, Smith and Hills two years ago. Otis Beckford, 26, was the lone fatality in the shooting, and five were wounded.

Then on Tuesday, a standoff began around 7:45 a.m. Eastern Time and was over by about 10 a.m. at an upstate New York middle school. A former student Christopher Craft Sr., 42, got into the Stissing Mountain Middle School just after classes began Tuesday morning carrying a hidden disassembled shotgun. He allegedly put the weapon together in bathroom before holding Principal Bob Hess hostage for more than an hour.

Craft had two sons who had attended the school, but school officials said neither was currently enrolled. Craft has a son in the military and is allegedly upset with the government. Police say Craft and his hostage were contained to one room in the school, located about 90 miles north of New York City.

Later on Tuesday, November 10, police report that two have died in a suburban Portland, Oregon office park shooting. The two people were killed and two others wounded in a shooting at a Tualatin office park. The shooting at a drug-testing facility was reported at 11:48 a.m. Pacific Time Tuesday. Police said the suspect is not at large but there are no additional details.

KATU-TV reported a witness describing one woman wearing something that looked like a lab coat with blood coming from what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds.

Do you happen to think that the Portland, Oregon shooter will be revealed to be a middle-aged male with close-cropped or no hair?

Update: This one appears to be a domestic murder-suicide brought to work. The shooting took place at Legacy Metro Lab in Tualatin, Oregon. It has been confirmed that two people are deceased, one of which included the adult male shooter who died from what appears to be a self inflicted gun shot wound. The other deceased was an adult female employee of the business. Robert James Beiser, 39, shot and killed his estranged wife Teresa Marie Beiser, 36, and then himself. The wounded are a 20-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man.

Further Update: Vail, Colorado ~ A man was killed and three others were injured in a shooting Saturday night, November 7, 2009, at the Sandbar in West Vail, Police Chief Dwight Henninger said. Witnesses said a man was being removed from the Sandbar by staff when he began firing a gun. Richard “Rossi” Moreau, 63, a Vail resident, was taken into custody as the suspect in the shooting, Henninger said. The man who died was from Carbondale, and the ages of the three other victims, all male, were 25, 29 and 63, police said.

Suspect Richard Moreau appears to fit the physical profile of the shooters during this rampage cycle. What is the twilight language being transmitted in the mere broadcasting of the Ft. Hood killer's image?

Fort Hood Shootings

2009-11-05T16:39:00.014-05:00

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

2009-11-04T17:45:00.007-05:00

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

2009-10-24T05:49:00.009-04:00

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

2009-10-15T18:19:00.006-04:00

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

2009-10-09T00:45:00.014-04:00

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

2009-10-07T05:35:00.006-04:00

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

2009-09-18T17:42:00.013-04:00

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.

9/9/9 Hijacking

2009-09-09T16:59:00.004-04:00

Aeromexico Flight 576, which is 5+7+6 = 18, thus 1+8 = 9, was hijacked on 9/9/9.

Breaking news is that the plane hijacking in Mexico is over after special forces stormed the jet.

The aircraft was hijacked as it landed in the capital Mexico City from the resort of Cancun. Mexican online media reports said Aeromexico Flight 576 had 104 people on board when it left Bolivia, and made a stopover in Cancun en route to Mexico City.

+++
Update: Mark Baard at Timenauts.com points out, from CNN:

A 44-year-old Bolivian drug addict and alcoholic who describes himself as a church minister was the sole person responsible for the brief hijacking Wednesday of a commercial jetliner....The suspect — Jose Mar Flores — told authorities he hijacked the Boeing 737 jet because the date — September 9, 2009, or 9/9/9, and 666 reversed — held some significance for him, said Genaro Garcia Luna, the secretary for public safety.

++++

Intriguingly, earlier reports said up to five men were taken off the jet in handcuffs after it was stormed.

The alleged hijackers reportedly had explosives strapped to their legs and were demanding to talk to Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

They released all the passengers soon after the plane landed in Mexico City.

The passengers left with their hand luggage. They appeared calm and boarded nearby buses.

But the plane's crew were still being held hostage before special forces moved in and made the arrests.

Nobody was hurt and no shots were fired, it is understood.

Transportation and Communications Secretary Juan Molinar said all passengers and crew were safe.

But he would not say how many alleged hijackers were detained or give details of their motivation.

"Various people who participated in the act have been detained and we are investigating," he said.

He said there was no bomb on the airplane, although some passengers said one of the hijackers held a package that resembled an explosive device.

Aeromexico Flight 576 has been on the runway at the capital's international airport after the hijacking.

One of the passengers, Adriana Romero, told Mexican TV she had not realized the flight had been hijacked until the plane landed at Mexico City.

"We realized it was a hijack when we saw the police trucks," she said.

