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SCIENCE

IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"

VOL. 4, NO.4

OCTOBER, 1971

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED


Columbia, New Jersey 07832
Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION
The legal and financial affairs of the society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees, in accordance with
the laws ofthe state of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the five Trustees, and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our society is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists, as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.

PARTICIPATION
Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is u.s. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the Society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $5, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
The society contracts-- with individuals, and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the Society.

NOTICES
In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion, as yet, of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities, as of now, cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.

PUBLICATIONS
The Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July, 1965, until the end of March 1968, the Society issued only
a newsletter, on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were, however, entitled PURSUIT-vol. 1. No.3 and No.4, dated June and september, 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2, No. 1. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January, April, July, and October. Back issues, some
available only as xerox copies, are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an order form.

Vol. 4. No. 4
October. 1971

PURSUIT
THE J 0 URN A L 0 F THE SOC lET Y F O.R THE
INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAi"NED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF "THINGS ,
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher: Hans stefa'n Santesson


Executive Editor: Marion L. Fawcett
Managing Editor: Allen V. Noe
Associate Editor: Walter J. MCGraw
c(;msulting Editor: Ivan T. Sanderson

CONTENTS

:r!u! Taxonomy Ql Knowledge

78

Editorial
Chaos !!!9 Confusion
Those Farnborough Tracks Again
On Bells
On Hunting Poltergeists. by Walter J. McGraw
Ontology
On Time Anomalies. by R. J. Durant
Chemistry
That Non-Rusting Pillar in India
Astronomy
The Planet "Vulcan"
Geology
How Big Can a Crystal Be?,
Biology
Arkansas Has a Problem
More on Jack Ullrich's Loch Ness Photograph
A Sea-Monster off New Zealand
Department Q! Loose Ends
Current Pursuits
~ from Q!!r Director
Comment by our President
Book Reviews
Index - 1970-1971

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Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1971

THE TAXONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE

THE

GEOLOGY

TANGIBLE,S

VI
EARTH SCIENCES

Atmospherici and M.teor6I09Y;


Oceanalag-y, Hydrology, and Gla.
ciology; Tectonicl, Vulconology, 5.ilmology, Geophylici
and GearnorpholOllY; Pe.
trology and Mineralogy;
. Geodesy, Geography,"
Cortollrophy,
Prologeonology. Botany, Zoo
Dating.
agy, E ... b,ology; HIStology,
Phy. iology and B,ochemi Itry;
Anatomy (Inc Iud In'll Man); G.netics and Evolution. Physi ...
cal Anthropology;

Palaeontology;
Ethology and
Ecology.
MATTER
Atomics, Molecular
ChemIstry, Crystallography.'

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

PERFORMANCE
Theoretical P.hysic., Nucleonic
ClaSSical Physics. Electric.,
E '.ctromagn_Iicl. Magnetic I,

TECHNOLOGY AND
THE USE FUL ARTS

MechaniCS.

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE
Cultural Anthropology and
Ethnology rArchaeology is a
technique), Pre-History,

H'llory, and Folklor.; Philol


ogyand linguiltici.
.

MENTAL CONCEPTS
LogIc and E pl.temalog,;
Psychology; Eth,c, and A
,h.,.c I, Comparative Inl.ll.genc .. ;
Paraps),chlc s.

EXISTENCE

MEASUREMENT

N~rnb.rl Quanti';.
Arithmetic. Algebra.
Georne"y. Trigonometry,.
Calculus. Topology. Theory
of Gam Probability, Co.
inCidence.

THE:

INTANGIBLES

Eyerything in ellistencer including -existence- itself, and thus all oJ ou~ p~S5ible concepts and all knowiedge
that we possess or will ever possess, is contained within this wheel. Technologies ond the useful arts lie
within the inner circle, having acce .. to any or all .of the ten major departments of organized knowledge.!
From the KORAN: -Acqui .. e knowledge. Itenables its possessor to know right from 'wrong; it lights the way to
heaven; it is our friend in ttle desert r our society in solitude; our cOlI!panion when friendless; it guides ius to
happiness; it lustains us in misery; it is an ornament among friends, and an armour against enemtes. - .
The Prophet.

78

79
E~ITORIAL

Old people as they are called, come in two classes: the worn-out and dejected, who rarely live very
long after retirement from an active life, or who become "vegetables" if they do; and that extraordinary
breed who" having made their peace with life and death, have a keenness of mind and enthusiasm about
everything that makes most of our current teen-agers and "under-30s" look like a bunch of zombies. These
latter oldsters have lived through an incredible period of technological advance and 'sociological' change
and have come to accept the inevit'ability of change, and even to enjoy it. They are our real "teen-agers"
in mind, spirit, and approach. (This writer once met Dr. Victor Heiser, then 94, who had just been appointed to a Presidential Commission to study the resurgence of leprosy, properly Hansen's Disease, in
areas where it was thought, to be under control; he described his plans as if he had at least another 40
years in which to complete his project. He was alive!) The 'actual' teen-agers and those a bit older seem
to have a tendency to forget that one day they too will be middle-aged, and even, with luck old. They
apparently do not seem to realize just how much they can gain from the experience and, yes, the wisdom
of "these ancient ones". (In all of this we are talking only of the so-ocalled "western World"; in other
cultures, the 'ancient ones' are still honoured, respected, and, for the most part, cared for.)
There is a "generation gap" in that the middle generations of ~oday, unless exceptionally fortunate,
were both mis-educated in school and taught at home that "money .is everything"; this latter possibly
stemming from the "easy money" days of world war II. Both the 'very' young and the 'very' old have
recognized this, and are inclined to look on the current middle-aged as the truly "los~ generation". However, this is as unrealistic as condemning all scientists for the sins of some; something which neither
Charles Fort- nor SITU - has ever done.
There is today not just a revolt but a revulsion against what is collectively called "science", and
especially among young people; but it seems to stem from a semantic misunderstanding more than from
anything else. There are, in fact', three 'classes' of "scientists": the philosophical scientists [e.g.
Einstein] (they used to be called "riatural philosophers"); the "working" scientists or experimenters
(e.g. Crick and watson]; and the technologists. These last, no matter how brilliant and inventive, are
really glorified mechanics who take the theories of the philosophical and working" scientists, and
:igure out how to "make them work". That is their job. The philosophical scientists do not usually
care whether their theories are 'applied' or not; they are simply curious about the Universe in all its
ramifications - and please note that most early scientists, many of whom made discoveries of incalculable value, were what are today called "amateurs", a term that was once highly complimentary, and
which indeed stems from the Latin verb "to love". In this day and age the word is ordinarily used to indicate some stumblebum who doesn't know what he's talking about.
There are stuffed-shirts among the true scientists -both philosophical and experimenters- but the
technologists, who are responsible for the application of scientific discoveries and thus, in goodly measure, for the current status of our' culture, should be left out of this wrangle about "Science". Their job
really constitutes the Charge of the Light Brigade: all too often with similar results, one might add. But,
short of making it illegal to think -or to publish what one thinks- we would seem to be stuck with this
attitude.
It is the "stuffed-shirts", to whom we object. I believe it was Linus Pauling who once said, "If you
know too much' about what !!!!. be, you are likely to miss what ~". It is those chaps; who won't believe
in Loch Ness 'monsters' until one is b9ttled and plunked down in front of them, who make bold -and
often fatuous- pronouncements, usually without having been to the scene of the "crime", or even having
done so much as made a phone call to find out what facts there might be. These personages are more to
be pitied than scorned, though they will, if they read this, probably foam at the mouth at such a suggestion.
They are in the middle ranks of their institutional 'pecking order' - not yet being able to afford to be big
enough to care not a wit if others think them balmy for even considering the possibility of the unexplained"
- and who, therefore, have to do their fortean 'homework' sub rosa, until they achieve tenure, or whatever
status of security they are looking for.
But the true realists, because of long experience and vast informal as well as formal education -and
education in its very broadest sense- 'are the "living" oldsters, and especially in the fields of Philosophy, science, and 'Technology. If you young people, who make up a large proportion of our membership,
really want to,know what's what, go to somebody who is what you would probably call an "antique". You
will probably find that tie has a far more open mind than you do; and he is a lot better educated. The
"middle class" chap is not deliberately against reality; he is simply scared and so tied up in administrative red-tape - you know: "publish or perish"- and a host of other nonessentials, that he hasn't time
'
to think. A goodly number of these poor souls may eventually 'recover'. ,
Over and over again we have heard college teachers yearning for retirement, not because they disliked
teaching -and some were good teachers- but because "then, at last, I'll be able to do what I really want
to do". Like investigating falls of fish from the sky, perhaps?
Marion L. Fawcett

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CHAOS AND CONFUSION

THOSE: FARNBOROUGH TRACKS AGAIN


Our English correspendent has been at wnrk, but
the results are disappointing-not through any fault
on her part. The local newspaper declined to provide
copies of their photographs, but the Frasers were kind
enough to lend her their newspaper clippings which
she photographed for us. Unfortunately, they really
are not reproducible and do not, in any case. show
much detail. But there is an attached further report
from the newspaper; it is a near classic in its way;"chessington Zoo experts say it [the animal making thl! tracks] could be a brown or Himalayan bear
which visited the Frasers in the dead of night. said
a spokesman: 'It could be a bear because bears are
the only animals which don't retract their claws.
Members of the cat family walk on their toes. However,
footprints in the snow do expand,' he warned. - Hmphh!
(or however it's spelled!)
The statement that bears are the only animals
which don't retract their claws is absolute rubbish,
and OM hopes the spokesman- was misquoted. cats
are thE! only ones that W2 retract them. Also, read
mammals for" animals".
But .it is the thought that a zoo expert could remark
blandly that it might have been a Brown or Himalayan
Bear that wandered amiably through the Frasers'
garden. apparently without any notion as to how such
an animal got there or where it came frolll, that causes
our eYE!brows to rise. The Chessington zoo is, one
must assume, not missing one; nor is there any indication that any other British zoo has lost one; while
there II.re, of course, no bears indigenous to the
British Isles. The fact is that the tracks, from what
we can make of them, ~ be bear track!:!. Frankly.
we do not seem to have got anyfurther with this case,
and it would seem to be necessary to 'file' it as a
case of possible ITF (Charlie Fort's "teleportation")
by an unidentified animal, possibly a bear. However,
from where?
ON BELLS
The two items that follow are only very loosely
connected, but both have thus far defied explanation.
A UPI report, apparently dated the 14th March of
this year, notes that in stone, England "A bell rings
twice every day in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth
Bentley. Trouble is, they can't find out where the
bell is or what causes it to ring. The fire brigade,.
post office engineers [the telephon!,! system is under
the postal service in England] , and council officials
have sE!arched for it to no avail. The rings come at

8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. without fail. 'It's r~ally quite
baffUng,' said a postal engineer.- . . .
This might be some kind. of poltergeist :manifestation; we do have reports of such regularly occurring
'events' which apparently are p,oltergeisti9 in nature
(or POMs, as the writer prefers to call them). There
really is not enough informatlon availabl~ as yet to
risk a diagnosis, but one must assume that no purely
mechanical fault causes this phenomenon ~nless one
wishes to insult a host of British enidne~rs" we are
also constrained to wonder about the effect on the
Bentley's nerves if the bell failed to ring on time!
Our English "sleuth- has been asked to iQvestigate.
The other 'bell' is reported by AP frbm Norris,
Tenn. (no date, but apparently late July or early
August ...,
,
"It seems that on windy days, people -in Norris
Dam State Park can hear bells - but only ~rom inside
a car with the windows closed tightly. Frank Podriznik,
the state park naturalist for the East Tenn'essee district calls it 'the mystery of the bells -that aren't
there,' and is looking to summer visitors to :help solve
that mystery. 'I first . learned of the bells last February,' Podriznik said Friday. He said he vJ,as talking
with other men at the park when the wind picked up.
One of them remarked that the bells should ring loud
and clear. 'I thought it was a joke, but they icorivinced
me they were serious,' Podriznik said. He iuid a park
ranger then drove around the park, stopping iat various
places. 'suddenly, I heard them,' he said. 'The sound
is not exactly like bells, but more like a flute player
playing up and down the scale. It was a: beautiful
sound' he added. 'I cannot explain the bells, and
neither can anyone .else I've talked to. T;hat's why
I'm hoping some of our visitors can solve the i mystery.The fact that the 'bells' are heard, apparently,
only on windy days suggests a natural explanation.
Sound -and particularly that of bells- has been known
to travel extraordinary distances (vide, th~ case of
church bells heard several hundred miles, if memory
serves correctly, at sea). But that the sounds reported
here are audible only.. in a tightly closed cl!-r.is: most
odd. A car with one or more windows slightly open
may be the site of very peculiar sounds baused by
air vibration, which can produce effects wh~ch affect
the. human ~ar 'psychologically'. The .humn/ing of an
electric fan, for instance. flometimes 'translates' into
music.

'"Dear Members: please date all clippings and indicate


source.

81

Any of our members travelling in the vicinity of


Norris, Tennessee, are hereby invited to investigate
and report. we will, of course, be making further
enquiries on our own, but the more reports the better.
And a little experimentation would seem to be ir! order
also.
ON HUNTING POLTERGEISTS

ij

r-'\

ITS's Desk

"Offending" lamp

MLF's Desk

by walter J. McGraw
Poltergeist phenomena -or PGMS, as Marion
Fawcett prefers to call them, i.e. short for PolterGeist Manifestations- are a great deal more common
than most people realize. If bureaus start falling
over, the crockery starts flying about the house, and
the occupants (the ordinary human ones, that is) are
regularly dumped out of bed, the fact that there is a
"poltergeist" at work becomes pretty obvious and the
long-suffering police are called in, usually followed
by the clergy, and the "parapsychologists". AS a
rule, it doesn't really matter ~ they do; the poltergeist eventually departs, and often within a few weeks.
Minor PGMs are, so far as we can determine, very
common indeed; though this should not be taken to
mean that the moment anything odd happens one should
start yelling "Poltergeist!" TO demonstrate the difference, here are several cases reported to me by
Alma sanderson and Marion Fawcett:
Both were sitting in the office one morning when
a crash and the sound of breaking glass were heard
coming from the cellar below the office. They immediately went to investigate and found that a small
glass jar, of necessity placed toward the outside
edge of a shelf in the toolshop, had fallen to the
floor and smashed: their instant verdi.ct was that a
field mouse had probably run across the tops of these
jars, which are arranged in staggered rows because
of the narrowness of the shelf from front to back, and
had knocked this one off. They cleaned up the mess
and returned to work. On another occasion, again both
were alone in the office when a tremendous crash
was heard from the sandersons' bedroom just above
the office. They quickly determined that all dogs
were outside and then stared at each other for a
moment. Marion Fawcett tells me that although the
crash resembled that of a bureau (at the very least)
falling over, neither she nor Mrs. sanderson was 'impressed'. One of them -they cannot remember whichfinally said, "I suppose we ought to investigate".
There was not so much as a pin out of place.

f.i-;,l
... -_.1

C-'1-\...-/
\

..''

I
Not to scale; and not a complete floor plan.
Recently (i.e. starting approximately the end of
August) they have had "trouble" with one of the office
lamps. These are standard light bulb 'sockets', to
which are screwed metal lampshades; the cords are
strung through metal piping so fixed that the lamps
can be moved horizontally to any position desired.
These lights are turned off at night, and the first
person up turns on both the kitchen lights and the
office lights. One morning Marion Fawcett, at that
time alone in the house, both the sandersons being
in hospital, turned on all the office lamps and went
to make her morning tea. On her return to the office,
where she habitually drinks this, she heard a "pinging" sound, clearly the sound of the metal chain on
the lamp on desk "A" (see diagram). This has continued to occur every morning, and the chain has been
seen to flip upward, sometimes landing exactly where
it had been placed after the lamp was turned on,
sometimes landing on the other side of the screw
which lies in direct line with it and holds the shade
onto the fixture (there are three screws in all). The
time between turning on the lamp and its flipping
about (this has been seen on some occasions but not
all) varies from 14 to 21 minutes. This is hardly a
spectacular occurrence, but it was thought initially
that it might be a PGM. However, Marion Fawcett noticed something and proceeded to dismantle the fixture. The cause of this particular "PGM" proved to
be a mechanical defect. The chain is made up of a
string of beads, with a large bead near the top of the
chain, and the chain, when pulled out to turn on the

Department of ~ confusion
Ruth Parker's "western Girl Report" quoted in the San Jose Mercury, notes that a Lincolnshire, England,
newsagent distributed. a form letter to his customers as follows: "To ease the strain on our bookkeeping,
in the future all weekly accounts will be rendered monthly & all monthly quarterly. Quarterly ones will
be rendered quarterly if you have one, or if you have not you can. Also if you wish to have a weekly or a
monthly you have only to say the word." To which Miss Parker added, "But not in front of the children!-

82

lamp, should slide back into the fixture up to this


large bead. It doesn't do so, there being a defective
"doohic:key" inside which apparently does not function until the lamp has heated up to a particular
temperature, at which point it suddenly yanks the
chain into its 'proper' position.
On t.he other hand, some time ago, Miss Fawcett
was plagued by a rather nasty PGM. In order to type
comfortably, she must sit on a small mountain of
pillows, with the result that her feet do not reach the
floor. A very sturdy box sits well under her desk as
a footrl~st ["X" in the diagram]. Some months ago
she began to hear peculiar noises definitely coming
from underneath her desk (actually a piece of heavy
plywood rather than a standard desk). Her initial
reaction was that one of their dogs had chosen it as
a sleeping place, a common occurrence -but, no dog.
she ignored the noises thereafter. However, when
she got. up a few minutes later she tripped over the
box which had somehow mysteriously -and instantlymoved into the 'corridor' between her desk and the
book shelves behind it. This occurred several times,
on the last of which-and it ~ the last- she went
flat on her face, bruising her knee and narrowly escaping smashing her skull on the bookshelves. This
was too much for Miss Fawcett who is reasonably
even-te:npered [except when struggling with putting
out PUHSUlT], and, following instructions from Ivan
T. Sanderson, she banged on the desk and, "using
language that would make a sailor blush", told the
PG what she thought of it and where it could go.
lt went.
Even a spectacular case may be difficult or impossible to inve"stigate -not so much because of the

manifestations themselves but because of the humans


involved and their reactions to these, to ther,n, totally
new and sometimes 'alarming' incidents.
'
It is also often difficult to determine whether even
a reportedly spectacular case is genuine. Our member
#402 wrote us in March of this year that an, acquaintance of his, with a friend, claimed that :they had
been disturbed by PGMS while on vacation in New
England during the summer of 1970, that ~hese had
stopped on their return to New York City to college,
and then had recurred. I should like to emph~size that
#402 was not directly involved and should, in fact,
be congratulated for bringing this case to 9ur attention while it was still "in progress". All :too often
we are informed of such cases only when it ~s far too
late to do anything truly constructive about 'them. He
provided the necessary contacts, but I am afraid" that
they were unable to produce a single piece; of 'hard'
evidence that this was indeed a poltergeist case.
They made investigation nearly impossible in any
event by alleging that they were being con~acted by
telephone -in a sort of Morse code- by an 'entity'
who instructed them not to talk to anyone who might
publicize the matter. I have no way of knowing whether this is/was true, or simply an "easy out~ on their
part. But #402 should not be discouraged by, this setback and is hereby invited, along with all our other
members, to report immediately any apparflnt PGMs
they may hear of. Some will be out-and-out hoaxes,
some will be the equivalent of the light' chain at
SITU's HQ; and some will be genuine. As Member
#402 put it, "The word 'frustration' probably dame into
being in connection with investigations such as this"
-but someday we will find an answer.

II. ONTOLOGY

ON TIME ANOMALIES
by

Ii~.

J. Durant

Recently SITU has been exploring the mysterious


disappe!arances and spatial dislocations of ships and
aircraft. such as the notorious Bermuda Triangle incident in which six Navy aircraft disappeared without
a tracl~. Ivan T. Sanderson's Invisible Residents
discussed several incidents in which aircraft encountered a totally inexplicable deviation from the
planned: duration of the flight. In these cases the aircraft simply flew "too fast" or "too slow" and did so
by a margin so wide as to strain credulity. AS a professional pilot with a major airline I was asked to
study these cases to determine whether any ordinary
conside"ration such as adverse winds or navigational
error might have caused the difficulties encountered
by these aircraft. The results of my study were quite
startling in that no rational explanation for these incidents could be found. The pilots involved were

highly competent and they used accurate navigational


methods. Wind and atmospheric phenomena ~ere ruled
out for a variety of reasons. It was profoup.dly puzzling, and as an active pilot naturally I t"ake more
than just a passing interest in these matters,
After pondering all this I concluded th/!-t an aircraft is really a fine thing to get caught in a Vile
Vortex, or Whatever, because it is jammed full of
instruments to measure temperature, altitude,: attitude,
direction of flight and so on. with a normally:attentive
crew one might get a very complete set of, readings
describing the atmospheric enviroment at th:e time of
the incident. and thus perhaps be in a more favorable
position to get to the heart of the problem. I was
especially keen to get a case involving :11. modern
commercial airliner because they are equipp~d with a
tape recording device called a flight recorder which
records altitude, airspeed, heading, and "G" forces
against a time base for the entire flight. At ilong last
one such case has come to my attention ~nd I de'
scribe it below.

83

A Boeing 727 left Detroit at 5:04 p.m. on the 16th


November 1968. en route to Milwaukee. The plane
had been cleared to climb to 22.000 feet and was in
a 5 degree nose-up attitude climbing at a rate of
2500 feet per minute. Two minutes and 55 seconds
after takeoff the aircraft suddenly encountered' a most
unusual set of flight conditions. The airspeed jumped
from 230 to 276 knots. the aircraft began a completely uncontrolled climb at a rate of 7.800 feet per minute. and the nose pitched up to a 25 degree nose-up
attitude.
The pilot immediately took corrective action by
reducing power and attempting to lower the nose.
Despite these actions the dizzy climb continued for
48 seconds. taking the aircraft from an altitude of
4.800 feet to nearly 9.000 feet. At this point the ordinary laws of aerodynamics came into play again
and the aircraft. finally responding to the controls.
nosed over in a 25 degree dive. A recovery was made
at an altitude of 240 feet above the ground and at an
airspeed of 460 knots. The pilot returned to Detroit
where a number of passengers were treated for injuries suffered in the dive.
The pilot was subsequently charged with improperly flying the machine in turbulence. This is not
unusual because the wild ride was simply not comprehensible to aviation experts. Atmospheric turbulence is a common phenomenon and pilots are well
trained to cope with it. On occasion aircraft have
temporarily gone out of control in severe thunderstorm
turbulence. but this case was radically different. and
the flight recorder told the tale. The authorities were
forced to charge the pilot on the basis of the facts
as they appeared at the time: the aircraft went out of
control and yet all the meteorological facilities of
the Federal Aviation Agency in the Detroit area indicated nothing that could have caused even a minor
control difficulty.
In the end. however. this incident was laid to rest
with a classic fortean "wipe" delivered in a most
modern and eminently fair adversary proceeding before the National Transportation Safety Board (Docket No. SE 1110). The pilot was vindicated. the of-

Department

ficial explanation being that a gigantic wave of air.


analogous to an ocean wave. four miles long and 1
mile high. with a wind velocity of 120 miles per hour
on the ascending side. and a precipitous breaking top
had enveloped the aircraft. This wave of air. having
gargantuan dimensions and potentialities. hoisted the
aircraft four thousand feet and then literally dumped
it over the curling top like a hapless surfer. case
closed.
Of course. such a giant atmospheric wave has
never been observed. It is a theoretical construct of
the meteorology trade and apparently the pet theory
of an emminent meteorologist from the University of
Chicago who was called in to testify on behalf of the
accused pilot. The Detroit area at 5 p.m. is a very
high density air traffic region. yet no other aircraft
encountered turbulence. At no time before or during
the flight did the authorities issue any warning of
turbulence. thunderstorms. or other unusual atmospheric phenomena. Nor was there any unusual wind
reported from observers on the ground. though it is
obvious that the effect on the ground of this giant
wave of air with 120 mph winds at 5000 feet would
have been considerable. to put it mildly.
Every pilot knows that the initial effect of flying
into a strong up-draft is a nose-down pitching action.
but the pilot reported an extreme pitch up! The airspeed should have dropped rapidly with the reported
nose-high attitude. but instead it increased substantially. then levelled off before beginning to drop. The
airspeed at the top of the climb was approximately
equal to the speed at the entry. The most puzzling
parameter is the "G" readout which shows that the
aircraft actually experienced a smoother flight during
the 48-second uncontrolled climb than it did for the
entire remainder of the flight after the dive and recovery; this is all the more remarkable in that the
cruise back to Detroit was flown at 5.000 feet. only
several hundred feet above the base of the "air wave".
A novel concept has been advanced to explain
cases of mysterious spatial displacement such as
this one and the "Bermuda Triangle" disappearances.
The theory postUlates the existence of variations in

2! Impossible Requests

we often blink. to put it mildly. at some of the questions asked us -and from college graduates as
well as youngsters- but we obviously have company'. The Jersey Free ~ of the 14th July of this
year reported that a 12-year-old boy wrote to the Boston Museum of Science as follows: "Please send me
complete information on the universe. I need it by Friday."

!! Goof 21 Frank Edwards


One of our subscribers. now resident in Mexico. writes as follows: "An item that may be of interest is
in connection with Frank Edwards' book Strangest of All. page 160. The account that a UFO almost rammed
us is pure nonsense. It is true that the pilot panicked when he saw the object. and he apparently was the
last one [to see it] because most of the passengers. including myself. watched the obj ect for several
minutes hovering harmlessly. going our direction and at about our speed. A few had their cameras out but
I never found out if this sighting was successfully photographed.

84

'"

These- ~G,"curl1onl re
III rlPldItlulh.IraclnlII
blUilmallllllPOIr.I.

rio

the normal flow of time. These variations, or "Time


Anoma.lies", seem to occur rarely. The only regularity
associ.ated with them is a rather well defined geographical distribution. This distributicilD of so-called
Vile Vortices was discussed at some length in
PURSUIT, vol. 4, No.2.
A simple explanation of the effect of the theoretical tIme anomaly is possible if we resort to a basic
formula from high school math. Distance equals rate
times time is a basic formula showing the relation
betwel~n the speed of an object, the time it travels,
and the distance travelled. Knowing any two of these
factors will quickly yield the third. For example, given
a car travelling at a speed of 30 miles per hour, how
far will the car move in one hour? This formula presupposes certain extremely important properties of
the universe we live in. The measurement of distance
must be constant. That is, whatever unit of length we
decidE! to use, be it a centimeter or a mile" must retain
its length throughout the area of space in which we
intend to move our car and measure its progress. No
space warps or rubber yardsticks, please. This idea
is commonsensical and fits in well with our ordinary
exper:ience.
In order that D = R x T may work consistently,
time 1l1so must have a fixed value, and therein lies
the problem and the genesis of the time-anomaly
theory. It was a simple matter to give an example
from E!veryday life showing the necessity of constant
distance measurements, but nothing of the sort is
possible with reference to time. If time flows in a

steady stream without variation, our formul", works; if


not, we are in deep trouble. This is a probfem that is
vexing some of the top minds in theoretic;U physics
today.
With all this in mind, let us refer again to the distance formula and suppose for a moment that the "T"
(time) is indeed flexible. The result - the distance
travelled by the car will vary; even though ~he speedometer may very well continue to read 30 mph. We
would say that the car has entered into a time anomaly, meaning that in the region of space occupied by
the car the flow of time is altered with respect to our
normally experienced time. If the driver (or pilot) were
to emerge and attempt to compare figur~s with an
observer outside the anomalous zone a cohsiderable
confusion would result. The car will have gone too
fast or too slowly, depending on the direc~ion of the
time flow. In a case where the time flow is, altered to
a sufficient extent the car would probably cease to
exist in our "normal" world. Thus the time anomaly
theory ties together both complete disappearances
'
and the fast/slow cases.
Viewed as a time anomaly case, the Boeing 727
incident was caused by the existence of ~ transient
time flow alteration in the vicinity of the Detroit airport. This particular anomaly apparently operated in
a vertical direction and resulted in the ai~craft performing in a manner inconsistent with normal-time
mechanics. Thus it is an exercise in futility to apply
the test of ordinary experience to a case sU:ch as this
as a means of explaining what occurred. IIi the same
way it may be that other hitherto unexpl~ned pheomena such as the UFO's and even the working of
the mind may have to be analyzed as proble!l1s in time
flow.
'

Editor's Notes: The tracings reproduced here were


made from a~cial copy of the flight re60rder tape.
They have been "simplified" to a certhin extent,
partly to save space, and partly to make'them more
intelligible to the ordinary reader who lacks technical
training; e.g. the scale for the airspeed :record has
been eliminated, but the tracing as such: is that on
the official record, which uses a doubl~ scale to
save space - when airspeed reaches a ce*tain level,
the machine automatically shifts to scale: B and the
record is started "at the bottom".
So as not to "muck up" the tracings with annotations, they have been labelled with numbe*ed arrows,
matching the comments by R. J. Durant as follows:
(1) Takeoff [and please note, the altitude is that
of the Detroit airport; the scale is based on 0 as in,
dicating sea-level]
(2) Initial climb; takeoff power
(3) Climb at 2500 feet per minute; climb power on
engines
'
(4) 7800 feet per minute climb at cruis,e power or
less

85

(5) Dive [in case you hadn't figured this out for
yourself long ago]
(6) Normal "G"; slight bumpiness
(7) Note "G" tracings during the climb at 7800
fpm- They are relatively smooth.
(8) Extreme "G" excursions due to dive and pullout.
One of the fascinating points about this record is
that the "G" 'level', which is relatively smooth, i.e.
normal. during the unaccounted-for rise of the aircraft when gravity would seem to have 'stopped',
drops suddenly just as the craft starts its dive. That

it later rose to nearly 5 Gs during the dive is not. one

assumes, really noteworthy except that commercial


airliners and transport (i.e. passenger as opposed to
fighter) planes are not built to withstand such
stresses. Mr. Durant told me in general conversation
on this incident that no one really knows why the aircraft didn't come apart at the seams during the dive
- it 'ought' to have done so.
Lastly. Mr. Durant says. "I'm sure my little
D = R x T thing will bring a load of brickbats", but
we are agreed that the more persons we can get to
work on this "thing" the better. Anyone have any
ideas?

IV. CHEMISTRY

THAT NON-RUSTING PILLAR IN INDIA


One of the 'standard' items in fortean books is a
rustless iron pillar in Delhi. India. The pillar is
definitely known to be about 1600 years old. dating
from the time of the Guptas. and was apparently first
erected at Bihar. An inscription dated 1052 suggests
that it was moved to Delhi at that time.
It is 23 feet tall, including the portion underground.
and was reported on almost ad nauseam by British
military and political personnel during the 18th and
early 19th centuries (these gentlemen were a most
remarkable breed; they really deserve a book) because
of the fact that it did not rust. various theories were
advanced to explain this, but none really did so. we
now have an explanation that ~plausible.
The New Scientist and science Journal (Britain's
leading -;er;:;i-popular scientific journal. generally the
equivalent of our Scientific American) of the 10th June
1971. paraphrases a report from the collection of
czechoslovak Chemical communications. vol. 36,
p. 625. wherein a gentleman by the name of G. wranlen
of the Royal Institute of Technology. stockholm -he
is not otherwise identified- comes up with what he
considers to be the answer to this puzzle. The article
in the N.S.S.J. is headed "Superstitious Myths Help
to stop Iron Rusting" and paraphrases wranlen's
original report.
This scientist attributes the rustless condition of
the pillar to the "clean and dry air" at (Ancient)
Delhi, stating that samples taken to more humid climates did rust and that the portion of the pillar below
ground is, in fact. badly corroded. He also notes that
'The composition of the iron. which is high in phosphorus and low in sulphur. is such as to encourage a
protective oxide layer to form on the metal'. (We have
written for a copy of Wranlen's original paper in order
to find out just what kind of "oxide" this is; ~
oxide is rust.) He further goes on to point out that
the pillar weighs some six tons and that the heat
accumulated during the day promotes rapid drying of
rain or dew that falls on the pillar.

Also. it is pointed out that the pillar is in a class


with wishing wells. the Blarney Stone. and such; it
is considered to bring good luck to stand with one's
back to the pillar and try to clasp one's hands behind
it. This. according to G. Wranlen, has polished the
metal in a band around the pillar and given it a rustresisting coating of fat -he cites some 2000-year-old
chains used as handrails along a path leading to a
shrine in Ceylon which are 'similarly' preserved by a
layer of human grease. This is a perfectly splendid

..

.. ~

~;?~'l~
-..
'"

86

notion. but suggests that. if all of the pillar is rustless (above ground. that is). these superstitious visitors mu.st average 15 feet tall. assuming that approximately one-third of the pillar is underground. and that
this is one of the reasons for its rustless state.
Dr. wranlen also believes that climatic conditions
at the time of manufacture of this object might have
played a part in its history in that the atmosphere at
that time might have been more alkaline (the result of
numerous animal 'inhabitants' and their dung) which
would have had a "passivating effect" during the
manufa,::ture of the pillar. described as being forgewelded wrought iron. Old Delhi is still "rural" in that
Sacred 'cows. monkeys. and other animals still roam
its streets unmolested; New Delhi is an entirely
different matter and may ~ the more acid atmosphere of any industrial city of today. thus promoting
corrosion of practically everything (including people).
Although we have the greatest respect for the New
Scientist and its synthesis of technical articles from
other sources. we await the full text of Wranlen's original report. As we said at the outset. his theory.
based on numerous reports by others. seems plausible; but there are some 'nasties' involved.

In the first place. its place of original manufacture


is in doubt; this is usually given as Biha~. but another source states that it was probably M~ttra (now
Mathura). Bihar is a bit southwest of Patna on the
Ganges River. while Muttra is on the ban:ks of the
Jumna River. about 90 miles 'south' of ancient Delhi.
The climatiC zone in which these and ancient iDelhi are
found is described as subtropical with winter drouth
and summer rain. The average rainfall for the area is
40" a year. This is not exactly a sodden ar~a (a town
named Mawsyhram had 670.35" of rain in 1957!) but
it isn't a desert either.
'
Nevertheless. whatever the explanat,ion (and
Wranlen may be correct; we will peruse hi~ original
paper with utmost care). the inscription on ;the pillar
dates its manufacture as circa 1600 years ago; and it
has certainly been there since the British fir~t arrived
in India in 1600 (the actual charter of the East India
Co. was granted in 1608).
:
We would still like to know more about it and will
report further when Wranlen's paper becomesiavailable.

V. ASTRONOMY

THE PLANET "VULCAN"


In september 1859 the famed French astronomer
who had correctly predicted the existence
of the planet Neptune. told the French Academy of
sciencl~s that he had observed what he believed to be
another planet between the Sun and the planet Mercury. The ensuing battle. which Leverrier lost. is described in considerable detail in Charles Fort's Book
of the Damned (p. 196ff in the hardcover collected
;-orks). It was declared categorically that there was
no planet vulcan. as Leverrier had named it.
In ;rune of this year a New York astronomer. Dr.
Henry C. courten of Dowling college. announced that
he had discovered what appeared to be something
orbiting the sun closer than Mercury. but more work
was needed to determine just what it is. The evidence
is a number of mysterious tracks on photographic
plates made during the solar eclipses of 1966 and
1970. These tracks do not have the characteristics
Leverr~er.

of comets. and Dr. Courten postulates an asteroid or.


more properly. planetoid with a diameter! of about
500 miles.
There ~ an irregularity in Mercury's orbit. and
this had been. in the 19th century. the origin of the
idea that another planetary body must li~ between
Mercury and the sun. This irregularity was :explained
by Einstein'S theory of relativity, but courten points
out that a body that has a diameter of only;500 miles
would not affect Mercury' s orb~t in any case. The
object -or possibly objects- is/are about 9 million
miles from the sun; Me'rcury is 36 million miles away.
courten hopes that other astronomers wiil look for
this during eclipses in 1972 and 1973 when conditions
should be most favourable. other astronpmers are
generally rather sceptical but agree that Courten. at
least. should continue his work. We shall si,mply have
to wait to find out whether Leverrier will lfinally be
vindicated.

A number of our readers have asked "When will Mr. sander~on be on radio (or TV or whateve[) again;
we would like to listen [etc.] ?" The fact is that it is impossible to let members know in advance of such
programs for the simple reason that most are arranged only a few days in advance. and sometimes:with no
warni.ng at all -the latter is particularly true of what are called "beepers". i.e. radio shows via te~ephone.
As for forthcoming magazine articles. we seldom know when an article will be published (this n:tay be a
mattE!r of four to eight or more months) and. by the time it is published. we have usually forgotten
about
it. All we can suggest in this latter case is that you keep an eye on Argosy. ~. saga. and Fate;

87

VI. GEOLOGY

HOW BIG CAN A CRYSTAL BE?


One of our most active subscribers -and it is not
only our members who investigate things on our behalf
- sent us a letter she received" from Dr. W. A. Paddon, Director of the Northern Medical services of the
International Grenfell Association (any library with
even a modest reference section should be able to
obtain more information on this organization if you
are interested). she had, for personal reasons, become
much interested in an island named Tabor (see map)
on the coast of Labrador, and Dr. Paddon's reply
contained the following rather astonishing information:"The island about which you have made enquiries
is Tabor Island and it lies about 25 miles to the west
of the town of Nain. The island is a solid mass of
rock, forming a smooth, rounded ridge and there is a
small cove which can be used as an anchorage, and
a few small scrubby spruce trees in sheltered areas.
I should say that practicaily the whole island is one
huge piece of Labradorite."
This may not sound frightfully fortean, but. .
Some enormous crystals have been found, one of a
mineral called tourmaline, which was over 45 feet
long; and another, a chip off a diamond (oflow grade,
admittedly) that was 21 feet long -I cannot find the
reference at the moment, and do not even remember
whether they bothered to dig out the rest of it! But
that an island, which is, after all, only the "top of
the iceberg" as it were, could be one crystal -however fractured- really is incredible. The island is
about a mile long! We have written to the proper department of the Canadian Government for confirmation
and additional information but have not yet had a
reply -they are probably even busier than we are and
things like this do have to "go through channels".
However, we can tell you more about Labradorite;
and if you wish to see specimens, visit the Cloisters
in New York where it was used rather extensively.
Labradorite is a semi-precious gem-stone and is
absolutely exquisite when seen under proper lighting
conditions. If you are interested in obtaining specimens, they are, we are told, available from the
British Newfoundland Corporation, 1 Westmount
Square, Montreal 216, P.Q., Canada. We have no idea
what the price is.
We apologize for what follows, since it is highly
technical and will probably be virtually unintelligible
to many of our readers; we include it for our rockhounds, in as condensed a form as possible.

We believe that both these crystals are in the


Geological Museum which forms one of the 'departments' of the British Museum complex and is on a
street off Cromwell Road in London, but are not certain of this.

(1) From the petrological point of view: Among the


volcanic rocks of the andesite group, the soda-lime
felspars are most commonly porphyritically developed
forms. These include memberf\ varying from oligoclase
to anorthite, but including andesine and labradorite.
The latter may turn up in such igneous rocks as the
diorites.
(2) From the mineralogical point of view: Labradorite is one of a class of minerals of the triclinic
crystallic form, commonly called the Albite-Anorthite Series. This consists of half a dozen forms
distinguished by the proportions of albite and anorthite that they contain. Labradorite has a 4:6 index
on this scale, meaning that it has as little as 25% or
as much as 50% albite.
(3) From the crystallographic point of view: Many
minerals display a feature called 'twinning' (e.g. the
famous "fairy crosses"). Most display simply two
contrary forms (from a crystallographic point of view)
in anyone crystal. In others, and notably labradorite,
there may be any number from three upwards. The
result of this, when examined (in section) with
"crossed nicols [a special lens used for examining
minerals under polarized light], produces a curious
eff ect known as laminar twinning.
(4) For the gemological view, we turned to Emanuel
M. Staub for a report. His report is as follows: "Luster
-vitrous; hardness- 6 to 6-Y.z; toughness poor;
cleavage -good to perfect in two directions; fracture
-uneven to conchoidal; specific gravity - 1.55 to
1.57; optic character -biaxial positive; birefringence
-low, .008; pleochroism [changing color when rotated

88

under polarized light (see "crossed nicols" above)] -none; dispersion -weak . 012; not attacked by acid;
heat -fuses with difficulty under blowpipe."
Manny goes on to say -and this should be intelligible I~ven to novices-"Labradorite in gem varieties
is so distinctive that it cannot be mistaken except
perhaps for "Blue John" (Fluorite) which is much
softer and the change of color is not in regular laminations (plates or 'layers'). As a trade term. labradorite refers only to those varieties of Labradorite
feldspar which show a change of color known as labradorescence as the stone is moved. Greenish. bluish.
yellowish. or reddish change of color may occur. but
blues and greens are -more usual. The background of
the sl:one is usually gray or brownish gray. Color
changE!s may occur only in patches. and color in adjacent patches may differ greatly; but this is not the
multi-<:olor playas seen in most opals. Dark stones
are sometimes known as Ox-eyes, green stones as
Lynx-E!yes. The greater the change of color. the more
valuable the stone. Clear fine blue gems. of the Russian variety are superior, and the most valuable. Some
rare labradorities can almost be classed as "precious~
but the inferior stones usually seen have lessened
the appreciation and v8J.ue of the variety as a whole.

Most specimens lack sufficient beauty or: have gray


patches that exhibit no labradorescence and can be
classed only as ornamental stones.
'
When cut (iri] cabochon [style]. it sh:Ows somewhat chatoyant ["marked by a play or colo~s"] bands
of green. blue. red. or yellowish light. It never- contains a combination of contrasting color~ such as
green and red as is often seen in opals. I Its colors
are always close together in the spectrum. such as
various hues of green or green and yellow or. more
rarely. blue-green and yellow".
Attempts were made to "mine" this isl1and in the
early 30s but the climate and the fact th~t blasting
operations tended to shiver the rock. thus: making it
virtually impossible to "work" later on. ca~sed operation to be abandoned. though the local people still
help themselves and sell it. though the pr{ce is low.
As Dr. Paddon put it in his letter. "Consid~ring there
must be several hundred -million tons of, it on the
island . . . 1 do not think that anyone's 90nscience
-was much bothered about this". We wish we had the money to reproduce ,in color a
photograph of a piece of labradorite in the p:ossession
of one of our members. It really is beautifull~

Notiee: Please do not address any mail to the Sandersons' New York -apartment; as of the mpment of
writing they still "maintain" this apartment, but the mail is not forwarded -even first-class mail+- and is
I
pickl!d up only at the most irregular intervals.
.
Quot!!:2k Quotes:
Philip callahan, in his book entitled ~ Behavior, reviewed in this issue. makes the following
- comment:
"And who ever said the 'expert' was always right. anyway? 1 often think of the words of the, German
poet and dramatist Schiller. who wrote: 'The natural enemy of any subject is the professor the~eof. for
the )lOWer of the professor is revealed not so much by the things he teaches. as the things hel fails or
-refuses to teach' ...
From Professor Charles Richet: "I never said it was possible; I merely said it was a fact."
HI~racleitus. circa 500 B.C.: "Because it is sometimes so unbelieveable the truth, escapes b~coming
known."

j001 'ljlOA\ A'8W


1nq "pamu'sTPun" aq A'8W U 'anssT OL61 laq0100 aql uT auo
aq1 palOu'sT aA'8q 01 waas nOA JO 1S0W !Ala1'8laqnap annb UA\Op aPTsdn uT pa1S'8d S'8A\ aonou sTq.r.
N
,
ill'B l'8
laAnap ol 'sUTH'8J sawnawos 'IT'BW SS'810-Pl11ll 1'8001 AlaAn'8lal uaAa laAHap 01 sljaaA\ aalql lnoQ1! saljul
'auTwlalap uuo aA\ S'8 lUJ os 'puu 'paJlad WOlJ l'8J sT aomo lSOd aq1 '"ljO'8l'B pU'8 SUl'B" 'PU'8- FSalPP'B
JO a,Suuqo U JO asn'8oaq paUlnlal sT n ssayun 'lOU lO Adoo mOA paATaoal aAuq nOA laqlaqA\ 'sUJI'!\OUlj 10
A"BA\ (lU aAuq aA\ !.anssT nldV aql la,S l,uPTP I .. 1'8ql 'sUn'81S laqwaoaQ uT sla1lal p'8q aAuq aM 'A\OU~ sn lal
as'8ald '(anssT 10 Q1uow aql JO pua aql PlUA\Ol paH'8w AHl'BUTPlO al'8 Aaq1'slOA'8apUa 1saq lno andsap) anssT
l'Blno~1lud '8 jO Adoo '8 aATaoal ol n'81 nOA n 'puV 'auo lnoqnA\ q,Snolq1 o's 10U saop .r.mS'Hnd 'apoo dTZ
lnOA :3UJPnIOUT pU'8 'alqJssod n aOU'8Ap'8 ul naA\ pU'8 'ssalppu jO aBu'8qo AU'8 sn puas :!ISV:!I'1d 'oslV
'pas'8ald Alq'8UOSUal lsual l'8 :alU nOA
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'aSlnOO JO 'lapuTwal '8 lno puas ol BUTA'8q mo lnoqnA\ A\aUal slaqwaw n Aauow pU'8 (moquI 'a'T) a~n qWq
uT sn 01 'sUTAUS l'8al's '8 sT U '(os auop Apuall'B lOU aA'8q nOA n) -luaA aql jO pua aql aloJaq sanp Z:L61 lOJ
01$ 1Twal Plnoqs l'BaA slql JO iaqoloo 1s1 aql alolaq pauTof oqA\ nOA JO asoql 1'8ql papuTwal aq a~ald

ig

89

VII. BIOLOGY
ARKANSAS HAS A PROBLEM
As a matter of fact, it would seem to have a whole
slew of them. One hardly knows where to start.
The two most highly publicized 'items' are the
"Fouke Monster" (apparently pronounced FOWK) and
the "White River Monster". though it is difficult to
determine from the various newspaper reports just how
many types of 'monsters' are involved in each case.
There are almost certainly two and possibly three
other kinds of unknown animals in the white River
area; plus. apparently, at least two ABSMS or "abominable snowperson" types; plus, again, some 'ordinary' out-of-place animals in the Fouke area. We
append a map.
"Wild men" -Le. unusually tall, definitely bipedal.
fully haired chaps with big feet- were, so far as is
known. first recorded in 1834 in st. Francis, Poinsett, and Greene Counties (see map) but no descriptions got into print. In 1851 one showed up in Greene
county again, stampeding cattle but otherwise behaving inoffensively. He was seen by hunters who
described him as covering a distance of 12 to 14 feet
with each leap when he made his getaway; he left
footprints that measured 13 inches long (this is really
not very big). In 1856 one roamed the Arkansas-Louisiana border and an encounter with him was fully reported in the Caddo Gazette of Louisiana (Caddo
County is just south of Miller County. Arkansas, in
which Fouke is located). Briefly, he was hunted by a
posse, the leader of which" managed to corner the
"wild man"; to quote from an article by Margaret ROSS
in the Arkansas Gazette of the 27th June 1971. [the
wild man] "dragged the man off his horse. threw him
to the ground, and demonstrated the dangers of chasing monsters. Besides biting large hunks out of the
man's shoulders and other parts of his body, he
scratched out one eye and injured the other so badly
that it was thought he would be permanently blind.
Then he tore the saddle and bridle off the horse and
demolished them. He held the horse by the mane
while he snapped off the top of a sapling, then
mounted the horse and fled across the plains to the
mountains, using the sapling to whip the horse." We
have reservations about this last though it is not
impossible. On the other hand, the rest of the posse
never did. so far as anyone knows, catch up with the
"wild man", and no one seems ever to have caught up
with the posse either. This story has no ending to it.
In any event, so much for ancient history.
So far as we can piece it together, on the night of
the 1st-2nd May of this year, a Bobby Ford, age 25,
of Fouke, Arkansas, was at home with his wife who
was "asleep" on the couch in the living room. Shoe
may have wakened as the result of unfamiliar noises
(and they had lived in the house only five days in

any case). but she "saw the curtain moving on the


front window and saw a hand sticking through the
window. At first I thought it was a bear's paw, but it
didn't look like that. It had heavy hair all over it and
it had claws. I could see its eyes. They looked like
coals of fire. . .real red. It didn't make any noise,
except you could hear it breathing." she screamed.
Then, apparently she and her husband both saw "an
animal" heading toward a wooded area, and Mr. Ford
took a pot-shot at it. They then went and got Constable Ernest Walraven of Fouke who searched the property and did find large tracks - which he described
as being "similar to a cat' s". walraven apparently
then departed.
The "animal" returned twice that night (i.e. early
sunday morning. the 2nd May) and on the second
occasion -Ford presumably was having a look round
outside- grabbed Ford. who managed to break away
and ran straight through the front door without bothering to open it. They went for Walraven once again,
and Ford was unconscious on arrival. He was treated
for several scratches on his arm and side at a local
hospital.
We have umpteen clippings on this, and none tells
quite the same story, but as early as the 3rd of May
Ford was describing the creature that actually attacked him. as "about 6-feet tall. black and hairy."
He also said that it ran on its hind legs, and much
too fast for a bear.
The Hope Star of Hope. Ark . sometime after the
the 3rd May, stated "Walraven and Johnny Carey. who
works in Texarkana. but lives and hunts in the Fouke
area. feel that it is a panther or a wolf" and goes on
to say that ,,[ Deputy H. L.] Phillips says that panthers occasionally do get as far north as Fouke. but
he thinks it is a cougar". This last is an absolute
classic, since "panther" and "cougar" are both local

Jacksonport

..J;..---j~

Greene Co.

- . . , . . - Poinsett Co.
St. Francis Co.

'"

\ -_ _ Mississippi River

Fouke

90

names for the puma (~ concolor)! Actually, the


term panther should be reserved for leopards outside
of Africa (the "black panther" is simply a black or
melanistic form of the African leopard). There is also
evi.dence of bear in the general area, an~ there are
those who are convinced that this was what attacked
Ford. However ...
On the 23rd May, Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Woods Jr.
and Mrs. R. H. Sedgass, all of Texarcana, were returning from Shreveport, La. along U.S. 71 when a
"large hairy creature" crossed the road in front of
their car. They all described the creature as being
"stooped with long; dark hair and running upright
across the highway". Mr. woods said it looked like a
"giant monkey" and estimated that it weighed more
than 200 pounds. This sounds like an awfully small
ABSM, and a correspondent, who wrote on the 30th of
June, remarked that a creature resembling that seen
by Ford "has been reported seen by a number of
people, including several motorists along U.S. Highway 71. The description is always about the same:
six to seven feet tall, covered with hair, and walks
upright like a man. One motorist, however, described
it as resembling a large monkey or a small ape, which
brings up the interestin,g thought that perhaps the
creature has offspring". This is almost undoubtedly
Mr. woods whose report is quoted above. And the
gentleman whose letter we quoted (received through
Argosy Magazine) has a very good point there.
On the 14th June, tracks showed up in a soybean
field about three miles southeast of Fouke. The
imprints measured 13-.! inches long, were 4-.! inc.hes
wide at the front and 3 inches at the heel. The horrible thing about them is that they appear, though generally hominid in shape, to have only three toes (and
did this cause confusion around here for a while; see
below), all the same size and all about 2 inches long.
These were found in freshly ploughed earth, and longsuffering constable Walraven was called in once again. H.e, the owner of the land, a W. M. Smith, and
a gentleman named Smokey Crabtree (his son reports
having seen a similar creature in 1963 near Jonesville
southwest of Fouke), found that the stride measured
57 inches. One of our members, #770, was visiting
relatives in Little Rock in mid-July and drove to
Fouke to "investigate" -the quotes are his; he had
very little time available. He reports that one of the
imprints is on display in a glass-covered cardboard
box at a grocery store-service station owned by the
son of the owner of the soybean patch, together with
several plaster molds of the print. He was kind
enough to take colour photographs of the casts and
is sending us one. [Tracing the newspaper photo is
impossible, the outline of the imprint so muddled by
shadows etc., that it is useless to try.]He tells us
that it does indeed seem to have only three toes; and
reports are consistent that ~ feet show this very
peculiar anomaly. The tracks have, because of this,
been labelled a hoax by Frank Schambach, an archae-

ologist at Southern State college in Magnolia, Ark.,


since all primates have five toes.
#770 further reports that "Discussion revealed that
infra-red camera & equipment had been used to no
avail to photograph the creature at night in the field.
Several citizens reportedly had heard 'it' making
cooing, crying, and chittering noises in nearby woods.
It had been seen mo&tly near a snake-infested, thickly undergrown creek region near town. A sketch
drawn by a witness showed the classical sloped forehead and jutting jaw of an ape. Indeed, those we
spoke to had no illusions of anything other than an
escaped ape, gorilla, or monkey."
None less than the washington Post got into the
act, noting that most 'sightings' occur on saturday
nights, with the usual ribaldry about the inhabitants'
alleged habits, though tney note that Mr. Smith, owner
of the soybean patch, told their 'stringer' (local
reporter) that the "monster" was "seen just this
morning (saturday, July 31) at eight in the morning
at the 134-71 crossroads just south of town. That
codger is up and about, day and night." He went on
to add "I believe it's got a little one out there. It
won't leave even though hundreds of people go trampling around. If it didn't have a baby, it would leave."
Smith is also reported to believe that it is an orangutan, "the last surviving member of a band of animals
which escaped a circus truck that overturned near
.
Fouke years ago".
While it is true that a circus truck did overturn,
thus letting loose a number of animals, we do not
'buy' this orangutan business. The Orangutan is one
of the most distinctive of the Primates; is pretty
strictly arboreal, being extremely agile in trees but
definitely clumsy on the ground; and is a sort of
orange color (this has. nothing to do with the origin
of the name, by the way, which comes from the Malay
orang !!!!ll! or "man of the woods"). Nor would we
'buy' an escaped gorilla; although primarily terrestrial, they commonly walk on all fours -watch both
at any zoo.
And "everybody" wants to go to Bluff Creek,
California, to look for ABSMS! There are reports from
virtually all the states in this country, including
recent reports on a so-called "Skunk Ape" in the
Everglades, simply because it stinks (quoth Samuel
Johnson, "No Madam; you smell, I stink"), which has
been widely publicized. At this point w~ give up on
ABSMs.
Paraphrasing the fanious musical humourist Anna
Russell, we now ask: Remember the white River
Monster?
We have been in touch with Mike Masterson, of the
Newport Dailv Independent, who was kind enough to
send glossy photographs and sets of clippings-none
of which bears a date of any kind. However, clippings
sent us by others indicate that this first came to
light in June of this year, though reports date back
to 1850. A clipping from the Arkansas Gazette dated

91

the 7th July states that "Tracks measuring 14 inches


long and eight inches wide have been found on a
small secluded island about six miles south of Newport where for the last three weeks there have been
sightings of a purported huge creature thrashing about
in the white River," and a photograph of (one of the?)
monster(s) was taken on the 29th of June.
The white River is shown on the map on page 89;
it runs into the Mississippi which, as everyone knows,
runs into the Gulf. Like all rivers, the White River
varies in depth, speed of current, etc. At a point
near Jacksonport, it is over a hundred feet deep,
having been measured in either 1968 or 1969 by
Jacksonport state Park Director Lairs Miller. It is,
in fact, a very sizeable river and might well contain
practically anything.
we reproduce here the various descriptions given
by witnesses:
(1)" "I j!lst saw a creature the size of a boxcar,
thrashing in the White River . . . . It was smooth, gray,
and long. . . very, very long. It didn't really have
scales, but from where I was standing on the shore,
about 150 feet away, it looked as if the thing was
peeling all over. But it was a smooth type of skin or
flesh. . . the thing was about the length of three or
four pick-up trucks, and at least two yards across ...
Water began to boil up about two or three feet high,
then this huge form rolled up and over; it just kept
coming and coming until I thought it would never
end. I didn't see his head, but I didn't have to; his
body was enough to scare me bad." This occurred
just south of Newport (see map).

(2) . . "a long spiney-backed creature approximately 10 to 12 feet long in a deep section of the
river near several sunken car bodies". The witnesses,
Gary Addington and his step-father Lloyd Hamilton
took photographs but, when they took them to the
newspaper, undeveloped, they forgot to mention that
the pictures were in color. As a result they were
developed as black and white film and ruined. This
incident occurred near Jacksonport in the deep area
of the river mentioned above.
(3) "I didn't know what was happening. This
giant form rose to the surface and began moving in
the middle of the river, away from the boat. It was
very long and gray colored. It appeared to have a
spiney backbone that stretched for 30 or more feet.
It was hard to make out exactly what the front portion
looked like, but it was awful large. It made no
noise except for the violent splashing and large
number of bubbles that surrounded it. I've never seen
anything like what I saw yesterday. I don't mind
telling you, I was scared to death. The creature looked like something prehistoric. The tail was constantly
thrashing, and bubbles and foam surrounded the upper
part, or.I should say the front." This occurred south
of the White River Bridge (apparently just south of
Newport), and the witness, Cloyce Warren,photograph-

ed the 'monster' with a Polaroid "swinger". It does


not show much detail, but we have traced off the
"monster" as best we can, thus eliminating confusing
reflections and ripples in the water.
(4) . . "a huge creature. that would probably
weigh over a thousand pounds. This thing I saw looks
like it came from the ocean. It was gray, real long,
and had a long pointed bone protruding from its forehead. . it resembled more an animal than a fish
[!; i.e. a mammal(?) rather than a fish]."The witness, named Earnest Denks, named the creature "The
Eater"; according to him "it looked as if it could eat
anything, anywhere, anytime." Denks saw the animal
south of Newport.
(5) Going back in history, a Mr. Bramblett Bateman
swore out an affidavit in September 1937, describing
two 'encounters' with the White River "monster", one
on the 1st July 1937 and the other two weeks before
he wrote his affidavit (we have no date on this). He
wrote, "I saw something appear on the surface [about
375 feet from him]. From the best I could tell, from
the distance, it was about 12 feet long and five feet
wide. I did not see either head or tail but it slowly
rose to the surface and stayed in this position for
some five minutes. It did not move up or down the
river at this time, but afterward on different occasions I have seen it move up and down the river."
Bateman said that he had never been able to determine the full size or length of the creature.
(6) Ancient history on "the monster" was supplied
by a folksinger named -Jimmie Driftwood, an expert
on the folk history of North central Arkansas. He
says that the monster has been reported at about _40year intervals since 1850 and that it used to be alleged that the monster "went clear up into the Buffalo
[River -see map]." Driftwood went on to note that
during W. W. II "what some folks feared were German
submarines coming up the Mississippi River as far
as Memphis [which is well north of the mouth of the
White River] were really sightings of the dreaded
White River monster coming home after a journey to
the ocean."
(7) Back to the present, but not a visual encounter.
Ollie Ritcherson, 66, and Joe Dupree, 13, were fishing from a boat near Towhead Island in the White
River, apparently south of Newport, when "something
came up under our boat and lifted it out of the water.
We turned completely sideways in the river." They
beached the boat which appeared to be undamaged,
took "one more turn around the area where it happened
and found nothing in the water, then we got out of
there." Both were emphatic that they had not hit a
submerged log, tree stump, or any other kind of debris. Ritcherson also noted it was"about four years
ago when a young fellow from Newport motored up the
river in the same vicinity. He was with a group that
were all in another boat, and he went up toward the

Arkansas

Photograph by Cloyce Warren, courtesy of MIke Masterson, News Editor

or the Ne\\'port Daily Independent.

Florida

Penguin

If It's A Mammal:
Calf, Pig, Dog, Or?

If It's A Reptile:
Iguana or Other Lizard

If It's A Bird:
Giant Penguin?

93

island by himself. About 20 minutes later, the group


saw the boat racing back down the river full throttle,
and beach itself with no driver. They never did find
that young man. No one knows what happened up the
river that day."
Now, to get back to these three-toed trac~s. As
noted, the imprints were 14 inches long ~nd 8 lDches
wide each clearly showing three toes with claws on
each' pods on the heels and toes "with a spur extending ~t an angle from the heel" - we are highly sc~p
tical of this "spur"; photographs of the actual impression in the ground do not show it, though it
shows up clearly in photographs of casts. It is probable that this is an artefact, i.e. a natural depression
in the ground which happened to abut onto the actual
imprint, thus being picked up when the cast was made.
These tracks were found on Towhead Island (see No.
7 above) by a gentleman identified only as a former
city official, who said he had seen tracks like these
on the island for the preceeding two years but had
thought nothing of them (!) until the reports of 'monsters' in the White River came to light. county law
enforcement officers went to the island to inspect
the 'original' tracks, estimating them to be about
- three weeks old. We are not sure whether this estimate
is valid or 'psychological', i.e. the monsters were
first reported three weeks ago, ergo . However,
Sheriff Ralph Henderson of Jackson County said that
it appeared that the tracks had been made during
high water. While the Sheriff and his companions were
making casts, Mike Loos, a psychologist at the Mental
Health Clinic in Newport, walked about the island
and found another set of prints leading from the water.
He said "I noticed many small trees pulled over and
a large section of grass bent down as if something
had been lying in the area. I'm still a little skeptical,
but I don't think that anyone would fake something
as real looking as these, especially this distance
apart and on the secluded island."
To review our 'scorecard', we have the following:
(1) A creature the size of a boxcar, with smooth
ski n or flesh, gray in color, with no noticable 'protuberances'
(2) A long spiney-backed creature approximately
10 to 12 feet long
(3) A long spiney-backed creature approximately
30 feet long, a measurement that apparently does not
include the head which could not be seen properly
but is described as "awful la,rge".
(4) A huge creature, gray, long, with a long pointed bone protruding from its forehead, resembling an
"animal" rather than a fish
(5) "Something" about 12 feet long and five feet
wide, no head or tail seen.
No. 2 probably can be "scratched", inasmuch as
there is a Mississippi Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). Quoting from the Cambridge Natural History
series, "they abound near the mouths of all the
creeks and rivers as far south as the Rio Grande,
ascending the Mississippi to the entrance of the Red

River in 33 50' N. lat." Its farthest northern range


is 35 in North Carolina. There would seem to be no
reason why one might not have wandered up as far as
Jacksonport, Ark., a much shorter trip from the Mississippi than that to 33 50' on the Red River. Also, 12 feet is a reasonable length for such, though it
is more or less the limit for a male (females are considerably smaller, seldom growing to more than 8 feet).
No. 3 is something quite else, [see comment by
Ivan T. Sanderson, following this piece] if one
accepts the length given; and this is at least the
honest opinion of the witnesses. Unfortunately their
photograph contains no "point of reference" which
would make a definitive measurement possible. However, from what one can see of the "head", it does not
look like an alligator, but it does at first sight look
reptilian, and one is reminded of the famous U -28
"sea serpent" which the Commander of the submarine
described as looking like a huge crocodile (see p. 396
of Bernard Heuvelmans'W ~ Wake Qf ~ ~ serpent
for a drawing), though this has been reported only as
a marine animal and never, to our knowledge, as a
freshwater inhabitant. However, it is virtually impossible for it to have made the three-toe4 tracks
since reptiles all have five toes. In some cases the
two outer toes may be 'set back' a bit on the foot and
might not show in an imprint if the animal were really
sprinting. But the three-toed imprints found on Towhead Island are absolutely "flat-footed", the impression being that of the whole foot and not Simply the
toes and the forward part of the ball of the foot.
On the other hand, No.4, might well have made
such a track, if it is what we believe it might be!
And here we would ask that you hang onto your hat,
as it were. This was described as a huge creature,
gray, long, and with a long pointed "bone protruding
from its forehead"; .it was also said to look like an
"animal" rather than a fish. The use of the word
"animal" in both English and "American" is so muddled that we cannot be certain what the gentleman
meant by it: everything from amoebas to whales, and
including Man, are animals; so are birds. And there
is a bird that fits this general description, though it
has not yet been collected and put in a zoo or museum.
This is a truly gigantic penguin. Shown in the accompanying cut are (1) the three-toed tracks from Arkansas; (2) a tracing of a photograph of a three-toed
track, one of many that showed up along the Suwannee
River in Florida in 1948 (for a full account of this,
see Ivan T. Sanderson's book ~ "Things", Pyramid Books, 1969, chapter 3). Unfortunately, the
American Museum of Natural History in New York
has 'lost' all the original casts, and an actual imprint, presented to it in 1948. The "bone" might
well have been the animal's beak; many penguins
lack a noticeable "forehead" and, of course, do not
have "chins", so that a closed beak could easily be
mistaken for "a bone".
Our No. 1 could also fall in this category -note
that the witness did not see the head at all, but
he said it was smooth and gray and very large, and

94

describl!d it as rolling over and over, so that any


spines must have become visible eventually. The
creaturE! is also described as having looked as if it
were "peeling allover, but it was a smooth type of
skin or flesh". Penguin feathers are very odd, and in
fact, at first glance look more like 'fur' or hair than
feathers,; and when moulting, the short, scale-like
feathers, are flaked off like the sloughing of a reptile's sltin.
The tracks from Florida were eventually likened
to (only) those of a giant penguin by some palaeontologist,s from New Zealand, who happened to have
recently uncovered a fossil penguin about 7 feet
tall in their country. The animal that meandered along
the shores of western Florida and eventually up the
SuwannE!e River was estimated, from accounts by
witnessl3s, to have been about 15 feet tall. Arkansas
would now seem to have a similar creature on, the
loose --aside from unidentified large reptiles, and
what appears to be a whole family of ABSMs. The
three-tol!d (apparently) hominid tracks do have us
stumped; they may be a hoax, but it is, a peculiar
thing for anyone to think up -and please note; these
turned up in mid-June, whereas the "Giant Penguin"
tracks were not discovered until the end of the first
week in July. Had it been the other way round, one
might suspect that someone who had heard of the
"penguin" tracks but had not seen photos, simply
borrowed the idea for his local hoax. There are
obviously some jokesters involved; and several chaps
were "taken in charge" and fined by the authorities
for claiming to have been attacked by the Fouke
Monster -police found blood under their fingernails,
leading t.hem to believe the wounds were self-inflicted.
But not all of this can be so easily dismissed. And
there is really no reason at all why ABSMS or even
"giant penguins" could not show up in Arkansas, as
ABSMs appear to have done in almost all of our
United states.

found the latter not only in short order but in such a


bewildering variety, that I found myself cpnfronted
with some really beastly questions. The biggest' new
animal I ever discovered was only four feet iong, but
I found it in a forest reserve less than a mile;, from the
house and laboratory of th~ officer in char;ge. What
might not then he some of the much larger things
reported to me, and even fleetingly seen b'y myself
in the presence of witnesses, in remote areas and
particularly large tropical rivers?
The 'loathesome' things that are now b0!'flbarding
us are mostly giant, hairy, stinking hominid-like
creatures, but along
with these . come an increasing
,
t ,
number of myoid pals the "River MonstElrs", and
especially those alleged to come out on la:nd, walk
on th~ir hind leg,s only, and leave huge three-toed
footprints. The preceeding piece ought to be enough
.
I
for anybody, but frankly It does make me a!lmost as
weary as Curt Fuller; and mostly because nothing
ever seems to happen. But we have just ;received
from our member ##923 a clipping from the Arkansas
Gazette, dated 9th september, which reads' in part;
(Gazette state News Service): "The ape-lik~ 'Fouke
Monster' and water slashing, gray 'White River
Monster' may be in line for funding from t~e Smithsonian Institution's center for Short-LIved Phenomena,
John Opita, executive director of the Ozarks Regional
Commission, said here Wednesday." Mean~ime, we
had been working on the latter of these items from
photographs kindly supplied by Mr. Mike Masterson,
News Editor of the Newport Daily Indepen~ent. We
had' decided to concentrate on this and withQut reference to "Old Three-Toes" because we could not at
first see any possible link between the two. Now,
however, things have changed a lot.

Let us start 'with the attached photogr;aph and


drawings. (We have gone to much pain and ;expense
to get the former reproduced on special stoc~ so that
you will be able to make out its special ~eatures.
Commen~ 2l !!!!:!! I. Sanderson
And while we are on this aspect of the matter, I
should explain the rather remarkable facts that this
To ollr considerable surprise and indeed shock we photo was taken at 200 yards, as a'snapshot with a
read in Curt Fuller's column "I see by the Papers" in Polaroid Swinger", from which a negative w~s made;
the October issue of his magazine Fate, a statement and that this was blown up to 8-~ X 6", and t:hat from
that "We' confess to a ~ertain weariness with conventhis the print which was made [by Mike M~sterson
tional monster tales because they so seldom are after office hours, at that! MLF] . This in tur:n had to
backed by convincing evidence. . . ." On reflection be reduced and then printed. we would say tMt everyand morl3 mature consideration, however, we begin to body along the line did a most remarkable jo~.) This
wonder if we don't agree with him. If you could see photograph has most remarkable qualities; in that
the ever-increasing cascade of reports of such that
when viewed in various (angles of) lights, the connow land on our desk almost daily from allover, the junctions of adjacent tones of gray also vary) just as
United ::;tates of Mexico, and whatever' states ours do aerial photographs of buried archaeologi(:al feashould t,e called, and from every Province of Canada,
tures when shot at' sundown. Thus, the outline of the
you'd bE!come "fed up" too; at least, in one manner head of this object appears quite different 'as seen
of speaking. "Monster" hunting has been my I?rofession when the illumination is from different angles - see
for over forty years now, starting as a professional drawings on page 92.
'
animal collector in the tropics for museums and zoos. '
After preparing these outlines, I could b~t come I was trained in, if not ground into straightforward, to three possible, alternate suggestions -as to the
pragmatic, scientific, orthodox methodology and my head that is. Either it is a mammal such as ~ dog or
job was to collect animals and look for new ones. I possibly a pig with upright ears; it is a very large

95

lizard like a giant monitor with large ear-holes; or it


is something quite unknown. But then I came to the
line of lumps and the obvious "splash effect- at the
end. The latter could be caused by a thrashing tail,
or it could be from a rifle bullet or shotgun, or again
it might be caused by something having been suddenly
hauled ahead and flopping about. The men who took
this photograph made no mention of firing at the
thing [and in fact apparently did not have a rifle with
them; they were simply out fishing]; and we tend to
believe them on this point. But then, something about
the line of protuberance ahead of this splashing and
the 'body' just did not look right to me, animal-wise.
Then something dawned on me.
Could this be an animal of, say, large pig size
caught in a fishing net with cork floats along the top
and lead weights below, with a float at both ends,
the hinder one of which might be splashing about
when the terrified animal tried to take off and found
itself so entangled? We are attempting to "find out
if such nets might be used in that river, legally or
illegally. Should this be the case, the ensnarled
animal would be about as shown by the dotted outline in Figure 3, and it could be a calf, a pig, or even
a large dog.
If, on the other hand, it is an enormous Monitor
Lizard, or even an Iguana, what is it doing way up in
Arkansas, alternatively 12,000 or at least 2000 miles
from where it should be. Again, if it is some until
now completely unknown kind of animal, might it be
the one that comes out on land and leaves these
damned three-toed prints? The final concensus of all
who inspected the famous West Coast Florida ThreeToes was that it was a giant bird of the penguin type
because of the disposition of the claws and their
comparative lengths with those of the toes. Looking
at this photo in this light, we find ourselves confronted with Figure 5. If a penguin-type was en snarled in such a net, its head might well break through
but its fore- flippers be held against its body, while
its thick muscular hind limbs and large webbed feet
would be free to propel it forward with a real burst
of energy.
We don't want to depress the monster-hunters or
enhance our reputation as a purely debunking outfit,
but we are set up to try to 'explain' tangible mysteries and, until all reasonable if seemingly improbable
suggestions have been ruled out, we prefer not to
simply add to a growing myth. If a Three-Toes could
get 50 miles UP the Suwannee River in 1948, there is
no reason why others could not have got far UP the
Mississippi and its bigger tributaries throughout the
ages, and even unto this day. It's only a suggestion.

MORE ON
JACK ULLRICH'S LOCH NESS PHOTOGRAPH
Lionel Beer, publisher of Spacelink, a British
(primarily) ufological journal, writes us as follows:

" Although there are insufficient details for a proper


evaluation [of Jack Ullrich's photograph] , I would
remark that monster sightings in the region of Urquhart Bay are suspect. Loch Ness is part of the caledonian canal and boats and steamers pass up and
down, often on the opposite side of the Loch, which
is a mile wide at the Bay, excluding the Bay itself.
Twenty to thirty minutes can elapse before the wake
of a boat reaches the Bay, by which time the boat
may well be out of sight. Now, although Urquhart Bay
is sited between steep hills, a study of the map shows
that the Bay itself is a gently sloping inlet. It has
the preculiarity of sometimes throwing up startlingly
large waves when the wake of a boat eventually
reaches its shallows. The direction of flow being the
same as the not so recently passed boat. I note that
the photo taken by Ullrich appears to show the wave
well into the Bay. It is significant that nothing was
seen above the surface, and an estimated 6 mph is a
reasonable speed for a boat. I am not saying that this
is a categorical explanation, but the Bay does give
rise to a fair number of reports, and it should be given
unbiased consideration. Waves have been estimated
to rise up to 18 inches on calm water [there in] ...
Jack Ullrich remains convinced that what he photographed was a 'genuine' wake, rather than the delayed
wake of a passing boat, but does not know whether or
not a boat might have passed, say, twenty minutes
before he and his companions reached the spot from
which his photographs were taken. It is, in fact,
impossible for anyone to be absolutely certain about
this photograph one way or the other; but there is no
question at all that there are 'monsters' in Loch
Ness, and that there have been unquestioned sightings in Urquhart Bay. Also, Jack Ullrich's academic
and professional background and experience make it
unlikely though not impossible that he would mistake
a boat's wake for something else; though I am afraid
that we do have here to render to scots verdict "not
proven-.
Addendum: Jack Ullrich returned from a trip abroad
just in time to check this article. He tells me that he
took a series of shots and that no boat has passed
that point within one hour, since he had a clear view
for miles along the loch in both directions and had
been watching for just such 'objects' that might
produce misleading phenomena.

A SEA-MONSTER OFF NEW ZEALAND


A correspondent res"ident in Japan has sent us a
clipping from the Mainichi lllillI News of the 18th
July 1971. It is datelined Yaizu, Shizuoka.
"A bug-eyed monster (BEM) startled crew members
of the 253-ton Kompira Maru as it Observed their
fishing operations off the SOuth Island of New zealand
recently. News of the BEM and a sketch of the mon-

96

- - - N o r t h Island

'\

New Zealand

I_ Ch.I."h~oh
LYttel~outh IBlan~
/

L....&......I

200 Km

ster -see cut - was released after the 26-man crew


returned to Yaizu Port. Shizuoka Prefecture. recently.
The crewmen reported that the BEM's head reared
about 1.5 meters [roughly 5 feet above the sea's
surface and that its eyes appeared to be about 15 cm.
[ roughly 6 inches] in diameter. The captain of the
vessel drew the sketch. It appeared to have a nose
like a deformed hippopotamus so they named it
'Kabagon.' after Kaba. the Japanese term for the river
animal. The ship's log gave the date of the sighting
as about noon on APril 28 and at 44.15 degrees south
latitude and 173.34 east longitude and about 40 kilometers [roughly 25 miles] southeast of Lyttelton on
South Island. The sea depth was about 40 meters.
the weltther was fine with a north wind. According to
the fishermen's testimony. the animal looked somewhat like a hippopotamus. But one noted that the hippopotami live only in fresh water.
"WhIm the boat got within about 30 meters of the
monster and a harpoon-gun was being loaded. it disappeared. according to the fishermen. Meanwhile, a
weekly magazine in New zealand reported strange
footprints had been found on Lyttelton Peninsula.-

Although hippos do occasionally go to: sea. they


are confined to Africa. and the sketch reproduced in
the Mainichi Daily ~ (reproduced here :in simplified form) does not look anything like a hippo to us
in any event. What it does resemble is a f~male walrus. but this doesn't help very much sirice the walrus
is - so far as anyone knows! - native o~ly to the'
Northern Hemisphere'. One wishes that the' crew had
been a lot nippier with that harpoon-gun. If :there is a
Southern Hemisphere Walrus. it must be 'enormous.
'Ordinary' male walruses reach a maximum, length of
about 12-~ feet (the females are much smaller). so
that an animal with a head reported to measure 5 feet
In 'length' would be heaven only knows how long.
Six-inch eyes are not to be sneered at either; and one
should note that enormous eyes are commo~IY reported by those who say they have observed sea as opposed to freshwater monsters.
We have thus far been unable to find out anything
more about the tracks on the beach at Lyttelton (at
least presumably on a beach). but walrus~s do not
'walk' and therefore do not leave tracks in the ordinary sense. whether there is in fact any donnection
between the two is not even open to debate as yet.
We are continuing our enquiries and will attempt to
report further on this at a later date.

DEPARTMENT OF LOOSE ENDS


Our advisor. Dr. Roger Wescott. points out that we
erred on page 27 of our April issue. in that the bishop
whom Thomas Huxley debated was Wilberforce. not
Ussher.
Member 461 reports. "In re 'large cats on the
loose'. you might be interested to know that the
Virginia commission of Game and Inland Fisheries
has just passed a regulation declaring the Puma
(Felis ~:oncolor). i.e. Mountain Lion. to be protected.
This is in response to some 25 sightings of the animal in t.he 'Peaks of Otter' area. mf!.ny by naturalists
and other people who should know their animals.This is most encouraging. and interesting. in view of

the all too frequent pooh-poohing of sightings:of pumas


on the eastern coast of the U.S. - and in fact most of
the U.S. - by game wardens and such. It :does not.
however. solve the problem completely. "P~mas" are
still turning up in England! One was seen in St.Albans
in July of this year. Our English sleuth reports "It
(if it is the same animal in all sightings. which is by
no means certain) moves round quite a large area of
southern England. - And some of the American "sightings" are odd indeed due to the frequent allegations
of melanism (i.e. black rather than tawny pelage)
among these reports. We have applied to' the most
"appropriate" authorities. and searched through the
zoological section of our library. which: contains

97

about a thousand volumes, and that classified as


"Natural History", and we have so far failed to find
a single case of melanism in pumas, either in the
wild or in a zoo. If any of you know of a reference to
this, in any reliable publication, please let us know.
Our member 621 notes, very correctly, that we
should, in the article on s~alled fairy crosses, have
stated that precious black opals come only from Australia; though he notes that precious black opal has
also been mined in Virgin valley, Nevada. Whether
this is the equivalent of the truly ~ precious opal
of Lightning Ridge, Australia, we have not yet ascertained.
In our January 1971 issue, page 15, we ran an
article entitled "were Egyptians First in Australia?"
Therein we noted that we had written to a Mr. Rex
Gilroy who claimed to have discovered the evidence
of their "occupation." He has not replied.
Member #755 who sent us what we called "contactee
seeds" contends that there is a possible basis for the
claim that this plant, the Bur-Marigold, and partic-

larly a Mexican Hybrid called tagetes. might prolong


life; this on the basis that it contains a particular
sulphur compound which apparently prevents or at
least reduces the risk of certain rust diseases in the
plant. He has not supplied us with leaves from the
mature tagetes for analysis; and we frankly have not
specifically asked for them, since, so far as we know,
humans are not subject to rust (this is a fungoid
disease of plants) - Thurber's uncle having died of
the Chestnut blight notwithstanding.

Members and subscribers who have friends or


relations who would like to join SITU or subscribe to
PURSUIT are advised that an application form is !lQ!
necessary. We do need the full name and address,
including zip code; a check or money order (naturally);
and it is of help to us if any special training, etc. is
indicated -e.g. we have one member who is fluent in
Arabic; we have not yet had to avail ourselves of his
help but he has a card in our "talent file". Talents
need not be as esoteric as that either; we can always
use volunteer plumbers, ditch-diggers, etc.

CURRENT PURSUITS

Our Member #668 has pointed out that our current


method of listing our current Pursuits may be a bit
baffling to new members and subscribers, and he has
a most legitimate point here. I recall one plaintive
note from a member asking in essence. "what in heck
is Ik Nish?" (The fact that these items are no longer
numbered stems from one of "Murphy's Laws of
Publishing", not yet written by MLF; I haven't had
time.) we will attempt to make these items a little
clearer to new readers.
TIME ANOMALIES AND VILE VORTICES
Read first R. J. Durant's article on page 82. This
is a continuing project and a most complicated one,
and, as he points out, there may be brickbats hurled
in his direction, but we hope they will all be constructive ones.
RINGING ROCKS
Professor George C. Kennedy has a mass of (phys ical) material for analysis but is away for six weeks
attending various conferences and will give these a
thorough going-over at his earliest opportunity. In the
meantime, Richard w. Palladino. the chairman of our
committee on this subject, is gOing to undertake a
very specific study of one aspect of this puzzling
matter: the effect of sunlight (i.e. notably the infrared
or "heat" aspects of same) on the rocks. As noted
elsewhere (Vol. 4, No.2) it has been our impression

that the number of rocks that ring varies throughout


the year. This writer (MLF) found out "the hard way"
that her impression was correct. Non-ringers sometimes
.start ringing again. we had packed (in March 1971) a
slab (i.e. a 3/4" thick piece cut from a ringing rock)
and which still rang like a bell and two chunks chopped
from a ringing rock but which had stopped ringing
-these for comparison. When next unpacked, the latter
simply went "klonk. klonk". However, when 'demonstrated' on a TV show later, they (very definitely)
went "klink, klink". Fortunately, they did not truly
ring as did the slab. but they gave me a couple of
very bad moments!
Reports from Mr. Palladino and
Professor Kennedy will be published in due course.

ENTOMBED TOADS,
OTHER AMPHIBIANS, AND SOME REPTILES
Marion Fawcett continues to plug away at this and
wishes publicly to acknowledge help in research by
members #52 and #372 in particular. As for her "lugubrious experiments". these stemmed from a report
that dessicated frogs revived when placed in water.
One such was secured from the basement at HQ and
placed in a fish tank which was sealed, the seal
being signed by Misses Heide and Aimee schoenenberger and their mother. Pat (Mrs. Edgar 0.) schoenenberger. This was done on the 12th of June of this
year. On the 16th June the frog had begun to float
toward the top of the water in the tank, but there was
no apparent change in the position of the limbs and

98

no sign of life. The tank was then placed on a windowsill. in partial sunlight. On the 19th June. the
water :in the tank suddenly turned a distinctly reddish brown. It was then opened -outdoors!- and it
was discovered that the frog had completely rehydrated and burst. and that the color of the water was due
to the frog's blood having apparently completely reconstituted itself;. it was bright red rather than the
brownish color usually seen when blood is "reliquified".
Even in the interests of science she was unable to
photograph the corpse. which no editor with any compassion for his/her readers would publish anyway.
However. our main concern remains the reports of
toads. frogs. lizards. etc.. either deliberately or
accidentally "entombed" in corner stones and such.
and. more especially in those found within solid rock
during quarrying operations. etc. We would be most
grateful for any reports members or subscribers may
come a.cross; and for any affidavits or other documentation concerning those deliberately placed in cornerstones; and specifically those alleged. (at least) at
Tinker AFB. ca. 21 June 1950. (for which my thanks
to Member #41); Eastland. Texas (a horned toad.
[actuallY a lizard] prior to 1948). and Heppner.
Oregon. a frog or toad. also prior to 1948.

frankly don't know if any came up. Membet #165 has


now sent us a new supply of seeds. and we will try
again. He notes "Don't get discouraged with the Ik
Nish seed. It only takes about 10 years to ;produce a
'seedling'. My 3-year-old plants were only 3" high
on a wire-like stem with 2-3 leaves. I figure they will
produce edible shoots in 30-50 years." we must. therefore. be more patient.
MECHANICAL DOWSING
Won't somebody attempt to duplicate tp.e experiments done here at our HQ with purely rriechanical
(i.e. without human intervention. help. presence. etc.)
dowsing. One of our associated groups ~hich specializes in studying dowsing was offered; complete
"instructions" months ago and has not been heard
from since. It would seem that there are two extremes
in this business: either you don't believe in it at all.
or you insist that it requires human agency. We contend
that this latter is not so but we cannot get :anyone to
attempt to repeat our experiments at other ~ocations!
To do so we offer copies of all our records. with charts.
maps. diagrams. and any other assistance ~alled for.
THE THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH

IK NISH
Having mentioned this mysterious-sounding 'object'
above. it would be unfair not to report on it at least
briefly . This is not really an unexplai'ned. but inasmuch as cooking is one of Ivan T. Sanderson's hobbies
and because this plant produces a variety of 'spices'
apparently known only to the local Amerindians. we
have been attempting to grow some here at our HQ.
thus far with no success. However. a small packet of
last year's seeds was discovered in cleaning out our
lab and potting shed. and these were broadcast over
a field completely denuded of topsoil -twice. as a
matter of fact. in various landscaping operations. we

It proved impossible for the young couple who had


volunteered to look. for a live thunderbird to I undertake
that job this. past summer. but we hope to line up
other volunteers with the time and the prop~r training
to search for this often-reported gigantic bird. a standard part of Amerindian tradition (note. not: legend or
myth). which is probably a truly giant conq,or. But it
still has proved impossible to locate the photograph
which shows sucl;l a bird. 'nailed' to the :side of a
barn. and displayed by six men. at least one of whom
is wearing a top hat. Any number of people ;have seen
this photograph somewhere. but not one has yet remembered where! Our comments from here o'n. if printed would bar PURSUIT from the mails!

A LETTER FROM OUR DIRECTOR

Mr. Hans stefan santesson


President. S.1. T. U.
columbia. NJ 07832
Dear Stefan.
In addressing this to you .I would ask that. if
possible. the Editor of PURSUIT might be able to
find space in the coming issue for its publication.
This will make my personal life a lot easier. since
all me'mbers may thereby be apprised of my recent
past. (:urrent. and future situation.
AS you know. my wife was hospita,lized at the end

of April and had to give up all her duties on behalf of


our Society. In late June I went in for a check-up and
-to the doctors' considerable surprise anq my great
annoyance- I learned that I had to und!!rgo three
major operations (with a possible fourt6 one upcoming). from the last of which I returned home for
convalescence only yesterday (the 4th september).
As a result of all of this. I have been ab~e to write
almost nothing by way of contribution to: PURSUIT
for this issue. In a way this is. perhaps. just as well.
since I had already expressed to the Board, starting
with the mid-year meeting of last year. mY intention
to gradually disassociate myself from this: aspect of

99

our endeavor. I had felt that the organization should


and by now could stand on its own feet.
However, as a result of your last annual report, I
assessed SITU's financial situation, and offered to
make my annual donation as usual for one more year,
in order to clear up the remaining loan originally
raised to complete i~s organization and (physical)
construction, thus balancing its books and putting it
"in the black" for the new year.
Both organization and physical construction are
now completed, in that the 8 acres, on which SITU
holds a 99-year lease at a nominal $1 per annum, has
been "improved" by landscaping, and the lay-out and
construction of 'fields', gardens, and ponds suitable
for any ecological research feasible in this area;
while it now has the necessary space and facilities
for a permanent staff of four to live-in, and all the
office, recording, and other technical equipment it
needs. A detailed inventory of this is now completed;
insurances written; and an 'acquisitions book'
provided, separate from two copies of the Library
catalogue.
I am not only willing but eager to remain as a
member of the Governing Board, but with the status
of Second Vice-President, and particularly since I
am one of the Trustees, as required by the laws of
this State. Also, I will continue my duties as the
Director of the Executive Board, mostly because, as
of the moment I hold a wider spread of degrees and
experience in the fields of the natural sciences than
any other and because, in point of fact, this 'officer
must reside at our HQ. Since I do reside here, material that results from my own work, researches, and
contacts is immediately available to SITU. I of course
continue to offer my good offices to our SOciety in
any and all other ways just as I have done in the
past; and, for as long as I can in the future.
PURSUIT cannot, as of now, be more than an
"Abstract" -like the "Annual Chemical Abstracts"
or "The Annual International zoo Book". Thus, contributors must not be offended or feel short-changed
if we have to cut, sometimes radically, a piece submitted to us. In other words, such contributions should
be looked on as 'pre-pub' summaries of possibly
forthcoming works.
Also, we are primarily a collecting-house and a
great deal of the material that comes to us has already been published somewhere; and for this reason
we reserve as much space as possible for comment.
It should also be understood that any member contributing an article which is published in PURSUIT
must permit his name to appear as author but that we
will continue our published policy of giving out his
or her address and/ or telephone number only on receipt of written permission from him or her so to do.
We must continue to do all we can to protect our
members from the appalling outcome of the new legal
(let alone the illegal) practice of the sale of mailing
lists, which can be not just harmful but deadly to the
reputations of professional people, let alone an
harassment of the ordinary householder.

Finally, I think the time is long overdue for us to


formally introduce Marion Fawcett to our membership.
she was for five years an editor of medical texts for
Messrs. Lippincott of Philadelphia, ending as senior
editor of that most exacting department. For the
following several years she was Secretarial Assistant to Dr. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr . Librarian of the
American Philosophical Society -"held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge" as its
initial charter, granted in 1769, so delightfully puts
it- which is the oldest scientific society in the
United States and which was founded primarily by
the efforts of one Benjamin Franklin, Esq. She also
has a number of technical publications to her credit.
Actually, she has been almost wholly responsible for
the last four issues of PURSUIT, even to writing
almost all of their texts except for those columns or
items signed by others.
What I feel ought to be stressed, therefore, is that
there is nothing "amateurish" in our Society's publishing department; while it can quite well dispense
with my personal services. (As a matter of fact. I
would like to put it on record that my severest critics
wrote asking "what the hell has happened to you?"
and praising the first issue that she put out, as being
a vast improvement! And these were all professional
editors who had had to do battle with my manuscripts
over the years!)
Yours sincerely,
Ivan T. Sanderson.
COMMENT BY OUR PRESIDENT
The foregoing letter from our Director will come
as a shock to some of our members, but it is my impression -both from personal experience and from
conversations with the working editor of this journalthat SITU has, despite its policy concerning the
giving out of members' addresses (and more about
this later), developed a rather efficient "grape-vine".
The original purpose in founding our Society was to
preserve, augment. !!ll! continue the work begun by
Ivan T. sanderson. Needless to say, we hope that
both the Sander sons will be with us for a very long
time -and both, despite their current illnesses, have
no 'intention' of dying (Alma Sanderson has, in fact,
survived several 'fatal' illnesses); and, again, despite the fact that SITU does not 'handle' mentalogical aspects of the Unexplained, there is no question
that one's mental attitude has a great deal to do with
whether one lives or dies.
The past several months, as of the time I write
this, have proved that SITU can stand on its own feet
in terms of organization and management of the
physical establishment. We have a splendid, and
most enthusiastic and loyal Scientific Advisory Board
with impeccable 'credentials,' and, as Miss Fawcett
once told me, "It's not what you know; it's whether
you know where to look for the information you need,
that counts".

- -- - - - - - ! - -

100

we are, as yet, a very young organization, though


growing steadily, and, as Mr. Sanderson has pointed
out, PURSUIT cannot contain complete reports on
all Unexplaineds investigated by us. Articles in
PURSUIT are precis of reports submitted to us, either
by members or by the resident staff after proper investigation. Full reports are available to Contributing
members; the articles that appear in PURSUIT are
summaIies based on the facts acclimulated.
We do not, and never have, claimed to be either
perfect or omniscient, and the proverbial 99 and
44/l00ths per cent of our membership seems to realize this.
We do have one member who has consistently
questioned our policy of not giving out members'
addresses or telephone numbers without their permission -he seems to feel it "undignified" for a
scientific society; though we have received only
commendation from all other members who have mentioned it, and many have specifically asked that their
privacy be protected. This "gentleman" has, accord-

ing to his correspondence file, been given ~l reasonable assistance a corresponding member can expect.
As many of you know, the amount of woi,k that has
been done by our really miniscule residept staff is
remarkable and we have, of course, been greatly
aided by a number of volunteers, both With office
work and with making the physical establtshment an
efficient and beautiful place to work.
I frankly do not believe that SITU owes any apology to anyone. It is still a very young s6ciety, but
with a quite. considerable number of accomplishments
to its credit, and I have the greatest confIdence that
it will continue to grow. I think also that' we should
tell our members that tentative arrangerrients have
been made concerning an exhibition of some of SITU'S
tangible Unexplaineds -Le. actual objects in our
possession- at the Library of the American Philosopliical Society.
.
Hans stefan Sante'sson

1:2 !tl ~ Record straight


There was considerable publicity some time' ago about a Mrs. Delores. Jackson (nee Pullard) wh'o underwent surgery of the pituitary in an attempt to correct her giantism; she died some ten weeks after op,eration.
The point here is that she was invariably stated to be 8 feet 2 inches tall. A representative of qUinness
superlatives Limited tells us that he had been in communication with her several times and that, she actually was 'only' 7 feet 5'h inches tall. He writes "This charming woman tells me tliat when she was 14 '
and 6ft. lOin. (82 inches) an American news agency who will remain nameless erroneously cre~ited her
with a height of 8ft. 2in."

From the

(Alaska) ll.il.y Min:m: A Preliminary Report

we have written to our correspondent in Alaska for further information on this rather startling .item but
have not yet had a reply (he runs a shipping business and is often away for long periods of tirpe). The
story is as follows:
":Rumors persist that there has been sighted in the Harvester Island area of Kodiak Island - a huge.
whit'3, marine creature which is capable of crawling up on the beach. Reports. unconfirmed as yet. lndicate
reliable individuals have observed the creature both from boats, shore and airplane. The MIRROR is
cUrrEmtly awaiting reply from the boat M/V TOTEM, whose skipper is said to have taken photos of the
creature. which has been described as being 'between 40 and 60 feet long' and as having 'a tail like a
whale's."

BOOK REVIEWS

by Marion L. Fawcett

Erich von Daniken. ~


Putnam.)

t2 ~ stars. London: souvenir Press.l,.50. (In the U.S., Gods from

Out~r

Space.

Member #33 said recently, "Also got the newest von Daniken mish mash to review .... that won't be an
easy task as there is so much nonsense there to take issue with that I hardly knQw wl1~re to start. iHe does

101

admit to being in prison in his introduction but neglects to say what for." Well, our member #318, who is
vice-editor-in-.chief of the largest-selling Swiss daily newspaper, wrote us in March of 1970: "It might
interest you to know that von Daniken, a swiss froin Davos, was convicted a few weeks ago to seven
years imprisonment on defraudation [sic] charges by the Supreme Court of Chur in the Grisons. At the
same time,. a French publishing com.vany announced their taking legal action against him because they
felt he plagiarized their author Robert Charroux whom you probably know."
Plagiarism is difficult to prove categorically, but von Daniken's stay in jail has certainly improved
his writing, and one is inclined to suspect that he did in fact, in his first book, 'borrow rather freely'
from Charroux' book, reviewed in our July 1971 issue. Return ~ ~ Stars (or Gods !!:2!!! ~ Space, its
American t.itle) is an entirely different kettle of fish, though the first two chapters are a bit dreary (and I
admit to having nearly hurled the ~ook at the wall on reaching page 21 where he repeats the hoary and
inaccurate, though apparently ineradicable, "Einstein has proved that the speed of light is the absolute
limit of velocity"; Einstein protested for years before his death that he had never made any such a claim,
but to no avail). However, once von Daniken gets going on his own theories, he is really quite splendid.
In fact, this is more a philosophical than a 'factual' opus, though the author does bolster his speculations with various examples, both concrete (literally and figuratively) and ideological. Unfortunately,
though he does include a bibliography (and an index), he does not actually list references as such, and
one must take a good deal of what he says on faith. But it is his speculations that are of primary interest,
and some are really. arresting: e.g. in discussing advances In computer technology, the ultimate goal of
which is a biotronic calculator (based on the use of nucleic acids -and please forgive this vast oversimplification), he ponders the possibility that these calculators would .be susceptible to infection by
viruses and bacteria! We continue to distrust computers anyway!
His major thesis is that we -the human race- are indeed "programmed" by other intelligencies* and
that much of the evidence of their possible previous visits to this planet has been either ignored or misinterpreted, either deliberately or through ignorance. He states "we should always bear in mind that although _the creators of ancient cultures have dis appeared, the traces they left behind still question and
challenge us. TO. find the correct answ~rs to their questions, to meet their challenge, archaeological research institutes shOuld receive adequate funds from their governments, but perhaps also from an international organisation, so that they can systematise and intensify their investigations. It is right and
necessary for the industrial nations to invest millions of pounds [i.e. dollars] in research for the future,
but should research into our past be treated as the Cinderella of the present for that reason?D
Von Daniken says, near the end of his book, "I accept the fact that the theories I have expounded will
be savagely attacked"; perhaps they will -certainly they will from some quarters- but they do deserve
consideration, largely because he seems to have done a lot more thinking since he wrote his first book.
Also, the photographs in this book are superior to those in his first, though there are still far too many
which lack anything that provid.es a guide to the size of the 'monument' or whatever.

Ivan T. sanderson. Investigating


Price?

ll!!!. Unexplained. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972.

This is the 'famous' "Still More 'Things'" that we have been promising for months. Technically the
publication date is January 1972, but.we are informed that copies may be available in local bookstores in
the latter half of November; so we can only suggest that you keep an eye peeled - and perhaps even nag
the bookseller about it. We are told that once the books are in the warehouse, it is not megal to distribute them even though the book has not yet been "Officially" published!
The book contains a Prologue, 16 chapters, an EPilogue, two appendices, a long list of references,
and an index. Ivan Sanderson considers it the best book he has ever written, and I must confess that I
agree with him, provided he adds to that statement "in that genre". In fact, having typed the manuscript
four times, proofread the galley proof, I winced when the page proofs came in. Oh, no! Not again!"
thoughti. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I believe you will too. It is, by the way, fully illustrated
with drawings by Ivan T. Sanderson in the text itself, and a batch of photographs at the back. But I still
wish they'd call it "still More 'Things' ".

*Ivan sanderson's reader's (and mine, for that matter) may have noted that we use the term "intelligencies", whereas most writers use "intelligences". To us, "intelligence(s)" is/are information, e.g.
intelligenc;:e reports by agents (of who- or whatever); "intelligencies" are entities possessing intelligence
(of the I.Q. variety), whether it be genius or idiot level.

102

Sibll~y S. Morrill (Editor). Ponape: Where American colonialism. Confronts ~ Magic; Five Kingdoms
WlSl 1lw. Mysterious Ruins Qf ti!!:!l-M ad 01.. sim Francisco: The Cadleon. Press. [Po O. BOx 24, zip code

94101] 1970. $2.95 (including postage).

. '

The author calls his book "the most comprehensive yet to appear in English on the' subject o~ Ponape
and its remarkable and mysterious people", and we are constrained to agree with this statement, though
the book has one defect which' is seriou's but not 'fatal'. It includes four chapters by sibley S. Morrill:
"Modern Ponapean Magic", "American colonialism vs King and Nobles", "Ponapean Medicirie in the
20th century", and "Nan Madol-surviv,al of a Sunken Civilization?~, and rep"rints accounts of Ponape by
JamE!S F. O'Connell (1836), L. H. Gulick, M.D. (1857), and F. W. Christian (1899). All Ponapean ~ections
in the APpendix of christian's book are included, and make interesting reading, though it is his general
account that will most appeal to the majority of readers.
.
:
Some of the material Morrill reports is truly eyebrow-raising, but it has been carefully researched -'-'
and is absolutely straightforward, however bizarre it may be. His second chapter has nothing t~ do with
forteanism but should be read with care by not just forteans but every 'American'. It is a devastating,
blow-by-blow account of the U. S. Government's aeliberate attempt to wreck Ponapean civilization and
should make all of us thoroughly ashamed.
.
. '
SITU does not handle medicine, but the third chapter proves that "benighted natives" can and ido come
up with cures that should be investigated thoroughly by the drug companies (they are sending !teams to
'uncivilized' areas looking for just such chemical' cures as are reported here, but they may ~ell'have
missed Ponape - and Morrill indicates that the Ponapeans may not cooperate in any event; in view 'of the
treatment meted out by us, why should they?).
It is, of course, the ruins of Nan Madol (there are a number" of spellings in use, depending ~ln which
author one reads) that are of primary interest. No one -with the possible exception of the Ponapeans, who
are inclined to be very vague about it and probably know considerably" more than they" have told any for eigner- knows how or by whom the structures on Ponape; which are massive and cover a very lar-ge area,
were built. The author's discussion of its possible origin, 'manufacture', and the reasons for it.s being,
plus the possibility that it represents the, or a, vestige of a sunken civilization is certainly oile of the
sanest and most conscientious we have read. A good many people have postulated a sunken continent in
the Pacific, but usually on the worst possible grounds.
.
The defect in the book is this. The author points out in his Foreword that Ponape is known to only a
tiny fraction of our population, despite the fact that we now 'own' it, noting that most people "give only a
blank look if one mentions Ponape and the ruins of Nan Madol". But, aside fr.om locating it in theicaroline
Islands, he does not really tell us where it is and does not include a single map! Inasmuch as the Carolines
stretch across approximately 1600 miles, this is not very helpful. Actually it is almost due east of Truk
and very slightly southeast of Eniwetok. But the real problem lies in the fact that Poriape is al~ of
islands and there should have been a map of them in the book. One becomes really frightfully muddled in
reading the accounts by the early 'explorers' who state blithe'ly that they went to Nan-Tauach by way of
Uchemtau, since one hasn't the foggiest notion. where either is. There certainly must be maps; Ponape
was held, in succession, by the Spanish, the Germans, the Japanese: anc( 'after w.w:n, by the U.~. There
are also very few illustrations; and this is particularly frustrating inasmuch as some that are not included
are described by F. W. christian who took a Filipino photographer with him.' There is a bibliogr~phy but,
alas, no index. Despite these deficiencies, get the book '(order directly from the publisher).
.
INDEX: 1970.- 1971

This index to Volumes 3 and 4 of PURSUIT inc~udes all articles published during 1970 and 1971, but
soml! of the-originally rather .fac.et~ous or not veryrevealing- titles have beep. changed, so that ~the content of the article is clear. Book reviews are listed alphabetically by title.
MATHEMATICS
Trisecting the Angle, III:4
ONTOLOGY
Black Holes, IV:62
Did they Come Home in Reverse?-Anti-Matter,
III:4. ~ also under Physics
"Gravity II", III: 66, 90
On Time Anomalies, by R. J. Durant, IV:82
Space is Three-Dimensional, III:57
Time Anomalies, IV:48. 97
Ti.me Travel, IV:61

, PHYSICS
Color Vision. III:59
Death Ray at Last, The. IV:9
Getting with Counter-Matter. III:58
Gravity Amended [Murphy's Laws. etc.]. IV:38
Mad Electric Sawmill, A. IV:8
Those Damned Quarks Again!. III:5
'Tri-Dimensional computers. by Michael R.
Freedman. IV: 63
. Truly Hair~Raising story, A. by Mich,ael R.
Freedman, IV: 63

~. . . . . . . . . .- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~. . . . .- .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~ . . . . . . . . . . . . ~. . . .P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~. . .. .

