Aliens menace Arizona and attack satellites while the price of exorcisms keeps rising
Robert Sheaffer
Now that Art Bell has safely returned to his all-night “Coast to Coast” radio talk show after his still-unexplained hiatus, the level of space-related paranoia is rising to levels that are, well, astronomical.
Richard Hoagland, one of Bell’s perennial favorites, generated tremendous excitement among Bell’s listeners with his claim that an alien space probe was due to land near Turret Mountain in central Arizona December 7, 1998 (see http://www.lunaranomalies.com/december_7th.html). It began with widespread reports made on the Internet concerning a supposed extraterrestrial radio signal that was allegedly being received from EQ Pegasi. According to The SETI Institute, this appears to have started as a deliberate prank by someone impersonating a certain SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researcher (see http://www.seti.org/eqpeg.html). Hoagland somehow determined that the supposed SETI signal portended the imminent landing of an extraterrestrial probe. Hoagland told Art Bell’s listeners that he was receiving information about the forthcoming landing from “intelligence community” sources, as well as from “speech reversals” (playing tapes of officials’ speeches backwards, which supposedly reveals what people are really saying). Peter Gersten, head of CAUS – Citizens Against UFO Secrecy – sent out a cry for assistance to his members to be ready for the probe’s potential arrival, since “CAUS believes we must assume that Dick Hoagland’s information, based upon his experience, expertise, and intuition and corroborated by his calculations and Pentagon sources, is reliable and accurate.” Gersten reported that “the response was overwhelming.” Pilots of small planes were asked to be on the ready in Sedona, Arizona. Hoagland, however, urged caution since “If there is a secret military tunneling operation or an actual ‘ET event’ is to take place, it may not be safe for you to approach the area,” and he speculated that the area would be placed under martial law. Remarkably, December 7 came and went without any unusual discoveries. So far as is known, no unusual military activity took place in the area, and nobody has yet found any ET probe. There was, however, what Hoagland termed “evil weather” in Phoenix on that date, which he speculates “may have actually been induced as part of a ‘Hyperdimensional Physics’ experiment.”
Linked into Hoagland’s Web page is a group called The Millennium Group (http://www.millenngroup.com/orca.html). They are raising the alarm about supposed “new solar system members” being detected by the SOHO solar research satellite. When contact with SOHO was lost last June, there was speculation among UFOlogists that the satellite had spotted something that it wasn’t supposed to see, and may have been a victim of “alien attacks” (see http://www.mindspring.com/-what/satellite1.html). One Web site hosted by Citizens Against the New World Order called “CyberSpace Orbit” promoted bizarre explanations for SOHO’s demise. It claimed that two weeks earlier a kind of solar flare “seemed to reach out and blind” SOHO’s cameras, and also that in another SOHO photo “two strange objects” appeared near the sun. Suddenly, the CyberSpace Orbit Web site ‘disappeared’ from the Internet. Speculation was rife that the Web site was shut down because “Perhaps too many people are seeing things someone doesn’t want them to see.” But if the New World Order is censoring Web sites, they are not very good at it, because the supposedly banned information can now be viewed at its new location at http://members.aol.com/phikent/orbit/orbit.html.
Now that SOHO has recovered fully from its “alien attack,” it is sending more images, which again contain blurry objects representing solar phenomena and optical artifacts. One of the supposed new solar system objects has been dubbed “Orca” by The Millennium Group because of the resemblance of its blurry, formless shape to a whale. “The LASCO C3 photo shown above was the very last image before the SOHO/LASCO satellite experienced a 90 day shut down. We are now more confident than ever that the interruption in service of the SOHO/LASCO satellite was done on purpose by the U.S. military/intelligence community to prevent the public from seeing any more of the ‘Orca,’ or the other new members of our inner Solar System. We also have reason to believe that the DIA, NSC, and/or NSA are working independent of any congressional or administrative authority.”