El Universal daily said the men had not been able to get inside the plane's cockpit.

The last hijacking in the region was in April in Jamaica, when an armed man took over a CanJet Boeing 737 due to fly from Montego Bay to Cuba.

All 182 people on board were rescued unharmed when Jamaican police stormed the airliner and captured the mentally troubled gunman without firing a shot.

Fayette Cannonball

2009-09-06T21:05:00.002-04:00

Police said a man in Georges Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, fired a metal cannon that sent a two-pound lead ball into his neighbor's house, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

William Edward Maser, 54, fired the cannon in his yard on Tent Church Road Wednesday evening, September 2, 2009, said Trooper Brian Burden of the Pennsylvania State Police. He said he was not sure how regularly Maser fired his cannon.

The cannon shot a lead ball through the side of his neighbor's house, breaking a window and traveling through a wall before landing in a clothes closet. No one was injured.

The cannon is an 80-pound homemade replica of cannons used during the French and Indian War. It has been impounded as evidence.

Maser regularly participates in battle re-enactments, Trooper Burden said.

He has been charged with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and disorderly conflict.

VA Tech Students Slain ~ Again

2009-08-28T18:08:00.005-04:00

A new tragedy has hit Virginia Tech.

Authorities are stepping up patrols near an area of Jefferson National Forest where two VA Tech students were found slain, during this first week of school.

A man walking his dog in the forest's parking lot section of the Caldwell Fields area, Blacksburg, Virginia, early Thursday, August 27, 2009, found the bodies. They were 19-year-old David Lee Metzler of Lynchburg and his girlfriend 18-year-old Heidi Lynn Childs of Forest.

When deputies arrived they found Metzler's body sitting in his car (a 1992 blue Toyota Camry), while Childs's body was on the ground nearby. The gravel parking lot of the campground and wildlife viewing area is popular among Virginia Tech students.

A suspect has not been identified.

Metzler was a sophomore industrial and systems engineering major and Childs, a sophomore biochemistry major.

Caldwell Fields is a peaceful area away from the hustle and bustle of campus life, a hangout site for students, especially on the weekends. Caldwell Fields is 15 miles west of Mason Cove and Hanging Rock, which are on Catawba Valley Drive, and five miles NW of Lafayette, which is on Interstate 81. The area where the students were killed is about 15 miles from the VA Tech campus.

The forest is technically named the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, consisting of two U.S. National Forests that combine to form one of the largest areas of public land in the Eastern United States. They cover 1.8 million acres (7,300 km²) of land in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

One victim's name Metzler has origins in German (Middle Rhineland), as an occupational name for a butcher, Middle High German metzeler, from Latin macellarius "dealer in meat," from macellum "stall (at a market)," "meat market."

In a statement released from the Virginia State Police, it has been learned that Childs is the daughter of a state police sergeant.

It reads in part… "Tonight, the Virginia State Police grieves with Sgt. Donald Childs and his family during this deeply difficult and painful time."

Childs, home-schooled in Abingdon, moved to Forest, Virginia, with her family about four years ago. Her father, Sgt. Donald Childs, has been a helicopter pilot with the Virginia State Police for 20 years. She had seven siblings, and fell somewhere in the middle.

Childs had met Metzler at Heritage Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Autopsies were being performed, but Montgomery County Sheriff Lt. Brian Wright said both students appear to have been shot sometime late Wednesday night (August 26) or early Thursday morning (August 27).

Heritage Baptist Church pastor Gerald Kroll said Friday, August 28, 2009, both had been active in the church for a long time and were members of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Two years ago, on April 16, 2007, a student gunman killed 32 others and then himself. On January 21, 2009, a doctoral student beheaded a fellow student in a campus cafe in the Graduate Life Center.

As blogger Thuth has previously pointed out in his research:

The northwestern corner of Virginia Tech is located upon an old historic site called Draper’s Meadow - bordered on the south by Stroubles (Troubles?) Creek...On July 8, 1755 a group of Shawnee Indians entered the sparsely populated settlement and brutally killed five of the settlers that lived there in what eventually came to be known as the Draper’s Meadow Massacre. Draper’s Meadow became the town of Blacksburg. The incredible synch here is that one of the settlers that was killed – the oldest of the five, one Philip Barger, was decapitated by the Shawnee. They put his head in a bag and sent it to a neighbor, telling them a friend had come to visit.

Today, few at Blacksburg, Virginia's well-known university are aware of this history. The community members have their hands full dealing with current unfortunate traumatic events, of course. Nevertheless, the past is prologue to the future.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George Santayana.

"I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so, myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data." ~ Charles Fort.