103

CHEMISTRY
Blue Again: Indigo and woad, III:59
Mercury Again, IV: 64
Polywater, III: 6. See
under Geology
Stone softening, 111:44, 66, 89
That Non-Rusting Pillar in Inida, IV:85
ASTRONOMY
Dr. Bagby's Moonlets, III:I0, 60
Look at the Past, A [Quasars], Iil:7
More on Mars, 111:9
Planet Vulcan, The, IV:86
Seismic Reverberations on the Moon, 111:8
GEOLOGY
Cave-Table in Afghanistan, A, III: 28
"Fairy Crosses", IV:41
Great Saharan ",Lake,?", The, III: 11
Hole at the Bottom of a sea, A, IV: 65
How Big Can a Crystal Be?, IV:87
London weather, III: 12
Original Landmass, An: Laurasia, III: 10
Ponds That Don't Freeze, III: 12
Possible Biological Effects of Reversal of the
Earth's Polarity, III:29
Ringing Rocks. III:44, 66, 89; IV:21
Rockall-You-All [an island], III:62
Tree Stumps in Cape May, III: 67 .90; IV:21, 47
You Think We're Polluted: A Look at Merrie Olde
England, III: 61
Why the Rocks Ring, IV:38
BIOLOGY
Abominable Jungle-Men (ABSMs), III:36
Abominable Spinifex Man, The, IV:9
Arkansas Has a Problem [with Monsters], IV:89,
'Bigfoot' Hunt, New Style, IV: 43
Bossberg sasquatch, The, IV:21, 48, 72. ~ 'Also
The Ivan Marx Film, IV: 65
Bozo, the "Icemari", 111:45, 66, 89
Common Sense on Frozen Mamm'oths, III: 17
Fibrous Balls in a canadian Lake, III:35
"He Have Head for Trunk": More African Neodinosaurs, III: 16
Iguanodon from Dahomey, An, III: 15
Ik-Nish, III:46, 67, 90; IV:98
Indonesian 'Wildlife, 111:31
Ivan Marx's Film, IV:65
Large Carnivores on the Loose, III:67, 90; IV:21, 96
Largest and Oldest Plant, The, III:46, 66, 89
Little Vietnamese Monster, A, IV: 13
Malayan Frog Battles, IV: 12
More African Neodinosaurs, III: 14
More on "B.O.", 111:63
More on Jack Ullrich's Loch Ness Photograph,
IV:95
"Nessie" is Alive and Well and Living in Urquhart
Bay, by Jack A. Ullfich .. IV:42
Nine-.Nostrilled Monster in the Mekong River, III: 13
Notes on Alcohol, III: 17
Now It's Ocean-Going Hippos, III:63
"Paddle-Bugs" [Phantom Crane-Flies], III:45, 66,
89
Photographs of Not so Frazzled N'erve-Endings,
III: 14

Sea-Monster off New zealand, A, IV: 95


sexual Attractants, III: 34 , '
Shaggy Deer: Radical and Rapid Mutation, UI,:30
SPOOF - A Society for Coelacanths, III:33
They Can Have Six Legs-" Amended" Animals,
with Reflections on the Acambaro collection,
III: 33
Three-Toed, Bipedal Worm!. 'A, IV: 14
Thunderbirds, IV: 22, 48, 72, 98
We're sorry, but It Was a shark, IV: 10
Yes: We would Believe a "Baboon Man", 111:31
ANTHROPOLOGY
Acambaro Collection: see 111:33
Americanism? [the invention of the airplane and
TV], by Ivan T. Sanderson, IV:70
Ancient Egyptian "TV" and Amerindian Circuitry,
III:46, 67, 90; IV:21
Ancient Glasses, III: 19
Archaeologists -and others - Beware!, IV:44
Atlantis Again: In the Bahamas. III: 19
Cast of Palaeolithic Man, A, III:40
Chain in the Rock, The, by Richard T. Grybos,
IV:68; see also III:45, 66, 89; IV:21, 47, 71
Enigmas in Lead, by Gaston Burridge. IV: 17
Footprints in the. . . ['manufactured' vs. 'actual'
prints],IV:69
,
Giant Skeletons on Lundy Island, III: 18; IV: 20
Little Gold Airplanes a Thousand Years Old, III:37
Noah's Ark(s), Again, IV:38, 45
Ark is Getting Arcane, The, III:85
Arks, IV:20
NO-Count Dracula: 'Furious' Rabies in Humans,
III: 20
Oldest Mine, The, III:40
Possibly the Greatest Lithic Implement Factory in
the World. 1II:44
Red-Haired People-Eaters, IV: 15 ,
Somebody's Ark Again, III:64
Stone Age "First" -Straight Ivory Javelins (!),
IV:46
Stone Spheres, III: 44 , 66, 89
"They All Discovered America" - Hebrew Inscriptions, IV: 16
..
Tracks on Mt. Etna, IV: 11, 34
Were Egyptians First in Australia?, IV: 14, 97
UFOLOGY
Caveat Emptor -in re the "Ber'muda Triangle",
IV:34
'
Facts About NICAP. The, 1II:22
Jacque Vallee's New' Book, 1II:42
1969-1970 AAAS Meeting in Boston, The, III:21
On Infirmity: NICAP, IV: 60
Other Intelligencies, IV:59
Reprint from BUFORA Journal, 111:87
Seeds from a "Contactee", IV:30, 97
SITU's Attitude, III:65
'
SITU's Policy, IV: 18
Why Doesn't EV'eryone Cooperate?, IV: 29
CHAOS AND CONFUSION
And Anent the Barbados vault, III:75
Angel Hair"Again, IV:5
Classic Case of Angel Hair, A, 111:72

104
Cocijo: The Ugly Rain-Maker. III:53
"Crooked" House. A. III:67. 90; IV:21
Damned Tracks in Farnborough. England. IV:33.
56.80
Devonshire 'Devil'. 111:74
Disa.ppearing Plane-well! Not Quite. IV:35
Entombed Toads and other Animals. III: 67, 90;
IV:21, 47,71,97
Famous Barbados Vault, The, 111:56
Flying Dimes from a Truck, III:43
Footprints on the . . . [places where they oughtn't
to be] , III: 77. ~ i!J.Q under Anthropology.
Genius computers, IV:5
Growing Ashes. IV: 57
Inanimate Life-Forms: i.e. Computers. III:73
Into "Thin Air" -and Out Again. IV: 31
IntroduCing "Fafrotskies", 111:76
It's Not Raining Inside Tonight, III:54
Mechanical Dowsing. 111:45, 66, 89; IV:98
More on DOWSing, IV:57
More on the Devil's Hoofprints, IV:4
More on Those Mt. Etna Tracks. IV:34
"Nasty"- i.e. a fafrotsky- from on High from
Venezuela. A, III:54
On Bells. IV: 80
Poltl~rgeist Manifestations. III: 67 90; IV: 81
(by Walter J. McGraw)
RainMaking: New Style, III:53
Running Around Like . . [A Chicken Literaily
Without a Head]. III:83
Set of Radio Dentures, A. III:52
shoe Imprints in Ancient Rocks. IV:22. !!.!! !!,[Q,
l!!!!I.2! Geology .!Y!9 Anthropology
"SkyLines" over caldwell, New Jersey. IV:6
Sounds Beneath the Sea, III: 22
Splendid Rain of 'voims', A. IV:30
Stuff from the Sky. III: 90; IV:21
Talking Foetus, The, IV:6
That Deepsea "Antenna", III: 84
Those Coloured Snows Again. III:75
Tree They couldn't Cut, A, IV:7
Trucking Levitation. III:56
MISCELLANEOUS
APology to Dr. John R. Napier, An, by Ivan T.
Sanderson, IV:47
Department of Loose Ends, IV:20. 96
In Memory: Keith Tavernor, IV: 52
Nikola Tesla, by Gaston Burridge, IV:36
Our Library catalogue Breakdown by categoI:ies.
III: 47
~rials: by Ivan T. sanderson unless otherwise
noted
Eduoation in the United States, IV:3
Forteanism and the Increasing Acceptance of
Reality by Science, III:51
H. BEmtley Glass and the "Endless Horizon", IV: 27
"Inst:lnt Everything: Plus" -The Rapid Advance' of
Technology and its Effects, III: 3 .
.
Journalistic Irresponsibility, IV:55; 'ml also IV:58,
59
Parapsychic vs. Parapsychological, III:27
Politi.cs vs. Geopolitics. Etc., III:71
SITU: Maw or Moloch? by Hans stefan santesson,
IV:~:8

Wisdom of the "Ancient Ones" by Marion L .. Fawcett,


IV:79
A letter from Ivan T. Sanderson to Haps Stefan
Santesson, IV: 98
Comment by our Pre~ident on Mr. Sanderson's
Letter, IV: 99
BOOK REVIEWS
by Eric Norman,
111:68
Abominable Snowmen,.The,
I
Adam and Eve story, The. by Chan Thom!,-s. III:24
Ancient Norse Messages Ql! American Stones, by
Ole Godfred Landsverk, IV:75
.
Bionics, by Daniel S. Halacy. IV:22
Chariots of !.Ill! Gods, by E'rich Von Daniken, III:24
Charles Fort: Prophet.2 the Unexplained, by
Damon Knight, 111:91
.
Friendly Beast, l:!ll!, by Vitus B. Drosch;er, IV:76
Gods !!2!!! ~ Space, by Erich von Dan~ken,
IV: 100
Humanoids, The, edited by Charles Bo~~n, Ill:68
In ~ of :tl!.!! Abominable Snowman, ~y Odett.e
Tchernine, IV:72
Intelligent Yfg in !.Ill! Universe, by I. S. Shklovskii
and Carl S'agan, IV:76
.
Invisible Residents, by Ivan T. sanderson, IV:24
.
Land to ~ ~, by Geoffrey Ashe, IV: 22
~ Look.!!!: Monsters. A, by Daniel dohen,
IV:23
.
.
.
Mysteries Beneath ~ ~, by William R.Corliss,
IV:23
Mystery gf Atlantis, ~, by charies Berlitz. IV:50
New Scientist and Science Journal, IV:51
One Hundred Thousand ~ of ~ ;Unknown
History, by Robert Charroux, IV:76
Passport t2 Magonia', by Jacques Vallee, ~1I:42, 48
Path of the Pole, The, by Charles H. Hapgood,

ll:92 - -- -

Principle, The, by Lawrence J. ~eter and


Raymond Hull, 111:48 ,
Ponape: where American Colonialism ~onfronts .
~ Magic, ~ Kingdoms, and ~ MYsterious
Ruins 2! :ti!!!-Madol, by Sibley S. Morri~l (Editor
& Compiler), IV: 102
Return t2 the ~, by Erich von Daniken, IV: 100
Psychic Discoveries Behind ~ !!:2!! Curtain. by
Shiela Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, I1i:24 .
Radiation, Magnetism, and Living Things, ~y Daniel
S. Halacy, Jr., 111:92
Reincarnation, by Hans Stefan .Sante.ssqn, 111:48
Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, The, by. John M.
Allegro, II1:91 - -- ,
Scientific Basis of Astrology, The, By Michel
Gauquelin, IV:50.
.
Space Nomads: Meterorites in !l. ~r ~ !:!!!:"
oratorY, by Lincoln and Jean LaPaz, IV::22
Strange creatures from Time !!!!! ~, by John
A. Keel, II1:68
strange ~ 2! Animals !!Ill! Pets, by Vincent and
Margaret Gaddis, III:68
Y.EQ: Operation Trojan ~,. by John 'f\.. Keel .
III: 68
Understanding Mg, by Hans Stefan Santesson,
IV:51
Xgli, The, by Odette Tchernine, IV:72

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

GOVERNING BOARD
Hans stefan Santesson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Ivan T. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Thelma K. Yohe
Daniel F. Manning
Adolph L. Heuer. Jr.

President (elected for 5 years)


First Vice-President
Second Vice-President
Treasurer
Secretary
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
-Trustees in accordance with the laws of the state of New Jersey.

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Director
Deputy Director
Executive Secretary
Assistant Director for Communications Media
Assistant Director for SCience & Technology

Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. SChoenenberger
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Allen V. Noe

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman. Department of Anthropology. and Director. Paleo-Indian Instltute. Eastern
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician. Georgian Academy of SCience. Palaeobiological Institute; University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director. Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. Philadelphia.
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director. Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center. Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology. Institute of Geophysics. U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics. Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology. Rutgers University. Newark. New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology. Department of Archaeology. University of Alberta. Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology. Emeritus. Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology. Queen Elizabeth College. University of London. (PhYSical
Anthropology)
Dr. w. Ted Roth - President. Roth Research-Animal Care. Inc Washington. D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head. Plant SCience Department. College of Agriculture. Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory). Essex County Medical Center. Cedar
Grove. New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman. Department of Anthropology. Drew University. Madison. New
Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer. U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman. Department of Botany. Drew University. Madison. New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY. 37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON. NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

-=-=-.

"if

.......
=.'

=-,'

-=- .

SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 5, NO.1

JANUARY, 1972

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED


Columbia, New Jersey 07832
Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION
The legal and financial affairs of the society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees, in accordance with
the laws of the state of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a Secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the five Trustees, and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our Society is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists, as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.

PARTICIPATION
Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is u.s. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $5, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
The Society contracts-- with individuals, and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the SOciety.

NOTICES
In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion, as yet, of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities, as of now, cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the SOciety.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.

PUBLICATIONS
. The society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
. RECORD: From its establishment in July, 1965, until the end of March 1968, the Society issued only
a newsletter, on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were, however, entitled PURSUIT-vol. 1. No.3 and No.4, dated June and September, 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2, No. 1. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January, April, July, and October. Back issues, some
available only as xerox copies, are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an order form.

Vol. 5. No. 1
January. 1972

PURSUIT
THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE
INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher: Hans Stefan Santesson


Executive Editor: Marion L. Fawcett
Managing Editor: Allen V. Noe
Associate Editor: Walter J. MCGraw
consulting Editor: Ivan T. Sanderson

CONTENTS
The Taxonomy Q! Knowledge
Editorial: The Noemasphere
Ufology:
ADC and UFO, by William B. stoecker
Chaos and Confusion
The Ringing Rocks: Another Aspect
Physics
Fire Walking. by Robert J. Durant
Astronomy
A Tenth Planet -Or an Eleventh?
w~~on~eMoon

Biology
The Hominidae and the Troglodytidae, by B. F. Porshnev
That New Zealand Sea Monster
On Evolution, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Black Pumas
The "what's-It" from South Dakota
Anthropology
Light Wheels and Holograms That Use Acoustical
Radiation, by Robert J. Durant
cultural Expansion: Which Way?
Food for Thought
Department of Loose Ends
Current Pursuirs-- Members' Forum
Book Reviews
Alma y. Sanderson

2
3
4
6
8
9
9
10
11
11
12
13

13
16
18
19
19
20
20
24

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1972

------------------------'''''I''''''''''''''E.''''''''''~I''~''''''''''.

~----."--

THE TAXONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE

GEOLOGY

THE TANGIBLES

VI
A'lIIosph ico o"d Me,eo.olol,"
Ouonology. H,d.olo",. o"d GI~.
ciololY; Tectonic Vulconol.
5.islllolo",. Geoph,sics
and Geo",o.pholog,; Pe'
I.olon and Mine.olog,;
Geode.,. Geog.oph,.
Co.,og.oph,.
P,olo",.onolo",. BOlO",. Zoo
DOli"g.
ogy. ExobIology. H"'olog,..
Ph~.iolog, and B,oeh."'ill'y;
A.. OIO"'y Ilncludlng Monl; Ge"e'
ic. tlnd Evolution. Physical A".h.opology;

0.,.

Poloeo".olog~;

Ethology a"d
Ecology"
MATTER
Atomic Molecular
Ch....... y. C.y.,ollog.aphy

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

PERFORMANCE
Thoo.elicol Ph,sico. N.. cl.oni ...
ClolSicol Ph,slcs. Elec i ...
E leu'OrlllOlnoticl. MOln.'icl.
Mechonici.

TECHNOLOGY AND
THE USEFUL ARTS

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE
Cultu.ol A... h.opology o"d
ethnology (A.choeology i. a
techniqua). P.e.His'o.,.
" H",o", o"d Fol.lo.. ; Philol.
ogy and Linguis.ics.

MENTAL CONCEPTS
Logic o"d Epl".",ology;
P.~chology; Eth,cs and Au
thetlcs. Comparative Int.llig_nc",:
PoraPlychlCI.

EXISTENCE
MEASUREMENT
Number, Quontlt)'.
Arithmetic, Algebra.
Geometry. Trigonome"".

Colcul .... Topology. Thea.,


01 Go", ... P.obobol,l" Coincidence.

THE INTANGIBLES

Everything in existence, including -existence a itself. and thus all of our possible concepts and alilenowledge
that we pone .. or will ever posse", is contained within this wheel. Technologies and the useful arts lie
within the inner circle, having acce .. to any or all of the ten major departments of organized lenowledge.
From the KORAN: -Acqui,"e len_ledge. It enable. it. ponessor to lenow right from wrong; it light. the waylto
heavon; it ill _ friend in the de.ert, our society in solitude; our companion when friend Ie ..; it guides us"to
happinell; it Sll.toins liS in misery; it is an ornament among friends, ond an armour against enemies. The Prophet.

3
EDITORIAL
THE NOEMASPHERE
Funny, but one has to go to Haile Selassie I University, in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, to get the first truly
clear statement on reality. In a paper published by one R. O. whipple at that seat of higher learning, reprinted
in a publication named Not Man Apart ... , we read with the utmost delight:"Organisms survive in the long run in proportion to the accuracy and completeness with which their internal
information on how to meet the environment corresponds to the actualities of that environment. In human terms,
our adaptation to our surroundings has become largely a matter of culture and its evolution, culture being a
much more rapidly accumulating modifiable device than the chemical memories of our genetic heritage.
Culture may be visualized as a composite of belief (what is) and technique (how to work with and use what
is). The sum of beliefs held -the idea-environment, or noemasphere- is thus a major controlling factor in the
day-to-day and year-to-year actions of mankind. The ~ !22. ~ essential environmental problem facing
the species today !. ~ pollution ~ belief by error, inadvertent self-deception, simple ignorance, and the
intentional deceptions of advertising and propaganda.
"Just as organisms with faulty genetic memories become extinct, !!!!!l will certainly eventually !!ill ~ !species in so far as the beliefs on which his actions are based are ~. Therefore, correct uncontaminated
knowledge and information are essential to human survival. The integrity of our idea-environment thus becomes
a prerequisite for species continuity, let alone genuine progress. When that environment becomes increaSingly
polluted with the garbage of inadvertent error and the poisons of intentional lies and distortions, our potential
for maintaining or improving the quality of life is proportionately reduced. Whatever else may be required for
the future, our insistence upon adherence to truth in every form of communication must be uncompromising."
The word noemasphere is derived from the Greek word ~ that meant "understanding", and this appeared
in the title to Mr. Whipple's article. what better word? Our basic trouble today is not either a lack of information - to the contrary; we have an overabundance of same- nor in communication, though there are damned
few people who can do just that even if they speak the same language; but, in true understanding. Talk about
garbage! Try reading the ~ York Times or the Congressional Record. Try ploughing through a pile of
scientific and technical journals every week as we do; or the so-called 'popular science' publications. Quite
apart from the typos, it is becoming every day increasingly impossible to figure out just what they are trying
to talk about. And when it comes to television. . . . but words fail us.
The almost universal mendacity today -and all the way from international politics to phrenology- is
completely terrifying. We have almost given up debate any more because we find that people -and even when
discussing their own speciality- often talk more unutterable rubbish than even those who don't know anything
of that speciality. Worse, nobody seems to absorb what they read -if they do so- any more, but continuously
argue about the findings of their peers. Better go to an African tribesman -if you can find one any more- if
you want to have an intelligent philosophical discussion over a bowl of palm wine. And, anent this, try
attending a symposium of any kind today.
No wonder our younger generation is 'protesting', and the public generally is becoming disenchanted with
science and technology in particular. The former are taught out-of-date rubbish, and the latter are fed outright
lies; and we strongly suspect that this goes for many other if not all fields of information. We wish to be as
impolite as possible. What, so help us, are things like "relevance", "environmentalism", "ESP", and even
this "ecology" bit? Relevant to what? Which environment? What's extra about the sensory perceptions of
humans and other animals (plants, one might add)? What about the sensory reception? And what, for pity's
sake, do these yakkers really think they mean by ecology?
The so-called science of Ecology -meaning the study of 'houses' or natural niches- was initiated by one
Professor Charles Elton at Oxford University in England in the late 1920s. It was probably best, and most
succinctly, stated by Professor Henry J. Oosting of Duke University some years ago as being; "The study of
organisms, their environment, and all the inter-relationships between the two. SO why can't we apply it just
this way; and find a new word for "pollution" that is really "relevant" to the issue on hand?
Only a little more mendacity and none of us will know !!!!!!: to believe; and we'll extinguish ourselves.
That TV performer, Jack webb, ought to run everything; starting with, and adhering to, his basic admonition:
"I want the facts, Ma'am; the facts". Shades of old Charles Fort!
Ivan T. Sanderson.

Published for Friends of the Earth (the John Muir Institute of Environmental Studies) and the League of
Conservation Voters, Washington, D.C.

UFO LOGY
ADC and UFO
by William B. Stoecker
In 1965 I entered the Air Force's Air Defense
Command (ADC) as a second lieutenant. and in August
of 1966 I was assigned as Assistant Chief of the
Intelli.gence Division at 29th Air Di vision Headquarters
in Duluth, Minnesota. Prior to 1966. UFO investigation
was ELn intelligence function, governed by Air Force
Regulation 200-2; that year, AFR 200-2 was superseded by AFR 80- 17, making UFO investigation a research and development responsibility. AFR 80-17
allowl3d each base commander to assign to any officer
he chose the additional duty of UFO investigation.
The ELssigned officer would investigate UFO reports
and sEmd teletype messages to the Foreign Technology
Divisi.on at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, then headed
by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Hector Quintanilla.
After the Condon project at the University of Colorado
began, UFO Investigation Officers were also required
to maH a copy of each report to Colorado.
In our case, the Division Commander (not the Base
Commander) verbally authorized the Intelligence
Divisi.on to continue investigating UFOs - so little,
if anything, was changed for us by the new regulation.
I can only say that my years in the Air Force were
the most disillusioning in my entire life up to that
time. UFO investigation by the military establishment
was a farce.
The years that followed included a number of radar
sightings. Since most people have only a hazy idea
of how radar works, a brief explanation is in order. A
radar is like a rotating searchlight sending out a beam,
not of light, but of short wave radio pulses. It indicates the direction and the distance to any object
detected; it does not indicate size or shape. A
search radar (the big, rotating "spotlight" type) cannot measure altitude: this is the function of other,
manually controlled radars called height finders.
These can be turned in any direction, and rocked up
and down.
It is easy to see how a UFO might escape detection.
If it is flying above the beam, say twenty or thirty
miles up, it will not be detected. If it flies below the
beam, say afew hundred feet or less above the ground,
it will not be detected. If the beam is pointing north
when the UFO flies in from the south, it will not be
detected. A vehicle capable of flying at any altitude
and almost any speed could evade the beam altogether.
More importantly, if the beam detected the UFO once
at one' position, and ten or twelve seconds later detected the same UFO thirty or forty miles away, most
radar operators would not correlate, or connect, the
two "paints", or "blips". The operator would probably
assume that they were caused by a -bug" in the
system, or that they were "angels", or cases of
"anomalous propagation" -that is, atmospheric dis-

turbances. Add to this the reported ability of the UFOs


to make sharp turns at high speeds, to climb and
descend vertically, and to hover, and it iis easy to
see why radar sightings are fairly rare.
,
In ADC, most of the search radars are ;tied into a
computerized system called SAGE (SemL Automatic
Ground Environment). At eatlh air divi:sion headquarters there is a large blockhouse called the Director
center, or DC. Here, the radar inputs, h'aving been
through a computer, reappear on consoles having only
I
a superficial resemblance to ordinary radar screens.
The important thing here is simply this: the computers
automatically eliminate most of the unwanted "angels".
Our air defense system is designed to detect, track,
and destroy conventional aircraft -not fast moving,
highly maneuverable space craft.
:
One possible radar sighting, which happened in
the fall of 1967, clearly shows the Air rorce's incompetence. A RAPCON (Radar APproa~h control)
radar at Kincheloe AFB, Michigan, detect,ed several
objects moving 2000 miles per hour. Now, theI RAPCON
is designed for tracking aircraft near lan~ling, when
distances and time intervals are short, ~nd it may
therefore have a "sweep" as fast as f~ve or six
seconds. That is, the radar "searchlight~ makes a
complete, 360 degree sweep of the sky ev~ry five or
six seconds (the long range search radars have a ten
or twelve second sweep). This, inciden~ally, also
makes the RAPCON ideal for detecting arid tracking
I,
UFOs moving at high speeds.
The investigation officer at Kincheloe, sent in a
report, but then the people at the colorlido project
asked me to do a follow-up investigation; to see if
any of the search radars within range of! Kincheloe
also detected the objects. If only one rad detected
them, it could be Ap*or a bug in the systell); if two or
more radars tracked them, we could be fairly sure
something was out there. I checked with ~he people
at the DC where I worked, but no one had 'any record
of the incident. This seemed rather st~ange; one
would expect such an unusual sighting to be immediately reported to the DC. I called the radar'sites, and
received no cooperation whatever -no one :knew anything, and no one had any record of anythiI~g. I noted
this in my brief report to Colorado.
'
Colorado then sent two field investigators -Dr.
Norman Levine and Mr. John Ahrens- to i~vestigate.
They went first to Kincheloe and then came :to Duluth.
I was highly impressed by their obvious int;elligence,
sincerity, and open-mindedness, and began to hope
that the Colorado project would actually :perform a
thorough and unbiased investigation. Little did I
know that Dr. Levine would later be forced ito resign.
On this day, however, the two investigato'~s wanted
to search further at the DC for records of any possible
*I.e. anomalous propagation or "angels". !

detection of the objects by other radars. They were


given a longer and more painful version of the same
run-around I had gone through earlier. The difference
was that I had given up more easily; being in the Air
Force myself, I knew what to expect.
While I was a UFO investigator I noticed certain
patterns. For one thing, the radar sighting mentioned
above was in northern Michigan, near Sault ste.
Marie, a town located near the locks where the Saint
Lawrence Seaway passes from Lake Michigan to Lake
superior. I noticed that this area always generated a
disproportionately large number of sightings, despite
its relatively low population density. For example,
the famous case (in the early 1950s -long before my
time) involving the disappearance of an F-89 and its
two crewmen originated in this area. I noticed that
many of the UFOs in this area were initially seen
coming from the north by northwest. Extending a line
over a map in that direction, I noticed that the line
passed through a vast and thinly settled area west of
Hudson Bay. It was in this area (and near my imaginary
line) that, according to the late Frank Edwards, an
entire village of Eskimos vanished in 1930. * Probably
a coi"ncidence. Probably.
I also noticed that UFO reports in my own area
were more common in the fall -perhaps due to the
clear air- and that the overwhelming majority were
seen at night. But still another pattern emerged. A
UFO would often "hang around" an area for several
days. If someone in Duluth saw one on-Tuesday night,
someone else would frequently see one on Wednesday
night. Then there would be weeks or months of relative
quiet, and then another brief wave of sightings. My
question was: Where did they go in the daytime?
Look on a map. Draw a downward-sagging arc
around the Saint Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and up

*stranger Than science. Also recounted (probably


'borrowed' from Edwards) in other collections of
this type.
Our member #621 has been doing some extensive
checking on various happenings that keep cropping
up in books on forteana, and he tells us that the
historian of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has
labelled this story "completely fictional". Where
Frank Edwards, whose version is best known, got his
information we do not know (it has proved impossible
to lay hands on his original files) and it is possible
-note the qualifying word- that the name of the
village or other details may have gotten garbled
somewhere along the way. Though Edwards calls his
stories "fully documented" in his introductions, he
never bothered to include the documentation, which
makes his materio.l exceedingly difficult to check.

The cross-hatched area is littered with lakes.

around Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake in


northern Canada. Within the arc is a vast region of
innumerable lakes, ponds, and swamps of varying size
and depth, and at its center is Hudson Bay. Northern
Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin are on the fringes
of this area, and Duluth is at the tiP of Lake Superior,
a vast area of very deep water. Perhaps the UFOs
spend their days submerged.
After the very active year of 1966 the number of
UFO reports declined throughout 1967, and in 1968
our office received only a very few. One final incident
of possible significance happened in the early spring
of that year. Major General Jensen, then Vice Commander of ADC, visited our base while on a routine
tour of ADC facilities. He asked to see the UFO
Investigation Officer. I was surprised to say the
least, for I had never heard of any officer above the
rank of captain even mention the subject of UFOs,
except to debunk them. I went to our Division Commander's office and there met General Jensen, who
asked me what Ithought of UFOs-I got the impression
that he was sort of checking up on the investigators
at each base. I cautiously replied that I thought
UFOs, whatever they might be, should be carefully
studied. He said that he had once been assigned to
Project Blue Dook, and that he agreed with me, that
we had better study UFOs now or we might regret
it later.
After three years, I'm still wondering what he
meant.

we apologize for the delay in getting out this issue of PURSUIT, but things have been a bit rough here, If
things are pasted up crooked, it is because I (MLF) have, temporarily, to work with one eye -the other is
suffering from a staphylococcal infection which I wouldn't wish on my "worst enemy,

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

THE RINGING ROCKS: ANOTHER ASPECT


WE! place this under C&C on this occasion because
we are not at all certain of the cause of the phenomena
discussed below. Much has been made of the purely
geological aspects of the Ringing Rock "fields". and
they have been pronounced "explained" by a number
of persons. Whether these last even know of some of
the I!ffects produced on some visitors to the rock
fieldel. we do not know.
On the 14th October of last year our member #944
wrote as follows:
"I visited the Ringing Rocks (at Upper Black Eddy)
for the first time. on Sunday. 3 October 1971. from
5: 15 to 6:00-6: 15 p.m . having driven there from
Audubon. N.J. On site. I slipped. merely scraped one
foreal'm. On driving back to .Philadelphia. I noticed
on leaving the site that I was very disoriented and
confused as to direction -north and south were reversed
in my thinking and I swore up and down that despite
the road signs. we were headed in the 180 0 opposite
direction. My companion had not gotten out of the car
to vie;it the site and. thanks to her lack of symptoms
and proper orientation. we got back without incident.
Disorientation lasted from 6: 15 to about 8:00 p.m
with (:onfusion slowly lessening about 7:40 or so. and
suddenly disappearing at 8-8: 10. I was in the best of
health. an exPerienced driver. (as always) sober and
unmedicated. There had been no symptoms before
arrivi.ng on site. of any kind. and no previous experiences like this one ~. It has not recurred. I plan to
go back to the Rocks soon -with a friend to stay in
the CELl."
On the 19th of October. he wrote:
"I repeated my journey this past sunday. 17 October
1971. taking the same route there. Arrival at the site
wa~ Itt 4:45 p.m. I stayed on the site. climbing all
over the rocks much like a monkey. until 6:30 p.m.
I then drove to Milford. NJ. and drove about for .z hour.
till 7:00 p.m without noticing anything unusual. On
returning toward Philadelphia at 7: 15 p.m I suddenly
began to feel the same disorientation of directional
sense with 180 0 reversal of north-south orientation.
At thE! time I was about 5 miles north of Upper Black
Eddy. just having entered Route 611 south. My
compELnion had not visited the rocks themselves and
felt nothing (and was quite dubious about my dizziness) .. I followed the signs back toward Doylestown.
Not tm I reached Doylestown did the disorientation
and di.zziness cease. It was. though. milder somewhat
than the previous episode. Next. I plan to drive up
there again. but not go out on the rocks themselves.
and merely take the same route back. to see if anything happens."
November 9. 1971:

"I've made one final trip there. almost exactly


reproducing all the particulars of the ptevious two
trips with the important exception of not ~alking out
into the rocks themselves but merely spending time
walking about in the nearby road and woods. Result
-no unusual effects or disorientation at; all on the
return trip. Naturally. this was not intended as a
controlled scientific experiment..
I
On the 16th November. #944 visited 9ur HQ and
we had a chance to look him over (and he us. of
course). He is an eminently "solid citizein" and has
medical training. Our discussion apparently changed
his mind about that "one final trip since We received
the following. dated the 21st November:
"Re: Ringing Rocks (once again). Todil.y I took my
immediate family on an unannounced outink to Ringing
Rocks. the party comprising myself. mo~her. father.
and maiden aunt (mother's sister). None of them knew
that I was ever there b~fore . nor did any iknow of the
miserable effects upon me of the plac~ after each
visit. On reaching the site. quite on a ;lark it was
made to seem. the following things happeried: "Mother began to shiver and shake . demanded to
go back to the car. for she suddenly felt terribly cold.
She felt that the place 'had somethin~ wrong (!!)
with it' and that it was full of the portent of something
terrifying and possibly injurious. She is :normally an
exceptionally rational and lucid person. not given to
fearful behavior. She said that the place gave her the
creeps and that she felt frightened.
.
"On the way back my aunt complaine!l of severe
dizziness and some nausea (shades of me!;!).
"My dad. a cardiac patient for some 8 y;ears. began
to complain of palpitations and irregular i pulses. He
was fascinated by the geological wonder of the site.
and repelled by the foreboding he felt th~re. He said
that it felt to him 'as if time were wrol)g there. or
some sort of radiations were hitting 4S'. or that
gravity and time were sort of 'wrong'.
"Note- The comments were elicited !separately.
out of earshot one from another!! My mother was
actually scared silly by the place, but she is a
survivor of several unspeakable horrors: of war in
Europe and is normally as strong as ste,el. Nothing
whatever ever disturbs her equilibrium.
"I questioned each person separately. and none
was privy to the comments of the others. jn addition.
my father said that he'd never let me fly a; plane over
the place (!). They all heartily loathed t~e site and
made me swear never to go back. such was their
foreboding and disturbance. My dad. an I intelligent
and accomplished gentleman. lost track of the approximate time of day on the way back. thinking it to be
much later. and was thoroughly confused as:to direction
and place. Frankly. I felt fine -just sc~ed as hell
and yet fascinated. My aunt's nausea and dizziness
began on leaving the site!! However. a~out 1 hour

..............................................._................

after leaving the site, I began to have dizziness of a


mild to moderate degree and had to fight hard to keep
track of orientation and direction. Next stop Devil's Run!"
He hasn't been heard from since (as of the time of
writing this, at least!).
This business of directional disorientation has
come up before, and seems to be intermittent -as do
the other 'symptoms' recorded above. On one occasion,
a visit by the full committee on the R.R., we had two
compasses with us, one a professional surveyor's
compass, the other an inexpensive wrist compass;
each 'misbehaved' once during the course of our
visit, the compass needle suddenly swinging a full
180 0 and then back again. There was also a rather
violent argument as to which way was north, some of
those present insisting that north was "over there",
and continuing to so insist even when it was pointed
out that it 2!!!!! not be since the sun was'thataway.'
Also of interest is the statement by 944's father that
he would not want him to fly over the area. First of
all, we have had the most incredible difficulty in
getting anyone to take proper aerial photographs of
the site; and secondly, there is something odd which
appeared on aeronautical charts in 1970. We obtained
several such charts when investigating the Caldwell
"sky-lines" and noted nothing "remarkable" on the
1969 chart, but. . . At apprOXimately the location of
the Upper Black Eddy Ringing Rocks site on the
![!Q chart there appears the single word "caution".
Why? There is a power plant marked some distance
north on the east side of the Delaware River, but
there is a power plant at Portland, Pa., also -and
no "Caution".
I (MLF) have visited the site several times and
have not experienced any of the 'difficulties' reported
by #944, though a rather large number of persons have
done so, reporting either in person or by letter. And

these effects are not limited to the Upper Black Eddy


site. Member #230, visiting the site at Pottstown,
became so dizzy and disorientated that she had to be
almost literally carried to the car. Though she was
apprehensive when we visited the U.B.E. site, she
admitted that her very slight symptoms there were
probably 90% "psychological" and a carry-over from
her bad experience at Pottstown. The appearance of
the site in summer is somewhat startling, green trees
surrounding a vast mound of pink rocks, but is not, on
the face of it, depressing; nor is the mere physical
difficulty of clambering about on the rocks -some of
which tilt under one as well as ringing- enough to
explain the uncanny effects produced on occasion.
Radiation gauges, such as are worn by laboratory
personnel, have been left on the site for weeks without showing any abnormal radiation. On the other
hand, there 12 something 'funny' about the light
there: camera-men have had ineXplicable difficulties,
and light meters have gone 'wild' for no apparent
reason; and our director, Ivan T. Sanderson, had some
very peculiar difficulties with a balscope, even to
"seeing around corners" as it were!
We would like a nice, neat explanation of all this,
but the fact is, the ringing rocks are not explained.
New experiments -particularly those having to do
with so-called infrasonics (which might explain the
"psychological" problems) -are being planned, as
are some dealing with the effect of "light", all the
way from the ultraviolet through the visible spectrum
to the infrared.
We hope that this rather lugubrious report will not
deter members from going to visit the Ringing Rocks.
The more data we can obtain, the better -and the
more likely we are to find an answer. we also are in
the process of obtaining competent archaeological
help for what member #229 calls "The Corner Store",
an underground chamber made of morticed stones.

Classic Correspondence

Recently we received a note, as follows: "Dear Sirs, I am an 8th grader in western Junior High School in
Byram Conn. I am doing a report on scientific happenings I would like it very much if you would send me any
information you could spare on this subject Sincerely (name deleted)." This is what they call an education?
Another classic received recently contains the following questions concerning Ivan Sanderson's Invisible
Residents and the Bermuda Triangle: "In your opening lines you say, ' . . . with due apologies to the memory
of the Bard 'The Much Vexed Bermoothes,'. What is meant by this? Has the famous under sea explorer
Jacques Costuea (sic) ever investigated this aquatic mystery?" Words fail us. What !!!2. "they teach our
children. If anything.

The HaE!ards

2.! Publishing

From the letters column of ~ ~ scientist, 30th September, 1971, Sir: I've heard of wild birds being
fitted with rings, but to provide swans with signets (your Monitor, 23rd Sept., p. 669) is surely gOing too far!
(signed) B. J. Hazzard, 8 Tilbury Road, Tooting Common, London S. W. 17."

III. PHYSICS

FIRE: WALKING
by Robert J. Durant
One occasionally reads of "fire walking" ceremonies in which individuals are said to walk on
glowing coals without any apparent injury. The usual
procE!dure is to dig a pit several feet deep and 15 or
20 feet long. The pit is filled with hardwood logs
which are set ablaze. SOme hours later when the logs
have been reduced to embers the pit is ready for the
fire- walking demonstration.
(III other cases. the pit is liIied with stones.
brush is piled on and burned until the stones are
white hot, and then the whole is swept clear of
ashes. Editor.)
The;;-;(fairs are invariably imbued with religious
significance by the practitioners. They take care to
expls~n that "faith" is the prime requisite for a successful traverse of the fire. This explanation has
been taken seriously by some fairly sceptical reporters
simply because the holy men, and at times a few
partieularly enthusiastic members of the audience,
really do walk on the extremely hot coals. Nor do
they make a quick hop. skip and jump through the
fire. These fellows take a deliberate walk of up to a
dozen steps though the average seems to be three to
five steps. The fire walkers don't linger, but they
don't run either.
The obvious 'explanation' that the walkers have
prepa.red the soles of their feet with some sort of
insulating material has been dealt with by fastidious
examinations made before and after the walks. The
tempE!rature of the surface of the pit has also been
confirmed to be every bit as hot as it ought to be.
And no report of a fire-walking demonstration is
complete without the description of pieces of paper
and c:loth instantly bursting into flame when dropped
into the pit.
In short. the fire-walking act is absolutely genuine.
Unfortunately, for many this has meant that they have
been witness to a miracle of sorts, or, if that is too
strong a term, to a suspension of the laws of nature.
The devotees of the "strange and Unknown" cite firewalking as irrefutable proof of life-after-death. mindover- matter, and what-have-you. In fact, fire-walkin~

is accomplished by 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration


(with apologies to Thomas Edison). Th;e very heat
that has convinced sceptics that firEt-walking is
paranormal in nature is the secret of the process.
The heat causes the soles of the feet tQ swe~t, and
a perfectly natural, though little kno~n, process
called the Liedenfrost effect does the rest.
To illustrate the Liedenfrost Effect, let us imagine
a droplet of water on a hot surface such: as a frying
pan. The pan must be slightly concav~ to prevent
movement of the droplet. If the temper~ture of the
pan is raised from room temperature to just below 100 0
centigrade (212 0 F.), the drop remains ih its normal
state and shape. When the pan reaches a: temperature
slightly in excess of 1000 the drop begins ~o evaporate
at once. But if the pan is heated considerably more,
on the order of 400-500 0 C . the drop o;f water will
not evaporate instantly as before .. Inste~d, it will
remain in place and retain its shape fori a period of
three to four minutes. A thin but quite effective insulating layer of water vapor is formed between the
droplet and the very hot surface of the pan.
Just don't try fire-walking on a 'cool'; fire. You'll
get burned.
Editor's Notes: One fact which should b~ emphasized is that the fire-walkers make darn!!d sure that
the coals are white hot and that there is not even a
trace of ash on top of the coals since: this would
lower the effective temperature just eno~gh to allow
burns.
:
This same Liedenfrost effect is used .by plumbers
who seal leaks with hot lead, first spitting into .the
palm and then applying the boiling lead ~y hand, and
is also used in certain areas of Africa iln "trials by
ordeal". If a crime has been committed. the suspects
are lined up and an iron rod is heated until it is white
hot. This is then drawn quickly across t~e tongue of
each suspect in turn. In fact. the cu~prit usually
bolts before the "judge" reaches him; he :knows he is
guilty and will be burned -this simply because he is
nervous and his mouth becomes dry. Th innocents,
being sure of their innocence, have nice ~et tongues,
and the Liedenfrost Effect protects them :from injury.
It works every time.
'

Caption from a cartoon in Punch: "Why is it that everything I like doing. causes tumo~s in mige?-

Absolutely Monstrous
AS reported by UPI. police in Wood River. Ill., received a call from a housewife stating that there was
a "monster" in her yard. She described it as a "grayish-white substance. getting bigger and bigger.. "
Police found a mass of bread yeast- rising in the heat of the sun.
'

V.ASTRONOMY
A TENTH PLANET? - OR AN ELEVENTH?
In our last issue we ran a short piece on the
possibility that Leverrier's Vulcan, a small planet or
planetoid, may indeed exist between Mercury and the
Sun. An article dated the 18th November 1971 and
credited to AP states that British and U. S. astronomers
are testing a theory that there may be another planet
in our solar system beyond Pluto. The scientists
admit that this a dubious possibility and i!! based on
minute irregularities in the motion of the planet
Neptune. Nevertheless, they are ploughing through a
mass of photographs to look for it, while admitting
that the process will take a very long time.
If they do find it, it will be interesting to s"ee what
the astrologers make of it. The latter attribute all
sorts of influences to Pluto which was not even
suspected until about 1850 and not actually found
until 1930. One wonders which planets controlled
these aspects of human destiny before Pluto turned up.
WATER ON THE MOON
For years scientists have been making fairly flat
statements about the Moon, often in direct contradiction of each other, but most have agreed all along
that the Moon is an arid, moistureless body. They
were even more certain of this after the APollo 11
crew brought back some moon rocks. They received
a rather severe jolt in March 1971. though the information seems to have been kept under wraps until
October of last year and has, so far as we can tell,
recei ved very little publicity despite its profoundly
interesting implications.
Instruments left on the Moon by the APollo 11 crew
and subsequent moon-walkers have detected water

clouds erupting like geysers through cracks on the


the lunar surface. The cloud, consisting of 99% water
vapour, covered an area of 10 or hundreds of square
miles, depending on your source of information; and
the eruption was accompanied by a number of minor
moon quakes. The 'display' lasted about 14 hours.
Startled though the scientists may have been,
there has reportedly been little disagreement that it
was water vapour. What they have not agreed upon is
where the water is located and in what form -and how
much of it is there. One unidentified space scientist
noted "If the interior of the moon is quite different
from its exterior, where we know that all of the
volatile materials have long since boiled off, it's
possible that there is still some volatile matter
trapped deep inside the moon. And it's finally working
its way to the surface now. There haven't been any
active volcanoes in the moon for at least the last 1
billion years, so if this actually proves to be water
vapor from the depths, we may be seeing the last
belches of the moon's vulcanism."
"GeyserlS" of this sort may explain many of the
'funny lights' reported on the moon (see the Chronological catalog ~ Reported Lunar Events published
by NASA); the "last belches" would seem to have
been going on for quite some time. Even the suspicion
of water in the moon makes the Luna City of the
science-fiction writers a closer reality.
Or perhaps the "lunatics" are already there. We
remember with amusement a cartoon that appeared
just after the first successful Moon-walk: our rocket
disappearing into the "sky" and a lot of little chaps
with antennae popping out of the ground -the caption
read simply" Are they gone?"

PURSUIT does not carry advertising, but we have been sent (via a circuitous route) a Slide-Chart
calendar which indicates directly the day of the week for a given date, i.e. the- 31 December 1899 was a
sunday. (It works, too.) If you are interested, write to "calendar", c/o SITU, and we will forward your
request for more information.

A will probated in Maine read simply, "Being of sound mind and body, I spent it all."

If you have not yet paid your dues for 1972, where are they? $10 per annum.

A Clarification:
All contributions and dues above the basic $10 per year are deductible from Federal Income Tax. The
basic $10 is.!!2! deductible; i.e. a person paying $100 for membership may deduct $90 only.

10

VII. BIOLOGY"

THE lfiOMINIDAE AND THE TROGLODYTIDAE*

contemporary Meganthropus and Gigantopithecusare


not included in the Hominidae at all b~cause they
The Antiquity of The Family Hominidae and Their undoubtedly made no tools.
Place in the Classification of the Higher Primates
3. The psychotechnical analysis of" paleolithic
implements shows that speech was not used in the
by B. F. Porshnev
by
process of their production which was sbstained
I
automatic imitation within populations. The present
1. Haeckel and vogt in 1866-1868 came forward level of neurophysiology and neuropsychology locates
with a hypothesis of the "missing link" between the the function of speech and its control in ithe frontal,
ape nnd man which they called "ape-man", or "man- temporal and sincipital regions of the brain and in
ape". Besides phylogenetic considerations they prob- particular in those fields and zones whiph phylogeably proceeded from Linnaeus who divided the genus netically are developed only in !!2.!!!2 sapi'ens and are
Homo into two species, Homo troglodytes and Homo absent in full shape in all ancestral form:s. This exsapie!!.!!. "This Haeckel- Vogt hypothesis was tacitly cludes the possibility of articulate sp~"ech during
turned down by Darwin in 1871-1872. Dubois on the" previous stages of evolution.
contrary tried to sUbstantiate it, but the hybreed (sic)
4. Hence, the advisability of abandoning the current
term, ape-man, caused among zoologists an idea wide nomenclature of fossil species included in the
alien to Haeckel and Vogt of this creature being a Hominidae. It is preferable to include in I this "family
morphological mixture, whereas they (and Linnaeus) just one genus Homo, represented by a single species,
implied morphological affinity with man while such ~ sapiens (SiiiHi'ivided into ~ sapi~ns fossilis
higher cerebral functions as speech and reason yet and Homo sapiens ~). The main diagnostic disabsent. The idea of ape-man (the troglodyte) was tinction of the Hominidae is the presence of such
almost completely abandoned in the 20th century; formations in the architectonic of the brain which
henCE! it is implied that man descended directly from made speech possible (and the correlative~ features in
the apes without a connecting link. A number of the organs of speech and in face). All the other bipedal
circumstances, however, prompt us to revive that higher Primates should be embraced by: the family
idea.
Troglodytidae (or Pithecanthropidae), no m~tter wheth2. The main criterion for placing fossil forms in er they made tools or not. Their main diagnostic disthe f::tmily Hominidae is in practice the presence of tinction: bipedal locomotion (two-footed, etect, orthoaccompanying stone implements. But such practice " grade) with all the correlative features in the structure
contradicts the purely morphological principle of of the body, head,limbs and internal o~gans. This
classification. The creature first n&n1ed Prezin- distinguishes them from the family Pongidae. The
janthl:2ill and later - ~ ~ - mad;-cru(i'e Troglodytidae (~ Pithecanthropidae) rr/ay be subdivided into the following genera: 1. Austr~opithecus,
pebble tools but had the brain of the anthroPoid t
(V. I. Kochetkova). Nonetheless it is recognized that 2. Meganthropus, 3. Pithecanthropus (Arclianthropus),
the discovery of the Prezinjanthropus has put the 4. Troglodytus (Palaeanthropus) (subdivided into T.
antiquity of Hominids ("humans") some 2 million years fossilis and T. recens). This fourth genu~ (commonly
back. At the same time the contemporary and subse- known as the Neanderthaler) can in its turn be divided
quent morphologically similar Australopithecinae are into the following" species: 1. southern I(Rliodesian
set allart as a subfamily for their tool making is con- type}. 2. Classical (La Chapelle type), 3. :Presapient
siderE!d doubtful or rudimentary. The geologically (Steinheim-Ehringsdorf type), 4. Transitory (Palestine
type).
5. The family Pongidae branched off ~he Primate
*Pr.ofessor Porshnev's paper is reprinted here tree in the Miocene. Currently it is represented by
because of the considerable number of requests we four genera: the gibbons (sometimes separated as a
distinct family), the orangoutans, the gorillas and the
have had for it.
For those who are not familiar with Professor chimpanzees. The family Troglodytidae departed from
Porshnev's name and work, he is the director of one the anthropoid line in the Pliocene. At p~esent it is
of thE! departments of the Institute of History of the represented by one genus, probably one species whic~
USSR Academy of sciences in Moscow, and virtually can be described as "relic hominoid" cTroglodytus
the doyen of ABSMery in the USSR: he has published recens). From the Hominoid (Troglodytidae) line in
extensively on the subject. Our copy of this paper is iiieUpper Pleistocene there separated ~ family of
a typescript from Professor Porshnev; he does not hominids in which the tendency towards th formation
indica.te where it was published, but word of it seems of species did not prevail and which fro'm the very
to have spread through the ranks of those interested start and to the present level has been represented by
the species Homo sapiens.
:
in ABSMery.
6. The taxonomic rank of a family for Homo sapiens
tI.E!., an ape. Editor.
is justified by the great biological sign~ficance of
I

11

such new formations as the organs and functions of


speech, i.e. the second signal system. The unusually
high tempo of this evolutionary progress (naturally,
on the basis of useful variations of ancestral forms)
indicates a mechanism of selection somewhat akin to
artificial selection. The question is open now which
species of the Paleanthropus (Troglodytus fossilis)
was the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens fci"SSIiIS.
Perhaps we shall know this when the study of the
relic Paleanthropus yields serial morphological material for there can be no doubt that the Troglodytus
~ is a direct survival of the divergence of the
Troglodytidae and the Hominidae.

small if the size estimates given by the fishermen


are accurate. The Elephant seal is known to be
extending its range. and its size would perhaps make
it a better candidate. All this does not positively
eliminate the possibility that the fishermen saw something new, but it reduces the odds considerably.
ON EVOLUTION
by Ivan T. Sanderson
The following quotation comes from The Nature of
the Beast by T. Murray Smith, published by Jarrolds
(London), in 1963, and will be found on page 133:

THAT NEW ZEALAND SEA MONSTER

"The elephant or buffalo, seeking to escape, will


go upwind. The rhino in a panic is just as likely to
Reuters has announced that the organizers of a
come blundering downwind; and an inexperienced
frog- jumping contest that is held in Christchurch,
hunter jumps to the conclusion that he is being
N.Z., has offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of
charged and foolish Faru [local name for the Black
the "sea monster" that Japanese fisherman claimed
Rhinoceros. Ed.] pays for the mistake with his life.
to have seen off New zealand, as reported in our
If Darwin was right -which I do not believe- that
October 1971 issue. Reuters notes "The monster was
only the fittest survive, it is a miracle that this predescribed as similar to a huge frog .. " That wasn't
. historic idiot exists, unless by fitness Darwin meant
the description we got (and we have been unable to
only physical fitness, which is absurd."
learn anything further of the alleged tracks on the
Lyttelton Peninsula).
As one trained in the Darwinian concept of evoIn any event, two members have come up with
lution, and more especially having spent the first
possible explanations, to wit:
half of my life observing and collecting animals for
Member # 164 suggests that it might well have been
museums and zoos in the tropics, I found this statea dugong, one of the sirenians, and related to the
ment extremely "provoking"; the reason being that I
Manatee that inhabits Florida. He points out that the
cannot refute it in any way.
nostrils, seen head on, might easily have been misHow many times have I looked at utterly bizarre
taken for eyes, and notes that the first person ever to
animals that seem to us so hopelessly 'lost' one is
see one (in a shark's gut) on Cook's expedition off
hard put to it to understand how they can even feed
eastern Australia, referred to it as a "hippo". The
themsel ves, let alone reproduce? I could name hunother suggestion comes from member # 155 who nomidreds that don't appear to be fit for anything! Maybe
nates the Elephant seal, which reaches 20 feet and
they evolved by natural selection, but the point is
might easily show five feet above the waterline.
how have they managed to survive?
Males have a distinctive trunk, hence the name: but
Personally, I still staunchly support the whole
young males and cows do not. Neither has 6-inch
notion of "evolution", and not only of animals and
eyes, but again, the eyes are large, and the nostrils
plants, as being a natural process; and, while I equalmight have been mistaken for eyes. We have no inforly subscribe to the basic principal as shown in the
mation on the artistic ability of the chap who drew
cartoon on page 30 of the APril 1970 issue of PURSUIT,
the picture.
I find myself forced to agree with Mr. smith that this
Unless they -or at least somebody- catches sometheory (or practice) does ~ explain the "survival"
thing extraordinary, I think we will drop this one.
business. Perhaps we just don't know enough yet, but
The frog bit would seem to be a publicity gag on the
it would seem to me that a factor which we should
part of the frog- jumping contest organizers. The
call "chance" enters the equation, so that hosts of
dugong is found in Australian waters and could have
of utterly ridiculous and inefficient animals survive
wandered over to New zealand, though it is a bit

"Hoven, England (UPI) - Colly, reputedly the world's fastest snail, has died at the age of 4. Owner
Chris Hudson, 15, said, 'I don't think captivity agreed with her.' The funeral was held yesterday in Hudson's
garden. Colly beat a host of challengers last May to win the world snail championships at Folkestone,
England. The creature covered two feet in the record-shattering time of three minutes.
Probably over-exerted himself.

12

simply by default. SO long as there is a niche for


them, they just go on and on until they become so
bizarr,e they they cannot reproduce any more.
,
Th,e rhinos are in another class. However idiot
they Il~re -and they are- some niches still remain for
them; they can still breed; and they are just to much
for predators, including man -and even with riflesto be bothered with as prey.
In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if modern man is
not equivalent to the rhinoceroses. we are certainly
equally demented; and there's really no purpose for
us. About all we have accomplished so far of a construct:ive nature, is this "pollution" everybody is
talking about. in which we don't seem to have achieved
anything but the promotion of excessi ve algal growths.

at close range demands some explanation. I once


believed they were caused by the speci!nens being
wet. To test this I went to Vancouver: Island and
followed a government cougar hunter until !he killed a
large male. I took the fresh hide and susp'ended
it by
I
its edges and filled it with water and left i~ overnight.
The next morning I photographed it in color from all
angles. I could not make it appear black.
"My next thought was that they must be backlighted.
However. a check on the position of the i sun at the
time of these reports proved this theory ,untenable.
"I have now no alternative but to accept the word
of the eye-witness that there are black sPecimens of
Felis concolor in northeastern North America and that
they are not particularly rare (about 7% in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.)"
'

BLACK PUMAS

Mr. Wright appends a table detailing n<;l less than


20 black pumas seen at close range in idaylight 'in
New Brunswick. Quebec, and Nova Scot,ia between
September 1. 1951 and August 2. 1970, and notes that
as many more were not included because the circumstances were such that positive 'identification' of
the color was impossible, though he adds "There is no
reasonable reason for disregarding these descriptions".
We also asked Lennie Rue -one of the~ very great
naturalists in this country; see National Wildlife and
International Wildlife for examples of his animal photography- if he had any references to bl~ck pumas.
Lennie has a truly incredible library 'on natural
history. with emphasis on North American mammals.
but could not come up with a single refere~ce. On the '
other hand, he pointed out ~hat there is a! claim from
Borneo for a black Clouded Leopard (Panther'a nubulosa)
believed by many to be extinct, and that there is even
a book called The Black Lion! We know of ~any albino
tigers; has anyone references on black ones? Black
leopards are quite common, and black jagu:ars are not
rare, though most seem to come from a fairly limited
area in the Guyana Massif.
'
And, just for the record, one of our subscribers
tells us that some five years ago he tal~ed with a
chap from El Salvador who stated calmly that he
occasionally hunted Bengal Tigers-"tigres i3engalis't...
across the border in Honduras (not British :Honduras);
he said they had multiplied theresince some escaped
years ago from a circus, so. if someone t~lls you he
hunted Bengal tigers in Honduras (provided you can
get into that country safely -and out aglun). he is
not necessarily a liar!

In our October 1971 issue we yelled Help! on the


question of melanism in pumas (otherwise called
cougars. panthers. painters, mountain lions. and
heaven knows what else!). We cannot say that we
have been deluged wit!) material. but we have received
quite E!nough to indicate that melanism -the occurrence
of blaek pumas in an otherwise tawny-coloured 'race'is in fllct quite widespread and is possibly increasing.
Member #210 promptly came through with two references, noting that .. stanley P. Young and Edward A.
Goldman's ~ (Dover Edition, 1964) men tions a
couple! of sources!!! black pumas. A specific case of
just such a cat having been killed in 1843 in the
carandahy River section of Brazil is cited. as well
as a v'ague reference to specimens of South American
pumas (black, of course) being taken 'from time to
time'. In Victor H. Cahalane's Mammals Qf North
Ameril~ (Macmillan Co., 1961) this great one-liner is
found on page 272: 'Melanistic or black cougars are
known; cougars of Florida seem to run strongly to
that "freak" color'."
Our major source of information, however, is Bruce
S. Wri.ght, who is Director of the Northeastern Wildlife utation of the University of New Brunswick,
Frede:ricton. N.B. Mr. Wright has written one book
about pumas, entitled The Ghost 2! North America,
and is at work on a revised edition. He cites a book
by William Thomas. Great cats! Have Met; Adventures
ill TWp Hemispheres (Alpha Publishing Co . Boston.
1896. p. 75-76), and in addition was kind enough to
send us a copy of a paper he presented at the 36th
North American Wildlife Conference in March, 1971,
the Symposium on the Native Cats of North America.
In this he devotes a section to melanism. as follows:
"No black specimen of Felis concolor has ever
been collected in North America, but one has been
shot in Brazil (Young and Goldman. 1946, p. 58). The
repeated mention of black specimens seen in daylight

THE "WHAT'S-IT" FROM SOUTH DAKOT!\,


There has been a considerable uproar over an
allegedly unidentified animal that was Ifound near
Bottineau. SOuth Dakota, and eventually laMed in the
zoo in Minot. SOuth Dakota (not North. as rPany newspapers reported). It was virtually hairless arid generallY
in wretched condition; and some pretty ~illy .statements were made by those who ought to ~ave known

13

better. The animal was variously 'identified' as


"possibly some kind of Kangaroo", possibly "a rat
tail opossum", and this, that, "and the other thing.
The kangaroo bit was the result of the apparently
excessively long hind legs. we called the director of
the zoo, Mike Nilson, who stated that the animal is a
Gray FOx suffering from a virulent case of a mangelike disease that has also been noted in red foxes,
raccoons, and bears, and has, it seems, been endemic
in the area for several years.
The Gray Fox is very different from the Red FOx,
in fact so much so" that its Latin name is Urocyon
rather than Vulpes. Its proportions, gait, and habits
are all distinCtTrOm those of the Red FOX, and it is a
fairly agile tree-climber. It is also much less commonly
seen that the familiar little animals chased by the
"view halloa" crowd. Also, shave any animal, and
you will probably have trouble deciding what it is.

t.;G;:.r;.;:ay::....:F;..o;;.x:...:.(U=r0i=ic:!!:y=o=n)~..::!~_ _ _ _.....:::!~_ _ _----l

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

LIGHT WHEELS AND HOLOGRAMS THAT USE


ACOUSTICAL RADIATION
by Robert J. Dur,ant
spe"culation" is a tricky business, but one that is
part and parcel of SITU'S work. Reading an endless
series of reports is tedious at best, but it is the
speculation on these cases that makes the study of
forteana fascinating and potentially rewarding. My"
suggestion is that we keep a carl!ful watch on technical
developments in "order to. find analogies or clues to
explain the nature and operation of the anomalous
phenomena. (We are, as it were, in the position of a
Volta or a Galvani faced with the task of explaining
a TV set before he has "discovered" electricity.)
This is admittedly a rather weak approach, but at
least it saves us from the extremes of the occultists
on the one hand and the weather-balloonists on the
other. I believe that "most of the mysteries we are
dealing with will eventually be explained in perfectly
logical fashion as physical forces and processes that
are simply unknown at the present time.
Let us take, for example, those wheels of light
discussed in Ivan T. Sanderson's Invisible Residents
and elsewhere. These so-called "wheels" are actually
spokes of light radiating from a central hub. Some
reports give the spokes huge dimensions, on the order
of 15 or 20 miles. These are the facts as we have
them from the testimony of a great many mariners over
a period of several centuries; and almost without
exception from the Indian Ocean. The first organized
speculation on the nature ofthis phenomenon appeared
in Fate Magazine and again in Invisible Residents.
This was the cOnjecture that the source of the light
might be the excitation of a microorganism called

Noctiluca milliares, a light~einitting Single-celled


organism that abounds in the waters where the wheels
of light have been reported. "It was further speculated
that two strong rotating sources of sound waves
could produce 'beams' of light. After considering and
abandoning the possibility that pairs of mating whales
might be the source of the sounds, Sanderson drops
the subject to wonder whether a machine might be
responsible!
In order to keep abreast of the latest inventions
I make it a practice to read the saturday ~ York
Times financial section; trus carries a summary of
Patents granted during the preceeding week. Most of
it is pretty dull reading, but from time to time one
hits a 'winner': "APparatus for Constructing a Hologram Using Acoustical Radiation".
This article described a new device that takes
three dimensional photographs (holographs) of the
interior of solid objects, and does so by radiating the
object with sound waves. The renected sound waves
are processed electronically and then changed into
light waves which are in turn used to expose a photographic plate. Holographs have been around since the
late forties but weren't really practical until the
invention of the laser beam. Even today they are
curiosities but there is considerable developmental
work underway which promises to give us threedimensional television in a few years. The technical
breakthrough in this patent is the use of sound waves
to make the holographs." The effect of using" sound
rather than light amounts to making opaque solid
objects almost transparent. A holograph" made with
light shows only the exterior of the object; the sound
holograph can show interior details.
In practice this means that one can take a 3-D
photo of a cavity in a tooth or an air b~bble in the

14

lFebo 2, 1971

K. PRESTON. JR

ArpARATU~

Fllod May 24, 196',

3,559,465

FOR CONSTRUCTING A HOLOGRAM USING


ACOUSTICAL RADIATION
2 Sheets-Sheet 1

.KClttltrll

INVGNTOR,

Pr~G I"tlJt~rI'r.

BY

....w.J""'~
H'l'7'OIlNBY.

15

center of a steel bar. The working model for the patent


does exactly that. The inventor. Kendall Preston
.Tr of Norwalk. Conn . hopes to make holographs of
the organs of the body. This would be a great advance
for medical diagnosis (and. presumably. make things
much easier for the patient. considering some of our
present diagnostic techniques!). but. in my estimation.
the significance of this invention is even greater. for
it provides the next link in the chain of speculation
~n the wheels of light.
sup~ose we were to want a three-dimensional
photographic record of the caverns and the interiors
of the "mountains" at the bottom of the sea. We could.
using the prinCiples established in this patent. build
a device to do so. The device would require very
powerful sound sources that would radiate in a beam.
In order to record a large area this device would be
equipped "to move slowly across the ocean floor. It
might also be convenient. for reasons of efficiency,
to have a number of sound beams in operation at the
same time. perhaps even revolving or sweeping in all
directions. If there happened to be a large number of
Noctiluca in these waters.....
So now the wheels of light are at least comp~e
hensible* in terms of a known technology. We have a
possible answer. In fact. we can make our own wheels
any time we care to" By "we". I mean our terrestrial
civilization. In the meantime. someone else seems to
have beaten us to it by at least several centuries.
The appearance of the wheels over such a long
period of time would seem to preclude a simple
exploration of the depths as the motive behind the
phenomenon. One wonders if the sound beams are
used to observe some process taking place deep
under the sea bed. This would be an excellent way
to keep tabs on the workings of a nuclear power plant
or other machinery that must be shielded so that
visual inspection is impossible. Immensely powerful
machinery. emitting deadly radiations. hidden in the
ocean deeps for centuries. inspected now and then
by its owners -but perhaps this is going too far.
Perhaps.
Note: To obtain a copy of Mr. Preston's patent. send
fifty cents to Commissioner of Patents. Washington.
*With the exception of those moat extraordinary
"wheels" of which the spokes form flattened s-curves.
This indeed is the real "stickler-; Bob Durant will
present a possible explanation in the April issue of
PURSUIT. but in the meantime we invite any suggestions or serious speculations on this score. Editor.

The Three Types of Light "Wheels"

Technology and the Useful Arts - Subsection Postal Service.


UPI dispatch from London: "Record Claimed For Delay In Postal Service. The following letter. from the
Dean of Canterbury. Ian H. White-Thomson. appeared in today's Times of London: 'Sir: A few days agol
received a communication addressed to T. A. Becket. Esq. care of the Dean of Canterbury. This surely must
be a record in postal delays.' Thomas A' Becket died in 1170 A.D."

..___________________________ --------------------------.....--------1--~.

16

DC 20231, and ask for Patent No. 3,559,465 APparatus


for constructing a Hologram Using Acoustical Radiation. Holographs may be obtained from the Edmund
Scientific Co., Barrington, NJ 08007. Write for their
catalogue.

CULTURAL EXPANSION: WHICH WAY?


Once upon a time there was an area called Mesopotarnia, and the people living there were frightfully
bright and invented all sorts of things like iron,
alphabets, agriculture, religion, pyramids, and whatnot. (Admittedly, some of them insisted that they
learned all this from somebody who "came up out of
of the sea" and told them how to go about it, but this
is bE!side the point.) They were once alleged to have
sent expeditions out to Europe and other unheard-of
placl~s,
even Scotland, and taught the benighted
nati'..es there how to do all these things too.
This is probably too far-fetched even for PURSUIT,
but the fact is that archaeologists and cultural anthropolOI~ists have always assumed that "culture" began
in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and slowly spread to
Eurasia -both western, and as far as the British
Islee:; and eastern, as far as china e.g., stonehenge
has been believed to have been built at least with the
help of the Myceneans. This belief was founded on
the fact that only Egypt and Mesopotamia had calendars and thus chronologies. so that archaeological
finds could be dated with reasonable accuracy. Finds
elsewhere had somehow to be correlated with Egyptian
and/or Mesopotamian artefacts. This was relatively
simple for such places as Central Turkey and crete
which traded extensively with the former; but what to
do about items popping up in northern Scotland or
Transylvania? There was considerable argument about
this for years, and it was not until the 1920s that the
dispute subsided somewhat with Gordon Childe's
theory of "modified diffusionism". This simply implied
that European cultures were built on Mediterranean
'foundations', and resulted from some kind of intercourse -whether commercial or religious- beginning
between the two areas, circa 2500 B.C.
some 21 years ago, radio-carbon dating was discovered and, though it has never been considered
infallible, it was believed to provide reasonably
accurate dates for organiC materials. Thus, a grave
could be dated within, say, a century or so, if it
contained bones, wooden implements. or the like.
The method was applied to many sites. and it seemed
to p:rove Childe's theory, since the dates that came
from the computers were roughly those that the investigators expected; i.e. they conformed with educated
guesses about the time required for a particular style
of pottery, for example. to have been 'transmitted' to
the ELl'ea in which it was found, from the area in which
it was assumed to have originated. However, studies
of carbon-14 dating data have been correlated with
the more accurate chronology provided by tree-ring

counts (specifically those of the Califo,rnia Bristlecone Pine), and indicate that some major revisions
are necessary. This has led to a consid~rable uproar
in archaeo-anthropological circles, the' chief instigator being one Colin Renfrew, a senior lecturer at
the University of Sheffield in England.
Using the new C-14 dates, he has produced a fund
of evidence that civilization began in northern Europe
and made its way down to the Mediterr:anean! Many
artefacts from northern Europe and the British Isles
are, in fact, from 700 to 1000 years oldler than they
were previously thought to be. Renfrew: admits that
simultaneous invention may account for some of this
presumed "diffusion" of culture. This prqcess, which
has always been recognized by archaeologists but has
not perhaps been given the 'weight' due it, is still
going on: Mr. A. in England invents a ",thi ngUlilmy " ,
only to find that Mr. B., in Chile, invented a "thingummy" at the same time. There is thus ho reason to
insist that only ~ person or group 'invented' the
production of copper, or whatever.
The consequences of all this are considerable and
if Renfrew is right (his theory has not exactly bee~
welcomed with open arms or shouts of glee from his
fellow archaeologists), a number of ra~her peculiar
'items' might be clarified.
'
carbon-14 dating will not help much in straightening
out one of the most puzzling mysterie~ facing the
archaeologists, since this invol ves th~ sometimes
enormous stone monuments found scatte'red allover
the British Isles, France, Spain, and eisewhere. In
some cases these were tombs and cont~n dateable
items, but in others OOta single scrap of !such helpful
material has been found; and the experts have a tendency to indulge in circular reasoning: i.e. this one is
better built than that one; therefore it mu~t be of later
construction, etc. This is debatable, pa~ticularlY if
no definitive date can be assigned to either. (One
pair of experts manage !E ~ paragraph to date Maes
Howe, a structure to which we will return shortly. at
approximately 900 A.D. and 2200 B.C.!
Probably the best known megalithi,c monument
(mega - large; !.ll!:!! - stone) is Stonehenge. It is. by
the way. a great disappointment when one sees it for
the first time. since most photographs have. apparently
deliberately. been taken to make it look as if the
standing stones should at least reach ;cloud level.
However, careful study of the site even by a nonexpert soon leads to considerable respect for both the
engineering skill and the mathematical preCision of
the builders. It was constructed in sev.eral stages.
and I do not know what the "new" dates (i.e. Renfrew's,
if he has done anything about stonehenge) are. The
Myceneans "got into the act" in a rather peculiar way.
It is popularly believed that the representation of a
Mycenean double-ended blade axe was fou:nd on one of
the stones by a schoolboy some years back. In fact.
the official handbook published by H.M. Stationery
Office (1955) points out that "No less than twenty-five
[incisions representing an early type of !bronze axe]

17

are on the outer face of stone 4 and originally about


a dozen were on the inner face of [stone] 53. Here
there is also represented a Bronze Dagger; owing to
weathering, its exact type is not certain." They add
that it is impossible to say ~ these axe blades
were incised on the stones. There are other carvings
on stone 57 "which were being gradually obliterated by
visitors walking on them". Ergo, there is no positive
evidence that the Myceneans had anything to do with
it -so far as we can see. The only positive thing
about stonehenge is that it was constructed as an
astronomical "observatory". The debate on its accuracy
as such is still going on, but the basic function is no
longer in doubt.
The function of Maes Howe near stennes in the
Orkney Islands off northern scotland is now very much
in doubt, though orthodox archaeologists insist it is/
was a tomb. It is a remarkable structure, but was,
unfortunately, vandalized by the so-called Vikings
about the year 1200 A.D. They scratched their 'initials'
in the walls and noted that they had carried off
"treasure"; they made no mention of throwing out old
bones. It has always simply been assumed that it
must have been a tomb.
I t is a cone-shaped pyramid 27 feet high and 115

/ /

/
/

"

_,

Equinoctial sighting line

~~
~-.....

_;/-_

, -.;:

-- -winte/r
Solstice

--,;;

Silbury Hill with maypole on top, showing seasonal


shadow lengths.

\
\

"
\

v."",a~: /
1

i>", ,'

I'

Maes Howe -"floor plan"

\ ~/1"'ua<o,

,.-

"'.
"
'
'

\~
./

/'

./

,.

"
\

~\

Grand Gallery

Pit

The Great Pyramid of Cheops, sliced in half, as it were, to show the interior construction. The passage
leading to the "King's Chamber" was initially an astronomical "sighting tube", much like a telescope.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
I . . . . . . . . . . . .-

. . . . . . . .~. .~. .~. . . . . . .. . .

18

feet in diameter. with a 45-foot-wide ditch, 700 feet


in ci.rcumference, encircling it. Inside this mound
there is a 54-foot-Iong passage leading to a chamber
15 fElet square. with three small rooms leading off
the main chamber. The roof of the main chamber
is cor.belled and could be closed at the top by a single
moveable slab. This interior construction is all
megalithic. and the stones are set so closely that a
knife blade cannot be inserted between them. In a
direcl; line with the passageway. and 2772 feet away
there is a monolith or single standing stone. At the
~!!! time, the sun rises directly behind this
monolith 10 ~ before the winter solstice. There is
another monolith to the west, apparently to indicate
the equinoxes. If the astronomers would get into this
business, we might find an at least approximate date
for Maes Howe. It is much more likely that it, too. was
an astronomical observatory.
In fact, astronomy seems to have been practiced
throughout the British Isles, Denmark. Sweden,
Franc:e, and Spain. Britain generally is littered with
small barrows. as they are called, and these are burial
mounds - many have been excavated. But .zhat does
one do with a mound that covers 5 acres and contains
an estimated million tons of earth. sitting on a flat
plain. we refer here to Silbury Hill in Wiltshire,
which was definitely manmade, has a truncated top,
and probably sported a maypole at the top -a maypole
whose shadow could be measured on said flat plain
to determine the passing of the seasons.
All of these monuments required both considerable
knowledge and an enormous amount of work. One
doesn't drag 45-ton stones around and then set them
upright just for the fun of it. These sites were important 1;0 the people who built them. What is important
to us, is that the degree of sophistication shown in
their construction does not show any nice neat pattern
from south to north -or vice versa. Maes Howe is
about as far as you can get from the alleged birthplace of civilization. but it shows almost uncanny
affiliations with the Great Pyramid attributed to
Cheops. If the sun at the winter solstice has shifted
ten clays, as it were, the structure at Maes Howe
may be a great deal older than Cheops' Pyramid.
Too. it is odd that Cheops' wife is depicted as a
blond,!! in her daughter's tomb. It is easy to dismiss
this by saying simply, oh. well. she was wearing a
wig. But. why ~? Whether the legends quoted by
one Otto Muck, about whom I know nothing except
that he has written a book about Atlantis (which does
not automatically or necessarily disbar him from
POliti! company). that Cheops married a light-eyed
(blue?), reddish-blonde female from northern Europe
and then married their daughter off to another northern
Euroll.ean. are valid I do not know, because I do not
know his sources. But he adds that the change in the
Egyptian calendar from a stellar to a solar base, was
the work of a light-skinned European. None of this
proves anything. but it does suggest that perhaps
Renfl'ew is right. or at least on the right track.

You may now wish to skip on to the book reviews


for more on pyramids.
'
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The following was sent to us by a gentleman who
works for IBM and is also a professionEti pilot. He
wrote several weeks after finishing Invi'sible Residents, stating:
~ would like to carry the basic findings you have
made a step further by proposing the following:
"A. That inter stellar travel in the center of the
galaxy would pose very few problems :due to the
relative closeness of the individual stars.
"B. Because of A, the developing planets would
simply move to other planets as room ~as needed.
"C. Also because of A, there would be very little
development of social sciences because Want of room
or resources could be solved by B.
"D. Because of the wealth of planets, a great
variety of different intelligent beings wo~ld develop.
"E. At some point, some scientist would begin to
realize that some day there would be no'more room,
or that resources would begin to become harder to
reach.
"F. In an attempt to find out the reaction to E. an
expedition would be sent out to the edge of the galaxy
to find a remote and isolated planet that ~as just beginning to develop some sort of intelligen~ life.
"G. Using advanced biological techniques, they
would advance the development of the hig~est form of
life in one giant step. This would elimin~te the need
to wait for nature to do this for them.
"H. They would then start accelerated ~ivi1izations
in different areas on the planet and study their growth.
"Disasters" and "want" could be induced !artificially.
"I. That the expedition would be in a iposition for
extended surveillance due to the flexibilIty provided
by D.
'
=-J. As the experiment developed to the point
be openly
where the cultivated intelligence began
aware of the outer influence, the surface surveillance
was turned over to the part of the tearh that lived
under water.
"K. The surface part of the team left for home,
promising to return someday. They left ~ spare ship
parked nearby for the rest of the team to leave when
the experiment had run its course.
"L. That things are getting tight for the team that
is left, because it is getting harder to hide all the
time.
"M. That we were that planet."
Bear in mind that this is pure specuilltion on the
part of Mr. C. But remember also that tile incredibly
rapid development of Man and Culture i~ something
that has bothered anthropologists, both physical and
cultural, for years. And then there are all t~ose archaeological 'horrors' that are either ignored, ;swept under
the carpet, or 'explained' away because they don't
belong there.

io

19

DEP ARTMENT OF LOOSE ENDS


We have not yet acquired a copy of the article on obtained from the Cambridge Natural History Series,
the Indian non-rusting pillar from the Czechoslovak a splendid set but dating from the 1920s. Member
Chemical Communications, vol. 36, p. 625, and so #976 also notes that a 19th century newspaper account,
cannot comment further on this. One of our 'spies' accepted by the Fish and Game Department, recorded
has been tracking this down: his first try ended in a Mississippi alligator that measured 28 feet!
"That's the only issue we have failed to receive",
Member # 164 suggests that the photo on page 92
and his second -the National Library of Medicine in of our October 1971 issue looks like a fishnet with
D.C.- produced the article; but they have no copying floats and an odd-shaped rock, and adds "I wouldn't
facilities a,nd will not permit people to bring in theIr go next door on the basis of that alone". This is, of
own copying machines! We promise to report further. course, a possibility, but one must still explain the
On the Arkansas White River Monster: For those "spray" at the 'other end' of the fishnet. Also, it is
who are made 'nervous' by giant penguins, we refer our impression that the White River is a rather popular
them to Ivan T. Sanderson's book More "Things", fishing area and that such a rock would be known to
chapter 3. Dinosaur .three-.toed prints do not match the local people. Also, rocks don't produce footprints.
those of "Old Three-Toes" (Model B). They do # 164 goes on to say "And as to tracks, a local (N.
match those of penguins.
Fla.) editor-writer, Thomas Helm, I think, who wrote
Next, member #976 notes that Putnam's The New the ~ book on sharks ever published, recently had
Field Book of Reptiles and Amphibians, 1970,States a Sunday supplement feature in which he said he had
that "In the United States, alligators grow larger than all the evidence on your (ITS) long-ago three-toe
crocodiles. Adults usually range from 6 to 12 feet in search in this [Florida] area; that it was a hoax and
length, but the maximum is more than ~ ~ [emphasis he could name the hoaxers, and how it was done ...
ours
One of the authors of this book is Doris M. . .?" For these "hoaxers". we again refer you to
Cochran; we trust her. And our original figure was ~ "Things".

J ."

CURRENT PURSUITS

THUNDER BIRDS
Will someone kindly find us that photograph??????

ANDREW CROSSE'S ACARI


Our member #621 has begun a campaign on behalf
of Andrew Crosse who, in the early 1800s, apparently
created life by sending electrical currents through
vats containing deadly chemicals. Crosse was vilified
in his own day and has been ignored since. The
"life" he created was not simply strings of amino
acids or such, but "bugs" as it were. He kept careful
records and, so far as we know, did effectively
sterilize the materials he used. What";ember #621
has asked approximately 50 scientific institutions is
simply that they attempt to duplicate Crosse's experiments. His first letter, to the American Institute
of Biological Sciences, was returned -the original
letter- with the words "No information" scrawled
across it. His second reply boiled down to a "It's up
to somebody else to prove that it is worthwhile trying
this experiment before any scientist should waste his
time on such garbage" (this is not a direct quote; it
merely indicates the sense of the reply). We would
suggest that our members and subscribers, writing as
individuals and not identifying themselves as members
of SITU -which frankly does no.t have the resources
for duplicating this experiment- bombard every

scientific organization they can think of with the


'suggestion' that Crosse's work should be checked.
No one has really ever defined Life, and Crosse -if
his experiments were as he reported them- did create
Life. He at least deserv!ls a hearing. For those of you
who are not familiar with Crosse's work, we will.make
up a brief precis so that you can make clear what you
want done. Any who want one will help us enormously
by sending a stamped addressed envelope. Just
address your request to Andrew Crosse, Esq. ,c/o SITU,
Columbia, N.J. 07832. "No information": and they call
themselves Scientists!
A LONG SHOT
Member #52 has been attempting to find a correlation
between magnetic storms and various fortean phenomena, particularly poltergeist manifestations. His
findings thus far show a rather remarkable correlation
but, as has been pointed out by member #255, trying
to correlate isolated events with world-wide phenomena is a very long shot indeed. Nevertheless, it would
seem to be worth following up for a time at least -and
there may be specific factors connected with magnetic
storms that 'trigger' such fortean phenomena. What
#52 needs is data on magnetic storms -Le. definite
dates, intensity, etc.- and data on fortean phenomena
with definite date of onset or occurrence. Anyone
willing or able to assist #52 should contact us; we
will put you in touch with him.

20

MEMBERS FORUM
In this column we will henceforth present special requests from members which cannot be handled by our
staff for various reasons. Unless they specifically ask that their names and addresses be giveh, they will,
as usual, be identified by number only, and correspondence should be addressed to Member #007, c/o SITU.
(1) Member #607 would like to get in touch with all members in Connecticut, possibly with a view to
setting up a connecticut "chapter" (would someone kindly think up a better name -the N .S.S.' or National
speleological Society uses the word Grotto!).
CZ) Member #909 in Laird Hill, Texas, would like to correspond with members in his area -'as far as we
"
can make out, he lives near Dallas; Laird Hill is not in our atlas.
(:3) Member #432 is interested in acquiring early books on UFOs, speCifically those pre,dating 1956.
('I> For all of you who have wondered but haven't dared to ask: that "thing" on the front of PURSUIT is a
!22!, not a mouse, snail, or whatever. It used to chase question marks, but they got lost som~where along
the line. The doggie was Ivan sanderson's "trademark" for years; he used to autograph books with it and
:
such. It is now ours.

Add to the Index in the October 1971 issue of PURSUIT:


believe we missed anything else.

"Those Damned Vimanas Again", 1II,:79. I don't

BOOK REVIEWS
2!!~
Odette Tchernine informs us that she was, in fact, brought up in England; and also states "The reason I
deliberately did not read (Ivan T. Sanderson's] book . . . when I was preparing 'The Snowman an~ Company',
and during the last two years I was working on 'The Yeti' was because I wanted to conduct my own investigations with no risk of being unconsciously influenced".
John A. Keel. Qw: Haunted

~.

Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc. (Gold Medal Paperback).

75~~.

The content of this book only fringes upon our particular field, which is the tangible unexplained
mysteries of natural history, but it is profoundly fortean in its approach to matters that are' primarily
intangible. at least in the dictionary sense of that word. This is not to say that items like Atlantis and
disappearing nuclear submarines are not tangible indeed but that the author tackles, and not Nst boldly
to say the least, the much more difficult and weird intangible aspects of all these things. Tpe reports
given in this book are, naturally, secondhand and most of them almost old-hat to forteans; but, strung together and assembled this way, with almost breathless, and often staccato, journalistic cadence (Keel is
a journalist), they certainly make one sit up, or back, and think. The details in quite a lot of these cases
are either inaccurate or at variance with other published accounts. However, I would not put it past Keel
to have dug out the true details.
'
If you really want to have some fun, bring up John Keel's name at any gathering of sCiElntifically
trai.ned folk, pseudoscientists, religionists or pseudo-religionists, or cultists of any kind, : and most
notably the ufologists and saucerians. Frankly, it is now my belief that he does not just emba~rass them
by quoting from their own published statements, but terrifies them with his theorising: both of which, I
may say, he does in exactly the same manner as the old man himself. John Keel is a lot more polite and
far less dogmatic than Charles Fort, but he knows just as well where to stick in the barb and! then "how
to twist it.
His general theory is, of course, utterly horrible to just about everybody but, as one turns ~he pages
of I,his book. one finds oneself constantly sucking in one's breath and" mumbling something like Oh no!
Not that too? But now I come to think of it . . . . ".
I was once involved in a scholastic debate on matters entirely pragmatic when his name cam~ up, and
a geophysicist with a full doctorate, and a Jesuit Priest at that, casually remarked: "Now th~re's one
thinker who's got guts. I was speechless, and not only because I had never expected this scientist to

21

have even heard of John Keel, but because, it ~as Keel who really first put forward the idea of ultraterrestrials - years before sClentists such as Dr. Jacques Vallee. He tackled this in two previous books
(strange Creatures !!:2!!! Time ~ ~ Fawcett; and ~: Operation Trojan !!2w, Putnam) and it
boils down to an analysis of the history of deliberate interference in human affairs since ever by other
intelligencies of various status and origin, invisible or tangible, and both what we call -good- and
"evil-. This is not a likely commendation to a professional geophysicist or a Roman Catholic priest!
The book is beautifully done by the author, but the publisher and/or he are to be most roundly condemned for not gOing to the trouble (despite the admitted expense) of a full bibliography or table of
numbered references; and, even worse, for not providing an index. If they are in business to sell books,
the publishers at least ought to know that these are essentials for a book of this nature, as it could one
day become not only a classic but a reference work of very great and lasting value. Back-tracking through
222 pages of packed small print to find even one's own name depresses both me and my ego. But get the
book -all of you.
Ivan T. Sanderson.
Brad Williams and Choral Pepper. The Mysterious

~.

New York: world Publishing Co. 1967.

When this book arrived as a gift from member #272, our eyebrows went up slightly, since its exterior
hardly looked like our kind of thing. However, the first several chapters, and sections of others, are purely
fortean; and the remainder is great fun as well. Though there is not a single specifiC reference the authors
have obviously done their homework. Unfortunately there is no index though, in this case, the lack is not
disastrous. The EPilogue is priceless.
H. Y. Li and Sibley S. Morrill. 1 Ching

~.

san Francisco: Cadleon Press. 1971. $5.95.

I would dearly love to spend about four pages talking about the I Ching games (pronounced YeChing), but
it is not forteana as such. However, it provides a peculiar kind of mental exercise that is potentially very
valuable to forteans (and other mortals); in fact, I can recall one incident in which such an exercise would
have saved us the cost of a call to Scotland! The book comes complete with playing pieces for both the
Seven Game (the Wisdom Plan) and the Fifteen Game (the Beneficial to Wisdom Plan). You should be warned
that it can be utterly exasperating, finally exhilarating, and is definitely habit forming. Order from the publisher, P. O. Box 24, San Francisco, CA 94101.
Just to whet your appetite, herewith the pieces that make up the Fifteen Game (on the left) and one of the
"diagrams" -the Tai-Chi"; there are at least three ways to solve it -Messrs. Morrill and Li and I all came
up with different solutions.

Afterthought:

You must use all the pieces; they may not overlap_

22

Norman Brennan. Flying Saucer Books

Pamphlets in English:

a Bibliographical Checklist. $3.00.

F'or those interested in ufology, this is well worth having. It catalogues 390 books and pampblets and
includes a title index. Order directly from Mr. Brennan, BOX 2662, Buffalo. NY 14226.
i

PE!ter Kolosimo (trans. by A. D. Hills).

Q!

~ ~.

London: souvenir Press 1970. l. 75 (35s).

This is a very odd book and while reading it I had constantly in the back of my mind the old joke about
chap who appeared in divorce court, presenting as grounds for divorce the fact that his wife; talked all
tho~ time. when asked by the judge what she talked about, his reply was. "I don't know; she just don't say!In general the book deals with evidence of various kinds that this planet has been visited: by and/or
deliberately 'planted' by extra-terrestrials, the latter either "from scratch" or by 'manipulation' :of animals
already here. The author uses both myths and legends (including also written records) and tangible items
such as monoliths, out-of-place objects, etc.; interspersed on occasion with, of all things, :quotations
from H.. P. Lovecraft and Murray Leinster, "quotes" from virtually unidentified (or at least so minor as to
have escaped notice) "explorers" , with no date or anything else by which one might check his information.
HE! includes some most interesting material. but there is no index, and no bibliography. and his "references" in the text are so vague that. in general. they are worthless. In some cases it is nearly impossible
to tell whether he is quoting from a document (he is particularly fond of the Maya Popol yuh) or whether
it is he who is 'talking'.
.
He also makes some rather monumental goofs, claiming that Musk Deer have been found in :Antarctica
(though it really is not clear who claimed this); and some of the errors may be the fault of the, translator
-E!.g. the famous "metal cube" found in an Austrian mine in 1885 is stated to be in the Salisbury Museum;
he means Salzburg. of course: translator asleep at the typewriter? And someone should have ;been a bit
more judicious in his choice of an adjective to describe the Milodont: "a tardigrade or slow-moving animal
thoughtto have been extinct since prehistoric times. - The adjective "tardigrade" is perfectly legitimatethough the phrasing is redundant- but there is an animal called a tardigrade; see cut below- anb Milodont
bears no resemblance to it, being one of the giant so-called Ground sloths.
The book is perhaps best described as an interesting conglomeration of facts, legends. rumours, reports.
etc. and wo.uld be rather valuable IF the book had an index and references. As it is, the boo,k is. to be
blunt. "toilet literature". And the author never really makes his purpose in writing it (other t~an paying
fm groceries. of course) clear; he does not speculate at any length. has no introduction (in ~he British
version at least; I do not know if it has yet been published in the U.S.. though it is available;in Canada
from the Ryerson Press. Toronto 2, Ont.) or epilogue. There are a fair number of photographs. many of
them the same ones that have been turning up in every other book of this type but with some n~w ones as
well. a number of which don't seem to be mentioned in the text. I do not guarantee this last. sirice I had a
a tendency to fall asleep while reading this book.
Despite all these reservations. I believe the book is worth buying, but I do suggest thait you keep
ha.ndy a large supply of small slips of paper to be stuck into the book. with appropriate anno:tations. In
other words. make your own index.
th'~

Tardigrades, otherwise known as Bear: Animalcules or water Bears. are a subphylum of the Arthropods; in fact. one zoology text notes "trhey are
doubtfully placed among the arthropods". For a full
account of these incredible animals. see Chapter 16
of "Things" by Ivan T. Sanderson. The drawing here
shows a Tardigrade magnified about 50 tim~s. (From
a drawing by Ivan T. Sanderson)

Peter Tomkins. Secrets of the Great Pyramid. New York: Harper &
by lOr. Livio Catullo stecchini.)

ROW.

1971. $12.50 (With a l~ng APpendix


.

'This is a splendid book, lavishly illustrated, and should be in every fortean library. Do not: be misled by
the review of it by our member and old friend Dan Cohen in Science Digest. It is true that the t~rm "pyramidology" has come to have a perfectly. frightful connotation. with visions of Madame Blavatsky ~ !!.. but it is
grossly unfair to say. as Dan Cohen does, that "the greatest part of the book is devoted ~o trotting out

23

practically every loony theory that has ever been proposed about this ancient monument". SOme of the "lunatics"
whose theories are discussed in detail in Tompkins' book are C. Piazzi Smyth (Astronomer Royal for scotland),
William Flinders Petrie, John Greaves (Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, some of whose work 2!! ~ pyramid
was used by Isaac Newton in formulating his theories), Sir Norman Lockyer, Sir John Herschel, Jean Baptiste
Biot, Richard Howard-Vyse, Edme-Francois Jomard. . . a fine bunch of "nuts". The problem here is that
probably most people are !!.Q! mathematically inclined and have trouble balancing their check books. Therefore, if someone comes along and says that the structure of the Pyramid incorporates the value of pi ( 1T ), the
reaction is, Oh yeah? The mathematical 'explanation' of this fact is so far beyond us ordinary "mortals that it
is ignored, being quite simply unintelligible to us, and the pronouncement is put down as fantasy.
The book begins with an extensive history of visits to and exploration of the Great Pyramid from the
ancient Greeks to contemporary Americans and others, but it is Tompkins' detailed description and analysis
of the modern surveys and examinations of the Pyramid and the conclusions reached by scientists, that
interest us most. Even if we devoted an entire issue of PURSUIT to these findings, we could not give you a
full picture. In fact, I sat down with pad and pencil and attempted to list the various "bits of information"
incorporated in the Pyramid and gave it up as a bad job; and these included only those which have been approved by modern science, but still short of certain current speculations; and none of the Blavatsky-type
pronouncements.
To list a few of these items: The structure of the Pyramid incorporates, in several ways, the value of
pi ( 11" ) accurate to several decimal places: the sacred 3-4-5 and 2-/5-3 triangles ( a 2 + b 2 = C 2) that made the
Greek Pythagoras famous; the "Golden section" beloved of both architects and artists - ill ( <p ) in Greek and also the one "thing" that provides for translating spherical s~ctions into flat ones (map projections!) the
Fibonnaci series (1-2-3-5-8-13-21; etc.) "discovered" by Fibonnaci, otherwise called Leonardo da Pisa, in the
13th century A. D.; and the direct relationship between pi and phi (7T = <p 2 x 6 / 5). In fact, for all practical
purposes, the Pyramid does "square the circle": "The Pyramid's base is a square whose perimeter is equal
to the circumference of a circle whose radius is the Pyramid's height". You'll find all the mathematics in
Tompkins' book; in most cases understandable even to mathematical morons like myself.
The Pyramid functions as an almanac, indicating the length of the year, including that damnable .2422
fraction of a day. It serves as an admirable theodolite for surveying, and in fact, was apparently intended to
represent a scale model of the hemisphere, incorporating the geographical degrees of latitude !!:ill! longitude
(something we did not manage to measure accurately until about 1760). Just as an example, it has been calculated that 1 minute of latitude at the equator equals 1,842.9 meters; the base of the Pyramid has a perimeter
intended to represent 1/8 minute of a degree -i.e. by actual measurement, twice the perimeter of the base is
1,842.91 meters! The Pyramid was a very carefully placed geodetic marker, oriented to true North, and so
accurately that compasses are adjusted to it !!!llY, not vice versa. Its major use, though, would seem to have
been as a stellar or astronomical observatory.
There is an empty "coffer" in the so-called King's Chamber which some contemporary scientists believe
to "contain" information on the "mean length of the earth's orbit round the sun, the specific density of the
planet, the 26,OOO-year cycle of the equinoxes, the acceleration of gravity, and the speed of light". Other
investigators have come up with totally different explanations for the purpose of this coffer (which, unfortunately, has been chipped rather badly at one corner by idiot tourists, making it impossible to get totally
accurate measurements). As Tompkins puts it: "Would it not be worthwhile . . . for academic institutions, so
admirably equipped with computers and talent, carefully to analyze such conceits [the information listed
above in this paragraph] as those of Alvarez Lopez and Funk-Hellet and either refute them or support them
with reliable data? Some of their ideas may turn out to be no wilder than those for which Jomard, Taylor,
smyth, and maybe even Davidson were unjustly lampooned."
All of this eyebrow-raising information is only a sampling of the data either believed or proved to be 'contained' in the Pyramid. Its validity depends almost entirely on accurate measurement of the Pyramid, and this
is where Dr. Livio Catullo stecchini comes in. His speciality is ancient measurements, and his rather lengthy
APpendix in this book details his search and research into the comilation between the various measures used
by the Egyptians (and others) and our present measurements. This becomes pretty frightfully technical, and
you may skip it if you wish; but you had better take Tompkins' word for it that various measurements given
are accurate. Dr. Stecchini has worked on this over a period of many years and is respected authority on the
subject. I admit that just measuring the Pyramids makes my mind boggle, particularly the most recent measurements which are accurate to the last millimeter! (with the exception of one figure which was given as plus or
minus 6 millimeters).
Tompkins makes it abundantly clear that the Pyramid is invariably attributed to Cheops (spelt Khufu)
though there is, in fact, no definitive proof that it was that Cheops who built it, or even that a Cheops built
it; but it was obviously constructed originally as an astronomical observatory and a geodetic-marker. He is
equally clear on the point that no one has yet come up with an unassailable answer as to how it was built or
by whom. If you insist that all the "information" incorporated in it is due simply to chance or coincidence.

24

our feeling that such insistance is even "worse" than attributing it to knowledge obtained so~ehow by the
early Egyptians from somewhere else, or somebody else. Certainly one can postulate an incre:dible genius
who somehow popped up in Egypt, like one Im-Hotep; but even such a genius as Leonardo da Vi~ci could not
get his contemporaries -who were exceptionally open-minded and forward-thinking- to accept even half of
his inventions. His paintings were perfectly splendid, and some of his "cannon" and such most useful -but
heavier-than-air flying machines . . . my dear chap. impossible! Even allowing a genius, and ,the fact that
the quarries where the stones were cut are known, it still defies explanation. And in more tnan one way.
There are all sorts of internal "structures" in this pyramid that have puzzled archaeologists for centuries;
either their purpose of their methods of operation, as it were, lead to all sorts of, sometimes rathier hilarious,
"explanations". Tompkins makes no bones about this. (someone having removed my marker, I cannot find a
particularly priceless quotation which I had hoped to use; but it has been suggested, sensibly, that- the pyramid
was originally built only half-way up -i.e. picture a pyramid with the top half chopped off- page 17 - - to
permit the necessary astronomical calculations to be made -and then the builders solemnly went on to add
the top half even though it wasn't needed. The gentleman did not explain how this was done. Or, if such was
the ease, why.)
As if all this were not enough, the Pyramid preserves bodies even today, mummifying them in a matter of
weeks, completely without putrefaction, though there is ~, evidence that it was ~ used as' a tomb. The
chap who first noticed this (dead cats kept turning up in trash cans for tourists inside the Pyramid; but why
or how no one knows) wondered whether it was a property of this specific pyramid or wheth~r it was the
specific shape of this "shape" of pyramid that was responsible. He built a small wooden replica and put all
sorts of Ocidni'ents in it, such as calves brains which are notorious for rotting quickly; they di~n't. In fact,
anything placed in a pyramid built to the scale of the Great Pyramid is preserved indefinitel~ -and razor
blades re-sharpen themselves! You figure that one out.
The book is very readable, though you will find that you must take it slowly. As noted i~itially, itis
lavishly illustrated, and the captions -which are sometimes lengthy- are closely related to the ~ext and are
'must' reading. In fact, the whole book is 'must' reading.
Harking back to our article on cultural expansion, we can and may indulge some speculation ..:..and speculation it is. Considering the "average level" of culture in Eurasia, it seems unlikely that such s9phisticated
knowledge as is apparently incorporated in the Pyramid, could have been figured out in such a: (relatively)
short space of time. Do we, or may we, assume that visible, uninvited visitors came to earth in "Europe",
taught them various mathematical, astronomical, and other techniques; found the northerners a bit "uppity
and lambasted them (literally -vide the fused forts in that area); and that some of the initiates or priests
who still held this knowledge fled to the south where, because of their extraordinary knowledge, they were
given a home and passed on to some ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamian peoples at least enough of their
knowledge that the latter could build. both figuratively and literally, on that information? such knowledge
would have been so valuable it would not have been passed on to the masses, who had to be controlled if
they were to be "persuaded" to indulge the labour needed to build the Great Pyramid. In time the knowledge
decayed and finally was lost almost completely; but the remaining bits and pieces were enoughi to give the
ancient Greeks a start. and thus Pythagoras, Erathosthenes, Hipparchus. ~ al. became, famous for their
"diseoveries", which they deduced from fragments of ancient Egyptian knowledge.
Tompkins does not say all this, though he hints vaguely at "outside influences" in the early part of his
book; and there is no proof of this thesis - but read The Secrets ~ ~ Great Pyramid and then consider the
new evidence concerning the age of European culture by Renfrew.

Alma V. Sanderson
26 september 1909 - 18 January 1972
As many of you know. Alma Sanderson was stricken with cancer in April pf last year. She 'ought' to have
died in June, but instead made a remarkable recovery which we all hoped would prove to be a cur~. However.
in mid-December it became clear that the cancer in her brain had been knocked down but not out. She was
readmitted to hospital on the 29th December and died on the 18th of January.
'
For those who would like to show their sympathy in tangible form, we propose an Alma Sanderson Memorial
Fund, all the proceeds to be used to further the work of the society -the only "child" Alma:and Ivan T.
Sanderson ever had. But please. no condolences, no sentiment. Alma's body.' as she wished, has been given
to a medical institution to further research in cancer and other diseases. This and the continuation of
SITU's work are all that Ivan wants.

I. . . . . . . . . . . . . .~. . . ., .. . . . . . . . . . . .F . . . . . . . . .I~. .~. . . . . . . . . . .J . . ..

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

GOVERNING BOARD
*President (elected for 5 years)
*First Vice-President
*Second Vice-President
*Treasurer
*Secretary
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)

Hans stefan Santesson


Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Ivan T. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Thelma K. Yohe
Daniel F. Manning
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.

*Trustees in accordance with the laws of the state of New Jersey.

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Director
Deputy Director
Executive Secretary
Assistant Director for Communications Media
Assistant Director for Science & Technology

Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Allen V. Noe

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute; University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia,
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and IAndon (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of !)eophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr." Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, Canada
(Ethnosociologyand Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - PreSident, Roth Research-Animal Care, Inc., Washington, D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department. College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman. Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY

13 W. CHURCH ST.

WASHINGTON, N. J. 07882

TELEPHONE 201-689-0194

::,.

;;;.

SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINEO n


VOL. 5, NO.2

APRIL, 1972

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED


Columbia, New Jersey 07832
Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION
The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board 2t Trustees, in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a Secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the five Trustees, and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive ~, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our SOciety is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists, as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.

PARTICIPATION
Participation in the activities of the SoCiety is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is U.S. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $5, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
The Society contracts-- with individuals, and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the society.

NOTICES
In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion, as yet, of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities, as ')1 now, cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print ma.y be construed as those of the Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the wa.y in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.

PUBLICATIONS
The society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From ~ts establishment in July, 1965, until the end of March 1968. the Society issued only
a newsletter. on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were. however. entitled PURSUIT-Vol. 1. No.3 and No.4. dated June and September. 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2. No. 1. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January. April. July, and October. Back issues. some
available only as xerox copies, are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an order form.

Vol. 5. No. 2
April. 1972

PURSUIT
THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE
INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher: Hans Stefan Santesson


Executive Editor: Marion L. Fawcett
Managing Editor: Allen V. Noe
Associate Editor: Walter J. McGraw
Consulting Editor: Ivan T. sanderson

CONTENTS

The Taxonomy of Knowledge


Editorial: On the True Nature of Things

Urology

A Documented Case of Governmental Dishonesty


~ ~ Confusio~

An Underwater Explosion - Or What?, by Robert J. Durant


Fire-Walking Again
Ontology
Other Universes, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Physics
Sound as a Highway Hazard
More on Light Wheels, by Robert J. Durant
Chemistry
The "Rustless" Iron Pillar at Delhi
Astronomy
The Moons of Mars
Biorhythms: Planets: and Astrologers
Geology
On Big Things, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Terrestrial Meteorite Craters, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Biology
Thunderbirds Again - and Again, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Anthropology
A Rather "Disgusting" Case, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Current Pursuits
Charles Fort's Notes
Members' Forum
Book. Reviews

. @

26
27

28
30

31
32
32

33
35
36
36

39
38
40

42
44

44
45'
45

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1972

THE TAXONOMY OF

KNOWLEDGE

GEOLOGY
THE.

TANGIBLES

VI
EARTH SCIENCES
A.tmosph.rics and Meteorblogy:
Oceanology, Hydrology, and Glacialo;,; Tectonics. Vulconol.
agy, Se;lmology, GeophYI;cl
and Geomorphology; Petrology and Minetola;)';
Geodesv, Geography,
Cartography.
Dating.

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE

MATTER
Atomics., Molecular
CheIYustry. C''1.tollogrophy.

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

TECHNOLOGY AND
PERFORMANCE
Theor.tical Physics, NucleoniCS.
Classical PhySICS. Electrics.
E lectromagnetici. Magnetics.
MechaniC".
.

P,o'0.geano logy. Barony. ZOO


09Y. E_.,b,ology. HIs.tology.
Phyuology and Blochemis"Y,
Anatomy (Including Man): Gene.
ics and Evolution, Physical Anthropology;
Paloeontology.
E .hology and
Ecology.

THE USEFUL ARTS

Cultural Anthropology and


Ethnology (Archaeology

IS

tee hnique). Pre-History.

H,story, and Folklore; Ph;lology and LingulSlicI,

MENTAL CONCEPTS
LogIC and EplS'emology;
P$ycholog y. E .hle s and AesthetiC", Comparative Inteiligenc.;

Pafo;:uychlcs.

EXISTENCE
Space. Time,
locu ... Co .. ",ology.
MEASUREMENT
Number. Quont,ty.
Arithmetic, Algebra.
Geometry. Trigonometry.
Calculus, Topology. Theory
01 Gomes. Probobility,CooO
Inc ,clenee.

THE

INTANGIBLES

Eyerything in existence, including ~existence" itsell, and thus all of our pc>ssible concepts and all knowledge
that we possess or will eyer poness, is contained within this wheel. Technologies and the useful arts lie
within the inner circle, haying access to any or all of the ten malar departments of organized knowledge.
From the KORAN: "Acqui .. e knowledge. It enables its possessor to lenow right from wrong; it lights the way to
heayen; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to
happiness; it sUltains UI in mi sery; it is an ornament among friends, and an armour against enem.es. The Prophet.
.

26

27

EDITORIAL

ON THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS


I have asked to be permitted to sign this personally as I wish to take sole responsibility for what I am
going to say; and also because - though we publish the usual statement that "No opinions expressed or
statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society" (see
inside front cover and in our brochure) - I wish to exonerate both the Boards that set our policy and administer our Society; and, even more so, our distinguished Advisory Board. In other words, I am speaking entirely for myself and not on behalf of SITU as a corporate body, or with the concurrence of any individual
member, or group of members, thereof. However, I feel strongly that the following should be put on the record.
It would seem to me, after over forty years of field work and research; and of reading the current scientific, quasi-scientific, and a lot of serious popular literature (and that in several languages), I have come to
the point where I have to face UP to certain disturbing facts; or at least one basic one. There is now just too
much coming out in orthodox scientific journals to permit me to ignore these facts any longer.
Said facts are that, while we thought we knew at the least the basic structure of "reality". it is now becoming clear that we don't - and in just about every department of so-called "knowledge". Our precepts, as
taught, are tumbling like ninepins. Moreover, the way in which they are "tumbling" is most distressing to
scientists - so, more power to them for having the guts to say so - however much laymen, and the mystics,
may deride them for their "blind" orthodoxy.
The detailed facts would require at least four fat volumes, written in simple language, but with massive
quotes, or paraphrasing, to expostulate this problem. Therefore, may I just go ahead without even one example? (Said examples have been increasingly turning up in this journal, and more especially in its Book
Reviews.)