The above, however, gives us only a small hint at the full richness of misinformation to be found by listening to Art Bell. Among the other gems that have been gleaned in the past few months by regular listeners:
A caller in northwest Washington told Bell that he had mysteriously suffered an hour and a half of “missing time.” Bell suggested that he be “regressed” by a hypnotist immediately, to check for possible alien abduction, The caller said that he had talked to others who had experienced the same thing at the same time, causing Bell to wonder if perhaps time for everybody might have “slipped” (September 21). A week later, Bell was claiming that hundreds of other people in Seattle had sent him faxes saying that they, too, had experienced “missing time” at this same moment (September 28).
A Dr. Jonathan Reed said he came across an alien while hiking in the woods, causing his dog to implode. In self-defense he struck the creature in the head, and it fell. Believing it to be dead, he wrapped it in a blanket to carry it home, and placed it in his freezer. Three and a half days later, he opened the freezer, and the not-so-dead alien let out a piercing, unearthly scream. Unfortunately, the Men In Black must have gotten word of his amazing discovery, because soon his house was broken into, the intruders removing not only the alien, but the freezer as well. As proof of his story, Reed offers photos of the dead alien, the hovering craft, and even the recorded sound of the creature’s scream (November 11).
It turns out that one of the factors making housing so expensive in Northern California these days is the high cost of feng shui. According to an Associated Press story October 2, 1998, the real estate development firm Kaufman and Broad incurred an unusual expense in a development in San Jose, in the heart of the Silicon Valley. It paid two practitioners offing shui – the Chinese art of arranging the environment harmoniously – $6,000 to perform a four-hour “seven-star blessing” to cleanse the area of “negative” or “stagnant” energies. Diana Robinson tossed flower petals into the wind, sprinkled water into the air, rang a sacred Balinese bell, and danced around in the dirt. The development needs all the feng shui it can get, as excavation of the site revealed a major Native American burial site. So if nothing dreadful happens there, like in the movie Poltergeist, it’ll be proof that the feng shui was successful.
A similar “blessing” was performed at the recent opening of a card club in Colma, California, just south of San Francisco, which is sometimes known as the “city of cemeteries” because its few thousand living inhabitants are far outnumbered by its 1.5 million dead ones. With so much potential bad luck around, how can gamblers be reassured that Lady Luck will not permanently be scared away by all those ghosts? The San Jose Mercury News reported July 9, 1998, that a little feng shui went a long way toward reassuring the card club’s largely Asian-American clientele that the ghosts of so many departed would not harm their chances of making a killing at the tables.
Back in San Jose, something like a ghostbusting service is being operated by the Academy for Psychic Studies. The Reverend Sandy Caven explained to the San Jose Metro (October 29, 1998) that “when someone moves into a new home, it’s set up for the last person’s vibration. It’s almost like they’ve left their furniture behind or their pictures on the wall. We just strip it of the old vibrations, and then people can set it up any way they want.” One satisfied customer related how the Academy helped rid her house of “a heavy kind of energy,” presumably created by “animosity” and “a lot of fights” with her exhusband. She reported that a few hours after the ritual ended, at about 3 A.M., she heard noises coming from the kitchen, as if something were rattling the silverware. “I believe it was one of the so-called entities,” she said, “leaving the house, taking the bad energy with it.” Her next house was in Berkeley, and had previously been occupied by university students. The house was filled with “heavy male energy … in the back room, it felt like they had been doing porno stuff.” The Academy performed its mumbo-jumbo, and cleared up the problem: “Now when I come home I can say, ‘Hello house,’ it’s all mine. It’s comfy, with loving thoughts.” What is the secret ingredient that makes the ghostbusting ceremonies so effective? Salt. The Reverend Angela Silva, another ghostbuster, explains that the salt “is a preservative” which “can hold a charge of energy.” The psychics, she explains, meditate over the salt and charge it with positive energy. They then sprinkle the salt all over the rooms to be cleansed, much like a carpet deodorant. Best of all, the treatment is “good for 100 years.” But nothing this effective comes cheaply. Caven explains that the reason that prices for the ceremony start at $75 per room is “it takes several hours to charge up that much salt.”
Robert Sheaffer’s World Wide Web page for UFOs and other skeptical subjects is at www.debunker.com.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