Credit: Gary Varvel

Hillsdale: Swamp Gas Times

2009-08-25T08:35:00.003-04:00

The Hillsdale bombing by Alex Youshock on August 24, 2009, seems self-fulfilling, in terms of it being a shock to the community where it occurred. On a deeper level, it continues the name-game theme seen recently with the death of John A. Keel and the involvement of the name "Ardmore" in clown and child abduction cases.

If you recall, the name Ardmore is a Gaelic word signifying high grounds or hills. John A. Keel pointed to hilltops (literally the "keels" of the high grounds) as the best places to observe Forteana. Furthermore, synchromysticism's godfather John Shelby Downard was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Monday's school violence happened in Hillsdale, California, and, of course, there is a significant Hillsdale in anomalistic history.

The famous Hillsdale UFO sightings of March, 1966, involved reports from Hillsdale County, as well as those in Livingston and Washtenaw Counties, Michigan.

Over 100 witnesses (including policemen, college students, and a civil defense director) saw the other worldly objects, according to the histories of those times.

On March 21, 1966, the Detroit News summarized the report of four Washtenaw County sheriff's deputies who saw "three or four red, white and green circular objects, oscillating and glowing, near Milan about 4. a.m."

The paper published a detailed technical illustration of an object that looked like two inverted saucers placed together with diagrammed placement of lights, antennae and a seemingly transparent dome. Other sightings came to the attention of the media, with one group of witnesses describing a craft as "pyramid-shaped" and having a "coral-like surface." The newspaper sketch of that object showed a "quilted surface."

The Hillsdale case will forever be remembered for the US Air Force's then-skeptical spokesperson Dr. J. Allen Hynek brief investigations and finding that the whole event was caused by "swamp gas." This upset the witnesses, and especially people like pilot William Van Horn, who grew up near a swamp and knew what he saw wasn't swamp gas.

The Hillsdale incident became a pivotal event in ufology, and propelled Hynek's life in new directions. It also impacted others. For example, the youthful ufologist Patrick Huyghe would go on to become a journalist and science writer, then talk of Hillsdale in his autobiographical book,

Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat.

Does Hillsdale's California event sign another shift in the cosmos, as well?

Hillsdale High Bombing

2009-08-24T16:05:00.007-04:00

The 2009-2010 school year has begun with a bombing. Teachers at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo say a former student came back to class Monday carrying a pipe bomb.

+++++
Update:
CBS 5 reported on August 25, 2009, that the 17-year old former student arrested for setting off two bombs at San Mateo's Hillsdale High School was identified late Monday as Alex Youshock. This is according to more than a half dozen of the suspect's neighbors, classmates and teachers interviewed by CBS 5.

Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and local police searched the suspect's apartment on Casa de Campo Street in San Mateo on Monday evening. They removed bags of evidence from the boy's apartment, including what San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi described as "bomb making materials."

Police said they were not naming the suspect because he is a minor.

14-year-old Moises Molina said officers asked him if he knew Youshock, and showed Moises a photo of the boy who lives in the apartment. "I seen him getting arrested and yeah, that was him," said Molina.

Next door neighbor, April de Guzman, said she shared high school and middle classes with Youshock. "He didn't talk much," Guzman said. "He was really quiet, didn't have that many friends. Kept to himself."

+++++
Earlier info on the incident:

No one was hurt in the blast just after 8 a.m. at Hillsdale High School at 3115 Del Monte St., authorities said. Some students reported that the explosion happened outside a room where a sophomore history class was in session, said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Authorities say an explosion at the San Mateo, California high school forced evacuation of students and cancellation of classes, according to the Associated Press.

San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi says officers received calls Monday, August 24, 2009, reporting a blast at Hillsdale High School.

Brunicardi says students were evacuated to a middle school. The suspect was confronted by two teachers after the explosions and was then tackled and restrained by a third teacher. Soon thereafter, a male suspect was arrested.

The teen was armed with a two-foot-long sword and chainsaw, in addition to eight pipe bombs strapped to his body. According to police, the suspect had detonated two of a total of ten explosive devices he had attached to a tactical vest. Those devices were cut from the suspect's vest. Raw footage on KTVU.com showed police handcuffing a young man with a closely cropped hair and a scruffy beard wearing a white T-shirt and white boxers or shorts. (It appeared that he had been stripped of his clothing due to the hidden nature of the weapons attached to his body and the noted vest.) Officers put him into a marked police car.

A bomb squad searched the school for any other explosive devices.

Hillsdale High School is starting its second week of the new school year. It has 1,200 students, and their mascot name is the Knights.

San Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, having been originally part of the Rancho de las Pulgas (literally "Ranch of the Fleas").

CEIII + TL

2009-08-19T17:32:00.005-04:00

As some of you know, the French scientist Claude LaCombe (François Truffaut) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was based on Boing Boing writer David Pescovitz's friend, and mine too, Jacques Vallée.