That which has now been. discovered, and by truly scientific means, or which we have accomplished by
technological methods is, manifestly, both sound and working. Nevertheless, an ever-increasing volume of
facts -and sound evidence to regard these as real- is/are cropping up every day. A remarkable example is
reviewed on page 3,2 of this issue. The point is that the "reality" we have been taught to accept, and the
reasons for dOing so, appear now not to be the whole truth. There is just too much coming to light that all of
us once thought was inexplicable (or just plain "baloney") that our modern knowledge is explaining; or for
which there could be valid explanations within our modern terms of scientific and technological reference.
This causes the scientific community some distress and not a little aggravation, but it is giving the socalled occultists (including the mystics, and all such assorted thinkers) cause for somewhat raucous and
considerably unwarranted glee. As Forteans, we have always stood squarely in the middle; denying neither
opinion, but insisting on a pragmatic and realistic approach to all matters. This, of course, leans strongly
to the so-called "scientific" approach. So I come IP the reason for this expostulation.
However you look at it, or wherever you stumble across it today, it becomes increasingly obvious that we
are either living in a "twin" universe, or w~ are -and always have been- infested with what is best called
the paranormal from another universe, or universes. Thus, there are two sets of "rules" or "natural laws
operative in our Universe, or our Earth. and in all our lives. One -that one that is not our accepted "reality"is either "weaker", less general. or rarer. or "occasional". This manifests jtself in the unexplaineds. But
we must now realize and appreciate the fact that these could or might (and watch those qualifying words) be
explained even along our current scientific principles and/or by our current technological know-how.
I. personally. am increasingly persuaded to suspect that this "other reality" (which we have come to call
the para-normal) is a great deal more prevalent than the average person thinks; and that this goes both for
working scientists and the dedicated mystics. Further, I am willing to put it on record that it is due. for the
most part. to our (legitimate) ignorance of it, and to the average person's reluctance to even talk about it
-and notably about their own personal experiences.
Thus, as a fortean from way back, all I can ask is that people, from astronauts to cow-farmers, come out
with both their experiences and their thoughts thereupon; and let the proverbial "chips" fall where they may.
Ivan T. Sanderson.

28

UFOLOGY

A DOCUMENTED CASE
OF GOVERNMENTAL DISHONESTY
Almost from the moment that ufology was 'invented', there have been those who have charged the
Government with deliberate "cover-up", sometimes
with such continuing vehemence that they have alienated even their staunchest supporters. The trouble is
that they have rarely, if ever, even tried to present
full proof of their allegations. We now have in our
files a document entitled "The Fitzgerald Report",
copyright 1959 by none other than Robert J. Durant,
who had not even heard of Ivan T. Sanderson at that
time. We wish very much that we had space to reproduce the whole thing, but it runs 20 pages *, so we
must condense and stick primarily to the evidence of
"cover-up" and such.
At approximately 3 a.m. on the morning of the 21st
September 1958 a Mrs. William Fitzgerald observed a
metallic, disc-shaped object maneuvering in the front
yard of her home in Sheffield Lake, Ohio. The object
was also seen by Mrs. Fitzgerald's son John. Neither
realized that the other had seen it until late the next
morning when Mr. Fitzgerald, who had at first disbelieved the boy's story, questioned them separately
and found that their descriptions were identical.
Later, the UFO Research Committee of Akron, which
investigated this case, found two other persons in the
immediate neighbourhood who had had experiences
which helped to confirm the Fitzgeralds' story.
Two other 'sightings', one most pertinent to our
tale, were reported in Lorain, Ohio, which borders
Sheffield Lake. At 2 a.m. a Mrs. Grego watched a
"big red ball" moving outside her window; she reported that it made a low pulsating sound that made
her "sick to her stomach", but she noted no aftereffects. At 2:30 a.m. a Mrs. Stewart was wakened by
a light flooding through her window. A look at her
clock indicated that it could not be the sun, and the
moon had set at 1:07 a.m. on the 21st. She described
the object as being several times larger than the
moon, and noted that it moved off in a westerly direction. Neither of these cases would seem to be in
any way related to the Fitzgeralds', but we will come
back to Mrs. Stewart later.
Mrs. Fitzgerald called the newspaper and was subsequently interviewed by members of the UFO Research Committee of Akron who prepared a report and
sent copies to the Aerial Phenomena Group, Air
Technical Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson Air
Force ~ase, with a request for an investigation. The
Air Force sent two investigators who checked train
schedules, lake activity (Sheffield is on Lake Erie),
and other possible factors in the sighting. On the 4th

*Copies are available at $2.00 each.

October they 'interviewed' Mrs. Fitzgerald and her


son John, with a member of the UFORCA attending.
Mrs. Fitzgerald filled out the standard form carried
by the Air Force men and was asked five questions;
young John was asked one. The AF chaps then departed, stating that a full report would be sent to Mrs.
Fitzgerald within 30 days.
The Air Force first released their conclusions on
the case to the Honorable A. D. Baumhart, Jr., Mrs.
Fitzgerald's congressman, to whom she had written
in an attempt to get some 'action'. The letter to
Congressman Baumhart was signed by W. P. Fisher,
Major General, USAF, Director, Legislative Liaison;
the pertin ent part read as follows:
"The investigation revealed that a railroad track
ran near the home of Mrs. Fitzgerald. The night of
Mrs. Fitzgerald's sighting, a train passed the house
at approximately the same hour of the reported sighting. The train had a rotating headlight which, under
some conditions, would produce unusual effects.
Contact was also made with Chief Bosun Mate
Willi a.m Schott of the Coast Guard Station. Lorain,
Ohio. Chief Schott reported that he was using his
spotlight in an attempt to attract the attention of
another ship, and that the light was directed toward
shore in the general direction of Mrs. Fitzgerald's
house. The time and date of this incident coincide
with those reported by Mrs. Fitzgerald. Mrs. steward
(sic) of Lorain, Ohio, a witness listed in Mrs. Fitzgerald's report, could not recall anything unusual on
the night of the reported sighting. Mr. (sic) Grego of
Lorain, another witness, was not available for interview. The weather at the time of the incident was a
misty rain with haze and smoke.
"The conclusion of Air Force investigators was
that the combination of moving lights, noise of the
train and prevailing weather account for the illusion
experienced by Mrs. Fitzgerald. The Air Technical
Intelligence Center, after evaluating the evidence in
this case, concurred with the conclusion of the investigators. "
Now to the real nitty-gritty:
Mrs. Stewart (not steward) signed an affidavit
giving the facts concerning her experience and
added the statement that:
"On October 4. 1958. I was visited by Technical
Sergeants Hof and Haistain from Air Force Intelligence department. I repeated the account of my experience as written above. The sergeants talked to
me abqut the sighting for about 10 minutes. They
were going to have me fill out a report form but then
decided again st it."
As The Fitzgerald Report points out. the Air Force
statement that Mrs. "Steward (sic) could not recall
anything unusual" must have been (1) a deliberate
attempt to distort the facts. (2) an unforgiveable act

29

of negligence, or (3) an extreme case of ignorance."


As for Mrs. Fitzgerald, her reaction to the report
by the USAF was that "The person who made it must
be insane." They may not have been insane, but they
were certainly incompetent.
1) They did not bother, even when asked, to observe headlights on trains passing nearthe Fitzgerald house -the light never hits Mrs. Fitzgerald's
window.
-2) The Fitzgerald house is 3000 feet from Lake
Erie, which cannot be seen from the house. In addition, the Coast Guard vessel was 5Yz miles downshore from the Fitzgerald house when the signalling
took place, and the light would have had to shine
through downtown Lorain to be seen at the Fitzgeralds' -rather a neat trick for any searchlight, aside
from the fact that the signalling apparently took
place about 2 hours before Mrs. Fitzgerald's sighting.
3) It wouldn't help to interview Mr. Grego; it" was
his wife who saw the "big red ball ~
4) According to the USAF, "misty rain with haze
and smoke": Mrs. Fitzgerald stated that it was not
raining, and the wind direction was such that smoke
from a U.S. Steel plant would have been blown away
from, not toward, the Fitzgerald home.
5) Chief Schott told a member of UFORCA that the
AF sergeants did not obtain a written statement from
him or even question him closely about his activities
on the lake. The "investigators" did not make a house
to house check in the neighbourhood for further
evidence either. They did not ask Mrs. Fitzgerald for
a 3-D drawing of tlE object, showed little interest in
its movements, and had Mrs. Fitzgerald fill out a
form intende"d for reporting obj ects in the sky, not in
a front yard, thus making it difficult for Mrs. Fitzgerald to turn in an adequate report. Obviously, the
USAF did nothing to improve on this.
Rather grimly, the Fitzgerald Report notes that on
October 6, 1958, the USAF put out a news release
stating that 98.1% of all UFO reports are of "known"
objects, with the rider that "Refinements in investigative procedure have resulted in a steady decline of
unknowns". The FR retorts that "After studying the
Fitzgerald report it !';hnul d be manifestly clear what
the Air Force means by 'refinements in investigative
procedure' ".
The FR includes a 6-page appendix detailing the
correspondence between" the USAF on the one hand,
and Mrs. Fitzgerald, Congressman Baumhart, other
members of Congress, and members of UFORCA on
the other. We cannot reproduce all of it by any means,
but we shall pick some of the juiciest items. To wit:
The original Fitzgerald Report, with a letter requesting proper investigation and disciplinary action

against the Air Force 'investigators', was sent to


General Fisher and to Major Lawrence J. Tacker, the
officer in charge of handling all enquiries concerning
UFOs except t hose made by members of Congress.
General Fisher replied as follows:
"I refer to your inquiry concerning allegations
relative to the unidentified flying object sighting
reported by Mrs. William Fitzgerald, Sheffield Lake,
Ohio, on 21 September 1958. The investigation conducted by Air Technical Intelligence Center on the
unidentified flying object sighting reported by Mrs.
Fitzgerald was thoroughly reviewed by Air Force
Headquarters. The Air Force is entirely satisfied "that
the individuals who conducted the investigation of the
unidentified flying object sighting at Sheffield Lake
on 21 September 1~58 were thorough and competent.
Further, that their"" findings were accurate and
"' "
adequate. "
Major Tacker's reply, except for the opening
phrase, is identical to General Fisher's. Letters to
the Secretary of Defense; "the" Se"cretary of the Air
Force, and to Colonel Gilbert "of "ATIC were answered
by Major Tacker with identical letters.
UFORCA and Mrs. Fitzgerald were becoming
rather annoyed and sent a still more strongly worded
letter to Major Tacker and received a rather venomous
letter in return; we quote only portions of it:
"We do not have the resources alloted to this
project to fill individual requests or to answer the
erroneous charges concerning individual sightings
which amateur organizations such as yours make
against the Air Force. Further, we are not interested
in your theories or science fiction approach to this
subject. [We aren't making this up, you know;
UFORCA has the letters on file.]
"The Air Force is rompelled to "deal scientifically
and objectively with facts and the findings to date
deny the existence of flying saucer"so' We are sure our
analysis and evaluation of reported sightings by
qualified scientific personnel are more than adequate."
From General"Fisher:
" ... case closed ... "
" Members of UFORCA wrote asking permission to
see the official Air Force records of the Fitzgerald
case, which the USAF had stated were unclassified.
They were informed, as was Congressman Baumhart,
that their request could not be honoured. The reports
may be unclassified but you can't see them?!
T() a certllin extent, one sympathizes w'ith the poor

Members are asked once again to try to find us new members. If y"ou wish a supply of our 'prospectus', drop
us a note and let us know how many you think you can use.

30

old Ai.r Force which should never have been given


the job in the first place and was never given adequate personnel. either in numbers or training. to
tackle a job that has confounded the best minds
around. However. they could be polite about it; and
they could be honest. To state that investigations are

competent and adequate but that one lacks adequate


resources suggests a bad case of finniminnimyosis*.
*This disease is caused by an excess of finnlminnies in the bloodstream with the result that the
left hand does not know what the right hand is dOing.

CHAOS & CONFUSION

AN UNDERWATER EXPLOSION - OR WHAT?


by Robert J. Durant
The average depth of water in the oceans is 12,450
feet, as compared with an average height of the land
above the sea, of 2,750 feet. The greatest known
depth is 35,640 feet. in the Marianas Trench in the
Pacific. The highest known land is Mount Everest,
29,002 feet. About 23 per cent of the ocean is shallower than 10,000 feet; about 76 per cent is between
10,000 and 20,000 feet; and a little more than 1 per
cent is deeper than 20,000 feet.
A certain long, narrow depression in an oceanic
bed is called a trench. The deepest trench in the
Atlartic Ocean is located about 100 miles north of
the island of Puerto Rico, approximately at the southern boundary of the area we have come to know as
the "Bermuda Triangle-. This trench extends some
300 miles in an East-West direction, and reaches a
depth of 28,374 feet. Aside from the general shape
and depth of this trench, which has been ascertained
with sonar depth-finding equipment, we know little
about the state of affairs in its lower reaches. This
is because there is at this time simply no way to
construct an adequately instrumented exploratory
device that will withstand the fantastic pressure
developed by the 28,000 foot column of water. This
pressure is on the order of 13,000 pounds per square
inch.
Flights between Puerto Rico and the United States
cf<?sS the Puerto Rico Trench (and the Bermuda

100 Miles
~

P. R. Trench

Triangle) several hundred times every week. Unusual


incidents in this area are statistically rare, but when
one does occur it is almost always a "whopper". Here
is one such story that recently came to my attention.
An associate of mine was assigned as copilot on a
Boeing 707 jetliner carrying passengers from San Juan
to Kennedy Airport in New York. Twenty minutes after
takeoff the jet levelled off at its assigned cruising
altitude of 31,000 feet. The pilots checked their
navigation to insure that they were accurately guiding
the plane over a checkpoint 100 miles from San Juan.
The copilot noted that the direction-finding radios
indicated the proper bearing of 354 degrees magnetic
and checked the distance-measuring equipment reading of 99 nautical miles from the airport transmitter.
He was about to record the checkpoint passage when
his eye caught an amazing sight in the water below.
At the 1: 30 o'clock position, about four or five
miles from the path of the jet, the ocean was boiling
up in a gigantic hemispheric mound. The copilot described the phenomenon as "a big cauliflower in the
water. He immediately called the captain and the
flight engineer to see the "cauliflower D . The three
crew members watched for about 30 seconds until the
sight passed behind the wing of the jet and disappeared from view. The copilot watched the mound of white
water growing in both height and diameter, but by the
time the other two crew members unlocked their
harnesses and climbed over to the right side of the
cockpit for a look the mass had begun to fall back.
Nevertheless, all three agreed that they had witnessed
sorre thing of a most unusual nature, and of extraordinary dimensions. Making a rough calculation
based on the apparent size of the mound of water as
seen from an altitude of 31,000 feet, it appears that
the diameter of the mound must have been lh to 1 mile
and with a height lh to 1/3 of the diameter.
As so often happens in instances of encounters
with anomalous phenomena, such as UFO's. Abominable Snowmen, and so forth, these observers were
somewhat stunned by the scene. Consequently, they
did not turn back to observe the "cauliflower in more
detail; though, at this late date, they feel that it"is
most unfortunate that they did "not do so. The flight
con tin lied to Kennedy Airport without further incident.
At Kennedy my informant telephoned the Coast
Guard and the FBI to relate the details of the "sight-

31

ing". Several days later he checked back with both


agencies and was told that they had no knowledge of
other similar reports, missing ships, unusual waves,
or anything else in connection with the reported
underwater upheaval. He did make one more call,
however, and that was to an acquaintance of his who
is a seismologist on the staff of Fordham University
in New York City. After exchanging pleasantries and
some small talK about mutual inteiests, the copilot
brought up the real purpose of his telephone call. The
Fordham seismologist, whose duties include operation
of a round-the-clock seismic wave detector, got very
huffy, said he had no knowledge whatsoever that could
possibly be connected with the sighting, and then
hung up!
The three crew members who witnessed the "cauliflower" believe t.hat they observed the result of an
underwater atomic explosion. The shape of the mound
of water, its frothing and almost boiling appearance,
_and the enormous size of it, all point to an atomic
explosion. And there is another circumstance that
makes the atomic explosion hypothesis even more
appealing: This incident took place on the afternoon
of April 11, 1963, one day after the loss of the atomic
sublI!arine U.S.S. Thresher.
The Thresher met an unknown fate in the North
Atlantic, several thousand miles from the Puerto Rico
Trench. At least, that if? the offiCial version. For any
number of very good reasons having to do with national security, the location and even the date of the
demise of t he nuclear powered, missile carrying,
Thresher might have been misrepresented to the
public. The pilots might have witnessed the explosion
of the Thresher's nuclear power plant and/or its
atomic missile warheads. Or they might have seen the
end of a Russia,n sub destroyed by the American Navy
in retribution for the Soviet destruction of the Thresh~. This last may sound implausible, but I siiiiiiiit"it
as a distinct possibility, considering the state of
affairs in the world today and the extent of the clandestine activities being carried out by both sides. A
volcanic eruption on the sea bed is another possibility, though the shape of the water mass would seem to
stand against that hypothesis. Underwater volcanic
activity is a well known occurrence, but it does not
result in the sudden lifting of millions of tons of
water.
.
One more possibility comes to mind, and that is
the reason that this case is being presented in the
pages of PURSUIT. Tbe explosion, if that is what it
was, took place almost directly over the Puerto Rico
Trench and in that part of the globe where so many
unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft have
taken place .. In other words, this case might be another piece in the so-called "Bermuda" puzzle.
The location of the "cauliflower" was approximately 19 degrees 54 minutes north latitude, 066 degrees
47 minutes west longitude. Unless the pilots were
greatly mistaken in their estimate of the size of the
mound of water, there must have been repercussions

of one sort or another from this incident, such as high


waves on the Puerto Rican shores, dead fish, swamped craft, etc. We urge readers living in that part of
the Carribean to search the newspaper files for information that might serve to shed light on this incident.

FIRE-WALKING AGAIN
A number of members have questioned Bob Durant's
'dismissal' of fire-walking via the Liedenfrost Effect.
They have brought up some pertinent points, but the
fact remains that ordinary fire-walking is explained
by the Liedenfrost Effect. There are other cases of
fire-handling -e.g. dancing on red-hot wood embers
for twenty minutes or more (the fire-walkers of
Langadas, a small town near Salonica, Greece, reported by member No. 1060), sitting on a red-hot
stove for extended periods and the like- which seem
to be connected with a particular trance state. On
the other hand, we have now acquired quite a collection of cases of immunity from injury which do not
fit either category. Some of these are most extraordinary.
Adolph Heuer reports having watched a TV show
which featured a Jamaican gentleman who had the
MC smash bottles and strew them around, and then
jumped onto the broken glass and walked around on
it without so much as scratching his feet. His expression was described by Adolph as that of a man
who had been asked to jump off a high diving board
into a barrel of concrete. Sibley Morrill reports a
similar exhibition he witnessed some years ago. In
both instances, the performer insisted that there
was nothing 'psychic' about it but that he had no
idea why he didn't get cut.
Ivan and Alma Sanderson once knew a quite "mad"
Mexican aristocrat of the old schoo~!. [whose name
Ivan Sanderson cannot now remember), who used to
munch on champagne glasses, stick steak knives
through his cheeks, and on one memorable occasion
-to show his devotion to Alma- carved the initials
" AVS" on his arm. He bled profusely at first, but by
the end of the evening not even a scar was visible!
Then there was another old school friend of Ivan's
-Prince Singh of Kapurthala, India- who did the
same for years in chi-chi European restaurants. Both,
incidently, are still alive.
These chaps aren't 'psychic' in the ordinary
sense of the word. And the things they do are patently physical. There is no question of a trance state
or any "preparation" at all. The writer (MLF) walks
on gravel without distress but definitely draws the
line at a pile of broken glass.
As for ordinary fire-walking, member No. 372
reports that he has walked on slate soaked with
gasoline and set afire. It singed the hair on his legs
but he was otherwise unharmed. He recommends
shaving the legs; he says it smells terrible.

32

II. ONTOLOGY
OTHER UNIVERSES
by Ivan T. Sanderson
At last we are getting somewhere with the core
problem of all, and the one which, if tackled boldly
and without prejudice or preconception, could not
only knit a lot of troublesome mysteries together, but
also give us a firm basis for the construction of a
better eoncept of reality; and, withall, without straining our current logic too much. Moreover, the first
clear statement on this in any popular form came from
none other than the dean of science-writers, Walter
Sullivan of the N. Y. Times. Since not everybody
reads the Times, and-many of those who do probably
skip the SCIeiiCe section. it is unlikely that many,
even of our members. picked this one up; so we quote
and paraphrase.
In his column of the 27th January of this year, Mr.
Sullivan wrote, under a head "Laws of the Universe
Put Into Question" (we would have said "Laws of ~
Universe .. "), and we quote: - Recent astronomical
observations have . . for example, brought into
question the reliability of the yardstick used in estimating distances to faraway galaxies. They have revealed objects that s'eem to be moving faster than
light . . and others whose energy output defies
explanation." He then goes on to say that two suggestions have been made to explain these observations: and it is the second of these that packs the
wallop, and this in just one brief sentence, namely:
.. A more radical suggestion is that matter is entering
this universe ~ other universes [emphasis ours],
carrying with it the phYsical 'constants' characteristics ofthose universes". Mr. Sullivan then goes on to
cast the first real shadow of doubt upon the so-called
DopplElr Effect, a matter that we have always doubted
seriously and which w.e have discussed with five of

the really leading astronomers of the world. But that


is another story.
That astronomers have been getting into a rather
tight box is obvious to anybody primarily: interested
in that subject. and even to those who re~ columns
such as Mr. Sullivan's and the serious popularscientific magazines like Scientific Americian and The
~ Scientist. However, this statement about "other
universes", and especially having some connection
with ours, is really cosmological and wrapped tightly
around by its cocoon of ontology. Once you can conceive of this idea of other universes ih physical
terms, you will be ready to try and understand not
only the theories of Jacques Vallee and ;John Keel
regarding UFOs, but a very high percent~e of other
forteana. like unauthorized things that fall from the
sky; out-of-place animals; "monsters" :of various
kinds; poltergeists; and so on and so fort)1. The key
to the whole thing is. as we have found o~t after ten
years of studying the so-called "Bermuda Triangle"
(which it isn't) and its eleven equally sp:aced areas
of anomaly, disappearances and appearances scattered around the globe, is what we call "Time". This
means that these "other universes" could b~ precisely
coincident with ours in space (or anywh'ere from a
tiny bit to infinity off our base). but run on different
"times".
It is therefore in no way inconceivabl~ that very
high intelligencies in other "universes" could devise
purely ph.vsico-mechanical means of. "dropping
through" from one space-time continuum ~o another,
or of collecting things from one and dumping things
into others. At that level of competence :they could
possibly create things, animate (monsters) or inanimate (UFOs), to suit their purposes - whatever
those might be. Even if our universe is ~ither finite
or in'finite, there is still an infinity Qf room for
others in time.

III. PHYSICS
SOUND AS A HIGHWAY HAZARD
Our member No. 340 wrote us some time ago both
to report and to ask a question. What follows is
really in the nature of a "public service". His letter
read:
"Have you ever driven a car with only one window
open and noticed (it's fairly rare) sometimes the air
in thE! car will start throbbing or pulsing. It would
seem to me that the whole car is reverberating like
the inside of a giant whistle. Some infrasonics are
hazardous . . Could this kind of infrasonic effect
be da~ngerous, directly? indirectly? by causing the
driver to have an accident?"
The answer, from the British Acoustical Society
at the University of Salford, England, is a resounding

YES. Studies by that Society have revealed that


"infrasonics". i.e. noises inaudible to 'the human
ear, are common today in cars and produce a state
Similar to drunkenness in drivers, slclwing their
reaction time by 20 to 30 per cent. This is particularly
true at superhighway speeds and the effects are
accentuated when the car windows are op~n. It would
seem that a number of otherwise unexplaine:d accidents
are due to the menace of infrasonics. So far as we
know. no one has come up with an answer ~o this one,
and we can only suggest that our member~ bear these
facts in mind, particularly when driving on turnpikes
and other high-speed roads, and pull off ~he road at
the first sign of relaxed vigilance, slowe4 reactions,
or whatever. If in doubt, stop. Better to be late than
dead.

--------_.----........_---_.------------ ........................

33

MORE ON LIGHT WHEELS


by Robert J. Durant
The radial lines of light that comprise the "submarine -lightwheels" have often been reported to appear as &shaped or sinusoidally curved. This curvature is one of the most puzzling aspects of this
curious phenomenon. In the remarks that follow I hope
to demonstrate that the curvature of the radials is a
necessary result of the fact that the light beams are
formed by the radiation of sound waves.
The case for sound as the exciting force of the
light beams has been made quite forcefully by Dr.
Wallace Minto in Fat'e Magazine (July 1964) and in
chapter 7 of Ivan T. Sanderson's Invisible Residents.
In brief, Minto shows that the simple mechanical
vibrations of sound cause a microorganism called
Noctiluca miliaris to emit light. * His theory explains
other characteristics of the lightwheels, such as their
ability to pass undisturbed through the hulls of ships.
But why do the lines sometimes curve? Is it not a
verity that light always travels in straight lines? If
you will bear with me through a bit of mathematical
analysis, the problem of the curvature of these lines
of light might be very neatly resolved.
We must assume that in some I,mknown manner, and
for som e unknown purpose, rotating beam s of sound
are being generated under the waters in certain parts
of the world. Instead of viewing the entire rotating
system, it will be simpler to focus on a single component radial or spoke of the wheel. This we assume
to be a rotating source of sound waves, exactly
analogous to arotating beaInof light from alighthouse.
Sound waves consist of physical vibrations. These
vibrations excite the Noctiluca into emitting light.
Thus, by obtaining a clear picture of the path of the
sound waves in water, one automatically has an exact
picture of the light pattern resulting from the sound.
For the purposes of mathematical analYSis it is
often convenient to view the whole as a sum of many
small parts. In this way a line can be represented as
the sum of an infinite number of points, or a curve
can be composed from any number of connected
straight lines. In accordance with this method, we
will substitute a "chopped up series of sound impulses for a continuously rotating and transmitting
sound beam.
Imagine a source of sound waves that will transmit
the sound in a straight beam. A practical example of
this would be a highly directional loudspeaker. Extremely directional "coherent" underwater sound
sources that spread out only a few feet per hundred
feet have been developed and put to use in various
military applications. Now, immerse this speaker in
water, and begin to rotate it slowly in a clockwise

* A protozoan that generates light on any physical


stimulus.

direction. Instead of transmitting a steady beam of


sound, let us make the speaker emit a "beep" once
per second. And finally, let us assume that the
speaker rotates at 2Jfz RPM, which is equivalent to
15 degrees of arc per second.
Thus, our speaker is rotating at a steady 15
degrees per second and sending out a very short
acoustical burst once per second. At the end of one
second the beep will have travelled 1450 meters (4800
feet) through the water, and the speaker is just about
ready to emit the second beep. At the end of two
seconds the first beep has travelled 1450 x2 or 2900
meters, the second beep has travelled 1450 meters;
and the third beep is about to be sent. Figure 1 is a
graphical representation of the paths taken by the
sound impulses or "beeps". Note that while each beep
is radiated from the speaker at a steady rate, there
is an angular difference of 15 degrees between the
paths taken by each successive beep.
Observe the points of the arrows in Figure 1. The
arrow-points show the position of the sound impulses
that serve to excite the Noctiluca. Each arrowhead is
a particle of vibrating water. If the particle of water
contains Noctiluca, it will appear as a pinpoint of
light. Figure 2 shows a number of arrows formed as
the machine beeps through 90 degrees of rotation, or
six seconds of elapsed time. The arrowheads can be
viewed as the positions of the beeps or points of
light.
Figure 3 is formed by connecting the arrowheads
with a smooth curve. Drawing this smooth curve is
equivalent to replacing the one-per-gecond beeps with
a continuous sound beam. Thus',Pigure 3 is the path,
and the only path, described by sound waves emanating from a rotating source in water. This curve is
a special form of spiral that makes precisely the
same pattern displayed by the water spraying from a
lawn sprinkler or the sparks from a catherine wheel
fireworks device. In certain respects it is similar to
oceanic or atmo spheric vortexes. It is obvious that
this configuration has a very pronounced curvature.
When two reciprocal lines are viewed, the general
shape is definitely similar to the letter "S" - - i.e.
tWisting, or snakelike. But the curve is not that of a
sine wave. Many observers have described the radials
as being "sinusoidal" in shape, but it is clear now
that they were using the term in the more genera!
sense of curving or undulating rather than as a precisely described trigonometric sine wave.
The actual shape of the spiral formed by the rotating sound source is curved much less than Figure 3
would indicate. I have drawn that curve with a deliberate distortion of scale in order to emllhasize the
general shape of the spiral. The shape of any spiral
formed in this manner can be infered from the ratio of
the velocity of the impulse (V) to the rotational
velocity of the source (W). Where the ratio of V to W
is great, the curvature will be small; and vice-versa.
Thus, a rotating beam of light will show no apprecia-

34

2900 M

... 1

Figure 1

Figure 2

ble curvature because the speed of light is so enormous. At the other end of the scale, the curvature
of a rotating garden spray is very great b~cause the
velocity of the water is probably on the order of 10
feet per second, as compared with the speed of light
which is 186,000 x 5280 feet per second.
Varying the rotational speed of the s,ource will
also alter the shape of the spiral, and once again this
is in agreement with the garden sprinkler Iilnalogy. If
the sprinkler is made to rotate more slowly" the jets
simply spray out in straight lines. The practical application of this theory to the lightwheel phenomenon
serves to explain some of the disparities' in the reports of the shape of the wheels, for observers have
at times seen the lines as straight shafts and at other
times as curving beams. In short, the tieams will
appear curved when the device is rotating~ and conversely, they will "flatten out .. when the device slows
its rotation or stops altogether. The distance of the
observer from the center of the phenomenon is also a
factor. If one observes only the outer extremities of
the beams, they will always appear to be straight
lines. But if one has a view of the entire ~ength of a
beam, a curvature will appear. Some ships iencountering the submarine lightwheels have sail~d directly
over the center, and they have reported a: very pronounced curvature near the center. All 'of this is
perfectly consistent with our analysis and the graphical representation of Figure 3.
Now we come to two questions that wou~d seem to
elude a precise answer. How many radials do the
lightwheels have? How rapidly do the whe~ls rotate?
Here it gets a bit sticky because we !have such
sketchy data from the mariners who have encountered
the lightwheels. Until we get a good set of aerial
photos of a lightwheel, or until one of these seamen
comes forward with much more detailed information,
we will have to resort to some educated guesswork.
The problem is that the beams of sound m!lst spread
out Quite a bit as they move through the w~ter. Even
a laser light beam one thousandth of an imch in diameter on the earth's surface expands to an area of
several hundred feet when it is focused on: the moon.
This results from innumerable collisions with air and
dust particles on the way. So it must be as~umed that
even a very good "coherent .. sound source VVill expand
considerably over a distance of six or seyen miles.
Without the spreading of the beams one cquld calculate the number of beams by the observed ratio of the
width of the ,beam to the width of the dark area as the
I
beams sweep past the ship. In one particularly well
reported incident thi s ratio was given as
feet for
the light beam and 100 feet for the interve~ing blank
space. These figures (assuming the beams to be symmetrically placed) mean that there is one beam placed
on every fifth degree of arc around the cirGumference
of the device, for a total of 72 individual beams. But
other reports give somewhat different wi4th ratios,
all the way up to a one-to-one ratio of widths. I believe this disparity is due to the spreading of the

?5

Figure 3

35

sound beams as they travel outward from the source.


All that we can say for sure at this point is that there
are no more than 72 individual radials. For reasons
that are too involved to go into here I believe that the
true figure is close to 72 separate beams.
We run into the same problem calculating the rotational speed of the lightwheels. Observers have often
stated that the beams crossed at a rate of two or three
per second. Assuming 72 beams, this would give a
rotation of 1 2/3 and 2'h RPM, respectively.
The size of the lightwheels is another problem.
They ought to vary with the power of the sound source
and with the number of Noctiluca present. Here again
the observations seem imprecise. One report has the
lines extending to t he horizon or "about 3000 feet
long". This observation was made aboard a freighter,

and assuming the point of observation to be about


25 feet above the waterline, the horizon wO'uld in fact
be located 6.15 miles away! The size of the generating device, on the other hand, seems to be 200 to 300
feet in diameter, and this figure is more readily believed because the observers literally sailed directly
over the machines.
And I definitely plunk for machines rather than
animals. Dr. Minto's suggestion that mating whales
might be the sound source is ingenious but does not
seem to me to fit all the facts at our disposal. It is
true that a variety of animals use either radar or
sonar, emitting regular "beeps", but that even mating
whales would rotate (while remaining stationary) with
the regularity required to produce the light wheels as
described by competent observers, I doubt very much.

IV. CHEMISTRY
THE "RUSTLESS" IRON PILLAR AT DELHI
In our October, 1971, issue we included an article
on the "rustless" iron pillar at Delhi, India, a
standard item in fortean books. This dealt with the
findings of one G. Wranglen of the Royal Institute of
Technology in stockholm, as summarized in the New
Scientist. We have great respect for this journal but
are sorry to say that in this case, their precis was
not as good as it might have been. We now have
(thanks to our members) three copies of his original
article in the Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical
Communications (vol. 36, p. 625), and Mr. Wranglen
would seem to know what he is talking about -he
works for the Department of Applied Electrochemistry
and Corrosion Science.
That part of the pillar which is below ground is
covered by a rust layer more than 1 cm thick, with
corrosion pits up to 10 cm (4 in.) deep. Wranglen
therefore concludes that climate, rather than the composition of the iron, is the primary cause of the good
preservation of the pillar aboveground. He goes on to
say:
"Immediately above the surrounding platform, the
surface of the pillar is very rough, apparently due to
defects in the forge-welding, which seem to have
been made worse by corrosion, resulting in deep pits.
A band of the circumference of the pillar at a height
between 1 and 1.5 m(eters) above the stone platform
is very bright, as if polished. The latter is due to the
custom of visitors to stand with their backs towards
the pillar, trying to clasp their hands around it 'for
luck'. The whole pillar is covered by an oxide film
of metallic lustre but varying colour (black-bluebroVvn). According to magnetic measurements, the
oxide film on the bright, polished section is less than
50 Jlm,* immediately above 500-600 pm and higher UP
thinner again. It should also be noticed that if the

oxide film is scraped off on some spot, the exposed


iron starts to rust as usual. After a week or so a
normal rust spot is observed, which, however, is
gradually converted to a darker oxide. After a few
yearR the newly formed oxide cannot be distinguished
from the main oxide of the pillar. This shows that the
good state of preservation of the pillar is due to a
protective film of corrosion products, formed also in
present-day Delhi climate, and not to some inherent
slag or oxide coating or some surface treatment
carried out during the early history of the pillar, as
has occasionally been suggested. Such a coating
would certainly have been damaged and made ineffective, at least locally, in the course of the ages."

J. C. Hudson carried out exposure tests with


carbon steel plates at various locations, and Wranglen
reproduces part of a table showing the results.
Plates exposed at Khartoum, a rural, desert-like
climate, lost 2 pm in thickness per year; this being
the smallest loss found, it was assigned a corrosion
rate of 1. At Frodingham, England, the thickness
loss was 200 JIm per year, with a relative corrosion
rate of 100. At Delhi the respective figures were 5
and 3. However, Wranglen notes that the tests at
Delhi ran only one year, while tho se at other sites
lasted ten years, and adds "This means that the value
for Delhi is, relatively, too high, since the rate of
rusting in slightly corrosive climates follows a
parabolic [curve
rather than a linear function".
The upshot of all this is that one should not become too excited about the non-rusting pillar at
Delhi. However, some other interesting points have
cropped up 'en route'. Wranglen points out that very
old iron, deriving from Antiquity or the Middle Ages,
in some cases has obviously rusted much less quickly than the best of modern steel but that this is, in

* Millimicron, i.e. the millionth part of a millimeter.

36

fact. Ii case of "survival of the fittest". He quotes


from a book entitled Metallographia or an History of
Metals by J. Webster, published in Londoniiilf17 i~"Lastly, as to this point I shall onely mind the
Worker in this metal of a passage in Diodorus Siculus,
an ancient Author, who tells us: That the Cel tiberians did thus prepare Iron. to make their weapons of
War of. For they hiding Iron plates in the earth, did
suffer them to be there so long, until the weaker part
of the Iron wasted, and the stronger remained. Then
of that they made Swords, and other Arms for the use
of the War. To these, thus made, all things or Arms
would yield, that neither shield nor helmet, nor any
other Armour could resist them".
In other words, they got rid of all the brittle,
inferior bits of iron and used the relatively indestructible leftovers.
Perhaps even more interesting is information received from Ralph Izzard who spent some time in
India and often visited the pillar at Delhi -it was a
favouri.te picnic spot. He writes as follows:

"In my OplnIOn the ongm of the Pillar is to be


found in Bihar (a Province of which Pa~na' is the
capital). The whole of southern Bihar is one vast
forest peopled by bow and arrow aborigin8J. tribes. In
1963 I spent some months happily with them. filming and hunting. The tragedy is that b!lneath the
forest is one solid mass of iron ore.' Thus. at
Jamshedpur, on the forest fringe, stands th.e colossal
Tatti Iron and Steel Works . . . Research: scientists
at Tata's have done much work concerning the
Ashoka Pillar. . . As I recall, [their reports] definitely state that the Pillar was made in Bihar and
as proof of the fact it is pointed out that in some
parts the aboriginals made not only their, own iron,
but also their own steel out of clay forges. Steelmaking has died out in Bihar but it still definitely
continues in Orissa, the wilder province to ,the south.
where I have actually seen it being done by aboriginals in the clay forges in the depths of the forests.
The Tata boys know all about this too."
Benighted natives indeed!

V. ASTRONOMY
THE MOONS OF MARS
In recent years and in certain circles. much has
been made of the mention by Jonathan Swift (16671745) of two moons of Mars (going around in opposite
directions) in one of his books, the question being:
How on earth (or off it) did he or could he have known
of them, the usual answer being that he must have
received his information from some type of OINT
(Other INTelligencies. or extraterrestrials, if you
wish). The actual answer to that apparently unanswerable Question is much more mundane. In 1610
Johannes Kepler predicted that Mars would be found
to have two moons.
Kepler was, of course, one of the very great
astronomers and did not simply guess that Mars
would have two moons but based his predictipn on
observations he had made. The moons were not 'discovered' until about 200 years later. but there is
little if any doubt that Swift was familiar with Kepler's
works. Swift took a degree at Trinity College in
Dublin (though he is said to have obtained it only by
"special grace") and "natural philosophy was a
standard part of the curriculum of all universities at
his time. (Oddly enough. in most cases biology was
taught only to medical students!)
There has also been much speculation that these
moons' would prove to be artificial satellites -Le.
sPace stations- and one Russian scientist stuck his
neck out rather far in thi s direction. Photos sent
back by Mars-probe satellites show both to be nothing
more than hunks of rock. We cannot at the moment
find the quotation and therefore must paraphrase. but

Carl Sagan, one of the chief exponents of, the possibility of extraterrestrial life -though not ~ecessari1Y
of Little Green Men on Mars- noted th~ he didn't
claim to know all possible types of satellites but that
he was willing to st ate c atego ric ally t hat rio artificial
satellite ever looked like that!
.

BIORHYTHMS: PLANETS; AND ASTROLOGERS


In our January 1972 issue we includ.ed a short
piece on "Planet X". estimated to be three times the
size of Saturn and believed to be orbiting the sun far
beyond Pluto. Initial reports by AP stated that its
existence was suspected because of perturbations in
the orbit of Neptune, something we should have
questioned at the time. A report in the Los Angeles
~ of the 29th April 1972 states that the 'new'
planet was suspected because of perturbations in the
orbits of three comets - Halley's, Olbers',' and PonsBrooks', which never arrive quite on schedule. (However, George Getze, science writer for the L. A.
Times, goes on to say that J. L. Brady (pf theuniversity of California's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory), who predicted the planet, said that "from Earth.
Planet X would be located in the constellation
Casseiopeia, 011 the border of the Milky Way". This
sounds completely balmy. If it is a planet of our sun.
it must revolve around that body and couldinot always
be even "in the direction of" Casseiope~a - aside
from the fact that Casseiopeia is a good :many light
years away!) No "twiddles" have ever been noted
in Pluto's orbit, but onl.Y one quarter of that orbit

37

(according to George Getze. at least) is known in an,)'


case: and there are astronomers who doubt that Pluto
is actually a planet. However. what is knuwn of its
orbit does not contradiet the possibility uf another
planet beyond it.
We noted in our original article that this would
pose a problem for the astrologers. but they would
seem to be extremely agile and have already announced that they "expected" Vulcan (not ,yet proved to
exist either!) since they "need" a tenth planet! Presumably they will now 'need' an eleventh, The astrologers have also been quick to latch onto some
recent findings of the biologists in particular; namely.
that the relative positions of planets. the moon. and
such things as sunspot cycles do influence animal
(including human) behaviour. It has long been known
that crime increases at the full moon - ditto. difficulties in mental institutions; but much more subtle
effects have been detected in the last decade.
Scientists at the Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque. New Mexico. have computerized records of accidents at that laboratory for periods of up to 20 years.
and found definite correlations with phases of the
moon. the sun's rotation. variations in the magnetic
field. and barometric pressure. Though the actual
mechanism is unkn'own. the facts have been put to
use by at least one company. the Ohmi Railway Co.
of Japan. which computed the "biorhythm" of each of
its 500 drivers and now - when an 'off day' is expected for an individual driver - hands him a card
reminding him to be extra careful that day. They have
thus cut their accident rate by 50% in one year. and
the rate has continued downward since then!
Superficially. this might seem to b ear out the
contentions of the astrologers; but they have not
really done their homework in this case.
Some time back we reviewed a splendid book entitled !l:!.!l Scientific Basi s 2.! Astrology by Michel
Gauguelin. a French scientist who set out simply to
disprove astrology and in the course of his work discovered some most extraordinary 'coincidences'.
Using the exact time of birth of successful professional people. Gauguelin - who is basically a
statistician. now at the Psychophysiological Laboratory at Strasbourg University - and his wife found
evidence that "an inherited temperament causes the
individual to be sensitive to the rise and culmination
of the planets and that these provoke the birth at one
particular hour rather than at another" [emphasis
ours]. This is. of course. the exact reverse of the
astrologers' point of view; but it has been checked

b,y variuus statisticians and astronomers who have


cuncurred with the Gauguelins' findings and who have
been un able to find any "internal" factor to explain
the "succesfl" of certain individuals. Also, the
Gauguelins studi ed over 30,000 deli veries of children
and t.heir parents to back up their findings, whereas
two highly regarded astrolugers said they had 'proved'
their contentions (which were wrong) on the basis of
only 200 and 2000 cases. respectively.
The most interesting fact reported by the Gauguelins is included in an article in Cycles for May 1972,
and we quote:
"The Gauguelins concluded from their studies that
'there is a hereditary tendency for children to be born
under similar cosmic conditions as those that prevailed at the birth of their parents.' It involves the
closest and heaviest bodies of the solar system the moon, Venus. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The
statistical correlation decreases as the distance
of the planets from the earth increases. and the effect
is not found for the more distant planets, Uranus,
Neptune. and Pluto. In addition. there is no correlation for Mercury, the smallest planet of the solar
system. "
The Gauguelins have also found that there is a
definite relationship between this "genetic sensitivity" to planetary cycles. and solar activity - the
greater the solar activity. the stronger the "sensiti vi ty". But. all correlations break down when the
deli very is not natural- i. e. when a caesarian section
is performed or labour is induced. either for medical
reasons or for the convenience of the doctor.
Doubtless. none of this will do anything except
infuriate the astrologers, but we hope that even they
will consider the logic involved. Their belief is that
some sort of "rays" emanate from the planets and
*Cycles is published by the Foundation for the
Study of Cycles. 124 South High] and Avenue. Pittsburgh. PA 15206. and is a most important publication.
The Foundation, which is affili ated with the Uni versity
of Pittsburgh. is the world's leading center for research on cycles - all the way from sunspots to the
price of pig iron. Since many fortean phenomena
exhibit cyclic behaviour, many of our members may be
interested in the Foundation's work. Individual
memberships are $15 per year. prorated from January
1. For more information. write the address given
above.

MODERN CONVENIENCES?
From Adhesives Age. January 1972: "Batch after batch of French baker Maurice Rivat's dough had been
spoiled by breaks in the electrical service. When it happened again recently. he loaded up 330 pounds of the
dough. went to the offices of the government-run electrical firm and poured it down the stairway."

..

38

influenee mankind, but they ignore the fact that the


planets are not equidistant from Earth - though they
seem, if I interpret their statements correctly, to
insist that each planet has equal 'power' within its
own sphere or sector, or whatever. You cannot have
it both ways, and the Gauguelins have found that
some p.Lanets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Mercury)
have no influence at all. This is reasonable, considerin~: their distance from Earth. Though scientists
are coming more and more to accept the idea that our
physical 'laws' may not hold true in distant parts of

,' Ie
i'

our universe (let alone other universes). Pluto is a


planet and relatively very close to us, and it is not
likely that the 'laws' change at that point. Hence.
"emanations" from Pluto ought to be virtl;1ally nonexistent when compared to those from. l?ay, Mars.
Lastly, we are tickled by our member No. 1121
who, having had training in astronomy, checked on
the positions of the planets and the conste~lations in
evidence at the time of his birth and discoivered that
the constellation Hercules was the only :major one
around. Astrologers, however, call him a L.eo!

VI. GEOlLOGY

Ii.

American, Aug. 1961; and Enever, A~alog, ca.


1966.
Nonetheless, we are subjected to an ~verlasting
A curiously ambiguous statement turned up in a
overall rain of meteorites. The vast majority of these
recent issuE:! of Science Newsletter. This prefaced a
straight. account of some intensive investigations by
are. of course. minute particles by the 'time they
one Dr, D. J. Milton of the U.S. Geological Survey
reach the ground (or the sea surface), bu~ still 100
and nine other U.S. and Australian researchers on
metric tons of this solid mat.ter gets through the
"The r'3sult of geologic. seismic, gravity and magatmosphere daily '[incidentally. this makes :365 x 100
x 4-billion, or 146 trillion tons of matter we have
netic surveys of a cryptoexplosion crater at Gosses
collected since this earth was stabilizE;!d], .while
Bluff, Australia". This preface read: "Both Mars and
every now and then a really big boy gets through,
the moon are dotted with surface craters, mostly
causing craters like the Barringer in Ariz0J?a and the
created by impact. Some scientists believe the tertwo hundred mile me.ss in eastern Siberi~ in 1947.
restrial craters that most closely.resemble lunar and
(Lucky for us, inCidentally. that we haven:t had one
Martian craters are a class called cryptoexplosion
of these land in an ocean recently because. according
structures. There are some 60 such craters known and
to Dietz. the wave from even a modest one might be
they oc,::ur in 8; wide variety of geologic environme':lts
20,000 feet high by the time it hit the nearest conti(sic); but their origin is debated". So let us so debate.
Has it not appeared strange to you that both the
nental shore.)
moori and Mars should be pockmarked while we, who
Despite the continual obliteration of impact
must huve been in the same line of fire as it were,
craters on our land surface, a lot more ~han sixty
apparently are not? Probably not; but there is at least
buried ones have now been discovered frem careful
one good reason. or explanation, and this is that
examination of comparatively low altitulde aerial
surveys. They are littered all across Canada for
actually we are, but the 'marks' are crypto or hidden
instance, the buried ones coming to light due to the
beCaUSE! this is, first, a "water planet" and, second,
curious crescentic shapes of some lake~ and the
it is geologically speaking "viable", meaning that (as
per the dictionaries) it is capable of growing and differences of vegetation that grows in an4 around a
circle containing these lakes. (Also take a Close look
developing. Further, this our planet appears to have
at the eastern shoreline of Hudson Bay!) Some of
been in a state of tectonic turmoil throughout its
these ancient craters are hundreds of feet :below the
history so that thos~ portions of it exposed to the
atmosphere have been literally churned up ever since
present surface but the mineralogical pattern persists.
it originally coagulated, and this churning is still
The truth is, we have been peppered just a$ massivegoing on today; and this is not caused only by the
ly as the moon and Mars throughout our pl~et's hisgrinding: movements of the great continental plates
tory. How could we have avoided this since we have
but is due also to massive deposition of sediments
always swept around roughly the same belt :like little
under water that cause the rocks below to sag and be
brooms, mopping up the lesser debris in that belt or
compressed. Then, there is continuous erosion almost
that which comes into it. or might be passi~g through
all OV'3r, that literally washes away hills and
it. The really unexplained fact is how life of any sort
mountains. Thus, even an enormous impact crater may
has managed to survive this bombardment ~t all. and
be totally obliterated in, geologically speaking,
especially the results of those large bodies. three
practically no time at all. As this planet is almost
quarters of which must have landed in the; seas and
three-quarters covered with water, a like percentage
oceans. Do we need to look any further for the causes
of mass extinctions of life or what geologists call
of meteor strikes would simply have caused unbelievable tsunamis (or 'tidal waves'~but not left any
'unconformities'. meaning overall surfac~s of all
strata that seem suddenly to have been $wept and
other trace, since they vaporize - see Dietz, ~TERRESTRIAL METEORITE CRATERS

39

scraped clean, and then new ones laid down upon


them?
ON BIG THINGS
by Ivan T. Sanderson.
I have asked for a little space to submit a brief
item under my name as being a topic which has always
intrigued me. This is the size of things. There is an
old wives' tale to the effect that people, and especially men, of small stature have a penchant for
large things. I have been exactly six foot since the
age of 16; but, if the above is true, I should have
been born a midget because I have always sought the
largest of all things - from cars to bacteria.
This prompted me at a very early age to enquire
into the real size of things. Fortunately, one of my
teachers was Professor "(now Sir) Julian Huxley; and
one Dr. Albert Einstein lectured at my Alma Mater and handed me my scroll, incidentally! My primary
interest being-biological, this was the department
that I first latched onto. The results were very
startling. and have affected my whole life. Here they
are; neatly laid out for you.
However. having also obtained a degree in Geology.
which" in those days encompassed crystallography.
mineralogy. and petrology, !ls well as the more
standard subjects. like tectonics. stratigraphy.
volcanology. and so forth. I have always been equally
intrigued with the size of inanimate obj~cts. Perhaps
it was a chip off one of the apices of a diamond
crystal that measured 21 feet (the chip. that is) that
first startled me; or maybe a gold-leaf-covered copy
of the largest gold nugget ever then found. that lay
in a lighted glass case at the entrance to the mineral
gallery of the British Museum. It was about three foot
long and. balancing out the lumps and bumps. some
eight inches in diameter. (I once read of a crystal of

tourmaline that was 135 feet tall!) In our issue of


October 1971 we described an island off the coast of
Labrador. a mile long, that is to all intents and purposes one vast crystal. Now comes this hunk of silver
ore 4 feet long, and so pure that the 1,620 lb. nugget
will yield 1,140 lbs. of silver.
This is not a single "crystal" but it is one heck of
a lump of silver. One could presumably get larger
pieces out of mines by pursuing veins - at least if.
for instance, the famous Los Alamos mine in Mexico
were opened up again; but a hunk of this purity is
actually fabulous. The largest gemstones found,
before they were cut uP. are also in some cases almost unbelievable.

THE SIZE OF THINGS


Each rung of the 'ladder'
shows a tenfold increase.

.. 'three-Ci,uartel"l1 J

----------------.. --.. - ...

THE SUN

TIlE URTH

LarS8!1t Llfs-Forra
LarGut Ar:1mal

:..ver&.;e "'an

~!:~&~r ~n~:ize

Giant R&dwooc:! Trae


Fl1maIe Blue 'inlol., L.rg8!!'t ':;'hh (Yftooilllll!! l;harl':)
Larrest La:1c. .Animal (dinosaura)
Lar[est Lt.nd !.~arr.mal (f!aluc:hHheriua), Shallr1eh
LaI"E:El8t BIrd. (I:'!oa). Croc:odllo, i!orall
Lal Cu:n. Flylr't Elrd. ClaCl. erst
.A"ra.t~a Cat, larreat Frog anc! WOI-I:I..
Avurfli:e P!68on and Rat.
14aus8, largllst Ins6ct and Spider.
SaI_llnt nal:lZll81 (Shrew) and Elrd (?m=lng-elrd)
Smallest ?lIIh, Aver6le;e Bda.
~iffiE~:~!::~rackt:oned Anir.lal Ie Frog).
Flea, "'star-Flea (Da;.,hnla).

SII'.allelit Shellrlah.
Smallest Insect, The Human Ovwa (eggeaH)
Smo.llllllt Werm.
-------------------- -- (on" q\:arter) - ___________________________ _
Arr.oet:a
i"lhite bloed Corpullc\:la.
SClaHeat Animal
Rad blood CorpUlicule. ~h,lJ:Ian Spem. laona a
Anthrax (d1saD.ae) Bac!llu&
'l'Uberc,,"loa1a, Oi8ease Cocci.
Round :.'e.cterJa
I.arger Viruslls
Smallest L1fe-PolT.""
Ul tr8-t1H.erBold '.ilruses

Largest piece of almost pure silver ever found.


(From the National Enquirer)

""ster f,i:;,lecule
::ldrogen Atoe

A!'l ELECTRON'

40

VII. BIOLOGY

THUNDERBIRDS AGAIN - AND AGAIN


Thi:3 keeps cropping UP again and again. It is, of
course, one of the "greats" that never fail to spark
the public, like "The Abominable Snowmen", the
"Ringing Rocks", the misnamed "Bermuda Triangle",
the Loch Ness "Monsters", Sea "Serpents", and now
some new ones like the Frog "Wars" (wrong again),
and so forth. And incidentally, "The Jersey Devil"
has turned up again. But that's a frightfully complicated story and comes in at least three parts, one
of which is definitely solved. But this Thunderbird
bit just goes on and on;
It all began with the Amerindians and was rife
allover this continent when the whiteman first hit it,
and from both east and west. The tradition had acquired a certain mythological content by that time,
but was otherwise a perfectly straightforward
statement of zoological fact by said Arnerinds; yet
nobody, except the first Spaniards in the West, would
even listen. This annoyed the indigenous peoples not
a littlE! because it not only impugned their veracity
but insulted both their traditions and, in some cases,
their rl~ligious precepts. The facts as first given by
and which have since been repeated year after year
and even by "palefaces", and right up to commercial
and private airplane pilots, are as follows.
We have birds that we call Turkey-Vultures or
Turkey-Buzzards. Both these names are misnomers
because these are not true vultures, but belong to a
New World family of birds known as tp.e Cathartidae.
This includes the great Condors. (They are not
"Buzzards" either, as those are kinds of Hawks.) All

that the Arnerinds said was that they ~ad a truly


giant Condor that lived on mountain tops and was
primarily nocturnal; and they had tens of: thousands
of wood and stone sculpts of this bird on t~eir totempoles and other monuments out west. This bird, they
affirmed, had a wingspan equivalent to si){ men with
outstretched arms, finger tips to finger tips, making
about 30 to 36 feet.
The early colonists, trappers, and hunters didn't
see anything particularly, bizarre or impossible in
this. In the 16th, 17th, and even the 18th centuries
the average person was still struggling 'out of the
dark ages, and popular belief was stil~ rife with
giants and monsters. Besides, the people who founded
what are now Canada, the U.S., and Mexic?, were not
exactly intellectuals; while it was comparatively very
late before any true scientists turned up ..:.. and they,
as often as not, immediately got clobbered by the
merchants and other executives. Birds with
a 36-foot
I
wingspan in Pennsylvania would have sh~en up even
old Ben Franklin. Kites indeed!
The two most amazing cases I know of are a
"sighting" made by a lone private flier while flying
up the Hudson River Valley in May 19in: at midday
in very clear weather, when there were pther small
planes in the viCinity. At first he thought it was
another plane with a somewhat greater wi~gspan than
his, but it deliberately made a pass at hi:m and then
chased him. He circled to inspect it as helwas puzzled as to how he had missed it; and then ,it began to
"flap" as he approached it, and he saw to:his amazement that it was an enormous bird. The dase should
be read in full, along with the other, as the stories

LOVES OF A GORILLA
Adhesives Age (October 1971) reports that "When the gorillas at the Frankfurt Zoo became lethargic and
apathE!tic, a television was installed in their cage as an antidote to boredom. The experiment provd that the
old movie King Kong wasn't just a flight of Hollywood fancy: gorillas do love pretty girls. Keepers at the
German zoo report that the television gave the gorillas a new lease on life. Gorilla TV favorites, in order of
preference: love scenes, weight lifting, and auto racing."
In fact, the Philadelphia Zoo found this out by accident a number of years ago when they instlilled a TV
set in the keepers' 'Quarters in the old "Monkey House". The keepers soon experienced that peculiar feeling
one gets when being stared at from behind, and discovered that "Bamboo", then the oldest gorilla i~ captivity
(in thl! U.S. at least), was watching too. If memory serves correctly, he also liked pretty girls best~
A

REI~UEST

FOR HELP

A letter to the Scottish Field of March 1972 notes that "At the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne work is
being carried out on the structure of bird skulls. I am anxious to find more skulls of the crow famih, that is:
rook, carrion and hooded crow, jackdaw, magpie, jay, etc. I would be most grateful if anyone finding dead
birds of these species could remove and send me the heads. If the heads are still feathered thes1e are best
sent sealed in one or more polythene bags in a crushproof box., I shall be glad to refund postag~. (Signed)
T. R. Birkhead, Department of Zoology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle, NWl 7RU, !England."
Specimens should be labelled with date and place of origin, i.e. 5 miles east of Armpit, Nebraska (don't look
that up in a gazetteer; it is one of Ivan Sanderson's 'concoctions'); and the package should ,be labelled
"Scientific Specimen".
'

41

were told in an article by Jack Pearl in the May, 1963


is~ue of ~ Magazine.
Shortly after noon on November the 23rd, 1962, a
United Airlines Viscount was cleared to land at the
Washington, D. C., airport, but suddenly vanished off
the radar screen. It crashed and exploded in a wood
in Maryland. The Civil Aeronautics Board investigators found both parts of the .35-foot-wide tail stabilizers half a mile behind the rest of the plane, and
both were matted with blood and feathers of "an unidentified bird". There was a lot of the usual rubbish
talked about swans and geese but not even a flock of
these could tear' off the tail assembly of such a
plane. Flirthermore, an ex-pilot, then an aeronautical
engineer, pointed out that it would be impossible for
"a" bird or birds "to get thrQugh the arc of props and
hit the tail". Finally, 'one official report stated that
there were enormous slashes or gouges right through
the thick, tough metal of the tail assembly.
The mOf1t extraordinary of all Thunderbird accounts, however, forms a mystery within a mystery;
and is the one we have been yammering about in issue
after issue; namely, the photograph of one said (and
by everybody, and for over 80 years at that. we
should add) to have been killed in 1886, brought into
a place called Tombstone, Arizona, strung up with
outstretched wings against a barn, with six men with
outstretched arm s fingertip to fingertip, to show its
size. The story further inv.ariably asserts that a
photograph of this was published 'in the local newspapers, named ~ Epitaph. The ridiculous - and
almost forte an thing - is that, while hundreds of
people we know personally have seen this photograph,
nobody can give us so much as a reference to any of
the dozens of publications in which it has been reproduced; and up to only a few years ago. Furthermore,
the editor of the Epitaph has become more than a
little incensed by the constant stream of requests for
a copy. He has searched his "morgue" back to 1884
and can find not one single mention of it.
Mary and Curt Fuller. editor and publisher of Fate
Magazine, when first asked about this said at once
that of course they knew the picture, and that they
had even published it in an early issue. Both they
and ourselves have complete sets of this magazine,
and both of us went through all of them, page by page
-but no such picture! We had a copy once but sent it
off-with two of our members on a field trip to Coudersport, in northern Pennsylvania, to look into a whole
string of Thunderbird reports from that area. The
photo was not returned to our files, and neither of our

members (one who had moved to Boston, the other


from Philadelphia) can find it in their files. The
clincher on this one came when, five years later,
another member who had never heard of the first two.
met a game warden who told him that two young men
camping out in a special-body, green station wagon
(ours!) had shown him this photo!!
Another of our members we could "kill". After
reading our forlorn appeals, month after month, for
this photo, he solemnly wrote (this year) saying that
he had seen it a couple of months before but had forgotten where! And he is a profound fortean too, and a
very conscientious bibliographical researcher.
There just might be a clue to all this ridiculous
"jazz". There was once a Tombstone in Nevada, as
well as in Arizona. It does not appear in any gazetteer any more but 'I think I drove by it in 1959. It
has probably long since become a ghost town; but
whether it ever had a newspaper who is now to tell;
but that any such newspaper also be called the
Epitaph is just too much to ask. *
But then still another thing comes up to completely confuse the issue; and here we must abbreviate
atrociously. According to several articles, the latest
being in Old West. Vol. 6, No.4, of Summer 1970, in
a column7ntitled "Letter Rip!", a Mr. Harry F. McClure, of 1424 1/2 North El Paso, Colorado Springs,
gave as nearly firsthand details of what appears to be
a quite separate "monster" case, also seen near
Tombstone. Arizona in 1890. The writer once saw,
when a kid, the two ranchers concerned in this case
but he never met them, and he has forgotten their
names as of over 60 years ago. This story as published, and known allover the area, appears to be of
quite a different animal. without feathers and having
a long pointed snout, and membranous. batlike Wings.
The ranchers shot at it on the ground with 30-30
rifles but it was beyond range and their horses were
so hysterical that they could not release them. This
animal was not killed, brought to town, or photographed.
Once again. can't SOMEBODY give us at least a
reference to any publication in which the giant bird
photograph has been reproduced in the last 80 years?
(N .B. The National Geographic. alleged to contain a
reproduction of the photo, has been checked, with
negative results so far.)

*Possibly, though "epitaph" is almost a 'natural' for


a town named Tombstone. MLF.

VERY ODD INDEED


A UPI dispatch for Bournemouth, England states that "Cyril Kent drove into his local gasoline station and
told mechanics he had a strange squeak in the car, and asked if they could fix it. The mechanics put the car
on a hYdraulic lift and found a little white hen sitting on the back axle. 'I don't even live near a farm'. Kent
said."

42

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY
A RATHER "DISGUSTING" CASE
by Ivan T. Sanderson.

This modest uproar began in May, 1971, when a


gentleman by t he name of Mr. Walter Elliott, of
QUincJ, Mass.', a carpenter by trade but whose hobby
for many years had been collecting Amerindian and
other artefacts washed UP on the New England
beachl~s, noticed, while having an al fresco lunch on
Popham Beach, Maine, on one of his days off, three
boulde!rs sticking out of a bank that had on them inscriptions and what lqoked like a map of that immediate area's shore line. On washing them off he knew
enough to spot that they at least looked like Norse
runes.
ThE! reporting on this story has been atrocious;
and the contradictions in over twenty accounts from
different newspapers, and some semi-scientific
journals, have to be read to be believed. Also, there
has been a singularly 'unpleasant implication from the
first that Mr. Elliott was - as almost all the press
called him - a "beachcomber". Beachcombers were
derelicts and are now virtually extinct except on a
few tropical islands, but the connotation (almost a
mystique) lingers on. Mr. Elliott is a very intelligent
and wE!ll-read man, and he knew just how to go about
getting his finds at least "looked at". At first, however, he failed; and one paper states that the mere
attempt cost him over $1000! He sent letters to over
50 experts at colleges, museums, and other institutions but received only 15 replies and no encouragement, ILnd he once spent five hours just trying to get
somebody to look at them at Harvard! He was so disgusted that he took the boulders back to Popham
Beach and reburied them as near to the point where
he had found them as he could. This is a sad commentary on the behaviour of our scientific establishment;
but, from forty years of personal experience investigating such matters, it would appear to be the established rule of procedure. (Don't ever let an
amateur upset the cart.)
However, in the meantime it appears that the only
two relll experts on not only runic scripts but the
marvellous sort of "acrostics" written into them,

which was a highly skilled and speciali zed art, were


allowed to inspect these stones. These were Dr. O.
G. Landsverk, founder of the Landsverk :Foundation
of Glendale, California, and his associate, Mr. A.
Monge. Dr. Landsverk, as subsequently reported in
newspapers and other publications, while making very
definite statements as to the authentici~y of these
runes, did not really say anything; and;I quote: "Monge's solution to the code c an only be described as fantastic in its historical connections and
implications. This new development is'really astounding. In view of these finds I now believe that
the Vinland that existed in the early 12th Century
was centered in the Popham-Popham Beach area."
But Mr. Monge came up with some very definitive
renditions; namely, concerning one BishoJil Henrikus,
also called Eric Gnupsson, who, he said, sailed in
1123 from Greenland to Vinland, being the Bishop of
both areas. Apparently he died there th~ following
year. His name is on all the church r~cords ,and
mentioned in several sagas. We understand that
Landsverk and Monge will be publishi~g full descriptions of both the texts, the map, and i a (fourth?)
stone that allegedly bears a number of sort of depictions. No photograph of this last appeius to have
been published, while those of the three stones show
(1) a map, (2) a long inscription in run~c, and (3)
simply a crude rune allegedly saying "Henrikus,
Oct. 6, 1123". Were there four stones, Qr were the
pictographs on the back of one of them?
Then comes the matter of dates. Are these, as
given, an adjustment to our calendar? T~at used by
the Nordmanni - i.e. the Norsk, Svensk, Dansk, and
several subjugated peoples such as the West Coast
Picts, some of the Irish, and the Norman!? - did not
run on our calendar by any means. We are always
suspicious of precise dates allegedly given on any
ancient d,ocument, be it a Sumerian clay tablet or a
17th century will. ,Let us not forget the protest-marchers in 1752 yelling "Give us back our eleven days"
(astrologers beware). Moreover, in this r:espect, no
two repor~s of what Messrs. Landsverk andl Monge ai'e

ARCHAEOLOGY
From Land to the West, by Geoffrey Ashe: " ... evidence may already have been found, and gon~ unrecognised. All archaeological workers are specialists nowadays, and it would be interesting to ascertain how
many authorities on Celtic antiquities have even looked at Americ'an antiquities, or vice versa. As ;Professor
fJohn] Evans remarked to me, 'They would be afraid people would think they were cranks.' No doubt a justified fear, but what a pity! ... I am not disputing the need to specialise; I am entering a plea for coU'aboration.
It is perfectly possible that the vital clue is staring us in the face, only the proper expert has not yet been
inducE'd to stare back."

43

alleged to have said, agree. An excellent se.ries on


this whole, now somewhat "dreary", story start.ed
appearing in the ~ ~ on the 3rd December
1971, under the byline of one Lynne Langley. She
even got the Norse and "vikings" right, and ~ith the
right ships too! But the dates for Bishop Henrikus in
this are all different!
To sum up for the benefit of those who may have
been interested in, but became hopelessly confused
about, this matter, as far as we can find out from
reliable news sources - and we begin to wonder if
there are any such anymore - Mr. Elliott helped to
retrieve the stones that, being on state land were

State property, and was compensated to the extent of


$4500 for his help and his serious efforts to bring
them to the attention of the appropriate authorities.
But there are conflicting stories even as to this, and
as to where the stones have finally been lodged.
But the really incredible thing to us is that people
still bother to try and dispute the fact that the Norse
were allover North America, and either down to or
up to Oklahoma, starting about 1000 AD (our calendar).
Some of the things said about Mr. Elliott's stones are
so utterly puerile as to be laughable - and notably
from Yale, which has got itself caught in the same
trap, but from the other side.

AN APPEAL AND AN OFFER


MOSTLY TO YOUNG PEOPLE
We desperately need one (or two) active young
people, male or female, who are willing to learn the
office routine, shoulder the drudgery of paper work,
but who, at the same time, don't mind "getting their
hands dirty". We are "working stiffs" here; and anybody jOining us has to be prepared to turn their hands
and efforts and brains to anything, from filing to treetrimming or even dish-washing!.
Point number 2: Said person has to be compatible.
The last points are these: (l) We cannot pay any
salary, though "pocket money" sometimes crops up!;
(2) we offer board and (good) keep; (3) there are two
cars available, to be .driven at your own risk; (4) time
of day (or night) means nothing here; (5) you'll have

to work, but, while I "crack the whip", I'll never 1!l!!


anybody to do anything; (6) you'll meet more people
here in a year than the average person meets in a
lifetime; (7) you'll be fully insured; and (8), for our
part, we don't tolerate any "bloody nonsense" around
here.
Would all of you members try to rustle UP some
volunteers, and let us know? The deal is two weeks,
as the undersigned's house-guest, to look them over.
But, "o-U-!:-OUT", if we don't get along, or they
behave in a manner of which I do not approve. And,
please not to forget that this is my home, as well as
my place of business.
Ivan T. Sanderson

The Trinity College (Cambridge) Annual Record for 1970 contains the following notice: "G. B. Blaker
was last year reported as being dead, but is in fact still alive. The Editor apologizes for the mistake,
which is particularly shocking because Mr. Blaker was also reported dead in 1945." He must lead an interesting life.

FOR PSYCHOLOGIsrS ONLY


In response to the "Classi-c correspondence" in our January issue, we received a note from Member No.
1025 to the effect that when he was taking psychology at California State College (now University), Los
Angeles, a classmate of his, on a midterm exam, defined "tabula rasa" as a venereal disease! He .adds "I
believe the chap received half credit for originality!!"
'
For non-psychologists, "tabula rasa" means, literally, a "clear slate", the state the mind is alleged to be
in at birth. (Lovely English, what?)
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
The Foo Lung Ching Kee Co., in accord.!IJlce with governmental regulations, labels one of their products
as follows: "Rice sticks (Net wt.: 1 lb.). Ingredients: Rice." You can't be clearer than that. They also add
the helpful advice that this is "a food prepared by cooking alone or with other food products".

44

CURRENT PURSUITS

RINGING ROCKS

THUNDER BIRDS. See page 40.

A number of our members have visited or are


planning to visit the Ringing Rocks sites and are reporting: to us on their experiences. When a sufficient
numbel' are received. we will do what we can to
present a resume' of their findings. In the meantime.
anyone' visiting these sites is asked to include in any
report several specific items: date; any psychological
or physical experiences which seem 'abnormal'; a
rough I!stimate of the "percentage of rocks that ring (we
don't expect a census count!); weather conditions;
any difficulties' with cameras and/or light meters
(pleaSE! state what type of meter is used); any aberrations on the part of compasses if you have one with
you; any unusual behaviour on the part of pets if
these life taken along.

ANDREW CROSSE'S ACARI

MECHANICAL DOWSING
About a dozen of our members have asked for and
been sent instructions for experiments on mechanical
dowsing. These expe"riments take time to set up, but
we will report on the results, if any, in a future issue.
A CHAIN IN THE ROCK UP THE AMAZON
Our member who has notes on this moved recently
and if; still going through the appalling task of unpacking and getting" settled. She has promised to send
the information on as soon as she unearths it.

A number of members have written foriinformation


and are presumably doing something about Ithat gentleman's experiments. We will have a report later. we
hope.
I

CORRELATION BETWEEN NATURAL ANID


FORTEAN PHENOMENA
Member No. 52 has been put in touch wi~h a number
of members who have volunteered to hel~. It is unlikely that we will have a report on this for some
time.
'
TIME ANOMALIES
This is, at the moment. one of our majo:r interests.
We will be grateful for any account rel~ting to apparent "time travel". i. e. instances in wh~ch persons
seem to have 'stepped' either backward or. forward in
time; or for accounts of any vehicle wh:ich arrives
before or after it 'should' have.
ABSMERY
Two crews are set for very specific "expeditions"
in search of a Sasquatch this summer. We give no
further details here so as to give both a :completely
clear field in locations which we have vpted "most
likely to succeed.
:

CHARLES FORT'S NOTES


As many of our members will know, Charles Fort's Original notes and clippings were given to the New
York Public Library by Tiffany Thayer's widow some years ago. They were stored in shoe boxes ~hardly the
best I~ontai.ners in the world. but serviceable. The NYPL and all 'old-time' forteans have long ~ished that
someone would catalogue them and. most important of all, microfilm them before they disintegrate. In 1965,
Ivan T. Sanderson found a gentleman who lived opposite the main library building, was willing to; undertake
the work, and was qualified to do so. He died of a heart attack while arrangements were still b~ing made,
and that ended that for the time being.
I
Recently, one of our members volunteered to do the job; but, most regrettably and, in our opinion, quite
illogically, the NYPL is only open from 10 to 6 on weekd,ays and is. for all practical purposes,! closed on
weekEmds!* How anyone is thus supposed to be able to use the Library is beyond us. (In our opinion, a great
working library like this should open from 4 p"m to 11 pm during the week and from 11 am to 11 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, when people could prosecute research without interfering with their work sc~edules, or
earning their living.) Further, the NYPL is not permitted to send Fort's (or anyone else's) manuscripts to
any branch library; they "must be worked on at the main librttry. Currently they are stored at an Annex. but
the NYPL will bring them over in batches if we can find someOne to do the necessary work. The n'otes have.
by the. way, been removed from the shoe boxes and are now stored in card-catalogue files. The job will be a
"long Ilnd tedious one, but the NYPL will give every assistance possible since they are as eagerias we are
to SeE! these properly preserved and catalogued.
;;'
"
If
any
of
our
members
living
"in
New
York
City
is
free
"from
9
to
5
and
feels
that
he
could
tlike
on this
"
"
,

Rooms 108 and 315, only. are open from 10 am to 2 pmQn Saturdays.

~--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------45

task, please call us. Your only reward will be the gratitude of all forteans, present and future, and the
knowledge that you have contributed to the sEiarch for truth.

~IEl\IBERS' FORUM
On the home front. Member No. 1072, who iives
near our HQ, comes regularly to collect old newspapers and all glass jars and bottles for recycling.
(We 'recycle' our own garbage in a compost heap.)
Apart from the primary purpose of recycling, this also
eases our trash disposal problem.
For
article
cannot
47 st.,

those interested in Nikola Tesla, there is an


in the IEEE-Spectrum for June 1972. If you
find a copy locally, their address is 345 E.
New York 10017.

Member No. 354 would like to contact any members


interested in putative extreme low frequency sonic or
electromagnetic effects - specificially in connection
with fortean phenomena.

Also, we are happy to report that Member No. 944


has not disappeared. His failure to communicate after
his 'last' trip to the Ringing Rocks was due to various
personal difficulties. Further, in self defense, Upper
Black Eddy, Pa., is just across the Delaware River
from Milford, N.J., which is just a bit north of Frenchtown, N.J., and southeast of Easton, PA. U.B.E. is
on Rt. 32, known as the River Road, and the ringing
rocks are reached by following a blacktop about 1
mile north of U.B.E. There is a small (defaced, the
last time we saw it) sign indicating this turn-off; the
rest of the way is well marked. Be warned: it is now
illegal to remove rocks from the site or to carry in
metal hammers (let alone sledge-hammers) .. Take a
wooden mallet with you. And do wear good climbing
shoes. We append a small map. (If anyone else writes
in to ask where Upper Black Eddy is Marion Fawcett
will probably scream.)

Member No. 1052 is interested in any information


on or references to solar prominences which are so
large that they escape from the sun and fly into
space. He has received no help from any astronomical
observatory!
RI.611

If any of our readers has a copy of Trevor James'


book They Live ill the. ~ and is willing to part with
it, Member No. 1025 would like to have one. We will
put the party of the first part in touch with the party
of the second part.

Ringing Roc:ks

Member No. 922 is interested in obtaining any


clear photos of UFOs and in getting in touch with any
members who would be willing to assist him with
"inform stion in general- - i. e. any inveterate "penpals are invited to write to him c/o SITU.

Delaware River

We would ask once again


since, obviously, no
one reads the inside front cover! - that members wishing to visit call several days in advance.

BOOK REVIEWS

by Marion L. Fawcett

John Godwin. Occult America. New York: Doubleday & Company. 1972. $7.95
John Godwin is an Australian journalist, formerly a crime reporter and foreign correspondent, with several
books to his credit. He will have difficulty in writing a better book than this one, which is an absolute 'must'
for every fortean -and non-forteans as well.

46

While on a cross-country tour to advertise his previous book, This Baffling World, Mr. God~vin became
intrigued with and by t.he r ather incredible upswing in interest in mysticism and the occult in; the United
States and set about looking for books that would explain this phenomenon. He notes in his prologue that "The
one thing I was looking for-a dispassionate .inquiry into the motivations and working of America's occultism
-seemed not to exist at all. If I wanted one I would have to write it myself. Which, in the course of events, I
,
decided to do." He has done it very well indeed.
The author points out that there are plenty of books on the "occult", generally divisible into two categories, the debunkers and the boosters, "both so preoccupied with effects that they devoted hardly any space
at all. to . . . the causes". In his opinion the debunkers 'win, though he adds that "They app eare~ sincerely
convinced that, by 'pointing out the irrationality of a particular belief, they were abolishing it. Which is
similar to proving the biological impossibility of the Resurrection and. expecting Christianity to evaporate as
a result". Godwin's book probably won't change many minds either, but any rational person will'learn a lot
from it. Under the cold light of reason, some of the beliefs held in this country provoke nearlY, hysterical
laughter, underlain by a feeling of considerable horror that such things are actually believed in Iby supposedly intelligent, rational, and educated people.
Godwin begins with the astrologers and works his way through 'prophets', witches, Ron Hubbard!s vassals,
Edgar Cayce's disciples, and a host of others, all the way to the satanists, which are actually a :rather mild
bunch compared to some other groups. He also devoted a chapter to the "occult goldmine": -books, a vast
assortment of sPiritualist "supplies", dubious (to put it mildly) degrees, and a wide variety of 'fself-help",
get-rich-quick, am other offers, which bring in heaven knows how much money. The astrologers alone are
estimated to rake in more than $150,000,000 a year! This I find appalling; and particularly becaus~ there are,
as John Godwin points out in Chapter 13, a number of individuals and organizations which are studying some
of ~hE! things believed in by the occultists, but doing it properly and scientifically, and they have ~he chronic
probll~m of financing t heir efforts. If one adopts some oriental-sounding name, and spouts un~ntelligible
garbage with plenty of references to the uplifting of the soul; a direct pipeline to God, etc., money will be
forthcoming from a vast horde of gullibles who are dissatisfied with their present state and the state of the
world. Announce that you wish to study any of the phenomena which defy our present understanding from a
scientific standpoint, and the orthodox scientists will probably ignore you (if they don't vilify yqu); but the
"average citizen" will gladly spend his money anywhere, and on any charlatan's suggestion.
John Godwin is not simply a debunker. He realizes full well that there are unexplaineds ana that it is
often difficult to draw a definite line between the fraudulent and the genuine, the real and the urt-real. His
book may help a lot of people to draw a more certain line between the two. He is not infallible, but he makes
few mistakes in this book: and these are minor and forgiveable in view of the overall value of OccuFt America.
Also, the author did his own research and search, interviewing over 300 persons, from astrologers! to the farout urologists, to gain a clear picture of just what is gOing on in America. It makes fascinating re~ding. And
there is an excellent index plus a glossary of terms.

Tim Dinsdale. Monster Hunt. Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books Ltd. 1972. $6.95.
This is an expanded and thoroughly updated edition of The Leviathan~, originally published in England
in 1966 but never, so far as I know, available in the U.S. Anyone interested in Loch Ness 'monsters' - or in
other freshwater and sea monsters - will want this book. Though parts of it do resemble what we citll a "seed
catalogue", i.e. long series of reports by those who say they have seen Nessie (or other monster~), there is
enoug:h general material and new information to satisfy all but the crustiest reader.
I
Tim Dinsdale, one of the most delightful people we have had the privilege to meet, has be;en chasing
Nessi.e for ten years and has had the greatest success to date. His film of a monster taken ini 1960 was
studil~d by the Joint Air Reconnaisance Intelligence Centre of the RAF and pronounced' by them to sh~w an
animate object. He has been trying ever since, along with some hundreds of other people, to; get a truly
definitive film which will leave no doubt in anyone's mind that there are monsters in Loch Ness.
WI: ha,:e received innumerable l~tter~ asking "Why don't they [Nessie 'hunters'] just ... ?" Frl,)m here on
we WIll SImply tell them to read Tim DlIlsdale's book. There is an all too common notion that aU one has to
do is sit on the edge of Loch Ness with a camera ready and everything will work out in a week 'or so. "Not
bloody loikly!" Tim Dinsdale several times almost lost his life during the course of his search, ~nd his de-

"Here is another on-the-pot dispatch by a science writer. - Associated Press .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .__________w _________ . .____________


~

47

scription of the hazards and difficulties involved in trying to gain evidence proving the existence of 'monsters'
in LQCh Ness (and elsewhere) leave one with the greatest admiration for these devoted seekers. As for why
they seek. I can not do better than to quote a quotation in Monster Hunt: this is taken from the Personality
Book" kept by the Loch Ness Investigation. in which each expeditioner entered a brief biography on arrival
and. at the end of his stay, about half a pag~ of comment of whatever variety the person chose. What follows
was written by the youngest member of the team, a 17-year-old boy: "Someone recently asked me why we hunt these creatures. It is easy to answer, but difficult to explain.
We believe in them-not only the individuals themselves but what they in the large sense represent. They
are a not-so-impossible dream and an enigma almost answered. On this world bound by technological complexities they are a return to nature. and a subtle reminder to'man that he is not a master of all creation. !tis
a quixotic search for t ruth in a scornful world ~ a tedious search which someday must have it's end. And
when we do place the final piece of the puzzle in position perhaps men will stop momentarily to gaze at inscrutible nature, and wonder about the deeper natural truths ... "
Whether it is the exceptionally high calibre of those keeping watch on Loch N:ess, as exemplified by this
17-year-old who is wise far beyond his years, or whether it is part of the growing consciousness of Science
that the neat boundaries they have set have been broached on every side. we cannot say. But it is heartening
to read of the increasing assistance from the 'orthodox' in this most unorthodox pursuit. There are still those
who deny vehemently that there even could be 'monsters' in Loch Ness. i.e. they are impossible; but we
firmly believe that this pursuit will have a happy ending, not just for Nessie fans but for science as a whole.
If one "impossible" of this nature is proved to be not just possible but real, it may open a great many doors.
In the meantime. the investigations at Loch Ness are adding considerably to our knowledge of the ecology
arid geology of that lake.
The book is illustrated and, fortunately, there is a list of plates, some of which are badly placed (not the
author's fault), e.g. Plate 15. referr.ed to on page 123. will be found facing page 85. Also, the publisher has
seen fit to reduce the map of the Scottish Northwest Highlands to microscopic size, making it extremely
difficult to read. A couple of other maps with far less detail are given a whole page each. There is an index,
though it is not as complete as one might wish..
One final point, Tim Dinsdale rightly includes the Le Serrec monster filmed off the coast of Australia.
However, it should be noted that subsequent investigation strongly suggests a hoax and the photographs
should be viewed with considerable suspicion. They may be genuine, but we would like to see similar ones
taken by someone less suspect than Mr. Le Serrec.
The book is not flawless, but it should be in every fortean's library.
Vincent and Margaret Gaddis. The Curious World

Twins. New York: Hawthorn Books. 1972. $6.95.

No one bats an eye if a cat has six kittens, but multiple births in humans have always aroused considerable interest and curiosity. Even fraternal twins, who are no more alike than any other brothers and/or sisters,
get special attention of the "Oh, you're twins, are you?" variety. I happen to be a twin, labelled identical,
though I have now learned from the Gaddis's book thl!ot a single placenta does not necessarily mean identical
twins; thus, various doctors and others who have questioned the label applied to my sister and myself may
well be right. (Frankly. I don't think we look identical - I can tell which is which eve.n in baby pictures.)
But, personal reminiscences aside ...
Vincent and Margaret Gaddis have put together another excellent book, and a very readable one, and have,
as always, included proper documentation. a bibliography. and a good index. After an opening chapter designed to whet the reader's appetite with a selection of 'hors d'oeuvres', the biological basis of twinning is discussed at some length in terms understandable to anyone. This covers not just fraternal and identical twins
but some of the more unusual types of twinning that have been discovered. e.g. "mosaics" or "twins in one
body". Some of the really unusual biological oddities are discussed in a later chapter - so-called Siamese
twins. teratomas or 'dormant' twins, parasitic foetuses and the like. Some of these are real "lulus". though
the reasons for their occurrence are now fairly well understood. There is also considerable information on
truly multiple births, i.e. everything .from triplets on up to the fertility-drug multiples (the record here seems
to be 15, all smothered within the womb), and the problems they cause and encounter.
The other major section of the book deals :with the sometimes most extraordinary 'links' between twins,
whether reared together or separately - twin.s who die simultaneously though one is not ill. parallel existences led by twins separated at birth and who:. don't even know they have a twin; telepathy and other
'psychic' phenomena exhibited by twins; pain-sharing, and such. These are documented case histories, along
with some "anecdotes" not so easily pinned down. But perhaps the most interesting part of the book is that

48

which concerns exact doubles who are not related to each other; ~so 'phantom' doubles - called ;autoscopic
hallueinations (formerly called doppelgangers) - seen only by the person whose image is being 'projected'.
There are theories about this latter but it is not really understood.
,
Lastly, for the benefit of twins and mothers of twins, there is a chapter on clubs "where God c,hooses the
members", with addresses to which interested (and qualified) persons may write.

Philip S. Callahan.

Behavior. New York: Four Winds Press, 1970. $4.95.

Although ostensibly a perfectly straightforward "introduction" to certain aspects of entomology (the


study of insects), of which there are known to be about 900,000 species, it does contain some realIy rather
purely fortean material and makes most fascinating reading in any case. It is written for the lay;man, and
speeifically the "amateur" (his quotes) entomologist. Professor Callahan notes: "The field of en\omology
is full of opportunities for amateurs. In earlier years, most of the greatest contributions to the f~eld came
from gifted amateurs' who pursued the study because they enjoyed it. Often, such enthusiasts ~ere considered crackpots for'associating with lowly insects and, worse, enjoying it!"
As the title indicates, it is insect behaviour that is dealt with here, not a catalogue of "whats"; and
the author includes a lengthy and eminently practical section on projects and experiments, with detailed
instructions on bunding insect traps and more sophisticated 'instruments' such as a chamber de~igned for
photographing insects in flight - an apparatus that can be built by anyone. A degree in optical and/ or
other engineering is not required!
'
The book also contains a list of selected readings, a glossary. and an index.
Charles Berlitz. Mysteries From Forgotten Worlds,. New York: Doubleday & Company. 1972. $8.95.'
Although the author apparently did his own research. he comes up with very little that is new in the "were
there advanced civilizations on e'arth in the remote past" genre. Much of his material is also cov~red in Von
DanB.en's and others' books on this subject. Also, though the jacket blurb. and the subtitle qf the book.
suggest that it deals pretty exclusively with an ancient civilization in the Americas. Mr. Berlit'z jumps all
over the globe for archaeological. linguistic, and other eVidence, and again spends considerable ~ime on the
problem of Atlantis, the subject of his previous book. He is on his surest ground in regard to linguistics. and
would be well advised to concentrate on this; he is not so good at zoology. and rather undiscrimin~ting in the
field of geology. apparently being as enthusiastic about Hugh Auchincloss Brown's very dubious ~heories as
anyone else's. (He also misspells Jack Ullrich's name throughout.)
,
The book is quite well illustrated except for two appallingly redrawn and inaccurate line icuts of the
"little gold dozer" featured in Ivan T. Sanderson's book Investigating the Unexplaine",. This r~allY is inexcusable; we sent Mr. Berlitz the original tracings by Mr. Sanderson.
'
There is no index, which makes the book virtually useless as a research tool. This lack of an index may
be stupidity on the part of the publisher; many publishers refuse to be "bothered" with indice~, but if the
author screams loud enough and is willing to do it himself, they usually capitulate. There is albrief bibli'
ography but it is unfortunately not keyed into the text.

Robert R. Lyman. Forbidden Land. Coudersport, Pa.: The Potter Enterprise. 1971. $4.50
add 25 for mail orders (plus 6% tax for Pennsylvania orders).

(paperb~ck,

$2.50);

This, the first of two volumes, chronicles ninety-one unusual, ,strange, and unexplained events' in the
Black Forest of northern Pennsylvania from 1614 to 1895, collected by Mr. Lyman who is extraordinarily
knowledgeable concerning local history and has that rare knack of knowing where to 'dig'. His bbok is quite
charming and will be of particular interest to those interested in folklore, though 'pure' fortedns will find
item s in it to interest them also. We look forward to volume two, which presumably will bring this unusual
history of Pennsylvania's Black Forest up to date. Mr. Lyman has the happy faculty of being ableito get even
reluc:tant witnesses to talk, and some of the most recent tales are forte an indeed.
'
Roy Pinney. Slavery: Past and Present. New York: Thomas Nelson Inc. 1972. $4.95
There is nothing fortean about this book, but it is well worth reading and should certainly be r:ead by anyone who thinks slavery is a thing of the past. The history of slavery is also not exactly what tnost people
think it was.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -. . . . . . . .~. . . .~----. . . . . . . .~ . . . . . . . . ._ . . . . .I . . . ._ . . . . . . .

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

GOVERNING BOARD
President (elected for 5 years)
First Vice-President
Second Vice-President
Treasurer
Secretary
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)

Hans stefan Santesson


Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Ivan T. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Thelma K. Yohe
Daniel F. Manning
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.

Trustees in accordance with the laws of the state of New Jersey.

ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD
Director
Deputy Director
Executive Secretary
Assistant Director for Communications Media
Assistant Director for Science & Technology

Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert .C. Warth

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of AElthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern
.
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute: University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia,
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)"
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - President, Roth Research-Animal Care, Inc., Washington, D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department. College of Agriculture, Utah State UniverSity.
(PhytochemistrY)
.
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON, NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

-=-

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=~

=-.

SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINEO


VOL. 5, NO.3

JULY, 1972

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED


Columbia. New Jersey 07832
Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION
The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees. in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President. elected for five years;
two vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a Secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the fIve Trustees, and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our society is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists, as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.

PARTICIPATION
Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is U.S. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $5, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
The Society contracts -- with individuals. and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the Society.

NOTICES
In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion, as yet, of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities, as ')1 now, cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.

PUBLDCATIONS
The Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The SOCiety further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July, 1965, until the end of March 1968, the society issued only
a newsletter. on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were, however, entitled PURSUIT-vol. 1. No.3 and No.4, dated June and september, 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2, No. 1. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January, April, July, and October. Back issues, some
available only as Xerox copies, are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an order form.

Vol. 5. No. 3
July. 1972

PURSUIT
THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE
INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

EdItor & Publisher: Hans Stefan Santesson


J!:xocutive Editor: Marion L. Fawcett
Man'sing Editor: Allen V. Noe
Associate Editor: Walter J. McGraw
Consultlns Editor: Ivan T. Sanderson

CONTENTS
Tb e Taxo.nom,l: Q! Knowledge
E!!itorial: ParlPsychics and the Encroachment of Technology
Urology
Off and On
Essential Reading
Chaos ~ Confusion
More Sky-Lines
Sub-Section K
Metallic Balls from Where?
The Mystery Bell - Stone, England

50
51
52
52

53
54

55
57

~ronomy

Wl1ere Does the Iron Go?


Geol!Z,g;y
Mystery Sand Dunes
Almost Fortean Facts About Lightning
BioloSl
250-M1l1ion-Year-Old Organisms Revived
A Definitely Unclassified Marine Animal
Self-Beaching Cetaceans
Deep-Breathing, or What?
Our Top Lake Monster
Sub~Sectlon Exobiology: Possibility of Life on Jupiter
The Message
Anthropology
South American Pygmies
More on Mercury Engines
~ Pursuits
Members' Forum
Book Revi~

57

58
59
60
60
62
62
62
63
64
66
67
69
69
70

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 19'12

THE TAXONOMy OF KNOWLEDGE

THE:

GEOLOGY

TANGIBLES

VI
EARTH SCIENCES
A,mospherici and Meteorblo9)'.
Oceanology, Hydrology, and Glo,
clology; Tectonics. Vulconol.
ogy, Seismology, GeophySIcs
and G.omorpholog y; Pe',ology and Mineralogy;
Geode-s)'. Geography.
Cartography,
DO'lng.

P'olo.geana logy. Botany. Zoo


og". E .,b1ology. H.So'ology.
Ph),,, 10109'1 and B,ochenll st,y;
Anotomy (Inc lud'"9 Man); Gene'.
ics and Eyolutlon, Physl.
cal Anthropology;
Paloeontology,

E 'hology ond
Ecology.
MATTER
Atomic Molecular

Chemistry, Crystallography.

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE
Cultural An.h,opology and
E.hnology (A,chaeology ;s a
technique). P, ... His'o,y.
H.stary, and Folklor.; Philology and linguiuici.

TECHNOLOGY AND

PERFORMANCE
Theoretical PhYSIC., ~uc leonies,
ClaSSical Ph),s'c,. Elect'lcs,
E l.e,romolne'lcl, Magne'lcl.

THE USEFUL ARTS

MENTAL CONCE PTS


LogiC and Epistemology;
Psychology. E.h,cs and Aes.
the,"c s, Compara'ive Inl.lllg.nc_,
ParoPsychlcs..

Mechonics.

EXIST ENCE

MEASUREMENT
Number. Quanli'y,
ArllhmellC, Algebra,
Geometry, Trigonometry,

Calculus, Tapology. Thea,y


Gam.s. Probab'lrty,Co ..
Inc Idenee.

0'

THE INrANGIBLES

E:ver)'thing in existence, including -existence- ilself, and Ihus all of our possible canceplS and all knowledge
that we possess or will ever possess. is conlained within this wheel, Technologies and the useful arts lie
.ithin the inner circle, having access to on)' or all of the ten major departments of orgoni zed knowledge,
From the KORAN: -Acqui .. e knowledge, It enables ils possessor to know right from wrong; it lights the wo)' to
heaven; it is our friend in the desert. our societ), in solitude, Our companion when friendless; it guides us to
happiness; it sustains us in miser)'; it i, an ornament among friends. ond an armour against enemies,. _
"he Prophet,

50

51

EDITORIAL
P ARAPSYCHICS AND TH E ENCROACHMENT OF TECHNOLOGY
Need it be reiterated that the pursuit of knowledge has always been along two quite separate paths which
are popularly called the scientific and the psychic. An intermediate land of the paranormal is recognized by
both; but, until recently, for the most part by the latter. They have further claimed for some time that they
are trying to approach their elusive subjects upon proper scientific lines, but this is all too often not so, and
the 'proof' they offer is seldom considered, or considered worthwhile, by scientists. Now, something quite
new has been added.
It has always been our contention that there is no such thing as the psychic. Either it is imaginary, or it
is susceptible to proper scientific and technological investigation that would prove it to be just as natural
and real as anything tangible, and thus to fit into both our logic and our current concept of reality. The key
word in the above sentence is technology. An astonishing and an as yet almost entirely unknown -to the
general public and even the average scientist- breakthrough has been achieved by these people without re
ference to either psychic or scientist, and with a somewhat delightful indifference to either of their opinions
or how many toes they tread on in both communities. The result has been the emergence of Parapsychics,
first in Russia.
This picture is, however, not nearly as clear and simple as that, and for several reasons. First and fore
most is that nobody seems ever to have looked up the term psychic in the dictionary and therefore universally
misapply it. The trouble is not so much that the word is mistaken but, to the exact contrary, because its true
limits are not known. The result has been that all manner of discoveries that have been made through purely
technological means have been happily classed as being of 'psychic' matters. The worst example is that of
so-called ESP, which is a gag-phrase that should be applied only and exclusively to extrasensory "perception-, but has become a popular term for an enormous spread of matters of which it, in its strict sense, is
only a rather minor part.
Extra-sensory perception is itself very badly named. What is really meant is reception by means other
than the some 30 senses that we now know we have. It totally ignores 'extra', or better, super-sensorY projection, without which there can be no reception. Further, a whole slew of related matters, mostly still
mysterious to us, and concerning not only us but all other animals, and now plants it appears, are on the
one hand either totally ignored by the psychics and mystics as a whole, or have been claimed by them when
there is nothing psychic whatsoever about them. All these matters, including so-called ESP, now "lie squarely in the realm of work-a-day practical science. So also do a legion of other matters that the psychics still
blithely claim just as if they had never been scientifically investigated and explained, like astrology,
pyramidology, and so forth. What is more, it is the technologists who have done the explaining.
n

To all such matters the designation Parapsychics (meaning para or like, what people otherwise call
psychic) should be applied. This is not to say that psychics should not continue to pursue such matters by
their own methods, but they are now well advised to find out first just what of their pet subjects have been
so explained scientifically; and, at the same time, see to it that anything promising that they might"stumble
across be immediately made known to the technologists working in that particular field. The longer they refrain from dOing these two things, tne more idiotic they look and the more suspect they become. That the
serious-minded astrologers -not the uneducated masses who have recently turned it into a paying religionshould waste their time and brains trying to prove their fossilized contentions that have now been proven to
be unprovable, is deplorable, especially w hen there is a most solid scientific bedrock for their basic contention; probably best laid out by Michel Gauquelin in his book The Scientific Basis of Astrology.
In reviewing a book most grossly misnamed Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Misses
Schroeder and Ostrander, we tried to make this point clear but, as the term Parapsychics only reached the
western world after this splendid book had gone to press, there was nothing to be done about it. The use of
the word 'psychic' in this title has done irreparable damage to the progress of science and general knowledge
in the many fields of enquiry which it describes. The book has (happily for the authors) had a very large
sale, but from knowing the authors and having heard what they went through last year on the lecture circuit
promoting it, it is very plain that all the good it has done is to confirm the psychics, mystics and the assorted nuts and screwballs who have crept in under their umbrella, that what they describe in their book is
'psychic'. Not one word of it is; it is all basically parapsychic, and concerns the technological proof that
the items covered are just as real and realistic as a bunch of rocks or a flock of geese.
Unfortunately both for those labouring sincerely in this vineyard of esoteric knowledge and for the public
at large the continued misuse of the term psychic will set all acceptance of the findings even of the tech-

-----~--------

52

nologists back years, perhaps centuries, because once the general public latches on to a catch-phrase -and
more parti"cula.rly if it is a misnomer: it would seem- they will never let go of it, and they will never bother
to read the facts or give up their drivelling misconceptions. This damnable term is every bit as bad as the
other popular fancies such as their persistence in calling the Yeti the "Abominable Snowman" when it is
neither a man, nor lives in the snow, and has no reason to be called abominable; "The Great se~ serpent"
which it is not and never has been described as; the "Bermuda Triangle" which is not a triang~e and has
nothing to do with Bermuda, other than that it pofnts roughly at those islands, while being an oblong shaped
something; and this most accursed of all terms "ESP" which for no reason at all has become a catch-all for a
vast uwge of individual though related stUdies having nothing to do with perception.
OUI' only hope for the future is that the technologists will continue to investigate these matters, tear them
apart on practical grounds, and publish their findings irregardless of the simperings of the non-tec~nological
psychi.cs, mystics, and all the rest of them. By this means the truth will be ever wider separated "from mere
beUef, and the believers come to look ever more ridiculous until even the general public gives them the horselaugh. Writers like Lynne Schroeder and Sheila Ostrander are going to be needed aplenty to explai~ the findings of the technologists in plain language, so that they can be compared with the babblings of the :psYChics.
Then, and then only perhaps, will the serious-minded psychical researchers drop their games and ddvote their
vif intellects to pushing back the frontiers of knowledge in this department by aiding the technologi.sts. They
had bE!tter, because the technologists are not gOing to stop now, nor are certain departments of sciencedom
and officialdom who are backing them and who are already perceiving the most useful possibilities coming
out of their searches and researches. Photographing a person's, an animal's, or a plant's aura i's already
proving rather useful; and the control of the two PKs -psychokinesis, meaning the ability to move objects at
a distance without touching them, and pyrokinesis, meaning to set things on fire at a distance- would change
a lot of things. More power to the technologists.
Ivan T. Sanderson.

UFOLOGY

OFF AND ON
Experiments (by whom or where not specified as
yet) al'e alleged to have discovered that the eye is a
differential organ, which can only see an image if it
is moving relative to the retina. It ensures this by a
continual irregular tremor at around 100 Hz. Further
remarkable experiments, in which this frequency is
optically detected and used to vibrate the scene
exactly in phase with the viewer's eyes, have also
allegedly been performed. This cancellation of the
tremour maintains the image exactly static on his
retina, and he cannot see it! But then, if a single
tunable frequency (say 51 Hz) be superimposed on top
of this continual servo-tracking movement, the world
immediately becomes visible again, for the optical
image is now oscillating at exactly 51 Hz over the
retina. If the experimentee looks at something at 50
Hz fmquency, the two frequencies will beat on his
retina at the same time. For one half cycle the image
will be out of phase with his retina and moving over
it, and for the other half cycle in phase and moving
with it; so he will see the scene or object appearing
and di sappearing once a second.

This brings up some interesting possibi~ities. How


about UFOs causing such in-phase interference? It
would be the simplest thing to do and 'either unidirectionally or throughout 360 degrees, so that some
individuals would see them flashing on and off, or
just plain coming on and then later disappearing,
while vast crowds could be similarly ~nfluenced.
This has nothing to do with what UFOs are or
where they come from; it is merely a rather solid new
suggestion as to how they might appear to us to perform one of their "tricks". The same suggestion has
been repeatedly made to explain their alleged ability
to switch car engines and other electrical circuits on
and off and, what is more, have the englne running
when they turn their little gimmick off.

ESSENTIAL READING
The following article is reprinted with;permission
from the January/February 1972 issue of Flying
Saucer Review and is by Colin Bard. We do not know
whether the book he mentions, The ~ of Lateral

53

Thinking by Edward de Bono, is available in this


country; but we consider Mr. Bord's article most
important. It is addressed to ufologists, but all
forteans should take heed. To wit: "'One of the current internecine squabbles among
UFO researchers r evolves around the question:
Should Fortean and paraphysical phenomena be considered as having some value in our efforts to solve
the UFO problem? While the advocates of this approach point out that UFOs are but one of the many
enigmas with which we are surrounded, and may in
fact be only part of a far greater mystery, the opponents feel, to quote from a recent BUFORA journal,
'there are enough "fringe" phenomena already classified or included under the UFO umbrella . . . which
have no proven direct connection with UFOs.' The
author's italics for the word 'direct' brought home to
me the tenor of his thinking. Here was the traditional
scientific approach to the problem, logical and exact,
from one solid step to another solid step, which is of
course the only recognised way with which to approach any problem, and the method we are all taught
to use throughout our early years of training.
"But there is another type of thought pattern that
can be used, not one opposed to logic, but complimentary to it. This mode is used instinctively by
those who feel that the Fortean and"paraphysical are
well worth considering. It is the thought style of the
inventor and the originator, the Individual who, to the
envy of his fellows, appears to be able to pluck a
cohesive coherent idea from what had seemed to be
trackless confusion. This approach has been critically examined and defined, and termed 'lateral thinking',
by Edward de Bono, in his recent book The. Use of
Lateral Thinking (pub. Jonathan Cape). Traditional
logical thinking he has termed 'vertical thinking', and
likens it to using building blocks, each block resting
firmly and squarely on the block below it, whereas in

lateral thinking, the blocks are scattered around and


the ensuing pattern can have a multiplicity of directions of approach, some of greater value than
others.
"Lateral thinking is more concerned with possibilities than with certainty, and with the generation of
new ideas, rather than the refinement of old ones, and
so this book should be essential reading for every
student of UFO phenomena. Indeed, sentences and
paragraphs leap from the page as one reads; it could
well have been written with the present state of UFO
research in mind. Thus we read of 'dominant ideas'
which can exert a 'powerful organiSing influence on
the way a person thinks and approaches a problem'.
Or again I quote, 'It is disturbing to think how many
situations are incompletely understood because
attempts at exploration persist in using well-tried
familiar patterns which ought themselves to be reexamined.'
"Although t his is not a book about UFOs, in
another sense it is very much concerned with them.
Not only will it help us to question our mental approach to the problem, but it shows us how to develop
and use other patterns of thinking, which may pay
greater dividends when applied to the UFO enigma.
"I end with a quote from the book that might suitably be printed on thick card and sent to every UFO
researcher.
"'It is not possible to dig a hole in a different
place by digging the same hole deeper. Logic is the
tool that is used to dig holes deeper and bigger to
make them altogether better holes. But if the hole is
in the wrong place, then no amount of improvement is
going to put it in the right place. No matter how
obvious this may seem to every digger, it is still
easier to go on digging in the same hole than to start
all over again in a new place. Vertical thinking is
digging the same hole deeper; lateral thinking is
trying again elsewhere.' "

CHAOS & CONFUSION

MORE SKY-LINES
Back in our January issue of last year (Vol. 4,
No.1) we reported a remarkable phenomenon that we
had investigated in the Caldwells, N. J., in the
previous summer. These were seemingly endless very
fine glistening lines or threads that appeared in the
sky running absolutely straight and taut for miles at
various angles to the horizontal ranging between about
30 to some 50 degrees of elevation. These lines ran
at different directions of the compass and showed no
pattern in their distribution. Two of them remained absolutely taut and stationary for up to a month through

several bad electrical storms and some other high


winds. Many people, including the local township
police, followed them both ways trying to locate an
end to them, but despite 20x20 binoculars none could
be spotted. Eventually the lower end of these two
lines fell down during the night; one in a retired
newspaperman's front lawn, the other among some
chairs by a swimming pool. The newsman and his
wife hauled in a very considerable mass of the stuff
before it came down so low that it snagged on some
tall trees opposite. That at the pool was hauled on
for almost an hour by four youngsters and the two
lifeguards until it too snagged on an overhead power
line. This lot almost filled a 55-gallon oil drum used

54

as a trash can. In both cases, the moment it came


down it ravelled UP just as if it had been unwound
from a. spool of a diameter of about two inches.
We had this material analyzed by the DuPont
Comp~UlY who stated that it was chemically a type 6
Nylon (caprolactam) or possibly a copolymer such as
type 6 and type 66, but that it was not of their manu
facturl~. It looked for all the world like a leadline for
fishing tackle and so we bought samples of as many
as WE! could find and wrote to the manufacturers,
especi.ally those in northern New Jersey. None could
identify it precisely. We then sent a sample to a Dr.
Vargas, an analytical chemist at Rhode Island University. He readily confirmed DuPont's identification
but then something even more mysterious happened.
These lines had a fine hollow tube running through
their length. When Dr. Vargas first examined the
specimens this was empty, but after a time in a
vacuum jar he found to his amazement that this tube
was filled .with some other solid substance, and this
defied analysis so far as we can make out.
Meantime, we had been asked to prepare a short
article telling the whole story for True Magazine, and
the Junior Editor assigned to this item came to visit
us at HQ, bringing his girlfriend with him. The moment
she saw the stuff she became really very excited,
telling us that the year before such a line had been
stretched over the lower Village in Manhattan where
she lived and that eventually one end had come down
on the outside fire escapes of her apartment house
and had become hopelessly ravelled on hers which
was the one but top floor. It was still there. Further,
she added, only about three weeks before we met,
another line had come down on the other side of the
small yard behind the house. A few days later she
sent us some specimens of both. They looked exactly
like the Caldwell one under the low"power microscope.
That was a year ago; now we have this, which we
take verbatim from the Atlanta Journal and Constitu
tion, of the 11th June of this year. It is bylined
Herbert Wilcox, a staff correspondent, and goes as
follows: "Elberton, Ga. - The sun hadn't quite come up
and the moon hadn't quite gone down the other morn"
ing, and Hut Wallace was in a rocking chair on his
front porch enjoying the dawn when he noticed a
strange thing. A shining line seemed to be right up
to the moon in front of his home and to stretch into
infinity in the back. Nowhere could there be seen
anything to hold it up. Hut, a longtime friend, telephoned and urged me to come over and see the unusual
Sight. By the time I got there, the sun had come up
and the moon had gone down, but the line was still
mounting the sky and shimmering in the light of the
early morning sun as far as the eye could see. An
earthy guess was that it might be a kite string. If so,

it was the longest and fanciest kite string ever seen


around here. Besides, there was no kite: in sight to
hold it way up in the air. Another guess! was tha~ it
was some sort of hot line laid out by:a plane, or
maybe a parachute had diSintegrated way up yonder
and that this was what was left of it. This still didn't
explain how it managed to stay up there. During the
day, Eddie Boswell, Hut's son-in-law, !got on the
roof, where the line was at its lowest point. He pulled in yards and yards of it but never saw a thing to
indicate what it had been fastened to. There were two
kinds of material in the line. That puUed from the
west was a fluffy, shiny, white SUbstance. That from
the east was a tiny, hard-finished gr~en material
something like a fishing line. Both wlere hard to
break. "
I am afraid that we have nothing to ad~ to all this
except to put on record that we submitted :samples to
the USAF, asking them if they might be s6me device
for jamming radar or such and asking whether we
might publish this fact if it were. We 'received a
curious letter back from an old friend there saying
"Preseilt budgetary stringency makes it :impossible
for us to run complete scientific tests on this
material". We had never asked for any such thing!
How do these obviously manufactured lines get up
there and what holds them taut and stationary through
rain and shine and all manner of storms? -FO what are
they attached at either end, and what keeps them up
there? It has defied the meteorologists, and the
physicists have nothing to offer because it seems to
defiy all their laws of natural propriety.