Jacque Vallée (right) and J. Allen Hynek.

Claude LaCombe (François Truffaut)

Today, David points to this magnifique deleted scene from the film that says some things about twilight language:

David Laughlin (Bob Balaban). Name game note: Laughlin, Nevada, in the extreme southern tip of the state, has become a modern focal meeting point for ufology conferences, anomalistic gatherings, and Area 51 researchers.

See here for more from David on what special phrase shows up in CEIII that is, indeed, so very Vallée.

Thanks also to Patrick Huyghe of Anomalist Books for bringing this to my attention.

Third Disney World Death

2009-08-18T13:59:00.004-04:00

Disney World has lost its third employee in seven weeks - this time, an individual working in the Indiana Jones show.

The stunt performer was killed after an accident during rehearsals for a show at the theme park in Orlando, Florida.

Anislav Varbanov suffered head injuries while practising a tumbling roll for the "Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular" in the Hollywood Studios section of the Florida resort.

"We lost a valued cast member and our thoughts are with his family, friends and co-workers as they mourn his passing," Disney said in a statement released to local news channel Fox 35.

The live show, which recreates scenes from the film Raiders Of The Lost Ark, will not go ahead on Tuesday as a mark of respect for Varbanov.

The stunt performers are involved in fight and fire scenes, chases and explosions, as well as acrobatics on a motorbike and plane.

Varbanov's death came a week after a 47-year-old performer died after a fall on stage during another show, Captain Jack's Pirate Tutorial.

Mark Priest was sword-fighting during the show, based on the Pirates Of The Caribbean films, when he slipped and hit his head on a wall. He joked about his condition when he was taken to hospital but deteriorated rapidly and died.

In July, 21-year-old monorail driver Austin Wuennenberg was killed when another train crashed into the one he was operating near the Magic Kingdom.

Evil Clowns: Summer 2009

2009-08-16T12:31:00.009-04:00

We live in strange times, it seems, with politicians viewed through the character of an evil clown who was played by a famed actor who died young.

Take this summer of 2009. Look at the new posters called "unpleasant," "disturbing" and a "fake grassroots movement" by liberal bloggers, and pointed out by conservatives as some kind of "popular" commentary. The original image was apparently created by Firas Khateeb, a student living in Chicago. However, whoever adapted it as a poster and added the legend, "socialism," is still a mystery.

Photos by Chris, via Tammy Bruce.

Made by persons unknown, the posters started showing up around Los Angeles. They are of President Obama as a version of Heath Ledger's Joker character in The Dark Knight, with a none-too-subtle "socialism" message attached to them.

It gets to be very cryptopolitical and weird out there. [Update: See SMiles' "Alex Jones as The Joker."]

LA Weekly.

Of course, such visual expressions were used against the previous administration too. Drew Friedman, in July 2008, drew President George W. Bush as "The Joker" for Vanity Fair. He entitled it "No Joke."

Clearly, the Joker's impact lives on today.

Even sightings of past stars are recorded in terms of their old Joker roles this summer. For example, see how Philadelphia Inquirer entertainment columnist Michael Klein mentioned one such actor on July 20, 2009:

Jack Nicholson, shooting the James L. Brooks comedy in town, was spotted sitting near home plate at Monday's Phillies-Cubs game in a white Yankees cap. Fans gave him a pass because, well, he's Jack Nicholson. The Phillie Phanatic came out on the field in a Batman costume and pretended to take on "The Joker." Nicholson played along, shaking his hands to signal that he was going to "get him."

Meanwhile, the movie's star Reese Witherspoon, who starts before the cameras Tuesday (7/21) in the Brooks comedy, was Jake Gyllenhaal-less at dinner with her kids and nanny Saturday at Plate restaurant at Suburban Square in Ardmore. She's living on the Main Line.

For future reference, be aware of the Joker, Donnie Darko's Jake Gyllenhaal, and the name "Ardmore," in Michael Klein's short passage.

As I have mentioned recently in "Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2008", "Evil Clowns 2008", and "Phantom Clowns Are Back", sinister clowns are an active Fortean and cultural phenomenon.

Now, something wicked this way comes, or, at least, a new momentarily appearance of same.

On August 11, 2009, WSBT 24/7 News broadcast the following breaking story, "Clown reportedly chases man near Ardmore Trail."

Police looking for a man dressed as a clown were unsuccessful in locating him early Tuesday [August 11, 2009] — that’s after a driver told St. Joseph County authorities the stranger chased him around just west of South Bend.

The man called 911 shortly before 3 a.m. and said the person in a clown suit was on foot, but chasing him as he was in his truck in the 55500 block of Melrose Avenue.

The clown then disappeared back into the woods, police were told.

Officers who responded to the scene were unable to locate the clown, according to 911 dispatch.

Clearly, in this seemingly near "abduction" case, it reminded me of the "Phantom Clown" cases where clowns were seen, children were threatened with kidnappings, and the clowns then merely vanished.

So I searched around a bit.

Guess what? On Thursday, August 6, 2009, there was a near-abduction of a little girl in...get this...Ardmore, Oklahoma!

Daniel Armbruster of KXII-TV reported:

Ardmore Police say a 10-year-old girl was riding her bike near her home Thursday evening when a man approached her and asked her to get into his car. Now a seemingly quiet neighborhood is on edge.

The 500 block of H Street Southwest in Ardmore is described by residents as peaceful and a great place to raise children. But since last Thursday evening some residents have become concerned that their small neighborhood may no longer be the safe place they one believed....

Ardmore Police say the only description the little girl could provide is that the man was light skinned. They say it was the skills her parents taught her about strangers that possibly saved her life, because she refused the man's invitation to get into his car and immediately ran home.

Ardmore, Oklahoma having a near-child abduction and Ardmore Trail, Indiana being the focus of "clown" attention on 8-11 are bizarre and very Fortean. What name game is behind "Ardmore"?

The name Ardmore is a Gaelic word signifying high grounds or hills. John A. Keel would often point out that hilltops (literally the "keels" of the high grounds) were the best places to observe Forteana.

Most of the uses of the word "Ardmore" link directly back to Ardmore, Ireland.

Round tower and ruins of St Declan's Church, Ardmore, Ireland.

On a hill above the village of Ardmore, Ireland, is a well-preserved 30m high, 12th-century round tower and the ruins of St Declan's church and oratory dating from the 13th and 8th centuries respectively. One of the outer walls of the church features some stone carvings retrieved from an earlier 9th-century building. The carvings include a very early image of a harp, and of Adam and Eve in the garden.

The Ardmore church also contains two Ogham stones (ancient alphabet message phallic carved rocks, see one below), which rest in small alcoves.

Where does "Ardmore" pop up in the USA?

Ardmore, Oklahoma was named after the affluent Philadelphia suburb and historic Pennsylvania Main Line stop Ardmore, Pennsylvania, which was named after Ardmore, Ireland (the oldest Christian settlement in Ireland) by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1873.

Another Ardmore is a city in Giles and Lincoln counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, and borders its sister city, Ardmore, Alabama. That Ardmore is a town in Limestone County, Alabama, and is included in the Huntsville-Decatur Metro Area. It is home to the Saturn 1B Rocket, at the Alabama Welcome Center, just south of the Tennessee border, on Interstate 65.

On April 22, 1966, Ardmore, Oklahoma, was the site of the worst plane crash in Oklahoma history, which killed 83 people.

And now a "clown" is appearing along the Ardmore Trail in Indiana, and a child kidnapping phantom in Ardmore, Oklahoma. BTW, as aferrismoon points out, synchromysticism's Godfather John Shelby Downard was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Ardmore is the site of Downard's imagined or real horrible Masonic childhood abuse memories.

For more on "Phantom Clowns," see Mysterious America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006). For more on symbolic criminal behavior, see The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Thanks to Dan Shideler for the first hints of the Ardmore Trail events.

Savage Boutique Immolation [Update]

2009-08-16T07:33:00.006-04:00

Updated on August 19, 2009:

A 42-year-old woman who set herself on fire at a Miami shopping mall died less than a week after the shocking scene, police said.

Cecilia E. Casals died Tuesday, August 18, 2009. Police say Casals covered herself in flammable liquid, set it ablaze and walked about until witnesses used two fire extinguishers to put out the flames.

Miami-Dade police wouldn't divulge any other details on August 19, 2009.

Authorities found Casals unconscious on August 13, 2009, with third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body, and airlifted her to a hospital. She was on fire about two-and-a-half minutes.

Court records show the woman had a history of mental illness and had been convicted on prescription drug trafficking charges, The Miami Herald reported. In October, Casals received probation in the drug case.

Earlier details...

A woman set herself on fire at a Miami mall on August 13, 2009, then walked around engulfed in flames as shocked shoppers watched. She started in a clothing store called Savage Boutique.

Two men and a woman who tried to help her were hurt, but not badly.

The 43-year-old woman, whose name was not released, doused herself with a flammable liquid at the Mall of the Americas in Florida, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesman Arnold Piedrahita. The suicidal woman had third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body and was found conscious in a parking lot. Authorities do not know why she set herself on fire.

She was air-lifted to a hospital.

Jose Morales, 24, said he was about to pay for earrings for his girlfriend at a nearby kiosk when he heard screams and thought someone had fallen. When he turned around, he saw the blaze and realized someone was within it.