SUB-SECTION UK"

If you turn ahead to page 59, you will see some of


the things that lightning does both normially and of
utterly bizarre natures. The following con~erns lightning but the oddities of its behaviour in th,is case are
far outweighed by its solidly fortean asp~ct; namely,
that of what we call uK", standing for coincidence.
This is one of the hairiest of all fortea,na and one
which irks mathematicians and a wide variety of other
scientists the most. There must be a natural law
somewhere to explain it but every time the mathematicians think they are gettIng such a ;new set of
rules, which have to be quite outside :our current
ideas of reality and logic, they break idown. The
following case is one of the sweetest we:have ever
seen.
We herewith offer excerpts from the L;A. TimesWashington Post Service release. It is appropriately
datelined Dooms, Va., and goes as follows,:

55

"Roy Cleveland Sullivan is a veteran Shenandoah


National Park ranger who used to have a full head of
white hair. He lost most of the hair recently when,
for the fourth time in his 60 years, he was struck by
lightning and lived to tell about it. Three of the hits
have occurred while he was on duty, including the
last one, which got him while he was manning the
registration station at the Loft Mountain camping
area. 'There was a gentle rain, but no thunder until
just one big clap, the loudest thing I ever heard,'
SUllivan said. 'The fire was bouncing around inside
the station, and w hen my ears stopped ringing, I
heard something sizzling. It was my hair on fire. The
flames were up six inches.' People made a lot of bad
jokes, leaning heavily on the fact that his home
community is named 'Dooms', and he did his best to
laugh. One of t he people who used to make such
jokes is his wife Patricia, 35. She hasn't made any
since August, 1970, when she was hit by lightning
while standing outside t heir trailer home near Saw
Mill Run on the western edge of the park.
"Sullivan's third lightning strike came in July,
1970. He was standing at the edge of his garden when
a bolt hit the power transformer near the trailer and
jumped from there to his left shoulder, knocking him
several feet but leaving only slight burns.
"Strike No.2 happened in July, 1969. Sullivan was
driving a park truck on Skyline Drive near Milepost
97 when a bolt hit two trees on the west Side of the
road, then jumped to a gum tree on the east side. The
bolt went through the cab of the truck, which had both
windows open, and relieved Sullivan of his eyelashes,
eyebrows, and all the hair up to his hat brim. That
was the only strike that knocked him out. The truck
rolled to a stop at the edge of a c tiff!
"Strike No. 1 was the worst. In April, 1942, his
sixth year with the Park Service, he was in the
MiHer's Head Fire Tower when a heavy storm hit.
'The tower was new and they hadn't put in the lightning rods yet,' he said. 'It was hit seven or eight
times and fire was jumping all over the place, so I
decided to bail out. I got just a few feet away from
the tower and then, blam! It burned a halfinch strip
all the way down my right leg and knocked my big toe
nail off. My boot was full of blood, and it ran out
through a hole in the sole.'
"Were he not a modest man, Sullivan could lay
claim to five lightning strikes. When he was a boy,
while cutting wheat with his father in a high meadow,
a bolt struck the blade of his cradle scythe and then
bounced off along the ground, setting the grain afire."

METALLIC BALLS FROM WHERE?


We are not quite sure that we have this in the
right place because, in the great majority of cases,
these things have been said to have fallen out of the
sky, not a few of t hem in conjunction with an UFO
overfly.
These metallic balls come in a very wide range
of sizes and weights. All seem to be hollow and none
of them show any signs of having been welded or
how they were otherwise made. If the reports are to
be believed, both government and commercial laboratories appear to have been unable to identify the
metals, and in several cases it is stated that they
were unable even to cut them. This last we find
passing strange, what with the power we have at our
disposal and the diamond and other cutting edges in
use in industry. These balls, once reported and
collected, appear almost always to disappear into the
maw of officialdom's laboratories, an(i are never
heard of again. A good example is as follows: Frorr' the Evening Times of Manasquan, New Jersey,
28th August, 1971: "A fishing trawler working off the
coast near here has dredged up a mystery of the sea,
a U.S. Navy spokesman said today. The fishing boat,
the Zerda out of Gloucester, Mass., late yesterday
netted a three-foot-diameter metal sphere weighing
about 1,500 pounds which the Navy has been unable
to identify. According to Martin Monahan, information
officer at the Earle Naval Ammunition Depot, the
object was first thought to be a bomb or mine. But,
Monahan said, a Naval explosive demolition team,
flown out to the trawler last night by the u.S. Coast
Guard, couldn't identify it. 'Right now, we're not
sure what it is,' he said. 'The team went through our
ordnance records to see what it mi!;ht be but it doesn't
look like anything we've heard of. The only thing
we're sure of is that it's old.' The 92-foot-long,
159-ton trawler radioed the Coast Guard that she
found tl1e device about 5 p.m. yesterday, 33 miles
southeast of Manasquan."
The case that was most widely publicized was
that of three balls found on the surface of the ground
in Australia. The following facts are excerpted from
the Investigator, the bulletin of the National Investigations Committee of Aerial Phenomena, via the
British publication FSR, Vol. 10, No.1., for JanuaryFebruary, 1964. "The odd metal "space" spheres
found in New South Wales, Australia, in April and

Predictions
From Samuel Johnson: "If ever a man should travel at more than thirty miles an hour, the flesh would be
seared from his bones by the pressure of the air."

56

mid-.July 1963, still have not been identified, according to the Australian Ministry of Supply, Mr. Allen
Fairhall. Minister Fairhall stated that his inquiries
to the tJ .S. and U.S.S.R. space agencies have drawn
a blank. The first mystery ball, 12 lb. hollow sphere
14 inches in diameter, was discovered on April 8,
Hi63, in a desolate part of Bouilla Station, New
South Wales. Mr. J. McLure, who found it, said no
one else had been in the area for 50 years. Scientists
failed in their efforts to open the sphere with files
and hacksaws. On June 28, the second 'space ball'
fell, in New South Wales, 60 miles from t he first
location. This one weighed 18 lb. and was 16 inches
in diameter. It was made of the same puzzling inetal.
The third sphere fell on July 12, near Muloorina, in
South Australia. It was six inches in diameter and
had an opening in it. Earlier, Australian officials had
said the first sphere would be cut in half for scientific examination. To date, there have been no further
announcements.
"The highly technical work and cost required to
build such spheres seems to rule out any hoax answer.
Both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have denied any connection. Even if the spheres were earth-made, all
threE! would hardly fall by accident in this one area.
To drop them there deliberately would require precise
re-entry by remote-control, also retro-firing jets,
which the spheres did not have.
"If they were extraterrestrial, some more advanced
control mechanism might be used. In this case, the

Australian Government may have found the answer and possibly a clue to their purpose - on openingthe
spheres. To the 'best of our knowledg~, Australian
officials have been silent as to what was:discovered."
Their silence has continued to date.
Three years ago there was a real flurr.y 1Il northern
Mexico. A peasant found one lying on th.e ground high
up a bare mountain slope and was sensible enough
not to touch it. He reported to the loc~ jefe of his
village who, knowing the Illan from birth,: went to look
at it. He did not touch it either, but reported it to his
local police superior who in turn repo~ted it up the
line. In due course, quite an assemblage of minor and
major "brass" turned up, and went to inspect the ball,
which was about a foot in diameter and iof a polished
bluish-white color. The Fe.ds picked it up and took it
down to the local village for a look. ;having run a
geiger counter over it and gotten a negative result.
There, the local citizenry crowded arou~d and one by
one started saying that they knew where there were
Illore such balls of varying sizes. Still higher-ups
were then called and the Americans arrived with
them! Three more balls were located over an area of
about 100 square miles. They were duly signed for
and sealed and whisked off to Mexico, I).F., and that
is the last that has been heard of that lot. r
Now comes another one, with a good photo at last.
It is under the byeline of one Ralph La~don, of whom
unfortunately we know nothing. Were It not for the
rather excellent photograph we would hive been most
reluctant to publish this as it comes from the "atrocity" newspaper called Midnight (of 7 Aug. 1972) in
which we have found, over the years, some stories
that are not only censurable but very I).early actionable. Nonetheless, it goes as follows: _.
"Scientists in New Zealand are baffled by a heavy
metal ball that appeared in a field one day recently and some of them believe it may have 'fallen from a
flying saucer! The object landed in a: field not far
from the town of Ashburton, and at the moment no one
can say where it came from, or what it'.s made of. 'It
must have fallen from a great height,' isaid Sergeant
J. R. Wheeler, of the Ashburton police force, who recovered the b all. 'There were no footp:rints or other
marks of any kind around the ball, and;it had buried
itself six inches into the ground - which was hard
because of a recefl~ drought.' The ball: is 16 inches
in d~ameter, weighs 13 and a quarter ppunds, and is
haH an inch thick. Expert metallurgists were unable
to identify the metal, or metals, fro"! which it is
made-but it had obviously been througq some drastic
abuse. 'One end has a jagged, irregtilar, burnt-out
hole about six inches by three inches,' commented
one police lab technician. 'Around the hole the metal
has been flung back as though subject~d to immense

57

heat. Where the metal has been burnt away, bright


gold and purple and other colored metal shows
through. The ball in fact is in two parts - perfectly
welded Ingether.'
"But by whom? And for what? Nobody yet knows.
For the moment, the Royal New Zealand Air Force
has been called in to try and shed light on the mystery, along with experts from the United states Navy's
Operation Deep Freeze. Attempts to get further information have been blocked by the air force in the same
way that flying saucer sightings have been suppressed by a wall of silence. But B. R. Roswell, a metallurgist who had the opportunity to examine the strange
ball, had this to say about it: 'If there's anything on
earth right now that comes from another planet, this
object could be it. It seems In be made from a metal
that bears no resemblance to anything known to man,
and nobody seems to be able to decide what it could
have been used for. But obviously, it was manufactured by something or somebody. Whether that
"somebody" was human or not still remains to be
seen.' ..

THE MYSTERY BELL - STONE, ENGLAND


In our October 1971 issue we included a short note
on various 'bells' that seemed to require explaining.
One of these was reported by UPI on the 14th March
1971, as follows:
"A bell rings twice every day in the home of Mr.
and Mrs. Kenneth Bentley. Trouble is, they can't find

out where the


fire brigade,
officials have
come at 8:30
really quite

b ell is or what causes it to ring. The


post office engineers, and council
searched for it to no avail. The rings
a.m. and 5:30 p.m. without fail. 'It's
baffling,' said a postal engineer."

We asked our English correspondent to investigate,


and she bunged off letters to various parties. Only
one, finally, deigned to reply - the Stone & North
Staffordshir~ Advertiser. The pertinent portionof
their reply was that "The ringing of the b ell was
eventually pinned down to a fairly natural cause. A
bell hung at the bottom of the Bentley's garden. Vibration from passing trains caused it to ring at
regular times."
That vibrations from trains could cause a bell to
ring is perfectly possible but this sounds suspiciously like a 'wipe', and we have asked for further in-vestigation. It may be that the original UPI release
was sloppily done and, in fact, grossly inaccurate.
Either the bell rang U! thE! home of Mr. and Mrs.
Bentley; or it rang at the bottom of their garden, they
forgot that t hey had a bell at the bottom of their
garden, and a whole host of engineers and technicians
were unable to locate it or, apparently, even to figure
out that it wasn't in the house. The type of bell is
not specified in the initial report, but the personnel
called in to investigate it suggests, to this writer at
least, an electrical bell rather than the church bell
type of thing. Post office engineers are, in England,
in charge of the telephone service, hardly the sort
to call in to check on a sudden spate of changeringing. So we shall see what the Bentleys have to
say.

V. ASTRONOMY
WHERE DOES THE IRON GO?
For decades group after group and corporation
after corporation, mostly led by one Mr. Barringer,
probed what used to be called the great Arizona
meteor crater - it was finally named after this
gentleman - in the belief that there was a great hunk
of iron that had caused the crater buried beneath. The
crater looks as if the meteor had come in vertically
but prolonged field work seemed to show that it had
come in at a slight angle so that the iron would be
outside the rim to one side. Drilling there, some iron
was found but not the real mass. They eventually
gave up and it became a tourist attraction.
Then in the late thirties, none other than the late
Willy Ley, originally a palaeontologist but turned
rocket expert, came up with a theory. This was simply
to the effect that a body the size of that which made
th e crater, landing on earth constituted virtually .. an

irresistable force meeting a:1 immovable body" so that


it would, for various reasons, be impossible for said
meteor
to survive. Willy Ley was a mathematician
and knew his physics, and he pointed out that the
heat engendered by such a collision on this scale
would cause the meteor to volatolize and perhaps
vapourize atomically. He went on to point out that
there should nevertheless have been a little pentration and a lot of spatter and scatter. And, true
enough, if you wander off over the level plain around
the Barringer Crater you will find small nodules of
meteoritic iron scattered for miles.
The majority of meteors are composed basically of
iron with metallic inclusions and, since the same
meteors seem to have peppered both the Moon and the
earth, we are constantly being asked now what
happened to all the iron that must have landed on the
former. Considering the number of craters on the moon
and the length of time that they have been piling in

58

there, one on top of the other, it is not unreasonable


to expect that the whole surface would be composed
of spatter. It isn't; as we now know firsthand. In fact,
there :is unexpectedly little iron even in the surface
rocks as far as we now know them. So, just where did
the iron go?
Thl~ larger the meteorite, the greater the volatalization, so that most of their bulk may have been shot
out int.o space; but what of the smaller ones; thousands
of them smaller than the Barringer Crater? The really
small ones should have remained intact and got buried
like many that we have found on the earth; but the
intermediate sized ones should have at least left.
first an increasing, and then a decreasing amount of

spatter according to their size, ranging upwards to


that of the really big boys. Stony metorites get
through our atmosphere as well as iron one:s. but there
is no possible reason for suggesting that all those
that have hit the moon were stony; and, e;ven if they
were, where did the stone go? Does it today form a
component of the breccias that we have now brought
back from the moon? We have asked several of the
more or less top chaps about these questipns but we
have obtained no answer either to the puzzle or even
to our communications in many cases! This is an
unexplained t hat, one would have thought, could
rather readily be explained by a combo of a~tronomers.
meteoriticists. astrop~sicists, and geophysicists.

VI. GEOLOGY

MYSTE:RY SAND DUNES


The results of a ten year study of north African
sand dunes by a French geologist have just been
published. This was begun more as a geographical
exerciBe but has ended up by demonstrating that we
didn't really know anything about inland sand dunes,
at least until this study was undertaken. The most
mysterious discovery is that they come in four basic
forms running both across and parallel to the prevailing winds, a~ they never change shape. or even
size and height. Further, while they have manifestly
been t.here since the drying up of the Sahara in the
last interglacial there is no evidence so far as to
why they are there or even where they got the sand
from in such vast quantities.
We have some very odd inland deserts in North
Ameriea and perhaps the most extraordinary is
Colora.do's Great Sand Dunes, a National Monument
since 1932. This has recently been beautifully reported on by staff writer Charles Hillinger of the
Post-Times News Service. This is loaded with other
mysteries related to these sand dunes, and goes as
follows: - "The strangest desert in the country Colorado's Great Sand Dunes, bounded by four
mountains more that 14.000 feet high - lies in the

Sangre De Cristo (Blood of Christ) range'. Covering


57 square miles, the great sand dunes is ene of this
planet's loftiest sand piles - at an e~evation of
9,000 feet, 30 miles northeast of Alamosa in the
south central part of the state. Scientists are unsure
exactly why the dunes exist.
"There are tales of vanishing wagon trains in the
early days of the West as immigrants mad~ their way
over the mountain of sand, and shepherd!,! and their
flocks crossing the dunes to waterholes !have been
10 st, never to be seen again. or so t he ~tories go.
Yet, the dunes at their widest and longest points
spread no more than 10 miles each direction."
Personally, I cannot see why the idiots didn't go
around the dunes. I have been there and either walked or driven almost all around them as they form a
compact blob, and the ground is for the niost part a
level plain with scant vegetation all around. Trying
to take a waggon train over them would be quite impossible, and why any shepherd would want to drive
sheep in there when there is nothing to eat except
around the few water holes which, incidep.tally, get
buried from time to time, seems equally b8J.my; and I
as just
would certainly be disposed to write both bff
1
other of those tall tales for which the So~thwest is

From ~ Idaho Weekl~


March 22: "For sale. Slightly used wench in good condition. Very handy. Phone 336-R-2. A. C,artright."
March 29: "Correction. Due to an unfortunate error, Mr. Cartright's ad last week was not clear. He has an
excellent winch for sale. We trust t his will put an end to jokesters who phoned Mr. Cartright and greatly
bothered his housekeeper, Mrs. Hargreaves, who loves with him." April 5: "NOTICE. My WINCH :is not for
sale. I put a sledgehammer to it. Don't bother calling 366-R-2. I had the phone taken out. I am NO~ carrying
on with Mrs. Hargreaves. She merely LIVES here. A. Cartright."

59

so famous, but for this Mrs. Cora King who is, after
all, a government employee as well as a llfetime
resident of the area. Mr. Hillinger then goes on: "In the past twenty years there have been scores
of reports of flying saucers taking off and landing
from the desert. Many nearby ranchers and a few
monument employees swear they have seen strange
object.s hovering overhead, landing and taking off
from the great sand dune s.
"Until recent years, a. herd of web-footed wild
horses reportedly roamed the sand hills, feeding on
wild grass and flowers that survive near water holes
hidden deep between ridges. 'My husband and other
ranchers around here have rounded up the wild horses
from time to time', said Mrs. Cora King, 60, an
employee of the monument and lifelong resident of
the area. 'The horses got lost in the dunes or wandered in and never got out. In time they became webfooted - their hooves got big and thick from running
over the soft sand.'"
This one I don't get despite Mrs. King's description. I suppose she means "splayed"; while a
horse's hooves could hardly be thicker than they are
to start with. We will have to write to Mrs. King and
ask for a photograph if she has one.
Despite the spin-off oddities, it is the sand dunes
themselves that are the least explained. They are of
an extraordinary, very slightly rosy, shade of brown
and, while mineralogically of the constitution of
certain rocks on that side of the valley, the color
appears to have been a secondary aquisition due to
atmospheric wee,thering.

perhaps should be classified under our famous head


of "K" for coincidence. These statistics were recently laid out very succinctly for us in an article in the
Asbury Park Sunday Press, for the 30th April, of this
year, date-lined simply Washington. The pertinent
facts herein are as follows: "Some 17,000 to 20,000 houses will be hit this
summer by lightning, many with as much as $25,000
damage. The total loss will be from $70 to $100
million. Despite million-to-one odds, around 600
people will be killed by lightning and 1.500 injured more than by hurricanes and tornadoes. Some will be
unharmed victims of freak accidents, such as the
steeplejack whose wristwatch was melted by a lightning bolt or the thunderstruck father and son welded
inside their car during a storm. About 500 airliners
will be hit by lightning, causing little damage other
than to electronic gear. Ten thousand forest fires
will be touched off by lightning strikes, burning $100
million in timber. Lightning frequently will strike the
same place twice, including up to 50 hits each on the
Empire state and other skyscrapers. The earth will
be enriched by 100 million tons of nature's fertilizer,
nitrogen, literally blasted out of the air by thunderbolts. Almost 2,000 thunderstorms are raging at any
one time, sending lightning stabbing the ground 100
times a second. A single lightning stroke may have
100 million volts, enough wham to lift the Queen Mary
six feet into the air. A typical lightning flash is about
350 kilowatt-hours of energy, but because it lasts
only about a fifth of a second, it is worth only about
$7.50 at average home rates. Momentarily a lightning
stroke mll3' be 60,000 degrees Farenheit, or five times
hotter than the sun's surface. With this heat, the air
explodes into sound waves heard as thunder as far as
18 miles away."

ALMOST FORTEAN FACTS ABOUT LIGHTNING


While the origin and nature of lightning is perfectly understood by meteorologists and other scientists
it displays some aspects that are more than odd and
for which there are not and perhaps cannot be explanations. These emerge from some basic statistics and

"Monkeyshine

Be it understood that all this applies only to our


continent. If you add the contributions of tropical
storms which go on all year round and all night every
night, you will get some idea of just how much
nitrogen is produced.

~ ..

From the San Antonio (Texas) Express of 19 May 1972; with thanks to member No. 582: "Port Arthur (AP)Port Arthur policeman Dave Smith said he spotted a young man sitting in a tree early Thursday morning.
Smith stopped and asked the man, 'What's your name?' The officer said the man replied 'Tarzan'. Smith said
he then asked, 'If you are Tarzan, where's Jane?' The officer said that from higher up in the tree a young
woman stuck out her head and said, 'I'm Jane'. Then Smith asked, 'Well, if you're Jane, where's Cheeta?'
The officer said the girl disappeared into the foliage but reappeared a moment later with a chimpanzee. Smith
told his superiors he did nothing about the incident. He said he knew of no law which forbids people -or
chimpanzees- from sitting in a tree."

------------.--------------.-

60

VII. BIOLOGY
250-MILLION

YEAR OLD ORGANISMS REVIVED

This is not the first report on the revival of seem ..


ingly fossilized organisms, but it is by far the oldest
record as yet. AP in Moscow dug this out of aRussian
scientific journal. Excerpts from that were distributed
by the news agency TASS. The substance of these
reports goes as follows, and we quote from a dispatch
as of the 10th of February of this year: .. A Russian scientist has revived microscopic
organi::;ms that had lain dormant for 250 million years
in a piece of potassium ore, a Soviet magazine report
ed yesterday. The experiment was disclosed in this
month's issue of the English1anguage monthly,
Soviet Union. Excerpts from the article were distributed by the news agency Tass. The article reported
that geochemist N. Chudinov happened upon his
discovery while examining a piece of potassium ore
in his laboratory at the Berezniki Potassium Combine
in the Ural Mountains .
.. 'The scientist became interested in the origin of
the red coloring of the ore', the magazine related. 'On
dissollring the specimen of rock in distilled water,
Chudinov noticed that stranger flakes, like bits of
moss, were beginning to float away from the rock.
They were lighter than water, and bore nq re"
sem blance to any oxide. The scientists did not
realize the excitement these flakes were going to
cause. Using a microscope, Chudinov found that each
flake eontained a world of microorganisms, but the
real surprise was yet to come. On taking another look
several days later at his world in flasks, Chudinov
couldn''t believe his eyes. The primeval microworld
had come to life and the tiny drop of solution was
swarming with reanimated organisms from the Paleo..
zoic era.'
"The article said the revived organisms grew in
the test tubes and then reproduced normally just as
if they had not been in a state of suspension, locked
in potassium crystals, for 250 million years. The
organif:.ms had flourished in the great Perm Sea,
which once covered much of European Russia from
the Urals in the north to Kharkov in the Ukraine, the
-article added."

A DEF'INITELY UNCLASSIFIED MARINE ANIMAL


Over the years we have viewed dozens of photos
of alleged "Sea Monsters" washed up on shores all
over the world. One look has usually been enough to
identify all of them as either a decomposed whale or
shark. However, the 'reports' run into the hundreds,
and none of these would appear to have been either,

since the single common denominator of all is long


neck of less diameter than the head. There is no
known marine reptile or mammal living today that is
so constructed, though the extinct marine: reptiles of
the pre-Tertiary period, known as Plesiosaurs
generally, had just such proportions. Dr. Bernard
Heuvelmans in his monumental work, ill The Wake ill
The Sea Serpert, for which he carded over:a thousand
reports: was finally forced to break them dpwn into at
least s even absolutely distinct looking' creatures .
One of these had a series of erect tria:ngular fins
along its back, and another (though with a short neck)
appeared to have a series of appendages o~ something
like large plates extending down the sides of its
body throughout its length.
NoW, we received first what appeared to be a
typical eye.. witness report by three resident artists
of a Longneck off a beach near the mouth: of Carmel
River in California, in 1948. This appearediin the May
issue of a magazine entitled What's Doing, for that
year and reads as follows: '
, "One stormy day last month three well known
Peninsula artists, John Cunningham, Sam Harris and
Myron 'Mike' Oliver Jr. were strolling along the beach
near the mouth of the Carmel river. SuddenlY, outlined
against the sullen sky, a huge snake-like l1ead reared
eight feet out of the rolling breakers. John set off on
a dead run to get binoculars and to phone tl:te Stanford
Marine Biology Lab. The Marine station i'gnored the.
phone call, thinking it a prank. When John returned,
the monster appeared to be no farther out' than forty
feet in the first line of breakers. They studied its
half.. submerged undulating form through the glasses.
All three agreed that it was shaped like a huge crook-
necked squash some forty feet long and abbut twelve
feet wide through the belly section. It was covered
with a 'mottled pelt of grayish green hair studded with
barnacles. It had a long pinkish wrinkle~ neck and
head. A row of sharp, glassy bottle-gr~en spines
stuck up along its back almost two feet high. It
seemed to swim by humping itself along lik;e [unlikeEditor] a serpent. It blew spume out of its mouth or
head when it surfaced. After lolling about ln, the surf
for an hour or more the weird creature steamed
majestically out to sea.
'
"Dozens of other people had seen the mpnster that
day. Among those who admitted seeing it were a retired U.S. Army major named Milton Bochat, a professor of Business Administration on sab~tical from
the University of Wisconsin named Dr. Robert Aurner,
a master mariner named Robert Bro~nll~Y, and a
number of other otherwise respectable business and
professional men who implored us to l~ave
their
,
names out of it, even though they did see ft.

61, :

"From the description and drawings by the artists.


Dr. W. K. Fisher of the Marine Lab supposed that it
could possibly have been a specimen of the extinct
bullet-headed whale. and the East Indian scientist.
Raghu Prasad. at first thought it the rare tropical
Rhinodon. but said the picture looked more like a
Mesozoic reptile. Marine Biologist Edward F. Ricketts
wondered if it could be a 'new species of pinniped
mammal'."

<; ,

You will note the usual idiocy of this Dr. W. K.


Fisher. who obviously knew no zoology. for no whale
alive or extinct (and what is this "Bullet-headed
Whale anyway?) ever had a long neck thinner than its
head. Dr. Raghu Prasad on the other hand. after
making a professional bow to the professionals - and
it could hava been no less because the Whale Shark
Rhinodon has just about the least 'neck' of any fishmade the first sensible statement we have ever seen.
So to a lesser extent did this biologist. Edward F.
Ricketts.
One of the results of the publication of this report
by the magazine was a slew of letters of a confirmatory nature and. among thes~ was the truly astonishing photograph reproduced above. which came out in
that magazine's June issue of the same year. The
caption that accompanied it reads as follows: .. Although many people saw the Carmel Sea Monster
last month. no one got its photograph. The general
reaction to the story and drawings appearing in our
last issue was that it was all hokum. These two
photos. sent in by one of our readers. (Mrs. Morgan,
Taylor of Piedmont, California) show that sea
monsters CAN be photographed. This one was washed ashore two miles north of Santa Cruz in the summer
of 1925. Many people from Monterey went to see it at
the time. Jack Hilbert. Monterey merchant. remembers
the serpent-like monster as about fifty feet long and
two feet in diameter. with a fish's tail and a duck's
head. Strangest feature. Jack recalls. were the pairs
of elephant-like legs every few yards along the body."

"

Please forgive us and our IOng.,suffering printers


for the Quality ot this photo but it was taken from a
rather pale photocopy of t he original in the old
magazine. We have made it as contrasty as possible
without losing the essential features but. however
murky. all we need are those essential features.
These are. first and foremost. the manifestly. and
undeniable. small diameter of the neck compared t6
the head. No whale however decomposed or shrunken
could possibly look like this and. what is more. the
skin is obviously not decomposed. The second
feature is the general conformation of the head. This
has a slim upper jaw and a very sturdy lower one.
which protrudes beyond the former. There are what
appear to be peglike teeth at the front of the lower

Jaw. There would also appear to be a pair of blowholes pointing almost forwards from the domed
cranium. No eye can be, discerned. unless they are
small a~d lie to' either side of the dual blowhole and
look forward; but there is a distinct small ear-pinna
not unlike those o'f some Pinnipede mammals such as
'
the Sea-Lions.
This is a curious combination of characteristics.
The general s,hape of the head can only be matched
by rec'0I1structions of some of the long-necked. so called Duck-i?illed Dinosaurs. which apparently had blowholes or r ather their nostrils on t he tops of their
heads. Howev:er. if there had been no neck and the
head from mid-crani'um back had just flowed into the
bo~y with in'c'reasing diameter moving backwards like
all whales. the head could possibly look like Ol)e of
the Strap-too~hed Whales (Xiphiidae). The head does
not look like a sealion or any other kind of Pinnipede
in any way. The result of all of this is that. for the
first time. it is our considered opinion that this
creature is an enormous marine Reptile. We had
al ways 'expected both the marine and t he freshwater
Longnecks to turn out to be long-necked Seals. Any
such, nO,tion in t~is case would seem to be finally
ruled out by the statement that this monster had a

62

"fish's tail-. That would be possible for a whale, but


not fOr 'Il Pinnipede.
Ail in all, we are prepared to say that this is the
first photograph we have seen that is manifestly and
with'out any shadow of doubt that of a totally unknown
and fJ,S yet uncaught marine creature, and probably a
reptile.

SELF-BEACHING CETACEANS
Funny that, after all these years and all the effort
put into it, kind-hearted people and government
employees spend so much time towing V81ious kinds
of small cetaceans (i.e. whales, dolphins, porpoises,
et al) back into deep water w hen they have deliberately beaehed themselves. These are mostly so-called
Blackfish - a kind of giant dolphin named Globiocephal~ mel~ - but, from time to time includes all
sorts of other smaller cetaceans. All, however, are
gregarious; be it noted.
About 15 years ago, one of the best marine biologists we've got, N. V. "Craig" Phillips, who planned
the Seaquarium in Miami, and is now with the Federal
government, pointed out something so basically
simple about this so-called "phenomenon- that one
wonders how anybody, unless they wish to make a
fast buck out of an old myth, dare even bring it up
again.
All cetaceans are mammals and appear to have
evolved from land animals, and gone back into the
sea. They breathe air and, although some of them
can stay below for a very long time, they all eventually haVE! to surface. Now cetaceans are subject to a
whole host of diseases, and, curiously, one that
appears to be very prevalent is bronchitis! If any
lung infection is infectious and becomes epidemic in
a herd, these animals experience almost insuperable
difficulties in both diving to hunt food and rech81ging
their air supply, which is hyper-oxygenated. Their
instinct; leads them to the only place where they can
get relief in the latter; this is to the ne81est shallow
water where they can rest their bulk and keep their
heads out of water for prolonged periods. It would
appear that among the Blackfish especially, each
pack 01' herd has a, or some, leaders and when they
are hit by some such affliction they head for shore
and thE! rest follow. Thus, some of the lot may just
be beaehed but quite healthy and, if towed into deep
water may survive, but most come back ashore again
in', short order. In a recent case in Florida a couple
survived in the Aquatarium in St. Petersburg. Several
others died within a few days.
Suggestions of "mass suicide- are ridiculous; and
the not.ion that their direction-finding sonar went on
th'e blink, does not seem to be valid even if they all
have the same ear infection at the same time; but we

feel that Craig Philipps' suggestion makes a lot of


sense. Of course, until som ebody does, a lot of
autopsying it will remain unexplained.
DEEP-BRE:ATHING, OR WHAT?
We have a mystery on our hands here that has not
been explained to our satisfaction by the ;phYsiologists. The breathing apP81atus of birds and mammals,
which are w81m-blooded, are supposed to ;freeze-up
at some point above minus-200 degrees. Apparently
they don't. The Emperor Penguins stand ab9ut in the
air all winter nursing their eggs, which the~ carryon
their feet and cover with the down of their
, lower
bellies. Ponies and sled dogs taken to the :Antarctic
also stay outside, though the dogs mak~ sort of
basins in the snow. Nonetheless, all of t'hese animals breathe sub-zero air.
Now, the lowest temperature ever recorded was at
a Russian Antarctic station and was mi~us-126.9
degrees. Only slightly higher temperatures are
common all 8l0und the periphery of the 60ntinent.
Now, I-knot of wind results in a drop of l~degree in
temperature, and winds can blow up to 2QO mph in
Antarctica. Thus if, say, we have a penguin standing
in still air at minus-150 degrees and a 15()'knot wind
blows up, we get down to minus-300 degr~es. What
happens then to the nasal passages and the windpipe down to the bronchial tubes? Why don't they
freeze solid, or is the internal heating niechanism
devised to cope with this? Maybe it is in penguins,
but how about the ponies and the dogs who!3e ancestors never experienced any such low temperatures?
There manifestly must be an explanation', and we
would very much like to hear what it is.
OUR TOP LAKE MONSTER
A splendidly written and, for once, t~tally unfacetious and factual article appeared in the:Baltimore
!!E, of the 9th December 1971, by the: Sun staff
correspondent, Muriel Dobbin. This was on the
Lake Monsters of Lake Champlain. This i~ so good
that we herewith reproduce it in toto but for two
irrelevant short paragraphs. The obtusen~ss of the
British about their Loch Ness monsters:- and in
Scottish and Irish lakes even better known - is bad
enough, but it is as nothing compared to' ours over
the score of endlessly documented case~ in lakes
ranging right across Canada and down, into our
Rockies', notably to Lake Payette in Idaho. The
scepticism about Lake Champlain is worst of all. The
reaction of the friends of a Mrs. Green, Inentioned
below; :would be analyzed by psychologists as not
ridicule, but a fear syndrome. Ridiculers ar:e not just
uneducated fools but basically psychopathic. This
excellent piece reads: '
'

63

"Burlington, Vermont - Within the 700-foot depths


of Lake Champlain, the stretch of water separating
Vermont from New York, may lurk something which
boggles even the mind of a Vermont bartender accustomed to hearing weird tales from his customers.
It. was in a hotel on the banks of the lake that the
bartender recently recoiled at the suggestion that he
share an eye-witness view of a snaky head and three
black humps slithering through the water. After one
incredulous glance, he returned to his bar, tuned in a
football game on television and declared: 'I'll never
say I saw it.'
"According to Mrs. Robert A. Green, who insists
that she, her mother, and a friend simultaneously
saw the sea serpent of Lake Champlain on that
occasion, the attitude of the bartender reflects that of
most Vermonters. 'They're afraid people will laugh
at them,' asserted Mrs. Green, an attractive mother of
six who used to be a society ed'itor and who admitted
that her monster story had reduced her friends to
hysterical laughter. Yet Mrs. Green's group was only
the latest of many who claim to have seen something
scientifically inexpijcable splashing around in Lake
Champlain.
"Back in 1609, Samuel de Champlain, the French
explorer who discovered the lake, reported that he
had also discovered a monster, which he described
as about 20 feet long, thick as a barrel and with a
head like a horse. Humps, horns, scales and a mane
also have been attributed over the years to the
creature, which appears to bear some resemblance to
its trans-Atlantic cousin, known as Nessie, which is
said to inhabit the depths of Loch Ness in Scotland
and is probably the most famous of the legendary
serpents. As in the case of the Loch Ness monster,
the Lake Champlain serpent has been seen too often
by too many people for too long to be dismissed as an
illusion resulting from sunlight on the water or
martinis on the mind.
"'There is certainly something that people see.
The question is, what is it?' said Professor Leon W.
Dean, a retired professor at the University of Vermont
in Burlington and an authority on Vermont folklore.
While skeptical of the existence of a centuries-old
serpent, he admits the lake does appear to be con
cealing something unusual within its depths. A thread
of references to the monster of Lake Cbamplain runs
through Vermont's folklore, including one report
dated 1871 which described the creature as moving
through the water 'at railroad speed'.

"The Burling ~ Press has offered $100 for a


'bona fide, documented' black-and-white photograph
of the Champlain serpent, and $200 for a color shot.
So far, the monster has not posed and no one who has
seen it has had the presence of mind to seize a
camera. There are those who live in homes fringing
the lake, like Walter R. Hard, Jr., editor of Vermont
Life magazine, who are among the ranks of once and
future monster watchers. Mr. Hard and his wife say
they saw the serpent 15 years ago, but despite their
vigil at their lakeside windows, they have not seen
it since.
"Lake Champlain, which stretches more than 100
miles into Canada and was once an arm of the North
Atlantic, is geographically similar to Loch Ness and
other deep cold-water lakes from Russia, to Norway,
Ireland and Iceland. At least 60 species of fish have
been inventoried in the lake, but none bears any
resemblance to the serpent as it has been described
by witnesses, including fishermen, farmers, school
teachers, students, housewives and one child who
reportedly was so unnerved b,Y what she saw from the
deck of a steamboat on the lake that she swallowed
her excursion ticket.
"Mrs. Green, a native-born Vermonter, complained
about those who had mocked her account of the 'superlong thing with three humps' that she watched streak
across the lake on a calm September afternoon. 'I
tried to com e up with a logical explanation for it', she
asserted. When she failed, s he called the research
department of the University of Vermont to report her
experience and was further outraged b.y the politely
skeptical reception she received. 'Their explanation
was that at certain times of the day, there was an
evolution in the lake, when cold air and hot air met,'
she related with rising indignation. 'What they told
me, in effect,' she concluded, 'was that the lake was
burping itself.' ..

SUB"SECTION EXOBIOLOGY

POSSIBILITY OF LIFE ON JUPITER.


There is one scientist we 'dig'. This is Dr. Cyril
Ponnamperuna of the University of Maryland. He
seems to be the last of the generalists and the first
of the intergrationists, and so willing to look at our
cosmos as a whole, and what we call 'life' and non-

For Fishermen Only


Wildlife Review of March 1970 notes that the bulletin of a Canadian fish and game club announced that
"The committee decided that three members should discuss the possibility of stocking the lake with Conservation Officers".

"""""""""'I~. """""""".---"~.-""

~"

64

life at the same time. What is more, he has been


bringing his hypotheses into the laboratory and
actually testing them. This is not just bizarre in this
current closed-mind world, but has proved incredibly
enlightening, He has been at it for years, and his
considl~red opinions keep cropping up allover. Now
he would seem to have struck at the core of one
matter that is perhaps the most important of all, at
least from a philosophical point of view. This is some
real commonsense about both the possibility, and the
possible parameters, of what we call 'life' elsewhere
than all this our planet. In this case, he tackles our
brother planet Jupiter and, as quoted on p.331 of the
13th Nov. 1971 issue of Science News, he states: "These conditions on Jupiter (see chart for said
conditions) are not conducive to the existence of any
iorm of)ife (as we know it)., yet the school of thought
that eliminates Jupiter as a possible abode of life
without giving it any more consideration is missing
the point. Life on the earth is believed to have
evolved initially in an atmosphere of methane and
ammon.ia which could be rapidly fatal to a man. And
which is closely similar to that existing on Jupiter
at the present day."

On the theory that life evolves to fit itself to


existing conditions, Ponnamperuna has simulated in
the laboratory the atmosphere of Jupiter (although he
didn't know the eltact hydrogen to helium ratio) and
put it through various tests. Using anhydrous
methan e-ammonia mi xtures; Ponnamperuna's group
simulated electrical discharges in the atmosphere,
and the result was the formation of organic compounds
as simple aliphatic nitriles, amino-nitriles, and their
oligomers. .At. red "tar" adhered to the side of the
flask.
Dr. Ponnamperuna's missing point is reall~' twofold. F'irst, not even such agile minds as Carl Sagansee his Intelligent Life in the Universe, co-authored
with LS. Shklovsk:i .:...!lave yet' facediJij- to the (chemical) possibility that 'life' (or animation) and/or even
intelligent life, need not be based on hydrocarbons
as ours is; or even on matter itself, as we know it.
Second, as Dr. Ponnamperuna says, even our kind of
hydrocarbon-based 'life' could have initi ally evolved
in what would be to us, today, a totally toxic environment. Thus the point is that our sort of life
could have evolved to suit its environment, and then
have changed that environment as it progressed. The
process involves both time (cosmic) and spacerelationship, meaning "place" relative to outside
energy sources. Maybe life on Jupiter could be
"behind" us, timewise, and this in turn could be due
to its position in our planetary system, spacewise.

But, just what is known of the chemical composition of Jupiter from which Dr. Pommamperuna has
worked? The simplest way to display this is as in
the accompanying diagram. This is a wedge from the
top of the planet's uppermost cloud layer, but not
necessarily its atmosphere to its center.
Thus, it might seem possible that life-forms have
evolved on this planet, or might be evolving thereupon; and possibly even along our lines. What is so
nutty about this suggestion? But, as with the Moon
and Mars, perhaps it would be better to wait :.Jnti! we
get there. Do you remember those people who suggested that t he Moon was covered with a 40o-ft tall
forest? Then, there were those cannali on. Mars! But
cautious speculation never did anybody :any harm;
and, without it, we'd still be chasing and skinning
deer.
'

THE MESSAGE
A very thought-provoking little piece appeared in
column 'Ariadne'in too March 9th issue Of the New
Scientist. It went:
"It has struck me that there is an (apparent) return
to primitivism in the search for other civilizations in
outer space. The little plaque carried by Pioneer 10,
for all its elaboration of mathematical logic, must
remind us of votive tablets scattered around by the
ancients. There is something strangely touching about
the Adam and Eve figures, forbearing to hold hands
lest the little green men out there mistake them for a
single organism. 'A hopeful symbol of a vigorous
civilization on Earth' is how the plaque looks to its
designers. It might also be seen as a me,ssage in a
bottle cast from spaceship Earth. Is it some sort of
boast ('See, we have only 10 fingers but we can
count beyond that') or a greeting? It do~s not look
like a threat, but who knows how it migh~ be taken.
Perhaps it is a symptom of a new post-rel~gious form
of worship, like those cargo-cults. Only we seek en"
lightenment rather than material help. It reminds me
of Ray Bradbury's allegory of the sp~cegeneral
buzzing from planet to planet seeking, with mounting
fury, the strange individual who alwa,ys seems to
have just moved on. And what will the ra~io astronomers make of the reply from space (']\.~essage received'). Will they simply sit on it embarrassedly as
they did with first pulsar signals, for fear. of looking
foolish? Even if nothing happens, there will be those
who will insist that a vital communication has in
fact been received and, of course, is being hushed up
by authority,"
.

10

Ammonia Crystals
Ammonia Droplets

Total Radius to
Here 1

Ammonia Vapour
Ice (H 20) Crystals
Water Droplets
Water Vapour

Atmosphere

~xpandec!J
0.94 of radius

Liquid Hydrogen
Liquisphere

Transition to: 0.8 of Radius

Metallic Hydrogen

Lithosphere

RADIUS OF JUPITER
As seen by oPtical telescopes
i.e. to the outer
cloud limit - No. 10 = 44,350 miles

65

66

Despite the enormous amount of thought that went


into this little plaque and the awe-inspiring lucidity
of thE! mathematical communications language developed for this, our first impression was, and has
remained, that it was rather naive. Rightfully. any
intelligencies picking such a thing out of a space
craft must be at our level of intelligence or more
advanced; but what if the thing hits something and
is found lying on the ground just like our fafrotskies.
not a few of which are alleged to have symbols on
them. The finder might be of any degree of lesser
intelli~:ence than we and, as we do with fafrotskies.

treat the thing as an unknown, a joke, or something


so nasty as to warrant immediate burial either literally or in a museum basement. Dr. Carl S~gan is not
only a very knowledgeable man but a very wise one,
and I know that he knows the treatment meted out to
all unexplained things that fall from our skies by
even the most openminded of his colle~gues. The
day for the serious study of these fafrotskies has not
yet come by any means. If the chances of this thing
being picked up are a billion to one. we would opine
that the chances of anybody paying any attention to
it would be about two billion to one.

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY,

SOUTH AMERICAN PYGMIES


One of the blandest statements we have ever seen
issuing from a Director of an established Anthropological Institution appeared in the Spring issue of the
official. Venezuelan quarterly entitled Venezuelli UP.
To ~~. It reads as follows: -

"Workers digging a ditch to lay new water pipes


in the city of Quibor, in the Venezuelan State of Lara,
found the skeletons of 44 Indian pygmies of the
Ayamanes tribe, who lived in the area up to the 3rd
century B.C. The skeletons, extremely well preserved. were found in what is thought to be a ceme"
tery. They were lying in rows and showing no sign of
death by violence. Their statures were about 3 feet
and a half, but one, a giant among them. was 4 feet
11 inches tall. Close to them were found clay vessels,
stone necklaces and statuettes. Tests with carbon
14, made by Dr. Adrian Lucena Loyo, Director of the
Archeological and Anthropological Center of Lara
State, indicate the skeletons date back to the year
318 B.C. The Ayamanes were native to Africa, and
their descendants still may be seen in the Ituri
jungles of the Republic of Congo. The skeletons just
discovered in Venezuela belong to venturesome
members of the tribe who emigrated to South America
in the late Stone Age."
When Professor Julian Huxley was heading up
UNESCO he broke d own one day in pure outrage
during lunch, and in the presence of five of us. What

had got him was that he had been completely baulked


in trying to get at least a percentage allotJj1ent of UN
money for the support of scientific search and re
search in Latin Am erica. Although of: course an
"anglo" himself. he stated point blank that'it was the
Anglo-'American bloc who had deliberat~ly canned
this more than reasonable suggestion. which was in
accord with UN guidelines, on the grounds . expressed
openly in camera that the Latin Americans were. as
he said they put it. "just a bunch of natives" while
their universities were merely political establish..
ment s. and any research done at them was, so "childish" as to be not worCh consideration. Huxley did not
have to tell the five of us that Mexico alone had five
universities before this country was even colonized
by t he Anglos. And. this b it of behavio,ur was an
outrage. quite apart from laying b are the abyssmal
ignorance and lack of education of the Anglo scien..
tists. their inborn prejudices. and their. total dis ..
regard for normal diplomacy.
It looks very much as if the same attitude persists
if this announcement is to be believed. ;We read a
considerable number of Spanish and BrazHian publications. and when compiling books on zoology.
vegetalogy. and ecology we have been fo:rced to go
to Latin American sources. For instance, there is not
one single seat of Vegetalogy in this w ho~e country,
while even the University of San Luis Poto"si has had
a whole department with a considerable staff assigned
to this essential basic discipline for twenty years!
And when it comes to anthropology and archaeology
they are often so far ahead of us in their thinking that
the Angl~s retreat from them and actually r~vile them.

At !L famous university. a sign was placed above the cloakroom hooks: FOR FACULTY MEMBE~S ONLY!
Underneath, someone had scribbled: MAY ALSO BE USED FOR HATS AND COATS.

67

Take the treatment meted out to Prof. Ramos for his


large and scholarly publications on the discoveries
of Phoenician inscriptions and petroglyphs in
Amazonia. Frankly it makes us sick.
Nonetheless, the idea of Pygmies of a protocongoid physique having boated over here from Africa
three thousand years ago might seem to be stretching
a point somewhat. In fact, might not these Ayamanes
be solid proof for Gladwin's theory that the New.
World was colonized first by pygmies over the Bering
Strait when it was a land-bridge, and later by successive waves of taller (possibly hairy) types related to the recently extinct Amerinds of Tierra del
Fuego, and of the Neanderthaler subspecies of man,
ani later still by, first, primitive and then advanced
Mongoloids in the form of the Amerinds? Of course,
Goodwin, although an Anglo, got clobbered for his
theory, but because he was not a professional (i.e.
working) anthropologist and was therefore classed as
an 'amateur', than which there is nothing more dis
reputable.

MORE ON MERCURY ENGINES


Through the courtesy of our Adviser for Cultural
Anthropology and Linguistics, Professor Roger W.
Wescott, of Drew University, we have received the
following most valuable further information on the
ancient Indian vimanas (sort of flying saucers -see
Pursuit, Vol. 3, No.4) and the first fully documented
translation of a reliable Sanscrit text published by a
recognized scholar. All the texts that we have had
in the past have been pronounced to be "shoddy" by
the scholars to whom we submitted them for translation. Also, in this new extract the much more vital
matter of the mercury engines crops up again.
Said extracts are from the "Yantras or Mechanical
Contrivances in Ancient India" by V. Raghavan
published in 1956, and go as follows:
"The Samaranganasutradharl!- ascribed to Bhoja is,
in many ways, a rare treatise in Sanskrit literature;
besides the Arthasastra, it is the only theoretical
text that has substantial)nformation on our subject;
its value, however, is greater than that of the Arthasastra, as Bhoja goes into the details of the construction of these yantras and explains at the beginning the principles underlying yantras.
"The most curious of the yantras described by
Bhoja in this Chapter is, of course, the one that
rises and travels in the air. From the previous notices
of this aerial machine only the barest details of its
make-up could be gleaned. The only text that gives
us some knowledge of its actual construction is this
work of Bhoja. Firstly Bhoja mentions the main
material of its body as light wood, laghu-daru; its

shape is that of a huge bird, mahavinhanga, with a


wing on each side. The motive force is then explained: In the bowels of the structure, below, is to be a
fire-chamber with mercury placed over a flame. The
power generated by the heated mercury, helped by
the concurrent action of the wings which are flapped
by a rider inside, makes the yantra go up and travel
far (dura) (95-96).
"A heavier (alaghu) Daru-vimana is then described (97-98); it contains, not one as in the previous
case, but four pitchers of mercury over iron ovens.
The boiling mercury ovens produce a terrific noise
which is put to use in battle to scare away elephants;
by strengthening the mercury chambers, the roar
could be increased so that by it elephants are thrown
completely out of control. This specific military use
of aircraft against elephants tempts one .to suggest
that the Hast}. yantra advocated by Kautilya against
elephants was something like the heavier Daru-vima!1! described by Bhoj a.
-- -"There may be some lacunae in the description,
and Bhoja does not fail to mention that some vital
knowledge is kept back as a secret, an idea which
we noticed in the Brihatkatha story also. !! ~,
however, clear that mercury vapour ought not to be
confused as pic)Viding !!m: lifting power;-U _was
evidently converted into mechanical power, and the
machine must --have risen, as is expressly stated
here, and implied by the mention of its cock-shape
in the Brihatkatha story, by the .flapping of the
wings, and further movement must have been due to
the manipulation of the wings and the flow of air
itself, on the Q.J)alogy of the flight of birds."
This may come as somewhat of a depressant to
the flying saucer boys since they seem to have
gained the imPression that the actual vim an as, as
mentioned in true, non shoddy texts, implied huge
wingless craft t!1at could fly not only over a bunch of
elephants but !Ill over the world and also out into
space. The flapping wings as a means of gaining
lift will be a disappointment to the engineers and
probably provok~ wry smiles among them, to say the
least. But to a whole new breed of scholars that has
only recently arisen, it is going to give much cheer
and impetus to their various studies. These are the
historians of technology who are working out of a
dozen cultural centers scattered all over the world
now and all of whom are bringing to light an increasing flow of actual (tangible) artefacts that are either
themselves technical devices, or scale models of
such, and all the way from selenial calendars from
the late Palaeolithic to various aeroforms between
500 B. C. and 500 A. D.
That the Ancients did have a knowledge of and
the use of flight can no longer be denied. However,

68

the Indians alone offer us concrete written information on power sources for them. The Near Eastern
items would appear to be gliders or Sail-planes,
though one Roman blandly states that he made his
model "fly by compressed air". (Who, I ask, was compressing air in 200 A. D.?) The South American types
probably would not fly without power, but we are
having: copies of these tested in a NASA wind tunnel
becauBe, if they can do so, we will have one of the
greatest breakthroughs in aerodynamics yet. The
Ancient Egyptian item is the most exciting and confusing of all because, while it has the conformity of
a glider, its fuselage looks more like a heavy-lift
cargo plane we now have on the drawing boards but
which is still full of bugs. (Incidentally, we will be
writing UP this amazing discovery in our next issue,
with photographs and scale drawings. We are being
assisted by both the Egyptologists and the aerodynamIc engineers on this one.)
However, here we are more interested in the
"engines" that are alleged to have activated thef?e
aerial machines. In Science for the 3rd January 1969,
two scientists, Gerald Schubert and J. A. Whitehead,
described a remarkable discovery that they had made
about heating mercury. On filling a wide, shallow,
circulllr dish of mercury and then revolving a naked
flame around and around under said dish, they observed that the mercury began to revolve in a contrary dirllction and with increasing velocity. So far we
have been unable to find anything further published

on this or any subsequent experiments, but will in


due course be applying directly to Messrs. Schubert
and Whitehead.
The most interesting sentence in the above abstract is underlined by us. First, w here did all the
noise come from? Just the mercury or from the
machinery it drove? Second, what machinery?
We must assume that this was part of the 'secret'
and so we shall never know unles.s somebody with
an eye to this mystery spots something i~ a text .
by a renegade tecl)nician; and there were these. The
Indian princes seem to have maintained wh01e stables
of such purely practical working technicians and,
presumably, labs for them to work in. A fe,w writings
by such have been found giving rathr intimate
details of other 'machinery'. If they !lad flying
machines did they invent them and t~eir power
sources themselves, or is this still anothElr hint that
there was once a much older and even more advanced,
worldwide civilization that left a residue of its
knowledge especially with native priesthOods? Now
that we know somebody was mining iron ore in 40,000
B. C. it looks more and more as if this were so; and,
be it noted, the first of the metals to corro~e is steel
and the last gold. As we di"g down we find :ultimately
only gold copies but, strangely, they ar~ the most
competently made and of the most advanced items so advanced indeed that archaeologists h:ave either
so far overlooked them for what they are, (vide the
Egyptian plane) or have deliberately set tl:lem aside.

NOTICE

Members are asked once again please to notify us of any change of address. We have 'lost' a number of
membl~rs who have moved and left no forwarding address.

AlBO once again, should you wish to visit our HQ to consult the files, please call in advance. If you have
difficulty reaching us or get a recording stating that "the number- you are calling is no longer in service" or
some other such idiocy, get the operator in Belvidere, New Jersey. Barring disruption of service by lightning
strikes or other disasters, the exchange in Belvidere will put you through. And there is always som'eone here.
In fact, for a number of reasons, we must insist upon definite appointments being made well in advance,
and particularly if members wish to consult Ivan Sanderson personally.
The Library is temporarily closed, but visitors will be received in the Sandersons' home, and, what they
need to read will be fetched for them for perusal in the office in what we call the Old House. AJ!so, due to
other circumstances, we cannot for now entertain any visitors or put them up overnight as before. (There are
ample facilities within short driving distance and at a wide range of prices.)

69

CURRENT PURSUITS

There is little to report under this heading but this


should not be taken to mean no progress at all.
Various of our members have sent us accounts of their
trips to the Ringing Rocks, though not enough to
yield even a preliminary report; and material is coming
in concerning other specific requests.
The Thunderbird photo continues to elude us, but

an active search for a live Thunderbird is currently


getting underway in an area in Pennsylvania where
they have been seen repeatedly in recent years. In
the event that no specimen is obtained this year, we
hope that the "expedition" will be able to locate at
least one nesting site though, in view of the terrain,
this in itself will be quite a job.

Bear in mind that contributions to SITU are tax deductible.

MEMBERS' FORUM

We are pleased to report that a complete reclassification of our clipping files for greatest efficiency
is underway. This job will take time but is one that
we mnsider to be of the utmost importance.
We are delighted to announce that one of our
members has volunteered to work on Charles Fort's
papers. Details are still to be worked out, so keep
your fingers crossed that nothing forte an happens
this time.
Member No. 966 notes that University Microfilms,
300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106,
claims that they will find and microfilm or Xerox any
out-of-print book. Either method can be expensive,
and microfilm-readers are not yet a standard piece of
household equipment, which makes that type of reproduction unsuitable for most people.
Member No. 922 wtsbes fD contact other members
specifically interested In ufology.
We will appreciate it it our members will let us
know the call letters, address, and telephone number
of any local radio stations that have "talk shows"
done by telephone -called "beepers"- and the name
of the MC. Armed with such a list, Ivan Sanderson
can entertain and instruct yOU while sitting in the
comfort of his own home.

Dr. M. A. Persinger, Environmental Psychophysiology


Laboratory,
Laurentian University,
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada (name published with
permission), is interested in contacting scientists
concerned with the possible effects of extremely low
frequency electric, magnetic and sonic fields, geomagnetic pulsations and seismologic stresses upon
human behavior and physiology. This includes verbal
behavior concerning putative "parapsychological
events" .
Member No. 460, head of a local club called
"Odyssey", P. O. Box 2022, Baltimore, MD 21203,
asks that any members hearing of UFOs, 'Bigfeet' or
Monster sightings, and unusual animals in Maryland,
southern Pennsylvania, northern and eastern Virginia,
and some counties of West Virginia (Jefferson,
Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Mineral, Grant, Hardy,
and Tucker), get in touch with "Odyssey" at the
address given.
For those interested in bio-feedback and applied
parapsychology, member No. 1151 welcomes correspondence and will supply, free of charge, schematics
and plans for Alpha monitors, c ardio-tachs, GSR
meters, etc.
Again with permission, Jerry Koenigsberg, 186 W.
Lake Shore, Rockaway, N.J. 07866, wishes to contact
other memb'ers interested in the "Ringing Rocks".

From Anderson's Diary of an Eighteenth-Century Garden (in the Calthorp edition):


"I would give more for ten minutes with.a man who cannot be sure that he has not seen an angel, than I
would give for a week with a man who laughs at all he cannot lay his fingers on."

70

Members in the Indianapolis area,are asked to keep


an eYE! open for any and all oddities in that vicinity;
membE!r No. 1132 reports that "oddities hereabouts
seem to be concert rated in an irregular blob over

southern Indianapolis" and wishes to, obtain all


possible data with a view to mapping a~d analysing
fortean phenomena for any possible paitterns. Any
reports received will be forwarded to him. '

BOOK REVIEWS
by Marion L. Fawcett

J. Allen Hynek.

UFO Experience: ~ Scientific ~. Chicago: He,nry Regnery Company. 1972. $6.95.

At last a book on UFOs that is worth reading, by just about the one man who does, or should, know what
he is talking about - and on, two counts. First, he is a working scientist, properly trained in: scientific
methodology; second, he actually worked on this bizarre problem for just over twenty years as a trained
scientist for the USAF as a consultant on this dreary business.
My colleague, Marion Fawcett, reviews the book per se below. As she says, reviews of this book have
been literally pouring out and most of them are very long for any review. This is good; but I have ;noted that
the ni.t-pickers have started in already, and mostly among the "buffs" and the lunatic fringe. Dr. Hynek's
simplE!, straightforward text seems to have infuriated some of them. Small wonder, because most of them are
not only "nuts" but almost all of them are totally uneducated.
To get a true grip on this r ather terrifying subject, investigators or interpreters must have ;scientific
training and some real knowledge of what facts about the subject are known. Dr. Hynek has both; so, as of
now, it is quite useless to argue, or even debate with him unless you have similar qualifications, and of
equal standing. Speculation is perfectly permissable but, in a matter such as this, please to be very careful
that your suggestions be in accord with this true expert's summations.
'
We have not got the answer to the so-called UFO mystery and it is possible that we never will; but, as
Dr. Hynek says, there just might be a 21st, and even a 22nd century 'science', if we don't blow our~elves up
in the meantime. Who knows now what we might or might not know then? This reviewer has his own theories.
hypotheses, and conceptions, which he has published but which he would not deign even to mention in any
bracket with this scholarly work. What a terrific job it must have been to write - and quite apart fr9m all the
damnfool politics and the buffoonery displayed by things like the Condon Committee.
Read this book and try to get some of the real facts.
I.T.S.
Dr. Hynek's book has been reviewed at really rather extraordinary length in a number of magazines and
journals. It certainly is an important book and may prove to be the landmark in the history of ufo:logy since
it may lead the scientific establishment finally to take an active part in both research and search in this field.
It is Ii book written by a scientist for other scientists, and to be frank, the non-scientist reader will probably
find parts I and II rather heavy going. Part III, "Where Do We Go From Here?", deals with past, p~esent, and
(hopefully) future 'official' investigation of ufological phenomena, and is in part rather fun. Dr. Hynek was,
of course, for many years associated with the Air Force Project Blue Book; he does not spare the :Air Force,
nor does he spare the ill-fated Condon Committee. In fact, some of his revelations about both are triuly shocking. E:. g. in re the Condon Committee:
"I remember my own dismay w hen, on the occasion of my visit to the committee, when

~he

project wa"s

scarcl~ly two week s old, Low [of the famous memo] outlined on the blackboard for us the form: the report

would take, what the probable chapter headings would be, how much space should be devoted to each chapter,
with an implied attitude that he had decided already what the substance and tone of the report!would be."
Part I is concernea wan wnat may be called definitions and guidelines. And herein lies one of the best
features of Dr. Hynek's book: he eliminated all the cases which have been explained before starti~g to compile statistics - hence, his statistics and analYses concern only those cases which have defied explanatlOli.
Also, in this section. he disposes of the common misconceptions held by the anti-ufo logy crowd - that UFOs

71

are reported only by nuts and screwballs or "uneducated" people (he points out, rightly, that "uneducated"
doesn't necessarily mean stupid, and further notes that air crash investigators have found that the best
witnesses are teenaged boys). He then presents his own method of analysing those cases he has accepted as
unexplained. He uses two basic criteria - strangeness and probability, each with a 'range' from 1 to 10.
strangeness is fairly e"asy to gauge; for probability he frankly uses a betting system, i.e. what are the odds
that what this chap reports really happened exactly as he says it did. Dr. Hynek admits that it is very difficult to assign probability ratings because of the many factors involved, but concludes that they are a very
useful tool.
Part II is entitled "The Data and the Problem". Herein he breaks UFO reports down into six categories
nocturnal lights, daylight discs (i.e. UFOs seen in the daytime), radar-visual UFO reports, and close encounters of three types ('sightings' at fairly close range; encounters which produce physical effects; and
'occupant' cases). Each of these is discussed at some length, always supported by case histories, the latter
chosen almost exclusively from those in which there were at least two witnesses. Old hands in the ufology
field will probably want to 'skim' Uiese, concentrating on Dr. Hynek's summaries of the various types and
and his suggestions on investigative techniques. It is noteworthy that these were rarely used by Project
Bluebook even after desperate urging by Dr. Hynek (he reports that a wag once dubbed Bluebook the "SoCiety
for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated!).
There are fo"ur appendices, two of considerable historical interest and importance -Dr. Hynek's letter to
Bluebook in response to their request for his advice on how to improve on the work they were doing (never
heeded), and Mary Louise Armstrong's letter of resignation to Dr. Condon.
It is perhaps regrettable that Dr. Hynek does not indulge any speculation on what UFOs might"be or where
they may come from; however, because proof of the nature of UFOs is completely lacking, such speculations
might well have weakened the impact of his book on his fellow scientists. As he points out, "It is likely
that many scientists would have given serious consideration and effort to the UFO problem had they been
properly apprised of its content". I hope very much that all scientists will read Dr. Hynek's book; should
they do so, they will find themselves properly apprised.I hope also that all those actively investigating UFO
reports will read it too, and take to heart the solid advice given therein. A coalition of scientists and laymen may crack this very tough nut. Quoting Dr. Hynek, "When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem
comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science but a mighty
and totally unexpected quantum jump."

Brad Steiger. Strange Disappearances. New York: Lancer Books. 1972 95ct
This is one of Brad Steiger's rather better efforts, and though many of the cases he relates will be familiar
to constant readers of Flying Saucer Review and other fortean publications, they are at least now gathered
into one place. Unfortunately, there is no index which makes it exceedingly difficult to use it as a source
book; and the references are spotty (one hopes that a reference to the October 1964 issue of Pursuit will be
corrected in future printings, if anY; it should be 1969).
The title of the book is somewhat misleading since 'appearances' and some 're-appearances' are also included, .together with a few extraneous bits and pieces. It is primarily what we call a "seed catalogue"
despite periodic murmurings about holes in time and/or space, through which things (including people) may
drop into or out of other space-time continua (called "dimensions" by Brad Steiger). Also, there are some
errors, e.g. the photograph of a little "space man" taken by Ronnie Hill (P. 91) was subsequently proved to be
a hoax; and it is not true that there were "no signs of violence" aboard the Joyita. In fact, brief though Mr.
Steiger's account of the Joyita is, it contains some rather astonishing statements. He reports that in 1959
(four years after she was found abandoned) a wine bottle cOlJtaining a messag~ "signed by the steward of the
Joyita" washed up on the coast of Australia. The message js alleged to have read: "Abandoning ship. Strange
circular metallic object forcing us aboard it. Help us." We have never heard of this before and, apart from the
fact that no source is given for the story, we cannot think of a more inappropriate and just plain silly way to
send for help in those circumstances than to toss a message overboard in a bottle! Also, there was no
.steward" aboard (see Vincent Gaddis' book Invisible Horizons). Further, the Joyita was not found "north of
Samoa" but west-southwest of Samoa, about ninety miles from the Fiji Islands.
The book is rather fun and provides food for thought, but not a great deal of thought per se! And, in view
of such errors as noted above, the reader should approach it with considerable caution. The errors listed here
are not the only ones in this book, but we do not have time or space enough to detail them all.

72

Sibley S. Morrill. Ambrose Bierce, E. ~. Mitchell-Hedges and the Crystal Skull. San Francisco: Cadleon
Press. 1972. $3.95. (Address: P. O. Box 24, San Francisco, Calif. 94101)
Some time ago Mr. Morrill sent me the manuscript of this book with a request for any comments or suggestions that I might have. He is candid now in saying that "your criticism about there being two qooks in it
still stands" -though I agree with him that he has smoothed the transition between the two to a co~siderable
extent.
The first portion of the book, and to me the most interesting part, deals with a most remarkable 'jewel',
a lifesize crystal skull (human) with a detachable lower jaw, somehow and somewhere acquired by the big
game :fisherman and "explorer" Mitchell-Hedges; and a similar crystal skull, but without a detachable jaw,
known as the" Aztec" skull and owned by the British Museum. The" Aztec" skull is undoubtedly, :according
to the! evidence -both physical and 'cultural' - accumulated by Mr. Morrill, a later copy of the IMitchellHedges slmll. Both are beautifully fashioned and, with one curious and most important exception, anatomically correct, so much so that an expert at the British Museum noted that "such realism ... gives the: skull the
character almost of an anatomical study in a scientific age". The exception isthe complete lack,of suture
marks on the cranium. Adding these would have been child's play compared with the work that weqt into the
teeth alIi jaw, and particularly the very extraordinary eye sockets in the Mitchell-Hedges skull; and Mr.
Morrill. presents an entirely convincing explanation for this 'oversight'. He concludes that the, MitcheUHedges skull was the archetype for the figure 10 in the Mayan head-variant system of numeration but was
also used by the priests in uttering oraeles and influencing people and events. There is evidence in the skull
itself that this last was done and that this produced permanent changes in the crystalline struct~re of the
right eye socket, wherein images may be seen and photographed (alas, Mr. Morrill does not incl~de one of
these) -a truncated pyramid, a domed edifice resembling the observatory at Chichen Itza, and a riumber of
little skulls. No such images are found in the left eye socket or anywhere else on the skull. To attribute them
to coincidence is stretching that overworked explanation much too far.
There is considerably more to the story of the skulls, and Mr. Morrill makes a pretty fair case for their
having been the cause of the downfall of the Mayan nation, and this on purely practical grounds - not
'psychic' ones. He does not, and I think Wisely, deal with the sporadic accounts (usually of doub~furorigin
and validity) of persons having dropped dead or suffered other misfortunes after laughing at or otherwise
scorning the skull. On the other hand, I should like to put on record one of Mr. Morrill's experiences with the
skull, since this is not included in the book. This was contained in a letter dated the 5th February, 1972:
"Ei.ght of us were seated in a semicircle before the skull. The only light was that from a bulb in a box
beneath the skull, channeled up through the eye sockets and facial areas. A nutty psychic was holding forth.
I was utterly bored, seated at the extreme right. As I lit a cigarette and glanced back at the s~ull, I was
astounded to see that the left side of the face was darkening from below. I said nothing and watche(,i intently.
The darkening area sPread upward about the mouth line extension. The forehead, too, began to dar~en downward. I looked casually around to see if anyone else noticed it. Jose Feola, a physicist and one of the most
careful thinkers I know, was seated beside me and was staring bug-eyed at the skull. One other man was'
also staring at it. The rest had their eyes glued on the speaker. From then on I divided my attentio~ between
the skull and the group. The three of us later agreed that better ilian 40% of the facial area had d!j.rkened at
the maximum point. The process lasted better than five minutes, less than ten, and the darkened a:reas :were
still there, as I recall, when the 'seance' ended and the lights went on. The others, who gave no evidence of
having noticed it during the seance, later claimed they saw it all along."
Going on now to "book two", Sibley Morrill presents evidence that the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce
was intimately connected with the reappearance of the skull, and that Bierce and Mitchell-Heqges -who
never revealed where, when, or how he found the skull- were in fact sent to Mexico by their respective
governments as intelligence agents. The careers of the two men are traced, wii.h particular emphasis on the
year preceding their travels into Mexico to join Villa; and the events following Bierce's disappell:l"ance are
given careful scrutiny. Morrill is not so rash as to claim that he has proved anything, but his theory is
certainly plausible and deserves serious consideration. Also, the spot picked by Mr. Morrill as ~he actual
site of Bierce's disappearance -there is no proof of this, but it is true that it would have attracted Bierceis notorious for disappearances. It is called the "Yalbac Triangle". I leave the reader to draw his own
parallE!ls.
Thl~ author is guilty of occasional infelicities of style, but these do not really mar the book an:d, even if
you are tired of reading about Bierce, you will find the material on the crystal skull most interesting.

,.........I._..............~'.....,.............-- .........-........-.......

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

GOVERNING BOARD
Hans stefan Santesson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Ivan T. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Thelma K. Yohe
Daniel F. Manning
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.

*President (elected for 5 years)


*First Vice-President
*Second Vice-President
*Treasurer
* Secretary
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
Board Member (elected for 1 year) .
Board Member (elected for 1 year)
*Trustees in accordance with the laws of the state of New Jersey.

ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD
Director
Deputy Director
Executive Secretary
Assistant Director for Communications Media
Assistant Director for Science & Technology

Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert .C. Warth

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute: University of Tblisi. (P alaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia,
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
.
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - President, Roth Research-Animal Care, Inc., Washington, D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department. College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(PhytochemistrY)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman. Department of Anthropology. Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON, NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

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SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 5, NO.4

OCTOBER, 1972

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia, New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees, in accordance with
the laws ofthe state of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board.
consisting of the five Trustees. and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board. listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally. our Society is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists. as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.
PARTICIPATION

Participation in the activities of the Societ~r is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is U.S. $10. which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year. as well as access to the Society's library and files. through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $5. including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
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-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the Society.
NOTICES

In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion. as yet, of additional living quarters.
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members .are welcome to visit to consult our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who.
as a result of the simple lack of facilities. as 'li now. cannot be properly accomodated.
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PUBLICATIONS

The society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July. 1965. until the end of March 1968. the Society issued only
a newsletter, on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were, however. entitled PURSUIT-vol. 1. No.3 and No.4. dated June and september. 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2. No. 1. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January, April. July. and October. Back issues, some
available only as Xerox copies. are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an or~er form.

PURSUIT

Vol. 5. No. 4
October. 1972

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


Managing Editor:
Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Ivan T. Sanderson
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Daniel F. Manning

CONTENTS
The Taxonomy of Knowledge
Editorial: A Fifth Force
Ufology:
Outside Interference with Human Vision
Olaos & Confusion
Ice Falls
The KLEE-TV Case Again
Ontology
An Alternative to Time Anomalies
Chemistry
A Natural Nuclear Reaction
Astronomy
The Great Galactic Ghoul
Geology
That -Diamond B Crystal
Biology
A New Mammal Discovered
A New Lake Monster
The Improperly Classified Marine Animal
Penguins and the Chill Effect
More Drivel About Frozen Manmoths
Eels Out of Faucets
That Frogl
The Paraguayan Monster
What the Human Being of the Future Will Look Like, by Edward B. Camlin
Anthropology
The Little Wooden Airplane
Giant 'Abo' of 6000 Years Ago
Skullduggery, Scientific Style
The Mystery Pits of Olduvai
The Mysterious Walls of the Berkeley and Oakland Hills, by
Sibley S. Morrill
Department of Loose Ends
Members' Forum
Book Re-rlews
Index for 1972

74
75
76
76
77

78
79
80
81

82
82
83
83
84
85
85
86
87

88
89
89
90
90
93
94
94

99

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1972

--

---~~ -------.-----~---------

THE TAXONOMY OF

THE

KNOWLEDGE

GEOLOGY

TANGIBLES

VI
EARTH SCIENCES

Atmospherici and "'.'.or610l)l',


Oceana lollY. Hydrology. and Gla.
ciolog y; Tectonics. Vulcanol.
ogy. Seilmology". Geophylici
and Geomorphology; Pe.
trology and Mineralogy;
Geade.y. Geography.
Cartography.
Da'ing.

P,otojeanoI09V. Botany. Zoo


ogr. E."b.olog y H,s'0Io9Y.
Ph y 110109)' and Biochemistry;
Anatomy (Inc ludlng Man), Gene''''
ic!. and, Evolution. PhySIcal Anthropology;
Palaeontology;

E.holog y and
Ecology,
MATTER
A.tomlCS, Molecular

Ch.m,~tr)'r Crystallography.

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

TECHNOLOGY AND

PERFORMANCE
Theor.tical Physics. Nucleonlcl,
Cla ... col Phy.ic Electric
E l.e'romalne'lcl, Mogn.hcl,

THE USEFUL ARTS

Mechanics.

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE
Culrural Anthropology ond
E .hnalogy (Archaeology os a
tee hnlque). Pre-Hi story.

H tory. and Folklore; Philol


ogy and Lingui.,ic

MENTAL CONCEPTS
Log.c and Epos'emalagy;
Psychology. Eth.cs and Au.
'h.t.c~. Compara'ive Int.lligenc_,
Po,aPlych.cs.

MEASUREMENT
Number. Quon'I')'.
Arithmetic. Algebra.
Ceome,ry. Trlgonom.,,'1.
Calculus. Topology. Theory
Games, Probobi lI.y, Co ..
InCidence.

0'

THE

UITANGIBLES

MATHEMATICS

Eyerything in existence r including -existence- itself r and thus all of our pc>ssible concepts and all knowledge
that we possess or will eyer possess, is contained within this wheel. Technologies and the useful arts lie"
within the inner circle, haying access to any or all of the ten malar departments of organized knowledge.
,I: om the KORAN: -Acqui .. e knowledge. It enables its possessor to know right from wrong; it lights the way to
heayen; it is our friend in the desert, our sociely in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to'
happinrns; it sustains us in miserYi it is an ornament among friends, and on armour ogoins. enemles.- _
The Prophet.

74

75

EDITORIAL

A FIFTH FORCE
Physicists recognize. work with. and obtain consistently reliable results using the four basic field forces
-the electromagnetic. the gravitational. the weak nuclear. and the strong nuclear- that have been demonstrated. It is now clear. and beyond a shadow of doubt. that there is at least one more force that. it now appears.
is susceptible to analysis. and the effects of which have in the past decade been demonstrated to be repeatable.
This is really all rather funny because orthodox physics has not only sneered at this but until recently
absolutely refused to even recognize it. Moreover. they damned it as being what they erroneously call psychic.
which means to them baloney. Now. as we pointed out in our last editorial. the technologists. and mostly in
the electromagnetic field. have forced them to take cognisance of at least some of the reproducible effects.
having demonstrated that these cannot be explained by any known aspects of the four known force fields.
Experiments that have now demonstrated the existence of this force have. however. unfortunately been recorded in a most haphazard manner. while no organized attempt seems so far to have been mounted to investigate
the properties of this force or define its parameters.
Further. that which the technicians have brought to light has been blithely relegated to. of all departments. the psychic. This has worse compounded the issue in that nobody seems to know the difference between true psychical research based on. or at least purportedly attempting to be prosecuted along. truly
scientific principles. and all those studies that are lumped together under the erroneous title of ESP -which
is only a minor division of the biological field of studies in the super- sensory proclivities of humans and
other animals and plants -on the one hand; and the seething mass of pseudo- or non-scientific rubbish
otherwise encompassed by the modern conception of what is called the Occult.
This fifth force is certainly involved in various aspects of SSP (meaning Super-Sensory Proclivities). and
it would now seem to be the major force operative in the true psychic field and possibly the only one acting
therein. Its manifestations are in no way affected by any of the other known forces; and. while doubtless
universal in nature. it can be Observed. measured. and investigated only in the biological field. The presence
of a living thing is necessary to bring it to light. Although we have not yet defined it or its parameters. it
has now been demonstrated that it. and it alone. can explain a whole raft of what were previously thought to
to be mysteries or pure imagination. such as mental telepathy. SSP (super-sensory projection) and SSR
(super-sensory reception). the two PKs -Psychokinesis and Pyrokinesis. and possibly the whole group of
things clustering around clairvoyance. It would explain all that has puzzled the psychologists about things
like the so-called subconscious. hypnotism. and the like.
It has long been manifest that people like Peter Hurkos' unimpaired abilities to perform when in a
Faraday screen long ago showed that he is not running along electromagnetic lines as it were. Now. Jan
Merta's incredible demonstrations on demand of PK. in Canada. prove without a shadow of doubt that the
human brain. while indeed developing alpha and other electromagnetic waves. broadcasts in thi's fifth field
as well. Cleve Baxter has demonstrated the same for plants and of a much more 'powerful' nature than that
displayed among animals. But the list could go on and on. Is it not time that we stopped just ignoring all
these things. or blithely relegating them to that vague field of the psychic. and got the technicians to work.
trying to define the nature of this force and. by both theory and experimentation. give us a set of laws for
it such as govern the other four forces. There is ample published material to get started on. so that at least
a basic pattern might be assembled almost immediately. There is then the matter of seeking its parameters
and fitting new observations into this pattern. rejecting them. or altering the pattern.
Our concept of the electromagnetic spectrum was built up this way starting with such humble beginnings
as Faraday's work with electrics and Gauss' with magnetism. This has been linked to the two nuclear forces
and it looks like the lot will soon be united with gravity as Einstein opined it must eventually be. This
fifth force. which I think should be called the Biologic. is probably linked to the others also but we have to
define it first and then test it against them. SO far the most promising field seemed to be the electromagnetic
but now. time and time agai"n. it has been proved to have nothing to do with the creation of this fifth force
field and it does not seem to be able to counteract or otherwise affect it. Currently the most suspect area is
that of sonics which are being shown to display an increasing number of surpr ises. Actually this means
Resonance other than that which can be demonstrated to be due to electromagnetic interference.
Let us hope that some properly established outfit with proper scientific facilities and accountrements
will drop the individual experimentation and get one with such an overall investigation. definition. and
description of this fifth force.
Ivan T. Sanderson

76

UFO LOGY
OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE WITH HUMAN VISION
In our last issue (p. 52) we reported briefly on
some astonishing discoveries made on the incessant
vibrations of the human (and presumably those of
other animals') eyeballs. This showed that" only
rather slight electromagnetic or sonic interference
from outside, if deliberately applied at a very specific
frequency, caused volunteer experimenters "not to
see"; and we went on to suggest that this might be
one of the methods employed by the operators of those
UFOs that are material constructions.
Our member, Bob Durant, who seems to be becoming our leading light in analysing the technical
aspects reported of UFOs, writes anent this item as
follows:

time as a means of travel, it is reason~ble to suppose


that the time field is deformed in the vicinity of the
device. Thus the cars were running all the While, but
during a peak in the time flow deform:ation caused by
the UFO 'time stood still- and the engine appeared
to stop running. With the departure of: the UFO, time
regained its normal properties and t"he engine continued to run. This is analogous to a stop-motion
photo showing a car on a road. The photo preserves
one instant in the motion of the car. W~ know that the
car is in fact moving on the road, but the photo preserves one instant of its motion; since we are familiar with cars and photography, all this is clear to
us in the photo analogy. But in the case of the UFOs
we are dealing with a totally unrami~iar set of concepts."

"The article in Pursuit (P. 52) presents a hypothesis that could account for purely visual anomalies,
but it seems a bit much to expect the vibrations to
operate on mechanical devices such as auto engines
which are not frequency-sensitive in the same sense
that the eyeball is. However, if the vibrations are
basically of an electromagnetic nature, and thus give
rise to powerful alternations in the ionization of the
surrounding atmosphere, one might get both the physical vibrations necessary to accomplish the eyeball
vibration and induced electrical/magnetic forces as
WE!Il. All of this is consistent with known laws of
physics. The brain can be affected in such a specific
way by electrostatic fields.
Another thought on this: A strong EM field probaly can gi ve rise to visual hallucinations and disable
electrical/mechanical equipment. But I have yet to
see the explanation for the restarting of auto engines.
Stopping an engine is a simple matter - cut off the
ignition. But starting is something altogether different in that it takes a force to rotate the crankshaft.
Simply restoring the ignition will do nothing. This
brings us back to time anomalies. If the UFOs use

There is a further point about the c,ar stopping and


starting. If we assume that they geti into an artificially created (by the UFOs) time sequence, which
may be the natural "environment" of such UFOs, how
about the lights also going off and coming back on,
since they are connected directly to a battery. All
electrical, including ignition, lights, ~nd radio - and
in the case of those automobiles that have magnetosand electromagnetic devices come back on apparently
suddenly, though the lights and radip are often reported to fade slowly on approach, and the engine to
lose power gradually sometimes to the point of
sputtering and choking before stopping.
The fact that everything comes b ak on suddenly,
would seem to be that either the car h!td been held in
spme sort of electronic vacuum (time-shift perhaps) or
that the UFO chaps have a method of:jolting electrical circuits on from a distance. And wie are becoming
increasingly intrigued by one detail of the reports of
this behaviour. Sometimes t he driv~r had left his
ignition on; other times they say that they had turned
it off and only turned it on again aHer their engines
had started up spontaneously.

II

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

ICE FALLS
We insert this only because, although from a leading newspaper, it may have been missed by our
"collectors". And this is as good a time as any to
bring up that matter.
From the Los Angeles Times, 24 May, 1972:
"Building Damaged by Ice 'Bomb': A chunk of ice
weighing between 30 and 50 pounds fell from the sky
and ripped through the roof of a downtown Riverside
law office building and landed on" a third floor hallway. No one was injured but damage to the building

was estimated at several hundred dollars. Observing


the evidence before it melted, authoi;ities theorized
it might have fallen from a passing plane, but a
spokesman for the Federal Aviation: Administration
said he knew of no aircraft in the area. at the time."
Hard-core forteans appear to fall into two distinct
categories, the Collectors and the Speculators. Of
course the latter - which includes our~ Society - live
off the former for, despite all the r.eading we accomplish here, we would still be v:irtually out of
touch with the world if others didn't specialize in
certain subjects and go after them; like rare coin

77

collectors. However. we could name a few both here


and abroad who have taken this to an extreme.
Almost the whole of the u{ological fraternity are of
this ilk. having absolutely one-track minds as regards
their chosen subject. What is more. we know several
who abhor all speculation and theorizing - at least
until their card-indices are finally UP to date which
we doubt they will ever be. and they have submitted
their findings for statistical analysis. This is fair
enough. and marks the truly scientific approach to
problems.
However. these people can miss an awful lot of
valuable information. to have which will eventually
become essential. just because they haven't read and
considered what the speculators have come up with.
We have watched these cataloguers at work and have
observed one most alarming fact. They all pick their
categories of factors for carding in advance. and
these will eventually become the only ones available
when 'analysis is attempted. They are indeed basic
and essential; but what of all the others they don't
even consider as they catalogue?
Only the speculators can supply these. until-thenunthought-of "factors". In othe r words. collectors
ought to know an awful lot more about their subjects
before they start out. and they must know. and to the
limit. what could be. as well as what is.

THE KLEE-TV CASE AGAIN


It's just possible that all of you once heard about
this some years ago. as there was the most colossal
popular uproar about it at that time. that went on for
months and resulted in a government investigation. It
was once thought that the whole thing had been some
ingenious hoaxters using a very popular sciencefiction story. the basis of which was that no radio or
TV signals ever really die away and by some ingenious twist of the author's imagination. the earliest
from Marconi in 1910 and station KDK in Pittsburgh
in 1924 and then on. reached earth again. having
travelled all around the Universe and started coming
back in 1947. He somehow arranged for them to come
in as strong as when they were broadcast. so causing
complete chaos forever. It was a splendid story.
The initial story of KLEE went that people in
England were picking up the Station Card and Call
letters of a station designed KLEE-TV at Houston.
Texas. four years after that station had been sold
and the call-letters changed to KPRC. This was in

1953 but. even leaving the time lapse aspects aside


for the moment. reception would have been impossible
in England in those days (1953). Nonetheless. a
pretty high level enquiry was finally instituted by our
government. who sent none less than Dr. Frank D.
Drake over to England on it. Dr. Drake was the leading light in the famous Project Ozma. set up to deliberately quarter the heavens and search for cogent
radio signals that were reproducible. trackable. and
to which it was planned to make suitable replies. The
Proj ect was officially and public ally closed after a
few years. but the work has continued ever since.
not only at Green Bank but at all our other large
radio dishes when they have the time. Dr. Drake
worked with none less than the British Department of
Defence while in England on this case.
Now does it not strike you as odd that matters
went this far in a case like this when anybody knew
perfectly well that the reception of any U.S. call
letters in England was then impossible? What is
more. Dr. Drake in a long letter to Mr. Paul Huhndorff.
Operations Manager of Station KPRC (previously
KLEE). dated the 17th November 1959. says that
before he left. the BBC had photographed not only
the KLEE-TV station card but others saying "Texas".
"Conn.... ..N.y .... and "N.J." that were obviously
hand-lettered and did not even follow t he pattern of
NBC. CBS. or other networks. They suspected two
notorious TV hoaxters who had previously somehow
gained access to the facilities of a broadcasting
station' either in England or on the Continent sufficiently powerful allover southern England to perpetrate their efforts. Nevertheless. Dr. Drake spent
some time in England and made a great play in his
final opinion that this was the' sole cause of the
uproar.
However. neither Dr. Drake - nor any other astronomer under contract to government - ever so
much as mentioned. (or just failed to reply to letters
of enquiry about) similar events in America that
started being reported after t he outburst about
England had hit the popular press. These came from
our northern tier of states and Canada; occurred on an
unassigned frequency; and were thus picked up only
by chance when people were fiddling with their sets.
They continued sPoradically for about two months.
one lady in Wisconsin deliberately noting the frequency on her dial and turning to it every night. And
what did all these people say they got?
Very clear and loud a professional-looking callletter station identification card for KLEE-TV. and

Notice to Librarians

If you are interested in microfilm or microfiche editions of Pursuit. please see the notice under Members'
Forum for further details.

................................................,...............,....
78

precisely 12'h minutes of what was apparently a


mystery story that just cut in in the middle and
always ended with a man running along a first floor
balcony, as they have on the old French houses in
NElW Orleans, and shouting something like save me,
help, they've got me" and ending with the man diving
at the balustrade and thus off camera. Ends. ImmEldiate cut to black, and never anything else all day
on. that frequency until 9: 15 p.m. the next night.
The government star-listeners must have heard of all
this because Dr. Drake says in another letter that
they received a report from a lady in Ohio, and quite
a few other instances were published in letters
columns to newspapers, and in some small magazines
interested in UFOs.
Now, consider the facts; would this not be the
most perfectly logical and intelligent way for other
intelligencies elsewhere to alert us to the fact that
they were "getting us" and for us to use this frequency - which, incidentally, was not that of KPRC or
old KLEE. Using TV rather than just radio, as is also
more intelligent because, while officialdom might
ne'ver happen to hit on this frequency, they knew that
a lot of the viewing public might, in due course, and
then report it. This worked, and was one of the
reasons for Dr. Drake going over to England. What is
more, when Project Ozma was officially closed down,
all the scientists involved scuttled all over the earth
-and not just to attend symposia.
Finally, after a three-page letter dated NoV., 1959,
to Mr. Huhndorff of KPRC, rambling on about liow he
and the BBC had proved it was a hoax, Dr. Drake
solemnly states in his last page:
" Actually, in recent years astronomers have
generally concluded that planetary systems are quite
numerous in the universe, and biochemists have concluded that life is quite frequent on planetary systems.
The tim e scales of cosmic evolution are such that we
could expect civilizations more advanced than ours,
at the same level, and less advanced than ours spread
in great numbers throughout the universe.
"In just the last two years, we have developed
el,~ctronic instrumentation that is capable of detecting
radio signals of the type we generate on earth, over
interstellar distances,. emphasis ours] That is, it
has suddenly come with.n our power to detect other

civilizations, even though they are w,ith other stars.


This has led to a lot of serious thinking about this,
~ of ~ has !!.Q! been !!!!!!!! public. [emphasis
ours] One of the conclusions most everyone has come
to is that the first thing one does whe,n one detects a
transmission from another planet is 19 send back the
same transmission to the other planet. This not only
tells them you are here, but that you are receiving
them. If you can send back a sufficiently powerful
transmission for which many receiver~ will be tuned,
such as TV, all the better, as your c~ances of being
received are better. This is why the KLEE thing was
so fascinating - it fulfilled all the ~ove reasoning
exactly. except that the time delay seemed too short.
[There are plenty of stars at four ligllt years away Editor. ]
"You may be interested to hear that for about nine
months now, we have been constructing a receiver
specifically designed to detect transmissions from
intelligent beings at other stars. It: should go into
operation in another few months."
Let us assume that these senders monitored
KLEE-TV station for some partiular technical
reason, and then started sending this 15-minute spot
back, and it took four years to reach us, arriving in
1958. It took us these nine months pl~s for us to set
up the appropriate equipment, as Drake states in his
letter; and our reply then took four, years to reach
them. Then, there would be another four years to get
an "OK, Message received" back to ~us. This would
make 1968 before we got an answer. :Should we then
have sent a confirmatory "Return Receipt Required",
it would be this year (1972) before they got it, and
1976 at the earliest before we can get a confirmatory
reply.
The basis of scientific endeavour is reproducibility, so, in the meantime, our scientists very rightly
don't want to go off "half-cocked", ~d are therefore
waiting for this final confirmation. M,eantime, if you
have kept up with technical journals: in your fields,
and these happen to be cosmology, :astronomy, and
certain aspects of optics and broadcast transmission,
notably on the use of TV on the Moon and now Mars,
as several of our members have and dp, you will find
a constant flow of "hints" and "slip-~ps" re all this,
provided you are looking for them specifically, and
know the above story.

II. ONTOLOGY
a~d

AN ALTERNATIVE TO TIME ANOMALIES

This gentlemen writes as follows,


letter in 'toto.

we give his

Member No. 973 wrote m our Director regarding his


UE,e of the theory that anomalies in TIME seemed to
be' the only observable feature of the 12 vortices (as
exemplified by the misnamed "Bermuda Triangle")
ti.:t. rr.;~ht link our Universe (i.e. Space-Time-Continuum) .... "h others, in certain special conditions.

"I. The electromagnetic qualities ~nd dynamics of


the two 'intermeshed' universe~ (eacih with, and in,
its own space-time) operate in their ~wn independent
dimensions. (The term, "electromagnetic, as used
here, refers to tli~t assumed nature of the other uni-

79

verse that most closely corresponds. or is comparable.


to what we know of as the electromagnetic nature of
our universe; it does not imply that the basic nature
of the other universe is electromagnetic per se).
"2. The 'electromagnetic' nature (i.e energy) of
our universe. and of the other universe. is expressed
in wave lengths. frequencies. magnetic fields. etc.
"3. contact between the two universes becomes
possible where the 'lines' of these 'waves' or 'pulsations' converge (i.e . are in phase). The laws of
periodicity thus apply. In light of this. and in light of
the fact that all of these dynamics must exist within
the context of space-time dimensions (if not space-

time-x-y-x dimensions), the existence of 'periodically'


arranged geographical convergence zones (i.e .
Earth's identified 'lozenges') can be explained (on a
spatial basis) and reappearance phenomena of the
Flying Dutchman variety can be e.xplained (on a
temporal baSis). Perhaps poltergeist and other anomalous phenomena can be similarly explained.
"4. At these convergence 'points' (Le., where
'lines cross'), ships, planes. energy, etc., can perhaps
be 'derailed' out of one universe and into another.
either by design or by accident."
Would members who feel competent to criticize
this. please do so and let us know.

IV. CHEMISTRY

A NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTION


We feel fairly assured that this is a discovery of
which all of you must have heard by now. While the
explanations so far given are all feasible. they are by
no means decisive. Furthermore. the whole thing
leaves at least three most important questions open.
and one does not seem to have been even considered
as yet. We present the facts as given by Walter
Sullivan in the New York Times of the 26th September
---1972:
"A leading French scientist yesterday reported
evidence that nature spontaneously ignited a nuclear
chain reaction in an Mrican uranium mine millions
of years ago. The reaction. he said. apparently ran
for a prolonged period ... It was the first reported
instance of a spontaneous chain reaction in the earth.
"When Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg. former head of the
United States Atomic Energy Commission and a Nobel
laureate for his work on heavy elements. was told of
the discovery. he said: 'That is fantastic.' However.
he added that. if any atomic explosions occurred. they
were probably little more than 'fizzles'.
"The first clue was the observation at the French
uranium enrichment center at Pierelatte. that uranium
from the Oklo mine. 40 miles northwest of Frenchville
in Gabon. had a peculi!lr composition. It was markedly depleted in the uranium 235 extracted for bombs or,
in weaker mixtures. for power plants. It was difficult
to explain this unless some of it had been 'burned' in
a chain reaction. Furthermore. the investigators at
the French atomic center at Cadarache found four
other rare elements -neodymium. samarium. europium
and cerium- in forms that are typically the residue of
uranium breakdown. The unusual composition of the
Oklo uranium. which has been mined only since 1969.
struck the analysts because all uranium. as it comes
from the ground anywhere on earth -or even as it is
found by astronauts on the moon- has the same proportion of uranium 235. This amount is 0.72 per cent.
The reason. presumably. is that all uranium in the

solar system was formed at the same time. However,


the form known as uranium 235 (because it has 235
neutrons and protons in its nucleus) is radioactive
and is slowly becoming depleted, relative to more
stable forms of that element. through radioactive
decay. Whereas natural uranium today contains only
0.72 per cent of uranium 235. some 1. 7 billion years
ago it constituted 3 per cent. (This can be determined
because uranium 235 decays at a known rate. Had
there been a nuclear power industry at that time it
would have been unnecessary to enrich the raw
uranium. It could have been used directly as fuel in
water-moderated reactors. This is why it is suspected
that the spontaneous chain reaction began approximately at that time. However. specialists in reactor engineering said yesterday that they were puzzled as to
how this could have occurred in a deposit with only
[even?] 3 percent of the fissionable uranium.
"As Dr. Seaborg pointed out, in a reactor burning
such fuel 'you have to have things exactly right'.
Water or some other 'moderator' is needed to slow
down the neutrons released as each atom is split so
that they are not moving too fast for absorption by
othe r atoms, to sustain the chain reaction. Furthermore, the moderator and the fuel must be extremely
pure. Even a few parts per million of a contaminant,
such as boron, will 'poison' the reaction, bringing it
to a halt. How the necessary conditions could arise
underground under natural Circumstances. said Dr.
Seaborg, is 'really puzzling'.
"Dr. Perrin, in the discussion that followed presentation of papers on this subject prepared by two
teams of scientists, proposed t hat water filtering
down through the uranium had acted as a moderator.
or neutron-slower. When the reaction ran fast enough
to convert the water to steam. the reaction halted
until the deposit cooled once more. 'I thus believe',
he said, 'the fossil pile at Oklo must have functioned
intermittently, pulsating, as it were' ...
First. we would like to know just what elements
constitute contaminants in the case of uranium 235

---

---,------

80

(in addition to boron). Second, how deep in the mine


is this depleted U-235 found and what lies above it.
Is i't granite right up to the surface, all free of all
contaminarts? If so, as the granite cooled down,
which it will do very rapidly on the geological timescale, was nothing else ,ever deposited on it in its
early days. It is stretching the imagination almost
too :far to expect any such overlay to have also been
free of contaminants.
But a much more cogent question seems not to
have been asked as yet. This would seem to be of
just as much pertinence to geomorphologists and
geophysicists as it is to geologists. This is to ask,
by IL process of intrapolation, at what point back in
tim E' might there have been a proportion of U. 235

sufficient to keep all uranium mas cons ~rom "burning"


thus naturally? Or is this case absolu~ely unique in
that it alone
(so far discovered) manag~d
somehow to
.
I
avoid contamination? How did U.235 avoid it in the
first place anyhow?
Should this procedure have once h~ppened much
more often'; am more intensively due :to the higher
proportion of U.235, would it not have 'a devastating
effect on the earth's crust, and leave: signs of its
effects due to heat transference if notl1ing else? In
fact, was the earth initially accreted frllm super-cold
material, later heated by uranium breakdown, as some
have suggested? This theory would not seem to wash,
as temperature is proportional to press4re so that as
the earth grew its internal temperature must have
grown from the inside out in any case.

V. ASTRONOMY

THE: GREAT GALACTIC GHOUL


The National Observer of the 13th November 1971,
in .its section "Background Briefing" included an
artiele entitled "Mars and a Space-Age Gremlin", as
follows:
AThere are two possible explanations for the
problem encountered last week by Mariner 9 on its
flight to Mars: A speck of space dust hit it, or the
Great Galactic Ghoul got it. Mariner 9, scheduled to
begin orbiting Mars on Nov. 13, suddenly lost its lock
on t;he star Canopus, which is used for navigation.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
Pasadena, Calif., promptly got the space craft to reesta.blish its proper alignments, and tests indicated
all i.ts instruments were working fine.
"The incident added to scientific speculation that
a ring of tiny particles and asteroids orbits the sun
between earth and Mars, some 128,000,000 to 133,000,
000 miles out from the sun. JPL officials say Mariner
9's difficulty could have resulted from a piece of
spac:e dust striking the craft and turning it so the
navigational antenna lost track of Canopus. But those
who relish a dash of spice with their space science
might prefer to think that Mariner 9 fell victim to the
Great Galactic Ghoul, a fictional space monster
blamed for the misadventures of several satellites

approaching the red planet. The Ghoul was born in


July 1969, in the imaginations of Time' magazine reporters Don Neff and David Lee. JPL I had suddenly
lost communications with Mariner 7, o~e of the two
U.S. space craft aimed to fly within 2,,000 miles of
Mars. seven hours later, and just as suddenly, radio
contact came back. But Mariner 7 had; lost some of
its ability to transmit data, and it was traveling
slightly faster than it should have been.
"While scientists puzzled over the ~henomenon later attributed to a possible meteorite; impact - the
Time reporters noted that Mariner 7's problem occurred about 131,000,000 miles out from the sun. In
19:63 Russia's Mars 1 went dead at abo~t 133,000,000
miles, as did the Soviets' Zond 2 in 1965 at about
128,000,000 miles. Neither was hear4 from again.
And Mariner 4, eventually a success, had its own
difficulties in the same general area in 11965. In a bit
of whimsy, Neff and Lee suggested to tlieir pressroom
colleagues that the Great Galactic Ghoul lurked near
Mars. It had eaten the Soviet sateilites. It had
swallowed Mariner 7, didn't like the taste, am spit
it out. That, they concluded, accounted for the loss
of radio signals and the increased sp~ed. One JPL
scientist opined that the theory was as tenable as
any other at the time.
'
"Today the Ghoul is as much a part of the U. S.
Mars program as gremlins were a part of it he World War

HOW TO GET YOUR NAME OFF JUNK MAIL LISTS!

Believe it or not, you can eliminate most of the junk mail you receive; not all of it -and for pornographic
mail, ask your local post office for form No.220 1 ("the form fOl getting off sexually-oriented: advertising
lists"). As for ordinary junk mail, write to Miss Lynn Lee, Director of Consumer Relations,. Direct Mail
Advertising Association, Inc., 230 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017. She will send you,information
on their service, together with the necessary forms. There is no cost to you except for the posta;ge required
to request the form and return it to her.

81

II Air Force. Consider the reaction of a National


Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) official
last week after Mariner 9 locked again on Canopus.
'The Ghoul has been foiled,' he said."
Since neilher telescopes nor any of our other
sensitive detection devices have been able to find
anything of.a solid nature [i.e. with mass] in this
strange "belt", and as it seems to come and go, we

are wondering if it might not be a zone of time anomaly like the 12 areas on the surface of our earth ex amplified by the misnamed "Bermuda Triangle" but on a much grander scale. Sometimes planes disappear completely; in other cases they seem to skirt
these areas and come out with all their inboard instruments functioning again but at a wrong time.
The two phenomena are strangely comparable.

VI. GEOLOGY

THAT "DIAMOND" CRYSTAL


On page 39 of our April 1972 issue under the heading "On Big Things", I made a casual remark that was
not only totally inaccurate but absurd. Our Advisor
on Geomorphology and Geophysics- and also straight
geology, mineralogy, etc.- pounced on this, and so
very rightly. Thank God that piece was written by me
personally, as I would not want the Society to be
blamed for any statement that is not fully checked and
for which full references are not given.
The wild aside that I wrote went:- "Perhaps it
was a chip off one of the apices of a diamond crystal
that measured 21-ft (the chip that is) that first startled
me". I saw this thing in, I think, the Geological
Museum in Munich when I was about ten years old and
I don't read German. The thing was manifestly, in
view of what follows, not a diamond and was probably
a piece of some rock like columnar basalt as opposed
to mineral ..Perhaps my parents had been pulling my
leg!
After some interchange of correspondence Professor Kennedy wrote as follows, and I think the
facts he gives are worthy of record of themselves,
apart from setting me straight.
"The largest known diamond is approximately 4"
across. For many years I have served as consultant
to the De Beers Diamond syndicate and can give you
the size and sequence of all the major known stones.
I am also enclosing a paper on the Origin of Diamond
Deposits which explains why large diamonds do not
exist. They are emplaced explosively from a depth of
approximately 200 km, through relatively narrow
cracks. A brittle material with as good a cleavage as

a diamond would never survive the trip to the surface.