"This woman is just walking like this, super slow, completely on fire," Morales said, his arms stretched out at his side to show what the woman looked like as she walked out of the store. "You couldn't see nothing but fire."

Morales said witnesses used two fire extinguishers on the woman, who was on fire about two-and-a-half minutes. All of her clothes except her underwear disappeared into ashes.

After the fire was out, Morales said, the woman walked out of the mall and into the parking lot.

The two men injured helping her were treated at the scene while the woman who helped was taken to a hospital.

The mall remained closed as of late afternoon.

Other recent cases of self-immolation:

• In June, a man Brandon, Fla., tried to kill himself by dousing himself with gasoline and then lighting himself on fire. The 67-year old-man was taken to a Tampa hospital for treatment. He survived.

• In February, a WalMart employee in Chicago set himself on fire outside the store where he worked. Larry Graziano, 58, used lighter fluid. Bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off. He died of his injuries.

• In 2004, a 34-year-old Pahokee, Flordia, man was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital after he slashed his wife with a knife and then set himself on fire.

The day before the latest Florida incident, on Wednesday, August 12, 2009, police were called to a Halifax, Nova Scotia hospital building after a man doused himself in gasoline, threatening to set himself on fire.

Police say they found the man, 29, in the lobby of the Centennial Building of the QEII with two lighters.

There were no injuries, the gas-soaked man was arrested without incident, and police say no criminal charges are anticipated.

Thanks for the Mall of the Americas tip from SMiles Lewis.

Death at Bridgeville {Killer Updates}

2009-08-04T23:59:00.010-04:00

Update:

The killer, identified by authorities, and noted by himself on his website diary as "George A. Sodini, a.k.a crazygeorge" has left a vast Internet trail of his musings of hate (e.g. black men have their choice of the best white girls). The 48-year-old's rampage plans are also documented in his web DOD ("Date of Death") entries. Sodini said he would die on August 4, 2009. See the bottom of this posting for further details on Sodini's angle of the story.

The published photos from his vacations do show an intriguing pull to some of the names of interest, as for example, this one above from his website.

+++
Posted August 4, 2009:

Shootings have occurred tonight at a highly symbolic geographic "intersection" where people use to say to each other, "Meet me at the bridge."

That's how a little community outside Pittsburgh called Bridgeville got it's name, when folks use to meet each other for trading at the very first bridge built at the crossing of Chartiers Creek at the south end of what is now Washington Avenue.

Before today, Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, had been most famous in current popular culture for being the home of Jenna Morasca, a winner of Survivor: The Amazon. Well, actually, Morasca tells people she's from Bridgeville because she really is a resident of South Fayette Township, but everyone uses the Bridgeville mailing address.

Yes, South Fayette Township is the adjoining town, and running right through the 1.1 square mile borough that is Bridgeville is the Washington Pike. The name game runs deep here.

A deathly "rampage-style" shooting occurred in Bridgeville on Tuesday, August 4, 2009. Initial reports said five women are dead and the shooter too, who has died by suicide.

[Update: Overnight reports indicate three gym victims died and the gunman, who left an unreleased note, took his own life.

The names of some of the LA Fitness Shooting victims have been released. Elizabeth Gannon, Heidi Overmier, and Jody Billingsley have died.

Elizabeth Gannon was 49 of Pittsburgh (Scott Twp).
Heidi Overmier was 46 of Carnegie.
Jody Billingsley was 38 of Mt. Lebanon.]

It all happened at a LA Fitness gym, in the Great Southern Shopping Center in Collier/Bridgeville. Specifically, it is known as the Bridgeville Club in Pittsburgh, by the LA Fitness staff.

Witnesses said a gunman wearing a black hat walked into an aerobics room filled with women shortly after 8:00 p.m. Eastern, turned out the lights and opened fire, according to breaking news services and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Several witnesses told a WTAE Channel 4 Action News crew first at the scene that a man unrecognized by the gym's staff, entered the facility, turned off the lights and shot people in a Latin dance class in the aerobics center at the time of the shooting. Every witness to whom WTAE Channel 4's Jon Greiner spoke said they didn't realize what they were hearing was gunfire.

"The lights were off and I could see flashes in the dark," said Jared Frederick, a witness.

A woman in the class at the time of the shooting, identified as Nicole, told WTAE Channel 4 Action News that the class had started about 10 minutes before the gunfire. She said about 30 people -- all women -- were in the class when "a middle-aged white male walked into the class. He had a big gym bag."

"He looked out of place in a class full of women," according to the witness, who said the man put his bag down, turned the lights off and opened fire. "It was horrible. He was 20 feet from me. He got off a lot of shots."

The woman said she ran out of the gym as quickly as she could and got into a stranger's car to escape the gunfire.

Others said 100 people were in the gym area.

Police responses came from Bridgeville, Scott Township, Collier Township, Upper St. Clair and Mount Lebanon, among others.

An Allegheny County policeman said he believes one of the dead was the gunman. Witnesses said they saw two to four wounded women lying outside the back door and two others lying in a parking lot at the side of the LA Fitness center along Washington Pike, noted the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Witnesses reported hearing dozens of gunshots before the shooting stopped.

"All of a sudden there was a really loud noise," said Julia Zorzi, 27, of Crafton, who was on a treadmill on the main floor when the gunfire began. "I heard 40 to 50 shots, and I hit the deck. I saw people running out. I ran outside and there were two girls lying outside.

"The shots came very fast," she said. "It sounded like he was using a serious piece of machinery."

Police and paramedics from throughout the South Hills and Pittsburgh responded to the shootings shortly after 8 p.m. A St. Clair Hospital spokesperson put the death toll at six, including the gunman. Others reported later another victim had died.

"He kept firing and firing," said Dennis Curry, 28, of Scott, who said he was working out on an elliptical machine upstairs when he heard the gunfire. "There was chaos. I ran out the back door, saw a girl lying there with a gunshot wound. I put a shirt on her to try and stop (the bleeding). There was blood everywhere."

+++

Killer Updates

LALATE has broken the news that the killer's, George Sodini’s online diary website preparing for LA Fitness Shooting was GeorgeSodini.com.

Lee Ann Valdiserri is referenced by George Sodini in his website GeorgeSodini.com. A Lee Ann Valdiserri is listed as dead in online obituaries printed years back, as early as potentially 2006.

On it, he writes the following claims about Lee Ann Valdiserri:

“Miscellaneous:

1. Probably 99% of the people who know me well don’t even think I was this crazy. Told by at least 100 girls/women over the years I was a “nice guy”. Not kidding.

2. Lee Ann Valdiserri had my baby in early 1991. Haven’t seen her since she was about four months into it. I knew her sister, Chris, from high school.

3. Net worth slightly more than $250K, (after all debt) as of end of 2008.

4. Death Lives!”

ABC's "Good Morning America" has confirmed that George Sodini, 48, of Scott Township, Pa., was the man who police say Wednesday walked quietly into an aerobics class at LA Fitness in Bridgeville, Pa., where he was a member, turned off the lights and started shooting. Police said they found 52 casings at the scene.

Three women, 46-year-old Heidi Obermier, 49-year-old Elizabeth Gannon and 39-year-old Jody Billingsley, were killed in the attack, according to the Allegheny coroner's office.

Among those reportedly shot were Sodini's ex-girlfriend, who survived, and the class instructor, who had just told her class she was pregnant, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Jen Malley told "Good Morning America's" Chris Cuomo that she was in the Latin dance class at LA Fitness Tuesday when the shooting started. It's a class she takes every week with friends.

According to LALATE, Monday Sodini finally writes the following:

“The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas.

“Everything stays the same regardless of the effert (sic) I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not.”

As broke earlier today on LALATE, George Sodini in the LA Fitness shooting shot his ex girlfriend, the aerobics instructor, who had just told her class she was pregnant, but she survived. George Sodini, 48, of Scott Township, Pa. was found dead along with four women. UPMC Mercy Hospital says five of the women injured are in critical condition, two are in fair condition. The conditions of the remaining injured women are still unknown.

Above, another bridge, from Wheeling WV Bike Trail. Pictures taken on Saturday, April 15, 2000. Information provided and page created by George A. Sodini, a.k.a crazygeorge

As comment maker Ryan noted, Sodini says: "This is like the Twilight Zone."

Galactica Producer Dies

2009-07-30T07:36:00.006-04:00

Harvey Frand, 68, an Emmy-winning producer who was the "Wizard behind the curtain" on the hit "Battlestar Galactica," died July 23, 2009, in Los Angeles, after a brief hospitalization for respiratory problems.

Frand's series-producing career began in 1982 with "The Devlin Connection," Rock Hudson's final series. Other credits include 34 episodes of the 1985-89 version of "The Twilight Zone," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Young Riders," "The Lazarus Man," "The Pretender" and "Strange World." He produced more than 20 pilots and movies of the week.

Intriguingly, the plot of "Strange World," which he produced in 1999, is often forgotten but should not. Here's the summary, based on info from IMDb:

"The X-Files" writer/executive producer Howard Gordon and producer Harvey Frand present an exploration of a nefarious world where "big business" funds "big science," and the answers Paul Turner finds lead to more questions than have ever been imagined. After exposure to chemical weapons during the Gulf War, ex-Government scientist Turner spent six isolated years fighting for his life until an enigmatic Asian woman saved him with a miraculous cure that lasted only temporarily. Ever since, the illness has regularly returned to ravage Turner's body until the woman mysteriously reappears to provide another dose. After a six year absence, Turner returns to the Army as a Special Investigator in charge of tracking down the Frankensteins of the world. Turner's belief that the government is too slow and inefficient to protect us from the unchecked advances of science proves to be all too true in this show that features such ripped- from-the-headlines fare as cloning and genetic engineering.