"No diamonds have ever been found in Europe. The
source of all diamonds up until circa 1850 was India.
The famous Golconda Mines. It was only after 1850
that diamonds had been found in Brazil and in
Africa. Incidentally, your 21 ft crystal would weigh
more than the entire annual production of diamond
and, if broken up, would have a value for industrial
use of little more than 10 billion dollars. An examination of the sketch you send with the dimensions
suggests that the crystal you draw would weigh circa
100 tons. From your sketch, I estimate a volume of
1000 cubic feet, diamond weighs circa 250 lbs per
cubic feet [sic]. This translates into 500 million
carats and a carat of diamond fragment suitable to
use in a diamond drill is worth around $20 as an
industrial stone. Thus, the value for industrial purposes of this stone would be circa 10 billion dollars,
and its volume is circa 20 times the annual production of stones for the entire world. You can thus
see why my eyebrows went up w hen I read the note"
My only further comment is that "out of stupidity
cometh (sometimes) enlightenment".

Ivan T. Sanderson

Editor's Note: Professor Kennedy notes also that


the largest single crystal he knows of is a spodumene
crystal in a pegmatite dike in the Black Hills of
South Dakota. He adds, II As I recall, this crystal is
circa 20 ft in length".

Please, once again, let us know of any change of address as far in advance as you can. Third class mail
is not forwardable Llnless you make a special request of the post office. If it is returned to us, the Iocal
post office sometimes indicates your new address, but not always -in which case it becomes impossible to
get Pursuit to you until you get around to giving us your new address. And always include your zip code;
Pursuit does not go through without it. We have a zip code directory, but it does not give a complete breakdown of codes within major cities. Thank you.

82

VII. BIOLOGY
A NEW MAMMAL DISCOVERED
There is a rather constant murmuring among the
sciemtific fraternity that 't,he discovery of any new
large animals is "impos!ijble". Nonetheless, and
though we are somewhat late in announcing it, new
animals, specifically mammals, are still cropping up.
(No one is astonished by the discovery of new
insects, since nobody has yet come up with even a
good estimate of the number of species that exist on
this planet.) We are indebted to Member 1I2lO for
sending us a copy of an article from the journal
Animals (V. 10, N. 11, March 1968), based on formal
reports in the journal of the Tokyo Zoological Society
by Yukio Tagawa and Dr. Yoshinori Imaizumi. The
animal in question is the Iriomote wild cat, which
constitutes a new genus, Mayailurus iriomotensis. It
was found not in "Darkest Africa" or the "steaming
jungles" of the ..\mazon, but on a small island at the
end of the Ryukyu chain south of Japan (see map).
Yukio Tagawa, a naturalist and author, was dOing
a smies entitled "Journeys into the Wild" and, having
heard (on Okinawa) rumours of a "new" cat -which
he at first dismissed as being probably domestic
cats run wild- and also having found that his first
proposed destination was overrun by so-called civilization, he went to the island of Iriomote where he
and, later, Professor Takara of the University of

"
China

.....
Formosa

Il'
'\ lriomote Is.

(/

Okinawa, eventually acquired some skins and skulls


and, finally, some live specimens.
'
Mayailurus is only slightly larger thliUl an ordinary
domestic cat but quite distinct from it. and from the
"leopard cat" (Felis bengalensis). "Mayailurus has
5 to 7 black lineSOii" the back of its ne~k which come
to an end in front of the shoulders; peak-shaped black
spots under the eyes, like those of a: cheetah; and
indistinct spots on the trunk which become vertical
bands like those of an ocelot. It also has only 28
teeth, whereas the leopard cat and the domestic cat
have the 30 teeth typical of the cat family in general."
Oddly enough, the Iriomote cat seeins to be very
similar to the Chilean mountain citt (Noctifelis
guigna) which also has 28 teeth an~ a similarly
shaped skull (specialists may wish. to read the
original article for these details which: are meaningless to the non-zoologist). Presumably" the Iriomote
cat is a primitive species related to the ancestors of
the leopard cat and the ordinary feral domestic cat
known throughout Asia: and possibly some of its
remote ancestors came over a land brid,ge from Asia,
thus producing the separate but relate~ Chilean cat,
Noctifelis guigna.
Even mOrelnteresting is the last, paragraph in
the Animals article:
"The Iriomote cat is a remarkable :find which is
all the more interesting for its possiole links with
the distant past. The islanders refer; to it in their
dialect as the pingimaya. They also talk about
another cat which they call the yamamYa. They say
that the yamamaya is, the size of a s~eep dog, and
looks like a tiger. Perhaps there is another unknown
animal concealed in the rainforest of Ir~omote."
Perhaps indeed. And the next time someone
announces that there cannot be any, undiscovered
animals, of whatever sort or size, deep :in the virtually impenetrable swamps and forests of .I\frica or even
in the sawtooth, forest-covered hills of north-central
Pennsylvania, you may now point out that a new
genus of felines was discovered on I an island off
Japan -an inhabited island, whose residents have
always said there was such an animal. But, of
course, no one believed them until 1966:.

A NEW LAKE MONSTER


A rather splendid and, for once, 'very straightforward report comes out of Lexington; Kentucky, as
follows:
Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal, 7 August 1972:
"Monster Reported Swimming in Herrington Lake" by
Joe Ward (staff Writer). "Prof. Lawrence S. Thompson,
who teaches classics at the University of Kentucky,

83

keeps a second house on Herrington Lake about 30


miles south of here. And sometimes, in the quiet
stretch of water between Chenault Bridge and Wells
Landing a few miles down lake, he sees a 'monster'
taking a leisurely swim in the early morning hours.
As the professor describes it, it's not a particularly
fearsome monster. In fact, in the four years he's lived
on the lake and felt there was 'something out there',
he's come under the impression that the creature is
quite shy. All he's ever seen of it is a snout - not
unlike that of a pig, moving along just above the
water at about the speed of a boat with a trolling
motor - and a curly tail, similar to that of the same
animal, coming along about 15 feet behind.
"He explained - in a recent interview marked by
its scholarly approach and multisyllabic vocabulary - that 'it's a monster only in the sense that you'd
call an alligator or a crocodile a monster if nobody
else had ever seen one.' Actually he said, he has no
idea what it is. But he knows there are no fish that
big in Herrington Lake and he leans toward a theory
of his own - that it might be a type at" creature that
has somehow escaped observation by men since its
prehistoric ancestors swam UP the Mississippi and
Ohio rivers millennia ago."
Professor Thompson is sensible enough to make
his report and leave it at that. What more can one do
about such an unexplained until one is caught? Why
blather and speculate? Perhaps one of our members
about those parts might like to take a stab at it and
try to get some good photos at least.

THE IMPROPERLY CLASSIFIED MARINE ANIMAL


Member No. 1006 writes to us saying that our
analysis of the corpse washed up on a rocky ledge
near Santa Cruz, California, is just plain silly; and he
advises us to refer to Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans' book
In the Wake of the Sea-Serpent. We had, of course,
already done thisas we were intimately associated
with him in the compilation of this work. Heuvelmans
is a funny fellow. In both his books he will devote
endless attention to item s that could well be explained, but then brushes a number of the most enigmatic
cases under the proverbial mat. He makes a great thing
out of being a professional scientist and when and if
ever he can find a definite pronouncement by a
brother scientist, he takes it at face value; and "Case
closed" .
In this case there were not just two but half a
dozen good photographs taken of the beast, but
Heuvelmans must needs choose the one that does not
show the long slender - and completely undecomposed, we might add - neck. We then made a further
gross mistake in that we cropped the photograph that
we used to the neck side, thinking that the avera.ge
citizen, let alone a zoologist, would see enough to
count out all types of Whales, decomposed or not.

As to the skull being that of a Berardius ~, it


might take a cetaceologist to refute any such ridicunonsense. This creature (B. bairdii) is one of the
beaked whales and has a long pointed skull, not a
bull-headed one like this and, besides, it has no
teeth in the front. But then, this is not the first time
that a switch has been done in a museum, and it is
much better to tell the newsboys and thus the general
public what the skull was. They were perfectly safe
in this case as they did not have a Berardius skull
within 3000 miles to compare it with. No, it was definitely not a whale.
Another thing that has been overlooked is that
everybody, even those with some zoological training,
that inspected the thing insist that it had four equalsized flippers, one pair just behind the junction of
the neck with the torso and the other pair far aft.
This, as in so many cases of this nature, was conveniently passed over and forgotten; by t he zoologists because from their point of view, the less said
the better; and from the point of view of the public
and even the newsboys, because they simply would
not have appreciated the significance of this point.
One of our zoologist friends objects that no long-necked dinosaurian reptile had a head anything like
this; Admittedly, those we know from fossil skulls
have large eye-sockets, but quite closely related
animals among, for instance, the salamanders normally have large protuberant eyes, but some cave-dwelling species have minute ones or none at all. And, be
it noted, that the creature probably spent 99% of its
tim e below the hundred fathom line and this in total
darkness, coming to the surface only very occasionally to replenish its oxygen. Anyhow, this is definitely
not a known mammal or a fish (shark). We await
further transcripts of the original stories, and then we
hope photographs, before bearding the museum with a
request for sight of their register of specimens received about that date. We will then ask for sight of
the skull.
PENGUINS AND THE CHILL EFFECT
We have received a number of notes from members
on this subject, including a most pertinent letter from
Member No. 1017, the first portion of which we quote
in full:
"On page 62 of the July 1972 Pursuit in an article
entitled "Deep-breathing, or What?" -in which there
in a confusion of objective and subjective aspects of
temperature. The difficulty the article is suffering
from concerns what is known as the 'chill factor'.
Wind does not produce a drop in air temperature. It
merely ~ to, subjectively. The variables are
wind speed, humidity and air temperature. Thus: at
windspeed "A", with humidity at "B" and the thermometer at "C", it feels as cold as though it were
temperature "X" at humidity "Y" with wind speed
zero. What thi$ means is that in your penguin example,

---------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

84

t"ne air temperature remains at -150' no matter how


fast the air happens to move. This could easily be
demonstrated by asking the penguin to stand next to
a thermometer. Subjectively, however, it might well
feE!! like -300 --In other words, a thermometer
exposed to your -150 degree air will register -150 at
any wind-speed from 0 to 00."
We got our facts "from what is otherwise regarded
as a thoroughly reliable text on the Antarctic but,
after asking around, this (and our other correspondents
and callers) would seem to be most certainly right.
However, I think that standing out in the open all of
the antarctic winter with temperatures t hat do go
down to -150 is pretty good going anyway, and we
arEl now searching for references to work that has
been done on the heating apparatus and feedback
system of it among penguins. We'd like to know how
thElY do it. At the same time we have written to the
Frozen Food Industry trade journal to ask how come
they use what they call the "blast method" to reduce
temperatures so drastically. We went allover this
years ago when we first tangled with the troublesome
matter of the deep-frozen mammoths in Siberia but we
want it confirmed.

MORE DRIVEL ABOUT FROZEN MAMMOTHS


A statement by one Dr. Troy Pewe, as quoted by
the Phoenix (Arizona) Gazette, 9th June 1972, was
headed "Animal-Death Legends Refuted". This is
one of the most pernicious pieces of misinformation
we have seen released yet on this subject; and from
the Chai"rman of the Arizona State University Geology
Department. It went as follows:
"Myths and legends about the giants of the prehistoric animal kingdom being killed in cataclysmic
shifting of the earth or violent storms today were
given a label: 'Baloney'.
"As a matter of fact, said Dr. Pewe, who has been
on expeditions all over the world, and especially in
Alaska and Siberia, those animals died natural deaths.
[aJ Man~ [bJ of them were found with buttercups in
their mouths and stomachs, he said, proving that this
flower is not confined to tropical zones [c].
"The carcasses, found as far down as 2,000 feet
in the permafrost of the polar zone, probably sank into
bogs in the spring and were covered up by the annual
accumulation of debris, said Dr. Pewe. Those ani-

mals, mammoths (the giant, woolly super elephant),


horses, musk oxes [sic], lions and, ye~, even camels,
were frozen after they died, thus preventing scavengers from eating them up. [d] Still fr~zen in spring,
they were covered up by the debris that came along in
each annual melt until they were cover~d by some 100
to 2,000 feet of permafrost.
"Dr. Pewe also applied the 'baloney' label about
the carcasses being millions of years old. 'They only
go back to the last ice age, about 70,000 years ago' ,
he said. [e] The fact that camel c arqasses also are
found in the frozen far north, he said, indicates that
this animal, usually associated with warmer life
zones, roamed pretty much allover the world. [f]"
A. Of course they died "natural" deaths; there
was no artificial refrigeration in those days!
B. Only one, the Beresovska Mammoth, had fresh
buttercups between its teeth and in its stomach, along
with a lot of sedges, and pine shoots. "
C. Whoever said that Buttercups were confined to
the tropics; in fact, that is one zone where they are
not found in the form that we know. 'Ijhey are, on the
other hand, one of the commonest plants of the lower
Tundra.
D. Of course they were frozen after they died but
the freezing had to be done in air and penetrate the
whole animal before the bacteria in i;ts stomach and
the rest of it, literally cooked it and rotted it. The
winter snows then kept the temperature down until the
spring melt, when "muck" began to bury them. This
then, too, froze to form the permafrost. How this was
achieved without the exposed parts of; the body thawing out and rotting in the brief but ,very hot threemonth summer, is one of the greater mysteries.
E. It is indeed true that the oldest carcase dated
by the Russians is only about 100,000 years old, but
animals went on being thus frozen in I fits and starts,
chronologically speaking, until about 10,000 B.C.
Then they stopped.
F. Dr. Pewe's remarks about the" camels is also
rubbish. The wild Two-Humped Camel" is found today
in a climate equivalent to that of the lower edge of
the Tundra; while, on the other han~, Plum Trees,
bearing fruit, have been found in the muck of the New
Siberian tundra. Truth is, the climate swung back and
and forth between Ice-Age conditionSI and temperate
during the last interglacial and glaci:al periods, and
eastern Siberia never was covered: by an icecap.
A fine geologist is Dr. Pewe! He seems not to
have read any of the recent and current literature

LItter Bugs!
From the Minneapolis Star, 29 June, 1972: UPI (N ew York, NY): "A cruising police car discovered a
grayish-pink hulk lying in a Bronx intersection. It was determined that the hulk was the skinned, decapitated
body of a 300-pound animal, either a gorilla or a bear. No zoos in the area have reporte~ the loss of a
gorilla. There was no known crime, so police said there would be no investigation."

85

either on the frozen animals. or the palaeoclimatology


of the area. even in our language. let alone the
Russian.
EELS OUT OF FAUCETS
From the Boston Globe. 16 June 1972. by Warren
Talbot: "Mystery Eels Puzzle Officials in Medford
Mass.. "An East Boston Woman called up the
Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) yesterday
and claimed that an eel had slithered out of her
kitchen faucet. 'That I don't believe'. Chief Water
Supply Engineer Arthur Grieve said. But Grieve is
trying to determine how three eels did find their way
into Medford's water supply system. 'I am willing to
believe that the eels could get into the city's water
pipes. but never will ever believe they can come out
a faucet'.
"Last Thursday Medford water department workers
answered a complaint of low water pressure at 975
Fellsway Drive. When they dug their ditch and took
the cap off the water main. an eel came out. The
teleost was four feet long. and to say the least. its
appearance astounded the work crew. Two more eels
were fished from water pipes - one last Friday and
another this Tuesday. All were taken in the Fellsway
section of Medford. and reached lengths of four feet."
Mr. Arthur Grieve should be informed that this has
been gOing on since ever and all over Western Europe
and Eastern North America. We have dozens of reports
in our files. Young eels have a built-in instinctive
urge to keep gOing upstream in their first year and
then being about pencil size they may get sucked into
a water supply system and then grow there until they
can't get out. On the other hand some may keep gOing
until they are in the domestic distribution system
when they go on up pipes that flow. before they get
too big. A four-foot eel has too big a girth to get up
to a faucet but a two-footer or even a starved 3-footer
can do so.

THAT FROG!
A week after Hurricane Agnes had gone all around
us -for a change!- in New Jersey. a gentleman rang
us up to say that he had been informed hereabouts
that we were interested in oddities. He is a pretty
high-level ergineer working under contract. he told
us. for outfits like NASA. His home base is Wisconsin
but he maintains a summer home near here in the
beautiful. unspoiled. wooded foothills of Warren
County. New Jersey. What he said on the phone was
as follows:"The hurricane didn't hit us but we had an awful
lot of rain and a lot of fine silt got through the filter
into my swimming pool. SO I told my man to drain it
and scrub it. Well. he did but he came to me yesterday
morning and said there was one hell of a funny looking frog in it and he really thought I ought to come
and look at it. Well. I did; but I'm an engineer. not a
bug collector. but I saw at once that this animal was
awfully odd -two pairs of nostrils. no eyes. and huge
sort of 'drums' there on the side of its head instead."
Well. we thanked the gentleman and asked if we
could come over (about 15 miles) and have a look at
it. He said "Heck. no; I'll bring it over to you; and
I'll find out how to get there" -which is quite an
exercise even for local people; and. py jinkoa. he
did; and. what is more. he gave us the frog. That was
on the 8th July.
It was a Bullfrog (Rana catesbiana) but was all
"wrong" in that it had the warty skin and the colouration of the River Frog (Rana heckscheri) which is not
from north of southern South Carolina. and which is
also somewhat smaller. As the accompanying photograph shows. it has no eyes. a sort of hard excrescence on its snout. and two enormous tympani or "eardrums". It was full-grown. and it changed colour in
bright sunlight. just like any other Bullfrog. But. do
what we could -and we are professionals at this- we
never saw him eat; though we once got an earthworm

86

into his mouth, He spat it out. He (or she) died on the


30th October. just as we were going to press!
So what's "unexplained" about this? Plenty,ladies
and gentlemen. First off, he was full-grown (head and
body, 5 ~"), and the book says it takes a Bullfrog
four years to attain adulthood. Now. frogs get their
food by sight -hence their enormous. bulging eyesbut; this guy was born without eyes. Being a Bullfrog
he must have hibernated for at least three winters. We
eventually put him in a big I" xl" turkey-wire cage
and put this at the edge of our pond, and we often
CrE!pt up at night with a big flashlight, and there were
always hundreds of polliwogs. baby Blue Gill fish.
anci all sorts of insects in. or going through, his cage.
But we never saw him eat, though one person does say
he saw him snapping at insects. Another strange thing
we discovered was that, although he was born without
eYI!S, he was sensitive to a light beam and used to
waltz around when we turned the flash on him. Funny,
but he did not like water. He also breathed through
his mouth.
He's dead now, but professionally "pickled" in
form aldehyde-salt solution: and he will be autopsied
by other professional herpetologists. We want to see
just how he was put together. So far it's totally unexplained.
THE PARAGUAYAN MONsrER
This was first reported exclusive to the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer in mid-February of 1972. It has
caused quite an uproar and no clear answers have yet
been obtained. The Paraguayans apparently don't
answer letters. even if written in immaculate Spanish.
The story went: " ... That Barking Snake in Paraguay Is for Real,
by Percy Forster: Asuncion, Paraguay - For centuries, white men believed the 'Mboi-yagua.' a serpent
with the head and bark of a dog and large steel-hard,
needle-sharp hooks on its t ail, existed only in the
imagination of Guarani Indians in the swampy jungles
of Paraguay. But last week rca. 6-12 Feb.] a party of
government surveyors retutned from a three-month
mission in a jungle along the banks of the upper
Parana River, bringing a live 'Mboi-yagua' with them.
Now it is housed in the local zoo. attracting thousands
of visitors daily. Something over 10 feet long and
about a yard in circumference in the middle, with the
tail thinning down to 18 inches, it looks almost exactly as Guarani Indians have been describing it
since the first Jesuit missionaries went to Paraguay
more than 300 years ago. In fact the only difference
is in the size. From the stories told by the Indians,
thE! missionaries envisaged it as being at least twice
as large.
"Four large hooks growing out of the serpent's
body about two feet from i.ts tail are believed to be
used for holding the huge creature's prey. though exacUy what it preys upon has yet to be determined.

Since its capture it has refused to ea,t anything, but


clearly it is carnivorous. judging from the gaff-size
hooks and the teeth, which are not u~like those of a
dog, and, according to the Indians, it has a terrifying
bark. But this specimen, in addition :to refusing all
food, also refuses to bark. On being p~aced in a high
wire corral, with a hut in the corner. it stuck its head
inside and thereafter refused to budge. The only sign
of life comes at intervals of several ho~rs with frantic
swishings of its murderous-looking tail:.
.. According to the surveyors who brought it in from
the jungle. they found it dozing in the middle of a
riverside swamp. They managed to lasso its head, but
six of them, tugging at the rope, were unable to budge
it from where it lay, mostly submerged in the mud.
Finally, to get it onto higher dry ~and they were
obliged to use a tackle. Even then, it took them more
than three hours to get it onto the cat~rpi1lar truck on
which they transported the trophy to A!3uncion.
Naturalists who flew in from Buenos Aires and
Rio de Janeiro to see the strange creature immediately became involved in a debate that is still ~n progress. Some of them are convinced tha~ it is a specimen of the mythical 'Mboi-yagua' whiie others assert
it is nothing more than a distant relative of the taraconda., a species of serpent that has been found
occasionally in swampy land along th~ banks of the
upper reaches of the Amazon River, in Brazil. ... "
This is one of the most puzzling "mpnster" stories
ever, and one's first thought is that lit is a put-on,
even if naturalists did fly in from Rio and B.A. One
look ought to be enough for any zoolpgist: and why
didn't the Zoo director lasso its tail a~ove the spikes
and have it hauled out by brute force so that some
good photographs could betaken and s orne film
footage of its movements before it dies
or escapes?
I
In fact, why didn't they do this while it. was being unloaded at the Zoo? The whole thing looks very "fishy"
to us.
If this thing is not just a pipe dream. there are
two alternatives. We suppose it could b;e some form of
snake related to the Anaconda lot, who:se heads seen
from the side can look very like dogs without ears,
but they don't bark. Further, t here is no snake
known with spikes on its tail, though all members of
the Boidae do have two small "claspers" near the
anus which are used to hang onto the female while
mating: these latter can hardly be: described as
"hooks . two feet from its tail".
The other alterml.tive is that it is some form of
legless, swamp-living mammal, but of 'what order of
mammals? Some Glyptodonts of the dentata order
had massive, hard, recurved spines on :their tails but
they were land-living vegetarians with huge carapaces
like armadillos. Further, there is no khown living or
fossil mammal that is legless. Aggrav~tingly. we are
not even told - and there have been several more reports on this throughout the year - r,f it has ears,
whether the teeth are differentiated like those of a

87

mammal, or if it is covered with hair, naked skin, or


scales.
The whole business is totally unsatisfactory as it
stands and we tend to believe that it is just a phoney
newspaper story.
WHAT THE HUMAN BEING OF THE FUTURE WILL
LOOK LIKE

"The jaw no longer has to do the hard chewing job


of earlier times."
Of course, nature will require some time to bring
about these changes -about 10,000 years - the
experts believe. But, they add, 10,000 years is not
much more t han a few days on the evolutionary
calendar. After all, it has taken nature several
hundred thousand years to build her present model of
man.

by Edward B. Camlin
[The following article is reprinted with permission
and is oopyrighted by the National ENQUIRER,
Lantana, Florida; the same is true of the drawing
which accompanies this piece.]
Future man's ideal male and female will have a
huge head, with feelers growing from the forehead,
hardly any chest, tiny legs, only one toe on each
foot, no teeth, and a body completely covered by hair.
These are some of the radical changes nature has
in store for mankind so that we will be able to keep
up with our fast-changing environment and life-styles,
the scientists say.
"Because we spend so much time in the dark
watching television, man may develop rudimentary
feelers in his forehead to help guide him over the
outstretched legs of gUtlsts on his way to the refrigerator," said Dr. Hugo Bohman, of Goteborg, Sweden.
"Perhaps that sounds amusing but that's the way
evolution works," he added.
Man will also become quite hairy again, says a
Dutch expert, Dr. Benjamin Grijseels of the Hague.
The earth is slowly getting coldE:r and man will grow
more and more hair to help keep him warm, he explained.
Dr. P. G. Balfour of San Francisco University
paints a grotesque picture of future man's body -at
least according to our standards. "He will have a.
massive head, easily the biggest part of his body.
And he will have hardly any chest or stomach, and
legs no bigger and not much stronger than presentday fingers." He said his forecast is based on trends
already in existence, which were fed into a computer.
Man will also lose some parts, among them his
toes and teeth, another scientist predicts. "Except
for our big toes, the rest are already useless," says
anthropologist Abel Voight of Boston. "We need the
big toes to push off with when we take a step. The
others were fine when we swung from trees, but evolution has shriveled them up and soon th~ will tend
to merge with the big toe."
"Future man will have no teeth", predicts R. A.
Wentworth,
a resident dentist at Witwatersrand
University in Johannesburg, South Africa. "Teeth
have been getting smaller down the ages and there
are indications that the molars are disappearing.
Future man will develop a more streamlined jaw that
is less muscular and bony." He said this will be the
end result of the soft foods we are eating because

Editor's Comments:Physical anthropologists and human anatomists


can, and may well not only just disagree with this
overall pictUre, but with the possible exception of
Dr. Bohman's prediction, they will find it hard to
dispute the individual statements. We would have
thought that lO,OOO years is too short a time spell
and the whole article leaves out a very important
"IF". Knowing Nature, one should keep an eye on the
distinct possibility that the way of life predicated
-presumably for all of humanity- will vanish long
before these changes have time to take place. Further,
the flat statement that the earth is getting colder may
well not be the case. We don't know nearly enough
historical climatology yet.

Human being 10,000 years from now, say experts,


will have a huge head, tiny legs, feelers growing from
the forehead, no teeth and be completely covered by
hair.
Artist's conception copyright National ENQUIRER, Lantana, Florida

.. ------------.------..~.......... .......

~--------------------------------------~---------------88

VIII.

ANTHROPOLOGY

THE: LITTLE WOODEN AIRPLANE


We mentioned, but just tangentially, in our last
issue when speaking of "flight" by the Ancients (p.
68), that the most amazing example yet to come to
light was the discovery of a scale model of a very
advanced type of cargo-carrYing pusher plane or
powl!red glider in an ancient Egyptian tomb at
Saqqara, and dated as having been made in or about
the year 200 B.C.
The Ancient Egyptian technologists always made
scale models of things they were going to build, all
the way from temples to ships. This item was' originally discovered in 1898 and, airplanes being unknown in those days, was thrown into a box marked
"wooden bird models" and then stored in the basement
of the famous museum in Cairo. Here it was rediscovered by one Dr. Khalil Messiha who has made
a life study of these models made by the ancients. So
important was this "discovery" considered that the
Egyptian Ministry of Culture set UP a special committE!e of leading scientists to study it. The result of

their findings was that a special exhibit was set up


in the central hall of the museum with this little
model as its centerpiece. It is even labelled as a
model airplane. 'This is not the kind of behavior one
expects of a committee of experts; especially archaeologists and in a museum at that.
To tell the whole story would fill all ~of this issue,
so we will confine ourselves to pointing out a few
of the amazing aspects of this story. 'First of all, this
thing has the exact proportions of a very advanced
form of what is called a pusher-glider that is still
having the "bugs ironed out of it". Tp.is device is
actually a glider that will almost stay: in the air of
itself so that even a tiny engine would Ikeep it going
at speeds as low as 45 to 65 m.p.h. while it could
carry an enormous pay-load. The whole business
depends upon the strange shape and proportions of
the wings. These, as you will see from the drawing,
curve down at the tips. This is called a "reversedihedral wing",
'
Now com es this startling outline of the controversial European super-plane Concord~, the design
of every part of which was planned' to give this
juggernaut the maximum lift without detracting from
its speed. And so what do we see?
Precisely the same wing form and p,roportions. It
seems rather incredible to us that anybody, for any
reason, should have devised just such ~ model 2000
years ago. Is this another "left-over:" from some
greatly advanced prior technological civUization, the
more useful techniques of which were carefully preserved by the priesthoods? It looks like it.

~--------~~~~~~~~~~--~-------..WING SPAN 83 ft. 10.4 in.

89

GIANT 'ABO' OF 6000 YEARS AGO


A startling discovery was made in Australia last
year that has some distinctly fortean aspects. AP
reported it straight on the 5th July 1972. It went as
follows:
"The skeleton of an aborigine who lived thousands
of years ago has been recovered from the earth near
Lake Mitchie, 550 miles west of Sydney. By comparison, the man was a giant -6 feet 2~ inches- against
an average 5 feet, 6 inches for the aborigine of today.
Around the neck and reaching to the pelvis was a
strange necklace made of 180 pierced teeth of the
Tasmanian devil, a carnivorous doglike animal that
has been extinct on the Australian mainland for 3,000
years. Prof. Neil W. Macintosh, who removed the
skeleton from the ground, said radio carbon tests on
the skeleton and walls of the grave had shown it to
be about 6,280 years old. The necklace teeth, according to the professor, were of different ages, with some
brown and cracked and others lighter. Some, he said,
were 2,000 years older than the skeleton. [Emphasis

ours]"-- - - - - - - -

We remember the time when the Abo were said to


be comparatively recent arrivals in Australia but we
never 'dug' this because of their truly "primitive"
appearance and behaviour, meaning that they must
have been isolated from the other human races since
before the end of the Neolithic stage in Southeast
Asia. And, inCidentally, some very much older human
remains have already been found Down Under, but
there was a strange silence about this after the
initial report. They were said to be pre-Abo and more
like late Neanderthalers. Further, this individual
may have been given important status while he was
alive, and special burial, just because of his exceptional stature. One such individual does not
predicate a whole "race" of giants thereabouts at
that time.

SKULLDUGGERY, SCIENTIFIC SI'YLE


There have been numerous newspaper and some
magazine articles on this subject but the best we have
seen is the following by Gordon Slovut, a Minneapolis
Star staff writer. It also brings together all of the incredible machinations of the archaeologists since
these skulls were discovered, ending with the extraordinary statement from the Smithsonian. It reads:"After studying two human skulls found in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe area four years ago,

archaeologists are still uncertain if the discovery has


any significance. There has been speculation that the
skulls -because they have very low foreheads and
pronounced brows- may have belonged to some
Neanderthal-like man and therefore would be older
than any other prehistoric human bones found in this
hemisphere.
"Dr. Elden Johnson, Minnesota state archaeologist,
said the other bones and artifacts found with the
skulls -discovered by Norman Saari, operator of a
Tofte Lake resort- were insufficient to set an age
for the bones. Dr. Martin Q. Peterson, a University
of Nebraska PhYsical anthropologist, examined the
skulls while he was at the University of Minnesota.
He thinks the skulls do have very low foreheads, but
'you WOUldn't think it too unusual if you saw someone
like this walking down the street'. Mter Peterson
checked the bones, they were sent to the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D. C.
"Dr. Lawrence Angel, curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian, said he had no record of
the bones there, although he was sure they were not
lost. He said this means the bones probably are not
an important find. Plains Indians had skulls matching
the description 'low-vaulted with pronounced brows'
used in a report of the Minnesota find, Angel said."
Another version of the 11th July, released by AP,
states: "The skulls are under study at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. and if Dr. T.
Dale stewart determines the skulls are unique enough
to warrant further investigation, a Carbon-14 age test
will be made. The test requires burning one gram of
bone material, and University of Minnesota scientists
have been reluctant to destroy any of the material."
That a carbon dating was not made immediately
before contamination set in is inexcusable, and one
gram [1 ounce (avoirdupois) equals 437.5 grains; 1
gram equals 15.432 grains] would not destroy anything! We fancy none of them wants a really early
date appearing. There have been constant reports of
Neanderthal-looking skulls cropping up for years and
from all over. One lot from southern California were
almost "super-Neanderthaler", surpassing even the
largest-browed and flattened cranium skulls of early
Neanderthalers from Europe. That lot were soon
scuttled though the discoverer placed them in the
local historical society museum.
But perhaps the most astounding thing about this
report is Dr. Angel's statement. There has been a
constant stream of accusations that the Smithsonian
"buries" things it doesn't like, but this is the most
blatant admission we have ever seen.

Bear in mind that donations to SITU above and beyond the usual dues are tax deduc;tible for Internal
Revenue Service returns.

90

THE MYSTERY PITS OF OLDUV AI


Back in June 1972 the National Geographical
Soc:iety announced the discovery by Dr. Mary D.
Leakey of a number of strange basin-like pits up to
thme feet in diameter apparently scooped out by hand,
and a child's footprint in the middle of one of them,
in ELIt upper level dated half a million years ago at this
famous East African site. The footprint was fully
human. The N.G.S. release said:
II 'Working in one of the upper levels of the gorge
. with the larger pits being about three feet in
diameter and about a foot deep. The pits were scooped by hand out of a sandy deposit, which is now rockhard. In some cases, clear traces of finger m alks
remain on the sides. Impressed into one of the pits
is 1;he greater part of a human footprint, most likely
the left foot of a child . . ." The Society said one
theorY is that the pits and channels were scooped out
and used by the Stone-Agers for water-storage. Mrs.
Leakey said, however: 'There are puzzling features.
ThE! bases of most of the pits and parts of the adjaCElnt areas contain many small, clearly defined
depressions. Some of these could have been caused
by the trampling of animals, but others look very much
.like marks made by the end of a stock or staff. It even
has been suggested that the pits and channels have
been the work of children at play.' still another
theory, she reported, is that the pits and channels
represent 'some quite commonplace domestic activil:y.' ..

All the suggestions as to what they were for are


more than feasible, but haven't we read somewhere
that. Abo children dig such little water-filled basins
to attract small night animals which then can easily
be <:aught in any number of ways even by hand?
We had written this up WhEln word came of Dr.
Louis Leakey's sudden death. He was not a young
man but he certainly was not old by today's standards.
I (Ivan T. Sanderson) knew him in the early days
when I was 21 and he presumably only 29, but he
was already established and appeared much older. He
was one of my sponsors for election as a Fellow of
the Linnean Society of London, a rather terrifying experience as it is by secret ballot and only one black
ball disqualifies you forever. We several times had
tea together in the Library of the Royal Geographical
Society when he probed me on my efforts in animal
ethology, and also what I knew of fossil man. He was
t~rribly kind to this enthusiastic youngster, and I
neVE!r forgot what he did for me. We all (SITU's staff
and Boards) wish we could list his, his wife's, his
sons', and an African who has been with him from
1931. when he started digging in the Olduvai Gorge in
Tanganyika, full record but space does not allow. The
scientific establishment had urged him to go and look
for fossil man in Asia, but he persisted in his con-

viction that Man originated in Africa, and between


1959 when he found his first human remains there and
the day of his death, he almost singlehandedly proved
his contention and drove man's history back 2.z
million years.
Ivan T. Sanlierson.
Editor's Note: I (MLF) cannot resist repeating one
of my favourite tales of Louis Lel!key. While at
Cambridge he was required to 'pa:ss' a foreign
language test. He had been brought up lin East Africa
and not only spoke but was able to think in Kikuyu
(something quite else!). Those in authority had no
option but to accept this choice but k'new of no one
qualified to give such a test. They therefore wrote to
all the top linguists in the country asking simply,
"can you give us the name of someone qualified to
examine a candidate who wishes to take his foreign
language test in Kikuyu?" The invariabie answer
was: "The only qualified person in this country is
one Louis S. B. Leakey."

THE MYSTERIOUS WALLS OF THE BERKELEY


AND OAKLAND HILLS
by Sibley S. Morrill
For better than a century now, some. ordinary looking stone walls in the Berkely hills overlooking San
Francisco Bay have been a subject of speculation on
three principal points: why were they built, by whom,
and when.
They are found mainly in heavily wooded or
chaparral-covered areas, but whether, there or occasionally in the high grasslands, they appear to have
served none of the usual purposes of ~alls -except
in two or three places where it seems they may
possibly form the remains of fortifications. They
survive only in sections, ranging in length from 20
feet to 200 yards or so. Their height ;varies from 2
feet or less to 5 or a little more, the average probably
being between 3 and 4 feet. Their breadth at ground
level, however, is great enough -4 feet in some instance s- to make it a near certainty that the walls
originally were much higher through the use of smaller
stones along the toP. Digging at their Qase, of which
only a little has been done, reveals that the rock
goes down as much as 10 inches below the surface.
While the sites of some of these walls, like those
in the Vollmer or Bald Peak (1905 ft. Jlevation) and
nearby Grizzly Peak (1750 ft. elevation) areas,
suggest the possibility of a defense purpose, other
sites, such as that of a wall which ru~s straight up
the &)utheastern slope of Roundtop (1763 ft. elevation)
through masses of underbrush alii poison oak, offer
no clue as to why they were constructe~. Even if its
present height of 3 feet was originally double that,
Roundtop wall's length of nearly 100 yards would
have made it of no use as a fortificatien. As to the

91

possibility that it once extended much farther in


either direction, there is nothing to suggest this at
either end. And whoever constructed it certainly did
not do it for fun; some of the rocks weigh easily over
200 pounds! Furthermore, it is unlikely that they did
it for 'practice'. Those who built that and t!;e other
walls were persons of some skill and experience, for
the walls are not just elongated piles of rock.
Seth Simpson, of Oakland, California, who has
studied the walls as a hobby for several years, and
his son Martin, a palaeontology student at Merritt
College, say it is plain that some of the stones were
chipped and fitted. In fact, a stone found in a wall
near Vollmer Peak was actually bored through or
holed, and because of the growth of a tree immediately in front of it, plus the length of time the stone
must have been in situ, that operation was probably
conducted generations ago, when or even before the
wall was built. In any case, throughout the greater
part of the length of these walls, it is generally evident that the rocks were placed in such a way as to
give a locking effect.
Simpson's investigations indicate that the walls
are found over an area extending for nearly 7 miles
south into the Oakland hills, but he has been quite
unable to relate them to any boundary markings. water
company survey maps show that none of the walls
has any detectible relationship to boundary lines;
except for one case in the Vollmer Peak area, bounda:ry lines parallel no walls nearer than about 600 yards.
Nor is there anything in the construction of the
walls to indicate that they are the remains of pens or
corrals. They are, for the most part, straight. Some
intersect at an angle, and there are instances of
parallel walls separated by as much as 10 yards or so,
but there are no indications whatever that they formed
enclosures.
Simpson attempted to determine whether there were
similar structures in other counties around the Bay,
but discovered nothing except in the hills behind
Milpitas, an extension of the Berkely and Oakland
hills some 25 miles to the south. In a way, thewalls
there are still more baffling. They are in a gently
rolling, comparatively treeless country, and except
for the remains of one (see photo), they offer no
suggestion of the usual purpose of a wall. In fact,
from the nature of the terrain, which I have visited, it
was not of a character to provide even the reason that
New England farmers had for building their famous
stone walls - primarily for "storage- of stones removed from fields to permit ploughing. When the New
Englanders ran out of "wall space- they dumped
excess rocks in the nearest gulley. The walls were
virtually useless as fences, and grazing land was
much more easily fenced by stumps or stakes and
rails. In the Milpitas area, the stone walls just run
their way for a few score or few hundred yards and
then stop. Livestock have no difficulty in walking
around them.
As to why and when those walls were built,

.... 'i.

j
.

7 ....

I
I

. . . ~~ . :!
... I

Photos courtesy of Seth Simpson.

92

ranchers in the area whom Simp son interviewed said


they didn't know. They had always been there -and
had been constructed by "the Mexicans, 0 r Chinese,
or some others, in every case long before the
ranchers came into possession of the land. In brief,
these ranchers know no more about the origin of their
walls than the inhabitants of Berkeley and Oakland
know about theirs.
: That is the way it is today. But, since the walls
in the Berkeley and Oakland hills have undergone a
certain amount of attrition, even destruction, in recent
yelU's (a considerable part of one of them was removed
in the construction of a botanical garden at Tilden
Park), it is of interest to see what was thought of
them fifty years ago or so.
On October 15, 1916, Harold French wrote in the
Oakland Tribune that, "since the Nineties, when my
attention was first attracted by three ancient rock
walls.. 1 have asked many old timers what they knew
about them. Two old tramping friends who have
ranged these ridges since the Sixties have told me
they were just as ancient in appearance then as in
later years.
"On e of them, the late Captain Albert S. Bierce,.
brother of Ambrose Bierce, dispelled the .last lingering doubt in my mind when one day in 1904, he led
me into a thicket of greasewood in a gulch draining
the southern slope of Mt. Baldy, and in the jungle
which has been growing there for ages he showed me
a very distinct old wall completely hidden from view."
French reported that the walls to be found Mat
vari.ous points from the peak known as Round Top ...
to the northerly extension of Baldy Ridge" had a combined length that would "extend two miles in all".
ThE! largest walls French reported were those found
"on the southerly slopes of Round ToP, overlooking
Redwood Canyon" where the walls "form a right
angle, the longest line of which runs westerly down
the slope for about 700 feet, the other points southward some 500 feet.
Noting that some of the "volcanic boulders"' forming the walls weighed nearly a ton, French said that
tho se forming the base of the walls "lie embedded in
the soil for a foot or more"', a matter which, when
combined with the coating of lichens and the weathered surfaces of the rocks, "proves they have lain there
a VElry long lime".
As for the origin of t he Walls, French found notQing
to indicate they were built by pioneers, Mexicans, or
any other people who came after the arrival of the
Spaniards in the 1770's. On the contrary, he notes
that "there was a tradition among the Matalanes,
tribElsmen who made their homes among the Thousand
Oaks (an area in the foothills of north Berkeley] and

pounded their acorn mills on the rocks near Cerrito


Creek .. that the walls were fortifications built by
'the hill people' with whom they w~red. The very
name Matalanes sounds strangely 'similar 10 Atlanteans, to whom the Aztecs and the,ir predecessors
who lived about Mazatlan, down the' Mexican Coast
were reputed to be related.
Another source, an undated and unidentified, but
very yellowed clipping found by the famous Oakland
bookman, the late Harold C. Holmes, tells of walls
found "half a mile east of GriZzly Peak" which form
"two sides of a right angle, each si1de being about
100 yards in length and appear to terminate in the.
dense chaparral, although traces are found showing
that they were at one time much more extensive ..
about 50 feet in length, although it m~y be seen that
it was built to a length of about 280 yards...... in the
vicinity are the remains of other walls, at present of
no considerable extent. The generally accepted
belief is that the place was a city inhitbited by some
long-forgotten race... Certainly the people who built
them understood stone cutting, as the boulders bear
evidence of having been split and chipped in order to
join compactly." Otherwise, the Clipping gives much
the same information as French gave.
Regarding professional opinion on these walls,
the situation does not appear to have changed appreciably since 1916 when French quoted an unnamed
"teacher of anthropology" he consult~d, as follows:
"From time to time my students ~ave come and
told me about these walls in the Contra Costa hills
[an old regional term], but I never took them seriously
enough to make the effort to climb wllY up there in
that 'Beanstalk land' to see them. I suppose they are
either old sheep corrals O{ ranch boundaries.
On which French commented, "I s~ppose he was
more interested in far away lands for ~nthropological
prospecting than these relics of the Pl!ost so near his
classroom".
Simpson, who evidently knows more about them
than anyone else, believes that they were not built
by local Indians since there are no other signs of
such construction attributable to Indians of the area.
"It is possible that some of these walls may have
been built for the purpose of driving g~e into a sort
of cul-de-sac where they could be easily killed, as
some of the Nevada Indians did," Simpson said. "But
except for that, all I can suggest, in t~e absence of
extensive digging along these walls, is that they
were built by unknown persons, in an llnknown year,
for an unknown purpose, and very POsfilibly, despite
our hopes, they will remain a puzzle for an indefinite
future.
.

ThEl Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull


We are informed that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, discussed in Sibley Morrill's book reviewed in our July
1972 issue, will be on exhibit at the Museum of the American Indian, Broadway at 155th street, New York
City, until the 31st March 1973. It is one of sixty-two examples of the Amerindian use of the hu~an skull as
an Mart motif". The exhibition is entitled "Visions of Mortality".

93

DEPARTMENT OF LOOSIE lENDS

Concerning the article on Thunderbirds in our


April 1972 issue, Member No. 928 writes, "The two
ranchers may have seen a 'monster' near Tombstone,
Arizona in 1890, but they did not shoot at it with
30-30 rifles. The first rifle chambered for the 30-30
was the Winchester Model 1894, introduced in 1894 in
two calibers, 32-40 and 38-55. It was not until 1895
that the 30-30 was introduced. This type of mistake
is quite common in the 'true west' magazines, and
probably has little to do with the veracity of the
story. Always made me wonder, though." It is probably true that this is simply a mistake -few writers
are experts on rifles and very likely have never
heard of a 32-40 or a 38-55. Also, Member No. 372
has been doing some checking on the Tombstone
Epitaph. "It" had a somewhat complicated history, to
put it mildly -we lost track about half way through
the account. In any case, our member will struggle
through the various editions (weeklies, dailies, every
other Thursday, or whatever) to see if he can lind
that famous photo which still eludes us. And our

Member No. 1172 writes, "I dreamt I found the magazine with the picture of the Thunderbird in it and the
name of the magazine was very familiar -but when I
woke up, I couldn't for the life of me remember it!
SOrry about that!" Still on this mph:, we have a
notion that it might have appeared in the old American
Weekly (the Sunday SuPplement) prior to about 1947.
Anyone care to check-?
Secondly, in our January issue we ran a piece
entitled "'1;'he 'What's-It' from South Dakota". We
apologize to North Dakota for depriving it of several
of its towns. The first clipping we received on this
allegedly strange beast stated that it was,in a zoo in
Minot, SOuth Dakota. We called telephone information
for the zoo's number and learned that Minot was in
North Dakota. Later clippings gave the location
properly. When we came to write this up, we obviused one of these newspaper clips but, "knowing"
that the location was "wrong", we dutifully ~elocated
it, not having noticed the switch in the meantime. We
shall be more careful in the future.

NOTICE
Our members are reminded once again that unless they joined us after the 1st of October 1972. their dues
for 1973 are due -still $10 per year. We regret that circumstances this year have made the publication of
Pursuit somewhat erratic and hope that next year we will be solidly back on schedule. We cannot do anything about the wretched postal service (a first class ,package took 27 days to get from Blairstown. N.J . to
Little Silver, N.J.) and delivery of Pursuit will presumably continue to be slow. In some cases it has
arrived in less than a week; in others it has taken over ,a month. The same is true of back issues. which are
sent out. as a rule. the day after the order is received.
We would also like to remind our members once again that they must make arrangements at least two
weeks in advance if they wish to visit. This is for your benefit as well as ours.

ON THE LIGHT SIDE


We are pleased to note the Mlle Mignon (last name
withheld in accordance with our usual policy) has
been made Honorary Member 1200. She is our youngest
member (though her age is somewhat in doubt) - and
we found her most charming. Generally she enjoyed
her visit. dips in our pond proving particularly delightful; though she was somewhat annoyed when forbidden to wreck our trash burner, composed of unmortered cinder blocks, by leaning on it; and frustrated to the point of screaming when refused entry for
the fourth time to Bus No. 1 which houses the potting
shed and our small lab. Like all true forteans she
possesses unbounded curiosity.
Ivan Sanderson, who has had considerable experience with elephants in his career, considers her
the most charming he has met. And. yes. she is
covered with hair - very bristly - and a source of
considerable surprise to all the others (non-elephants)
who came to tea that afternoon.
It is not our custom to confer membership on
animlils but Mignon is definitely a special case.

Mignon

~".I"""""""""''''~''''''''''~I''''''''.~''-.''~''''-94

MEMBERS' FORUM

Retired or otherwise 'unoccupied' members in


Philadelphia are invited to visit the Philadelphia
Maritime Museum near the Independence Hall complex
wi.th a view to going through their most excellent
library and files for material that may be of interest
to us. A great deal of information on light wheels and
other phenomena is buried in such publications as
Notice to Mariners and, so far as we know, no one
has gone through these systematically.
Work on Charles Fort's notes is progressing
satisfactorily, though we have no specific report at
thl~ moment. We should put it on record, however, that
the gentleman who is doing the work has been permitted by his employer to take off two days a week to
do it; and we understand that he is also taking wads
of it home with him from time to time. He estimates
that there are some 60,000 clippings and handwritten
rel:erences on small cards.
A small "expedition- is forming to search for a
live Thunderbird in Pennsylvania next spring. Preliminary arrangements were made late this summer
and early fall, and the cooperation of the local people
is assured. Nothing can be done until the snow melts,
hopefully in early May. Take a look at a good geological survey map of northern central Pennsylvania;
most of it is straight up and down.
Member No. 272 has drawn our attention to another
kind of "sky-line-, reported in Doubt No. 14 as
follows:

.. A Sky Anchor of Course. Across ~he roof of 347


Hale street, Oakland, Calif., and two adjoining
houses, a steel cable was draped. It was 750 feet
long and 3/16 inch thick. 'Found' by a patrolman. No
mention of anybody hearing it arrive '..(night. of June
4-5, 1945 old style). No damage done.'
"Fourth Air Force Headquarters had no record, but
said it 'could have been tossed overboard by an airplane crew which thought itself ov;er the ocean.'
"Query: Is 750 feet of steel cable standard equipment of planes? Or were the boys attempting to tie to
a wave? 9. Yetter. '
Perhaps one of our members in the Oakland area
would like to try to track this one down in local
newspaper morgues.
One of our members who is a high:-school teacher
has three classes studying forteana, based on Pursuit
and the better fortean books. He is ~being assisted
by one of our Board members who lives nearby. If
there are other teachers who would like to start such
classes -alid assuming that the schoo]. superintendent
or whoever will permit it (we once had a cancellation
of a subscription to Pursuit which h~ been ordered
by a teacher!)- we will give you what help we can.
Also, of particular interest to libraries but perhaps
to individual members as well, University Microfilms
has signed contract with us and will ibe reproducing
Pursuit in miniaturized form. For information, please
write to them at 300 North Zeeb R08.d, Ann Arbor,
Michigan 48106.

By way of explanation, our Director, Ivan T. Sanderson, wishes us to place on record the fact that he
mlmied his literary partner -trading for many years under the nom-de-plume of Marion L. Fawcett- on the
4th of May last. Our Director and said Marion L. Fawcett were married under their given nam'es so that the
person appearing on our mastheads now (as necessitated by both the laws of the State of New Jersey, and
the Internal Revenue Service) as Sabina W. Sanderson is also the said Marion L. Fawcett.

BOOK REVIEWS

by Marion L. Fawcett

BOOKS AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK


A number of books that have been reviewed in
these pages are now available in paperback editions.
For those of au readers who could not afford the
hardcover books, we list those we know of, with what
information we have on them.
Bernard Heuvelmans. On the Track of Unknown
Mlimals. MIT Press. $2.95. This is abridged but in-

cludes photos, maps, drawings, an, index, but no


bibliography
C. D. Darlington. The Evolution 0 f Man !!:WJ
Society. A Clarion Book, Simon and Schuster, $5.95.
This was $13 to $15 in the original.
M. Gauguelin. The Scientific Basi'S Q! Astrology,
stein and Day, $2.45.
.
Vincent and Margaret Gaddis. The Strange World
Q! Animals and Pets, Pocket Books, :95. (This was
"remaindered", and you may be able to find a copy of

95

the hardcover edition -at $1- in bookstores that deal


in "cutrate" books.)
G. and H. Papashvily. Anything Can Happen, A
Camelot Book, Avon Books, SOt. (Someone once
asked why we included this in a list of recommended
fortean books; in fact, most of it is simply a charming
account of the lives of immigrants, but there 1s a truly
fortean account toward th e end.)
Charles Berlitz. The Mystery of Atlantis, A Tower
Book, 95. This doesnot includethe photos, acknowledgments, or bibliography.
Daniel Cohen. Mysterious Places, Tower Book,
95. Minus photos.
Pepper and Williams. Mysterious West, Ballantine,
$1.50. (Scheduled for September 1972.)
Vitus B. Droscher. The Friend~ Beast, Harper
and Row, $2.95.
Edward de Bono. The Use of Lateral Thinking.
Two of our members wroteus-about a paperback
edition of this; I have managed to mislay both notes.
So far as I can remember, it was an Avon Book with
the horrid title New Think. We are also informed that
Simon and Schuster has published a book by de Bono
entitled ~: ~ Device for Successful Thinking; this
may or may not be the same book. lP'0r a review, see
P.9S.]
John A. Keel. ~. Pyramid Books. $1.25. Unlike
the previous Tower Books edition, this is unabridged.
Charles Fort. A number of our new members -or
members who are just discovering the world of the
tangible unexplaineds- have asked, "What in the
heck is forteana?" Forteana is the generic name given
to tangible unexplaineds in memory of the impish
Charles Hoy Fort who published four books on
tangible unexplaineds and thumbed his nose at
orthodox science. The hardcover collection The
Books of Charles Fort is out of print and, so far,
efforts to get the publisher to reprint it have failed.
However, the books are available in paperback (minus
any index, alas) and are as follows:
The Book of the Damned, Ace star Book H-24, SOt.
(Witii'an added preface by Donald A. Wollheim.)
Lo!, Ace star Book K-217, 50et.
Wild Talents, Ace Star Book H-88, SOet.
Ne; Lands, Ace star Book H-74, SOet.
~other of these is occasionally "out of
print", but the publisher is apparently aware of the
market and does reprint eventually. They are must
reading for all who are interested in the unexplained
-and Fort can truly be said to have started the whole
business. Do read them, but don't take his speculation too seriously; he sometimes had his tongue so
far in his cheek that he must have used pliers to get
it out again.

a;;

explaineds- almost invariably gravitate to the worst


possible books. We cannot list all of them but will
name some that should be absolutely verboten and
others that should be approached with considerable
caution, with a few pointers on what to look for in
books on forteana.
Absolutely Forbidden
All books by James Church ward. (The fact that he
spent his life 'studying' his subject does !!.Q! make
his work valid.)
Any book by Robert Charroux.
Mu Revealed by Tony Earll.
~ Gods Who Made ~ and ~ by Jean
Sendy.
The Morning Q! the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier
(see comments below).
To Be Approached With Caution

--

Here we will deal not so much with specific titles


as with authors who share certain failings.
They do not include references or documentation,
or the documentation is inadequate. Second, their
works are not indexed (admittedly, this is not always
the author's fault, but it makes the book relatively
useless as a reference work. Third, they claim to
have had documents or photographs which have invariably disappeared; and some of the 'excuses' for
this are ingenious but extremely suspicious. Some of
the offenders, in no particular order, (with comment
where necessary):
R. Ripley .@ of his books. Great fun, but many
of hib tales have proved to be pure fiction.
Frank Edwards. Ditto, but substitute "some" for
"many".
C. B. Colby. Ditto.
H. T. Wilkins. Ditto.
Coral E. Lorenzen's The Shadow of the Unknown.
(She should stick to UFOs.)
John Macklin. He occasionally changes people's
names (it would be better to leave them anonymous)
and sometimes fails to indicate where something
happened, which makes it impossible to check on him.
Brad steiger (also writes under the name of Eric
Norman*). Inclined to be very slipshod at times.
Daniel Cohen. So busy grinding his anti-fortean
axe t hat he often comes up with very lopsided
accounts.
Erich von Daniken. A self-apPOinted expert who
provides no real documentation and is sometimes just
plain wrong about his "facts". His speculations are
interesting and may be valid, but watch out!
Warren Smith. In the same category with Frank
Edwards, et al.

BOOKS NOT TO READ


We have noted with considerable consternation
that those new to our field - that of tangible un-

We have just learned that!uill! these authors use


this name; check the col1yright notice.

96

This list does not pretend to be complete, and the


number of books being churned out on "strange things"
is really rather incredible. Unfortunately, most of
thllm are simply compendia of "interesting stories".
Th.ey contain no references whatsoever, no biblio-

graphy, no index; and the authors hav!! a very strong


tendency to borrow from one ano~her, repeating
certain stories almost ad nauseam and, for all I know,
making them up. These books may be ,fun to read but
should not be considered to be sources of information.

Edward de Bono. The Use of Lateral Thinking."

------

This book was mentioned by Colin Bord in his splendid piece for Flying Saucer Review, which we reprinted in our July 1972 issue. It deserves fUrther mention here and should be read by all forteans, particuly those "vertical thinkers who resent any suggestion that logic is not omnipotent". To re-quqte Edward de
Bono:
"It is not
that is used
wrong place,
may seem to
a new place.

possible to dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. Logic is the tool
to dig holes deeper and bigger to make them altogether better holes. But if the :hole is in the
then no amount of improvement is going to put it in the right place. No matter how obvious this
every digger, it is still easier to go on digging in the same hole than to start allover again in
Vertical thinking is digging the same hole deeper; lateral thinking is trying again elsewhere."

In fact, one is tempted simply to quote de Bono ad infinitum. His book is full of little gems, and it is
clear that he understands, perhaps better than anyone else I have read, the process of thinking. His book is
not just a dissertation on the subject but a practical handbook, as it were, of how to think laterally. He
points out that "The search for alternative ways of looking at things [i. e. lateral thinking] i:s not natural.
The natural tendency of the mind is to become impressed by the most probable interpretation, and then to
proceed from that"; and he goes on to present techniques for overcoming the habit of vertical thinking which
is drilled into us almost from birth. He quotes, quite rightly, that education is "not really concerned with
progress: its purpose is to make widely available knowledge that seems to be useful. It is communicative,
not creative." And it is certainly true that most new ideas have come about when new observations or information have forced a reappraisal of old theories that had previously been taken for granted. Logic, or
vertical thinking, may have a high-probability quotient, but it seldom produces new ideas; lateral thinking
ha.s a low-probability quotient (many new ideas may be produced before one of real value appears) but it is
lilt ely to be of far greater use to forteans, and it can always be combined with logic. They are complementary.
Ji.m McClarin. Manimals Newsletter. (A monthly publication)
Quite a number of our members are particularly interested in what we call ABSMs -BigfoQt, Sasquatch,
Yeti, et al.- and some have 'complained' because Pursuit does not include all current reports on this
subject:' This is not, in fact, the function of Pursuit; but for those who do want such repor);s, we cannot
re'commend a better source than. Jim McClarin's MB, established for just this purpose. He chose the term
"rnanimal" because "it is a relatively self-explanatory contraction of 'man' and 'animal', uf:led to mean a
man-like animal, or an 'animal-like' man, and it seems to carry no other special occult, humorous, or ethnic
connotation." We approve heartily of this choice (ABSM is a bit of a jaw-breaker) and we are particularly
happy to get away from the quite incorrect use of the term Yeti when referring to our North American hominids.
MN includes both general articles and letters of interest, and an extensive bibliography of both magazine
andnewspaper articles, with a very brief abstract of each. Photocopies of individual articl~s can be obtained from Jim Mcclarin; details on ordering are included in MN.
The subscription policy is a bit complicated. In order to encourage the exchange of information, Jim
McClarin will send the "next" issue to anyone who sends a self-addressed stamped (8) IQng business
envelope (1110) plus at least one informative dispatch (i.e. current news clipping or whatever). Or you can
slmd a self-addressed etc. envelope plus 25, and you will get the same issue but one month late. Back
i:;;:sues (August 1972 was the first issue) are available for 25 plus the usual envelope. Presumably a stack
of 12 envelopes plus a check for $3.00 will get' you a year's subscription, but these will be mailed one

"'Through the kindness of one of our English correspondents we learn that ~ ~ Q.f Lateral Thinking
ifI available as a Pelican Book in the U.K. (25p), Australia ($0.85), New Zealand ($0.85), and Canada
(~jl.15).

And see p. 95.

97

month after the date of publication. The address is 4717 Florin-Perkins Road, Sacramento, CA 95826: and
if you have any really 'hot' news, his telephone number is (916)-381-1674.

Gerald L. Wood. The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats. London: Guinness Superlatives Limited.
1972. L3.95. (U.S. price unknown-)- - - - - -- - This is one of a series separate from the justly famous and widely used Guinness Book of Records, and
is devoted exclusively to the animal world. Each section is concerned with one Class (or, in some cases,
phylum) of animals, with information on the biggest, smallest, fastest, etc. etc. It is a useful reference
work, but also includes some profoundly fortean tidbits; e.g. an authenticated case of an eagle having
carried off a four-year-old girl: the fact that decapitated caterpillars may metamorphose into perfectly healthy
but headless butterflies which live longer than their normal brethren. But we could go on and on. One can
read the book straight through with a fair amount of pleasure, though "smallest" and such eventually become
somewhat tiresome. Our only real complaint about the book is that the author, particularly when reporting
unusual (at least semi-fortean) items, very often announces that "this must be discounted'" or "this must be
considered fanciful" or some such without giving any reason why it "must be". It is clear in some instances
that sizes or ages or whatever are probably exaggerated, or even definitely so, but in others one can almost
hear Gerald Wood saying to himself "there ain't no sich animal -and there couldn't be".
The book is well illustrated, though we understand that the author is not satisfied with the current photos
and is looking for others for the next edition. It contains a good bibliography and an index.

Bruce S. Wright. The Eastern Panther. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited. 1972. $6.50 (plus 501t
handling charge; order from Order Department, Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 701 st. Clair Avenue West,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
This is a completely updated edition of Bruce Wright's previous book entitled The Ghost of North
America, and deals with the survival of the Eastern Puma which has long been considered to'""iieextIncteXcept in Florida. Understandably, the author devotes most space to pumas in northeastern Canada -he lives
there; but he also records pumas seen all down the eastern seaboard of the U.S., including one seen on the
Garden state Parkway in New Jersey! The first half of the book concerns the evidence of their continued
existence -and there can be no Question of this- while the second half presents a picture of the animal
itself, its physical appearance (he devotes a couple of pages to black pumas), life cycle, habits, and such,
and suggestions for the protection of the few survivors. Pumas are protected only in New Hampshire and
Florida; elsewhere they do not legally exist and therefore cannot be protected. They playa valuable role in
nature and deserve a better fate than that which now faces them.
Mr. Wright's book includes drawings and photographs, two appendices listing reports of pumas, and an
excellent bibliography. There is an index but it leaves something to be desired.

Arthur Koestler. The Roots

2! Coincidence.

New York: Random House. 1972.

This is a most peculiar book which has almost nothing to do with coincidence so far as I can see. The
first chapter is entitled "The ABC of ESP" and is a crashing bore. The second chapter, "The Perversity of
Physics", I found rather interesting, and intelligible, which is more than I can say for the rest of the book.
Koestler devotes about five pages to a definite discussion of coincidence, i.e. what Paul Kammerer (of
Midwife Toad fame) called the "laws of seriality". Once past these five pages I found it impossible to
figure out what Koestler was talking about. I certainly canr,lot agree with Rente Haynes who states inher
"Postscript" that "Mr. Koestler has given us a lucid exposition of modern data as to space, time, matter,
causality, neurophysiology and psychical research, out of which a remarkable synthesis emerges. His concept of 'Janus-faced holons' may well prove as stimulating to our generation as was Bergson's !!!! Vital

we are informed by Member No. 981 that North Carolina now protects the Puma, a bill having passed
recently -though it still is not legally recognized to exist.

98

to the thinkers of the early part of the century." And don't ask me what "holons" (Janus-faced or otherwise)
are: there is an index. but it contains only names of persons mentioned or quoted in the text. and I cannot
find the "holons" to see if a third reading might clarify them for me. (I doubt that it would.) There are also
references and a bibliography (he is very fond of Carl Jung and A. Koestler).
I have read only a greatly abridged version of Koestler's The Case of the Midwife Toad (Handom House.
1971) and cannot therefore legitimately review it. However.my impression from reading it is that Arthur
Koestler needs a good editor who uses an axe.

Richard Perry. The World of the Jaguar. New York: Taplinger Publishing company. 1970. $6.50.
In most respects this is a straightforward natural history book. but the author has seen:fit to dump into
the middle of it. apparently quite arbitrarily. two really unrelated chapters. one on the Anaconda (straight
natural history) and one on the so-called 'Sucuriju Gigante' or truly gigantIc snakes. whether Anacondas or
other species. Be does not. so far as I can recall. add anything new to the literature and has. in fact. culled
all the material for his book from other authors. He shows a tendency toward somewhat purple prose at
times. but this may be unconscious imitation of some of the earlier authors he quotes. Mr. Perry can at
least be congratillated on an open mind. There is a bibliography and an index.

New Horizons. Journal of the New Horizons Research Foundation. incorporating the Transactions of the
TOronto society for Psychical Research. Published occasionally. Individual copies are $:3.50 U.S . $3.00
or 1.50 sterling. P. O. Box 427, station F. Toronto 5. Ontario. Canada.
We have received Vol. 1. No. 1 of this journal which is edited by A. R. G. Owen -his name should
be familiar to those who are interested in poltergeists- and found it most interesting. It includes two
articles on "spook lights" and ten on a variety of so-called 'psychic' phenomena studied pragmatically from
a physical point of view: voluntary (i.e. on demand) psychokinesis. "psychic" photography. an allegedly
haunted house. etc. It is thoroughly scientific and. though some of the items considered are not of especial
interest to us. they may be to some of our members. This issue is dated Summer 1972. iand it is noted a
Winter 1972 issue is planned.

Erich von Diiniken. Aussaat Y!!9 Kosmos. (German Edition) Dusseldorf. Germany: Econ Verlag. 1972.
One of our members in West Germany has very kindly sent us a copy of von Daniken's l~test book which
will probably be available in English shortly. We have no idea what the title will bei Aussaat is not easily
translatable but might be rendered as "dissemination". but the English/American publishers :may well change
the title entirely.
Fans of von Daniken will be glad to hear that this book is as entertaining as his pre:vious books. but
forteans will probably find it more amusing than revealing and too short on facts to be exciting. It contains
some fresh material and plenty of von Diiniken's theories. He begins with an account of ~the greatest adventure of my life" in a gigantic system of tunnels alleged to lie beneath Peru and Equador. He claims his
guide led him to a subterranean treasure of gold artefacts and a library of several thousand metal plates and
foils of "mysterious composition". rich with inscriptions. Needless to say. he has practic~lY nothing more
to say about these "treasures" (or any proof that they exist) but does go on at length ~bout the tunnels
-alleged.
The bibliography is considerably more extensive than is usual in his books. and there is' an index. but no
actual references. Von Daniken has been accused of plagiarism in the past. and we note that a photograph
(credited to von Diiniken in the photo index) of the "little gold airplane" found in Colombia: S.A . is almost
certainly the cover illustration used by Argosy Magazine when the original article was run. And two pages
on. there are drawings of that same gold airplane that must have been lifted (without credit !tgain) from Ivan
T. Sanderson's book Investigating the Unexplained.
Read the book. but read it carefully and with skepticism throughout.
Robert C. Warth

99

Peter E. Viemeister. The Lightning Book. Gar'\ien City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1961. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press. 1972. (Prices unknown)
This is a splendid book for those who wish to know more about lightning or who want to know what to do
about it. In our July 1972 issue we reprinted parts of an article about lightning. Some of the figures given do
not tally with those in Peter Viemeister's book, and I frankly favour the latter if only because of the very
extensive bibliography and the obvious amount of research that went into it.
The book is divided into three parts: "The Search for Knowledge", "Origin and Character of Lightning" ,
and "Lightning in Action". The first section deals with the history of the study of lightning and thunder-storms all the way from early Egyptian and Greek beliefs to "Project Thunderstorm" in the 1940s. (He also
later points out that it is most unlikely that lightning actually struck Ben Franklin's famous kite; though
Franklin did collect "electric fluid" from the atmosphere by that means.) The second section presents a
very clear picture of the "anatomy" of thunderstorms and of lightning bolts as such. It is a more complicated
busi-ness than one might think, but he makes it intelligibl e to the layman. And in the third section he relates
the effects of lightning and presents practical suggestions for protecting oneself and one's property. In
fact, lightning rods are effective provided they are properly installed. They gained a bad reputation because
a lot of fast-buck operators failed to do this, thus putting the poor house-holder is greater jeopardy than
before! In any case, the safest place to be is in your car.
The book is well illustrated though, in the paperback edition, the photographs lose something in quality
because of the paper they are printed on. There is aver y useful list of codes and handbooks worth sending
for -some free and none costing more than $1.00- and also the names of manufacturers and installers if you
feel you want lightning rods (in many locations they are really unnecessary). As noted before, there is an
excellent bibliography -and a good index.

INDEX - 1972
This index for 1972 includes all titles published during that year, some with annotations to make the
content clearer. Book reviews are listed alphabetically by title. For the convenience of the user, paging
during t~e year was as follows: January, 1-24; April, 25-48; July, 49-72; October, 73-100
ONTOLOGY
Alternative to Time Anomalies, An, 78
Other Universes, 32
PHYSICS
Fire Walking, by R. J. Durant, 8
More on Light Wheels, by R. J. Durant, 33
Sound as a Highway Hazard, 32
CHEMISTRY
Natural Nuclear Reaction, A, 79
"Rustless" Iron Pillar at Delhi, The, 35
ASTRONOMY
Biorhythms; Planets; and Astrologers, 36
Great Galactic Ghoul, The, 80
Moons of Mars, The, 36
Tenth Planet -Or an Eleventh?, 9
Water on the Moon, 9
Where Does the Iron Go?, 57

GEOLOGY
Almost Fortean Facts About Lightning, 59
Mystery Sand Dunes, 58
On Big Things, 39. See also p. 80
Terrestrial Meteorite Craters, 38
That -Diamond" Crystal, 81
BIOLOGY
Andrew Crosse's Acari, 19
Black Pumas, 12
Deep-Breathing, or What?, 62. See also p. 83.
Definitely Unclassified Marine Animal, A, 60. See
also p. 83
Eels out of Faucets, 85
Hominidae and the Troglodytidea, The, by B. F.
Porshnev, 10
New Mammal Discovered, A (in 1966), 82
Improperly Classified Marine Animal. The, 83. See
also p. 60.
More Drivel About Frozen Mammoths, 83
New Lake Monster, A, 82
On Evolution, 11

100

Our Top Lake'Monster (Lake Champlain), 62


Paraguayan Monster, The ("Barking Snake"), 86
Penguins and the Chill Effect, 83. See also P. 62.
Self-Beaching Cetaceans, 62
'rhat Frog! (Congenitally blind Bullfrog), 85
'That New Zealand Sea Monster, 11
Thunderbirds Again -and Again, 40. See also P. 93
25O-Million-Year-old Organisms Revived, 60
What the Human Being of the Future Will Look
Like, by Edward B. Camlin, 87
"What's-It" from South Dakota, The, 13, See also
p.93
EXOBIOLOGY:
Message, The (on Jupiter rocket), 64
Possibility of Life on Jupiter, 63

Underwater Explosion, An -Or What?, By R. J.


Durant, 30
MISCELLANEOUS
Alma V. Sanderson: In Memoriam, 24
Charles Fort's Notes, 44. See also Members' Forum
Current Pursuits, 19, 44, 69
Department of Loose Ends, 19, 93
Members' Forum, 20, 45. 69, 94
Editorials: by Ivan T. Sanderson unless otherwise
noted
Fifth Force, A, 75
Noemasphere, The, 3
On the True Nature of Things. 27
Parapsychics and the Encroachment of Technology,
51
BOOK REVIEWS

AN'rHROPOLOGY
Cultural Expansion: Which Way?, 16
:F'ood for Thought ("Extraterrestrial" cultural Expansion), 18
Giant 'Abo' of 6000 Years Ago, 89
Light Wheels and Holograms That Use Acoustical
Radiation, by R. J. Durant, 13. See also under
Physics.
Little Wooden Airplane, The, 88
Mitchell.,.Hedges Crystal Skull, 92. See also P. 72.
More on Mercury Engines, 67
Mysterious Walls of tne Berkeley and Oakland
Hills, by S. S. Morrill, 90
Mystery Pits of Olduvai, The, 90
Rather "Disgusting" Case, A (Rune Stones in
Maine),42
Skullduggery, Scientific .Style, 89
South American Pygmies, 66
UFOLOGY
ADC and UFO, by W. B. Stoecker, 4
Documented Case of Governmental Dishonesty, A,.
28
Essential Reading (reprinted from FSR), by Colin
Bord, 52. See also P. 96
Off and On (Possible Cancellation of Images on
the Retina), 52
Outside Interference with Human Vision, 76
CHAOS AND CONFUSION
Fire-Walking Again, 31
Ice Falls. 76
KLEE-TV Case Again, The, 77
Metallic Balls from Where?, 55
More Sky-Lines, 53
Mystery Bell -Stone, England, 57
Ringing Rocks: Another Aspect, 6. See also P. 44
Sub-Section K (Coincidence and Lightning), 54

Ambrose ~, E. 4. Mitchell-Hedges and the


Crystal Skull, by Sibley S. Morrill, 72
Aussaat Y.!.U! ~, by E. von D~iken (rev. by
R. C. Warth), 98
Books Available in Paperback, 94
Books Not to Read, 95
Curious World Q! Twins. by Vincent and Margaret
Gaddis, 47
Eastern Panther, The, by Bruce S. Wright, 97
Flying Saucer ~ ~ Pamphlets' ill English:
Bibliographical Checklist, by Norman Brennan,
22
Forbidden Land, by Robert R. Lymap, 48
Guinness Book of Animal. Facts and Feats, The,
by Gerald L. Wood, 97 - - -- I Ching Games, byH. Y. Li and Sibley S. Morrill, 21
insecr-BehaViOr, by Philip S. Callahan. 48
---I
Lightning Book, The. by Peter E. Viemeister, 99
Manimals NeWsletter. by Jim McClafin, 96
Monster Hunt, by Tim Dinsdale, 46
Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds. by Charles
Berlitz, 48
.
Mysterious West, The, by Brad Williams -arid Choral
Pepper, 21
.
.
New Horizons (journal), 98
Not 9! This ~, by Peter Kolosimo, 22
Occult America, by John Godwin, 45
Our Haunted Planet, by John A. Keel (rev. by
-I. T. Sandersonr;-20
Roots !:!f Coincidence, The, by Arthur Koestler. 97
Secrets 2!' the Great Pyramid, bYPet;er Tomkins,22
Slavery: Past and Present, by Roy Pinney, 48
~ D""i'Sa"ppearances, by Brad Stiger. 71
UFO Experience, The: ~ Scientific Inquiry, by
J. A. Hynek (rev. by I. T. Sanderson & Marion
4. FawcJtt), 70
Useof Lateral Thinking, The, by Edward de Bono,
-96: See also P. 95
-World ~ ~ Jaguar, The, by Richard Perry. 98

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
President (elected for 5 years)
First Vice-President (life)
"'Second Vice-President (life)
Secretary (life)
"'Treasurer (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Boazd Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)

Hans Stefan Santesson


Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.
Daniel F. Manning
Robert C. Warth
Mazk A. Hall

Trustees in accordance with the laws of the State of New Jersey


Legal Counsel
Accountant & Auditor

Judge John C. stritehoff, Jr.


Thelma K. Yohe
EXECUTIVE BOARD

Director '
'Executive Secretary
Executive Secretary
Technical Director
Mass Media
Promotion and PubliCity
Productions

Ivan T. Sanderson
Mark A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert C. Warth
Walter J. McGraw
Daniel F. Manning
Michael A. Jazmus
EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor and Publisher


Managing Editor'
Executive Editor '
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor

Hans stefan Santesson


Ivan'T. Sanderson
Marion L. Fawcett
'Walter J. McGraw
Daniel F. Manning

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Depaztment of Allthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - 'Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute; University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Cazl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia,
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman H1l1 - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institut,e of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Mazkotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. w. Ted Roth - PreSident, Roth Research-Animal Care, Inc., Washington, D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
,
'
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
,
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON, NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

-==-

=-

SCIENCE

=---~

--

=-

IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"

VOL. 6, NO.1
(.

~
=.

~-

- ~

JANUARY, 1973

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia, New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees, in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for f~ve years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a Secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the five Trustees, and four other members elected for one year tenns. General: administration and management is handled by an Executive Board, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our Society is c6unselled
-I
by a number of prominent scientists. as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.
PARTICIPATION

Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of ,:fanuary to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of: that year
gratis. The annual subscription is U.S. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the Society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitlition.
The
I
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone, and without membership benefits) is $~, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis, to other societies and institutions.)
The Society contracts-- with individuals, and institutional and official organizations for specifib projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote oUhe Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an;outstanding contribution to the aims of the SOciety.
NOTICES

In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion, as yet, of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consultl our files,
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of me~bers who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities. as 1)1 now. cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Fu~ther, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any m~mbers in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by ~y members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way ;in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.
PUBLICATIONS

The society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of curr,ent events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Soci'ety affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special ~eports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July. 1965. until the end of March 1968. the Society if sued only
a newsletter. on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were. however. entitled fURSUIT-vol. 1. No.3 and No.4. dated June and september. 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2. No.1. PURSUIT has
been' issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January. April. July, and October. Back iSSues, some
available only as xerox copies. are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these sho~ld request
.
an order form.

PURSUIT

Vol. 6. No. 1
January. 1973

iHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


IN V,E ST I GAT ION 0 F THE

'u N E X P L A I NED

DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS


THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED "

Editor & Publisher:


Managing Editor:
Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Ivan T. Sanderson
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS
The Taxonomy or Knowledge
Editorial: The Great Semantic Mess
Urology
Can We Tick Off Another One?
Chaos and Confusion
The Mary Celeste
One of the PKs to the Fore
A Cat Conclave
Light NWheels Under the Sea, by Robert J. Durant
Chemistry
Alleged Fallout-Free Water
Astronomy
The Moons of Mars, by Robert J. Durant
Life on the Moon?
Geology
The Mediterranean
On the Subject oC Cold"
Biology
The Paraguayan NBarking Snake"
That New Very Human-Looking Skull
Pearls in Hens' Eggs
Giant Herbs
Tropical Fish in Siberia
Ancient Seeds
A Second Lobster Mystery
A Scaly Beast
Anthropology
"Yesu of the Druids
A Linguistic Surprise
Metallic Balls from Here!
More on Mercury Engines
Department oC' Loose Ends
Members' Forum ,
Paper,! Available, in Xerox Form
Book Reviews

2
3

5
5
6
7
10

II
13
13
13

14
14
15
15
16
16
16
17
18
19
19

20
20
21
21
22

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1973

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... ----------,...........

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THE TAXONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE

GEOLOGY

THE TANGIBLES

VI
EARTH SCIENCE 5
A'mOlphe"c, o"~ MeteorlllOlY;
O.. ana10g.1' Hyd,ology. and Gla.
cloIOI'; T.~,q"ic,. Vulcanol_
ogy. Seil"'",oVY. C;eophyl.cl
and Geomorphology; Pe.
trolon "nd Mine,alogy;
Geocj"y. Geography.
CClr'"groph y
Protoieanalogy. Botany. Zoo
Oa'"ng.
ogy. E ."b,ology; H, .tology.
Phy .. ology a~d B,ochem"'ry;
Anatomy (.nc 'ud.ng Man), Gene'.
ics and. Evolution. Phys.ical Anthropology;
Polaeontology;

E .holog y and
Ecology.
MATTER
Atomics. Molecular
Chem.itry. Crystallography.

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

PERFORMANCE
Thearo',cal Phy ..... Nucleonics.
Clonical Phyl,cI. Elec.,ici.
E IDe'romagneticl. Malne cl,
Mechon.c,.

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE
Cu"urol An.hropology ond
E'hnology (Archuology it

II

technique). Pt Hiltol)'.

H"'ory. ond Folklore; Philol.


ogy and Lingui.tici.

HCHNOlOGY AND
THI; USEFUL ARTS

MENTAL CONCEPn
log,c and E p,..emology;
P'ycholog y. E.h,cI and A...
th.t,el. Compora' .....
Paraplyduci.

,""II.ge"e";

EXISTENCE

MEASUREMENT
Number, Quantl'Y.
Ar,thmehc. Algebro.
Ceome"y, T,.gonomet,y.

Calculus. Topology. Theory


01 Gam ... P,obab. Io'y, CoinCidence.

THE INTANGIBLES

Everything in existence, including -exi stence- itself, and thus all of our po-ssible concepts and all knowledge
that we passelS or will ever possess, is contained within tbis wheel. Technologies and the useful arts lie'
within the inner circle, having acce .. to any or all of the ten major departments of organized lenawledge.
From the KORAN: -Acqui ..e len_ledge. It. enables its possessor to know right from wrong; it lights the way to
hea""" it i. our friend in the de.ert, our society in solitude; our companion when friendless; i.t guides us to
happiness; it ,".toins II. in mi.ery; it i. an arnament among friends, and an armour agains. enem,es. - _
The: Prophet.

EIIU,][,ORIIAL

THE GREAT SEMANTIC MESS


An acronym that has now become a household word in modern popular usage is one of the most confusing
and misleading that has ever been coined. This is "Esp; and especially as we now often see it equated
with such great groups of studies as psychology or comparative religion, just as if it constituted a science.
The term "extra-sensory perception" was coined by Professor J. B. Rhine in the early days of his studies
at Durham, to cover a set of factors that he observed in certain special human behaviour that apparently fell
extra (i.e. outside or without) the normal perception by those people using only their known, or rather most
popularly known and recognized senses. These senses, of course, were those of touch, smell, taste, hearing,
and vision. Note that the term was carefully chosen and restrictive in that it was a record of what his subjects apparently perceived that they could not have done using just their ordinary and recognized senses.
Before going any further it must be realized that even then -the 1940s- we were known to have at least
20 more senses", though no organs, with the possible exception of our sense of balance, to which their
perception could be assigned. There is no reason, however, to suppose that any of these other senses -such
as those of pain, thirst, hunger, rectal-peristalsis, radiant heat, electrical flux, orientation, and the resthave or had anything to do with the results that Professor Rhine was obtaining; any more than did the
standard five seem to be able to explain the results. No: there was apparently another "force" at work here.
Nonetheless, the phrase "extra-sensory perception" immediately became popular and stuck. It has as of
now, gone "hog wild-, both in popular and even scientific usage.
This ability to perceive answers to qUestions or other matters beyond the recognized scope of our senses
means just this, and only this. Rhine now seems undeniably to have proved his initial point as expressed in
this term, but unfortunately said term (i.e. ESP) has become a sort of catch-all for the most amazing gamut of
not only just human abilities but other things of all manner of natures, that have nothing to do with the senses
or perception.
It is now, of course, far too late to try to rectify this semantic muddle though, sooner or later, it is gOing
to have to be done now that established seats of higher learning have started advertising courses with this
given title. Having examined some of the curricula of these we are not just disturbed but appalled. Poor
little Extra-Sensory Perception has got completely lost in the shuffle and in some cases is not even entered,
per se, in the studies being offered.
ESP is a ratter sPecialized and in some respects minor aspect of an enormous new science, which admittedly lacks a professional or popular name. This concerns the working and demonstrable behaviour of
minds -and bodies in response to them - in a wide range of fields. These are to the non-specialist para(or
like) or non- or un-normal. The science as a whole cannot be called the Paranormal as that is already preempted and covers many other things in the biological or life sciences and much in the physical sciences.
Thus, to arrive at a proper understanding we must go back to appreciate the following.
All animals and (it would now appear from the work of Cleve Baxter and others) even plants are born with
a whole set of proclivities that we have only very recently come to recognize. Some animals, for instance,
have literally dozens of recognizable physical organs with some of which they would appear to achieve these
"extra" (to us) accomplishments. Simple examples are the "homing instincts of so many animals, and the
projection and reception of infrared rays by, for instance, some moths.
Two essential words have cropped up here -projection and reception. ESP as originally conceived by
Rhine meant literally a special (to us as of then) aspect of what should be called ESR, or extrasensory reception. ESP manifestly stands for extrasensory projection. Further, even these two proclivities are but a
very minor aspect of a much greater field of natural bionomic activities and proclivities that are, it is now
being rapidly demonstrated, run on this fifth basic force-field -namely, the said Bionic. They are without
the purlieus of the physical sciences though we can to some extent study their workings with electromagnetic
technologies. ESP is actually but one aspect of ESR or Extra-Sensory Reception but today it has to embrace
all of that, plus true ESP, meaning extra-sensory projection; and many other matters that are not necessarily
even in the Bionic field, like much of the two PKs or pyro- (fire) kinesis (movement) and psycho- (by the
mind) kinesis (movement). We lind also that it has come to cover also mental telepathy, and seemingly
clairvoyance. You can often hear people saying "My ESP's working fine today; I was just going to phone
you".
It has thus encroached upon that vast ontological field of Coincidence and, if some of these curricula are
to be believed, it already embraces just about all the mysticisms other than orthodox religion; and all manner
of other things that are today (and again quite erroneously from a semantic point of view) lumped together as
the Occult.
In fact, just what do people now mean by "ESP"?

Ivan T. Sanderson.

UFOLOGY
CAN WE TICK OFF ANOTHER ONE?
Before launching into this tirade, we would just
like to thank the National Enquirer for permission to
reproduce this photograph because it shows in one
shot half of those scientists who really know anything about UFOs. The rest are in France, being Drs.
Aiml; Michel and Jacques Vallee; in Austria, Dr.
Schoenherr, or in quite a list of other countries. Four
of 1;he gentlemen shown here are members of our
society - Messrs. Salisbury, Hynek, Sprinkle, and
LOrE!nZen - and two of them are on our Scientific
Advi sory Board, but neither in any W8JI connected
with UFOs; Dr. Salisbury for Phytochemistry, and
Dr. Hynek for Astronomy.
The subject of ufology was pronounced "dead" a
couple of years ago after Dr. Condon published his
mad report - at a cost of over a quarter million
dollars to us taxpayers, one should perhaps add - on
the subject. That gentleman stated in print that any
further pursuit of this matter was not worthwhile from
a scientific point of view. As he was more or less
official the Press tended to believe him, and the
publi.c went along with that. The matter of UFOs just
dropped out of the news. However, it most certainly
did not do so anywhere else - the foreign press

without exception, the lesser press in this country,


literally hundreds of private citizens groups formed
to follow up reports of these things and, frankly, just
about everybody else. And the reports on these things
grew by leaps and bounds to a point. almost of insanity; anyhow to a point where we (meaning this
Society) simply could no longer cope. We have tried
to be helpful by passing the material ,we get on to
APRO and NICAP just in case they m:ight not have
encountered it otherwise: but, I fear me, an awful lot
of this material has been original and we doubt very
much that either of these organizations has been
able to make use of said material, although they are
devoted to this subject only. (Please :note that we
are not; and a couple of scientists wh.o visited our
HQ recently estimated that we had about 10,000
different items in our files!) Now comes, this.
The newspaper with the largest circulation in
this country is narned the National Enqui'rer, a weekly.
A year ago it offered $50,000 to anybo'dy who could
produce concrete evidence that UFOs are real and
that they corne from off this planet - "are not natural
phenomena" as they rather naively put it. Well, the
year is up and they have received thousands of reports and other statements. They state in an article

!i!!tional Enquirer UFO Panel (from left): Dr. R. F. Creegan, Dr. F. B. Salisbury, Dr. J. Harder! Dr. J. A.
Hynek, Dr. R. L. Sprinkle, and Jim Lorenzen. (Photo copyright by and courtesy of the National Enquirer,
,
Lantana, Florida)

in their 28th JanualY 197.3 issue of this year that


they are now gOing into the procedure of caleful.
complete. and scientific appraisal of this mass of
material . BUT . this went on to state: "There are reports that clearly cannot be explained
in conventional terms." said Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
former advisor on UFOs to the U. S. Air Force
And many of the reports meet the scientific requirement that morethan one witness describe the UFO ....."
This is as near as anybody of sane mind and
scientific training can come as of now to saying that

amongst the mass of material the National Enquirer


has tur.ned uP. there would appear to be some that
must be satisfactory to established and orthodox
science as proof of the fact
(a) that UFOs exist
and
(b) that they do not come from this planet.
That's all we want. brethren! As to where they do
come from. we will be so bold as to say that we have
the answer waiting if we are asked. and we don't
want any 50.000 bucks for it either.

CHAOS AND CONFUSiON

THE MARY CELESTE


As noted in the book review on page 23. Eric
Frank Russell has presented the only really plausible
explanation for the desertion of the MalY Celeste by
its crew in such haste that they did riOteven lower a
boat. He points out that many of the bits of "evidence" that have been made so much of. would not
even have been noticed had it not been for the unusual circumstances and what can only be called
over-officiousness on the part of the singularly
ambitious presiding judge at the inquiry. For those
who cannot find a copy of Russell's book. we here
report his conclusions. They can. in fact. be summed
up in one word: ergot.
Ergot is a fungus which effects grains of valious
kinds. but particulally rye; its "active principle.
ergotine. is highly poisonous. creating fearful delusions. suicidal tendencies and death". An 'epidemic' of ergotism broke out in Pont st. Esprit in
France in August 1951. Again quoting Russell.
"Help rushed from outside; gendarmes. troops and
ambulances poured in. Delirium in Pont st. Esprit
was general. attempts at suicide numerous. Four
people died. many were injured. Thirty were overpowered. strapped down and taken to hospital still
raving about demons. monsters. murderers and flames
from the depths." All the victims had eaten bread
made from ergot-contaminated flour.
It haldly needs repeating that the food served on
sailing ships in the 19th century was often literally
rotten -maggoty meat. weevils in the biscuits. etc.
In 1904 one Harry Franck noted that the food on a
cattle boat steaming from Canada to England was
"unfit to eat"; and Alan Villiers lists "menus" for
crew members on various vessels in his book The
ID!! '!Yill! cape !!2!!!. The quantities sound grossly
insufficien t. and the quality (particularly at the end
of a long voyage) is probably best left undescribed.
Those who investigated the Mary Celeste when she
was brought into port pronounced that her supplies of

food and water were "adequate" but did not analyze


either. Thus. Russell's conclusion that "The mystery
of the Mary Celeste could well have been born at her
port of departure. in a warehouse full of food not fit
for pigs". her entire crew having leaped overboard
either singly or en masse to escape the hallucinatory
horrors that beseiged them. There was evidence of a
recent (and not quite finished) meal in the cabin. and
ergotism apparently strikes almost without warning.
It is possible that this same disease may account
for some other cases of ships found abandoned for no
apparent cause and with no signs of damage but it
would seem imprudent to dump them all in this category. particularly those of recent 'vintage' and those
which occurred so close to shore that at least some
bodies should have been washed in bY the tide (e.g.
the Seabird and others which have most peculiar
historieS).""

ONE OF THE PKs TO THE FORE


It seems that to whatever of the multitudinous
aspects of forteana -down even to the wildest cases
of "chaos and confusion"- that one turns today. we
will find orthodox and respected scientists and
specialist technicians applying their expertise to
possible (at least) explanations of these oddities.
We believe that this would have pleased old Charles
Fort himself. as he was in one way basically a debunker. Many people seem to feel that he just tossed
these items at both the scientists and the public in
his impish way as sort of teasers. and then turned
his back on them am let those whom he called the
"experts" do what they could with them. Not so; he
loved something explained just as much as he did
something that defied even lUs agile brain.
There is one great slice of a mystery that has
languished in a sort of limbo for a century and which
interested Fort immensely. This is what we call

"PoltE!rgeist Manifestations", which is to say certain


aspects of what the modern parapsychologists called
Psychokinesis or the ability to move solid objects
at a distance without touching them. The other PK
is, or course, pyro (fire) kinesis, "movement" or
"creation of" fire, but also at a distance.
Now, although there are a great number of "holes"
in the work he has been dOing, one Prof. Dr. Hans
Bender, an MD and also holding a PhD. in psycholoi:y, the founder and now the director of "The
Institute for Border Areas of Psychology and Mental
Health, at the University of Freiburg, Fed, Rep. ot
Germany, has for sever!ll years been investigating
one aspect of this matter, !lDd with the mOlilt advancod
electromagnetic equipmen~ known. Doubtless !ill of
you who are interested in PK will know all. about
this, but, in the overall, the number of tho$e who Me
so inl:erested must be infinitesimal. That of whleh
we SPI~ak is those "manifestl!.tlons that ~p'pe(l.f to ba
associ.ated with mentally disturbed -or just normally
supprE!ssed- teenagers.
EVlm Charles Fort was, for once, not the fJ.r!tt to
note that many of these mEUlifestations appear to be
linked to teenagers, mostly girls reachipg pullerty,
and particularly to moronic girls.
Whim pots and pans start flying about apparently
of thllir own accord in broad daylight and in the
presence of plenty of witneSSes, the average person
still murmurs something like "nuts, or some uoh,
and blame s it all on the press. Throughout the years,
however, many families, Jtarassed by these a.ffairs
-and I!ven more so by the Crowds wno gather initially
to jeer- have appealed to their priests beseeching
exorcism; and in not a few cases this seems to have
been successful. However, the parapsychologists
have also been called in, but they do not seem to
have done any better than the poor police who are
always the first to be appealed to.
Now, Dr. Hans Bender goes immediately to any
case that he hears of involving a young person,
armed with film cameras, tape recorders, loyal assistants, and all the rest that makes it impossible
for the orthodox, stuffed-shirt, disbelievers any
longer to so disbelieve. Here are the pots and pans
flying about with nobody anywhere near them; here is
the "Ilying about" being transfered by Dr. Bender
from one location to another simply by mOving the
young man or woman thereunto; here are recorded
measurements of changes in temperature when these
event!:, occur; and dozens of the other "manifestations" that have been reported by tens of thousands
of sincere and sane citizens for hundreds of years

but scoffed at by all classical scientists. If you


want to know more about what this man has turned
up, write to the Washington Post (News) Service,
Washington, D. C., and ask tiieiii'" for a copy of an
article on the subject by one Nino Lo Bello, dated
the 15th of October 1972.
Now that this aspect of "poltergeisti:sm" has at
least been pinned down, maybe we can: proceed to
some of its other manifestations which, frankly, are
of much greater interest to us. These are the occurrences of PK when no people are any,where near.
A CAT CONCLAVE
We are not certain where this belongs 'and include
it primarily in t he hope of gathering additional information from members who may have read of or seen
similar occurrences.
The writer (MLF) formerly lived in Philadelphia
and owned a house in center-city. This .had a back
porch and a garden measuring about 15 :by 40 feet.
The neighbours on one side did not 'own' any cats
but fed all the strays in the neighbourhood, most of
whOm spent much of their time in my back' yard, much
to the fury of one of my two Abyssinian cats. Taki
~ cats (how I had managed to introduce Mali to
the household is beside the point here) :and I often
had to put cushions up against the very large rear
window in the living room to keep Taki from seeing
the strays in the yard; her reactions were so violent
that 1 feared damage to either Taki or the window, a
fact which is pertinent to the account that follows.
I was down with a mild case of "flu" or: some such
and was resting on the couch, facing the window,
when I saw "Pappy" (top cat among the strays) come
slowly into my garden and lie down on it sawhorse
toward the bac.k of the yard, but facing the center of
the yard. In the next five to ten minutes, five other
cats arrived, each taking up a position facing the
the center of the garden; one lay at the corner of the
porch. This was at approximately 2 P.m., the day
overcast, and, 1 believe (I have not yet tracked down
the diary entry), during early winter. For ~proximate
ly the next three hours those cats lay there, almost
without moving; they did .!!2! sleep; they made not a
single sound. On rare occasions one would turn its
head to look at one of the other cats, but otherwise
they were motionless. After about three ,hours they
all rose as if at a signal and simply ambled off.
During this period I watched with complete fascination; and Taki lay on top of the radio-phonograph
by the window and paid no attention to them what so-

As Charles Fort said, "Don't ever ask for anything... "


A lady in westerville, Ohio, received 218 catalogues through. the mail on the same day from an *,ea store.
When she halted the deliveries after several bundles of the 50-page catalogue arrived, the mailmaq said that
severlu hundred more bundles were awaiting delivery at the post office substation. And they were not even
the ril~ht catalogues. "I wanted one copy of the annual catalogqe", said she; "The ones I got were ~he smaller, sales catalogues". Modern technology -in this case addressing machines- bah.

ever. This fascinated me almost as much as the


'performance' outside, which was patently some kind
of convocation.
I have talked with several people who have he~d
of such assemblies or whatever one calls th~m, but
all have been somewhat startled to learn that this one
took place in daylight -those they remember reading
or hearing of have been on moonlit nights, and none
seems to have lasted so long. I have lived with a
variety of cats, and this is certainly not typical cat
behaviour. cats do display quite extraordinary abilities, and Taki definitely saw things which" were not
visible to me. On the occasion described above Taki
apparenUy decided to respect a "religious service,"
as it were. Subsequently she went back to snarling
at any cat that appeared in the garden.

LIGHT "WHEELS" UNDER THE SEA


This" is a profoundly fortean matter that was, in a
manner of speaking, started by Fort himself. We have
had several articles on this (e.g. Vol. 5, No.1), and
notably from Bob Durant who has been pursuing the
matter relenUessly since I (Ivan T. Sanderson)
published on it in a couple of magazine articles and
my book Invisible Residents. It concerns revolving
and moving rays of light of several forms - one like
a catherine wheel - that have been reported from all
around the periphery of the Indian Ocean, in the
Persian Gulf, in the Strai,ts of Malacca, the Gulf of
Siam and the SOuth China Sea (and nowhere else).
Several apparently logical explanations of these
have been published but all, on careful analysiS, fall
down on either one or more counts. Now Bob Durant
has turned up an incredible 32-page paper published
in Deutsche Hydrographische Zeitschrift of the
Deutsche Hydrographische Institut of Hamburg, Vol.
13, No.2, of 1960, by one Kurt Kalle. This is a
complete survey of all the records from 1897 to 1957.
It is a virtual monograph and apart from listing 70
cases, all from ships' logs, naval or commercial, it
is a must for all forteans interested in this matter.
We do not, however, agree with Dr. Kalle's explanation any more than we do with any of the others.
Of this item Bob Durant writes as follows: Charles Fort hypotheSized that the submarine
lightwheels might be "super-constructions from outer
space th"at were taking a quick cooling dip in the
ocean. Dozens of writers on ufology a"nd related
subjects have taken Fort quite seriously on this
matter, and thus the lightwheels have become a staple
in the fortean literature and most particularly in those
books that argue in favor of the existence on this
planet of other Intelligencies (OINTS). The late
Richard Turner, writing in the British periodical
Flying Saucer Review(Vol. 13, No.5) took exception
to this view of the lightwheels and concluded that
they fall into the category of "psuedo-UFO's", that

Is, a class of bizarre but nevertheless perfectly


natural phenomena.
Turner based his contention on the work of a
German hydrographer Kurt Kalle [see reference above].
In sum, Kalle states that the lightwheels must result
from underwater seismic disturbances. For "reasons
which will be made clear later, this theory is not, in
my opinion, satisfactory. However, Kalle's study of
underwater luminescent phenomena is in every other
respect a thoroughly admirable piece of scholarship
and stands at this writing as the definitive work on
the subject.
The Kalle study is based on an examination of 70
selected reports of luminescent phenomena reported
over the past century by mariners. The reports were
made by ship captains to the British and German
Government hydrographjc offices and then published
in the Marine Observer and on occasion in other
scientific periodicals. When one considers the extraordinary nature of these reports, it is surprising and most gratifying that they have been taken so
seriously by the official agenCies responsible for
providing practical information for the furtherance of
marine operations.
Kalle divides the reports into five major categories:
A. General and superficial description (equivalent
to SITU's II chaos and confusion" category)
B. "Balls of light, spreading like an explosion
from one central pOint on the sea surface
C. Parallel light waves spreading extremely quickly at the surface of the sea.
D. Light waves spreading extremely quickly at the
surface of the sea and apparently rotating around a
common center.
E. Light waves rotating on the surface of the sea
like spokes around a common center (these are the
classic "lightwheels")

If my analysis of the lightwheels (Pursuit, Vol. 5,


No.2) is valid, categories C, D, and E can be lumped
together as the same basic phenomenon seen from
different positions or under different conditions.
categories A and B, however, deserve a closer look
because they represent a sort of appearance that has
not heretofore been mentioned in forte an writings. The
quotes that follow are representative Kalle "B"
cases, taken from the original reports as printed in
the Marine Observer. Category "A" will be left for
desserr.S.S. Somersetshire, 1 October 1926: ..... Balls of
brilliant light seemed to shoot from a depth, burst
on nearing the surface, irradiate and cover an area,
seemingly of a couple of hundred square yards ... "
M. V. Bellerophon, 18 February 1956: ..... patches,
these formed very suddenly, starting at about 3 feet
in diameter, and rapidly growing to between 100 and
150 feet in diameter, ... the closest patches illuminat-

ed the decks of the ship with the intensity of a full


moon ..
S.S. Otaki, 5 November 1928: ..... numerous renarkabl.e patches of phosphorescence. These appeared
suddenl.y radiating outwards from the point of their
first appearance with great rapidity, until they covered an area of approximately one to two hundred feet
in diameter. Subsequently they faded so that within a
minute from the time that the first glimpse was seen,
no trace of them remained. Duration: about 12 minutes

S.S. City of Benares, 3 February 1930: ..... huge


phosphorescent 'balls' which rose and appeared to
burst ... "
These reports suggest bubbles of gas riSing from
the sea bed and expanding as they ascend through the
steadily decreasing pressure of the water. The gas
is probably of volcanic origin and perhaps is of a
chemical composition that is particularly obnoxious
to the protozoan, Noctiluca (the cause of marine
so-called phosphorescence), thus causing them to
glow brilliantly. The pattern formed on the flat
surface of the sea by an ascending bubble is indeed
a circular area, and given- even a moderate rate of
ascent J:or the bubble the radius of the circular area
would appear to grow almost explosively. So this
particular set of observations seems, for the time
being, adequately explained by underwater volcanic
activity. Unfortunately, Kalle has extended this line
of reasoning to include the rest of the reports.
Because of the large number of reports of the
lightwheels and parts thereof that have been printed
in these pages and elsewhere, I will omit also written
d-escriptions of those cases which comprise Kalle's
categories B and C. However the Kalle paper contains
several excellent illustrations of the lightwheels
that have not been published elsewhere. These are
shown a_s Figures 1 through 4. In Kalle's Figure 10
are shown the number of observations of phosphorescent phenomena reported to the British Meteorological
Office during the period 1920 to 1930, as compiled by
a Mr. H. T. Smith. The chart is very interesting but
really ought to be redrawn with the data weighted to
indicate the areas where shipping is especially light
or heavy. The heavily travelled sea lanes should
yield a correspondingly high number of reports, and
vice-versa. Allowing for such factors would make the
chart a much better tool for determining the focus of
the lightwheel phenomenon than a simple long-term
statistical tabulation.
Kalle's Figure 11 is a map of earthquake activity
for the years 1931 and 1935, in the Indian Ocean,
showing the epicenters and general areas of seismic
disturbance caused by the convulsions at the epicenters, and then in effect superimposes this map on
his Figu.re 8, which is the distribution of wheels and
other special phenomena, his categories A to E,
around that _ocean, to support his theory of the seismic
origin of the lightwheels. At first glance there seems

tu be a clear connection between the two phenomena,


but a close inspection of all the data precludes such
a quick and easy solution. For example, the area at
005 deg. north lat. and 090 deg. east long. should
generate a great number of lightwheels, but clearly
it does not. However, it is fair to say that'the areas
of intensive seismic activity do corresporid roughly
with the areas in which light wheels have been seen
with above-average frequency.
My discussion (see Pursuit, Vol. 5, No~ 1) of the
propagation of the sound beams that excite the
Noctiluca and thus form the rotating l~ghtwheels
assumed that the source of sound is something akin
to a highly directional loudspeaker, or a number of
such speakers arranged symmetrically around a circular platform. This conception makes for ease in understanding the curious curving shape of some of the resulting light beams, but is certainly not necessarily
the true picture, even if we are to suppose the source
to be a 'natural' one. Both Kalle and Dr. Wallace
Minto opt for a physical process known a!i; interference to explain the generation of the s.xmmetrical
shafts of light. This method has several a~vantages
from an engineering standpoint, particularly in that it
eliminates the need for the moving parts in the rotating
speakers scheme. But it by no means obviates the
argument for the man-made or "OINT"-made nature of
the process.
Kalle's Figure 7 shows shafts of light formed by
the interference of two expanding light wavefronts.
The light sources are separated by distance "0" in
the figure. As the waves radiate from eac;:h source
they tend to alternately cancel and reinforce each
other in such a way that a pattern of light and dark
beams is formed. This effect can be prod,llced with
sound waves as well as with light waves. But here's
the rub: The production of such interference patterns
is strictly a trick for the well equipped l~boratory.
One must have two wave sources of exactly 'the same
frequency and the sources must be placed :very precisely with: respect to each other. Given these two
conditions, a set of symmetrical shafts of light or
sound will be formed. But if either condition is disturbed even minutely, the pattern breaks dow~ at once.
Now the submarine lightwheels rotate while maintaining an exact symmetry. Therefore we must introduce' still another factor that further complil:)ates the
matter. In order to generate symmetrical silafts that
rotate, the two sources must rotate about one another,
i.e. around a common center. Once again, the rate of
rotation about the common center, the frequency of
each source; and the distance maintained between the
two sources must all be kept within very close tolerances. All of this is feasible in the modern laboratory, but is it reasonable to say that earthquakes in
the ocean bed give rise to a similar set of circumstances? I -;submit that an occasional 'bur~' from a
volcano at the bottom of the Indian Ocean just won't
do the tricki

...
f="

"

\
"or.

,
----,'

Light Wheels

20
-i;.

Epicenters

20
Limit of earthquake
zone __ CI -= Clc:t . .

Indian Ocean

40

~--~~~~----~------r-----~-----r----~------r-----+-~~

20

40

60

80

100

120

Redrawn from maps in KaUe's original article, Figures 8 and 11 being superimposed, showing geographical distribution of light wheels and earthquake zones and epicenters.

10

Now we come to Kalle category "A". Here are


contained a couple of whoppers":
M.VL British Premier, Capt. F. G. Baker, 2602'N,
56 53'E, 30 November 1951: The ship's radar
apparatus had been switched on with a view to checking her position, when in the same instant that this
gear became operative, most brilliant boomerangshapl~d arcs of phospherescent light appeared in the
sea, gyrating in a clockwise direction to starboard
and clockwise to port, but all sweeping inwards
towards the ship from points situated from five to six
points on either bow and some two miles distant, and
conveying the irnpressivn that they ricocheted from
each other on meeting at the ship' bows and then
turned and travelled away astern to similar points
which were equidistant on either side and about four
points on each quarter. Duration: 15 minutes."
S.S. Strathmore, Captain M. J. Paice, 10 sm West
of Mt. Delby, Malabar Coast, 9 February 1953: "Between 0130 and 0200 white patches of light were
observed on the sea surface. Milky white patches
were first noticed on the starboard beam about 2
cablE!s away and appeared to 'flash' about once every
second. Later they moved closer to the ship, being as
bright as a phosphorous patch, although there was no
indic:ation of phosphorescence in the water even when
the ship's wake broke into the patches [Interesting Editor]. The patches had made different movements,
each one continuing for a minute or so - rotary,
clockwise and anticlockwise - towards the ship in
waves and away from it in waves parallel to the
ship's course. During the entire time of observation
the period of reaching maximum brilliance and fading

was about 1 second, gIvIng a regular flashing


appearance. At 0152 the waves reached their maximum
brilliance, appearing to travel from the starboard
quarter to the port bow. On switching Qff the radar,
the phenomenon ceased abruptly close, to the ship,
but it was still faintly discernible on the port beam
about 2 cables away. At 0157 the radar was switched
on again, the phenomenon did reappear' close to the
ship but only faintly, and then disappeared altogether.
Noliling was observed on the radar screen during
this time that was out of the ordinary."
Now this is absolutely amazing. The lightwheels
were apparently turned on and off by the ;ship's radar.
Leaving all other considerations aside, these two
cases alone destroy the earthquake theory. But beyond
that, they open a whole new dimension' to the lightwheel phenomenon, and I must admit to being, for the
moment, simply flabbergasted by the implications of
this data. [I think that whatever was causing the
Noctiluca to action was an electronic beam of a very
specific frequency- Editor.]
It appears that the lightwheels can be triggered by
electromagnetic radiation. That suggests, once again,
exploratory or sensing devices. The observation of
several lightwheels rather than a si,ngle one is
actually the general rule. Previously we :had assumed
that passing ships came upon the lightwheels by
accident. Now we must ponder the possi~ility that the
passage of a ship itself triggers the liglltwheels, and
the presence of strong electromagnetic iimpulses will
also set, them into operation. [But, again, why in such
a 'localized' area? -Editor]
Robert J. Durant

IV. CHEMISTRY
ALLEGED FALLOUT-FREE WATER
We hope that all of you with the necessary experience and expertize fn this field of atomic and
nucll~onic chemistry will put your minds together and
eithElr tell the rest of us what is wrong with this, or
suggest what these people mentioned below think they
are talking about.
Radioactive fallout is composed of several very
different kinds of 'particles', some of which are so
'mUd' that ordinary clothing provides adequate protection. Others, particularly gamma radiations, are
extremely penetrating and require considerable
'shielding' for safety. Presumably the "relics"
described below were not subjected to local fallout
from an atomic or hydrogen explosion, but worldwide fallout follows any surface testing of such
bombs. It is true that most fallout is carried to earth
by rEin or snow, so the desert areas receive far less
fallout than other regions; and the report here does
say "possibly the only radiation-free water", but ...

"Geologists find pre-atomic 'relic' in Egypt desert:


by William Dullforce; special to the st~Ledger [11
July 197'2]. Cairo - An Egyptian geologfcal team has
just made a major scientific discovery deep in the
western Desert some 1,000 miles from the nearest
habitation. But the objects are only 3'0 years old.
They arEl four galvanized iron drums made in Milan,
Italy, in 1942 and containing possibly the only radiation-free water in the world. The geolog~sts stumbled
over an abandoned wartime British airfield at Bir
Tarfawi far south near the Sudanese border. Among
the wrecked buildings, vehicles, and thousands of
gasoline drums were ten Italian water drums, four of
them intact.
The water in these drums has been encapsulated
for 30 years and should thus be free of the atomic
radiation which has progressively pollu:ted the earth
since the ,first explosion.
Doctor Rushdi Said, American-trained head of the
Egyptian geological authority, claimed in an interview Monday with AI Ahram that the find will enable

11

scientists to assess the characteristics of ra!liationfree water and will serve as a touchstone for subsequent water pollution throughout the world.
One drum is being sent to the United states and
one to the International Atomic Energy Agency in
Vienna, he said. They will be opened under conditions
of complete sterilization. Speculating on how Italian
water drums came to be on a British airfield, Said

suggested the Italians may have tried to capture the


airbase. Tests on the water should show whether it
comes from Libyan oases occupied by the Italian army
in 1942 or from Milan, where the drums were made."
This is obviously not a case of bad reporting, nor
can an editor be claimed for doing the usual hatchet
job; we would like some clarification in any case.

V. ASTRONOMY

THE MOONS OF MARS


by Robert J. Durant
The April 1972 issue of Pursuit contains what I
believe to be a much too casual acceptance of a
statement made elsewhere concerning Jonathan Swift
and his moons of Mars, and the assertion that
Johannes Kepler predicted the existence of the moons
in 1610. a full 117 years before Swift wrote Gulliver's
Travels and the famous description of the Martian
moons.
To begin with. Kepler had no reason to suppose
that Mars might have two satellites. His astronomical
calculations were based almost entirely on the
measurements made by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) with
oct ants, i.e., purely angular measurements as opposed to telescopic observations. The telescope was
not invented fie-invented? See Editor's Note below]
until 1608, well after the bulk of Kepler's work was
done. The telescopes in existence at that time were
very crude instruments indeed, with approximately
9x magnification and very poor optical qualities. A
pair of binoculars with plastic lenses that one might
bUY for a child today is a viewing device superior to
that available during Kepler's lifetime. Galileo (and
Kepler) was able to observe only four of Jupiter's
moons and had so poor a view of Saturn that he mistook the rings for two moons. Not until fifty years
later did Huygens, using a vastly improved instrument, distinguish the rings of Saturn; yet the rings
can be clearly made out with a good pair of modern
binoculars. ApparenUy the source for the "wipe"
failed to understand that in ascribing Swift's uncanny
description of the moons of Mars to Kepler he was
merely shifting the miracle from one author to another and, by pushing the event back in time more
than a century, making it even more paradoxical and
anomalous.
In sum, this is what Swift had to say (Gulliver's
Travels, Laputa, Ch. 3) concerning the discovery

made by the astronomers living on the airborne island


of Laputa: ..... :discerned 2 lesser stars, or satellites,
which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is
distant from the center of the primary planet exactly
3 of his diameters, and the outermost, 5, the former
revolves in the space of 10 hours, the latter in 21'f.z ... "
The currently accepted figures are, respectively,
Phobos - 7 hours, 39 minutes, 1.4 diameters; "Deimos
-30 hours, 18 minutes. 3.5 diameters.
Obviously, Swift's accuracy leaves something to
be desired, but his figures are nevertheless "in the
ball park". One familiar with the history of the observation of the periods of the moons of Jupiter, for
example, with be slow to fault Swift. But the crux of
the matter is this: How did Swift learn of the existence of the moons of Mars in the first place?
Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels in 1725. approximately 150 years prior to the first telescopic observation of the moons of Mars. The discovery of the
moons was made in 1877 by the American astronomer
Asaph Hall, using the newly built 40-inch refracting
telescope at the U. S. Naval Observatory. Hall spent
two years searching' for a Martian satellite before his
success -and he was using the finest telescope the
world had ever seen. But the fact is that Swift
described the existence of these two moons, together with acceptable approximations of their
periods and distances from the planet. 150 years
before Asaph Hall and the 40-inch telescope. It is
only natural that this extraordinary fact has given
rise to equally extraordinary speculations regarding
Swift's sources of information.
The contention that Kepler predicted the moons
of Mars is apparently a misinterpretation of a curious
incident that occurred while Kepler and Galileo were
carrying on a correspondence relating to Galileo's
first telescopic observations. Galileo, following the
custom of the scientific community of his day, took

Levitation
Reprinted (in Twin Circle) from Dick Van Dyke's "Faith. Hope and Hilarity"; "A preacher advised a new
boy in the congregation that it would be a good idea to kneel beside his bed and pray every night. The boy
said. 'If I tried that. it would be a real miracle. I sleep in the top bunk'."

----------_.

--,---

12

'great pains to safeguard his discoveries lest they


be pirated by rivals. Accordingly, when Galileo
observed Saturn and what he took to be Saturn's two
.moon!!, he sent the news to Kepler in the form of an
anagrlUD. Kepler improperly decoded this as "Hail,
burning twin, offspring of Mars", and concluded that
GalilE!o had discovered two moons of Mars. A short
time later Galileo revealed the correct translation of
his anagram: "I have observed the highest planet
[Saturn] in triplet form" -the "triplet form" being
the pl.anet and its two pseudo-moons. Thus, Kepler
did believe, for a period of several months, that
Mars had two moons; and presumably he died believillJ~ saturn has two moons. But the temporary
belief in the moons of Mars was clearly due to a
cryptographic error and Kepler freely acknowledged
it as finch. This is a great deal less than the supposed "prediction" of the moons ascribed to Kepler.
It was implied in Pursuit that Swift learned of
Kepler's' 41prediction" while studying at Trinity
Colle~:e Dublin. For this to be so, the faculty at
Trinity must also have completely misunderstood
the anagram incident. It seems unlikely that so minor
(and I~mbarrassing) a matter would have been discussed in undergraduate lectures. Beyond that,
there is a serious question as to whether or not the
incident of the anagram was known even to scholars
before the recent exhaustive investigations of the
lives and works of the outstanding scientists of
history. In any event, no modern text supports' the
claim that Kepler discovered or predicted the moons
of Mars. I first read of Swift's description of the
moons in a magazine written for professional and
serious amateur astronomers. Though the Swift story
was covered in considerable detail, no mention was
made of Kepler.
Gai.i1eo sent another anagram to Kepler, this one
concerning his discovery of the phases of Venus.
The correct decryption was: "The mother of Love
[venus] emulates the shape of Cynthia [the Moon]".
Kepler rendered this as "There is a red spot in
Jupite:r 'which rotates mathematically." Now this
adds a new and quite exciting twist to this whole
'business, for Kepler once again stumbled upon an
astronomical fact that was not to be discovered until
long after his death. Of course he discarded this
one' Ju'st as he had discarded the incorrect translation
of the first anagram, and there is certainly nothing
. to sUI~'gest that Kepler predicted the Red Spot on
Jupiter. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that Kepler unconsciously knew of both
the moons of Mars and of the great Red Spot on
Jupiter.
ThEl entire history of Kepler's astronomical
discoveries (his famous Three Laws) is replete with
instanc'es of lucky guesses, and errors in computation
canc'elling other errors in a most fortuitous manner.
He WitS 'quite consistent throughout his career in

getting the correct answers; with 'incorrect 'calculations and assumptions. Arthur Koes~ler treated
this subject at length in his book The Sl"eepwalkers.
But this "divination by anagram analysiS'" practised
by Kepler seems to have escaped even:Koestler~s
probing mind.
It would seem then that the so:'called prediction
of the moons of Mars by Swift was indep'endent of
the equally mislabelled prediction by Kepler, but
both men produced valid data on subjects that were
simply not within their ability to produce using normal
cognitive processes. Thus we must not only reconfirm the oft-told Swift story, but we must add a
new and even more striking tale to the annals of
clairvoyance, precognition, OINT tutelage, or Whatever this is.
References: "How Did Kepler Discover His
First Two Laws?" by Curtis Wilson, Scientific
American, March 1972, vol. 226, No.3, P. 92; The
Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler, New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1959 (also available in paperback).
'r

Editor's ~: Apart from the fact tf:tat, on the


surface at least, Kepler would seem to have been
singularly inept at solving anagrams, there may be
worse things in store -and it is not at all certain
that ancient peoples did not have such 'modern' items
as telescopes. Frederick B. Jueneman (director/
research, INCA - whatever Ihat is), writing in
Industrial Research for November 1972, remarks that
....Chaldean tablets almost casually rriention. the
phases of Venus and, unless they had telescopic
eyeballs to see these phases, the planet was somewhere nearby". Ah yes, but what of the lens found
at Ur (of the Chaldees, please note)? Many ancient
civilizations, e.g. Egyptian, seem to have known a
heck of a lot more about astronomy and related
subjects than they ought to have done. And it is also
true that other 'primitive' peoples (Amerinds and
South Sea Islanders) appear to have had considerable
knowledge of astronomy, some of it not 'available'
by ordinary record-keeping and/or unassisted vision
(they did use hollow reeds as an aid, but presumably
this simply cuts out distractions).
Mr. Jueneman also notes that "Homer's Iliad
relates that during the Trojan War Venus and Mars
had an altercation and a few centuries later, about
-700 [presumably 700 B.C.?], Mars was close
enough to observe the two steeds pulling the chariot
of the war god. Phobos and Deimos." If one can take
Homer lit'erally, it poses an even gr~eater problem
than Kepler's 'divination by anagram' ':"'and it is
true that 'the one chap who did take .him literally
discovered the city of Troy, although he "w.ent beyond
it by several layers. Just what does o,-:!e make of
all this??

13

LIFE ON THE MOON?


The following is a quite preliminary report on an
item which has just been brought to our attention
though it appeared in the Dallas Times Hera!d on the
7th June 1972. We' will be making further enquiries
and will report back when and if we obtain more
information.
Donald K. Slayton. NASA director of flight crew
operations for the Apollo program. spoke at the
annual awards dinner of the United Press International Illinois newspaper. editors and said that he is "not
so sure" now that the moon is a de~d planet. The
reason: " ... a camera brought back to earth by Apollo
11 astronauts was found to have a micro-organism
living on it. That camera. he said. had been on the

moon's surface three years. The organism. 'in the


condition of being freeze-dried'. was not on the
camera when it was rocketed to the moon .... Slayton
said moon soil seems to stimulate ce:tain types of
plant growth." He did not specify which plants.
though he noted that some grow "three to four times
faster in moon soil than in earth soil" and added that
moon soil (certain types. at least) have "killed three
types of earth bacteria" (again unspecified).
It is Probable that most if not all our readers know
of the very stringent precautions taken to prevent
contamination of the Moon by terrestrial bacteria of
any kind. and the implications inherent in the discovery of even a single micro-organism on equipment
brought back from the Moon (under totally sterile
'wraps') are or should be enough to 'shake up' even
the most complacent. We will report further if possible.

VB. GIEOLOGY

THE MEDITERRANEAN

ON THE SUBJECT OF "COLD"

Just for the record. and in case anyone ei"se has


noticed it: While we were first working on the socalled Bermuda Triangle and other "Vile Vortices".
we attempted to find any factor common to all these
anomalous areas and the only one we could find was
ocean currents. These flow in a clockwise direction
in the Northern Hemisphere and in a counterclockwise
direction in the Southern. However. in several atlases
containing maps of ocean currents. we discovered
that the arrows indicating such currents in the
Mediterranean point to the left. i.e. counterclockwise.
We therefore -and finally- sought the advice of
Professor George Kennedy of UCLA. and received the
following reply.

Some time back a lady wrote to us asking how the


Emperor Penguin manages to stand the sub-zero
temperatures of its Antarctic home during its prolonged dark winter. As this opened up such an enormous subject we merely mentioned it in this
journal but started up a private correspondence into
which several of our members have now jOined.
Trouble is, all of this has become so extensive that
it warrants a book but, while there is a whole library
on the subject already among both biologists and the
frozen foods people, most curiously we cannot get
a straight answer on the essential point at issue upon
which all of them will agree. This is simply: does a
wind (and not necessarily a very cold one) actually
lower the actual temperature of something like a dead
frozen mammoth or half a steer, or a living penguin or
doesn't it?
Until last month the party we call the "subjective"
lot -who assert that blast only makes things feel
colder- seemed to be way out ahead. but then the
"objecti ve" lot in the form of the frozen foods people
have again asserted that their chill " or "blast"
technique actually reduces the real or actual (thermometer) temperature; and now comes the following
from the column headed the "Compleat Consumer" in
the National Observer.

"I didn't know much about the surface waters and


their motions in the Mediterranean; consequently I
picked up the telephone and called Henry Menard at
La Jolla who is Professor of Oceanography down
there. He tells me that the Mediterranean circulation
is broken up into a large number of small cells. some
of which revolve clock-wise. others of which revolve
counter clock-wise. so there is no general sense to
the. motion in the Mediterranean. In short. it is like
currents in the bends of rivers which have all senses
of motion, owing to the highly irregular topographY
and the fact that the Mediterranean is broken up by
many islands and long reaches of shallow ridges
which break up the circulation pattern."
Ergo, we -and you- may now stop worrying about
the apparent anomalous circulation of water in the
Mediterranean.

"Cool weather can kill a careless or luckless


outdoorsman as readily as freezing weather. Coolweather death can occur when the body begins losing
heat faster than it produces it, a condition called
hYpothermia. Wind and rain can speed the onset of

Please. please. let us know of any change of address as long in advance as possible. and include your new
zip code.---

14

hypothermia. The Evergreen Safety Council of Seattle,


a National Safety Council chapter, notes that clothing
loses about 90 per cent of its insulation power when
wet, less if woolen and more if cotton or synthetic.
Wind adds to the problem by evaporating moisture
from wet clothing, producing a refrigerating effect.
The safety group s~s a 15 m.p.h. wind at 55 degrees
creatE!S a wind-chill effect on bare skin that is the
e uin.lent of still air at 11 degrees below ~."
Emphasis ours-]- - Further, the 1973 World Almanac, on page 244,
includles a "Wind cliiil'Table", and notes that
"Temperature and wind both affect the heat loss from
the surface of the body. The effect of these two
factors is expressed as an 'equivalent temperature,'
which approximates the still-air temperature which

would have the same cooling effect as the wind and


temperature combination. For example, from the table
above, with a temperature of 20F. and a wind of 20
mph., the effect on exposed flesh is the same as
-9F. with no wind."
Also, in a booklet published by the Pacific
Bamboo Gardens in San Diego, Califqrnia, it is
stated that "A plant grown in a sheltered location
will probably fare better at a lower temperature than
one grown in the open . The wind will effectively
lower the actual temperature [emphasis ours], as far
as the plant is concerned, many degrees."
Inasmuch as no one seems to agree on anything
concerning this subject, we will drop the matter
unless we get a categoric statement from an authority
who is acceptable to everyone.

VII. BIOLOGY
THE PARAGUAYAN "BARKING SNAKE"
Spa.nish is basically a very simple language, but
it comes in as many 'varieties' as there are Sp'anishspeaking countries. The person who "translated"
the original report from Paraguay for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer obviously did not know Paraguayan
Spanish.
We have received a charming letter from Sr. Junio
Milciades Frutos, Vice Director of the Jardin
Botanico, Museo y Zoologico in Asuncion, telling us
about their most famous acquisition and enclosing a
newspaper clipping recounting a press conference
called to combat the wild rumours which were then
circulating; the clipping is dated the 25th February
1972 and gives full details.
The "Mboi-Yagua" or "Barking Snake (with hooks
on its tail!)" is an Anaconda, specifically Eunectes
murinus. The bulge in its 'midsection was explained
on the 20th M~ 1972 when the snake gave birth to
61 live young, all but 4 of which died during the
next week or so. The mother snake is approximately
5 meters in length (a bit over 16 feet) and caused the
Zoo c:onsiderable concern through her refusal to eat.
However, she devoured a duck on the 4th of October,
and six days later consumed another duck, and they
are now fairly confident that she has adapted to her
new Emvironment.

The scientists who attended the press conference


pointed out that the name "mboi-yagua" was better
translated as "tiger-snake" than as "snake-dog" (or
dog-snake) since it is based primarily on the fact
that the snake is spotted like the tiger -this is confusing until one recollects that Central and South
Americans insist on calling the jaguar ~ tigre. As
for the hooks on the tail, the Boidae gellerally' have
vestigial hind limbs in the form of spines near the
anus, but in this case the "hook" would seem to be a
ghastly mistranslation of t he simple fact that ~.
murinu~ anchors itself to a tree by hooking its tail
around it (or some other solid object) when attacking
its prey, particularly if the latter is large.' E. murinus
is much larger and much less well known iJ1Paraguay
than its smaller relative ~. notaeus.
.
THAT NEW VERY HUMAN-LOOKING SKULL
Even if you are not in any way interested in the
subject of fossil man and the age of our ancestors,
you will almost surely have read about the new one
found in Kenya by the son of the famous Dr. Leakey,
who is carrying on his father's work. There is gOing
to be a lot of discussion over this find an,d it has, in
fact, already begun. The fact that it has :been dated
as having lived more than twice as long ago as the

!:. E!!rther Request for Help


In our April 1972 issue we noted a request by Mr. T. R .. Birkhead, an ornithologist, for skulls of the Crow
family. We have managed to acquire for him specimens of both the common Crow (~ brachyrhyncos) and
the Ellue J~ (Cj"anocitta cristata). He has asked us to 'advertise' further for the following: the eanada J~
(f!!!~ canadensis), the Magpie (~~. hudsonia), the Florida or Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens
~11escens), the Fish Crow (~ ossifragus), and the Raven (Corvus ~). Any members' who come
acrOEIS any of these are asked to seal them in plastic bags and send them -sturdily packaged- to us; we will
forward them to Mr. Birkhead.

15

beetle-browed Homo erectus, which had until then


been thought to be the earliest hominid on our direct
line of ancestry, was enough to "shake uP" everybody.
However, the fact that the skull was found in a
large number of small pieces has already caused
some to criticize the way in which Dr. Maeve Leakey
has reconstructed it. There are also hints that the
dating of the particular strata, from which over 200
other pieces of hominid skeletons were extracted last
year, may be off. Anyhow, that a creature with a
brain capacity of 800 cc. (modern man averages 1500
cc.) that was contemporary with the very ape-like
Australopithecus with a brain capacity of less than
500 cc. more than 2Y.z million years ago is very
thought-provoking. But then, as more than one anthropologist has pointed out, about 80% of the contributions to this very early history of Man has come from
one area in the past two decades and almost entirely
as the result of the efforts of one man. W83 back in
1890 Eugene Dubois discovered what was then
called Pithecanthropus in Java; then creatures of
much the same type came from Pekin and were at
first called Sinanthropus. Drs. Dart and Broom brought
to light the first Australopithecus in South Africa
-some five stages in their evolution have now been
tabbed.
Walter Sullivan pointed out in his report of this
latest discovery that Dr. William Howells, Professor
of Anthropology at Harvard, had more than succinctly
remarked that our knowledge of man's history is still
fragmentary a!1d "There are blank parts, but they will
be filled. We have hundreds of years of exploration
ahead of us". Actually, we have only just started
looking, and even the rare deposits of volcanic
ejecta such as are found in the Rift Valleys are not
that rare, so there are still many places to look. The
mere hugeness of the "project" (worldwide) nonetheless causes us to marvel when a specimen such as
this is found.
PEARLS IN HENS' EGGS
The attached photo, with the story that went with
it, was sent to us by one of our Swedish members.
These items were on the front page of the newspaper
Norrlandska Socialdemokraten, of Noorland. It is
under banner headlines.
Now, we have certainly found some amazing things
in eggs ourselves and some of these were concretions of CaC03. Pearls are essentially made of this
stuff too but their luster is applied in the form of a
complex organic substance derived from the mantel of
the oysters.
In this case the article accompanying this photograph states that scientists who went to examine
these eggs found some pearls still in si.tu, and they
suggested that the hens that laid them had been
getting some new chemical in their food, or from some
other sources.
We are, however, highly suspicious of this case,
for, be it noted, the newspaper is dated the First of
April! [1972]

GIANT HERBS
Botanists and gardeners have for long known that
a substance to which the name gibberellin has been
given and which occurs naturally in plants, when
purified, concentrated, and applied in specific w 83S,
can produce healthy gigantism in lTlany kinds of
herbaceous plants. Most reputable seed and plant
catalogues advertise this along with instruction
books. A standard solution is .1% Potassium Gibberelate; and it is Quite true that such things as lO-ft
cabbages can be grown with this treatment. What is
more, some at least temporary mutations that breed
true have thus been developed.
We will not forget our surprise when some seeds a
friend of ours in California sent us -he is a great
gardener and especially of Amerindian herbs, and
often sends us seeds and cuttings to experiment
with- and which he asked us to plant as soon as the
first skunk cabbage showed green, sprouted large
crinkly, fleshy leaves before anything else in that
special garden had even appeared, and then continued
to grow, throwing up also a large mound all around
its sturdy stem. After a heavy rain we perceived a
tuber of some kind below this. On extraction it
proved to be a white radish about four times the size
of a grapefruit. This was many years ago now but was
the first of these artificially provoked plants we had
seen.
-+

-+

16

Bul; now that remarkably "inquisitive" weekly


newspaper the National Enquirer (29 Oct. 1972) reports (byline: William F. Michelfelder) that a Mrs.
Rose Nickle of Corte Madera, about 20 miles from
San Francisco in California, has been producing giant
flowers, starting with Dahlias, by mixing human hair
clippings into the mulch she trowels around her
plants. There are some aspects of this story that, we
must admit, more than stretch one's imagination,
notably the speed with which this odd manure is
reportl~d to work, or at least worked on the first
occasi.on that she noticed the results -a doubling of
size in a matter of a few days.
AIlparenUy Mrs. Nickle got her idea from her
husband, a semi-retired barber, who told her that a
lady bad been coming into their shop regularly for
years asking for the sweepings; when they finally
asked her what she did with them, she said that she
spaded them into her garden when planting. Mrs.
Nickle decided to give it a try, and this, everybody
swear!!, is the result. A local chemical laboratory
could only say that hair is a good source of protein
but as to its being a sort of super fertilizer, they
discreetly remained mum.
ThEm, of course, there is the now famous case of
the giant, poisonous form of the common Hogweed
that suddenly cropped up in Britain a couple of years
ago and appeared potentially so serious a pest that
the government took exceptionally swift and direct
measures. This large form is indigenous to the
Caucasus and had escaped from the Kew Botanical
Gardens. Some of the plant "monstrosities" -not
whole strains or mutations- that have cropped up at
the Brookhaven experimental station where they have
been t'~sting the effects of what may be called "overdoses" of hard rays, have been a bit startling, but
all these four cases fall into different categories.
If this story about the human hair is trile, what,
pray, is the explanation? Our members seem to be
getting very good at turning up explanations. Perhaps
one of you can satisfy the rest of us on this one.
TROPICAL FISH IN SIBERIA
A curious little item headed "Russians Catch
Tropical Fish", by UPI, date-lined Moscow, 9 June
1972 (Los Angeles Times), went as follows in toto:
"Fishermen braving Siberian cold to drop a line in
one of the Angara River tributaries have been pulling
out tropi"cal fish -thousands of miles from the tropics.
The T:1SS news agency said someone must have once
dropped a tankful of pet tropical fish in the river near
Lake Baikal. The fish swam uPstream into a canal
where a thermal power plant disgorges hot water; and
began reproducing."
This may be so, but if they are catching them presumabl.y by line or net, they must be of some size and
therefore to have established themselves for some
years, for nobody keeps even six-inch tropical fish

in tanks. Moreover. we'd like to know what fish.


since those tropicals that collectors 40 keep are
usually not species that grow above two iqches at the
most. We've written seeking further enlightenment but
no reply so far, and in a case of Ihis sort there
probably won't be one. The Russians are funny in
that they answer some enquiries almost bY return
mail; others they ignore.
However. there is something distinctly "fishy"
about this. [Editor's Note: A report so~e time ago
noted that the Russians claimed to have 'resurrected'
lizard-like .tritons (i.e. newts, a kind ofamphibian)
alleged to have been buried in the permafrost for
5000 years; but later admitted that the story was
"pure fantasy".]
ANCIENT SEEDS
This business of 400o-year-old seeds sprouting has
been going on for years. There was the controversial
matter of Ancient Egyptian wheat of about that age,
which was never positively resolved. Nex:t, it was a
series of lotus seeds found in a peat swamp in
Manchuria. Western scientists seem not to have believed this either (see the ultimate and definitive
work on the subject entitled Seed Preservation and
Longevity by L. V. Barton, 1961, L~onard Hill
Books). in which the oldest seed to germinate is said
to be about 200 years - possibly 250. Now comes
this from Japan.
.. Akita, Japan (AP) - Several seeds found in an
ancient tomb and believed to be 4,000 years old
sprouted when they were exposed to sunlight a
Japanese archaeologist reported yesterday. Yasutoki
Togashi, the archaeologist. said the age of the seeds
was based on the composition of soil and clay in
which they were found."
The mystery here is that nobody has tried to explain why only certain seeds from any one site do so
germinate - if they do. Barton strongly suggests that
seeds alleged to come from 4000-year-olC:l Egyptian
tombs and such did not, in fact, do so, but were planted (no pun intended) by chaps with a perverted sense
of humour. Some finely controlled experiments were
carried out by botanists in the 18th and 19th centuries
(and into the 20th), and the rate of germin~tion varied
widely among seeds of 'identical' plants and depended
largely on the type of seed, i.e. "hard-shelled",
"fuzzy", or w hatev er .
If any of our readers can come up with some really
incontrovertible evidence on this subject. we will be
happy to hear of it. And meantime where's the radiocarbon dating on those associated seeds that did not
germinate?

A SECOND LOBSTER MYSTERY


Lobsters are very funny creatures. As anyone
knows who has looked at a whole lobs~er dead or

17

alive. their claws are quite different. One is long and


slender with a lot of hooks on the inside for holding
things. the other one is bigger and bulbous and has
only a few rounded knobs inside. This one is for
crushing. Thirty years ago. finding what was called a
"left-handed" lobster (in which the order was reversed
to the common run of that species) was an extreme
rarity. In twenty years. however. nearly fifty percent
-as seen in the lobster corrals of our northeast coastwere "left-handers" and since then the tendency has
continued apace so that they have become the
standard. and the "old-fashioned" type the rarity.
This oddity can be put down to some as yet unexplained mutation. but now comes this one which is
not so Simply explained. We take this in toto from the
"This World" Sunday supplement of the San Francisco
Examiner & Chronicle. of the 19th November 1972.

condition will prevent complete development. We do


not know the cause of the eye loss. nor whether it
occurs in nature or only in artifiCially hatched
lobsters. Obviously. if these unusually rapid growing
lobsters could be created at will by manipulation of
their environment and if no other detrimental effects
are associated with the condition. the phenomenon
might find a useful application in the artificial
culture of lobsters.
"The loss of a Single eye in lobsters is a much
more frequent occurrence, but in one-eyed lobsters
the glands in the remaining eyestalk appear to be
sufficient to regulate molting normally. Although
lobsters are able to regenerate lost limbs, they are
not similarly able to regenerate lost eye stalks."

"Blind Lobsters Grow Bigger. For unknown


reasons. lobsters born blind grow faster. bigger and
more orange than those with Sight. This curious
discovery was made at the Boothbay Harbor. Me.,
laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. About one lobster out of every 5000
was born blind. they found, and that lobster would
lack pigment (they would be the brilliant orange-red
of a cooked lobster instead of the blue-green of the
normal Ii ve lobster). It would also molt 12 times in
the first four months instead of only 8; might weigh
40 times as much at that time as a normal lobster
- yet eat no more."

A SCALY BEAST

We wrote to the N.O.A.A. for further information


and received the following most interesting reply from
Alden P. "Stickney. Fishery Biologist.

From The Hindu. Madras. India, dated the 8th


January 1973 and bylined Tranquebar:
"Amphibious Creature Caught from Sea. A fourfooted amphibious creature caught from the sea is
attracting large crowds here. The orange-coloured
creature measuring nearly a metre in length and 30
cm in height, has a sharp nose like an anteater and
has scales all over the body. :It walks and runs about
on land. Fishermen who caught the creature, which
has not been identified yet, said that it caused some
damage to their net while struggling to escape.-PTL"
This is the kind of item that really causes us both
trouble and enlightenment. The above clip was sent
to us by one of Our founding members and a very old
personal friend of our Director - Mr. W. M. (Gerald)
Russell (the "George" Russell of Animal Treasure by
Ivan T. Sanderson]. Now the fun begins. While we are
digging out the newspaper entitled The Hindu, all we
can do is speculate. And as of nOW: we do so as
follows:-

"In answer to your letter. the blind lobsters to


which you refer lose their eyes during one of their
early molts. usually when changing from the first to
second larval stage. or from the second to th~ third.
They are about one half inch long at this time. The
cause for this eye loss is not known. but the entire
This sounds like an Indian Pholidota (i.e. a Scaly
eye stalk is lost. Only one out of several thousand
Anteater) that the fishermen had as a pet and which,
are victims of this deformity.
with its powerful claws. could indeed completely
"The eye-stalk of a normal lobster contains some
wre~k an inshore fishing net. The Indian Government,
very important glandular tissue. somewhat analagous
to the pituitary gland in higher animals. These glands. . in its generosity. provides financial relief (i. e. hard
cash) to fishermen for things such as torn nets. On
regulate a number of physiological functions in the
the other hand, the damnedest animals go SWimming
lobster. including pigmentation. metabolism. reproin the sea. What about the Proboscis Monkey found
ductive cycle and molting. Since the effect of the
paddling happily along, way out of sight of land.
gland on molting is inhibitory. its loss perqlits more
frequent molting and faster growth. Artificial removal
somewhat northeast of Borneo; rescued by a British
of the eye stalks has the same effect. but generally
patrol launch. and presented to the world by the now
kills the lobster after the ensuing molt. Naturally
defunct ~ Magazine on its cover.
eyeless lobsters. on the other hand. seem to live
vigorous and healthy lives for several additional
Of course. we're all still hoping for a scaly "seamonster" but. I fear me. this will turn out to be just
molts.
We have not yet had the opportunity to study these
another item like the Paraguayan "barking snake-dog"
aberrant lobsters adequately because of their rarity.
(see P. 14). Nevertheless. one must keep trying;
We do not know whether they will mature normally. or
otherwise something for real will get missed. and just
whether other defects also arising from their eyeless
because someone is. scared of ridicule. We are not.

18

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

"YESU" OF THE DRmDS


Thl~re has been a legend in the southwest peninsula (Somerset and Cornwall) of England; and southern
Ireland throughout recorded history that the Palestinian E!;sene whom we call "Jesus Christ" visited and
resided at a place, today called Glastonbury, in
northern Somerset. This is a matter of enormous

historical interest; and not only to theolpgians. Just


look it up 'in any encyclopedia.
Let us, however, leave the theological aspects of
this out of the picture for the moment and concentrate
on t he historical, with some reference to botanical
matters. It is our intention to find as much space as
we can in future issues of this journal to present as

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~'''.".

. . 6'0~t:

~'GODNev./

<"""""!"\ ..~~~'1'

. .. .. .BUItV
.. .
f".-.,...~ \.\ ..,.....~.

l.\,\:;_.r. . . . ; DORSET

The southwest peninsula of England with places having legendary or historical relations to visits by
Joseph of Arimathaea.

Believe it or not. you !!!!. eliminate most of the junk mail you receive; not all of it -and for pornographic
mail, ask your local post office for form NO.2~0 1 ("the form fo: getting off sexually-oriented advertising
lists"). As for ordinary junk mail, write to Miss Lynn Lee, Director of Consumer Relations, Direct Mail
AdvE!rtising Association, Inc., 230 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017. She will send you information
on their service, together with the necessary forms. There is no cost to you except for the postage required
to request thE' f'')rm and return it to her.
Possibly Apocryphal
SITU is, of course, strictly apolitical but, though we naturally deplore the violence in Ireland, we pass on
the following which was sent us by Sibley Morrill who got it from a chap named Henessy, who told of an
interview with a citizen of Belfast who downgraded all the reports of violence there. Finally the interviewer
asked him what kind of a job he had in Belfast since he knew so much about it. His response was "I'm a
tail-gunner on a milk wagon"
From "Welcomat", a center-city Philadelphia weekly (August 1972): "Things can always be worse. Thirty
years from now speeders will crash in the sky and fallon pedestrians."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. .

19

many findings on this story as we can, and especially


those suggested by our members. But for now let us
try to dispose of two corollary matters: first the
matter of the flowering thorn tree which is really the
basis for this whole legend.
In Glastonbury, County of Somerset, England, and
only there in all of western Europe, is there found a
thorn bush which-flowers twice a year, and almost
exactly on Christmas and the Christian Easter. The
story goes that these bushes in that area are all
descended from a staff left outside a hut by one
Joseph of Arimathaea, a prominent Hebraic and Roman
Official, who was also til! uncle of Christ and his
guardian, on one of his periodic visits to the tin
mines of Britain.
The so-called "thorn trees" constitute the genus
Crataegus (a member of the Rosaceae family) of which
there are at least 150 full species and now over 900
sub-species, though most of the latter were developed
in North America. The common species of Britain is
Crataegus oxyacantha -of which there are also
numerous very distinct natural sub-species. They are
all shrubs or small trees with, occasionally, an old
giant up to 45 feet. The original: indigenous distribution of this species was apparently from northwestern
Europe north to 62-~ 0 north latitude in Sweden; and
then east, via the sub-boreal belt, all the way to
farthest Siberia; and then back west again, north of
the mountains to Asia Minor and North Mrica. However, there is another species known as C. praecox
that flowers twice a year and which is indigenous to
the eastern Mediterranean, and thence east, ~ of
the distribution of the Q. oxyacantha group.
So why is there only one tiny place in western
Europe where this species has become implanted; and
why should seeds taken from it there (cross-bred or
otherwise) fail to perform?
Next, there can in no way be any doubt that the
Phoenicians and other Palestinians obtained a major
part of their supply of tin and other metals from this
area in the islands that the Greeks called the
Cassiterides. Therefore, who would wish to deny that
a leading metal trader, such as this Joseph of
Arim athaea, should have taken his adopted son, age
12, on a trip with him to the west? As to whether or
nor this adopted son happened to be the man we know
(historically) as Jesus Christ is of no concern to us
at the moment; but, since that person appears to have
been missing from Palestine from the age of 12 until
30 there is no reason to suppose that it was not he.
Finally, as you will see from this journal (Vol . 5,
No.1, p. 16), it has been suggested (by Colin
Renfrew) that the most ancient monotheistic theologi-

cal influences spread not from the eastern Mediterranean to the north and west but from the north and
west to the south and east. In other words, the late
neolithic, and especially the Celtic ecclesiastics
(often erroneously call the "Druids") were the first
monotheists and they could probably teach a Palestinian Essene more than could any other people whom he
could reach, a pure philosophy that he could develop
to apply to what Christians call his "Ministry", when
he went home. The fascinating thing is that the celts
had a Messiah belief, and this great philosopher and
teacher-to-be, was called by them YESU. Coincidence?
For now, we would just like to revive this fascinating legend, and introduce it to this country.
How many of you "exported" Celts have observations to make on this. Try an encyclopedia first; then
see if you have any "ancestors" still alive; re-read
the Bible; and then bombard us. There's more to this
legend than meets the eye.
A LING UISTIC SURPRISE
The National Enquirer (19 Nov. 1972) pointed out
that the editors of Webster's Third New International
Dictionary', state that the word with the most usages
in our language is SET. It can be used as a noun, a
verb, or an adjective, and over 200 such usages are
known for it.

METALLIC BALLS FROM HERE!


It has been truly said that people don't like their
mysteries solved; hence Mr. Alfred Hitchcock's
initial and enormous success. However, just wangle
an invitation to a Mystery Writers' Guild bash, and
ask around. As forteans, we run the risk of censorship
on both scores and we are very happy to do so. We
consider explaining the "unexplained" just as important as bringing them to your attention in the first
place, when oth~rs refuse to do so for one reason or
other. This is particularly the case when there has
obviously been some deliberate malintent along the
way.
In our July 1972 issue we gave quite a lot of
space to the matter of hollow metal balls of various
sizes that have been turning up on the surface of the
land and, in one case, on the bottom of a shallow
sea, for some years now in various parts of the world
and which have got the average intelligent newspaper
reader intrigued, while. it has sent all assorted

li2 Possible Doubt Whatever!


Some years ago the Manchester Guardian Weekly (as it then was), reprinted the following extract from
British Admiralty instructions: "It is necessary for technical reasons that these warheads should be stored
with the top at the bottom and the bottom at the top. In order that there may be no doubt which is the bottom
for storage purposes, it will be seen that the bottom of each head has been labelled with the word TOP."

20

species of kooks, and even the serious-minded


ufologi sts, into transports of speculation. Now, thank
goodnE!ss, we have at least one very straightforward
and simple, possible, explanation for some (most, if
not all.) of them. In our opinion, therefore, the onus
falls squarely upon the Press for having either
deliberately built this into a mystery or, alternatively,
for just plain not knowing their job.
We received a letter from the brother of one of our
members, who reads this journal regularly, and we
quote the essential part, in toto, with his kind permission:"I recall an article in the local papers about such
balls being discovered years ago -would guess about
5-15 years ago; there was also an article at about
the same time in Aviation ~ I believe. One of
these articles, probably the ~. \Y.. one, included
photos of a couple of such spheres. One of these
spheres resembled the one in the photo in the Pursuit
article very closely in the photographs as well as
the dE!scription. These spheres are gas bottles that
are used to hold helium (and maybe other gases) under
very high pressure for use in controlling the direction
of thrust of rocket engines. They are made of various
alloys and are very strong so that they can contain
tremendous pressures. They come in various sizes.
They are carried on virtually all rockets which are
used 1;0 launch satellites and re-entry experiments;
they are part of the upper stages of launch vehicles
which go into orbit with their payloads. They are
part of the tremendous amount of 'space junk' in
orbit about the earth. Many of these vehicles are
parts of military reconnaissance satellites which are
in low earth orbits which decay very rapidly. These
spheres and some other parts of these vehicles are
often not burned up when they re-enter the atmosphere
at 17,000 m.p.h. due to their shape and high surfacearea-to-weight ratio. Parts of fuel tanks up to 10 feet
long have been found. In the case of the sphere in the
photo .in Pursuit the hole was melted by heat of reentry because there was already a break in the surface
of the sphere at that point; namely, the outlet valve
for the pressurized gas it contained. When these
spheres were first discovered, they were a three-day
wonder, until someone recognized what they were."
So, until such time as one is unlucky enough to be
hit by a ten-foot tank re-entering at its own leisure

we may save space for other things in our still limited


number of pages.

MORE ON MERCURY ENGINES


In our issue of July 1972 when discussing possible
motive power sources for flying machines devised by
the Ancients we once again touched upon'this curious
matter of the Pre- Aryan Indian so-called "Mercury
Engines". How th~y derived their motive power (if
they ever existed) would probably ne,ver be discovered by us.
The following statement is taken directly from
the U.S. Department of Commerce's Marine Fisheries
~, of the 5th October 1972, Vol. 34, No. 9-10,
p. 70. It is credited to the Japan Economic Journal
-, ---'
for the 1st Aug ust 1972.
"A model undersea craft propelled by electromagnetically created jets of water will be tested in
September. The I-meter-Iong model test craft weighs
90 kilograms. It was built by t'he Electro-technical
Laboratory of the Japan Agency of Industrial Science
and Technology. If it works, the new craft should
make undersea operations much safer and easier
because it would eliminate the hazards of propellerdriven submarines. At great depths, h,eavy water
pressure mak es it difficult In maintain the air tightness of the propeller shaft's bearing section. Also,
steering is difficult due to heavy propeller vibrations.
"The laboratory has applied the principle of
movements of any liquid in a magnetic field in a right
angle to the field when an electric current is applied.
It is using mercury [emphasis ours] as the basic
moving liquid because it is far more conductive
(earlier test with seawater failed) and will allow for
miniaturization. The power system involves a, "Ushaped" container of mercury surrounded by a magnet.
It is connected to storage cells and a square-shaped
input/output piping system extending from the motor's
core. Alternating currents will cause the mercury to
move in different ways. This will cause seawater
inside the motor to move. This movement will be
regulated by a system of valves propelling the vessel
in desired direction."
We have written asking for whatever furth'er technical information might be available and this (if any is
forthcoming) will be passed on to you.

DEPARTMENT OF lLOOSE ENDS

In our July 1972 issue we reported further on a


mysterious bell that rang regularly at (we use this
word advisedly) the home of the Bentley family in
stone, England, and stated that our correspondent in
England had promised to try to find out from the
Bentleys just what did happen. Repeated pleas for
their side of the story have gone unanswered. Our

informant notes that they are presumably "fed up with


the whole affair -or they may have moved, of course,
though in such cases the Post Office usu:ally returns
mail marked 'gone away'. So it looks as though we
have come to the end of the line on the Stone bell
case. I hate having to admit defeat!" So do we, but
there would seem to be nothing further that can be
done in this case.

21

Notice to Foreign (including Canadian and Mexican) Members and Subscribers


Please make all remittances to SITU by either personal cheque or, preferably, by money order payable in
U.S. dollars. Do not send cash unless you can send U.S. dollars; foreign currency poses monumental problems
for our local bank.
Once again, please remember that donations to SITU -but not dues- are deductible for income tax purposes.

MEMBERS'FORUM
Does anyone know the whereabouts, or in fact
anything about the American Investigating Museum?
We cannot find this listed in anyof our directories and
are most interested in locating it if it still exists,
since it is reported that at least one, if not several,
"giant skeletons" were sent there.
One of our members is interested in learning about
the Coando Effect; we have searched encyclopaedias
(technical and general), dictionaries, textbooks,
and every other source we could think of, to no avail.
Can one of our members give us a reference on this
that we can send this gentleman?
As noted some time ago, member 1152 has been
working on an apparent relationship between magnetic
storms and various fortean phenomena. He reports
that he has consulted eleven specialists and has
been given considerable encouragement and help.,
the latter in the form of letters of introduction to
other specialists who should be able to assist him.
He has also been asked to write an article on his
preliminary findings for the Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research. An unhappy sign of
the state of science in this country is the warning
from six of the consultants that he should "suppress
or soft-pedal the Poltergeist: it can only damage your
credibility" .
Work on Charles Fort's notes is progressing most
satisfactorily and we have a letter from Mr. Paul R.
Rugen, Keeper of Manuscripts at the New York
Public Library stating that "you may count on our
continued efforts to facilitate I[ theJ work in any way
possible within the limits of our organization." Many
of Fort's notes were published in Doubt, the journal
of the Fortean Society, and our member finds that he
disagrees with Tiffany Thayer's interpretations in a
significant number of cases. When the job is completed (last report, some 4000 of an estimated 66,000
3x5 file cards had been finished), at least a third
party, if not a fourth, will be called in to act as
"referee". The last stage in this truly monumental
undertaking will be to check the original sources
cited by Fort to make certain that he did not 'goof'.
It is not possible even to estimate the time that will
be required to finish transcribing the notes onto
cards, but we will keep you informed on progress on
this project.

On a more personal basis, does anyone know of a


brand of table salt that is pure salt? (If you think
yours is, you had better check the label; the only
brand available to us locally also contains sodium
silico aluminate and yellow prussiate of soda!) And
you should be cautioned: do not use table salt to
make up eyewash solution ifTt contains anything
other than good old NaCI -get the bottled USP salt
solution from your druggi st.
Once aiain, please call us at least one week in
advance if you wish to visit our HQ. We regret that
our telephone has been erratic during the past few
months -the telephone company has put in all new
phones and jacks in the house and is currently working on the outside cable which has taken a terrible
beating from ice storms during the past two winters
(and again in late 1972). If our telephone rings and
you get no answer, call the operator in Belvidere,
N.J.; she will be able to t ell you whether it is in
service or not -when the cable breaks, you will hear
our telephone ringing; we won't.
We long ago lost one of our "fun pieces" but have
just now dug UP a date on it. It appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer on or about the 12th October
1966 in a oolumn entitled "The Philadelphia Lawyer".
We will be eternally grateful if one of our Philadelphia
members will dig this out for us (the Public Library
has a file on microfilm) and send us a copy. This
particular item was known as the "Dishrag caper".
PAPERS AVAILABLE IN XEROX FORM FROM SITU
SITU does not sell books, but we do have a small
supply of the following papers and journals (aside
from back issues of Pursuit). We regret that due to
rapidly rising postal costs, we must charge separately for postage; the first and third class postage given
applies to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; the third
figure is the third class rate to all other foreign
countries.
"The Two Gravitational Fields and Gravitational
Waves Propagation" by John Carstoiu, $1.50 plus
postage: 1st cl. 24ft; 3rd c1. 12; foreign 14.
"Gravitation
and Electromagnetism-Tentative
Synthesis and Applications" by John Carstoiu, $1.50
plus 24; 12; 14.

22

"An Experiment in Dowsing" by Ivan T. Sanderson,


$1.50 plus 24; 12; 14.
"The Fitzgerald Report" by Robert J. Durant,
$2.00 plus 40; 20; 26.
"Ueber den Bau der Nester von Atta cephalotes L.
und Atta 5exdens L. (Hym. formicidae)" by Gerold
Stahl!l and D. C. Geijskes, $4.50 plus 56: 28ct: 26/t.

"Acarus Crossi" -free in U.S. with stamped "selfaddressed envelope; "foreign, send reply coupon.
"Journal of the Interplanetary Exploration Society,
Vol. I, No.3 (December 1961). contains articles on
ancient space travel, plus Ivan T. Sanderson's
"Non-cuvierian Cataclysms". $3.00 plus 48; 24ct;
26.

Anyone interested in miniaturized reproductions of Pursuit -i.e. microfiche or microfilm- should write to
Univl3rsity Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106.

BOOK REVIEWS

by Marion L. Fawcett
James Robert Enterline. Viking America: The ~ Qrossings '!!!E Their Legacy. With an EPilogue by Thor
Heyerdahl. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. 1972. $6.95.
This is a splendid book and wholeheartedly recommended to all forteans, as it pulls the plljl-tform out
from under still another bunch of disbelievers. It is subtitled "The Norse Crossings and Their Legacy".
Would that the two titles could have been reversed because there never were any people called the
"Vi.kings" - they were Norsemen, or better Nordmanni, but they did "go a-viking" which was roughly
equivalent to those of our people who were once admonished to "Go West, Young Man". Another "sad thing
could not, of course, have been avoided due to all that all of us have been told -and also all wrong. That
is the prettily designed Norse longship on the jacket. The Norse went raiding all around Europ~ in these
shallow-draught, low-freeboard, sleek, clinker-built rowing boats, but they never went a-viking in them.
Fo!" this they used the Roundboat, the deep-draught Nordskip; but then: of course, those aren't "so pretty
or ~IO romantic.
The great value of this book is that it is, as far as I know, the first attempt to at least make a start on
the history of the Norse from the end of the "viking" period (circa 1100 A.D.) to 1500 A.D. It unfortunately
does not go nearly far enough into this; but the author, being a relatively young man, has to "guard his
reputation.
However, this concern is not a valid reason for his having lagged so far behind on another part of his
historical research. This is the opening part, on the origin of the Norse. It is true enough that they constitutE!d one lot of emigrating west-central Asiatics, but Mr. Enterline's assignment of them to the "Germanic
hordes" is more than a little suspect. Indeed, Vautaan (Wotan, Wodin, Odin) led his tribes to the Baltic
and on into Scandinavia, circa 400 A.D., whence they spilled outwards again 500 years later, and both
eae,t and west; but even this otherwise apparently careful scholar Mr. Enterline has, like almo'st all the
others, overlooked the one basic fact about the whole Norse affair. This is the people who were there
whEm the 'Norse' arrived.
Mr. Enterline's Norse (and everybody else's "Vikings") were a bunch of landlubbers and couldn't even
get across the Skagerrack without the help of the dark-haired, narrow-headed, blue-eyed left-overs from what
we call Neolithic times, and who were indigenous to the west European Atlantic fringe. Their "head god"
wal; Thor -riding his reindeer (goat) with his stone axe (gavel); and doing the ship-building and piloting.
Whon the Norse ran out of land in their Viks (bays) and wanted to go boating, these ancient Celts taught
them how -and both Longships and Roundboats- and taught them how to sail and how to row. These were
the people who brought the Norse a-viking. Hence all the trouble in this, and everybody else's books,
about grapes, wine, Vinland, et al., and all the independent-minded non-Norse pilots who'd been coming
here for centuries; and all of whose names, you will note, start off with Thor. An alert, and bow, to Mr.
Thor Heyerdahl!
For all these queries, as I sald at the outset of my review, this is a damned good book and well worth
the $6.95 charged for it if you are truly interested in the realities of history as a hobby. It at least
starts to fill in another slot in s aid history.

23

And, just as a challenge: Do you think


Great Lakes?

th~

Norse got to Oklahoma up the Mississippi - or south via the


Ivan T. Sanderson

The Record: Found on the Elevator, 205 W.

~7

(New York City), 11 February 1969.

This recording has been advertised in the Village Voice and may still be advertised therein. The "explanation" which accompanies it is as follows:
"The process by which this recording reached the place where it was found is not yet fully understood.
Its authenticity as a so-called 'artifact' from a future time is also under serious question. Nevertheless it is
currently being examined by a group of responsible investigators [un-namedl] to determine its validity, as well
as to clarify the meaning of its contents and to suggest possible applications for the information contained
therein.
"Preliminary estimates place the time and location of its origin as approximately 100 to 125 years from
the present, recorded somewhere in the area of northern New Jersey.
"No attempt has been made to edit or clarify the recording. It Is presented here exactly as found, complete
in its original form. *
"[Their footnote] *The source disc itself is 8Z inches in diameter, made of a very thin, rigid plastic
material (with no label or center hole), and with an optimal playing speed of approximately 20 revolutions per
minute. This reproduction has been made on a ten-inch disc at 33 1/ 3 rpm so as to be playable on homp.
phonographs. "
We obtained a copy and have played it for a number of persons, including professional radio engineers.
Frankly, not one of us can figure out how anyone came to the conclusion that it takes place in the future, let
alone at an even remotely specific date; and we found much of it virtually unintelligible. Apart from some
jargon -which would be child's play for any science fiction writer- there is really nothing about the recording that warrants spending any money on it at all. Someone is pre!'!umably giggling all the way to the bank,
since it is the type of thing that sounds as if it ought to be investigated. We consider it to be a hoax and
unless someone comes up with much more definite information on its origin propose to forget it altogether.

The Self-Publishing Writer (A Quarterly Journal for Writers), 547 Howard street, San Francisco, CA 94105;
subscription rate $7.50 a year, $2 a single copy.
A number of our members are authors or would-be authors, and this new journal (Vol. 1, No. 1 is dated
October 1972) edited by Sibley S. Morrill may be of interest to them. It contains both general articles and
specific and practical 'instructions' on the process of publishing books independently.

John Wallace Spencer..Limbo of the Lost. 1969. $1.95 plus 25 postage and handling, from Phillips Publishing Co., P. O. Box 141, We stfielcr.-MAOi 085.
For those who are fanatics on the subject of the so-called Bermuda Triangle, this book is an excellent
"seed-catalogue" of events in that specific area. The author does mention the "Devil's Sea" off Japan and,
rather oddly, adds a section on Blackbeard the Pirate (Edward Teach) and -heaven knows why!- in Chapter
8 (entitled "Possible Explanation and Latest Losses") a feature "Do Sea Serpents Really Exist? (Loch Ness
Monsters) - FEATURE". What this has to do with the rest of the book I do not know, but it's there. The copy
we have is the fourth printing of the book and contains reports of disappearances as late as 1971.

Eric Frank Russell.

World Mysteries. New York: Roy Publishers. 1957.

We do not know whether t his book is still in print, and it has been our practice to review only new books
dealing with forte an a. However, we will from time to time bring to your attention books which should be
read by all forteans. Eric Frank Russell is probably best known as a science-fiction writer (Wasp, etc.) and
is also one of the few sci-fi writers who will have anything to do with forteana. Oddly enough, most sci-fi
writers take a dim view of forteana and have been known to foam at the mouth at the very mention of things

24

which are much less "far out" than the stories they concoct. (Robert Heinlein is a definite exception to this
'rule'.) In Great World Mysteries Mr. Russell examines a number of famous cases in most pragmatic fashion
and !:omes iiiiWith the only truly sensible suggestion concerning the Mary Celeste (not the Marie C.) that we
have ever come across. This is r"eported on page 5 of this issue and will, we hope, stop the interminable
ramblings about that (to us) much over-rated case. The rest of his book is worth reading too. It inCludes both
a bibliographY and an index.

Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, Editors. UFO's-4 Scientific Debate. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press. (Scheduled for publication, 2 February 1973). $12.50. (Also London: Cornell University Press. I.5.65
net)
This is the printed transcription of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, held in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 26th-27th December, 1969,
until now available only on tape from the AAA8. The Editors state that it is a "Slightly compressed version
of thE! fifteen invited talks and the discussion that followed", and it is also indicated that some authors have
"considerably revised" their papers. Without comparing the book word for word with the tapes (in some places
difficult to hear because of 'static'), it is impossible to say how much or what kind of revision has taken
plaCE!, but my impression is that most of it has been of the legitimate kind.
The Editors have added a comment here and there, and have provided both an Introduction and an Addendum which I shall deal with later. The Introduction details the history of the Symposium -there were those
who ,rigorously opposed it (even to the extent of writing to the Vice-President of the United states "to demand
that he put a stop to it!)- and Drs. Sagan and Page make it quite clear why those who did favour it felt that
the AAAS should present as unbiased a program as possible on a subject of such considerable interest to
the public. They also single out Walter Orr Roberts, then President of the Association, for his :"steadfast
courage", in concert with others, in "beating down the opposition". They note that "We believe that organiza.tions like the AAAS have a major obligation to arrange for confrontations [presentation of "observ:ations and
some of t he speculations generated by a critical examination of the evidence-the traditional scientific
method"] on precisely those science-related subjects that catch the public eye". Quite naturally, the papers
presented here vary both in viewpoint and in 'literary' quality. Lester Grinspoon'~ paper (with Alan D.
Persky) is probably the worst, though the "funniest" -he is a psychiatrist and apparently decided that UFOs
are (whatever they really are) representations of the human breast (saucer-shaped) or phallic symbo.s ("cigarShapE!d"); this elicited giggles from the audience and a later aside from Carl Sagan: "Drs. Grinspoon and
Pers1:y may be interested to hear that the vehicles in the UFO literature described as 'mother ships' are the
ones that are cigar-shaped, and I shudder In think what that means for their interpretation."
This book is refreshingly free of reports of "sightings", though a few are included as examples, and
certaini.} deserves a place in any library, personal or public, that makes any pretense of containing a wellrounded selection of books on ufology.
As for the Addendum mentioned previously: This first reports briefly on some of the more pertinent
questions asked the panel at the Symposium, and then prints a letter Signed by Thornton Page on behalf of
twelve of the participants and addressed to the Secretary of the Air Force. The letter was written because
there were rumours that the Air Force would not preserve the files kept by Project Blue Book. ~he answer
they received was an undated, unsigned form letter from the Secretary's office, which simply reported that
Blue Book had been closed and its files transferred to the Air Force Archives. Thornton Page telephoned the
Secretary's office and received a letter (signed this time, and dated the 13 Jan 1970) stating tha~"bona fide
researchers and news media representatives will be granted access to the records upon application to HQ
USAF' (SAFOI), The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 20330." Later in 1970, the late James McDonald, after some
difficulty, was able to see some PBB files at Maxwell Air Force Base, but only those he specifically asked
for in advance -and he had to wait for copies to be made in which all names were deleted; as noted, "scarcely cOllvenient for any serious study."
There is an index, and it is quite good.
If your local bookstore does not have copies, you may order directly from the Cornell University Press,
124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, NY 14850; or 2/4 Brook st., London W1Y "1AA, England.

Dr. John R. Napier's book entitled Bigfoot, The Yeti and Sasquatch ill Myth and Reality has been published by Jonathan Cape of London (L2.95) and is scheduled for publication by E. P. Dutton & Co. of New York
in Mfllch 1973.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
*President (elected for 5 years)
*First Vice-President (life)
*Second Vice-President (life)
*Secretary (life)
*Treasurer (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)

Hans Stefan Santesson


Ivan T. Sanderson
Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Adolph L. Heuer. Jr.
Daniel F. Manning
Robert C. Warth
Mark A. Hall

*Trustees in accordance with the laws of the State of New Jersey


Legal Counsel
Accountant & Auditor

Judge John C. stritehoff. Jr.


Thelma K. Yohe
EXECUTIVE BOARD

Director
Deputy'Director
Executive Secretary
Technical Director
Technical Consultant
Mass Media
Establishment

Ivan T. Sanderson
Mark A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert C. Warth
Robert J. Durant
Walter J. McGraw
Adolph L. Heuer. Jr.
EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor and Publisher


Managing Editor
Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor

Hans Stefan Santesson


Ivan T. Sanderson
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman. Department of Anthropology. and Director. Paleo-Indian Institute. Eastern
'New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician. Georgian Academy of Science. Palaeobiological Institute; University of TbUsi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director. Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. Philadelphia.
(Mentalogy)
.
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill -' Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director. Li~dheimer Astronomical Research Center. Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology. Institute of GeophYSics. U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics. Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology. Rutgers University. Newark. New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology. Department of Archaeology. University of Alberta. Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology. Emeritus. Harvard UniverSity. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology. Queen Elizabeth College. University of London. (Physical
Anthropolo gy)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - President. Roth Research-Animal Care. Inc Washington. D. C. (Ethology)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head. Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture. Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwar'z - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center. Cedar
Grove. New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman. Department of Anthropology. Drew University. Madison. New
Jersey. (Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer. U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany. Drew University. Madison. New Jersey.
(Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY. 37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON. NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

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SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 6, NO.2

APRIL, 1973

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia, New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board Qf Trustees, in accordance with
the laws ofthe state of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President, elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board,
consisting of the five Trustees, and four other members elected for one year t!!nns. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board, listed on the inside back cover of this publication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally, our society is counselled
by a number of promin-;;;t;cientists, as also iisted on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.
PARTICIPATION

Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of J:anuary to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of, that year
gratis. The annual subscription is U.S. $10, which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year, as well as access to the society's library and files, through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone. and without membership benefits) is $5, including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed, on a reciprocal basis. to other societies and institutions.)
The Society contracts-- with individuals. and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees)- on those who are adjudged to have made an 'outstanding contribution to the aims of the SOciety.
'
NOTICES

In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-complt;!tion. as yet. of additional living quarters,
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our fUes.
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of me~bers who,
as a result of the simple lack of facilities, as 1) now. cannot be properly accomodated.
The SOciety is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further. the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views. and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.
PUBLICATIONS

The Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on socity affairs
to members. The SOciety further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects, and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July. 1965. until the end of March 1968. the Society issued only
a newsletter. on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were. however. entitled PURSUIT-vol. 1, No.3 and No.4. dated June and september. 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2. No. 1, PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January. April. July, and October. Back issues. some
available only as xerox copies. are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these sho~ld request
an order form.

Vol. 6. No, 2
April. 1973
INk

...- " . ,

Y'+;W

Mt M _ _

" , __ i.J.>: SiWfW'i . , ' i i ie a+< IW

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


Managing Editor:
Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Mark A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS
In M~l!IOriQIII-Ivan T. Sanderson, by Sabina W. Sanderson
Editorial: The Sensible Breakthrough At Last, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Ufology: A Possible Alien Space Probe
Chaos "!It Confusion
Eagle Requiem, by Col. Stanley W. Tyler
Unnatural Darkness
Who's Down There?
Weighing the Soul
Spook Lights
Physics
The Coanda Effect
Astronomy
Saturn's Rings
Geology
Has the Earth Shifted?
Erupting Rocks
Biology
More New Cats?, by Ivan T. Sanderson
Current Search and Research of ABSMs
Beware an All~ged 'Bigfoot' Skeleton
Florid!l's Wild Wildlife
Nomeus - A Fish that Disappears, by Craig Phillips
-Horrors from the Mesozoic, by Mark A. Hall
Anthropology
The J uls~!1d Ceramic Collection in Acam baro, Mexico
Kirkbride's WlJll and the Great Wall of Peru
A Special Notice to Our Members
Translating ChlJrles Fort's Notes, by Carl J. Pabst
Department of Loose Ends
Book Reviews

26
27

28
29
29
30
30
31

32
32
33
33
3S

36
37
37
38

40
41

43
4S

46
47
48

SOciety for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1973

26

IN MEMORIAM -

IV AN T. SANDERSON

30-31 January 1911 to 19-20 February 1973

From letters we have received, it is clear that


many of you may not yet have heard that Ivan T.
Sanderson died of cancer on the 19th of February,
1973. It was perhaps like Ivan to have an uncertain
date of birth and death. He popped out on the 30th of
January, took one horrified look and popped back in;
he was hauled out with forceps after midnight. And,
actulI.lly, he died in his sleep on the night of. the 19th
of February, but he was not officially pronounced
dead" until after midnight. I understand, though I was
sparE!d seeing it, that one obituary gave the impression
that he was "found dead at his home". For those of
his 'fans' and friends who may have seen this and
been distressed by- it, Ivan died in his sleep, in his
own bed, and I held his hand until the end. It was the
way he wanted to go and, t hough it has been a
grievous blow to me and to all those who knew him,
it was in fact a blessing. He was found to have cancer
shortly after his first wife, Alma, was discovered to
have it. He underwent several major operations in
1971 and for many months thereafter seemed to be on

Ivan and Sabina Sanderson.


Photo taken by Frank Brown, Blue Ridge studios.
Blairstown, N. J. January 1973.

the road to recovery. with the cancer under control.


In January 1972 Alma died of cancer of the brain. It
was a soul-searing experience for both Ivan and me.
and perhaps from that came our 'emotional' love for
each other. We had always been very close intellectually. So we were married in May of ~972 and for a
time Ivan became almost his old self agllin. In September he was involved in a minor auto accident and
although no one was physically injured. Ivan was
was never quite the same again. Late in 1972 he was
hospitalized for several weeks for dou1!le pneumonia
and before he had fully recovered from that he was
hit by the "London flu". The combin~ion was too
much for him. Also, since September 1972 he had been
in constant pain and. of course. it was his right
shoulder which was affected. Eventually it became
impossible for him to type and. finally. impossible to
write more than a page or so in longhafi(~ per day. and
he had to resort to recording on tape. Some of this will
appear in Pursuit as we have time to transcribe it.
His mind was clear till the end. but the' pain and the
frustration were taking their toll, and so death came
as a blessed relief.
A very old friend who had come to our wedding
wrote me that "I am much less shocked by Ivan's
death than I would have been had he :not, on your
wedding day, told me he had cancer .... He also added
something you no doubt will deem typical: 'There's so
much to do I haven't time to be bo:thered about
cancer'... This was Ivan's attitude, but in fact he
fought the cancer in every way he could: and allowed
his doctors to use him as a human guinef!. pig. He left
his body to medical science, hoping thereby perhaps
to contribute to the general fight against cancer. And
he specifically forbade any type of funeral or 'gloomy'
ceremony after his death, asking only that those of
us left behind, carryon. Carryon we will.
It is 'perhaps the greatest tribute to Ivlan that many
of the cards and letters I have received have come
from people who had never met Ivan; th~y knew him
from his books. his radio and TV sho'Vs, and they
felt his death as a personal loss. I wish I could
acknowledge personally all the letters I have received
from you, our members, but I cannot -there are too
many- and would ask that you accept this as my
thanks for your concern and good wishes.
I realize that I have said nothing of w.hat Ivan did
during his lifetime. This is in part because I don't
know where to begin. Ivan had started work on his
autobiography and pad four different outlines; even he
was puzzled as to how to go about it. A :friend wrote
that "a pal phoned out here to tell me he'd seen the
news in the Paris Edition of the Herald Tribune. A
three line head, Associated Press, well displayed,
and seventeen lines. God! What lay between those
seventeen lines: but I guess Ivan wrote the thing him-

27

self and left all the meat out of his fabulous life since
1911 on this otherwise, largely, boring earth. t laughed. I think you know what I mean." Yes, I do know.
Ivan, in seventeen lines! Ivan had, for the benefit of
publishers and radio & TV people, mimeographed
"Biographical Notes"; seventeen lines gets you as
far as the word "Chronology", and that starts with the
year 1918. I will not attempt here even an outline
of Ivan's life. Hopefully, in the years to come, I will
be able to do Ivan justice in a series of books. I
cannot now even try to describe his character. Those
who met Ivan will have happy memories of time spent
and things done together. and these memories they
will have to cherish for the rest of their lives. For

those who had not met him. I should like to quote


from still another letter:
"And when we talked about it I said that there
were empty people and full people. When an empty
person dies, we feel extra sad because that person is
so totally gone. But when a full person dies, there is
another, deeply human happiness mixed with the sadness, because the full person has left us so much to
remember. Ivan. was the fullest person I will ever
know. He was one of those pivotal persons. He entered my life one day "and my life pivoted. He had much
to give, and he gave of himself to so many of us.
What he ~ is gone. but; what he !ll9 is not."
Sabina W. Sanderson.

EDITORIAL

THE SENSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH AT LAST


We've been plugging away at this for some twenty years without. of course. the slightest hope of an
assist. But then. realism is not appreciated!
Now, however, comes the following from. of all outlets, Science ~ (which is backed in part by the
AAAS and is the most distinguished "popular" weekly on the progress of science and technology in this
countr;r.) And we quote, from page 88 of their issue of the 10th of February. 1973 (Vol. 103, No. 6):1"Parapsychology might be paraphysics: The parapsychology controversy has usually focused on the
existence of extrasensory perception and related intangible phenomena. But that may be a moot question.
A questionnaire on parapsychology conducted by the British Publication NEW SCIENTIST show s that
only three percent of nearly 1.500 responding readers (the majority of whom are working scientists or
technologists) consider ESP an impossibility. The rest hold it to be an established fact or a likely possibility.
"While most respondents hold ESP to be a legitimate area for scientific study, only 30 percent feel that
the parapsychologists are attacking the problem in the right way. Only 20 percent feel that it falls within
the prOvince of academic psychology. Quite a few, says the magazine in its Jan. 25 issue. suggested that
paraphysics might be a more satisfactory word to employ. Accepting the existence of ESP. most respondents
said it is now time to get on with finding out how i~ works."
Funny thing is that. as Science ~ says, this bit was started by the equally erudite British journal
The New Scientist which, while having almost as official" credentials. has approached the same field
~ the" journalistic point of view and, being British. tends ~o be a bit more flippant. In other words.
caveat American reader!
ACtually, it was that publication which started this whole thing off in their issue of the 23 November
1972. They had an editorial on the subject and then a full-page questionnaire. The point they did not make
was the place of psychologists in this whole business. That they left to the readers.
Apparently, from the above-quoted piece from Science News, the general run of those who "are working
scientists or technologists" agreed with us (i.e. SITU) that psychology has nothing to do with the business.
In fact. as the Russians have been saying for years now (see PsYchic Discoveries Behind ~ Iwn
Curtain by Shiela Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Prentice-Hall, 1970), it is in most cases, simply a para
(i. e. "like") normal physical business.
-I still think that J. B. Rhine started a "great thing"; but that "psychology" bit has put us back one
hundrai years. Ethology or even behaviourism perhaps. But let us now leave it to the technologists.
Ivan T. Sanderson.
Editor's Note: The above editorial was the last that Ivan T. Sanderson wrote for Pursuit. He felt, perhaps
more strongly than anyone else, that "ESP" and all those 'phenomena' popularly lumped with so-called
ESP should be divorced from the field of Intangibles, and studied from the standpo"int of physics or even
chemistry. There is more and more evidence accumulating that these abilities -"clairvoyance", "mental

28

telepathy", "precognition" and the like- all have a physical basis. It is, in fact, high time that we stop
trying to find out about them by using a "spiritual" method of attack. We may not yet "have the in!?truments
needed to detect and define the workings of what we call the "mind", but this shOUld be the direction of
our I!fforts.
S.W.S.

UFOLOGY
A POSSIBLE ALIEN SP ACE PROBE
Whitt follows is not strictly ufology and should
better come under the heading "Cosmology". However,
becauBe of the long and sometimes vehement argument
concerning the origin of UFOs -where do they come
from?-- it seems legitimate to include this extraordina"ry report here.
Malcolm Balfour, writing in the National Enquirer
of the 18th March 1973, reports that the British Interplanetary Society "has just begun an attempt ... to make
contact with an alien space probe they believe may
be circ:ling t he Earth, in the sarne orbit as the moon."
The B_LS. is a highly respected organization and includes some of Britain's top astronomers among its
members; this goes a long way toward taking their
announcement out of the science fiction class and
certainly separates them from the 'kooks'. The basis
for their attempt to "talk" with the probe by way of
superpowerful radio transmitters is a discovery made
recently by a Scottish astronomer, Duncan Lunan,
presidEmt of the Scottish Association for Technology
and Research in Astronautics.
B'ack in the 1920s Norwegian, Dutch, and French
radio rl~se!llchers picked up some very curious echoes
from" space. The normal echo bounces back from the
iono~phere in 1/7th of a second, and they apparently
got plenty of these. But they also got a second set of
echoes "which carne back after various periods of
delay from 3 to 15 seconds long. This suggested that
the signals came from an object well beyond the
ionosphere -at least as far as the moon." Lunan
studied all the delayed echoes that had been recorded
and decided that they might constitute some kind of
intelligent signal. He told the National Enguirer:
"I recalled that in 1968, the distinguished American" astronomer, Prof. R. N. Bracewell of stanford
University in California, predicted that a probe trying
to contact us might attempt to send us a map of the
star" constellations. I therefore made a graph of the
delayed echoes which showed the various periods of
delay as dots in various positions on the graph paper.
To iny a~tonishment, the dots made up a map of an
easily-recognized constellation -the constellation of
Boote~, in the northern sky .... In all, I plotted six
star maps. All the reference lines point to a star called Epsilon Bootes in that constellation -103 light
years from Earth. That is the area from which the
probe would have originated. It

We are not competent to assess Lunan's star maps,


but they have been endorsed by the technical manager
of the computer division of the British electronic firm
E_M_I. which is providing the equipment (something a
firm of that size would be unlikely to do unless they
were conyinced of the validity of the experiment), by
Terence Nonweiler, professor of aerodyna,mics at the
University of Glasgow, and by Kenneth Gatland, vicepresident of B.LS. Also, Professor Bracewell at
Stanford has at least tacitly given them his approval.
It must be pointed out that they do ndt expect to
encounter any "little green men" but rather a highly
sophisticated computer which they hope to 'interrogate' at some length if their attempt to make contact
succeeds.
Interestingly enough, in the 14 December 1972
issue of the ~ Scientist, there is a short piece
entitled "Sentinels That May Wait in Space". In part
this reads as follows:
"Has the solar system been visited in the past? If
so, how often? G. V. Foster has made a straight
attempt at calculating this apparent imponderable. He
comes up with the staggering result that' there may
have been as many as 420 visitations to this region of
space since the birth of the Earth. This figure leads
him to say that sooner or later we shil.u 'almost
certainly' encounter artifacts of another ci\~ilization ...
Foster has kept the statistics simple to produce what
he admits is an 'idealistic model.' But the results
prompt deeper thought about the possible consequences. :poes the surface of the Moon or Mars bear
the footm~ks or relics of an alien expedition? Such
an expedition may well have left behind a marker to
commemorate "their visit-perhaps in orbit ,around the
largest planet, Jupiter... _ There could even, be a radio
transmitter at work in the solar system, beaming back
inforamtion-or a 'come and join me' call sign-to
civilizations circling distant stars .... "
The New Scientist will soon publish a paper by
Lunan on his preliminary work, and perhaps E-M.L
will .lind an answer to their question. If there is
another civilization capable of putting a device in
orbit around our Earth -and we do not know when this
was done..... they may have been up to other things as
well. But" even if the British Interplanetary Society
should succeed in contacting such a Civilization, this
would mit necessarily be "the" answer' to UFOs.
There stiil may bern any answers.

29

Editor's Note: There seems to be considerable


confusion as to exactly what the Interplanetary
Society is dOing about this. The London Sunda.y
Times of the 24th December 1972 Rtates that "The
iheOrY was discussed last week by the British

Interplanetary Society"; whereas the Zodiac News


service, on the 14th March 1973, announces that a
meeting is scheduled to take place on the 29th of
March. However, it is clear that they are definitely
interested.

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

EAGLE REQUIEM
by stanley W. Tyler, Col., USA, Ret. *
After reading the article "A Cat Conclave" in the
January 1973 issue of Pursuit I must report an impressive as well as startling event witnessed by
myself and my wife in southern Ethiopia in November
of 1963.
We had been stationed in Ethiopia during the period
1961 to 196.4 while I was on duty with the Military
Assistance Advisory Group, Addis Ababa. For recreation we had a small camp on Lake Awasu, south of
the city towards the Northern Frontier District of
Kenya. The lake abounded in fish and there was quite
a variety of wildlife in the area, but most impressive
of all were the huge Fish Eagles, whose whitefeathered heads made them almost duplicates of our
North American Bald Eagle.
This was a beautiful wilderness, broken only by
widely scattered native villages with their thatched
huts or "Tukuls". We carried firearms, but only. for
protection in the event a pair of prowling leopards or
a rampaging pig decided to try us out for size. Our
interest in nature is colored photography of wildlife to
capture their beauty in their normal pursuits.
One of our companions, not of our persuasion,
wanted a stuffed eagle for atrophy, and shot one. As
the eagle was too badly damaged to retrieve for mounting, he left it lying where it fell by the side of the
lake.
The next da.y, my wife decided to ride the horse we
had in camp, and I followed about one hundred yards
behind in our Land Rover with my gun handy in case
there were leopards on the prowl. As we proceeded
along the shore of the lake, we noticed about twenty
eagles circling above the spot where the dead eagle
lay. Lower and lower they came and alighted on the
ground. My wife carefully approached and then I saw
her raise her hand -our signal for something unusual.
I stopped the Land Rover and climbed onto the hood
(or "bonnet" as the British would sa.y). I adjusted my
binoculars and what I saw will always be etched in my
memory.
My wife was not more than twenty feet away from a
perfect circle of eagles formed around the dead eagle.

'*Those interested in Colonel Tyler's credentials


will find him listed in most standard biographical
reference works.

Their wings were outspread and they would move a


step or two in a clockwise direction after which they
bowed in unison. More' steps, another bow, which
continued for alinost ten minutes. My wife and I hardly
moved until, as if by common consent, the whole flock
took flight with a series of cries, circled the site
twice and flew away, leaving their dead comrade to the
jackals and hyaenas.
Unfortunately the distance was too great for my
camera to record this spectacular event, and although
we watched the area closely, they never returned to
their dead comrade. Call it instinct or COincidence, to
us.it appeared as nothing else than a ceremonial meeting of the eagles to bid farewell to a dead member of
their group. It was a stirring and, to some, unexplained
event.
UNNATURAL DARKNESS
.. All the news that's fit to print" very often does
not include things for which there is no 'neat' explanation. An example comes from one of our readers,
born in England but now resident in Canada.
"Sometime during the month of November (it must
have been November, that being the month for 'peasoupers' in England) 1925 [possibly 1924 but .!!2!
1926]. we were in school waiting for the bell to go so
that we could go home to lunch. Our school, a 200year-old house (said to have been visited 'bY Nell
Gwyn! and containing an underground passage which
passed under the Thames, which was true) on the
Upper Mall. Hammersmith, London, England, had
tantalizing glimpses of the Thames from its front
windows. I confess I was sitting chewing my pen and
watChing some rowboats going by, so I sawall that
was to be seen, which wasn't much. It was about
11:45 a.m. when a yellow glow started in the sky and
I thought 'F.og!!' Gradually it got darker and darker
and about 11:50 a.m. it suddenly went pitch black,
but not as if it were normal darkness because it was
so thick with fog that we were told that if it didn't
lift soon we'd just have to wait it out. This lasted
until about 11:59 a. m. when the whole thing disappeared in a flash and we were able to leave school
on time. I was curious enough to wonder if anything
would be in the paper about it, but nothing was
mentioned at all."
London "pea-soupers" can be pretty incredible but
it certainly is not usual for one to result in "pitch
.....

",.

30

black- within five minutes and then vanish in an


instant! We have in our files a number of similar
occurrences and can only say that when an explanation was given, it was pretty feeble. Don't tell us that
it was blown in by wind; fog doesn't form unless the
wind is light or calm (at least it is not 'supposed' to),
and is most common in the early morning and late
evening. We do not have an explanation but we do not
doubt our correspondent's story -it must have been
most impressive to have remained so clearly in her
mind for over forty years. And WP- will be grateful if
other of our members who have experienced similar
events will write to us about them.

ed while the net was being lowered and at small depth.


strange. The cable which carried the core ,sampler into
the deep also broke, also at about five hundred meters.
Same thing happened with the dredge. Three devices
lost during one station! This was the first such occurrence in more than twenty years of work and over
five thousand stations! When the broken 'cables were
lifted on deck. the perturbed oceanologists found a
strange Sight: the ends of cables were frayed and each
one had a two meter long segment near the end polished to a fine gleam. As if they were 'cut with an
enormous file. And the pilot whales were merrily
poking their snouts out of the water. Coul,d they have
done it? I doubt it. They haven't the equipment for
such mischief. Sharks? Perhaps. Sword' fish or its
close relatives? Possibly

WHO'S DOWN THERE?


We are indebted to Christopher Bird for sending to
us a translation of extracts from an article in the
January 1973 issue of the Soviet magazine Khimiya i
~ (Chemistry and Life). This was entitled "Let
Us Lellve Some Room for Mysteries and was written
by Candidate of Geographical Science I. Belousov who
is familiar with but not entirely convinced by Ivan T.
Sanderson's book Invisible Residents. (It should be
pointed out that all of Mr. Sanderson's books should
be read with a close eye for qualifying words.) In the
course of discussing the "vile vortices", Mr. Belousov
records the following curious story:
..... All day long on the first of September, and then
second of September of 1968 the ship was accompanied
by pilot whales (Globicephalus mel as) -appealing big
dolphins with a blunt nose, like the bottom of a bottle.
This was in the South-Eastern part of the Pacific
Ocean, not far from the coast of South America, during
the fourth voyage of the scientific research vessel
Academic Kurchatov. During an oceanographic station,
in the presence of the curious dolphins, we lowered
overboa.rd a series of scientific instruments attached
to thick steel cables, including nets for plankton,
dredges and bores for extracting core samples. According to their function, these were supposed to
reach a certain horimn [i.e. level] or the bottom of the
ocean (there some lIve kilometers deep), obtain
samples and return.
"The winches were manned by experienced operators and all proceeded as usual. Then happened the
incomprehensible. When the net went down five
hundred meters, the cable shifted off to a side and
then .sa,gged -the net had broken off. It does happen
that "'the cables part, but almost always during the
lifting, from an increase of tension; but here it happen-

But we don't believe he believes that any more


than we do. Swordfish have been known to impale
boats through rather incredible thicknesses of wood
and even metal but nothing has ever been said to
suggest that they polish two-meter-long segments of
steel cable. Mr. Belousov notes that "We have decided
that the most romantic solution was to write this off
to the account of the famous sea serpent .. (sic). There
are accounts of giant fish hooks having been straightened out by something down there, and the ,frayed ends
of the cable could (watch the qualifying word) have
been chewed through. But what, again, of a polished
segment two meters (roughly 79 inches) long? Explanations please

WEIGHING THE SOUL


A Dr. Nils-Olof Jacobson has published a book
entitled Life After Death, as reported in the San
Francisco-ch.roDicl'e Of'tiie 19 December 1972. The
major point of interest to us is his statement that the
human 'soul' weighs 21 grams -about ~ of an ounce.
He placed the beds of terminally ill patients on extremely sensitive scales and noted that at the exact
time of death the needle on the scale dropped 21 grams.
This is not the first time ,that such an' experiment
has been performed. In 1906 Dr. Duncan MacDougall
of the Massachusetts General Hqspital studied six
patients and reported his findings in the Journal of
the American Society for Physical Research in May
1907. The scales used by him were accurate to within
1/10th of an ounce, and he chose patients suffering
from diseases that end in profound exhaustion (i.e.
tuberculosis) so that there was little or no muscular
movement that might cause the scale to 'move. The

Jacques Monod, Nobel Laureate


From the New Scientist, 12 Oct. 1972: "Sometimes I feel I'd like to write a book that would say the
truth about a few things. Few books are really truthful. Truth is so dangerous that I wonder whether it
should be done -but it's a temptation.

31

patient~

were observed -and weighed continuously


for a period of hours before death- and both final exhalation of air from the lungs and loss of weight by
evaporation were taken into account and found to be
negligible. (It is not clear whether Dr. Jacobson included these in his calculations or not.) Of the six
cases reported by Dr. MacDougall. two were ruled out
by him as inconclusive (interference by persons not
in sympathy with his work) and another because the
patient died too soon after being placed in this special
bed to permit critical adjustment of the scales. One
'valid' case was a patient dying of tuberculosis.
"Patient was under observation for three hours and
40 minutes before death . He lost weight slowly at
the rate of one ounce per hour. due to evaporation of
moisture in sweat. During all three hours and 40
minutes. I kept the beam end (of the scales) slightly
above balance near the top limiting bar in order to
make the test most decisive if it should come. At the
end of three hours and 40 minutes he expired. and
suddenly. coincident with death. the beam end dropped
with an audible stroke. hitting against the lower
limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The
loss was ascertained to be % of an ounce."
Dr. Jacobson's book was published in 1972. Dr.
MacDougall's article in 1907; and both come up with
the same figure.

A discussion of what is meant by the "soul" (or


whatever term may please you) is outside SITU's
sphere of interests. but when there is physical evidence -and of course we will want many more such
studies before reaching any final conclusions- that
'something' that ill! weight leaves the human (or any
other) body at death. it becomes another of the socalled "psychic" phenomena which are more and more
shifting into our bailiwick of the tangible "Unexplaineds".

SPOOK LIGHTS
Lights of unexplained ongm that frequent one
place seem to be common in this country. We presently know of locations in over half of the fifty states
where from one to several globes of light the size of
auto headlights reportedly appear. sway or move
about. always remaining distant from any observers.
These seem to be traditional "spook lights", this
name being the most popular and appropriate when
taken from spook" as a verb meaning "to haunt; inhabit or appear in or to as a ghost or specter". While
stories of departed persons come back to haunt an
area are sometimes local'ly considered to account for
such lights (and these stories soould be made part of
any permanent record). we think some tangible phenomena that are little known or simply unknown are
responsible. Famous examples of these lights are the
"Brown Mountain Lights" in North Carolina and the
"Tri-State Spook Light" reported near the point where
Kansas. Missouri. and Oklahoma meet. While numerous
persons have variously explained these away. their
explanations do not satisfy us; and no one has been
busy trying even to explain away the lights in Alabama. Texas. North Dakota. Iowa, and so on. These
have been ignored.
Mysteriously re-occurring lights have, in fact. long
been known in countries' allover the world. and we
are interested in all of them. We will shortly be investigating one such light as thoroughly as posslble
and will then offer guidance to any members who will
similarly investigate lights in locations near them.
This will be a long-term research project. and we ask
that our readers write to us about any local (1) reports
of lights, (2) of unknown origin. (3) said to re-occur
(4) in the same locality. This includes "swP,mp fire".
glows on rocks or near the ground, and anything else
that fits these four conditions. This phenomenon may
encompass several mysteries. but only the combination of search and re-search will eventually provide
us with any solutions.

Little Wooden Airplanes


We have little further to report on this. but a note from the Soaring Society of America. Inc.. concerning
a particular type of glider. ended with the statement "Many of us have wondered why gliders were not
invented millenia ago. since there is nothing inherent in the machine which requires a modern tec,hnology
to produce."

Lightning Strikes Twice


From the Winnipeg Free Press (23 Feb. 1973). datelined Salisbury. Rhodesia (AP) _" An African farm
worker was killed by lightning near Headlands. A later bolt struck a truck removing the body. but no one
else was injured."

--.--

-----

32

III. PHYSICS
THE GOANDA EFFECT
In "Members' Forum" in the January 1973 issue of
Pursuit we asked for references on the Coanda effect
for onl~ of our members. We have since received other
requests for information as well as references. For
the benefit of any other members who may be interested, we list here what information we have.
From y!!! Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, third
edition, Princeton, New Jersey: COANDA EFFECT.
The tendency of a jet of gas to follow the wall contour
when discharged adjacent to a surface even when
that surface curves away from the jet discharge axis
is known as the Coanda effect.
.
"The effect may be either beneficial or detrimental..
In a slotted flap, the tendency of the flow to follow
the upper surface of the flap, even when considerably
deflected, contributes to the increased lift; in bellymountE!d jet engines. the tendency of the exhaust is
to follow the bottom fuselage contour. causing glow
problem s affecting the tail surfaces."
From Member 944: Actually. it's the COANDA
effect [we missed a typo there). after the Roumanian
scienti.st of that name. It all has to do with the
science of fluidics and fluidic amplifiers. A fluid
such i:l.S air or gas. or liquid, flowing close to a
SurfacE!. entrains molecules of slower moving fluid
nearer the surface to flow with it. thus lowering the
pressure near the surface. causing the entire flow
stream to be pushed over toward the surface or on it

by the now stronger ambient pressures. Coanda was a


brilliant man. and sorry to say, passed away only a
few months ago. He had a very long obit. in the New
~ ~, which listed all his numerous achievements along with some explanation of the effect bearing his name."
We do not have the exact date of the ~ article
but presumably it was in December 1972 or January
1973. Other references given us by Member 944 are as
follows:
Angrist:
"Fluid Control Dp.vices", Scientific
American, 211, No.6: 80. 1964.
Parker:
"Fluidics ... If, Bio-Med. Engineering, 2,
436, 1967.
Harry Walton: I!!!1 How and M!J: of 'Mechanical
Movements, N. Y. The Popular Science PubliShing
Co., 1968; 297 pp. illustrated by Ray Pioch.
And we are informed by one of our subscribers that
the original papers describing the Coanda effect are
as follows: "L'Effect Coanda" by A. Mitral. frQ.ceedings of the Fifth International Congress of
Applied Mechanics. 1938. In addition, W. E. Gray and
Hans Stern of the General Electric Co. wrote a series
of articles on Fluid Amplifiers in Control Engineering
in 1964. beginning with the February issue.
For those to whom this is all "Greek", the Coanda
effect is the reason why water (or tea or whatever)
drips back down the spout when you are .pouring. So
far as we know, there is no cure for it.

V.ASTRONOMY
SATUUN'S RINGS
Saturn's rings encircle that planet from about
90,000 to 140.000 kilometers out. It has long been the
majority opinion that the rings are thin (i. e. unsubstantial) and consist of ice crystals. dust particles,
or gas, or a combination of these. However, recent
findings indicate that this is not the case.
Dr. Richard M. Goldstein and George A. Morris Jr
radar a.stronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
PasadE!Da, California, accomplished the first successful radar probe of Saturn, the longest planetary radar
bounce yet attempted (Saturn is 700_ million miles
away). in December 1972 and January 1973, as reported in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune of the 4th March
1973. They-used NASA's 64-meter antenna at Goldstone 13tation in the Mojave Desert to make a dozen
tests during the two-month period. The roundtrip for
the radar beams took two hours and fifteen minutes.
and the results were not what was expected:

"We received much stronger bounceb~k signals


than we expected from such a distance. From our
radar results, the rings can not be made up of tiny ice
crystals, dust or gas. Our echoes indicate rough,
jagged sQrfaces, with solid material one meter in
diameter or larger. The Signals from the rings were
five times stronger than Venus would be at that size
and distance. The ring chunks certainly have to be
closely packed, although not too closely because
starlight has been seen shining through them. They
cannot be much smaller than one meter in si"ze and
may be larger. The rings must be considered an
extreme hazard to any spacecraft sent into or near the
rings ...
The exact composition of tne 'chunks' that make
up Saturn's rings is. of course, still in dou~t. Dr. Carl
Sagan was quoted in the ~ X2!! '!l!!Ul. of the 5th
M~l.rch 1973 as stating that earlier optical and near
infrared observations indicate that there is ice in the

-------,-

33

rings. He suggested that the rocky chunks might be


coated with "water frost" (as opposed to fr~zen ammonia or other compounds). i.e. "something between
icy moon!': and rocky asteroids".
NASA and the JPL plan to send a Mariner spacecraft past Jupiter and Saturn in 1977. If Messrs.
Goldstein and Morris are correct. and one assumes

that they probably know what they are talking about.


that splI.cecraft may have a far more difficult journey
than haa been anticipated. The average citizen has no
way of checking on pronouncements by astronomers.
but increasingly sophisticated instruments in the
hands of technicians should eventually give us some
definitive answers. whether me astronomers like them
or not.

VI. GEOLOGY

HAS THE EARTH SHIFTED?


Walter Sullivan. in the New York Times of the 28th
February 1973. presents a "popularized" account of a
theory put forward by G. S. Pawley of Edinburgh
University and N. Abrahamsen of Aahrus University
in Denmark. originally published in Science. Briefly.
these gentlemen point out that the sides of the Great
Pyramid of Cheops are oriented almost exactly north.
south. east. and west. but the structure as a whole is
twisted about four minutes of arc from true north
toward the west. This they consider to be too great a
deviation to be accidental in view of the extraordinary
precision with which the pyramid was built. They
point out that a distant reference point -i.e. a starwould have been needed by the surveyors and state
that "there is no way of aligning to a point just off
true north".
The spin-axis of the earth does shift very slowly
but. as currently understood. this shift is not considered adequate to explain the 'twist' in the pyramid.
The same is held to be true for the shifting of plates
of the Earth's crust. now believed to be pushing
Europe and North America apart while nudging Africa
into the South Atlantic. Hence we are left with the
question of just what did cause the pyramid to twist.
The nearby Chephren Pyramid. believed to have
been built at about the same time. is also slightly out
of alignment with true north. but apparently no other
Egyptian monuments show this deviation. Messrs.
Pawley and Abrahamsen suggest that megalithic
monuments elsewhere -in Britain am Brittany- and
such things as the Nazca Lines might be used to
determine whether the spin-axis of the Earth or its
geography has changed in some as yet unknown way.
The headlines on the newspaper articles we have

From Road

on this inevitably bring to mind Prof. Charles Hapgood's book Earth's Shifting 9:!!!!. now long out of
print. but brought UP to date and revised in his later
book ~ !3!h Q! ~ ~ (Chilton Books. 1970).
(READ IT!) In this Prof. Hapgood postulates periodic
shifts of the entire crust of the Earth (visualize an
orange skin sliding o.ver the fruit inside) to account
for many geological (and biological) mysteries and
paradoxes. His theory can hardly be called popular
but is nonetheless most intriguing. Also. it is not
really incompatible with other theories such as plateshifting. One need think only of slow erosion and
violent earthquakes to see that while some changes
in the earth's surface may be gradual. others may be
rapid and extreme in their results.
Whether the twisting of the pyramids and perhaps
other monuments will provide support for Prof. Hapgood's theory. only time and future studies will say.

ERUPTING ROCKS
One of our subscribers. who formerly had a farm
near Langley. B.C . Canada. sent us a letter from
which we quote the pertinent portions.
"I guess. at some time or other. we've all had to
'pick rocks'. and we've had our share of rock-picking.
My hUSband use~ to (and still does) say they seem to
grow out of the ground overnight and I used to agree
with him until I noticed something about our North
Field... We did very little rockpicking here. mainly
just enough to keep large rocks out of the way of the
mower. and the only time there seemed a great many
was when we'd plowed part of the field. We were there

Track (January 1973)

"Tourists were enjoying a sunny day at :Niagara Falls. Ontario. when their a ttention was suddenly
DIVERTED from the grandeur of the cataracts to an unoccupied car. parked near the Horseshoe Falls.
First the car's lights went on. then the lenses shattered. Then the horn began to blow. the engine started.
the car burst into flames and the windshield exploded. Firemen blamed the activity on a short-circuit."
All we can say is. Heaven defend us from short-circuits. If that was the true cause of the 'trouble'.

34

twelve years and gradually I began to notice that it


was possible at certain times of the year to walk on
that" field and find practically no large rocks (over 1~
to 2" In diameter) at all. Now. not finding them didn't
(and doesn't) worry me; it's what I found when they
~ there that's the puzzle. I can't remember why. but
one dilY I turned over one of these rocks and found
green grass underneath with only a slight dent in it.
I was so surprised that I began turning rocks over all
around me. There was only one that was held by the
earth and even that had whitish grass roots underneath
it. no bare earth; the rest ranged from fresh green
grass slightly dented (like the first) to grass turning
rusty brown and dying. just as if they [the rocks] were
not coming UP from below. but gOing down into the
earth."
-Mrs. M. notes that her husband "muttered something
about the cows kicking them out of the earth. even
though some years the cows hadn't been in that field!"
Unfortunately we cannot adequately reproduce the
color photographs sent as evidence of this peculiar
phenomenon; nor can we suggest any definite explanation. R.ocks are supposed to work their way gradually
toward the surface (this has happened at SITU headquarters) -which brings us to something else
On the 28th February 1973 the Associated Press
announced that 3D-ton rocks had "erupted" from a
previously smooth field on a farm south of Elk City,

Oklahoma. and did so. along with a lot of small rocks.


apparently "overnight". Allegedly the farmer had
pastured his cattle on this field. which lies along a
small creek. on the 16th of February. It is not clear
exactly when he returned to find that he had a patch
of boulders. but it was apparently either the 24th or
25th of February.
We received a large number of clippings on this.
including one from the Daily Oklahoman of the 1st
March which stated that the experts could not agree
on the cause and that "theories abound". In the meantime we had contacted Dr. Robert o ..Fay of the.
Oklahoma Geological Survey. who had first been
placed in charge of the investigation by State officials.
and he sent us a copy of the official release as well
as answering our immediate questions.
The farm is owned by James Walter who has stated
that he first noticed rocks emerging from the earth
last fall (probably November 1972) but paid little
attention to them since he thought that the Shell Oil
Company. which has wells in the area. might be excavating for pipeline construction. The major "eruption". however. must have been fairly sudden and
was due to a "gas blow-out" (not an explosion) to
move some of the chunks of rock. The exact mechanism
is. at the time of writing. still under1ilvestigation.
Quoting in part from the press release from the
Oklahoma Geological Survey. "the center 'Of the site
is a shallow cavity paralleling the creek bed. 30 to
50 feet across and about 15 feet deep. The rocks
around the cavity are composed of red siltstone and
shale from the Doxey Shale. which crops out at the
surface . and have been raised and tilted from their
normal horizontal position to angles ranging from 28
to 78~ The largest blocks are 3 feet thick. uP to 20
feet high. and weigh an estimated 30 ions. Trees
along the creek have been uprooted and tilted. and
smaller chunks and blocks of siltstone have been
thrown as far as 75 feet from the cavity. In addition.
several fissures are evident. generally par,alleling the
creek. No faulting. however. was visible at'the surface
of the vicinity of the blowout."
Some of the fissures were more than a foot in width
and as lI1uch as 10 to 11 feet deep, and in some cases
they are apparently still growing; also, th~re are indications that the rocks are still emerging. The total
area affected measures about 230 feet long and 100
feet wide.
Initial investigations by Dr. Fay and others eliminated the possibility that all this was caused by "meteorite impact. volcanic emergence, an earthquake
along an existing fault. and an explosion caused by
natural gas leaking from a pipeline or from highpressure reservoirs at depth". Dr. Charles J. Mankin.
director of the O.G.S. stated that:
..... it appears likely that the rupture was a nonexplosive blowout caused by the buildup of lowpressure propane gas beneath a relativI:lJy~-weak spot
at the :surface. The source oLthe-gas was,probably a
well some 2,000 f~et-nofth-of the site at Shell Oil
Company's naturw" gas processing plant. where liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), mostly propane. is being

35

pumped into a small underground storage reservoir


which has been dissolved from a salt bed in the Blaine
Formation about 1,400 feet beneath the surface."
The Shell Oil Company cooperated fully and their
specialists reported to Dr. Fay that they had detected
gas in the area (date uncertain-circa 2-3 March) "from
analyses which indicated concentrations well above 2
percent-approaching combustible proportions. The gas
itself was composed of 85 percent propane." Inasmuch
as all nearby pipelines transport methane, this eliminates a pipeline break as the cause. However, a
storage cavity in Shell No. I-LPG Yelton well was
completed in January 1954 and was originally designed
to hold 16,000 barrels of liquid propane. Since that
date its capacity has increased to 17,500 barrels,
"presumably because of the further dissolution of salt
by the column of water beneath the propane .. Shell
has reported from its records no loss or significant
variation in pressure in the propane storage zone over
the past months."
Dr. Mankin said "This leads to the likelihood that
the well bore itself is leaking small but constant
amounts of propane to surrounding permeable rocks,
possibly because of an inadequate cement bond ad-

jacent to the well casing or of a break in the casing


itself." Dr. Fay told us that the 'leakage' could
amount to anything from 1/10th of a barrel per day to
150 barrels if the propane remained liquid. In a liquid
state the propane would 'migrate' horizontally through
the siltstone and sandstone beds, though moving upward along any fractures or joints in the rocks, and,
when sufficiently 'depressurized', turn to a gas and
blowout at the surface -in other words, finally give
a monumental "push" rather than exploding.
The site has been closed to visitors because of
the continued presence of gas -and an accumulation
of cigarette butts that indicate that sightseers are
unaware of the still present danger of
explosion;
and various State and company specialists are attempting to pinpoint the exact position of the leak and
to repair it.
Thus what appeared at first glance to be a rather
spectacular unexplained proves to have a mundane
explanation, though the phenomenon is rare, to say
the least; while the very unspectacular appearance of
rocks elsewhere is for the moment unexplained.
And if you are wondering, as we did, why Mr.
Walter did not hear anything, his "farm" is a large one
-his house is 6 miles from the pasture.

an

VII. BIOLOGY
MORE NEW CATS?
by Ivan T. Sanderson
During 1940 I made a trip alone from central
Sonora, via the west (i~e. southwest) coast of Mexico
with the lightest possible equipment. I was collecting
certain specified small mammals, all rodents, only
once collected before, Copies of the original papers
published on them I carried in a small bound book.
There were fifteen rats and one squirrel, This last
was, of course, a forest animal and had been reported
only once from the Pacific coast about 25 miles inland from the unnamed coast of the bay between San
BIas in the north and San Marcos in the south of the
State of Nayarit. The only way to get to this general
area -and I could not find out if there were any
villages there- was to walk.
I detrained at Tepic and after making some enquiries found a man with a donkey train who made
regular trips over a mountain road to a settlement
without, as far as I could ascertain, a name. The
Sierras of Nayarit are completely separated from
those of the adjoining ranges known collectively as
the Sierra Madre Occidentale and which contain,
further south, from Colima to Vera Cruz, the great
volcanicity of the 20th N. parallel, The vegetation is
considerably different and, as I learned, the fauna is
rather distinctly different, especially that which is
and has obviously for a long time been completely
separated from the other ranges.

In the "settlement" I was given quarters in a


cubicle at the end of an enormous sort of barracks or
warehouse. This was thatched-roofed and raised on an
eight-foot earthen platform which was some 220 by 75
fe.et. This building just stood in a rather dense
secondary jungle growth which had been assiduously
kept back all around and not permitted to seed in the
building or on the roof. There were no outbuildings. In
a month I failed to find out what this was for (except
as a "depot" for the donkey train) or who had built it.
The locals were friendly though few spoke Spanish,
but once I explained what I wanted two or three of
them said immediately that they knew the squirrel I
wanted and would get some for me. They did. In the
meantime they brought along all sorts of things for
sale and among these were quite a number of skins of
animals from about the size of a cat up. They were
simply sun-dried after being pegged, and had been
rolled up fur-side in. Not knowing of any animals
larger than deer, possibly peccary, puma, and jaguar,
I at first assumed these to be the hides of domesticated animals for sale. However, one of the largest had
the crudely-skinned feet hanging out, and on some of
these were very large, obviously retractile claws. The
skin was very tough but I got some men to unroll it
for me, fur-side up.
Of course I did not know how much it might have
been stretched (or shrunk) while drying, but it measured from nose-tip to the base of the tail just over 6
feet, the tail being only about 18 inches long. The
legs appeared to have been rather long compared to,

------

36

say, a house-cat or a puma. The paws were very big


and splayed and well furred. The claws were bright
yellow.
ThE! fur was soft below and rather firm on top and
was ba.sically various browns throughout, plain on the
head and shoulders but breaking up into light and dark
sort of wavy stripes on the flanks and upper legs. The
lower limbs were very dark brown almost to black. The
tail (wid here I am not sure of my memory) was I think
plain dark brown like the whole ridge of the spine.
The face was very short and there were no facial
markinl~s.