Frand began on Syfy's "Galactica" in 2003. For his work on the show, he earned a Peabody Award in 2005, an AFI Award in 2006 and an Emmy last year. During July 2009, he was nominated for a second Emmy, reports Mark Barnes and editor Sheri Linden at Reuters.

"Harvey was the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain, the train engineer, the orchestra conductor, the school guidance counselor," NBC Universal executive Todd Sharp said. "He was adored by executive producers and production assistants, studio and network, cast and crew."

A native of Philadelphia, Frand began in television at NBC News. Later, as an executive at Warner Brothers, he oversaw production on "Harry O," the 1973 series starring David Janssen. Frand went to San Diego to check in with the company and, because there was no on-site producer, stayed to work with the cast and crew. After that, he was fell in love with the role of producer.

Frand is survived by Bill Bowersock, his domestic partner of 32 years.

Soon In A Scottish Rite Hall Near You?

2009-07-25T03:51:00.007-04:00

Interested in seeing me give the most intriguing twilight language talk of the year in the midst of a Scottish Rite Masonic lecture hall? Come to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in October. More details below.

Decoding the meaning of the twilight game sometimes requires a sense of humor.

But first, there is news on the speaking front for the California lectures.

Thinking about going to the talks at the Magicopolis in Santa Monica, California, August 21-23, 2009?

By ordering your tickets because you are a Twilight Language reader, you may use the promotional discount code "chupacabras" and receive 10% off the single day passes or $5 off the weekend pass.

There has been a revision in the itinerary, in response to feedback and a need for an afternoon session on the weekend.

See the total schedule here for more on the John A. Keel - Mothman timing, but below is the new afternoon wrinkle for my talk on millionaire Tom Slick and his search for Yeti:

Sunday: 12 pm to 3 pm

* 12pm – 12:45: Barry Conrad
* 12:45 – 1:00: Q&A
* 1:00 – 1:20: Break
* 1:20 – 2:10: Loren Coleman
* 2:10 – 2:25: Q&A
* 2:25 – 3:00: Book signing

How about a couple of related events in Maine? Come hear an illustrated cryptozoology talk on Black Panthers, Bigfoot & the Dover Demon, followed by a Sea Serpent-Whale Watch, as the leaves are changing colors up the coast of Maine, Labor Day weekend, 2009.

First up, a PowerPoint presentation and Q&A at 7:00 pm, Friday, September 4, 2009, at the Waldo Theatre located in Lincoln County in Waldoboro, Maine. I'll be selling and signing books there too.

You can order tickets already at the Waldo Theatre Website.

Next, how about a special on-the-water presentation?

Yes, out of Bar Harbor, Maine, a whale watch will occur in which I will give commentary, now and then, about local sea serpent reports and other mystery ocean cryptid sightings in the Gulf of Maine.

Right now, if you want to secure a seat, you can purchase tickets for the Saturday, September 5th, 2009, 1:00 PM tour, by going to Bar Harbor Whale Watch or calling 1-800-whales4.

Also on board will be Richard Klyver, the cryptozoologist artist who will have copies of his illustration of the Frenchman's Bay Serpent for sale for $10, which Dick and I will sign for tour guide members. The trip leaves from Harborplace, next to the Downtown pier in Bar Harbor, and is being organized by whale watch-marine cryptozoologist Zach Klyver, who will also assist with his professional guide skills.

On September 26, 2009, while not on their speaking schedule yet, I will be at the Texas Bigfoot Conference in Tyler, Texas, selling and signing books.

Then, how about Indiana, in a special Masonic site?

I will be speaking and appearing at the American Paranormal Conference 2009, October 9-11, 2009, at the Scottish Rite Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. If you live in the Midwest, get a ticket and say hi. This may be my most Fortean twilight language talk of the year, merely due to the remarkable setting.

Next, it is on to Watertown, Massachusetts, for the Mass Monster Mash, October 17th, 2009. For more information, go here. I will be speaking about the "Search for Yeti by Tom Slick."

Up first, LA. Sign up today.

Watch this page for ongoing revisions and additions of new events.

If you wish to speak to Loren Coleman about a presentation for your group or school, an interview on your television program, consultation for your series, or a product endorsement, please contact him by clicking here. Thank you.

See you along the way.

Willow Creek, California, 1975.

Thank You.