CURRENT SEARCH AND RESEARCH OF ABSMs


Unfortunately we do not have space in this issue to
do more than make these two brief announcements.
The Hominid creatures of our Northwest 'and Canada
that are widely known by the names "'Bigfoot" and
"Sasquatch" are now amply covered by two organizations: Peter Byrne's field outfit, to be addressed at
P. O. Box 632, The Dalles, Oregon 97058; and a
publication entitled Manimals Newsletter put out by
Jim McClarin of4717 Florin-Perkins Road, Sacramento,
California 95826. However, for over a century reports
of similar-appearing creatures have been turning uP
from allover the rest of this country (and Canada) and
down even to Florida. In fact, since one of our members, Loren E. Coleman, started investigating these
reports that sounded serious from those areas. starting
just ten years ago, they seem now to have been alleged from just about every state in the Union, including
Hawaii! Anyone having reports of such creatures outside the Pacific Northwest should please send them to
Mr. Coleman at 308 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois
61801. You will be reading more about these creatures
in future issues of Pursuit.

The most outstanding feature of this skin was that


the halrs from just behind the shoulders appeared to
grow forward and form a large ruff around the neck,
covering the ears from behind and above.
I was able to purchase another smaller specimen
but on which the ruff was just as pronounced. Its
stripings were lighter and sharper in outline but it
was in bad condition with the limbs folded in. 1- had
these and another animal of quite another species
careful:ty and tightly sewn up in several layers of old
sacking. This was about all I could carry and they
wanted a much greater price for these skins than for
any of the others -and there were dozens. I did not
know what I had got but I knew it was "'new" in all
The matter of the Yeti is at long last recelvlDg
respects.
proper attention in Nepal. A team of five Americans.
Eventually this collection and some others made
all of them professional biologists, set out in October
later were stored in the government jail in Belize,
1972 to do an ecological survey of the Arun Valley in
British Honduras, which was our real headquarters;
the northeastern part of that country. Th'eir work is
but thiEI was at sea-level and was completely flooded
sponsored by the Association for the Conservation of
for two days by a hurricane While we were away. By
Wildlife, based in Bangkok, Thailand. Before starting
the time my assistant got back there, everything that
out, they pointed out that "the Arun Valley is said by
was not in bottles was completely ruined, the skins
Sherpas to be the habitat of several large mammals
having been sodden for two or three weeks. What was
unknown: to science, including the famous Yeti."
saved went to the Field Museum in Chicago. These
In January of this year the group's joint leader and
skins were not worth sending.
zoologist, Jeffery McNeely, announced their support
I don't know what this large cat might have been
for the e-xistence of the Yeti. He said three plaster
but I sa.w several native-cured skins of animals in the
casts had been made one morning from a set of tracks
Grand Sierra that I know are "'not in the book". Without that passed as close as one foot from a tent where two
even a skin, however, any description is worthless. I
team members were sleeping soundly. The zoologist
saw- other skins, including another of these cats, for observed that "they seem to be the tracks of a primate,
sale in a sort of tourist store in the big market in
and monkeys (both langurs and macaques) have been
Colima, but the proprietor wanted tourist prices which
seen in the area. However, the footprints are conwere quite beyond me! Colima is at the south end of siderably larger than those of any monkey and are
the Nayarit mountain block. All I can say is that the much wider in relation to the length than are tracks of
number of skins of animals I did not know that I saw monkeys. It seems quite clear that the tracks belong
down the southwest side of Mexico and, later, on into to an animal which is still unknown to scie~ce." While
GuatemfLia and Nicaragua, was positively bewildering.
we have not seen photographs of the casts, McNeely's
Needless to say, if any of our members visit Mexico more detailed description of the track indicates the
-and particularly those with training in zoology- we
creature was indeed one of the rock-climbing pongids
hope they will at least pay a visit to the market in (i.e. ~!) that are known to us as Yeti. The casts
Colima. They may still have unknown cat skins for have been secured in safety lockers at the U. S.
sale.
. Embassy in Katmandu, Nepal's capital, until December

Magazine Was 'Had'

Those of you who saw the February 1973 issue of SAGA with the photograph of an animal alleged to
come from Mars, should take a peek at the January 1972 issue of Pursuit. The animal shown is plainly a
Tardigrade or "Bew Animalcule" (see Ivan T. Sanderson's book "Things" for further information.)

----.

....

------------------------~----------

37

1973 when the survey is completed. The team of


Americans continues to study plant and animal life in
the Arun Valley. and this now definite1:v includes at
least one animal that is "still unknown to science".

BEWARE AN ALLEGED 'BIGFOOT' SKELETON


There is an organization calling itself the "Wonders
of the World Museum" in Port Costa. California. Its
director is one Clayton Bailey. We do not know Mr.
Bailey personally. but some time ago we received a
newspaper clipping from a chap who wished to know
whether we felt there was any validity to the pronouncements made therein by said Mr. Bailey. Frankly. we were astonished that he felt it necessary to
ask. One of the "finds" made by Wonders of the World
was an enormous skeleton of a sea monster of some
sort; 'unfortunately' it was taken apart by beachcombers before the proper authorities could be notified. It was 'found' by a group of ceramics-hobbyists
who took with them 1.000 pounds of Georgia clay.
Another of this group's 'discoveries' was a
"comple~e ,skeleton of the North American ape-man
'Giganticus Erectus Gladstonii'" (named after its
discoverer. Dr. George Gladstone. one of Mr. Bailey's
associates). This is on display at the Wonders of the
World Museum. and we have seen a photograph of the
"skeleton". One of our members has viewed it in
person and states that it certainly is not composed of
bone and is probably either plastic or ceramic. In
view of Mr. Bailey's past history. we would vote for
clay though it is impossible to tell from the photograph. (We do not have permission to reproduce this.)
One must agree with the statement that Wonders of
the World is composed of amateur palaeontologists:
the skull most closely resembles a Halloween pumpkin. and words fail us when we come to the hands and
feet.
Astonishingly enough. we are informed that another
"skeleton" from the Wonders of the World Museum is
on permanent exhibit at the San Francisco Museum at
Van Ness and McAllister in San Francisco. We know
nothing of this museum or of what label they may

have put on this atrocity. but this is the kind of


thing that can set back serious search or even research.

FLORIDA'S WILD WILDLIFE


One of our interests is "out-of-place animals". i.e.
animals found in locations where they do not normally
exist. However. we will have to be exceedingly careful
in screening such cases in the future. The problem is
Florida. which has given up even trying to eliminate
the hoards of exotic animals which have established
themselves in southern Florida (and in some cases
all the way north into Georgia) and is concentrating
on keeping new ones out. An article in the San Gabriel
Valley Tribune of the 12th March 1973. byAP writer
Eric Sharp. listed some of the 'imports': giant toads.
African snails. armadillos. North American elk.
jaguars. electric eels. the walking catfish. blacktailed
jackrabbits. the jaguarundi. nutria, the canary-winged
parakeet, the Chinese mynah bird. the rose-winged
parrot. and even piranha fish.
Florida has relatively few native animals, and thus
has plenty of ecological niches where new animals
may fit in. Also, it is one of the major centers for the
importation of animals. and animals do escape from
cages on occasion -sometimes through carelessness
on the part of their 'keepers', sometimes apparently by
what may be called unconventional means (see the
article on Nomeus by Craig Phillips). Once loose in
Florida with its complex water system and extensive
swamp and forested areas. the animals have a very
good chance of surviving.
One animal that Mr. Sharp failed to' mention is the
Rhesus Monkey. Two packs of these monkeys. believed to number some 200 in all. are to be found along
the banks of the Silver River in north-central Florida.
They are descended from two pairs brought into the
area in the e"arly 1930s when a series of Tarzan films
were made there. Some of them live partly on handouts
from tourists and partly by foraging, but others are
believed to be totally self-sufficient. (Incidently. if
you visit Florida and happen to see these monkeys. do
!!2! try to feed them; they can be extremely dangerous.

A sign on a boarded-up building near downtown Portland. Oregon. reads "No Admittance - No Trespassing
- Survivors Will Be Prosecuted." The National Enquirer. which published a photograph of the sign. noted
that their reporter did not linger or try to find out how many survivors has been prosecuted!

From the Winnipeg Free Press. 21 Feb. 1973. date-lined Romeo. Mich. (AP) -"The Romeo school
board hit a snag while discussing the purchase of Rix new buses and federal guidelines for seat belt!"
Supervisor Chris Holmes said the requirement for three safety belts a seat is based on 'the measurement
of a 13 -inch rump per student' but 'many of the students surpass federal standards'."

38

particularly if you run out of food, and are perfectly


capabll~ of taking your arm off.):
While it may seem odd indeed to have monkeys
in the wild in Florida, we may one day have
chimpanzees and/or orangutans living on an island
off the coast of Georgia.. This, however, will be by
plan Bnd not by accident. The Yerkes Regional
PrimatE! center in Atlanta, Georgia, freed four chimpanzee8 on Bear Island during the summer of 1972 to
see whether they might be able to survive there. The
chimpanzees were not too happy at first but then
settled down and were seen to eat foliage, bugs,
crabs, and small rodents in addition to the monkey
chow taken them daily. We have no recent report on
whether they were able to tolerate winter weather on
the island, but the spokesman from Yerkes stated that
the experiment might last three years, depending on
the chimpanzees' condition. If they survive it, Yerkes
plans to experiment next with orangutans.: Both
animals are threatened with extinction in their native
habitats, and the idea generally is to establish a
protectE!d breeding colony. :
thrivin~:

The point is that there have been animals showing


up in most unlikely plaees, but with the advent of
Jet travel in particular, animal importers have been
able to bring in animals that could not be imported
before; and pet owners do sometimes simply turn loose
the mo:;t extraordinary "pets" (e.g. the piranhas in
Florida's canals). It has always been our practice to
check as thoroughly as we can on this possibility
when, for instance, flamingos turn up in a New England
backyard, but .the acclimatative abilities of animals
and a possible 'ordinary' explanation must, of course,
be always .kept in mind. :

NOMEU. - A FISH THAT DISAPPEARS


by Craig Phillips
This is the story of an unusual fish, Nomeus
gronovii, that lives for protection among the stinging
tentaclE!S of the Portuguese man-of-war along the
Florida coast, the Bahamas, and elsewhere in the
Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Unusual in its
own right for its remarkable form and habits, what is
particularly uncanny about this little fish is the fact
that captive specimens have sometimes disappeared
under (:ircumstances that are difficult to explain.
While none has ever actually vanished before my eyes,
on o~casion I have had them turn up missing, much to
my exasperation and bafflement, when they should
have bl!en there. The fact that on other occasions
they have not disappeared is scant consolation. :
The Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia pelagica) is
a large colonial coelenterate classified as a siphonophore and somewhat resembles but is not closely related to the jellyfish. ALthough it appears to be and
functions as a single individual, the Physalia is
actually a colony of ~losely joined individuals,

various members of which perform the individual


functions of feeding, digestion, stinging, reproduction, etc. Surmounting the colony is a'remarkable
air-filled structure known as the pneumatophore, or
float, beautifully colored blue and pink and translucent like a partially deflated toy balloon.: This
float is provided with a soft muscular sail, crimped at
the edges somewhat like a pie crust, by means of
which the Physalia is blown along by the wind. From
the underside of the colony trail the assorted feeding
and reproductive organs and other associated "spaghetti", as well as the trailing stinging tentacles
which when relaxed may extend many feet beneath
the colony .. : These tentacles, which resemble d:ark
blue strings, are lavishly provided with nematocysts
or sti~ging cells. The intensity and duration of the
stin& ..... is considerable (and has accounted for some
human deaths), which makes all the more remarkable
the fact that the six -to eight-inch Nomeus fish swims
among them constantly, apparently possessing some
chemical or physiological means for not triggering
off the sting (when dipped up in a net along with a
man-of-war, the Nomeus mayor may not get stung, and
those that do appear to die instantly, as do other
species of fish that chance to contact the tentacles). :
Nomeus are usually seen beneath the man-of-war
in small groups, and their average size is four inches
or less. The body of the fish is silvery-white with
large irregular blue blotches, and the back is solid
blue. The paired pelvic fins beneath the breast are
enlarged, recalling the appearance of a small flying
. fish (in the latter case, however, the wings" are the
pectoral fins) and the tail fin is enlarged and deeply
forked. The entire fish has a fragile and delicate
appearance, and when placed in an aquarium tank
away from the protection of the Physalia, is often
promptly attacked and devoured by fish of other
species.
It was during the early Fifties while taking marine
science courses at the University of Miami that I first
had an opportunity to observe numbers of Nomeus fish
in the wild ..It was my custom to spend my vacations
with Capt. Wm. B. Gray (now Director of Exhibits at
the Miami Seaquarium) aboard his boat assi!sting with
"the collection of fishes and other biological specimens in the Florida Keys and along the edge of the
Gulf stream. One daY as Gray and I were preparing for
a trip to the upper Keys, he mentioned that Marineland
(in Florida) was particularly d esirous o~ obtaining
sorre man-of-war fish for their small corridor tanks
and that we should be particularly on the lookout for
them this triP. He then told me a story I found hard to
believe.
Several times previously, Gray s aid, he had sent
Nomeus to Marineland aboard the truck, only to be
told that they were gone when the truck arrived. The
fish had been placed at first in a compartment containing other assorted and presumably innocuous small
fish, but, :realizing how vulnerable the Nomeus was,
Gray then placed several in a small .wooden cage
covered with fine screen and floated this in the compartment containing the other small fish. No trace of

39

them could be found on arrival, although the door of


the cage was still wired shut according to the Curator
at Marineland.
On the possible theory that the fish had died en
route and that their remains might have been "picked"
through the wire screen by the other fish, Gray decided
to try what seemed to be a foolproof system. The
Nomeus were again placed inside the screen cage,
and this cage then placed inside a larger one, likewise covered with fine screening. The wooden frames
prevented the respective screens from coming into
close contact, and both cages were again wired shut. "
However, on arrival no Nomeus or portions thereof
were to be found; and both cages were tightly closed
"Isn't that a mystery now?", Gray inquired of me. I
admitted that I had never heard of anything like it
before.
Several days later we were working the reefs off
Angelfish Creek north of Key Largo, when an easterly
wind had sprung up, blowing in a few Physalia from
the edge of the Gulf stream. Although we investigated
all of these that we could, none seemed to be accompanied "by Nomeus. However, near the end of the
day we pulled the skiff alongside a large man-of-war,
and as we approached, I saw four medium-sized fish
drifting in and out of its tentacles. With a quick sweep"
of a small hand net beneath the Physalia, 1 managed
to net all four fish at once without complicating
tentacle fragments, and deposited them in the forward
live-well of the skiff. We then left them there for the"
time being until the next morning when we would decide where to best place them for safe-keeDine:.
Lifting the lid on the live-well after breakfast, 1
was dismayed to find that all four fish had vanished
during the night without a trace! This was puzzling
indeed. After Gray and 1 talked and speculated for a
while we decided that what must have happened was
that the fish had died during the night, their bodies
had softened, and the pumping action caused by gentle
rocking of the skiff on the waves must have sucked
out their remains through the small holes used to
admit water in the floor of the live-well. Admittedly,
we were grasping at conjectural straws here (I know
of no other case of this having happened with aliy
other fish specimens, but at the time we couldn't
come UP with anything better).
This incident bothered me so much that 1 could
think of little else except .. those damned little disappearers" throughout the day. The Pbysalia were
thinning out now due to a change in the wind direction,
and those few that we saw were unaccompanied by
fish. The days went by rapidly-and without successbut after we had raised our last trap and were heading
the main boat back to our anchorage in Angelfish
Creek just before dusk, we Sighted a large, solitary
Physalia some distance away. Gray suggested that
we try our luck and we headed for the man-of-war
while I leaned over the bow with my hand net. Under
the large float was a solitary seven-inch Nomeus, the
largest individual 1 have seen before or since. It was
captured without difficulty, deposited in an empty
section of the live-well, and we headed back to the

dock with the skiff containing the Nomeus and other


specimens in tow.
In spite of our previous experience with the live
well we felt certain that this Nomeus was safe (at
least until after supper) due to his large size and excellent condition; besides, we had spent a long, hard
day and were welcoming an opportunity to relax for a
while. When at length we had finished our evening
meal and the sun had set, 1 climbed into the skiff and
raised the live-well lid, flashlight in hand. Our Nomeus
was nowhere to be seen. This was too much, I tiiOiiiiit.
but just as I was recovering from my initial shock, the
mystery in this case was abruptly solved. The livewell had contained another inhabitant -an eight-inch
Gulf toadfish (Opsanus beta), a stubby creature with a
capaciOUS mouth for swallowing things and a baggy
stomach in which to store them, resting against a
corner on the floor of the well, its dark coloration
rendering it almost invisible at the time -and forgotten by me. Noting ruefully that its belly was distended to its "full bagosity", I netted it and with my
fingers clearly felt the remains of the Nomeus closely
folded within.
Several months went by until another holiday period
permitted me to rejoin Gray on a trip to the Keys. 1
learned at this time that he had seen no Physalia
since our last trip, but was still anxious to fill the
standing order from Marineland. Luck was with us
once again. Shortly after our arrival at Angelfish
Creek we found a man-of-war accompanied by four
"Nomeus, which were netted and placed in the livewell "of the skiff. We returned to the main boat at noon
for lunch and, after noting with some relief that our
fish had net "ectoplasmatized" in the interval, I carefully netted them out and placed them in a two-gallon
glass "8.qu~rium which 1 set on the engine box in the
cabin where"we could observe them during our repast.
It was" at this point that Grll3' remembered having set
a trap near "the boat that morning, and suggested that
we pull it before lunch. Pulling and tending the trap
from the skiff took half an hour to complete -and
when we returned to the main boat we found the
aquarium empty!
Subsequent and thorough search of the cabin deck
revealed absolutely no trace of the fish (and no wet
marks), and besides, it seemed impossible that they
could have jumped out of the tank in the first place.
Since the screen door to the cabin had been left open
during our visit to the trap, we wondered if an enterprising seagull might have paid a visit in our absence.
However, we had seen nc gulls in the area that morning, and besides, it would have had to be a pretty bold
indi vidual to actually enter the cabin.
Later on Gray informed me that he had gotten some
to Marineland successfully, and I have since also
kept Nomeus successfully in aquaria where they
thrived without pulling any apportive cop-outs. And
so, here the matter rests -man-of-war fish disappear
and they don't! But there is a postscript to this story.
About a year after the last Nomeus incident, while
I was employed as a research aide at the University
of Miami Marine Laboratory (now the Rosenstiel
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences), one of

40

my associates walked into my office one da.v and


startled me with the question: "Sa.v, Craig, have you
ever heard of Portuguese man-of-war fish disappearing?" When I asked him for more details, he
told me that on the previous day (a Sunda.v), he and
his family were swimming at Crandon Park Beach on
Key Biscayne, where they caught some small Nomeus
in thl~ surf. These were taken home and placed in a
glass bowl on the mantle overnight. In the morning,
he said, they had vanished completely. and a thorough
search of the fireplace and the surrounding floor
failed to reveal the slightest trace of them!
Editor's Note: Several years ago I (SWS) set up two
small aquaria (with lids) on the windowsill in my
room. They were filled by the simple expedient of
dipping a bucket into our marsh. Included in the catch
were three baby Blue Gills. Two promptly disappeared.
The ~:eneral 'diagnosis' was that they had died and
had been eaten by the snails, etc. I was never convinced; and when the third Blue Gill did die, I left
him in the tank. After three weeks I tired of looking
at the corpse and removed it. Nomeus ma.v not be the
only fish that disappears.

"HORRORS" FROM THE MESOZOIC


by Mark A. Hall
Mysteries turn up to our delight in the most placid
surroundings, such as sky-lines found stretched over
suburban communities and stray cats that gather in
'solemn ritual in a Philadelphia back yard. The following "oddity" appears on North America's Great
Plains, crossed by well-traveled roads and historic
routes of travel, where the onl.v hint of this mystery
to a passerby may be the agitated waters of some
out-of-the-way pool.
Public attention was focused in the early 1920's
on Nebraska's Alkali Lake, on the map in the days
prior to the Dust Bowl period, in Cherry County (between King and the town . of Spade in Sheridan
County). After two years of complaints by residents
and visitors alike of some large animal in the lake.
local citizens determined to hunt it. This put the
matter into the newspapers; I found it reported in the
Minneapolis Journal for the 25th and 27th July 1923.
Fishing boats had ceased to go out on Alkali Lake
after startled fishermen saw one boat pitched into the
air and several days later the lacerated body of the
lon'e fisherman was recovered. The following incident
was rl~lated by J. A. Johnson, a resident of Hay
Springs, who saw the animal while with two friends
in the fall of .1922.
"We had camped a short distance from the lake in
the nh:ht before and all three of us arose early. We
started to walk around the lake, when suddenly coming
around a slight rise in the ground, we came upon this
animal,. nearly three fourths out of the water in the
shallows near the shore. We were less than 20 yards

from him and he saw us at the same time we came


upon him. He lifted his head, made a peculiar hissing
sound and disappeared. The animal was probably 40
feet long including tail, and the head. when raised in
alarm as w hen he saw us. In general appearance, the
animal was not unlike an alligator, except that the
head was stubbier and there seemed to be a projection
like a horn between the eyes and nostrils. The animal
was built much more heavily throughout than an alligator and was not at all sluggish in its actions. Its
color seemed a dull gray or brown, although it was
hardly light enough to distinguish color well." The
"monster" hunt dissolved in a dispute over leasing of
the lake and in ridicule from outside_
Now such an animal cannot appear overnight, and,
in fact, the local Amerinds (not further identified)
said there had always been such a creature known to
inhabit Alkali Lake. And elsewhere on the Great
Plains Amerinds have identified certain pools where
they are supposed to live. One anthropologist, Stanley
vestal, has recorded that what are known simply as
"water monsters" have a reptilian form and horns like
a buffalo. They are seen in pools, sinkholes, and
rivers. And the late-comers to the Plains have also
been seeing them. as one farmer in Brookings County.
South Dakota, said he was forced to take a ditch on
his tractor when one of these giants crossed his path
in 1934. This animal's track was later followed to
where it disappeared into Lake Campbell. And then
there are the reports of the "White River Monster" from
Arkansas that were discussed at length in the October
1971 (Vol. 4 No.4) issue of PURSUIT.
We can recall the huge crocodile proposed in
Bernard Heuvelmans' ~ the Wake <If the Sea-Serpents
to explain some accounts of "sea-serpents" in Atlantic
waters and even at high latitudes on occasion. Such a
"Marine Saurian" could enter our freshwater rivers.
And while North America's known alligators and
crocodiles are too small to account for the reported
giants, the continent's fossil record offers possibilities of additional survivors from the Mesozoic
Era. Prime among these is Phobosuchus or "Horror
Crocodile" (also called Deinosuchus) that ranks as
the largest known crocodile ever, having reached 50
feet in length. Its fossil remains have been found in
Texas and Montana. While this "Horror" is known to
have lived only into the Upper Cretaceous, 70 million
years ago, Gavialosuchus americanus, a crocodile
that may have reached 45 feet, inhabited the southeastern United states in the Pliocene Epoch, a few
million years ago. During the Paleocene there was
even a short-snouted alligator, Ceratosuchus, with
enlarged squamosal bones at the rear of its skull that
formed a pair of horns!
Which ancient reptile may account for recent reports I will not guess, but I do suggest that large
living crocodilians may have been overlooked in our
freshwater rivers' and lakes. We can all understand
how this could happen: the creatures appear where
they "ought not to be" and where no one has looked
for them!

41

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

THE JULSRUD CERAMIC COLLECTION


IN ACAMBARO, MEXICO
We have a file approximately two inches thick on
this most complicated subject, and the following
account constitutes, to the best of our ability, the
"bare bones".
Waldemar Julsrud was a German national, resident
at Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico, an educated man
and much interested in Amerindian archaeology in that
area. With a local priest he had, some time prior to
1945, uncovered a very important Tarascan site at
Chupicuaro not far from Acambaro. About 1945 he was
riding on horseback along a trail on the side of what
is called Bull Mountain on the outskirts of Acambaro
when he spotted a peculiar object. He dug it out and
found it to be a ceramic figurine totally different in
style from anything he knew. He asked the employee
who accompanied him at the time, one Odilon Tinajero
(present whereabouts unknown), to dig around and
bring to him any other similar figurines he could find,
which Sr. Tinajero did for years. The collection
numbers some 32,000 pieces, all currently stored in
Mr. Julsrud's former residence in Acambaro (he died
several years ago).
There are two m~or questions concerning this
collection: (1) is it genuine, or a fraud perpetrated on
Mr. Julsrud (his integrity and sincerity are attested
to by everyone who met him), and (2) how old are the
figurines? Neither is a simple question, and there is
disagreemert among those who have investigated
the collection and its origines) on even very minor
points (e.g., Prof. Charles Hapgood has stated emphatically" that Julsrud's son Carlos never signed
himself Carlos Fuenlabrada -but we have a letter
from Julsrud's son, dated the 3rd July 1948 and sign.
ed Carlos J. [ulsrud] Fuenlabrada).
Most archaeologists have, up to this time, branded
the collection a fraud and claimed that Odilon Tinajero made the figurines himself, aided by his family.
Their objections stem from the size of the collection,
all found within a few acres of ground, the condition
of the figurines, and the fact that some of these seem
to represent 'dinosaurs'. Prof. Hapgood has dealt with

most of this more than adequately in his booklet


entitled "Mystery in Acambaro" (available from the
author; address Winchester, New Hampshire; but no
price noted) but there still remain the question of the
'dino~aurs' and the age of the collection as a whole.
Ivan Sanderson and Wendell Skousen (a geologist
an"d mineralogist and a photographer of professional
standing) visited Mr. Julsrud in 1959 and examined
the collection very thoroughly. It was their conclusion
that there are seven types of material: 1) Crude
-small, solid, yellow, semibaked (and almost certainly modern); 2) Julsrud -from very small to one yard,
fully baked, no glaze, interior grey, surfacing to
yellow, brown, or reddish; many made in parts; none
moulded; 3) Grey-Black -mostly solid, some 'excavated', dry, unfinished, grey throughout, rough
surface; 4) Horny-Black -fine design with curved and
rounded incisions but no holes; hollow but not moulded; black with extremities turning to horn-color; fine
patina but not glazed; 5) very finest, beautiful designs,
formalized; angular incisions and designs with holes;
hollow and apparently all moulded; high polish but
not glazed; some solid plaques; 6) Samian-type -a
red, glazed, typical Greek sarnian-ware type; reddishbrown clay, bright golden to ochre-red finish; solid
(see below); 7) Imitation stone -dark gray, even
colored, solid, massive items, roughened to imitate
stone, and of very distinct Mayan type. Though Prof.
Hapgood recognizes that the figurines are made of
various types of clay, he lumps them all together as
the Julsrud COllection". In a sense this is perfectly
valid, but it makes the problem of dating the artefacts
more difficult, since it is not clear which specimens
were eventually dated by scientific techniques. We
shall return to this later.
The collection is, as noted, enormous, and the
variety of objects depicted can be broken down into
about twenty basic types, i.e. animals, humans,
humanoids, cooking utensils, etc. The "animals"
pose a great problem. Ivan Sanderson was a trained
zoologist and he stated that "there are practically
speaking NO figurines in the whole collection fl..e.
TYpe 2 or Julsrud] that represent either in detail or in
m~or features any known animals either living or
extinct, either realistically or in formalized manners

The Winnipeg ~ ~ of the 31st January 1973 reported a somewhat heated meeting with the chairman of the unemployment insurance commission. "'Why', asked William Skoreyko (PC-Edmonton East).
'does a computer advise a man who is 64 years of age that he is not eligible for benefits because he is
pregnant?' Mr. Cousineau (the chairman) laughingly conceded that the t}ommission's computers are not
infallible. He said that there was a case of a priest who received a similar notice."
Reported in Time, 8 June 1970: British research chemist David E. H. Jones managed to produce an
unridable bicycle. He commented "It seems a lot of tortuous effort to produce in the end a machine of
absolutely no utility whatsoever, but that sets me firmly in the mainstream of modern technology".

42

... In fact, with one exception [see later] the only


animflls that do coincide truthfully with any either
existi.ng or extinct (as reconstructed scientifically)
animflls are found in classes other than (2) the
Julsrud. Further, the number that are so found is
minute and amounted to only 27 in four days of close
search out of tens of thousands of items. All the
Julsrud-type animals are not only fabulous but are
made up of bits and pieces of known living animals."
Prof. Hapgood includes a number of photographs in
his booklet and 'identifies' a number of these animals; I must disagree with many of his identifications
(e.g. Plates 38 and 39 are stated to be armadillos;
I see no resemblance at all to that animal) and am
constrained to pOint out that many other illustrations
support Ivan Sanderson's statement. The reptiles
have I;he wrong kind of feet, their necks and tails are
grossly out of proportion to the body; human-types
have fins (or practically anything else) for hands;
one "horse" (also illustrated) has a beak and another
has EL long rather reptilian head, and the feet are
wrong on both. There are, it is true, quite a number of
obviollsly fantastic animals included in the collection
and these are easily picked out; it is the apparently
"realM' animElls that are a mishmash. So-called primitive man -allover the world- is 'notorious' for the
fidelit.y with which known animals are reproduced in
paintings, carvings, ceramics and the like: when such
'primitive' artists choose to let their imaginations run
riot, I;his is obvious, and is admitted freely by the
artist. At Acambaro we are asked to believe that
artists never bothered to notice what horses' heads
or feet look like. (Prof. Hapgood's insistence on
these being horses is apparently based on the discovery among Mr. Julsrud's collection of some teeth
definiU vely identified by George Gaylord Simpson,
the "dean" of palaermtology, as those of Eguus

conversidans owen, an extinct American horse. Prof.


Hapgood also found some objects, still partially
buried in a hillside, that appeared to be porous, very
decayed "bones"; these he took to Harold B. Anthony
at the American Museum of Natural Ilistory. He stated
that they were not the bones of any animEll alive today
and finally called them "earthy concretions".)
We come now to the appalling problem of dating
these artefacts. In 1968 Prof. Hapgood submitted
samples for carbon-14 dating to Isotopes Inc. in New
Jersey, the sample consisting of the broken'fragments
of one figurine. The date reported was 1640B.C., with
an attached cautionary note pointing out that if the
clay used to make the figurine included older organic
matter, the date could be' inaccurate. Two further
samples were sent for carbon-l4 analysis, this time
chosen from figurines that seemed not to include
'extra' carbonaceous material. Sample No. 2 yielded
a date circa 4530 B.C. and Sample No.3 circa 1110
B. C.
In 1969 three samples, two . from the Julsrud Collection and one sent by Charles Di Peso, (an archaeologist who had denounced the whole thing as a fraud).
and all representing "monsters", were tlilsted by the
thermoluminescence technique at the University of
Pennsylvania Museum. This test is based on the fact
that the quartz and feldspar particles present in clay
acquire a thermoluminescent glow from exposure to
rays passing through the earth's atmosphere. This
glow is lost when the clay is heated above 500 (other
sources say 400) degrees centigrade. Therefore, the
date of manufacture of any piece can be pinpointed by
measuring the amount of thermoluminescence reestablished in these particles after the piece was
fired. The pieces examined by the U. of P. Museum
all yielded dates in the range of 2400-2700 B. C.

\'

A sampling of figurines from the Julsrud Acambaro collection.

43

Our problem here is that we do not know which of


the seven types was analyzed. Of the collection as a
whole, 75-80% are of Type 2 (Julsrud); Type 1 is .... ery
scarce but contains a high proportion of known and
realistic animals -cats, dogs, rabbits; Type 3 is
similar in content to Type 2. Type 4 we shall deal
with in a moment. Type 5 seems to consist of a few
pieces only, a very formalized fish and some plaques,
one bearing an incised outline of a swan. Type 6; the
"samian-type- ware, is, according to Prof. Hapgood,
Tarascan (the suggestion that it resembles Greek
ceramics is most intriguing), and includes some birdshaped whistles, some humanoid plaques, and a
number of rather large, very 'dinosaurian' figures -but
these, while superficially like 'dinosaurs', are not
accurate representations of such. One has a typed
tag stuck on it saying "Diplodocus, but its hind "feet
are Theropod, its fore feet mammalian; it has external
ears, and its proportions are not those of that genus
of extinct reptiles.
Those who claim the collection is a fraud, point
out that the artist -and whoever did these was an
artist (or a group of artists)- could have obtained his
ideas from modern comic books, B-class movies,
science fiction, and the burgeoning assortment of
popular books on palaeontology. Possibly -if they
are all modern. But if the dates thus far obtained are
accurate (and the Pennsylvania Museum states that
their lab "stands on these dates for the Julsrud
material, whatever this means in terms of archaeological dating in Mexico, or in terms of fakes versus
authentic pieces), these pieces were made long
before such influences were available.
And then there is Type 4: "Horny-Black: very few
animals -a non-exaggerated item that could be anything, some perfectly legitimate formalized birds and
fish, and the one perfect extinct type. This last is
about four inches tall and three and one-half inches
long. It is perfectly made, smooth black in color, and
covered allover with wavy incisions that are bilaterally symmetrical and seem to indicate a sort of coloring as is found in snakes. It is the only specimen in
the whole collection that is exactly and precisely in
accord with a known reconstruction, and in every
proportion and detail even to small nostrils and the
number of toes. This is Brachiosaurus, known from
fossils from North America and East Mrica. (This is
shown on Plate 29 in Prof. Hapgood's booklet.) If
this particular figurine is ancient, the most probable
explanation would seem to be that the artist saw the
animal alive.
Whatever the final verdict may be, the Julsrud
Collection requires thorough investigation~ Though
some of the pieces may be modern copies or pure"
fakes and there are still many questions concerning
their origin, there is now enough evidence to convince
all but the most hardened sceptic that the Acambaro
site deserves attention.

KIRKBRIDE'S WALL AND THE GREAT WALL OF


PERU
In the October 1972 issue of Pursuit Sibley S.
Morrill reported on the mysterious walls found in the
Berkeley and Oakland (California) hills. One of our
English subscribers has sent us a clipping from the
Daily Telegraph of London, dated the 27th January
1973-the day on which she received her copy of our
October issue! It reads as follows:
"Sir Alec Kirkbride, at 75, one of the last surviving
British officers to fight in the Arab revolt with
Lawrence, has been telling me about the mystery of
the stone wall which runs for 20 miles at a distance
of about 12 miles from Petra in Jordan.
"Sir Alec, who was for many years British Resident in Transjordan, and ended his career as our
Ambassador in Libya, first spotted the curious wall
when he flew over it in a light aeroplane. He was so
interested that he returned to take a closer look from
horseback.

Damascus

Petra

Medain Salih

Red Sea

44

"'It was utterlY staggering,' he tells me, 'because


it had involved a tremendous amount of l'abour, being
about 10 ft wide and 2 ft tall. But it bore no relation
to any boundary or defensive position at all. It's just
a great jumble. '
"His own theory is that it was built by the Nabateans in the early Christian era, but he is far from
certain. Despite much research no one can explain it."
The Nabateans were an Arab people who occupied
the northwest comer of Arabia. Originally nomadic,
they monopolized the caravan trade and by 100 B.C.
held territory from Damascus In Medain Salih and down
to the Red Sea with the port of Elath. Their capital
was Petra.
The point is that Sir Alec, who certainlY knows the
area as well as anyone can, states flatly that this
wall is not a defensive or boundary wall. In fact,
its dimensions make it sound more like a road; but
the description suggests that it doesn't "go anywhere".
If all this is so, and our figures are correct, it means
that some group of (presumably demented) people
carefully piled up 2,112,000 cubic feet of rock for no
reason whatsoever. We would very much like to have a
.detailed map of thIs "wall" and the surrounding area,
preferably a topographic map, but so far have been
unable to obtain one. It. might provide a clue to the
purpose of such a structure that is not evident from
clo.se examination. One cannot seriously entertain the
the idea that people lugged stones around for the fun
of it, particularly in the inhospitable area around
Petra.

A very different wall was reported in the January


1932 issue of Popular Science Monthly. Unfortunately
we have only a Xerox copy of. this and have been informed by the publisher that "our record keeping does
not extend so far back that we could help you in your
search for information [on] and photos of Peru's 'Great
Wall'. Good luck." The brief story accompanying the
photos is as follows:
"First photographs of the amazing 'Great Wall of
Peru', discovered not long ago by the Shippee-Johnson
Expedition in South America, dispel all doubts that
this world's wonder actually exists.
"By foot and airplane, the two youthful American
explorers traced its course from its beginning, near
the seacoast town of Chimbote, for forty miles through
the Andes until it disappeared in a mass of mountain
peaks and ridges. Made of stones cem~nted with
adobe, the barricade rises at some points thirty feet
high. It is believed to have been erected at the dawn
of. the Christian era by the Chimus in a vain attempt
to protect their highly cultured civilization. Discovery

"Great Wall of Peru"


RedrawIl from aerial photo by Aerial Explorations, Inc.

*Mark Hall points out that there is a good reproduction


of this photograph opposite page 193 of Peter
Kolosimo's book Not gJ This World.

45

of the wall, resembling China's famous rampart, was


the climax of a trip in which the explorers came unscathed through an airplane wreck and a revolution."
Nothing is said about the width of the wall, but
from the reproduction of the aerial photograph which
we have it would appear to be fairly wide. On the
other hand, a photograph of Robert Shippee standing
next to a section of the wall gives the impression that
it is quite 'thin'. But, again, no details are given.
There are a number of magnificently engineered
roads in the Andes, and there are those who contend
that this "wall" is actually one of these roads. How-

ever, the aerial photograph shows two sections which


appear to go up 'mountainsides' at a really impossible
angle -worse than England's famous Porlock Hill (a
gradient of 1 in 4, if memory serves). This would
seem to preclude the idea that it is a road, and in
view of the topography of the Santa River area and
the manner in which this structure cuts across all the
valleys, it would seem that it was indeed built as a
defense against invaders from the south. The "wall"
in Jordan, on the basis of the admittedly sparse information we now have, may perhaps have been a road
built for the benefit of caravans travelling to Petra.
We will hope to report further on this.

The Dishrag Caper


Member /.1695 has presented us with a copy of thi~ item which we 'advertised' for in a previous issue
of Pursuit. It actually appeared in the Philadelphia Bulletin of the 4th October 1966, and is reprinted here
for your amusement.
"Dear Philadelphia Lawyer: I am a waitress in a very nice restaurant. A woman customer in here pOinted
to a fellow sitting at the counter and said she has friends who know him real good, and they all say he
was faking it in an Army hospital because he was afraid to go overseas, and although there was nothing
wrong with him, he was given a discharge.
"I am not very big, but I have a very strong temper and cannot stand men who are afraid of Army service.
I told him I do not serve draft dodgers and hit him in the face with a wet dishcloth, whereupon he stepped
behind the counter, picked up a blueberry pie and threw it in my face. The lady who related the crazy story
also got it in the face with a large lemon pie. Our 70-year-old cook heard all the yelling and threw a stewpot from the kitchen door, which hit nobody but went through the front window. The cook was then knocked
cold with a large pan of cheesecake.
"When the police arrived they informed us that the woman who told the story in the first place had spent
eight years at Byberry and had been released too soon, and also that the man she told it about had been
wounded in combat, had an excellent Army record, and gets a disability pension from the VA. The boss
made me pay for the pies and the window.
"Has he a legal right to do this? Of course I am sorry about it all, but I was simply trying to run the
place on a refined level. It is not my fault if deranged people come in here with cra?.y stories, is it?-M. W.
"No matter how pure your heart, nor how compelling your aspirations toward refinement, I must tell you
that you have no legal right to hit customers in the face with wet dishrags, even if the customers are draft
dodgers in fact. So, whether or not the demented lady's story was true, you were at fault, and under the
circumstances it is not unreasonable for the boss to ask you to pay. You may be working in the wrong
neighborhood. 1 know a few taverns where a girl can clout the customers -in a refined way- without being
fired, but they are all in p.xotic locations. such as Marseilles, Liverpool, and Gary, Indiana."

A SPECIAL NOTICE TO OUR MEMBERS

There have been those who have expressed ~oncern


that the Society might 'fold' with the death of Ivan
Sanderson. Please rest assured that this is not, and
will not be, the case. The purpose in founding the
Society was to preserve and continue the work begun
by Ivan T. Sanderson, and we now have the personnel
.
to do just that.
Mark A. Hall joined us as "resident st!!.ff" in
September of 1972 and quite frankly is largely re-

sponsible for our survival through that rather desperate


period. He was unanimously elected Acting Director
at a special meeting of the' Board on the 10th of March
-the "Acting" stems from a somewhat complicated
matter of policy that will have to be resolved by the
Board at its next regularly scheduled meeting. Prior
to joining us Mark Hall had served with the US Army
Security Agency as a Russian linguist with Top Secret
Clearance, travelled extensively in Europe, and

--~~--------

46

attendE!d the University of Minnesota where he majored


in phyBical anthropology. He does not remember when
he first became a fortean, but it was some time before
he joined SITU in 1968. He has taken over the bulk of
the office work and his name should be familiar to
many of you.
Robert C. Warth, "The Chemist" at Bendix, has for
many months been working on the reorganization of our
clip~ing files. He has come up regularly every other
weekend and started with those files most in need of
reclass.ifying. (Pasting up clippings he does at home,
and thE'se are up to date!) It is impossible to give any
accurat.e percentage value to the job done thus far, and
we must point out that it will never be possible to
achieVE! 100%. We are receiving an increasing number
of reports and in many cases the receipt of new information makes necessary an immediate reorganization
of old material. We should also like to emphasize that
talk of reorganizing should not be taken to mean that
our files are in a state of chaos; the majority are
already in good order -particularly those on such'
major topics as ABSMs, "Monsters" (sea, lake, and
land), c~ultural anthropology, etc. - though these will
be examined later to make certain that no extraneous
material has filtered in that should be filed elsewhere.
Carl J. Pabst is now working full-time on Charles

Fort's notes and has reaffirmed his intention to complete this monumental job. As of the time of writing
this, we hope for an article on Fort's notes in time for
inclusion in this issue.
We should also like to single out R. Martin (Marty)
Wolf who has given us a great deal of help -and
usually with such thankless jobs as typing' labels,
stuffing envelopes, and raking and mowing the lawn.
(If your copy of Pursuit is long in arriving, don't
blame us: blame the post office.)
We accepted with regret the resignation of Adolph
L. Heuer, Jr. from the Board at our January meeting.
He felt that personal responsibilities would make it
impossible for him to 'pull his weight' las a Board
member. However, he remains, in fact, as active as
ever. His major point has always been that there are
"unexplaineds in everyone's "back-yard:", and that
these should be investigated. Some may not be as
spectacular as a Loch Ness monster but they nevertheless deserve study. We would ask that you refer to the
"Elaboration of Our Interests" for suggestions on the
type of thing to look for. As always, please send us
any newspaper clippings, magazine articles, or personal reports that you think may be of interest. to us -and
don't ~ assume that someone else probably has
already sent us a copy.

Israel Zangwill (1864-1926): " .. Science as an interpreter of the mysteries of the Universe is a dismal
failure. "

TRANSLATING CHARLES FORT'S NOTES


by Carl J. Pabst

When the original Fortean Society was formed in


January 1931, one of their objectives was "to preserve
the notes, data and references assembled by Charles
Fort", and this they did (in the person of Tiffany
Thayer) though the Notes were stored in shoe boxes
until fairly recently. Mter Thayer's death his widow
presented the Notes to the New York Public Library,
and they have lain there ever since.
Thayer did publish a number of Fort's Notes in
Doubt, the journal of the Fortean Society, but merely
"scratched the surface." It is a monumental job; but
one tha.t I undertake with increasing enthusiasm despite the labor involved. As Tiffany Thayer remarked
in the fl.rst issue of ~ (page 12):
"ThE! notes present many difficult problems of
translation. They were written in pencil-over a period
of twenty-six years-in a code known only to the
author-a sort of personal shorthand. The letters,
numbers and symbols are wretchedly formed and many
of the tiny scraps of paper are misfiled and disarranged."

Fort wrote on any scrap of paper available, and the


Notes are now discolored and crumbling. The accompanying life-size reproduction of one of these is
a good example of the "problems of translation". It
reads as follows:
"1875 Dec 11 / (P) [a symbol known only to Fort] /
Between Bombay and Aden/5:45 p.m. I [At this point
a magnifying glass is essential.] A streak of light reported seen by crew of H.M.S. Crocodile. Roughly
formed (Rever'se side) "ANHIRTY. / Symons' Mo. Met.
Mag. XI!10 [the source
[Please turn to the upper
left-hand ~ corner.] The cor [Fort's abbreviation for
"correspondent"] says that another vessel [Follow the
line up to: Fort's insertionJ from Aden had reported a
meteor at ~ about the same time [Follow the line out of

1/

Our printer has done his best with a Xerox copy


of this Note.

47

the corner.] but in daylight. [The punch line is crdwd- n~~1


ed along the edge.] He concludes that had seen a met
fji'ort's abbreviation for "meteor"] streak."
As you can see. it isn't possible to just sit down
and read Fort's Notes. They do require lIanslation. I lc'!;i~~~;~5
expect to spend about two years on this project but
feel it is more than worthwhile. Sturdy. typed 3 x 5 r~;~~~~
file cards will last a great deal longer than bits of
scrap paper.
For those who are not yet acquainted with the
works of Charles Fort. his books are available in
paperback: The Book of the Damned. h.2l. Wild
Talents. and ~ Lands.

THE IVAN T. SANDERSON MEMORIAL FUND


For those who wish to make some tangible expression of their . support for the work begun by Ivan T.
Sanderson. we have set up a Memorial Fund in his honor. All checks should be made payable to SITU but
should bear a note stating that they are intended for this Fund. Specifically we hope to buy a 'proper'
copying machine. expand Pursuit - and our staff. and increase our field operations. Bear in mind that all
contributions to SITU are tax deductible;

DEP ARTMENT OF LOOSE ENDS

In our April 1972 issue Robert Durant wrote of an


apparent underwater explosion north of Puerto Rico.
We had hoped to find corroborative evidence. e. g. high
tides or similar phenomena. but thus far have had no
success. It may be that it was simply too far away to
produce effects at Puerto Rico.
Secondly. in our January 1973 issue there was an
article on allegedly fallout-tree water. The point here
is that the water has not been circulating and therefore is more likely to be free of contamination than
water in even the t:learest' brook.
One of our members who works (at least indirectly)
for NASA informs us that Mariner 7 suffered a decrease
in velocity. rather than an increase. while passing
through the "Great Galactic Ghoul" (see October 1972
Pursuit). The fact remains that 'funny' (peculiar. not

ha ha) things happen to many space vehicles in a


particular region between the Earth and Mars. and they
are not yet explained.
And the brother of one of our members has dug
through Aviation Week for information on "Life on the
Moon?" in our JaniiilrY 1973 issue. The micro-organism
that was found on a camera from SUrveyor III (brought
back by the Apollo 12) was streptococcus mitis. The
three types of bacteria that were killed by lunar soil
were Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Azotobacter vinelandii.
and Staphylococcus ~. The plants that grew
faster in soil "spiked" with "moon dust" included
liverworts. sunflowers. and ferns (exact type not
known). There are. so far. at least three different
theories as to why growth is stimulated; When the
experts have made up their minds we will try to let
you know.

Again. please let us know of any change of address as long in advance as possible. and include your new
zip code.

Anyone interested in miniaturized reproductions of Pursuit should write to University Microfilms. 300 North
Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Michigan 48106.

. 48

BOOK REVIEWS
by Sabina W. Sanderson

ru

MORE :BOOKS IN PAPERBACK


Vineent and Margaret Gaddis. The Curious World
Qf Twin. Warner Paperback Library. 1973. $1.25.
Shiela Ostrander ana Lynn Schroeder. Psychic
Discoveries Behind the U.Q!! Curtain. New York:
Bantam Books. 1971. $1.25.
1973 Guinness Book Q! Records. New York: Bantam
Books. 1973. $1.50.
Tim Dinsdale. Loch Ness Monster. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. n.25.

Edward de Bono.
Mechanism 2f ~. Pelican
Books. UK 40p; also Australia. New Zealand. South
Africa. and Canada.
Edward de Bono. The Five-~ ~ U! T!!!n!.!!!g. Pelican Books. UK 70p; also Australia and New
Zealand.
These last three are presumably not available in
the U.S.. but readers ma,y find American editions
-possibly with different titles- by browsing through
paperback bookstores.

W. ~r. Perry. The Children Ql ~ sun:


Study in ~ Early History Qf Civilization. London: Methuen & Co.
~td. 1923. Republi~hed by scholarly Press. Grosse Pointe. Michigan, in 1968.
ELDd

Cyrus H. Gordon. Before Columbus: Links Between the Old World and Ancient America. New York: crown
Publishers. Inc. 1971. $6,50.
-- - -There are two basic schools of thought among anthropologists and archaeologists. one being that the
various ancient civilizations developed independently of each other("independent inventionism-), the other
that all civilizations (or cultures) stemmed from a single ancestpr, as.it were, and resulted from 'diffusion'
of that original culture. (This is admittedly an oversimplification, but "I shall let it stand.) The diffusionist
theory has had little support in the past and has been vehemently opposed by many; the objection to
diff~lsionism is summed up in H, J. spinden's statement that "Where real similarities p.xist [between
cUlture~ they probably can be explained by pure chance or by psychic unity-.
Perry's book is exceedingly scholarly but on the whole quite readable. One can skip 99% of the footnotes (these are primarily references to works cited in his 24-page bibliography) and some of the middle
chapters may be skimmed. These are devoted to detailed accounts of various cultures. and one is inclined
after a time to shout .. All right. you've made your point! Now go on to something else.- However. the
initial and the concluding chapters really should be read in full. If you need to refer back to anything.
Perry's book contains a splendid index.
cyrus Gordon's book is equally scholarly but in general much. easier reading; the 'average citizen' will
have' difficulty only with those sections dealing specifically with linguistics. Again, there are numerous
notes (many of which may be skipped), a good bibliography. and an index.
Though Gordon states that he is not committed to either school of thought. both he and Perry are basically diffusionists. Perry, of course. wrote long before such things as carbond4 dating were 'invented'.
and some of his con"Clusions may well De wrong, but he presents apowerful argument in favor of his theory;
and it is more than interesting to find that many of the factors he cites also crop up in Cyrus Gordon's
book. It is impossible to present a really adequate summary of the material in Perry's book (the text runs
over 500 pages. closely set). In general. his theory is that civilization originated in Egypt and from there
spread to India. Indonesia. Oceania (Polynesia). North and central America. and that it did so because
the ]!:gyptians (and others in the Near East. influenced by the Egyptians) were looking for such things as
metals (gold in particular but also copper. tin. and iron). pearls. salt. gemstones. and such. (If you think
this is an unlikely explanation for 'expedition~' so far afield. remember the Klondike gold rush.) HIs
evidlmce for the transmission of culture is summarized on page 406:
. "The discussion of the past twenty-three chapters has been concerned with the elaboration of the
theory that the first food-producing civilization in the region was characterised by the following cultural
elements:- 1. Agrigulture by means of irrigation. 2. The use :>f stone, typically for pyramids. dolmens.
stonl~ circles, and rock-cut tombs. 3. The carving of stone im!!-ges. 4. Pottery-making. 5. Metal-working
and pearl-fishing. 6. The use of polished stone implements. 7. A ruling class in two divisions:- (a) The
Children of the sun. connected with the sky-world. born of theogamies, who practise incestuous unions.

..-..,........,.oC

I~-.0

po-

~~

~-'b- r------I--~

,:p".~.

.....
'.

'J

:.'

?.

A+,

'''''

.....

.-:e----'

TrOpe Of 'C.p,wn

'.

PF-' Major civilizations (Perry's

"remains of archaic civilization-)

.,..~I

1-;::" .

.. Megalithic monuments
Mining

Pearl fisheries

compiled from maps in Perry's The Children of the Sun. For detailed maps. see Perry's book.

'.

~---------------------------------""'''''''''''''''''''--'''''''''''''''~'''''''''''~'''''''''''''''~

50

(b) A class associated with the underworld, who survive as war-chiefs. 8. 'The sun-cult. 9. The practice
of mummification. 10. The great mother goddess. 11. Human sacrifice, connected with agriculture and the
cult of the mother goddess. 12. Mother-dght. 13. Totemic clans. 14. The dual organizatio'n. 15, Exogamy."
,'~ ~.

-'

Perry does not contend .that all cultures derived' from the' Egyptian, simply that what' might be called
thE! major ones did. The map shQ;"n here is a composite of maps in his book (unfortunately, in the reprint
edition they are not in two colors, which makes them rather difficult to read), showing the location of
major civilizations and cultural elements associated with them (Perry virtually ignores Europe though he
dOE!S note "the presence, in this country W:ngland], and elsewhere in, western Europe, of megalithic
monuments and other cultural elements that suggest the presence of the archaic civilization .. In one
respect the conditions controlling the spread of civilization from the Ancient East to western Europe
should be identical with those controlling the distribution of the archaic civilization in the P'acific and
elsewhere in the region-the earliest settlements should be situated near sources of raw materials. This, I
take it, is a fundamental general principle of human geography that cannot be upset. ")
In his introduction Perry states that "Given certain desires, men will do their utmost'to satisfy them,
and it is to this dynamic attitude that is attributed the development and spread of the, archaic civilization. . .. from the days of paleolithic man settlement has been made in certain localities because men
cho'se to live there, and not because they were forced so to do by the climate or som~ other geographIcal
cause."
, Cyrus Gordon, in a way, goes even further than Perry, though he is more selective iI:! attributing cultural '
elements to diffusionism (or independent invention). He does, of course, have the benefit of nearly fifty
years of search and research not available to Perry, together with the advantages of 'absolute' dating by
modE!rn methods. His book will not be popular with those who insist that columbus discovered America
(he notes in his Acknowledgments the -irrational hostilities evoked by the topic of this book",) but. as
RobE!rt Graves points out in a blurb on the back cover, "columbus. of course, did not even redis'cover
America: he simply used maps." The fact would seem to be that "befote the continental concept of the
classical world. there was' a maritime view of the world based on the oceanic voyages of ancients such
as the Minoans and Phoenicians in the Bronze and Early Iron ages. By Roman times the geographical
hori~:ons of mankind were shrinking back to the continental view. which persIsted to the time of Columbus."
In other words, Gordon believes -and produces evidence to support that belief- that there was a civilization that antedated what we think of as classical civilizations (including the Egyptian) and that the
science and technology of those civilizations were 'left-overs' from an earlier civilization of ,which we,
at present, know nothing. Compare the following with Perry's summary.
"The achievements of civilized man in preliterate times, prior to the building of the first cities in
Neolithic antiquity [emphaSis mine1. include a high developmentOf the exact sciences and technologies.
Cuneiform literature, notably the Gilgamesh Epic, reflects what the archeology of Neolithic Mesopotamia
illustrates: (1) access to raw materials in many far-off areas, (2) development of land and sea travel,
(3) domestic, urban and naval architecture, (4) skilled workmanship in ceramics, stone-cutting and metallurgy, (5) the stratification of society into specialized guilds, (6) city planning, (7) an already ancient
tradition of science and technology, (8) a system of international morality and law in addition to local
regulations of law and order-in brief, an international ecumene. ~
Gordon lays most stress on the Mediterranean area since this is his major interest! but he does point.
out that it is not the only "seminal area" though it !!i!!:l' be the most important. He does insist, and quite
properly from the evidence he produces, that there was communication be,tween' the Old World and the New
at a, very early date, and goes on to point out that "Nowhere is the interdependence of the Old and New
worlds clearer than in the domain of science. Astronomy, mathematics and chronology bridge the two
worlds so inextricably that it is impossible to understand the history of science in the one without the
other. "
, . As for the "psychic unity" proposed by spinden to account for similarities between cultures, I should
like again to quote Dr. Gordon: "The diffusion of ideas from the Mediterranean to Mesoamerica explains
the facts more reasonably than a psychological approach implying that it is so natural for men to conceive
of bearded whit e men who are at the same time feathered serpents [in Mesoamerica and Athens
that
the same combination naturally developed independently at the ends of the earth in isolation." So much
for "psychic unity which seems, in any case, to have been areamed up because of tlie common, and
erroneous, notion that it would have been impossible for early'peoples to have crossed either the Pacific
or the Atlantic. Aside from the fact that people now cross the Atlantic in vessels little larger than bathtubs, and that Late Bronze Age ships were far larger lthan any 'of Columbus's ships, take a globe and turn

J'

51

it on its side: you will find that you can "cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic almost wHnoUt gettIng
out of sight of land!
Both books deserve thorough reading; the matetial they contain has been little more than hinted at here
but should be seriously considered by everyone.
There is just one further point to be made. Both authors suggest considerable scientific and technological expertise in the part of the Ancients (whether just Ancients or ancient Ancients). and Gordon
in particular wonders where this knowledge came from. "Mesopotamia cherished a tradition that 'at the
dawn of civilization, long before any period of history known to us, science stood at a level from which
historic man has fallen. Oannes brought from the sea knowledge and technology above anything achieved
(or, for that matter, achievable) by sumer, Babylonia, Assyria or classical Greek antiquity." Perhaps the
answer lies in Perry's book with those traditions found throughout ancient civilizations that gods came
down out of the sky and, like Oannes, brought science and technology, religion, and everything else to
the people. These gods mated with mortal women, whose children were the Children of the sun -the rulers
of the ancient world.
Edward J. Kunkel. Pharaoh's Pump. (Order from Mr. Kunkel, 295 W. Market street, Warren, Ohio 44481).
1967 (revised edition). $2.08 postpaid.
This little book (74) pages was privately printed, and the printing leaves something to be desired;
some of the illustrations in particular are very difficult to make out. However, despite our initial feeling
that it must be someone's idea of a joke, it is most thought-provoking -and the author isquite serious.
His basic premise is that the Great Pyramid of Cheops was a gigantic pump during its construction, for
the purpose of construction.
The' book was sent us by an engineer, and we subsequently turned it over to Adolph L. Heuer Jr. for
his opinion (his article on the subject will appear in the July issue of Pursuit). Mr. Heuer's primary report
is that while the author does do a lot of speculating, he does seem to have "done his homework'", has an
adequate knowledge of hydraulics, and has built a working model. Mr. Heuer points out that even today we
use flotation for moving really massive weights (e.g. drydocks for battleships).
Mr. Kunkel does not claim to have all the answers by any means. However, even non-engineers (who
will find some of his material rather difficult to follow) may wish to read this intriguing book.

Gay Gaer Luce. Body Time. New York: Bantam Books. 1973. $1.50. Also Biological Rhythms in
~ Physiology. New York: Dover Publications. 1971. $2.50

lli!!!!!!! !!l!!

There has been a great deal of material published in recent years on the subj ect of "biological rhythms",
"bio-cycles, and a host of other names for the same thing. These two books will probably tell you more
than you want to know about it, and the' author admits that some of it is so technical that the average
reader will want to skim some chapters. It is a vitally important subject and one that deserves much more
practical attention than it has been getting.
This is a vast over-simplification, but the body 'arranges' its various functions to fit a particular time
cycle and cannot 'rearrange' things on even a few !!.!!:l. notice. Hence, travellers who fly to' Europe from the
U.S. for a two-week tour, spend their two weeks trying to (though they may not realize it) rearrange their
body rhythm. They then fly back and spend the next month recuperating from the whole business. For
those who do this only once a year or perhaps once in a lifetime, there probably are no permanent effects;
but for persons such as airline pilots and stewardesses who must make such 'adjustments' at frequent
intervals, the results are devastating. No one yet knows exactly how much of an effect is involved. We
know from first-hand information that the pilots are, to put it mildly, concerned.
You probably will not want to read straight through either of these books, but they are worth looking at,
and probably of far greater value than the sort of "computerized individual cycle predictions" now being
hawked by various firms. We have not seen an actual example but believe that you will be better off figuring
out your ow9 cycles.

TIME-LIFE Books announces The Emergence

Qf M.!n.

I have been castigated by one of our memliers for being so presumptuous as to tell anyone what they
ought and ought not to read. However, inasmuch as I think there is nothing more useless than a "book

52

review" which tells you what the author talked about and who the author is but not whether the book is
wOl'th reading, I shall continue to be "presumptuous".
We received in the mail a lavish 'brochure' (with other papers begging us to subscribe at once) nn the
first volume of a series to be published by Time-Life Books. Ivan Sanderson annotated it: "This thing is
a (censored) disgrace". It is. And this despite quite an array of topnotch "consultants". We know of a
previous consultant to Time-Life Books, who is reported to foam at the mouth at the mention of their name,
since they refused to have anything to do with any possible alternative theories or such, and more or less
said "tell it like it !, man".
The 'brochure' is a bit overwhelming and I am a bit at a loss to know where to start. Time-Life states
that "THE EMERGENCE OF MAN tells the story of man's beginning Il. !,!; really ~.. " -emphasis ~.
Inasmuch as !lQ ~ really knows what the story of man's beginning" was, this is pretty presumptuous of
Time-Life. In fact, John Hillaby, writing in the New Scientist of the 21 December 1972, notes that when
Louis B. Leakey "exhibited Nutcracker Man or whatever he called it at the Royal Academy years ago,
Prof Cave [emeritus professor of Anatomy, London and Barts] -who comes from Manchester-muttered
'Well he's got the bloody nasal bones upside down for a start'." This will give you some indication of just
how certain we are of "man's beginning"!
There is a 'lovely' illustration entitled "The Face from Fish to Man". The shark and the lizard are
OK: the "opossum" may be all right but looks more like a large Oriental insectivore: the "lemur" is not
any that we know of -it looks more like a dormouse than anything else: the "monkey" is certainly a baby
chimpanzee (which is an ape, not a monkey): the gorilla and man are all right. If they can make so malllY
errors in one illustration, heaven help the rest. And Time-Life points out (at some length) that You don't
just read this new information-you ~ it. Time-Life Books has commissioned hundreds of special paintings, drawings, panoramas and models (including the unique 'photo-painting' at left) to reconstruct faithfully the latest discoveries on how man looked and lived in the dimness of prehistory. Never before has the
stor.y of man's origins been made so vivid, so colorful, so dramatic.... " We don't doubt that this book,. and
the other books to follow, will be vivid, colorful, and dramatic, but we do suggest that anyone buying this
book read it with caution and bear in mind that we do not have all the answers yet, flat statements by
Time-Life notwithstanding.
-

Clifford Wilson. Crash Go The Chariots: An Alternative to Chariots of the Gods? New York: Lancer Books.
197"2. $1. 25 (Pu'biished byarrangement-With Word of Truth Prod;ctiO""ns, Ltd., Mt. Waverly, Victori 11."
Australia. )
lt is obvious that Lancer Books is trying to cash in on Erich von D!1niken's current popularity as an
author, and we agree in general with anyone who takes a dim view of his books, but I am afraid that Wilson's
book is just as bad as von DBniken's, though in the other direction. Clifford Wilson is patently a "fundamentalist", and his attitude is summed up in the last paragraph of the text of his book:
"On this note we conclude. The answer to Erich von Daniken's question on the cover of his book,
'Was God an astronaut?' is easily answered. No. The true God, the Almighty, is the One Whose character
is consistently presented in the pages of both Old and New Testaments."
Wilson very rightly accuses von Daniken of leaping to conclusions and presenting speculations as facts,
but in many cases is equally guilty of these faults himself. And on page 62 he comes up with a real "eyepopper", as follows:
"So the authority now is the 'Popol Yuh' - which is traditionally accepted as a sacred book of the
of Central America. It is believed that the 'book' became known after the conquest by the Spaniard

MayfLS

COrtl~Z, and was published in a Spanish form. However, the onl;y copy today is in Latin. It is thought that
the original would have been in pictographic form, somewhat resembling the Mexican codices - IF there
was an original in writing. This view is put forward by some scholars (see e.g. 'Sacred Books of the
World,' A. C. Bouquet, p. 82). It is possible that an original was destroyed at the time of the Conquest,
but '.j;he relevant point is that it certainly is not good scholarship to quote such a work as though it were
prOpE!rly established as source material.... "

This IS an incredible statement from someone who claims to be a scholar. Unfortunately it is ra.ther
typical. of Dr. Wilson. He is right on some points, but his book is not even "an" answer to von Da.nlken.
We rE!commend that you read it only if you are in need of an emetic.

TH E SOCI ETY FOR TH E


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
Hans stefan Santesson
Edgar o. Schoenenberger
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Daniel F. Manning
Robert C. Warth
Mark A. Hall
R. Martin Wolf

*President (elected for 5 years)


*Vice-President (life)
* Secretary (life)
*Treasurer (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member .(elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
*Trustees in accordance with the laws of the state of New Jersey

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Mark A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert C. Warth
Robert J. Durant
Carl J. Pabst
Walter J. McGraw

Acting Director
Executive Secretary
Technical Director
Technical Consultant
Research Consultant
Mass Media
EDITORIAL BOARD

Hans stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

Editor and Publisher


Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman. Department of ADthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute. Eastern
New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician. Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute; University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director. Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. Philadelphia.
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Director. Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center. Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology. Institute of Geophysics. U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics. Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology. Rutgers University. Newark. New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology. Department of Archaeology. University of Alberta. Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology. Emeritus. Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology. Queen Elizabeth College. University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - Assistant Director, Baltimore Zoo, Baltimore, Maryland. (Ecologist & Zoogeographer)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head. Plant Science Department. College of Agriculture. Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric SChwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory). Essex County Medical Center. Cedar
Grove. New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology. Drew University. Madison. New
Jersey. (Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman. Department of .Bot!lDY. Drew University. Madison. New Jersey.
(Botany)
.

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON. NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-6890194

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SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 6, NO.3

JULY, 1973

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia. New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 201496-4366

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board Q! Trustees. in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. These Officers are five in number: a President. elected for five years;
two Vice-Presidents; a Treasurer; and a Secretary. General policy is supervised by a Governing Board.
consisting of the five Trustees. and four other members elected for one year terms. General administration and management is handled by an Executive Board. listed on the inside back cover of this ilUblication. The Editorial Board is listed on the masthead of this journal. Finally. our society is counselled
by a number of prominent scientists. as also listed on the inside back cover of this journal. These are
designated as our Scientific Advisory Board.
PARTICIPATION

Participation in the activities of the Society is solicited. Memberships run from the 1st of January to
the 31st of December; but those joining after the 1st of October are granted the final quarter of that year
gratis. The annual subscription is u.S. $10. which includes four issues of the Journal PURSUIT for the
year. as well as access to the society's library and files. through correspondence or on visitation. The
annual subscription rate for the journal PURSUIT (alone. and without membership benefits) is $5. including postage. (PURSUIT is also distributed. on a reciprocal basis. to other societies and institut~ons.)
The Society contracts-- with individuals. and institutional and official organizations for specific projects
-- as a consultative body. Terms are negotiated in each case in advance. Fellowship in the Society is
bestowed (only by unanimous vote of the Trustees) on those who are adjudged to have made an outstanding contribution to the aims of the society.
NOTICES

In view of the increase in resident staff and the non-completion. as yet. of additional living quarters.
there is no longer over-night accomodation for visitors. Members are welcome to visit to consult our files.
but we ask that they make application at least a week in advance to prevent 'pile-ups' of members who.
as a result of the simple lack of facilities. as ')1 now. cannot be properly accomodated.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further. the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in
its publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of th\! Society.
There have been a number of articles recently on the problem of junk mail and the way in which
one's name gets on such a mailing list. We should like to assure our members and subscribers that our
mailing list is available only to resident staff at our headquarters.
PUBLICATIONS

The Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled PURSUIT. This is both a diary of current events
and a commentary and critique of reports on these. It also distributes an annual report on Society affairs
to members. The Society further issues Occasional Papers on certain projects. and Special Reports on
the request of Fellows only.
RECORD: From its establishment in July. 1965. until the end of March 1968. the Society issued only
a newsletter. on an irregular basis. The last two publications of that were. however. entitled PURSUIT-Vol. 1. No.3 and No.4. dated June and september. 1968. Beginning with Vol. 2. No.!. PURSUIT has
been issued on a regular quarterly basis: dated January. April. July. and October. Back issues. some
available only as xerox copies. are available; those wishing to acquire any or all of these should request
an order form.

PURSUIT

Vol. 6. No. 3
July. 1973

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


MBIlaging Editor:
Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
AssistBllt Ed1tor:

Hans StefBll Santesson


M81k A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS

Editorial: Our Greatest Crisis? by Sabina W. Sanderson


Ufology
The Mystery Airship
Chaos & Confusion
The Bermuda Triangle. Again. by Robert J. Durant
Why Did the Foxes Sing? by John Stuart Martin
That Disappearing Eskimo 'Village'
Chipmunks and 'ITF'. by Sabina W. Sanderson
"Chopped Off" Corn
Entombed Toads, by Sabina W. Sanderson
Ontology
'Worm-Holes' in Space
Astronomy
Planet X
Biology
Luminous People and Others, by Ivan T. Sanderson
"The Blob"
A Botanical Puzzle
Giant Skeletons
Anthropology
Leys -Ancient British Power Network? by Janet Bord
Pharaoh's Pump, by Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.
Members' Forum
Book Reviews

54
55
55
57
58
59
59
60
64
66
66
67
68
69
70
71
73
73

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1973

54

EDITORIAL

OUR GREATEST CRISIS?


in 1952 Robert A.. Heinlein. the "dean" of science fiction W:.riters -and one of the very few sci-fi
!!:lUi forteana- wrote an article entitled "Where To?". The
pertinent paragraphs read as follows:

writ~Ts who is not either afraid of or simply

"The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia. not the Atom bomb. not corruption in government. not encroaching hunger. nor the morals of the young. It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of
. human knowledge. We own an enormous 'encyclopedia' -which isn't even arranged alphabetically. Our
'file cards' are spilled on the floor. nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be buried
somewhere in the heap. but it might take a lifetime to locate two already known facts. place them side by
side IUld derive a third fact. the one we urgently need ...
"We need a new 'specialist' who is not a specialist. but a synthesist. We need a new science to be
the pl!rfect secretary to all other sciences."
In 1966 the article was up-dated and published in The Worlds' of Robert A. Heinlein under the title
"Pandora's BOx. and again we quote:
-- - -"Today the forerunners of these synthesists are already at work in many places. Their titles ,may be
anyth:ing; their degrees may be in anything-or they may have no degrees .... they are all interdisciplinary
people. generalists. not specialists -the new Renaissance Man. The very explosion of data which forced
most scholars to specialize very narrowly created the necessity which evoked this new non-specialist. So
far. this 'unspecialty' is in its infancy; its methodology is inchoate. the results are sometimes trivial.
and no one knows how to train to become such a man. But the results are often spectacularly brilliant.
too-this new man may yet save all of us."
Though Robert Heinlein was not speaking specifically (or at least openly) of forteana. I believe we
may be sure that he had it in the back of his mind. I have always looked on our operations as a synthesizing of knowledge. and particularly in the case of items filed under "Chaos & Confusion". There are a
number of organizations which specialize in one aspect of the' Unexplained. e.g. APRO for UFOs. the
A.S.P.R. for such intangibles as 'ghosts'. SITU does not specialize and is therefore in probably a much
better position to find two (or more) seemingly unrelated 'things' .which together provide a possible answer
to an old problem. Our results thus far may indeed be trivial. b~t we are still a very young organization
arid are hampered by lack of proper funding and adequate staft Nevertheless. we feel an obligation to
continue our work. ineffective though it may seem. Back in late 1969 we received a letter from a member
who stated that he would not renew his membership: we had beEm in business for two years and had not
yet solved any Great Mysteries. No. we had not. And we may not for another twenty. But this is no reason
to quit now. Most overnight sensations" have struggled for manY years to reach that enviable position.
It is not possible at this point to do more than guess at the results we might achieve. To give just one
example: in the article on page 59 a case of apparent ITF or instant-transference (or teleportation. if you
wish) is presented. As I write we face a definite shortage of gasoline and the prospect of rationing; if we
could find out how to 'teleport' at will. such a shortage would affect only those who drive tractors to till
their fields and those who are not really travelling --i.e. fishermen and such. This is undoubtedly too
grandiose an idea at the moment but it is not impossible.
All. this is basically an appeal for both patience and support on your part. We realize fully that many of
you have little spare time -or money- or perhaps lack the training to do active search or research. but
would point out once again that even shut-ins can assist us by watching their local papers. trade journals.
and the like. for any items that might be of value or interest to us. And once again also. please do not
ever nssume that we have clippings on a particular story; we would far rather have ten copies than none
at all. One can never tell when one little tidbit may prove to be a vital key to an Unexplained.
Sabina W. Sanderson
"Where To?" copyright 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.; updat~d and published in The Worlds of Robert
A. ---.--Heinlein. copyright 1966 by Robert A. Heinlein; the latter published
by Ace Book;:-!nc . 1tF-375-.--,

55

UFOLOGY

THE MYSTERY AIRSHIP


Presumably everyone interested in ufology has at
one time or another read of the alleged crash of a
'spaceship' at Aurora, Texas, in 1897, and the subsequent burial of the much mangled 'pilot' in a local
cemetery. Interest in this incident burgeoned suddenly this year and a number of UFO investigators
descended on Aurora, now reported to be a ghost
town, to comb the area for traces of the spaceship
and to attempt to get permission to disinter the 'body'.
The oldest residents of nearby towns are divided
on whether any such thing ever happened, some contending that the story is completely factual and
others stating, just as emphaticall.y, that it was a
hoax originally. From the accounts available to us
it is impossible to determine which group is right.
However, the visiting ufologists have gone over the
area with metal detectors and those pieces that have
been dug up have been sent to various laboratories
for analysis.
Dr. Tom Gray of North Texas State University has
four pieces of metal. Three are in no wa.y unusual,
but the fourth is a puzzle:
"It's mostly iron with about 25 per cent of it zinc.
But it's not magnetic. Now that wouldn't be unusual
if it were stainless steel. But it's not stainless
steel. I don't know w hat it is."
This piece is further described (in the HeraldNews, Joliet, Illinois, 31 May 1973) as being shiny
and soft instead of dull and brittle.

Another piece studied by unidentified scientists


is said to be "an aluminum alloy of a type which
could not possibly have been made here on earth prior
to 1908, 1910 or even as late as 1920". It is also
stated that the scientists said the 'nugget' had the
appearance of having been buried for a lo~ period of
time. This piece was apparently dug up by newsmen.
All the scientists have emphasized toe fact that
there is no evidence that the metals are extraterrestrial in origin, simply t hat at the moment they
appear to be unusual. Furthermore, Dr. Gray found a
zinc casting at the site. This has American threads
machined in it. As Dr. Gray says, "I don't think a
spaceship would land here carrying American-threaded zinc."
Finally. and most important, Jim Lorenzen of
APRO states categorically that "in 1967. Mr. Alfred
E. Kraus. director of t he Kilgore Research Institute
at West Texas State University, undertook an exhaustive investigation of the Judge Proctor farm where
the spaceship was supposed to have crashed and
using a metal detector found nothing but very ordinary bits of colored metal objects such as rings from
horses' bridles. stove lids and 1932 license plates."
It is their opinion that "publicity-oriented individuals
have used the story to promote their own interests.
There's every indication that the bits of aluminum
alloy arrived on the Proctor property since 1967 and
probably within the last 60 days."
This appears still to leave t he bit of odd iron to
be explained, and we keep an open mind on this
though we tend to agree that some of the investigator s who rushed to Aurora do not enjoy our confidence.

CHAOS & CONFUSION

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, AGAIN


by Robert J. Durant
The literature on the "Bermuda Triangle" mystery
consists almost entirely of a lengthy recitation of
instances of the unexplained disappearance of ships
and aircraft in that rather vaguely defined geographical area. Certain other facts have been discovered,
notably the apparent existence of twelve areas of
high incidence of disappearance and other oddities
located symmetrically about the planet. Beyond that,
there is little even in the way of speculation concerning the cause of the Triangle or any of the other
hypothesized "Vile Vortices".
It is known that a large number of disappearances
have occurred in the Triangle, but there is also a
great . deal of air and sea traffic in the area. The
number of disappearances is well documented, but
the rate of disappearance has never been rigorously

established. In other words, do more ships disappear


in the Triangle per thousand transits than in any
other given sea lane? Unfortunately, the statistical
data on marine disasters is not collated in a format
that supplies a ready answer. The same can be said
for air traffic. An examination of the data that is
available (mainly the Lloyds of London records) does
yield the subjective impression that the Triangle
gets more than its share of disappearances. However,
one fact does stand out: a great many of the Triangle
disappearances have occurred in relatively good sailing and flying conditions, but disappearances in other
shipping lanes, such as the North Atlantic lanes,
have almost always been directly connected with
severe weather.
"Dead men tell no tales" is an old saw that
applies well here. One might add that "disappeared"
men tell no tales either. A list of missing ships,
utterly lost, with neither bodies nor wreckage found,
is of little use of and by itself. Ships sink in storms,

56

and ships explode at sea. Often there are s urvi vors or


burnt wreckage to explain the disaster. But what does
one do to get clues to the cause of the complete
disappearance of a series of ships and aircraft?
OnE! possibility is that intermediate cases exist.
That is, ships have burned, but not completely. Their
crews have nursed the stricken vessel back to port
where the details of the experience have been recorded for posterity by boards of inquiry. By analogy,
there ought to be instances of ships and aircraft
which have become enmeshed in the forces of the
Triangle, but only fleetingly.
ThE! absence of such cases would be strong evidence against any paranormal causative factor for the
disappearances. If the only intermediate cases
available are those in which a perfectly well known
and logical cause such as storm and fire caused the
difficulty, it becomes an act of faith to continue to
believe in an extraordinary causation for the Triangle
disappearances.
On the other hand, a body of case histories of
near misses or brushes with -?- would not only be
strong evidence in favor of the paranormal nature of
the Triangle phenomenon, but it would also furnish a
fertile source of data for intelligent speculation into
the causes of the phenomena. "A funny thing happened to me on the way to Bermuda.. It That, unfortunately:"" dOE!S not make the papers. And if it doesn't make
the papers, chances are that i~ will never come to
the att.ention of the handful of individuals who take
the Triangle business seriously. Hopefully, there
are enough readers of this publication who are involved in some manner with flying or boating to
search for such material. At the moment, it would
seem that these "intermediate" cases are vital.
Specifically, we need to collect the tales told by
the "survivors. What follows is an account given to
me by a fellow pilot. Were it not for a bit of luck and fine flying- the details of his experience would
be unknown. The flight would probably be just one
more in the Bermuda Triangle seed catalogs".
ThE! flight was en route from San Juan to New
York, at an altitude of 35,000 feet, all systems
operating normally. There was no turbulence. In fact,
the air was so smooth that the three crew members
had a chat about how unusually smooth and absolutely clear the air was of even the occasional little
bumps that one encounters in the best circumstances.
In recounting his experience, the pilot said that in
retrospect this was the first sign of something out of
the ordinary.
After flying in the unnaturally smooth air for some
time, the windshield began to show streaks of static
electricity. This phenomenon is not at aU unusual,
but it is almost always encountered while flying
through heavy clouds, and most especially through
the tops of thunderstorm clouds. In a severe instance,
the windshield will be criss-crossed by tiny streamers of purplish electrical discharges that have the
appearance of miniature lightning bolts. This sight
is unnerving to the neophyte, but quite harmless.

In a short 1'1 bile the static discharges became so


strong that they covered the entire windshield in a
bright white glow. This is something that the writer
has never seen or heard of before . .Apparently the
crew members of the jet had never seen anything like
it before either, for it was at this moment that they
began to sense that something most unusual was
occurring. The aircraft still remained unnaturally free
of turbulence.
The jet was being "flown" by the autopilot, with
the crew monitoring its performance and keeping
track of the navigation. At this point the copilot remarked that the autopilot, which was programmed to
fly the craft straight and level, was making the air
craft turn. The captain glanced at his gyro horizon to
confirm the turn, but noted no bank angle indication.
A quick check confirmed a discrepancy between the
captain's and t he copilot's instruments. Both the
gyros and the compasses were giving conflicting
readouts.
(Ed. Note: Mr. Durant has considerable additional
technical information on this but has not included it
here since it would be unintelligible to most of our
readers.)
This is a very serious situation indeed in a big
jet. They are flown almost entirely by reference to
the instruments. Instrument failures occur and there
are standard procedures for remedying such failures.
In any event, there are two complete sets, one for
the captain and one for the copilot. But this instrument failure was definitely "not in the books". There
was no means" of determining which instrument -if
any- was functioning properly. The crew was now in
an emergency situation.

This aircraft was equipped with a small, batteryoperated gyro horizon installed as insurance against
the possibility of a complete loss of electrical power.
It is also useful as a reference to test which of the
other two gyros is indicating correctly. Unfortunately all three were giving different indications by this
time, but the captain elected to ignore the two main
gyros and fly entirely on the battery-operated gyro.
By now t hey were about 100 miles south of
Bermuda. Luckily, Bermuda has an excellent long
range radar system. The jet asked. for emergency
landing clearance and radar assistance with the
navigation and let-down to the airport.
They arrived safely but with nerves shattered. On
the ground, mechanics hunted in vain for the cause of
the malfunctioning instruments. A telephone c all to
the airline's technical center in New York elicited
the reply t hat the reported troubles 1'1 ere simply
impossible". The pilots must have been imagining it
all. After several days of fruitless trouble-shooting
in Bermuda, the plane was flown back to New York
-in daylight- without incident. After further testing
by the "experts" it was decided that the electrical
system and all of the instruments showed signs of
having been subjected to an extremely strong electrical shock, probably the result of being struck by a
lightning bolt. Both t he instruments and t he wiring

57

I tended my traps coming and going. You could get


three dollars for a grey fox in those days, and as
high as ten for a prime red. It was just about the only
way a boy like me could ever get any money, so I
really worked at it. But my dad told me one thing.
He told me not ever to set [a trap] for Old Joe,
which was a big dog red fox that had chewed off one
of his front feet to get out of a trap Dad had set. Dad
figured that after that Old Joe hact earned his life and
liberty, and he told me: "Just you foller that old cus,
Charley. Foller his track wherever he goes, summer
and winter, and he'll teach you more about foxes than
you ever could learn otherwi se ...
So I did that, and I did learn all about foxes almost- and I, sure caught a lot of 'em after I got
wise to Joe's habits and tricks. And because I got to
admire him, I got real fond of him, like a boy WOUld,
and it got so that Joe knew me, too. We;d see each
other passing on the road every so often, early in the
morning or towards'dark.
' ,
'
Well, Joe's den was way up 'on the ridge right
back of our place and I seldom went up there, let
alone ever to set for Joe. But one winter I was about
thirteen and had been studYing Joe for half that time,
[Ed. Note: A Bermuda Triangle Bibliography, list- ,
there came a night of blizzard and high wind and then
ing about 240 books, newspaper articles, miscellanethe thermometer dropped out the bottom. It calmed
ous papers and reports, is now available from either
down long before daybreak, though -I knew, cause
Larry Kusche or Deborah Blouin, University Library,
the quiet woke me uP. And after a long spell of
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85281. The
silen~e, as I lay looking out my window at the stars,
price is $2.00 plus a stamped, self-addressed enve-,
I hear!! this sound, these singing sounds, like nothing
lope.
I'd ever heard before. They came from up on the ridge
We have not yet seen this but the compilers note
right in -the direction of Old Joe's den, and they
that "Most of the items have been annotated, and
sounded like what you read about coyotes baying the
comments have been made indicating those that are
moon out, west" or just yodeling and yelping to each
outstandingly superior or inferior", i.e. in the latter
other.
case "trivial and error-filled".]
It was more than I could stand, so I got up and
dressed and sne'!i.kEid out and- got mY axe' from the
shed and started up there through the ~imber. Mter I
WHY DID THE FOXES SING?
crossed our spring-run, whel'e- my snowshoes made a
clattering I guess, that fo~ music up above me began
by John stuart Martin
to die out, and long before I got up to the top to Old
Joe's den, it had stopped altogether.
When I lived up in Schoharie County, New York, I
The stars were still ou~, but day was coming, and
used to hunt and fish with a rosy-cheeked oldtimer
it
was
light enough for me to see the dark opening of
named Charley Shelmandine, who still farmed in the
Joe's den. Also, I could read all the fresh fox signs
rough hills around West Fulton. He used to tell me
there were around there.
tales, most of which I believed (and still do), about
A solitary track led through the powder snow and
his boyhood, including this one, which is my favourinto the hole. This was a three-footed track -Old
ite:
'Joe's- and 'it didn't come out again. All around in
front was a confusion of many tracks,' and a lot of
I used to walk five miles to school and five back
fresh sitting places, where different foxes had been
every day (said Charley), and in fur season of course

were completely replaced. The pilots, of course,


don't buy the lightning bolt theory at all. When a bolt
strikes an aircraft there is little doubt about what
happened. There is a very bright flash and a sharp
report. But as to what did happen, they are equally
certain that they do not know.
The plane landed at Bermuda around midnight.
The next morning. the captain was told that about
an hour after his jet had landed, another aircraft
arrived at Bermuda in almost exactly the same circumstances. The second craft was a four-engine turbo
prop of British registry, and it had also reported
trouble with all instruments. My informant did not
pursue the matter, though now he is very sorry that he
did not do so. At the time he was more worried about
the fact that the "experts were calling him crazy.
I asked the captain if he had ever heard of the
Bermuda Triangle. He replied that the first time he
heard the term was minutes after he landed at
Bermuda on that fateful night. A mechanic poked his
head into the cockpit and said "You've just flown
through the Bermuda Triangle".

THE IVAN T. SANDERSON MEMORIAL FUND


For those who wish to make some tangible expression of their support for the work begun by Ivan T.
Sanderson, we have set up a Memorial Fund in his honor. All checks s'hould be made payable to SITU but
should bear a note stating that they are intended for this Fund. specifically we hope to buy: a -,proper'
copying machine, expand Pursuit - and our staff, and increase our field op'e~atiol)s. Bear in ,mind that all
contributions to SITU are tax deductible.

58

circling around and then squatting, probably to do


that sinl~ing I'd heard. It was hard to tell exactly how
many. but there must have been at least a dozen
foxe:s bi~sides Joe UP there. I found that many different tracks leading away from the ridge where they all
had finally left it, and not a one of these tracks was
three-:footed.
W'eH, I just had to know the truth, so I took off
my ma'ckinaw and went to work with my axe on the
mouth (If Joe's burrow. About a half hour after the
sun cam e up I finally got inside right to him, up a
gentle sandy slope at the end, about twelve feet into
the hillside.
He lay curled up in a ball with his big, whitetipped black brush folded over his face. His lips
were drawn back in a foxy kind of smile, but it was
the grill of death, 'cause his eyes were open and
glazed, and through his worn-down old teeth his
tongue stuck out a little, stiff and greYish. Old Joe
was dead all right, but after I shut his eyes and
lips he looked only asleep. After that I covered him
up and refilled hi's burrow, putting stones into it so
mice and other creatures wouldn't bother Joe's
carcass come springtime.
No (lther faxes would bother him -of that I was
pretty sure. But what I kept wondering, after my tears
stopped and I went on down the hill for breakfast and
school, was: why did all those other foxes go up
there la.st night? Did Joe call them, or how did they
know? And who did all those foxes sing to?

THAT IHSAPPEARING ESKIMO 'VILLAGE'


One of the 'standard' stories to be found in many
collections of fortean tales is that of an Eskimo

N.W.T.

Hudson Bay

-,

500 miles

......

--~

'village' on Lake Anjikuni in Canada's Northwest


Territories that was found deserted by a trapper
named Joe Labelle. According to the published
account, only the people were missing;' untouched
pots of food, kayaks, rifles, tents, etc. were said to
be untouched, and seven dogs were found, starved to
death, about one hundred yards from the camp. A
cairn grav'e had been opened, the corpse removed, and
the stones neatly piled up. The number of persons
missing varies in different accounts but ranges
between 25 and 30.
It is a good story, but it seems to be only that.
One of our members, Ronald G. Dobbins, has been
carefully tracking down many of these oft-repeated
tales to determine whether t hey are truly factual or
not. The original report, supplied by Vincent Gaddis,
cam e from NEA Service and was dated the 28th
November 1930. It includes a photograph of Joe
Labelle and is datelined The Pas, Manitoba. It states
that "The Royal Northwest Mounted Police have
taken up the hunt, and white trappers have been asked to be on the lookout. But nothing so far has been
learned ...

Mr. Dobbins is working on a book, and we do not


wish to steal his thunder. However, he wrote several
times to the RCMP and they were kind enough to
check their records and to write to ex-members of the
RCMP who were stationed at Baker Lake (the Detachment which would have been in charge of any
investigations in the Anjikuni area) at the time of the
alleged disappearance. The RCMP Historian notes
also that even if Labelle "had reported it earlier at
Churchill the same sequence of events would have
occurred as Baker Lake was responsible for any investigations in that area." He concludes that they
are "unable to provide any tangible evidence to
support the story.
In addition, the Historian for th'e R.C.M.P. points
out two serious discrepancies in a more recent claim
by one Bernie Julkowski to have found two rifles at
Repulse Bay in the summer of 1969. Julkowski said
they were lying on a rock shelf 400 miles ,above the
Arctic Circle. Repulse Bay is between 500 and 600
miles northeast of Lake Anjikuni where the Eskimo
'village' is said to have 'disappeared' but it is just
on or a bit south of the Arctic Circle. It therefore
seems unlikely that his story is valid, and it is
certainly most improbable that they have, if they do
exist, anything to do with the vanished Eskimos.
We are fully aware of the fact that many persons
do not want their mysteries solved, let alo'ne simply
done aw~ with, but our first obligation is to Truth.
In this Mr. Dobbins is doing a very great service,
however :disappointing his findings may be to the
general Dublic which is interested only in "light
reading" !md a few "chills".

59

CHIPMUNKS AND 'ITF'


by Sabina W. Sanderson
On the 15th of June of this year Marty (R. Martin)
Wolf and I were sitting at the gazden table back of the
Old House at SITU's headquazters enjoying a brief
rest from our respective labors. My two dogs. Marzi
(a Golden Retriever). and Bruno (a Black Retriever
with some Collie' blood). were lying in the grass
nearby. Both dogs have had a running 'battle' with
the numerous chipmunks that come to the bird feeder
but. so far as I know. had never succeeded in catching one. The chipmunks' burrows are scattered
around the Old House. within fairly easy reach of the
feeder. One burrow. mazked on the diagram shown
here. was being carefully watched by Marzi. a very
competent hunter but with an exceptionally gentle
mouth. She suddenly made a dash for the burrow. the
chipmunk having appeared briefly at its entrance.
Both Marty and I were somewhat staztled when. on
the second grab. Marzi came up with a mouthful of
chipmunk and grass. Having previously rescued such
fragile victims as baby birds -:-damp but unhurt- I
grabbed Mazzi and. with Marty's help in holding her.
prized her jaws open. The chipmunk promptly leaped
to the ground. made one additional bound toward
freedom. started to make a second leap -and then
just wasn't there.
Marzi was still being held by her collar but did
not pull against it and made no attempt to locate her
prize; and Bruno. who had been following the proceedings closely. also immediately lost interest.
Marty and I. loth to believe our eyes. made careful
search of the area. including the mulberry trees.
despite the fact that both of us were certain that the
chipmunk had not and in fact could not have gone up
the tree without our seeing it. (A later survey by
Marty proved that even had it gone up the tree it
could not have escaped detection.) We then inspected
the entrance to the burrow. primarily to determine
how the chipmunk could have been caught so close
to home. IP1d found there confirmation of my fleeting
thought during the rescue operation that the chip-

,,~9 ft. ~~11~ ft.


Burrow
Tree
"stump"

munk's tail was shorter than is normal. Marzi had.


with her first grab at it. neatly amputated about 1~
inches of its tail. This was lucky for us because our
next question was. of course. Where did 'it go? Into
another universe. or will it come back?" We cannot
say where it went. but it was seen on the bird-feeder
the next day. and on subsequent days. We 'should'
have dug up the burrow. I suppose. but this would
have been a truly major effort. since there are tree
roots throughout that azea; and no guarantee that the
chipmunk had no other exit (if he did in fact teleport
back to his burrow).
There is little else to report on this. I should not
care to take an oath on it but my impression is that
the chipmunk appeared 'hazy' or blurred just before
vanishing and that it seemed to twist in the air as it
started its leap. Marty Wolf was unable to confirm
this but was not in as good a position to see in any
case. However. the fact that it vanished before our
eyes is not in question.
We have had previous reports of rats. mice. hamsters. and lemmings that evidently indulged in ITF
or "instant-transference" -Charles Fort's teleportation- and now must. I think. add chipmunks to the
list.
"CHOPPED OFF" CORN
Member #1383 sent us a brief item from the ~
Moines Register of the 28th June 1973. with the
photographs reproduced here by permission of that
newspaper. Their account went as follows:
"Duane Woodruff. who fazms in Warren County east
of Ackworth (Iowa). Wednesday examines two rows of
corn that were mysteriously cut down. Woodruff said
he discovered the damaged corn about 9 a.m. Wednesday when he went to cultivate the field. He said the
corn appeared to be 'chopped off.' "I thought at first
someone had been in the field with a corn knife.' he
said. 'But the ground was soft and if someone had
been walking they would have left tracks. There were
no tracks of any kind. The chopped-off rows continued

r-13ft.~

-+e,-

2<!1L ft
un .

__

I " ' " n.

~.

Table

/ '"-'

BIrd
feeder

II

20 ft.

11/

I
... ~

.-Chipmunk's Path

~.,r

~)~

~ Mulberry trees

60

-a "steady fellow and respected fa[mer"- and that he


believes him when he says that "there were no
tracks". Even so light an animal as a rabbit leaves
tracks in soft earth; and the fact that the stalks were
all cut cleanly through virtually eliminates 'animals'
as the cause. Furthermore, all the stalks have fallen
toward each other, thus leaving the two 'paths' beween the damaged rows and the uncut ones on either
side.
We asked about the somewhat puzzling statement
that "The chopped-off rows continued down ... and
disappeared", and Veryl Sanderson replied that he
had not been there but understood that a "grass waterway" was meant and that some grass had also been
cut. (This would certainly rule out a suggestion from
left field that a helicopter might have been .involved;
the prop wash would have left evidence of its passing.)
It is of interest that about a year ago "burn
circles" were found in a soybean field. These have
often been correlated with UFO activity in an area
and we therefore asked whether there had been any
reports of "funny lights in the sky" or other ufological phenomena. The answer was no. Of course, this
may mean simply that no one was looking, but it
would be most imprudent to assume this. For the
moment therefore, the incident remains totally unexplained.

ENTOMBED TOADS
by Sabina W. Sanderson
For at least a couple of centuries there have been
reports of what are facetiously called "Toad( s) in the
Hole", i.e. toads or other small animals, almost exclusively amphibians, found incarcerated in solid
rock or inside tree trunks -and found alive. The
usual reaction from 'orthodox science' is that this is
impossibie. 1 cannot refrain from Quoting Professor
Richet who said, "I never said it was possible; 1
merely sa.j.d it was a fact."

Register photos by Charles Anderson. Our arrows


point to stubble stalks in each row.

down into a waterway, turned left and disappeared.'


One of the cut-off stalks is shown in the close-up."
We c.alled the Des Moines Register and spoke with
Veryl Sanderson of their Farm Department. He told
us that several agronomists at a local event that day
said they had never heard of anything just like it.
Suggestions put forth were rabbits or other animals,
but Mr. Sanderson said that he knows Duane Woodruff

There would seem to be at least six 'types':


1) Animals hibernating or estivating in dried-out
mud
2) Animals frozen in ice for long periods of time
3) Animals deliberately or inadvertently "entombed'" in cornerstones, concrete floors, etc.
4) Animals found in incompletely enclosed spaces
with possible access to air, food, etc.
5) Animals found in totally enclosed spaces, i.e.
in coal seams, boulders, etc., with (presumably) no
access to,air, food, etc.
6) Anim als "entombed" under experimental conditions in a:n attempt to study this phenomenon.
"

The first is well known and is mentioned here


only because laymen have occasionally been 'carried
away' by: other reports and have sent accounts of

61

frogs or toads 'buried' in mud to local newspapers or


even to scientific journals.
The second is questionable. A 1963 story from
Russia claiming the 'resurrection' of a 5000-year-old
lizard-lik e triton was later admitted to be "pure
fantasy". though a very similar story was printed by
Izvestia in 1973. In this. geologists searching for
gold deposits in the Siberian district of Kolymsli:aya
allegedly found a lizard in a piece of ice extracted
from a depth of 33 feet. They later thawed it out and
took it to a Kiev scientist who identified it as a
Siberian uglozub which ordinarily has a lifespan of
about 15 years and is known to spend winters in
hibernation. Izvestia announced that radiocarbon
tests proved it to be 100 years old. At the moment
this case can only be labelled 'unconfirmed'. The
only other record of this type of incarceration is an
undated. unidentified wire service report which states
that a Dr. D. L. Albasio found a frog frozen deep in
the ice of a glacier in Yosemite National Park. Dr.
Albasio said that the glacier "is no less than 12
centuries old and that "Lazarus", as he named the
frog, must have been frozen in w hen the glacier
formed. There is no further information on this, and
attempts to find a Dr. D. L. Albasio have been unsuccessful.
One of the best cases 1 have belongs to the third
category, that of animals inadvertently entombed and
later found alive. 1 am here indebted to Mr. James B.
Steele, who is fluent in Afrikaans, for a letter from
the Director of the College of Agriculture and Research Institute at Potchefstroom. South Africa, concerning t his case. This letter, translated by Mr.
Steele. is here quoted in full.
"I thank you for your letter of the 19th October
[1970J and was surprised "to hear of your interest in
the frog which had been found, still alive, in a cavity
in a cement floor some years ago.
.. At the end of 1945 a cement floor was laid for a
small potato storeroom. The first half of the floor
was laid during the afternoon and the job was finished the following morning. Apparently t he frog was
attracted to the unfinished floor by the dampness and
was caught [imprisoned] inside when the floor was
finished the following morning.
When t he store room was demolished at the end
of 1949 or beginning of 1950. the cement floor was
broken up. The frog. which was plus-minus 1~ long.
was found in a cavity in the cement floor. The cavity
was about 2.!" in diameter and completely sealed on
both sides. according to the marks when the floor
was broken up.
"The people who were present at that time. as
well as myself, were convinced that the frog could
not get into t he cavity after the floor had been laid
and could not have come out of there either. It was
a complete cavity without any cracks or openings.
The cavity could have resulted from the movements
of the frog when the cement was still wet.
"When the frog was found it was practically snow-

white. The frog was placed in a container and handed


to the man who at that time was the chief of the
Department of Zoology of the Potchefstroom University, viz. Prof. G. T. Eiselen. (Prof. Eiselen died a
few years ago.)
"The late Prof. Eiselen told me that the frog refused to eat anything and died the following day. A
post mortem did not really reveal anything. except
that the stomach sections were much smaller than
those of a normal frog of the same size. The frog was
without food. light and air for approximately five
years.
Yours faithfully.
(Signed)

I. Hattingh.
DIRECTOR.

A more 'spectacular' report was printed in the


April 1972 issue of Animals. This was a letter from
Eric G. Mackley of Barnstaple, Devon, England, a
journeyman gas-fitter, who once had to dig up some
'meter-houses' which were brick-walled and "rather
massively concrete-floored". His story continues:
" ' "My mate (whoJ was at work with a sledge hammer,
dropped it suddenly, and said, 'That looks like a
frog's leg'. We both bent down and there was the
frog. Being fond of animals the sledge was laid aside
and I cut the rest of the block carefully. We released
23 perfectly formed but minute frogs which all hopped
away to the flower garden .. The only explanation I
can give is that whoever originally mixed the concrete
took up frog spawn with" the water from a stagnant
stream opposite; the frog spawn found its way into
the middle of the concrete base; and when the tad'::p"oles hatched they cannibalised until the hole in the
,. 'concrete was completely filled with small but perfectly formed frogs. Not the least interesting point to me
was that after (1 assume) lying in a state of torpor,
the frogs were immediately fully active after over a
quarter of a century."
The suggestion t hat the frogs had squeezed in
through minute cracks was rejected by Mr. Mackley
who stated that the concrete was "firmly compacted".
Tpis is t he only case in which there was more than
one animal.
.
TiE fourth category is perhaps best illustrated by
a letter from t he archives of the American Philosophical Society. It was sent to Samuel Harrison of
New York by Samuel Peters and was dated the 10th
of January 1806.
"My dear Sir.
" Agreeable to your Request I have Stated A
Phenominon which was manifested to me at Hebron
in the Colony of Connecticut A.D. 1770"The Case was as here follows"A Rock nearly 20 feet Square on its Superficies &
about 10 feet thick lay in the high Road opposite to
my House. and as Report" Said had been growing

62

higher for 150 years whereby it had become a Nuisance


to Carri.ages & Travellers
"To remove the Inconvenience I ordered my
Negroes to dig a ditch around the Rock three feet
wide, & to go down with the Ditch to its Bottom.this being done I engaged a Miner to perforate the
Rock with an Auger near the middle of the Surfacethe A\lIi;er was two Inches wide & with it he made an
Hole five feet deep - He then charged the Rock with
half a Pound of Gun Powder & fired it off with a
Match, while the Spectators stood at a proper Distance
to shun danger & to See the Effect"The Explosion was very great:
"The Hock was rent into Eight or Ten large Pieces,
beside8 many fractional ones- We soon hoisted up
the Fra.gments; at last we cameto the two center and
largest Pieces between which the Auger had passed
"Having taken UP the Smallest, the largest Piece
stood up edgeways- I then went down & viewed the
Path of the Auger, which had passed by a Cavity as
large as a Goose Egg, in which lay a Frog who
compleatly filled the Cavity .. His Thigh was bleeding by Reason of a wound . The Orifice was too
small to pull him out .. The Miner soon enlarged the
Orifice and I took out the Frog, bound up the wound
and placed him on some Mud near a puddle of Water,
which I inclosed with a Board Fence- The Frog was
aliv:e and struggling for delivrance when I first discovered him in his Bed; which was as smooth as the
inside of a Glass Tumbler"He appeared in perfect & high Spirits, though he
had no visible means of living in his Hole four feet
& an half down from the Top of the Rock to his bed,
(all around him was firm & hard as a flint Stone) excepting by what Water, Air & heat ~hat reached him
through a Small crivice not so large as a Knitting
Needle & that Crivice was filled with fine dust from
the Top of the Rock down to his Bed in which he lay,
in so close a manner, that with difficulty I dug it out
with a steel Pointer-. I kept the Frog imprisoned
many weeks for the Inspection of the Curious
Do not let the odd spellings and capitalizations
mislead you into thinking this gentleman uneducated;
there were no "standards in those days.
Animals found in totally enclosed spaces constitute category number five. Herewith two illustrative
cases:
From Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, vol. LVII
(1821), p. 462: "A short time since, as David Virtue,
mason, at Auchtertool, a village four miles from
Kirkaldy, in Scotland, was dressing a barley millstone from a large block, after cutting away a part, he
found a lizard imbedded in the stone. It was about an
inch and a quarter long, of a brownish yellow colour,
and had a round head, with bright sparkling projecting
eyes. It was apparently dead, but after being about
five minutes exposed to the air it showed signs of
life. One of the workmen, very cruelly, put snuff in
it& eyes, which seemed to cause it much pain. It soon

after ran about with much celerity; and after half an


hour was brushed off t he stone and killed. When
found, it was coiled up in a round cavity of its own
form, being an exact impression of the animal. This
stone is naturallY a little damp; and about half an
inch all round the lizard was a soft sand, the same
colour as the animal. There were about 14 feet of
earth above the rock, and t he block in which the
lizard was found was 7 or 8 feet deep in the rock; so
that the whole depth of the animal from the surface
was 21 or 22 feet. The stone had no fissure, was
quite hard, and one of the best to be got from the
. quarry of Cullaloe-reckoned perhaps the best in
Scotland."
A le~ter from W. T. Bree, dated December 19,
1835, tq the Magazine of Natural History (vol. IX,
1836, p. 316):
"Last summer a live toad was found incarcerated
in solid sandstone, by the workmen who were forming
the railroad through Coventry Park.:". I saw the toad
alive the day after it was found. It is a good example
of the kind, the block or rather rock, of sandstone
being solid, except the cavity where the toad lay."
Benjamin Silliman, in his American ~ Qf
Science (XXIX, 1836, p. 353), noted that "the animal
was reinstated in his narrow bed by the engineer, but
it survived only four days. The engineer was John
Brunton (1812-1899), and he wrote a book about his
experiences for his young grandchildren, in which he
mentions the 'Coventry Toad':"While making the cutting for the Railway near
Coventry, in the new Red sandstone formation, one
day when I was standing at the easterly end of the
cutting, . some loaded wagons were running down
towards the embankment. As they passed one piece
of stone fell from a wagon; in falling it broke across
the middle and disclosed a hole in the heart of the
stone, out of which fell a live toad. I immediately
picked it up, as well as the two broken pieces of
rock."
The "New Red Sandstone" of Great Britain is
Triassic in age, and is called "new" only to differentiate it from the "Old Red which was formed in
the Devonian Period. The current ages assigned to
these periods are 195 and 355 million years, respectively.
"Toads or frogs enclosed for many years in stones
or rocks;' is one of the items listed in an article (with
the idiotic title "Hints for Writing Science") by
Edwin E. Slosson, which appeared in Science News
Letter for July I, 1950. Mr. Slosson stated that
stories .on his list "should, in general, not be used,
at least until t hey are thoroughly investigated by
several: competent speCialists in t he subject" . We
are not certain that there are any 'specialists' in this
subject; though a number of persons have pronounced

63

upon it, perhaps the most notable being Maurice


Burton. In the August 29, 1959, issue of The Iilustrated London. News he devoted his section on "The
World of Science" to "toad-in-the-hole" stories. He
doesn't believe a word of them, though he is relatively charitable about it. He first details experiments
carried out by the Rev. W. Buckland. father of Francis
Buckland (not 'Frank' as Burton has it) of Curiosities
ill Natural History fame. These tests consisted of
sealing toads into chambers cut in limestone and
sandstone blocks. each chamber being given a glass
cover. and t he whole being covered with slate and
then buried in the ground. No toad survived more
than two years, and those that lived that long were
(apparently all) in cells imperfectly sealed or on
Which the glass cover had cracked. Burton notes that
Buckland's tests "show several important conclusions. First, that a toad cannot survive in a
hermetically-sealed chamber inside a block of mineral. This is no more than we should expect." He
further points out that t he record lifespan for an
amphibian is 29 years, and t hat many of the stories
place toads in rocks formed long before toads evolved. He concludes that "while accepting that the
tellers of such stories are sincere, t here are only a
few explanations possible. Either the toad... was
able to enter the block of stone or coal when it was
small, through a hole in the block that escapes observation. and has been there only a few years, or there
is an optical illusion.... "
The optical illusion stems from the "fact" that a
toad (or frog or whatever) was sitting nearby and, at
the moment the stone was split open, leaped past the
workman who immediately assumed that it came out
of t he rock. Burton relates an experience of t his kind
which he had and notes that "but for the fact that
there was no cavity in the nodule I . . . should have
had no alternative than to suppose that the toad had
come from inside the piece of rock."

This would be fine 'but for the fact' that in almost


every instance there is recorded the existence of ~
cavity, usually just fitting the animal therein, and
with "walls" commonly described as "smooth" or
even "polismd". In addition, the absence of any
cracks is specifically mentioned. But perhaps more
imp'ortant is the fact that there really are no reports
that indicate that the toad "leaped" past anyone. On
the contrary, in many cases the animal had to be
"extracted" from the hole, or was descrl-bed as moribund, sometimes reviving for a short period and then
dying.
On the other hand, one must certainly agree that
it is most improbable that any toad could have survived millions of years of entombment, even if one
assumes that toads evolved much earlier than is
indicated bY t he fossil record. Also. as Burton
points out, some of the reports concern toads found
in strata laid down' under oceans. and no marine toad
is known.
But, superficially at least. the experiments of
Buckland Senior are not supported by such cases as
those of Mr. Hattingh and Mr. Mackley, related above.
Mr. Hattingh in particular has no reason to make up
such a story, and indeed. should be congratulated on
his courage in, speaking out! Even the blandest description of those 'who presume to report such cases
are hardly flattering.
So. unless one chooses to call all such reporters
hars, the problem of toads-in-a-hole remains. There
may be two basic types: those immured in 'unnatural'
structures -concrete floors, corner stones. and sucheither accidentally or deliberately; and those foun~
in .natural structures -boulders. trees. coal seams,
Mdsuch. In the:iirst instance. and ignoring the few
cases which are very probably hoaxes. it may be
simply that toads, frogs, and w hat-have-you are
capable of going into some kind of suspended animation w hen circumstances demand it, and t hat they can

tJ

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A Xerox copy of a page from the Register of. the Edinburgh University Museum (which was given to the
nation in 1854 to found what"il> now the Roya( Scottish Museum) reprinted here through the kindness of
Dr A S Clarke. The speciinen is no longer in their collections. nor could Dr Clarke find any further
documentation.

..

64

survive for much longer periods than is generally


tho light possible, experiments to the contrary notwithstanding.
The second type is much more 'difficult'. "Unfortunately, we do not have the space to give the details
of the nearly forty cases in our files, and some particulars will have to be taken 'on faith'. The condition of the cavities in which the animals were found
suggests that they had been occupied for some time,
hence t he smooth or polished walls. But why the
cavity should just fit the animal is not so clear
unless this type of entombment is due to some kind
of two-way ITF or teleportation, the toad 'going in'
and an equal amount of rock 'going out'. This is
certainly a bizarre notion but it is not impossible,

though it still leaves open the question of where the


toads came from in the first place. Are they ordinary
terrestrial toads with a mixed-up sense of (teleporting)
direction, or did they slip in from some other universe
and "get off at the wrong subway station"? There are,
of course, a vast number of reports of 'fafrotskies'
-things that fall from the sky- and very often they
are said to have appeared relatively close to the
ground and not to have fallen from the strastosphere.
It is therefore possible that the entombed toads are
misdirected fafrotskies.
The whole business is most unsatisfactory, and
anyone who comes across accounts of entombed toads
or other animals or who has any serious suggestions
to make, is invited to send them in.

II. ONTOLOGY
'WORM-HOLES' IN SPACE
We have just caught up with a splendid article
entitled "Breaking the Light Barrier" by Adrian
Berry, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph Magazine (London) for the 7th May 1971. This was reprinted (in slightly cut form) in the March 1972 issue of
~ Magazine. Our readers are urged to read this in
full if possible. It c.oncerns the theories of Professor
John A. Wheeler, one of if not the most forwardthinking scientist of our time. (It was he who some
years ago suggested that the Library of the American
Philosophical Society -basically a scientific society
despite .its now somewhat misleading name- collect
the best science fiction, since many new ideas, both
scientific and technological, first appear in this form.)
Albert Einstein formulated his Special Theory of
Relat:ivity in 1905. This showed that no material
object eould reach the speed of light since. as it
approached that speed. its length would shrink toward
zero while t he energy required t a propel it would rise
toward infinity. Not even the most audacious sciencefiction writer has ever suggested a spaceship that
would do that. However. many writers have envisioned some way to get round the obstacle posed by the
Special Theory. usually by "jumping" through an area
in which time and distance have no meaning at all.
As Adrian Berry points out. "This sort of talk infuri-

ates the conventional scientists. One distinguished


science writer. James Strong. declares: 'No assumption has been more fiercely challenged by the
scientifically-minded than the rather casual assertion
that faster-than-light speeds ~ill one day be commonplace. On half a dozen counts, it has been emphatically declared to be quite impossible. and ... violates
every tenet of Relativity' ."
John Wheeler obviously couldn't care less al;>out
"impossibilities"; and he is an expert on both
Einstein's Special Theory and his General '['heory of
Relativity. published in 1916. The latter is a far
more complicated business than his Special Theory.
and no one has .vet figured it all out. but "Professor
Wheeler has been working on some aspects of it tha'
provide a real challenge to the mind. In 1962 he and
R. W. Fuller published a paper entitled "Casuality
and
Multiply-Connected
Space-Time" (Physical
Review. Oct. 15. 1962). It was cautious but must
have brought JOY to the hearts of the science-fiction
writers.
Professor Wheeler suspects that the Universe is
shaped like a doughnut and that it contains "wormholes" -entrances into another universe that is invisible to us but lies "just next door". This idea
stems from Einstein's General Theory which proved
that in reality there is UQ such thing I!. l! straight
line: space is curved (hence Einstein's famous joke
that if your eyesight w~re good enough and you were
to look up at the sky. you would see the back of your
head). But the General Theory goes further than that.
Time is also curved. The Special Theory (keep this
and the G.T. separated) lays down a third rule about
a spaceship approaching the speed of light: as the
spaceship 1J,ccelerates. time slows down until. at the
speed of li"ght. it stops altogether. Hence. time runs
at different" speeds throughout the universe and must
also follow a curved path. Wheeler used the G.T. as
a base fo~ his new science known as "geometrodynamics" :-the geometry of curved empty space or
the dynami"cs of geometry. (Take a deep breath.) He

65

has "invented the "geon", a theoretical particle


composed of curved empty space (time and space are
both curved and thus may consist of solid "matter).
Wheeler asks the question: "Do geons exist, or do
they not? Do they have mass, or do they not?1I His
reply is that since they are deflected into curved
paths by the gravitational attraction of stars and
galaxies, they must exist; and they obey the laws of
mass and so must be massive. Ergo, they exist as
solid objects and, inasmuch as all 'solid' objects
-(e.g., the chail-" you are sitting on) when seen through
a good enough microscope- are riddled with "wormholes. To quote Wheeler: "Geometrodynamic law
forces on all space this foam-like character. To
quote Adrian Berry:
"On the other side of the worm-holes lies the
mysterious region of Superspace [the hole in the
doughnut], to which all parts of our Universe are
connected by worm-holes. Inside Superspace there is
neither space nor time. Every event in this fantastic
region occurs simultaneously, and every journey
across it is instantaneous. This is logical since the
traveller" who has entered Superspace has left time
and space [ours at any rate] behind him. It is idle to
ask whether Superspace is hot or cold, whether it is
wide or narrow, or whether it is shaped like a cubeor
a sphere. It is a place without any dimensions at
all. . "
Is Superspace the answer to "faster-than-light"
travel? Wheeler and Fuller point out that their work
thus far is largely a mathematical exercise but conclude that their theory does not conflict with Einstein's conception of curved space-time. A "jump
through Superspace is a decided shortcut -across
the 'hole in the doughnut' rather than around its
perimeter. Another way to imagine a journey through
Superspace is to mark Earth as a dot at the top of a
piece of paper and place "another dot at the bottom to
represent the star you wish to reach. The linear
distance between the two is the 'normal' distance
one must tr.avel to reach that star. Now fold the paper
so that "Earth and the star are back to back and
punch a hole through with a" needle. You have just
'jumped' through Superspace.
Wheeler and his colleagues" are still looking for a
Wa:J to.!!!!!! the worm-holes. Travel through them will
probably come (assuming that they exist), but it is
unlikely to be available in the near future.
Professor Wheeler is by no means alone in believing in Superspace. Kip Thorne of the California
Institute of Technology is another believer. He asks,

where does a neutron star go when it is crushed out


of existence by its "own gravitation, and suggests
that it might "bubble up either in another part of out
Universe, or in another universe altogether. And on"e
Yuval Ne'eman, of Tel Aviv University, has talked of
"Black Holes as possible entrances to Wheeler's
worm-holes. Too, there is a young Englishman,
Mic bael Hawking. He is crippled, unable to walk, and
can sPeak and write only with difficulty, but many
top phYsicists believe he may be to Einstein what
Einstein was to Newton. He is much interested in
Black Holes and has done considerable work on
them. Some of the theories concerning them are mindboggling, and for the benefit of those who are mathematically inclined we here include a formula or two
(the unmathematical need not worry about them).
A Black Hole is formed when the radius of a star,
(or other body), R, gets small enough that:
R is equal to or less than 2 ~M
c
where M is mass, G is the Newtonian universal
gravitational constant (present value)
11
ma
6.67 x 10
kg sec 2
and c is the speed of light. Theoretically there is a
lower limit for the size of a Black Hole (and some
are believed to 'reside' inside planets or even socalled asteroids) but there is no upper limit. In fact,
based on current figures, our whole universe comes
very close to the "R equals equation above; and we
may be a Black Hole in somebody else's universe.
Perhaps Mr. Hawking will find out, theoretically at
least.
Suggested Reading:
J. A. Wheeler. Geometrodynamics. Academic
Press, 1962.
Jerry Pournelle. "Black Hole Mines in the Asteroid
Belt. vertex, August 1973.
J. A. Wheeler and S. Tilson. "The Dynamics of
Space-Time", International Science and Technology,
December 1963.
G. Robinson. "Hypertravel,
Listener, December 17, 1964.

ru

Pluto was found where it was predicted to be and


has the 'tight' orbit, but its effects on Neptune and
Uranus indicate that it must mass about six times as
much as the Earth. Unhappily for the astronomers, it
appears to be about the size of Mercury. If both calculations are correct, its gravitational effect is "all
wrong for its size. Unless there is a Black Hole
inside it.

Microform Editions of PURSUIT


Volumes 3-4 (1970-1971) of ~ are" available from University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. The price is $4.10." Volume 2 will be available at a later date, as will subsequent volumes of Pursuit.

66

V. ASTRONOMY

Planet X would seem to be ex-X. Its existence


was predicted on the basis of computerization of
'wobbles' in the orbit of Halley's Comet in particular,
but anot her computer t earn has recomputerized the
whole business and believes that the first was in
error. In any case, no one has been able actually to
find Planet X where it 'ought' to be.

And keep your e.yes and ears open for forteana


when that brilliant new comet, discovered by Kohoutek, 'arrives'late this year. We shall be interested to
see whether there is any outbreak of oddities and
enigmas coincident with its appearance. Such have
been claimed in the past, and it may be worthwhile
to keep detailed records on this one.

VII. BIOLOGY
"LUMINOUS PEOPLE AND OTHERS
by Ivan T. Sanderson
There are (or can be) luminous men. By this I
mean wholly physical human entities, born of the
human species, and fully touchable. I saw one once.
He was a Nicaraguan fisherman living on a small
creek among the vast coastal mangrove swamps of
the Bluefields Lagoon area of his country. on the
Caribbean side. We were puttering around that labyrinth in our schooner some years ago and got lost.
Our old pirate captain (may his fine soul rest in
peace, for he was murdered by his comperes for aiding
the U.S. Government in time of war by giving away
secrets of their smuggling operations for the enemy)
took a dim view of this because he was born a
Nicaraguan (but wanted" in seven countries!) and
prided himself on knowing all Caribbean waters and
waterways as well as the hairs on the back of his
hands.
We were chugging along shortly after dark through
this tiny twisting creek - our boat drew only six feet
of water - when we turned a b end and espied a
cleared area to the right, upon which grew short
grass. At the back of this clearing was a small
shack. As we rounded t he bend we saw a fairly
bright greenish-blue light emerge from this shack and
advance to the creek to coincide with our passing.
Even our gallant and extremely rugged 'Captain' was
rather startled, for said light was in the form of a
person's torso!
To make a very long story as short a~ possible. I
will only explain that this was a local citizen of,
apparently. almost pure African origin, wearing only
a wide leather belt, and a pair of ragged khaki p,!-nts.
His tiPP(!f half was magnificently proportioned but all
over it were large mottlings (as in hound-dogs) of
brightly 'lit' glowing luminescence. By very pure
coincidence. our Captain happened to have known the
man years before and we struck up a conversation
after we tied up at his so-called dock.
The glowing patches on his body, which really lit
up the afterdeck, proved on examination with a flashlight to be huge, soft swellings. They glowed from
inside --a sight more bizarre than I would ever have
wished to see. I did not know much. if anything. about

such things in those days. so I endeavoured to preserve the amenities. We had a couple of rums and a
pleasant chat in the brightly lit main cabin. and then
our new friend went ashore and waved us a cheery
~~~.

'

This whole business bothered me for a long time.


I was told that this fine fellow was a fisherman and
that he spent most of his time in and out of the
creeks, brackish lagoons, and the coastal seas. I
also knew that there are certain bacteria that are
brilliantly luminous -for their size. that is. In point
of fact, it has been stated (by Dr. E. Newton Harvey.
I think, in his brilliant book Living Light. Princeton
University Press. 1940) that said minutenesses individually put out more energy -in the form of visible
light- than any power-plant that we had devised
before the implementation of atomic energy. But it
never dawned on me that there might be a connection
between marine luminous bacteria and a luminous
marine fisherman!
Some years later I received a letter from one Dr.
Robert A. Schlernitzauer of Cocoa. Florida. and I
QUO~~:

"Dear Mr. Sanderson.


"I read your most interesting story [in the Sat"evepost"] with more than average interest. You" see. for
many years I was a country doctor. Later I retired to
go into buSiness with my son ...
"Many years ago. late one evening in September, a
deep-sea fisherman came into my office. He had been
living with two companions in a shack across Merritt
Island. on the Banana River. Every day he came home
soaked with salt water.
"He did not complain of being ill nor suffering in
any way. except that he could not sleep at night.
Likewise, his condition, he said. annoyed his roommates.
"
'Pllt gut your office lights'. he said; 'it is growing dark'. ":.Then he removed his coat and shirt.
"I saw 'Ii large. glowing tumor"on his shoulder. The
glow it emitted was almost as bright as the""light of a
candle. I found the mass was slightly spongy. It had
become infected with phosphorescent sea animalculII

*The Saturday Evening Post, now 'extinct'.

67

ae, which frequent the waters of the Indian and


Banana Rivers in our autumn months.
"Later. we found the tumor was a sarcoma, of
which the poor chap subsequently died. It occurred to
me that pathologic~ epithelial cells might be more
susceptible to such an infection than normal cells.
"I reported the case, and a medical journal replied
that such cases, though very rare, were not without
precedent .... "
The whole matter of light is profoundly difficult.
There was a time when we thought of all light as
being hot. Then came the neon sign. It is not very,
if at all, hot. And science finally got around to fireflies and luminous fungi, bacteria, fish, octopuses,
centipedes, old beef steaks and -so help me- men.
These things do not give off heat; but they do give
off light.
For instance. about one-third of all deep-sea fish
app ear t"O be self-luminous. There is a fish in the
Indonesian Banda Sea that collects luminous bacteria
in small pockets under its eyes and which it can turn
on or off at will!
What is more, the light given off by living things
is almost 100% visible light. without any ultraviolet
or infrared. It will cause both fluorescence and phosphorescence. It affects photographic plates, stimulates the actions of chlorophyll, and plants will lean
toward it if they are otherwise in darkness.
There are other amazing things that have been
found out about "living light". The so-called glowworm, which actually is a small beetle, puts out light
which is 14-thousandths of the brightness of a clear
blue sky at midday; a luminous watch dial puts out
only one one-hundred "thousandth of said sky. This
animal light is luminescent, as opposed to incandescent. This is a very important point. The luminosity of an incandescent lamp is only about one-half
of one percent that of the total of a firefly's output.
And an electric bulb is about one per cent efficient;
the light from a firefly is more nearly 100% efficient
than anything else we know of on this earth as a
producer of light. Because this light is so almost
"pure" it has no color range so that everything in it
looks green-gray.
The problem of light in its various forms is one
which has" concerned science for a long time. Many
years ago a famous New York newspaper column
asked and gave an answer to this question: "Is there

such a thing as light without heat? Theoretically


there is. But practically, man has not yet been able
to create it. The most perfect light known is that
emitted bY fireflies. for almost all rays are light rays
and almost none heat rays."
All of which reminds me of a rather pleasant
limerick composed spontaneously by a friend of mine
on passing a sign-post in southern England:
A seasoned young toper of Hinckley
Said. "Yes, I can see it distinctly,
An enormous pink rat,
Incandescent at that.
Which is glowing distinctly and pinkly.
"THE BLOB"
For the benefit of tJ;\Ose few persons who may not
have "heard about it. and for the recordAt the end of May, 1973, Mrs. Marie Harris, a
housewife and organic gardener living in Garland.
Texas (a suburb of Dallas), found a "thing" in her
backyard. She described it as being "as big as a
cupcake, and not very pretty. Really kind of disgusting. I couldn't tell if it was animal or vegetable". The
newspapers had a field day; descriptions became more
and more lurid, and eventually one joker announced
that it was a mutated fungus and might "grow from
one billion spores to one billion tons in 24 hours".
Mrs. Harris was described as "terrified" by the blob.
though her pictures show a pleasant woman who
smiles as she pokes a stick into the mass. In fact,
the" comments attributed to her are about the only
sensible ones in connection with "the blob". Rather
naturally she did want to get rid of it -or them; she
had four "blobs" in her garden over a period of
several weeks. Efforts to kill off the "blob" apparently succeeded -but each time it re-appeared until
finally she used a nicotine solution on the last and
largest of the blobs.
"The Blob" was in fact nothing but a Slime Mold,
specifically Fuligo septica. However, it is more than
understandable that Mrs. Harris and just about everyone else were puzzled by it and unable to identify it.
Even experts on the Mycetozoa -an Order that includes only the Slime Molds- really don't know what
to do with these extraordinary 'animals'. An 'official'
description (from Storer & Usinger's General Zoology,

Our Postal Service


From the National Observer of the 16th June 1973. credited to David P. Johnson: "Residents of Seattle
received this astounding letter from the Seattle Letter Carriers Association: 'Dear Friends: Recently we
sent out a [fund-raising] mailing containing tickets to the Annual Letter Carriers Ball. After dOing some
checking. it now appears that some. if not all. of these letters were not received. Our main concern is
that you may yet receive these letters containing tickets to the function which is now past, and we do
not wish to irritate our friends.
"'Therefore, if you did receive the tickets and chose not to donate to us, please ignore this letter.
However. if you did not receive the tickets and would have donated to us, we do surely need the funds.'"

68

p. 270) reads: "Adult phase a sheet of multinucleate


protoplasm with streaming movements; feed on decaying wood or leaves, or live fungi". A more helpful
account appears in Winifred Duncan's charming book
The Private Life of the Protozoa, unhappily long out
~print. Accordi;g To Miss Duncan's book, there
appears to be some doubt whether Slime Molds are
animal, vegetable, or mineral! It depends upon the
stage of their life cycle. Ignoring the question of
which came first, they start as spores and grow into
a variety of forms. all microscopic. and may be red,
black. or purple, but never green. They look like "a
forest of fantastic trees. each with its own kind and
color of fruit." These fruits finally burst and. from
this ve~:etable mold. there come animals -specifically amoebae with a nucleus. a vacuole. and arms of
protoplasm exactly like Amoeba proteus. These gather
their bodies into a "bag" and put out a tail. All this
time they are busy eating. and when they reach a
certain size they lose their tails and become shapeless a~~ain. At this point their behaviour is truly
baffling. Whenever they meet one of their own kind.
the two 'melt together'. losing their cell walls. When
enough of these have com e together they form "one
huge amoeba, two inches across or more -a beautiful sheet of jelly with the nuclei all floating about
'loose inside it. This is called 'Slime mold' ... "
This large amoeba travels about so long as there
is moisture available. Winifred Duncan describes her
specimen's peramulations as follows:
"It poured itself around grass blades. around
stones. into earth cracks; it separated into glassy
strands around tree roots. only to flow together again
on the other side. Meeting a big obstacle. it piled up
on itself like a transparent mound of jelly. Then it
would spread out again. thin as a cobweb, frothing at
the edges. branching like ferns. like frost on a
windowpane; advancing like a tide, bubbling, streaming, pausing to surround tiny particles of food.
digesting them, and leaving the remains behind in a
trail of slime. like a snail... It came up against a
tree trunk, To divide around this was impossible
without the two halves losing each other forever.
They could, of course, have wandered off as two big
amoebal~. But no .... The mass began to climb. straight
up the trunk, ... Winding up the bark crevices it had
become so thin that you would have passed it by as
just a patch of dampness .... "

Came the dry season and brilliant sunshine, and


the Slime Mold shrank into separate blobs of jelly
which pulled in their arms. lost all their moisture and
hardened into tiny crystal-like grains. invisible to
the naked eye. When doused by a thunder shower, the
crystals picked up moisture and became amoebae
again, and again formed a jelly. But this time when
dried out, the jelly separated into individual amoebae
which reverted to the tiny tree-like forms and "Slime
mold returned to the plant kingdom, to sleep through
the lon~:, dry season as a mold".

An "ordinary slime mold" the newspaper called it;


but almost totally unexplained.
A BOTANICAL PUZZLE
The various bamboos are extremely useful as well
as ornamental, and we have acquired several species
from the Pacific Bamboo Gardens in San Diego, California. One note in their handbook intrigued us.
"Bamboo is rather unique [sic] in its flowering
habits. There are bamboos which are in flower
continuously. others which flower in cycles ranging
from 15 to 60 years. and others which have never
flowered in recorded history (over 150 years for
Bambusa vulgaris) .... All the plants of a single clone
will flower at the same time. regardless of where in
the world that plant is. For instance. Phyllostachys
bambusoides is in flower in Japan at this time. It is
also in flower in Chico. California at the USDA
station there, as well as in our gardens."
We wrote to the owner of the Gardens to ask for
more information on this curious behaviour and received the following reply.
"Your question regarding the flowering of the
bamboos is one that has puzzled botanists for some
time. It boils down to this. A single plant (one from
a seed, called a clone) will flower at the same time.
Nothing unusual in that except that when the plant
is propagated by division. any division of that clone
will flower at the same time. That is, regardless of
the size of the plant. location in the world, climate.
hemisphere. etc. That in itself is unusual enough. but
when added to the fact that some of the bamboos
flow.er every 120 years (Phyllostachys bambusoides
for example) it adds to the mystery~
"I talked with a botanist a~ the Smithsonian
Institution who is studying bamboos and we discussed the phenomenon. He is of the opinion that it is
genetic in nature and that a 'clock' is present in the
cell. An ~accePtable solution except that in nature
there is no known example of a 'clock' covering a
period of time anywhere near 120 years in duration.
We have seven- and seventeen-year locusts etc. but
no 120-ye~r or even 6o-year occurrences. I theorize
that the 'clock' is triggered by some external force.
Periodicity of that magnitude is found only in the
movements of the solar system which has led me out
of the realm of botany. at least what botanists
normally consider.
"Of cour.se all of the above is speculation. No one
as yet has done a definitive genetic analysis of the
bamboos, imd until someone does. all we can do is
speculate ..,.. "
We tend to agree with this gentleman's speculations conc.erning an external 'trigger' for a built-in
'clock' but also wonder about the evolution of the
bamboos in general. Many varieties do not come true

69

from seed, and if they produce seed only once in 120


years ... Well, we have P. bambusoides on order, but
someone else will have to investigate its flowering
next time.
GIANT SKELETONS
We would not care to even try to guess how many
chaps are barging around the country 'hunting' a
Sasquatch (Bigfoot, Oh-Mah, etc.), but we have a
suggestion for them: Try tracking down some of the
many giant skeletons reported from allover t he place.
A recent article in the Winnipeg Free Press tells of
the successful search for a fossil w hale skeleton
originally found by a farmer in 1906. In 1963 a local
historian mentioned this in a book, and Richard
Harrington, curator of quaternary zoology at Canada's
National Museum of Natural Sciences, spent a year
tracking it down through old records. It was found in
a hay loft.
The North Jersey Highlander for Spring 1973 includes an article by the editor, W. Mead Stapler,
entitled "A Mystery in History. It concerns giant
skeletons. Mr. Stapler notes that The Conservationist
for Dec.-Jan. 1966-67 (a publication of the New York
State Department of Environmental Conservation,
Albany, NY) published a piece on "The Lesser
Wilderness-Tug Hill" area north of utica, in which
the author discussed the finding of "skeletons of
giants, with double rows of teeth in each jaw. In
The History of Bedford, Somerset, and Fulton
Co'iinties in PerUisylvania by Waterman andHopkins,
is described the finding of "the "remains" of a people
of "gigantic size" who preceded the Iroquois in an
area about 100 miles south of Tug Hill and were
called the Allegwi by the Iroquois. And in Benjamin
J. Lossing's Field Book Qf the Revolution there is a
footnote:
"I [presumably the author] saw, in the possession
of Mr. Neilson, many relics plowed up from the battle
field [at Saratoga], such as cannon-balls, grape shot,
tomahawks, arrow-heads, buttons, knives, etc., and
among them were some teeth, evidently front ones,
but double ......
The teeth were attributed to the Hessians, but
undoubtedly this is simply the result of propaganda.
The New York Times of "the 2nd December 1930:
"Discovery of apparent remains of a race of giants
has been made at Sayopa, Sonora, a mining town 300
miles south of the Mexican border. J. E. Coker, a
mining engineer, reports that laborers clearing ranch
land near the Yaqui River dug into an old cemetery
where bodies of men, averaging eight feet in "height,
were found buried tier on tier .... " Dismissed by
Bernard Brown, curator of the American Mu~eum of
Natural History, as pure exaggeration. Thert~ is no
indication that he saw the skeletons.

The New ~ ~, 14th February 1936: ',~


Managua, Nicaragua- "Press accounts say that the ,~
skeleton of a gigantic man, with head missing, has ~.:.
been unearthed at EI Boquin, on the Mico River, in
..5
the Chontales district. The ribs are a yard long and i
four inches wide and the shin bone is too heavy for
one man to carry. 'Chontales' is an Indian word, .::....
meaning 'wild men' ... This ~ sound exaggerated,
but the "wild men" is interesting indeed.
The ~ York ~, 9th June 1936: Miami,
Florida- "A tale of human skeletons eight feet long
[sic] embedded in the sand of an uninhabited little
island off Southern Florida was brought here today
by three fishermen. They exhibited a piece of one
skull containing six teeth. E. M. Miller, zoologist at
the University of Miami, said the mandible was that
of a man and was probably several hundred years old.
'It is entirely probably that this find might be important,' he commented. The men said that the skulls
were unusually thick, the jaws protruded and the eye
sockets were high in the hea!J."
And then there is the American Investigating
Museum and Indians with horns as reported by Robert
R. Lyman in his book Forbidden Land:
"Eight hundred and more years ago, giant Indians
with horns roamed the Black Forest of Pennsylvania
beneath giant trees.
"At Tioga Point, on t he Murray farm, a short
distance from Sayre, in Bradford County, an amazing
discovery was made. Dr. G. P. Donehoo, state
Historian and a former minister of the Presbyterian
Church in Coudersport, together with Prof. A. B.
Skinner of the American Investigating Museum, and
Prof. W. K. Morehead, of Phillips Andover Academy,
uncovered an Indian mound. They found the bones of
68 men which were believed to have been buried
about the year 1200.
"The average height of these men was 7 feet,
while many were much taller. On some of the skulls,
2 inches above the perfectly formed forehead, were
protuberances of bone, evidently horns that had been
there since birth. Some of the specimens Were sent
to the American Investigating Museum.
"We have more evidence that very tall men once
lived in the Black Forest. In December 1886, W. H.
Scoville of Andrews Settlement discovered an Indian
mound at Ellisburg. When opened, the skeleton of a
man was found. It was close to eight feet in length.
Trees on and around the mound indicated that burial
had been made at least 200 years before."
These are only a few of the reports of giant
skeletons that have been found and in many cases
said to have been sent to local museums. Writing to
museums or even puttering about in their basements
may not be as 'exciting' as tramping through the
woods, but it is likely to be far more productive of
results. Quite a few ABSM hunters have told us that

.'
0'

70

they spent time "in the field- and saw nothing but
very often had the feeling that they were being
watched. In fact, one group was told by a forest
ranger that he had seen a Sasquatch trailing them!
They came home empty handed. Skeletons in museums
or barn lofts won't run away, but they must be searched for. And local museums are more likely to have
specimens 'buried' in their collections than the big

institutions -particularly those operated by orthodox


scientists who do not want to have to rewrite the
textbooks. Troublesome items are prone to lose their
labels, and unlabelled items are of no value and are
therefore thrown out. Small museums, in many cases
connected with a local historical society, often
depend on part-time volunteer help -but such persons
are usually very knowledgeable.

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

LEYS by

ANCIENT BRITISH POWER NETWORK?

~ranet

Bord

Archaeologists and historians have long asserted


(or implied, if perhaps not stated in so many words)
that the ancient Britons were woad-painted savages,
ignorant and superstitious, but the .present-day trend,
especially among the young, is to doubt this belief.
The most obvious flaw in the 'savages' theory is the
evidenc:e in stone and earth allover the British
Isles -- the many ancient sites which remain as a
'living' memory of our ancestors several thousands of
years Ilgo. These ancient sites - standing stones,
stone eircles, barrows, tumuli, cairns, hillforts have for the most part long been neglected, except
for certain examples such as Stonehenge, Avebury
and Silbury Hill, but there are literally thousands of
them s(:attered around the country (those which have
survived the ravages of human interference, that is many more have been lost for ever). They have long
been regarded as rude monuments erected for no
apparent reason and therefore of little significance,
and have mostly been categorized as religious
structul'es, probably pagan temples, burial mounds,
etc. These interpretations may be partly true, indeed,
but wh::l.t has not been fully appreciated until now is
the tremendous labour and skill that went into building these carefully-designed structures.
The man who has done the most work in this field
is Professor Alexander Thom,l who has examined
some (iOO stone circles in the U.K., and made detailed surveys of 300 of them. The results he has
producl~d throw a completely new light on these
constructions and the people who built them. It seems
that thl~ circles provide an extremely accurate means
of calculating the movements of sun, moon and maJor
stars during the year. In order to be used in this way,
the stones had to be set out with a high degree of
accura.c:y, and Professor Thorn has found that the
people who constructed the circles had a knowledge
of mathematics that was only equalled a thousand
years later in classical Greece.
But this modern look into Britain's past has
recently been taking another form, and this 'live
archaeology' goes under the name of ley-hunting. The
basis of the ley system is quite simple - that sites
of ancient importance align exactly in straight lines,
these often stretching for long distances across

country. By using maps in the first instance


(Ordnance Survey mlIPs, scale 1- to 1 mile, are the
best for this purpose, as anci~nt sites are marked,
also churches and other places of historical interest),
it is quickly found that, in most parts of Britain
except the most built-up areas, ancient sites seem to
be built along invisible lines. The following types of
site are considered: stone circles, standing stones,
barrows, tumuli, 'castles', mottes and baileys, moats,
hillforts, earthworks, churches, abbeys and other
religiOUS buildings, in fact anything which is very
old or traditionally sacred. Many three-, four- and
five-point alignments, perhaps also six-, seven- and
eight-point ones can be found. In order to rule out
coincidence, 'ley hunters' stipulate that an alignment which merits further investigation must have at
least five valid points aligning within a fairly short
distance, that is ten rather than fifty miles.
The next stage in a ley hunt is to actually go out
to the site and try to walk along the selected ley.
Often initial results are discouraging, because
twentieth-century man has so changed the face of the
landscape that" what seems a clear line on the map
is rarely so on the land. But if a rural area is chosen
for the experiment, one is more likely to meet with
success. An unsuspected markstone, now hidden in a
hedgerow but standing untouched where it has stood
for literally thousands of years, an obvious piece of
old trackway, a notch cut out of a distant hillside any of these will be unexpected and exciting confirmation of the presence of an old ley.
This brief introduction can of course only give the
bare bones of what is becoming a wide field of study;
anyone who finds his interest aroused would be well
advised to read The Old Straight ~ by Alfred
Watkins. 2 . This book, originally published in the
1920s and now reissued, is the book on ley hunting,
for Alfred Watkins was himself the 'discoverer' of the
ley system. As John Michell says in his new introduction to. the book - -The revelation took place
when Watkins was 65 years old. Riding across the
hills near Bredwardine in his native county [HerefordshireJ, he pulled up his horse to look out over the
landscape below. At that moment he became aware of
a network .of lines, standing out like glowing Wires
allover the surface of the country, intersecting at the
sites of old churches, old stones and other spots of
traditional sanctity. - Watkins painstakingly develop-

71

ed hi s ley research and, as he was also a professional photographer, he left somp. hp.autiful pictures
illu strating t he most important ancient sites on
the leys he found. In his book, he puts forward the
belief that the leys were old trackways, but this is
doubted by most people now, in view of the fact that
many of them went straight through marshy land, even
water, and over high mountains, whereas man would
prefer a more circuitous but easier route when travelling across country. But it has recently been said by
those in the know that Watkins was not wholly convinced himself by his 'track ways' explanation.
And that brings us to the upsurge of interest in
ley-hunting today. Further research into leys, in the
light of other unexplained mysteries such as dowsing,
radiesthesia, ufo logy, terrestrial zodiacs like that
at Glastonbury, folklore, all of which appear to have
links with leys, suggests that there may be a more
subtle reason for their exi stence. It is now widely
felt that the leys may in fact follow invisible lines
of power criss-crossing the countryside, and that
early man was aware of this power, which he harnessed for his own spiritual and physical benefit (and
also for the benefit of nature and the earth) by erecting his 'temples' at certain significant points along
the power-lines. Some people who seem to have a
particular kind of sensitivity receive shocks, sometimes violent, w hen they touch certain ancient
stones, but the stones don't seem to be 'charged'
with power all the time.
Again, the current ideas are only briefly stated
here, for to try to give examples of all the aspects"
would make this article far too long. Two books now
available in the U.S.A. giving far more information
on leys and related topics, are listed at the end of
this article. 3
So far, leys are only positively known in Britain,
but that does not mean that they do not exist elsewhere. Most countries have ancient sites, and it is
more than likely that leys are a worldwide phenomenon. There are dragon lines in China which seem to
have had the same effect and purpose, and Watkins
in his book mentions briefly evidence in Burma,
India, Palestine, Egypt and Syria which has similarities to certain ley features.
In England t here is an active body of people
delving into these mysteries, and their thoughts,
arguments and researches are published in the monthly magazine The ~ ~. 4 Naturally their ideas
are considered cranky by the 'straigl!-t' archaeologists, and ley-hunters are generally considered to be
the lunatic fringe of archaeology, but year by year
their ideas gain new followers among more openminded people who have had the sense to pick up an
Ordnance Survey map and a straight-edge. and try it
for themselves.
Antiquarian Harold Bayley's words, written in
1919. are most apt in this context: "It is, J;lOwever,
an Englishman's peculiarity that possessing""perh!lPs

the most interesting history, and some of the most


fascinating relics in the world. he is either too
modest or too dull to take account of them."
Thom. Megalithic Sites ill Britain (Oxford
University Press. 1967) and kY!!!! Observatories (Oxford University Press. 1971).
2. Alfred Watkins. The Old Straight Track (Garnstone
Press. 1970 - 59 Brompton Road. London SW3
IDS).
3. John Michell. The View Over Atlantis (Garnstone
" Press, 1969; also available in the U.S.A. as a
paperback. I believe).
Janet and Colin Bord. Mysterious Britain (Garn" stone Press, 1972; and New York. Doubleday,
1973.
4. ~ Ley ~, edited by Paul Screeton, 5 Egton
Drive, Seaton Carew. Hartlepool. Co. Durham,
TS252AT.
1. A.

PHARAOH'S PUMP
by Adolph L. Heuer. Jr.
[Editor'S Note: This is a further commentary on
Edward J. Kunkel's book Pharaoh'S Pump. reviewed
in our April 1973 issue.]
"" Mr. Kunkel's book was rather well done, and the
author seems to have done his homework. Further. I
believe that careful study of his basic premise also
seems worthwhile -at least in part. There is no doubt
that the Great Pyramid is very complicated though
seemingly simple. It would seem also to be a multipurpose structure.
Although the suggestion that it was a pump during
construction for the purpose of construction may at
first seem a bit bizarre. the idea does have merit.
Even today our greatest mover of massive weights is
flotation. Consider for a moment a drydock for a
battleship: While a modern drydock is part of our
modern technology. it should be very clear that whoever built the Great Pyramid also had a highly developed technology. To view this construction in any
other light would be ludicrous to say the least.
After having reached the conclusion that Mr.
Kl,mkel's "pump" was a reasonable suggestion, it was
necessary to determine. insofar as was possible,
whether his statements concerning the pyramid are
correct. For this I turned to Peter Tompkins' book
Secrets Q! the Great Pyramid. There are many evidences therein to support the idea of a technologY
far more advanced than is usually assumed for the
Ancient Egyptians -and also considerable "pure"
scientific knowledge, particularly in the field s of
geography and astronomy. However. I s hall limit
myself here to those 'items' that seem to support Mr.
Kunkel's premise. These quotations are. of course.
taken out of context but generally stand on their own.

72

Page 12. para. 2 of caption: "The walls of the


[Queen's] chamber are of unblemished limestone
blocks. beautifully finished. i:?ut early explorers
found them mysteriously encrusted with salt as much
as Y2 inch thick." This strongly supports Mr. Kunkel's
theory. ]i'urther. it suggests that either salt water was
used for additional bouyancy. or that the pump was so
efficient; that it started pumping salt water from the
Mediterranean during a low-water period of the Nile.
Page 63. para. 6: "The floor [of Wellington's
chamber] was covered with a thin black powder which
when analyzed turned out to be exuviae. or the castoff shells and skins of insects. Of living insects
there were none to "be found." The unexplained
"exuviae" might indicate a drought and also suggest
deposition by water.
Here follow a series of quotations and then my
comment;.
Page 68. para. 1: "Hewn to the correct angle and
pOlished to a uniform surface. they [the limestone
casing stones] were quite perfect. in the words of
Howard Vyse. 'in a sloping plane as correct and true
almost as modern work by optical instrument makers.
The joints were scarcely perceptible. not wider than
the thickness of silver paper.'"
PagE> 101. para. 6: "He was amazed to find that
the aVI~rage error in the part [Of the Descending
Passagl~] built of masonry was an infinitesimal 1/50
inc h in 150 feet; and over the entire length of 350
feet the sides were within 1/4 inch of being absolutely strail~ht."
PagE! 105, para. 2 ff: "The faces [of the casing
stones] were so straight and truly square that when
the stones had been placed together the film of mortar
left between them was on the average no thicker than
a man's nail. or 1/50 inch over an average area of
35 square feet .... the mean variation of the casings
from a straight line and a true square was but 1/ 100
inch all a length of 75 inches.... So fine was the
cement that after millennia of exposure to the elements, the stones shattered before the cement would
yield."
Page 323; para. 5: "The reports about the dimensions of the coffer show some discrepancies.
because t he coffer was cut rather roughly. Petrie
relates that an entire side was cut by the strokes of

a hugh saw, which was backed up after it had dented


the stone as much as one inch out of plumb."
Tompkins notes that the only reason offered for
the building of the pyramid is that it was constructed
to protect the dead Pharaoh from the attentions of
grave robbers, but goes on to point out that t here are
no reliable reports that any body was ever found in
the Great Pyramid. After reading the astounding
accuracy reported in t he first three quotations and
then considering t he shabby workmanship described
in the last, it strikes me that the "coffer" would be
the last place for a Pharaoh! However, the repeated
exacting precision plus the statement that the saw
used to cut the coffer drifted one inch out of plumb
very strongly suggests unattended automated machinery. Mr. Kunkel's suggestion that it served as an
ingenious "alarm bell" (bear in mind that it is reported to ring when struck) is much more logical.
Page 234, para. 3: "The only report on the daily
cost of building the Pyramid is given by Herodotus.
who says that an interpreter told him the daily sum
spent on radishes. onions and garlic for the workmen
was inscribed in Egyptian on the base of the Pyramid.
But the report sounds apocryphal ... "
I must say that I go along with Mr. Kunkel on this
one. A diet of radishes" onions and garlic would
hardly keep a workman on his feet -and it seems to
have astonished Herodotus. On the other hand. all
three are 'hot' vegetables that burn the tongue; and
Mr. Kunkel suggests that the Egyptians used these
as symbols to represent fuel and that the record of
the number doled out each day in fact indicated fuel
consumption.
It must be admitted that both Edward J. Kunkel
and I have indulged in considerable speculation on
this subject and have not "proved" an,ytllihg. However,
Mr. Kunkel did construct and shows pictures of a
working model. If nothing else, it might be great fun
for budding engineers -or others- to copy his model
and see whether it really works. I personally would
be interested in the results and suggest that this
might make a good science class project.
[Ed. note: One of our members won first priZe in
a science fair at a parochial school -his subject:
UFOs!]

Shades Qf Dorothy Parker?

Seattle. Wash. (UPI)-- "The following ad appeared in Friday's [8 June 1973J edition of the Seattle
'My boat and motor has disappeared from Ma,rtha Lake. Alderwood Manor. since June
10. I send my wishes that the boat breaks in half in mid-lake and that your mother is unsuccessful in
attracting help as she runs barking along the shore.' ..

Pos~-Intelligencer:

73

MEMBERS'FORUM
Member 11292 has dug up an old issue of the
National Geographic (January 1933) which contains
photographs and more information on the great wall
of Peru. It was almost certainly built as a defensive
barrier and, in fact. there are forts to be found along
it.

serious introductory study) and has asked that anyone


who has knowledge of purportedly genuine photographs of ghosts or ghostly phenomena. contact her.
Her business address is 34a Barnsdale Road, London
W9 3LL, England. (Though 'ghosts' are not our usual
business, we are glad to lend a hand here.)

We are still looking for that photograph of a


Thunderbird (see PurSuit. Vol. 5. No.2). Can't someone find it??!!?? - - -

Member 111173 is looking for funding for a search


for a Manimal (i.e. Bigfoot). Any members who know
of institutions or individuals who might be willing to
provide funds are asked to get in touch with him
through us. He is also interested in contacting
persons who would like to join in such a search next
summer -presumably only those who can at least
afford to p By their person al expenses.

Also, can anyone tell us of the pres-ent whereabouts of the "Casper, Wyoming, Mummy"? This has
been written up many times. usually being identified
as a 60-year-old man and probably "not of this
earth". On the other hand, museum specialists have
x-rayed it and identified it as an anencephalic fetus
-i.e. an infant. whether stillborn or not. lacking most
of the brain. However. one specialist at the American Museum of Natural History whom we have been
in touch with, has been unable to locate his set of
x-rays (he had been moved to a new office just before
we wrote to him and is still disentangling his files).
We want very much to find this mummy -or good
x-rays- so that the dentition can be studied by an
expert of our own choosing. If the mummy's jaw
contains a set of adult teeth, we have a 'problem' on
our hands: if the teeth are "baby teeth". then we can
forget it. At the moment it is not at either the AMNH
or the Smithsonian, and rumours have it that it was
repossessed by the owner; we have -been unable to
trace him.
Janet Bord, whose article on leys appears in this
issue, is planning a book on ghosts for children (a

For the record, Bernard Heuvelmans is not working


on a book on freshwater 'monsters'. Having spent ten
years on sea monsters, he simply couldn't face another bout with water monsters. Though this will be
a disappointment to those who looked forward to
_getting the book. we do not blame M. Heuvelmans at
all. Even forteana in massive doses can become a
bore.
And Mildred Higgins, starsong. Rt. 5. Fayetteville. Ark. 72701, -would like to correspond with
anyone "interested in/or collecting accounts of tiny
UFO discs" and also "for whatever humor or whatever
else- -it might lead to, if anyone wants to help me
compile the 'strange words' that sometimes pop out
of dream life". Alma Sanderson had a tendency to
"talk in tongues" in her sleep. and on one famous
occasion she sat bolt upright, flung out an imperious
hand -nearly braining Ivan- and uttered the single
word FLOY!

BOOK REVIEWS
by Sabina W. Sanderson
Andrew Tomas. ~ Are Not the ~. New York: Bantam Books. 1973. $1.25. (Hardcover editions: New
York: G. P. Putnam: London: Souvenir Press.)
This is still another book in the "Was there an ancient civilization preceding what we think of as the
dawn of history" genre? It is considerably better than most despite a few dubio.us statements, and contains references for some material though not all. There is a fair bibliography but no index in the paperback edition. (We do not know whether there is one in the hardcover editions, but hope there is.) The
author does include a most interesting chart outlining the "Rediscovery of Science", i.e. scientific and
technological. ideas known in antiquity and later lost. to be rediscovered by modern science.
While much of the material in Andrew T_omas's book will be familiar to those who have read other
books on this subject, he does include some new material and seems to have delved more deeply into
some of the old subject matter. The few items which are definitely not !!: propos (e.g. the "non-rusting"
pillar at Delhi) do not seriously affect his basic thesis that there was very advanced knowledge millennia
ago and that at least part of this knowledge would seem to have come from some outside source.
I do wish he had not devoted three chapters to ~men who traveled to one of these oases" (remote parts
of the world where a scientific 'utopia' is said to linger on), namely, Apollonius of Tyana, the "immortal"
Comte de Saint-Germain, and Nicholas Roerich. In fact, he dedicates his book to Saint-Germain, "who. in
the words of Voltaire, 'never dies and knows everything'''. I am inclined to wonder where Voltaire's

74

tongue was when he said that. and. while all three men are fascin'ating. the mere mention of Saint-Germain
in particular is likely to put many person's backs up. The increasing evidence that there was indeed a
rughistoric highly advanced civilization requires the most searching enquiry, and we shall need all the
'professional' help we can muster to determine the truth of all this. The general thesis may not be popular
but it should not be ignored.
One quite refreshing aspect of Andrew Tomas's writing is his kindly attitude toward orthodox scientists. He notes the very narrow specialization forced on most scientists. with the unavoidable result that
they know little outside their own field (called professional cretinism" by the scientists themselves). He
is not. of course. referring to those vociferous gentlemen who yell "Fake" when anything fortean appears
on their horizon but this lot can be ignored if the more open mintled can be induced to tackle this problem.
Tomas's book might be a good one to pass around.
The ,Magazine Q.f Science Fiction. 8060 Melrose Ave . Los Angeles, California 90046. Bimonthly.
$6.00 per year. ($7 for Canada; $8 'foreign')

Vert~:

This new science fiction magazine is really quite splendid -not so much for its science fiction as for
its science. Each issue has contained several articles on the latest in astronomy, computer technology.
and other such items as are of particular interest to SF writers and readers. These are very well written
and while perhaps not strictly forteana. they deal with discoveries and theories that have the orthodox
scientists tearing their hair.
Even if you don't like science fiction, we believe you will find it worth the price. Tell them we sent
you.
Raymond Lamont Brown. Phantoms

ell the

~.

New York: Taplinger Publishing Company. 1973. $5.50.

']'his book deals primarily if not exclusively with ghosts and is therefore generally outside our field.
Most of the tales are the old stand-bys though a few wiII,be new to most readers. However. incredibly
enough, the a uthor manages to make the whole thing rather dull.
Gerald S. Hawkins. Beyond Stonehenge. New York: Harper & Row. 1973. $10.00.
This is a rather odd book and definitely not up to Mr. Hawkins' previous work. In the first place. the
author does not seem to be certain whom he is addressing; portions of the book are quite technical and
will leave most readers a bit baffled unless they are astrono.:ners or mathematicians. but other sections
'are simply a chatty travelogue with repetitious discussion of his self-imposed diet that wards off the
"tra,veller's trots. He bounces from Stonehenge to the Nazca Lines (he concludes that they are !!.Qt a form
of ealendar) to Egypt and elsewhere and ends up with a sort of "whither mankind" and a discussion of
ecology and such. Altogether it is not a satisfying book.
Elizabeth Montgomery Campbell and David Solomon. J:.!!!! Search for Morag. New York: Walker and Company.
1973. $6.95.

This is an excellent and very straightforward account of the, initial work undertaken at Loch Morar
whi.ch lies not far from Loch Ness and also is inhabited by "monsters". The Loch Morar Survey group
consisted of three autonomous sections: biological. operational. and historical. The findings of the biologists. including the geological history of the loch. are reported by David Solomon who holds a degree in
zoology from Exeter University. while Mrs. Campbell reports on the operational (i. e. camera-watch) and
historical 'sections', the latter being. of course. the unearthing of eye-witness reports. It is unfortunate
but inevitable that these really are no different from those from Loch Ness 'and are therefore generally
repetitious. One exception is the 'initial' report from Loch Morar. given here without t he journalistic
embellishments that appeared in newspapers and infuriated the two gentlemen involved; they were not
attacked by a monster but one did graze the side of their boat and the 'ancient' oar they used to try to
fend it off did break. but both men felt that there was nothing deliberate in the animal's actions.
The book is divided into four sections -Background. Environment. Evidence. and Assessment- and
also includes a bibliography and an index. Though much of the material will be familiar to those who have
followed the investigations at Loch Ness. the book is a worthy addition jp any library dealing with
for1:eana.
Lastly. as amunition to be used against the sceptics. I rriust quote from Mrs. Campbell's chapter "The
Problem of Credibility": "Drink is another theory to explwn away the monsters. though I often think
that this one reflects more upon the doubter than the doubted. This was certainly so in the case of one

75

man who cornered me at a party with the repeated question, 'How do you know they weren't drunk?' His
insistence led him to the ultimate absurdity. of querying Tim Dinsdale's film with the words 'Yes, but how
do you know he wasn't drunk when he took it?'" This needs no comment from me.
Guy Underwood. The Pattern Qf the Past. London: Pitman Publishing. 1971. L1.50. New York: AbelardSchuman, Ltd. 1973. $8.95 (probable price).
The author's thesis is that all prehistoric structures -henge monuments. figures carved in the chalk,
barrows, roads, fords, entrances and divisions of fields and you name it-and also medieval churches and
cathedrals, are determined in both location and shape. by what he calls "geodetic lines". He has "proved"
his thesis by dowsing. Acceptance of his thesis therefore depends upon the reader's faith in his ability
as a dowser, something that I am inclined to d.oubt for various reasons.
Underwood devotes several chapters to the art of dowsing and states that there are two basic types of
dowsers: negative and positive ("terms used for distinction only, and not Signifying any electrical polarity"). Negative dowsers are sensitive to water lines, Le. underground streams. Positive dowsers, when
equipped with a "suitable rod. can detect not only water lines but also "aquastats and "track lines
which, according to the author, ~ be detected by negative dowsers. And herein lies the rub. Despite
the fact that Underwood devotes a chapter to "Primary Geodetic Lines" (his name for water lines. aquastats. and track lines), I really do not know what "aquastats" and "track lines" are. Certainly the author
does not make it clear, though it is aquastats and track lines that he uses to prove his theory. He states
that "Hazards are present in full force when water divining constitutes the prime method of research. The
sole media whereby the investigator may dete'ct or measure any phenomenon are his own perceptions-and
these are liable to mislead him. Auto-suggestion is his enemy, and preconceived ideas may blind him to
important facts when these seem impossible or produce chance and unrepresentative results ... " This does
not sit well with his later statement (p. 142) "As had already become clear to me, the location and shape
of all prehistoric structures are determined by geodetic lines ... "; nor with his conclusion that the movements of a divining rod are due to reflex actions of the dowser's muscles. triggered by some outside force.
The "rod" used by Underwood was a particularly 'sensitive' one whose movements could be detected
"though they be slight tremors only". Indeed. he detected the existence of aq.uastats and track lines by
the use of his "Geodetic rod", though he contends that other dowsers have been influenced by them but
have paid no attention to them, being interested only in finding underground streams or springs.
Underwood's detailed presentation of his findings is intriguing but not, to me at least, convincing. He
has a tendency to make flat statements where qualified ones should be required -e.g., speaking of Stonehenge, he says "The supposition that all recumbent stones have fallen from an upright position is incorrect ... "; and there is. so far as I can make out. not one single instance in which his findings by dowsing have been confirmed by digging down to find his aquastats or track lines. He several times states
that his findings have been confirmed, but the implication is that the confirmation has come from other
dowsers. He also makes several errors of commission and omission. Perhaps the most incredible of theSe
concerns Logan Stones. Th'ese are the large stones which are precisely balanced on one point and can be
rocked easily. To quote Underwood:
"The most famous in Britain is near Lan~'s End, and weighs 70 tons, while the largest in the world is
at TlUldil. in the Argeritine. It weighs over 700 tons, and rocks in the wind. All the logan stones tested
for geodetic lines were discovered to be placed similarly to monoliths and the inference is that they were
deliberately sited with reference to the geodetic pattern."
He fails even to speculate on how anyone managed to balance a 70-ton rock on one point, and one can
only hope that he does not seriously mean that anyone positioned a 700-ton stone so precisely that it
rocks in the wind!
Similarly he identifies some cracks on Stone 28 at Stonehenge as forming a swastika, noting that
"This is roughly executed. but recognizable". Here I can only credit him with a good imagination. I see no
resemblance whatsoever.
When he comes to cathedrals built in medieval times, he would seem to be guilty of omissions in at
least one case -Salisbury Cathedral- in that he completely ignores the fact that the original cathedral
was built on top of a chalk hill over the r,uins of a Norman castle, a Roman fortress, and an Iron Age hill
fort. The present cathedral was built because the old one ... Well, to quote from a history of Salisbury
Cathedral by Canon A. F. Smethhurst, Ph.D., Treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral:
"Both the Roman and the Saxon names for Ol<;l Sarum mean 'dry fortress' or 'dry city'; and it was indeed
dry and very short of water, being on the summit of a hill with chalky subsoil. The Cathedral was within'
the 'line of fire' from the castle; the wind was terrible 'so that the clerks can hardly hear one another

76

sing' and they suffered from severe rheumatism, and t he Church was continually damaged [often by
lightning]; there were not sufficient houses for the clergy within the congested city; and finally the
soldiers in the castle were continually annoying them and interfering with the services .... with the King's
sUPport he [Richard Poore, the Bishop] began in 1220 to build a new Cathedral on land which was his
own property, having been refused ground at Wilton by the Abbess there .....
Compare this with Underwood's statement that "It was immediately apparent that where anomalies and
lrregularities occurred in medieval cathedrals and churches, these existed for the sole purpose of avoidIng breach of the geodetic laws." He includes diagrams of several c athedrals, Salisbury among them, with
the "geodetic lines" drawn in. I am afraid I am not impressed; they look like so much spaghetti to me.
The author devotes two chapters to the effects of his aquastats and track lines on animals and vegetation and here, for some Unfathomable reason, he is more convincing though, again, acceptance of his
statements depends on one's belief in the author's dowsing. I have grave doubts about it but still feel
that at least a preliminary check should be made to determine whether there is any truth in his findings.
He may be in a category with Bottineau and his "nauscopie", a method he used to fortell the arrival of
ships long before they appeared over the horizon but which he was utterly unable to teach anyone else.

John Green. The Sasquatch File. (Order from Cheam Publishing Ltd., Box 99, Agassiz, B.C.) 1973. $4.00
poe;tpaid.

TIlll. Sasquatch File is John Green's third book on reports of hair-covered hominids (he calls them
"apes") that he has been investigating for fifteen years in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada. This is
avowedly what Ivan T. Sanderson always called a "seed-catalogue". Accounts of tracks and sightings are
arranged by states and provinces in chronological periods from the 1800's to reports as recent as March
and April 1973. Unlike Green's previous books, there are fewer illustrations, but bibliographical notes
and a good index are included.
While about 12% of the reports listed originate east of the Rocky Mountains, the book does little to
indicate the complexities of distinguishing more than one type of creature among the eastern accounts. To
most readers they will all appear to be "Sasquatches", while details not given by Green indicate otherwise. And this is true here even for accounts in and west of the Rockies where the author is most familiar
with his subject. Only the most avid follower of Bigfoot/Sasquatch progress will want to read this catalogue. For readers to whom this subject is new, a concise introduction to activity in the Pacific Northwe:3t and the most thought-provoking material on what is really happening there are to be found in Green's
second book, ~ of the Sasquatch, still available from Cheam Publishing at $3.00 postpaid.
While we find that we disagree with several of the author's concluding remarks in The Sasquatch File,
we do agree that the existence of any such living creatures will be officially denied until a specimen. is
physically presented to professional scientists for their inspection.
Mark A. Hall

~ain, please let us know of any change of address as long in advance aeo possible, and include your new
zip code.

HOW TO GET YOUR NAME OFF JUNK MAIL LISTS!


Bt~1ieve it or not, you can eliminate most of the junk mail you receive; not all of it -and for pornographic
maii, ask your local post office for form No.2201 ("the form for getting off sexually-oriented advertising
lists"). As for ordinary junk mail, write to Miss Lynn Lee, Director of Consumer Relations, Direct Mail
Adv.ertising Associlrtion, Inc., 230 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017. She will send you information
on their service, together with the necessary forms. There is no cost to you except for the postage required
to request the form and return it to her.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
"President (elected for 5 years)
"Vice-President (life)
.. Secretary (life)
Treasurer (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elected one year)
Board Member (elec~ed one year)
Board Member (elected one year)

Hans stefan Santesson


Edgar O. Schoenenberger
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
Daniel F. Manning
Robert C. Warth
Mark A. Hall
R. Martin Wolf

Trustees in accordance with the" laws of the state of New Jersey

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Acting Director
Executive Secretary
Technical Director
Technical Consultant
Research Consultarit
Mass Media

Mark A. Hall
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert C. Warth
Robert J. Durant
Carl J. Pabst
Walter J. McGraw
EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor and Publisher


Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor

Hans stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD


Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology. and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute, Eastern
"New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science. Palaeobiological Institute; University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia,
(Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek-Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University. (Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, Canada
(Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - Assistant Director, Baltimore Zoo, Baltimore, Maryland. (Ecologist & Zoogeographer)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex" County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanography)
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew UniverSity, Madison, New Jersey.
(Bot~y)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON, NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

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SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 6 NO.4

OCTOBER, 1973

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED


Columbia, New Jersey 07832
Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

MEMBERSHIP
Membership is $10 a year and runs from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Members receive
our Quarterly journal PURSUIT, an Annual Report and Auditor's Report, and all special Society publications for that year.
Members are welcome to visit our Headquarters if they wish to use the Library or consult the staff but,
due to limited facilities, this can be arranged only by prior appointment; and at least a week in advance.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL OR EVEN AN AMATEUR SCIENTIST TO JOIN US.

ORGANIZATION
The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board of Trustees in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. The Society is also counselled by a panel of prominent scientists,
which is designated the Scientific Advisory Board.
The Society is housed on eight acres of land in the Township of Knowlton, Warren County, New Jersey.

IMPORTANT NOTICES
The Society is completely apolitical.
It does not accept material on, or presume to comment upon any aspects of Human Medicine or Psychology; the Social Sciences or Law; Religion or Ethics.
All contributions, but not membership dues, are tax deductible, pursuant to the United States Internal Revenue Code.
The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in its
publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made bY any members
by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.

PUBLICATIONS
Our publishing schedule is four Quarterly issues of PURSUIT, dated January, April, July, and October,
and numbered as annual volumes - Vol. 1 being 1968 and before; Vol. 2, 1969, and so on. These are
mailed at the end of the month. (Subscription to PURSUIT, without membership benefits, is $5 for 4
issues.) Order forms for back issues will be supplied on request.
PURSUIT is listed in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory and in the Standard Guide to Periodicals; and is abstracted in Abstracts of Folklore Studies. It is also available from University Microfilms,
300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. The price is $4.10 per reel. An annual index appears in the
October issue.

PURSUIT

Vol. 6. No. 4
October. 1973
G

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS
Editorial, by Hans Stefan Santesson
Chaos and Confusion
Whose Point of View?
The Avenger Flight; and Others
Mermaids, '
He Talked with the seagulls
Astronomy
The Tunguska "MeteoriteGeology
Lightning Again
London for Darknesses?
Pre-Earthquake Phenomena

78
78
79
80
81

82
82
82
83

B~~~

,
ABSMal Affairs in Pennsylvania and Elsewhere,
by Allen V. Noe
Anthropology
Not the Salzburg Steel Cube, but an Iron Object
from Wolfsegg, by Hubert Malthaner '
The Chinese Pyramid
Members' Forum
Department ! ~ ~
Book Reviews, by Sabina W. Sanderson
Index {Qr !!!1a.

84

90
93

95
96
97
99

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1973

78

EDITORIAL
A number of quasi-semantic crimes have undoubtedly been coiDmitted by enthusiastic pseudo-Forteans,
at times even in the pages of this publication, in part, as Hubert Malthaner points out by implication in this
issue, because of the desire of dilettante archaeologists to prove the case for the existence, in remote
pre-historic times, of civilizations on this earth far surpaSsing our own in technological development".
CCllonel Churchward is obviously the classic example of this 'rather casuistic approach to pre-history,
which rationalizes the selective "editing" of references cited in support of the case for the prior existence
of these civilizations. Latterda.v Churchwards, not content with paraphrasing Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
wi.thout due credit, and shifting happenings from the Caribbean to the Pacific, have of course shown a
mluked talent for blatant plagiarism of e adier plagiarists, and also been inclined to paraphrase not only
not wisely but all too well. The result has been decidedly confusing.
We are concerned at SITU not with this pseudo-Fortean approach to pre-history, but with the evidence,
as yet unexplained by the technicians who have pontificated on the subject in the past, which adds up to
the possibility that ours is possibly not the best of all possible worlds but simply the most recent chapter
in man's repeated efforts to reach the stars. .
We tend to view with suspicion anything which suggests that we ma.v in fact have come this wa.v before.
We ignore the historical precedents which should remind us of how technicians, administrators, bureaucrats
as truly sanctified in their da.vs as in ours, have in the known past prevented earlier advances, ignoring
wltnt and hunger and ignoring misery and injustices in their no doubt understandable preoccupation with
formulae aimed at prolonging the status quo of the da.v.
It is tempting, but intellectually dishonest, to dismiss out of hand the possibility that civilizations
have risen and fallen and literally vanished into the mists of time on this world of ours, solely because of
the excesses of these latterda.v Churchwards whose sins are obvious and whose devotion to truth ma.v
properly be questioned.
If we therefore recognize this possibility, and extrapolate from the known to the presumed, we are
legitimately speculating on a subject which has intrigued thousands, including many of our members,
throughout these and earlier years. We would be lacking in the humility demanded of students of history
if we thus denigrate this possibility solely because of the best-selling charlatans who have in recent
years muddied the waters.
This is assuming we pay more than lip-service to our description of ourselves as Forteans, and that
WE! have a certain sense of history to which so many among us are proudly alien.
Hans Stefan santesson

CHAOS & CONFUSION

WHOSE POINT OF VIEW?


A cartoon reprinted from Punch, the famous English
comic magazine, shows two apes (variety not distinguishable) in a cage and a little man in another
cornl~r of a room. The caption reads "It's most interesting, by pushing this lever 20 timeS you can get
him to walk across here with a banana."
Obviously, this is intended to be funny, but we
did E~ kind of mental double-take after reading it. How
do we know that this isn't the reaction -the true
one- of animals subjected to various tests designed
to measure t heir intelligence, adaptability, etc?
Actually, we don't. But we are so certain of our
superior mentality that it seldom occurs to us to
even consider the possibility that such tests ma.v
work both wa.vs.
There is a common notion that animals (i.e.,
properly "mammals") do not "think", though just what
is meant by this word I am not certain; and that one
must. not attribute 'human emotions to other animals.
If BJ) animal shows apparent affection for its young,
this is put down to instinct -a catch-all word if
there ever was one- but not to the 'fact' that the

animal may indeed be fond of its offspring. Ivan


Sanderson, in his book The Dynasty of Abu (still in
print, Alfred A. Knopf, NYC), includesthe story of a
female elephant tested for her mental capacity and
memorizing ability at a scientific institute in Germany. The gentlemen who did the testing noted that
after a few trials the elephant "became much annoyed,
but usually chose the neutral, just in case"; and Ivan
Sanderson concluded t hat "Her peeve was apparently
with t he nature of the experiment, not with its result".
It would seem to be impossible to become peeved if
you cannot 'think'.
Certainly, much of animal behaviour, including our
own (though this notion may not be popular), is
"instinctive" but it probably is a mistake to assume
that all of it is. On many occasions I have watched
our dogs lying on the lawn and obviously calculating
their chances of catching a groundhog pottering
about on the periphery of the lawn. (Here I should put
on record that on one occasion a young groundhog
was found approximately 7 feet up in an apple tree at
one end of the lawn: the trunk is vertical for the first
4 feet. I was not aware that they could climb.)

79

It is impossible to draw any firm conclusions from


any of this, but it is perhaps a good idea to keep it
all in mind.

THE AVENGER FLIGHT; AND OTHERS


The unexplained loss of a flight of five Navy
torpedo bombers off the Florida coast in December,
1945, was the incident that began the entire "Vile
Vortices business. This is not to say that the Navy
planes were the first to disappear in that area in
strange circumstances. On the contrary, there are
records of hundreds of disappearances of ships and
aircraft in the so-called "Triangle- as well as a
tradition of suspicious goings-on that dates back
several hundred years. But the loss of the five torpedo
bombers, and of a search plane sent after them (but
see below), brought the situation very dramatically to
the attention of the public. Writers such as Vincent
Gaddis (Invisible Horizons) and Ivan Sanderson
(Invisible Residents) collated a large number of case
histories from the Triangle and offered the Navy incident in the context of a long and continuing history
of unexplained occurrences.
The U. S. Navy makes exhaustive investigations of
accidents that occur to its ships and aircraft. The
loss of the five torpedo bombers and the search plane
touched off an unusually detailed study. The transcript of the official board of inquiry is the basic
source document for data on the incident, but it has
been a difficult matter to get access to it. The report
has been available to the public, but only to those
willing and able to visit an obscure office in the
Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington. Furthermore, only the testimony and exhibits were available
-the conclusions of t he board of inquiry were kept
under wraps. Apparently the Navy feared legal
ploblems might result from the release of the conclusions of the board. However, the Navy did inform
us (this was long after Invisible Residents was published), "off the record-, that t he board pinned full
responsibility on the leader of the flight, and concluded that he had simply lost his way, panicked, and
eventually led the flight out to sea where it ran out of
fuel.
We are pleased to report that Member 11372 has
recently succeeded in convincing Naval officials that
the entire report, including the conclusions of
the board, should be made public. Furthermore, the
Navy has agreed to make microfilm copies for general
distribution. This may be ordered from dperational
Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington
Navy Yard, Bldg. 210, Washington, DC 20374; the
price is $4.00. and requests should specify that this
is the case of the five TBMs or Avengers lost on
December 5, 1945.
The Navy should be commended for this "forthright
action, as should our member for his persuasiveness.
Without both. the original report would probably be
lost forever to serious researchers. It is true that the

new data in the report simply puts the blame on Lt.


Taylor, the flight leader. and then corrects the findings to say that he wasn't to blame and that "the
flight disappeared for reasons or causes unknown-.
(Even if he was, there are certainly some peculiarities still remaining.) Robert J. Durant, who has done
much work on this, tells us that he has interviewed
two pilots who were in the same training program and
that their information "makes Lt. Taylor, the leader.
look bad.... but really only serves to confuse the
central question of 'what happened?'And the question of the Martin Mariner sent to look
for the lost flight is most odd. The official Navy
version is that it "disappeared but that a flash of
light was seen by a freighter in the area where the
plane ought to have been and that it is believed that
it probably blew up. A radio talk-show MC in Florida
has told us that these planes were probably the worst
death-traps of that era; gasoline fumes had a tendency
to leak into the plane -one spark, and that was thatand that the crew of one plane in the squadron to
which he was assigned -and which was sent out s hortly after the Martin flying boat, saw the plane blow up.
If this is true, and our informant certainly was sincere.
why didn't/doesn't the Navy know of this and say so?
While we are at it, Member 11372 has also eliminated one of the vessels formerly believed to be connected with t he mystery of the "Triangle-. This is
the John and Mary. listed by both Gaddis and Sanderson, and just about everyone else. The SS West
Quechee sighted the 125-foot fishing schooner at
318"29' North and 6329' West, southeast of Bermuda,
at 4:45 p.m. on the 16th April, 1932; the crew and the
ship's papers and documents were missing. Our
member checked through Coast Guard records on
derelict ships and found that:
.. All of the six crew members had already been
rescued on March 8, 1932. by the master motorship
Tidewater. There had been an explosion in the engine
room of the John and Mary, after which the crew
panicked. abandoning the ship hastily at 1:38 p.m.
The crew was soon picked up and had brought the
ship's papers with them. The location of the abandonment was at 3658' North and 6950' West.
"It was found that the engine had exploded but no
other damage had been done, so it was taken into tow
as a derelict.-

The Impossible Triangle

80

MERMAIDS
Mermaids have been a popular topic for many
years, one viewpoint being that these were simply
manatees or dugongs seen by love-st!!lved sailors,
and the other t hat mermaids really exist. I have
always been inclined to believe that it was pretty
close to libel to suggest that sailors were this blind,
but there proves to be another facet to this, as reported in Elaine Morgan's book The Descent.Qf.
Woman (reviewed in this issue). Mrs. Morgan says,
..... a report on the dugong by H. A. F. Goohar offers
the most probable solution to the mystery of the
mariner and the mermaid. It points out that there is a
striking resemblance between the genitaliaof dugongs
and those of human beings; and that in the Red Sea
area there is an oral tradition that in former centuries
a sai.Lor after months at sea who found a dugong in
the shallows-large, docile, warm-blooded, air-breathing, smooth-skinned, female-breasted. and with
ventrlLI genital organs which remarkably well fitted
his own-wouldn't worry over-much if she was comparatively faceless." This is certainly a more rational .explanation t han the mere suggestion that sailors
saw dugongs or manatees and mistook them for
beaut.iful women.
On the other hand, many reports of mermaids come
from !!leas in which no sirenian has ever been found
and in which they could not survive, e.g. in the
north'~rn latitudes. There have been some deliberate
hoaxes and publicity stunts, but there are other reports which cannot be so easily dismissed. One such
report is included in !1.! Enchantress by Gwen Benwell and Sir Arthur Waugh (New York, The Citadel
Press, 1965; pp. 113-114):
"Deposition by John M'lsaac, a farmer, ...
.. At Cambeltown, twenty-ninth of October, 1811.
In presence of Duncan Campbell, ESQ .. Sheriff-substitute of Kintyre, appeared John M'lsaac, tenant in
Corpb.ine ... solemnly sworn and examined depones....
That about three or four o'clock of the afternoon of
Sunda.,y the eighteenth current having taken a walk
towards the seaside, he came to the edge of a preci. pice above the shore, from which he saw the appearance of something white upon a black rock at
some distance from him.... He crept upon all fours ...
until he came within twelve or fifteen paces of the
rock where it lay: That, upon looking at the object
with attention, he was impressed with great surprise
and astonishment at its uncommon appearance .... That
the upper half of it was white, and of the shape of a
human body, and the other half towards the tail of a
brindled reddish-grey colour apparently covered with
long hair; and as the wind blew off the land, it sorne. times raised the hair over the creature's head, and
every time the gust of wind would do this, the animal
would. lean towards one side, and taking up the opposite hand, would stroke the hair backwards, and then
leaning upon the other side of its head in the same
manner. That at the same time, the animal would put

back the hair on both sides of its head in this manner;


it would also spread or extend its tail like a fan, to
a considerable breadth, and while so extended, the
tail continued in tremulous motion and w hen drawn
together again it remained motionless and appeared to
the deponent to be about twelve or fourteen inches
broad lYing flat upon the rock .... That the animal,
upon the whole, was between four and five feet long,
as near as he could judge: That it had a head, hair,
arms, and body, down to the middle like a human
being, only that the arms were short in proportion to
the body which appeared to be about the thickness of
that of a young lad, and tapering gradually to the
point of the tail: .... (observer watched for near two
hours) ... he saw its face, every feature of which he
could distinctly mark, and which to him had all the
appearance of the face of a human being, with very
hollow eyes ... the cheeks were of the same colour
with the rest of the face: That the neck seemed to be
short .... (could not see the chest, half submerged in
the water, so could not say if it were male or female)
All which he declares to be truth as he shall answer
to God; and depones he cannot write.
DUNCAN CAMPBELL, Sheriff-Substitut'e"
Witnesses: Rev. Doctor George Robertson and, Mr.
Norman MacLeod, minister of Campbeltown, and
James Maxwell, ESQ., Chamberlain of Mull.
A second report is taken from Silliman's American
of Science, Vol. II (1820), PP. 178-179, and
is identified as an extract from the log book of the
ship Leonidas, "sailing from New-York towards
Havre, Asa Swift master; May 1817. Lat. 44, 6'
north". It was "communicated to Benjamin Silliman
by Mr. Elisha Lewis of New-Haven, a respectable
merchant", and reads as follows:
~

"First part of the day light v!!liable winds and


cloudy; at two P.M. on the larboard Quarter, at the
distance of about half the ship's length, saw a
strange fish. Its lower parts were like a fish; its
belly was all white; the top of the back brown, and
there was the appearance of short hair as far as the
top of its head. From the breast upwards, it had a
near resemblance to a human being and looked upon
the observers very e!!lnestly; as it was but a short
distance from the ship, all the afternoon, we had a
good opportunity to observe its motions and shape.
No one on board ever saw t he like fish, before; all
believe it to be a Mermaid.
"The second mate Mr. Stevens, an intelligent
young man, told me the face was nearly white, and
exactly like that of a human person; that its arms
were about half as long as his, with hands resembling
his own; that it stood erect out of the water about
two feet, looking at the ship and sails with great
earnestness. It would remain in this attitude, close
along side, ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and then
dive and appear on the other side. It remained around
them about six hours. Mr. Stevens also stated that
its hair was black on the head and exactly resembl-

81

ed a man's; that below the arms, it was a perfect


fish in form, and that the whole length from the head
to the tail about five feet."
Both these accounts are very straightforward, and
it is unlikely that either wa~' simply "made up". Under
English law, perjury is a very serious offense -what
the penalty was in 1820 I do not know, but it must
certainly have been sufficient to deter anyone from
making such a deposition unless he were very sure of
his facts. Also, Mr. M'lsaac's da,ughter made a
similar deposition, stating that she had seen the
'creature' on another occasion; and the Witnesses
were convinced of Mr. M'lsaac's sincerity.
As for the entry in the log of the Leonidas, it
was an offense to make an incorrect entry and ship
captains had better things to do with their time than
to write down fairy tales that could easily discredit
them with ship owners.
Neither report has much in common with 'legendary' mermaids, the beautiful blondes who lure sailors
to their doom by singing at them. In fact these mermaids don't sound at all attractive, but they do share
one peculiarity: noticeably short arms. This is an
odd thing to make up if you are concocting a story.
Whether M'lsaac's deposition was widely published
and might have been seen by Mr. Stevens, the second
mate of the Leonidas, is unknown, but even if it was,
the initial report must still be considered to be an
accurate description of what John M'lsaac saw.
None of this proves anything, but it does suggest
that reports of mermaids should be given more consideration than is often the case.
HE TALKED WITH THE SEAGULLS
Our member 111434 has sent us a number of accounts of unusual events in his part of the world, but
perhaps the most unusual -though it is not strictly
within oUf province- is the following. (We" do not
have permission to use t he full name of t he witness.)
"Dick B. was working in some of the more remote
areas of Alaska in the early 50s. One morning an
older Amerind laborer disappeared for a while. When
he returned, he was very concerned about his wife,
stating that she was. ill and that he had to go to her.
The only available communication was a shortwave

radio which, at that time, was not working. The


Amerind explained that he had gone and talked with
the seagulls who told him that his wife was seriously
ill and he had to go to her. She was 500 miles away.
"Later that day a plane came through heading
north, and the Amerind went along.
.. As soon as the radio was repaired, the pilot was
contacted and he reported that upon landing at the
island the wife's illness was confirmed. There had
been no advance notice of the Amerind's arrival, and
yet, the only auto on the island was waiting to deliver them to the village some 13 miles distant. The
pilot had no explanation for the fact that the taxi was
there to meet them.
"When the Amerind returned to his job, he commented casually that it was,a good thing that he had gone
to talk with the seagulls."
This is really most extraordinary, though there are
possible theories that come to mind. Amerinds in
many places are, or at least used to be, noted for
using smoke signals, and these are also used by the
Australian Aborigines. In some cases the smoke
signals themselves convey a message, but in others
(and this seems to be particularly true of the Australians) the smoke signals seem to be simplY an attention-getting device, the message actually being
sent by "mental telepathY". It is also true that many
so-called mediums use their crystal balls, tea leaves,
or whatever, not as sources of information per se but
as objects which help them to" concentrate, the
'message' coming from some other 'source'. It seems
unlikely that seagulls as such convey even simple
bits of information from one human to another, but it
is possible that tribe or even a family of Amerinds
might choose, say, a seagull as a sort of guardian
angel and thus an unwitting intermediary in an exchange of news by what is now called mental telepathy. It" is unfortunate that" the Amerind was not
quizzed more thoroughly but this, of course, may not
have been possible for many reasons.
The modus operandi of mental 'telepathy' is not
understood at the present time, but we believe it
likely that it, too, will prove to be a phYsical phenomenon, operating on a wavelength" not yet detectable by us.
If any of our members know of similar occurrences,
we will be happy to hear of them.

a.

David Scott-Moncrieff, head of David Scott-Moncrieff & Son Ltd., Purveyors of Horseless Carriages to
the Nobility and Gentry since 1927, is the 'limericist' whose work was quoted in our July issue. Herewith
another of his efforts:
The monster that lives in" Loch Ness
Said he lived in the days of Queen Bess.
When they ~aiq "Do you mean ". "
That you lived WITH the Queen?"
He r eplie"d with a wink, "More or less".

:. -:. ... I ""

" .

82

V. ASTRONOMY
THE TUNGUSKA "METEORITE"
.Still another theory to explain the explosion and
odd pattern of damage at Tunguska in Siberia in
1908 has been put forward by A. A. Jackson 4th and
Michael P. Ryan Jr., physicists at the center for
Relativity Theory at the University of Texas at
Austin. Their suggestion is based on experiments
carriE,d out by Soviet scientists in 1966, which showed that the pattern of tree felling at Tunguska could
have been caused by a "cylindrical explosion travelling down a wire at an angle of 30 degrees to the
ground". This experiment was done with a scale
model. of the Tunguska site and produced an identical
pattem to that found there.
ME,ssrs. Jackson and Ryan suggest that all the
effects noted at Tunguska, and also those recorded
elsewhere at the time of that 'explosion', were producecil by a "black hole" that plunged straight through
the earth. "Black holes are not, of course, "holes"

but incredibly dense and minute bodies that are believed to be the final stage in the collapse of a star
A black hole is described by Jackson and Ryan as
"a grain of dust weighing a million billion tons and
travelling at about 25,000 miles an hour when it hit
the earth. If it entered at Tunguska, it would have
exited somewhere in the North Atlantic between Newfoundland and the Azores, and it would have produced
shock waves here also. They therefore suggest that
ships' logs be examined for accounts of any unusual
occurrences on the 30th June 1908 and that any other
records of changes in air pressure in the North
Atlantic should also be checked for confirmatory
evidence.
It may never be possible to prove the cause of the
devastation at Tunguska -comet head, "space ship,
an antimatter meteorite, or a black hole- but the
continued accumulation of evidence, not simply from
the site itself but from other areas, may provide us
with a probable answer.

VI. GEOLOGY
LIGHTNING AGAIN
. One of our members, who prefers to be known as X,
sends the following:
,"Aside from Fort's comments on lightning's
affinity for wedge-shaped objects, it has been known
to do some crazy things such as fusing coins inside
a pocket without causing other damage, fusing a live
bullet to the barrel of a gun, and burning photographic
images into glass. But the following incidents are my
favourites.
"In the Scientific American (old series), 11-344:
'A Lightning Well Borer: During a recent thunder'storm at Kensington, N.H., the lightning descended
perPE!Ddicularly in an intense discharge into a pasture
field, and made a hole about a foot in diameter and
30 feet deep, forming a well which soon filled up with
good water.' What better way to dig a well, but how
does one get "perpendicular" lightning?
"And in the early morning of June 29, 1869 the
residents of Pradettes, France, caught glimpses of a
naked man sneaking about. The naked man turned out
to be the mayor. From out of the blue, a bolt of lightning struck him and burnt away every stitch of clothing without touching him. I've heard of seams being
. burnt away, but not all at once! (See Hart's Giant
Book of Fascinating Facts, p. 148.)
M]"rom the same source there is an undated account
of lightning striking near a flock of sheep grazing
near Lapleux, France. All the black sheep in the
flock were killed instantly, but not one of the white
sheep was so much as touched. This sort of thing
carries selectivity of targets a bit too far."

Perhaps, but... In our issue of July 1972 we reported on a Shenandoah National Park Ranger, Roy C.
Sullivan, who had been struck by lightning no less
than f~ur times and lived to tell about it. He's been
hit again.
The Washington star-News (Washington, D .C.) of
the 27th August 1973, reports that Sullivan was struck
for the fifth time on the 7th August of this year. They
quote :him as saying, "I had had a dream that I was
going ~o be struck again this year and after that I had
been ',dodging every storm that came near me. He
added, that every time he saw a storm gathering, he
leaped in his car and headed in the opposite direction
at top speed, but miscalculated in August 7th. "It
strucJ,t me right on the head, set my hair on fire and
went 'down my left arm and left leg, knocked my left
shoe off, but didn't untie the lace or cut it, then crossed over to my right leg below t he knee and went into
the ground. This time he was away from work for
seventeen days.
Mr. Sullivan is no longer afraid of being struck. He
states that he has had another dream. "That was the
last one. I know exactly why it happened--it was all
for good purposes. However, he will not elaborate on
this, saying simply, "That's between God and me,
.and nobody but us will ever know. A 'final' answer
but not a helpful one. Only time will tell whether he
is correct. For his sake, we hope so.
LONDON FOR DARKNESSES?
One of our English subscribers sends the following account to be added to our catalogue of "unnatural
darknesses"

83

"This happened to me, circa Spring 1942, when I


was working for the war time Government 1n an
obscure department as typist. The building' where I
worked was near Westminster Abbey and t he Houses
of Parliament and the bus that took me homewards
went up Whitehall, the seat of the Government where
all the civil servants and war officers were situate.
"One day, about 4 p.m., I got on my bus to go
home, and it was a clear, rather dull day. But as the
bus turned past the Houses of Parliament and up
towards Whitehall, the whole atmosphere darkened
and we drove into a perfect fog; dark air billowed
round the bus and the conductor had to put on the
lights, and we looked at each other startled. (I don't
remember anyone else on the bus - but do remember
the look between the conductor and myself). We drove
up Whitehall without a stop - it is quite a short
street - and then came onto Trafalgar Square, and
lo! the fog lifted and the streets were clear again.
Fog over Whitehall! yes, literally true. I never saw
this mentioned by anyone I seem to remember the
lights being on in the offices in Whitehall as we went
through, but not elsewhere.Again, we would ask that any members who might
have further information on this incident get in touch
with us; or if you have other examples, we will be
happy to have them.

PRE-EARTHQUAKE PHENOMENA
One of the things that interested Charles Fort was
the 0 ccurrence of various phenomena preceding
earthquakes, almost invariably dismissed by the
'experts' as being 'unrelated' to the quake. Despite
this, the common man has continued to report such
things as glows in the skies, odd dark clouds, etc.
This has now become almost 'respectable' because
of the near necessity for finding some way to ~redict
earthquakes so that at least some precautions can be
taken or arrangements made to provide relief for the
victims afterwards.
A recent earthquake in Mexico was preceded by
flashing red glows, similar to "heat lightning-, and
sounds of thunder in a clear blue sky. White flashes
were seen after the quake. Also, Soviet scientists
studYing the 1966 earthquake that wrecked Tashkent
have announced that the sky there did glow several
hours before t he quake, and that t he cause was a
"redistribution of electric charges in the earthatmosphere system -. Electron concentration s were
measured at stations at Alma Ata and Tashkent the
night of the quake; the ionosphere over Alma Ata was
found to be "calm-, but over Tashkent "a silent storm
of electrons" broke out several hours before the
quake, reached its peak before the first tremor, and
then subsided.
:
We have reported before on the fact th~t animals
show every evidence of sensing an impending earthquake, despite a lack of obvious warning signals, and

have speculated that some electromagnetic dis


turbance may be at the root of this. (Probably Man
also has the necessary 'receptors' but these are
either hypertrophied or we have trained ourselves to
ignore the signals. If you read reports by persons
who have had some type of "psychic experience;
you will often find a statement to the effect that the
episode frightened the person so much that he or she
does not want anything like that to happen again and
will deliberately try to 'block' such abilities. This
could be true of more 'physical' predictions as well.
It would seem that few premonitions have to do with
pleasant events.) Some very bizarre and measurable
phenomena occurred before the earthquake that hit
Hawaii Island on the 26th April 1973; so bizarre that
one scientist said, "It's too much like Buck Rogerswe have no explanation for it yet.
About an hour before the earthquake struck Hilo
(on Hawaii Island, some 200 miles southeast of Oahu)
the radiowave-reflecting layer of the ionosphere some
50 miles up suddenly disappeared -that is, for some
odd reason, the layer did not reflect radiowaves sent
up from the ground-. And the Navy's "Omega Navigational System-, producing longwave-Iength radio
signals to guide ships far at sea, "began drifting and
not making any sense-. "Omega- hit its maximum
drift just about the time the quake occurred and then
began to recover; and the ionosphere again began reflecting r adiowaves immediately after the quake.
Discovery that the ionosphere was 'missing' was
a serendipitous outcome of studies set up to try to
provide an early-warning system for tsunamis (socalled tidal waves). Major tsunamis are commonly
preceded by a particular type of earthquake shock
wave -called Rayleigh waves- which are detectable
in the atmosphere as well as in the ground, and it

Atmosphere

Seismic body waves

Redrawn from AP Diagram

84

was these Ra,yleigh waves that the observatory at


Oahu, which discovered the 'missing ionosphere',
was looking for. They can be detected by special
radio signals, and it was these that failed to return
from the ionosphere.
This Hawaiian earthquake was also abnormal in
that tremors at oahu continued to be recorded for
two hours instead of the usual 30 to 45 minutes. The
reason for this is unknown. To date, so far as we
know,. there have been no published speculations on
just what happened here or why. The widespread
reports of flashing lights in the sky prior to earthqUakE!S may indicate that "electron storms" are a
common event in conjunction with earthquakes. In
the a.rticles available to us there is no mention of
such before the Hawaiian quake but, obviouslY,

something went 'wrong' with the ionosphere. Equally,


it would appear that the ionosphere, though disturbed
over Tashkent, did not disappear before or during that
1966 earthquake. Nevertheless, there now seems to
be no question that there are unusual atmospheric
concomitants to earthquakes, and we would suggest
that the scientists should pay more attention to
reports from the "benighted natives" of bizarre events
preceding or following earthquakes. The basic mechanism governing the occurrence of quakes is fairly
well understood, and t heir destructive 'powers well
known; what we need now is a thorough study of the
less visible consequences. Flashing lights are far
from being the only unusual phenomena that have
been reported before earthquakes. The others tend
to be even "worse".

VII. BIOLOGY
ABSMAL AFFAIRS IN PENNSYL 'V ANIA
AND ELSEWHERE
by Allen V. Noe
Edito.r's Note: This issue of Pursuit was deliberately
held up in order to bring iou this report on the extraordinary events in Pennsylvania. As of the time of
writing (mid-October), there have been no new reports
for about two and a half weeks and it seems that the
creatures have withdrawn from the area for the time
being. Publicity on this has been kept to a minimum,
both to avoid panic locally (and we must emphasize
that there are no reports of humans having been
molested in any way, even when they have taken pot
shots at the 'monsters') and to avert an influx of
trigger-happy monster-hunters who too often damage
prival;e property and show a tendency to take pot
shots at anything that moves. We would ask our
members not to go barging off to Pennsylvania
where' the;-;'m probably only cause Y trouble at
this point. There is no current activity there in any
case. We are in touch with investigators there and
are prepared to take any necessary action.
In August of this year, I took my wife and Number
Two 80n on a trip to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas,
primarily to visit relatives but also to check on Unexplaineds along the way. While visiting a friend in
Little' Rock, Arkansas, I first heard of sightings of
large, hairy creatures in the vicinity of Pine Bluff,
and we therefore made a detour to that city. The
Sheriff's Office there had reports from two out-of:state motorists that they had seen a large, hairy
somet.hing standing upright on t he highway north of
Pine Bluff. When the motorists approached it, the
creature dropped to all fours and took off into the
woods in a hurry. Since this was consistent with a
bear's behaviour, neither t he Sheriff nor I considered
that this was anything other than a bear, but in the
light of more recent developments, it is more than
possible that it was not a bear.

Others had also reported sightings, but there were


insufficient details to warrant the assumption that a
bipedal animal was involved. A newspaper clipping
just received, however, reported that three boys riding
motorcycles near Pine Bluff had seen a large, hairy,
ape-like beast cross the road, walking upright and
carrying a blonde girl in its arms! We are told that no
blondes are known to be missing, and this story remains for the moment "unconfirmed", but we are still
checking on it.
While in Pine Bluff, I telephoned a contact in
Texarkana to inquire about the status of the "Fouke
Monster" (first reported on in our issue of October
1971). I was told that t he creature had not been seen
in the area for some time but that there had been
reports of a similar creature deCimating the chicken
populati'on in northern Louisiana. (I had visited
Fouke, Arkansas, in October 1972, at which time
Glenn Zorn, who had grown up on his grandfather's
farm near Fouke in the area where all the footprints
were found, was my guide. I obtained a cast of the
creature's footprint, saw the bed made of brush, grass
and leaves w here it had been sleeping, and interviewed witnesses who had seen it crossing a nearby
road several times.)
A letter, dated the 5th October 1973, from the
Commerce Journal of Commerce, Texas, reported two
sightings of another monster in the South Sulphur
River bottoms near Peerless, Texas. One person
repo.rtedly has photos of some tracks, and we have
taken steps to obtain copies of these. Also, Johnny
Newcomb, a SITU member from Oklahoma City, reported a large, hairy creature which had been seen
near Hobart, Oklahoma, but noted that the available
information is insufficient to permit a definite statement on the nature of the beast.
I returned home on the 23rd August, believing
-Quite erroneously- that that was that for the
summer. As I caught up with my reading I came
across an AP release dated the 31st August. which
reported "Bigfoot" sightings in Westmoreland County.

85

Pennsylvania. The release suggested consi~eratile


reluctance on t he part of Greensburg (the' couriiy
seat) officials tot alk about this, s a I contacted
stan Gordon, Director of the westmoreland County
UFO study Group (WCUFOSG) and now one of our
members, who was stated to be investigating the
matter. He told us of what must be one of the greatest
known concentrations of sightings of huge hairy
bipeds in history.
There had been frequent sightings, starting in
June and reaching peak during the hot and humid
weather in August, at which time stan had as many

Pittsburgh for analysis but that no reports were


forthcoming. Stan Gordon therefore went with me tQ
the Museum and we retrieved the material, which ~
brought back to SITU headquarters. The hair and
feces, together with additional specimens gathered
by me on a subsequent trip, were sent to Frederick
Ulmer, formerly Curator of Mammals at the Philadelphia Zoo but now retired, for examination; and
other specimens which I will discuss below, were
sent to Professor George Agogino of t he PaleoIndian Institute of the University of Eastern New
Mexico. As of the 12th October 1973, the hairs have

"
Q

f!>

00
(:)0.

(":)

Map of westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, showing locations of major sightings


and areas of concentration (circled on the map).

as five people to man telephones and two-way radio


communications with the members of his group who
were attempting to visit and question all those who
had reported seeing t he creatures and to look for
footprints and other evidence. For about two and a
half weeks they got little or no sleep.
Accompanied by my wife Polly, an avid monster
hunter, and by Robert E. Jones, an enthusiastic new
member of SITU, I drove to Greensburg on\the 6th
September, returning home on the 10th. We had an
opportunity to interview several persons who had
seen the 'monsters' and to respond to some telephone
reports. Further, we learned that samples of hair and
feces and a cast of an almost certainly authentic
footprint had been taken to the Carnegie Museum in

not been identified as those of any known species,


but no definitive report is expected for some time.
The identification of hairs is a much more complicated business than most people realize.
I returned to Greensburg on the 21st September
and stayed until the 4th October, both to be on hand
to help to investigate current reports and to organize
the reports alreadY on hand. We now have over 6,000
feet of tape-recorded (at 1 7/8 ips) statements of
eye-witnesses and on-site searches for footprints,
etc. We also prepared a card index (on 3 x 5 cards)
with condensed accounts of approximately 100 sightings, many by more than one person, thus constituting reports of some 150-175 witnesses. Questionable
reports and known hoaxes were not included here.

86

,.

-,,;!

\.,

1/

\~

Drawings by Bob McCurry of the Westmoreland


County U.F.O. study Group, redrawn for Pursuit.
Reproduced with permission from WCUFOSG.
1) Seen at Luxor, Pa., on the 26th August 1973
at 5:00 p.m. The absence of a neck is typical of
of ABSM reports though the face would seem to be
far too "human".
2) Seen at Latrobe, Pa., in September (exact
date not legible). This is most curious, having a
very catlike appearance. The body, not reproduced
here, is more or less typically "absmal" but shows
definite hips, not usually reported of ABSMs; and the
hands are turned backward as in Erb's paralysis,
otherwise known as "porter's tip hand" .
. 3) Seen at Beech Hills, near Jeannette, Pa., on
the 27th August 1973 at 2:30 p.m. The very prominent
fangs shown here have, so far as we know, never
been reported pf an 'ordinary' ABSM.

(One 18" foot print, for example, was a very crude


fake, though it received perhaps more publicity than
any other prints found.)
The usual description of t he creatures was as
follows: 8 to 9 feet tall, covered with dark hair; walking upright on two feet; having a smell like "sulphur",
"rotten eggs, or "rotten meat"; with long legs (a
50- to 57-inch stride when walking); long arms reaching below t he knees; large orange-red eyes that
glowed in the faintest lig ht; a flat, broad nose;
"pointed". ears; a large mouth with a long white
'fang' at each corner; and a gait that seemed awkward
until the cre.ature started to run -witnesses stated
that theydoubted that a deer could outrun it. Young
ones were also reported. A "family group" was seen
on a golf c~urse one night by five persons, who

87

estimated their heights as approximately 4 feet, 6


feet, and 8-9 feet.
It is impossible to ascertain how many of these
'monsters' were in the area. As many as t bree were
seen at a time, and nearly simultaneous reports were
received from widely separated areas, including at
least three adjoining counties. The map shows the
areas of greatest activity (circled areas). Most were
seen at night: crossing roads; along railroad tracks;
in people's dooryards; looking through second-story
windows (!); on porches; in one instance, on the roof
(a long arm with a "three-clawed hand" was reportedly seen reaching down); and frequently near abandoned coal mines or caves. There were, however, a few
daylight sightings, usually early in the morning or
late in t he afternoon.
A few representative cases are related here,
names being used only when we have specific
written permission.
At 6:35 p.m. on the 1st September 1973, a woman
from Whitney, Pa., was in the Youngstown, Pa.,
cemetery placing flowers on her mother's grave. Her
baby girl, a toddler, we~t toward the edge of the
woods (about 30 feet away). The mother smelled an
overpowering rotten odor and heard her baby start to
cry~ She turned round and saw a large, hairy, apelike creature moving slowly toward the child. She
grabbed her, just a few feet from the monster, ran to
her car, and drove to her father's house (about five
miles away) to call t he police. An hour later the
the creature (she believes it was the same one) showed up at the father's house; her brother and sister
saw it standing at the corner of the house.
On the 2nd September, Mr. and Mrs. Chester
Yothers of Whitney, Pa., were sitting with friends on
the screened front porch of their trailerhome. Mr.
Yothers, a retired coal miner, told me that he had

Cast of the 'standard' three-toed print found in


Westmoreland County. The print has been outlined
with a very thin layer of plaster to make the contour easier to see. The print does not match any
known type of foot.

believed the whole thing was a hoax and that he


would believe it was real when he saw it. He even
called out, "Hey, Bigfoot, come on in here: I want
to see you." They all laughed about it; the company
left, and the Yothers went to bed. About 4:30 a.m.
Mr. Yother heard a noise outside and thought that
someone was trying to break into his garage. He
pulled back the window curtain, looked outside,
shook his head, then looked again. The "monster"
was standing about five feet away, looking at the
house next door where eight small children live, who
usually sleep on the front porch on hot nights. He
shook his wife, asked her if she was awake. He told
her not to be scared, but if she wanted to see "Bigfoot" she should look out the window, because he
was standing right outside! She did so, and they
decided to call the police. As they made their way
through the trailer to the phone in the living room,
they looked out the back door and noted that the
creature was still standing there looking at the house
next door. After calling the police, they looked again
but he was gone. Two police cars arrived soon
afterward, and they found wet footprints on the rear
concrete terrace; these were also visible in the wet
grass. Older footprints were discovered in flowerbeds at a corner of the trailer. Mr. Yothers is known
in the area as an absolutely honest. man, and his
experience made "believers of a lot of local residents. I talked to one of the state Policemen who
investigated this incident, and he stated that he was
convinced that the Yothers had seen exactly what
they described. The Yothers, incidentally, were
afraid to stay at their trailer, and visited relatives
for a few days until the shock of their experience had
faded somewhat.

Cast of the ape-like print found in the VeronaPenn Hills area of Pennsylvania, together with the
outline of an orangutan's footprint. Notice the shortness of the 'front' toes and the apparent lack of any
joint in the great toe.

-----

----------------------

88

Although generally dogs were reported to react to


these creatures with signs of extreme fright (many
dogs seem to have been either mauled or simply
carried away by these "Bigfeet"), a woman called
from a. housing development near Latrobe, Pa., and
gave the following account. She was wakened at
about 2:00 a.m. by the sound of a dog tearing at
something across the street. She went to t he window
and saw that a dog had a giant creature by the right
heel. The creature was tall and built like a very
hairy man. Its legs were long, and its arms were so
long that it didn't have to bend its knees to beat the
dog off. The woman went out into her front yard to
get a better look, when the creature broke away and
took l;remendous leaps going across the yard. She
said she could feel the vibration whenever its feet
hit the ground. The dog could not catch it, and the
woman. -more intrepid than most- chased after it in
her nil~htgown to see where it was gOing. She noticed
no odor, and commented that the creature was entirely covered with hair except for the elbows and
palms of the hands, which appeared flesh-colored.
She did not see the face.
At the edge of Greensburg, near the State Police
Barracks and st. Anne's Home for the Aged, both on
a hilltop, there is a valley filled with a veritable
jungle of briers, thorn trees, brush, and larger trees.
On the 21st September at about 2:00 p.m., a group of
ten boys r an into the state Police Barracks and told
officers that they had been down by the edge of the
woods, and saw the head and upper body of a "garilla-like" creature. They said it was a sort of tan
color -which matched patches of hair found on the
ground and on tree branches in the area. Two troopers
investigated and found footprints. While they were
searching the area, the boys saw the creature again,
moving deeper into the woods. stan Gordon, anoth~r
member of his group, and I visited the site, guided
by thrl~e of t he boys. We found footprints deeply impressed in soft earth in a grassy spot, and also
several fecal specimens. Pulling the long grass from
the impressions, we found the dimensions of the
prints to be about 14 inches long and 'Ph inches 'wide
across the toe portion. The individual toe prints
could not be distinguished in the matted grass. We
also found some tan-colored hair.
On Monday, the 24th September, at about 2:30
p~m. two boys were in the woods in t he same area,
and rE!ported that t hey saw a large, "gorilla-like"
creature lying asleep on some old grass clippings
which had been dumped there by st. Anne's maintenance personnel. The boys were very frightened and
ran up the hill to get a man aad his son to come
down. When t hey returned, t he creature had gone.
They described the creature in great detail to the
WCUFOSG artist, Bob McCurry, who made a sketch
under their direction. That same evening at about
5:00 p.m., a newsboy was delivering papers near the
st. Anne's Home, when he looked toward a hill on the
other side of the wooded valley and saw a tall, tancoloured creature which walked with a stooped
posture "like it was drunk".

All the reports are generally similar except for


three in which someone shot -or shot at- one of the
creatures, never (so far as can be ascertained) with
any partiCUlar effect. No specimen was acquired for
scientific study, and no photographs were obtained.
We did get four 'clots' of what was thought to be
blood from one of the creatures, shot (at?) with a.. 35
calibre rifle. One sample was sent to a local police
laboratory, the rest to Professor Agogino in New
Mexico. They proved not to be blood, but further
tests to determine just what they are, are being
carried out by experts chosen by Professor Agogino.
These may take some time but the results, together
with the report on t he hairs and feces w ill be
published w hen available.
Just when we had decided that the overall picture
presented above was reasonably accurate, we were
considerably jolted by two incidents. The first was
initjally reported to us by Channel 11 TV at Pittsburgh. We immediately contacted the party mentioned,
who directed us to the vicinity of Verona, Pa., in
the Penn Hills area. There is here an extremely wild
lOG-acre tract of tangled trees, brush, berry and
grape vines, etc., in the midst of a built-up area.
Some of the local boys were riding their motorbikes
through some trails on Saturday, the 22nd September,
when t hey heard something large in the woods,
moving through the brush and breaking tree branches.
They rode home in panic but returned later the same
evening. They found fresh tracks in the area but
none had casting materials. That night there was
heavy rain, and the next day the father of one of the
boys -a Mr. Baird, who is a bank employee- went to
the area but found the tracks washed out. He went
deeper into the woods, found some fresh tracks, and
made a cast of the best one he could find. So help
me, it was a pongid-type (i.e. ape-type) track, 11
inches long, 5 inches across the four-toed portion,
and 7 inches across the great toe. One of t he boys
had reported seeing a monkey-like creature in the
woods t he summer before, but everyone laughed at
him. What he said he saw was something in the trees
with long legs and arms and a tail. Apes, of course,
do not h~ve tails.
We had not 'recovered' from this when a WCUFoSG member from an adjoining county called concerning a most extraordinary case. This had occurred at
about 9:30 p.m. on the 27th September, when two
girls encountered a seven- or eight-foot, white hairy
creature carrying a luminescent sphere in its hand.
Both girls were white with shock when they returned
to the house. The father of one of the girls (the
property. owner) was said by his daughter to have
gone int'o the woods for over an hour, but when interviewed )ater, he denied having gone into the woods,
stated that there were some things that shouldn't be
discussed and that he did not want anyone tramping
about in his woods. After the incident, it was reported that a "plane" was seen shining a bright light
down into the woods. (The man appeared to have experienc.ed a personality change following this whole

89

experience, and the possibility that he may be one


type of UFO 'contactee' must be borne in' mind..)
Further reports from this area note the finding of
several sheep with "their intestines ripped out" and
the body of a dog with a "hole in its skull".
Apparently there was considerable UFO activity in
the Westmoreland County area, but there is really no
evidence, let alone proof. of an:v connection between
UFOs and the 'monsters', with t he possible exception
of t he last case reported here, and even in this
instance the evidence is purely circumstantial. Dr.
Doutt, Curator Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum in
Pittsburgh, when told of the monster sightings,
speculated that they seemed to bear out the Amerind
legend of the Wendigo which howled and prowled
round the tepees at night. In the circumstances this
may be as good an explanation as any!
The tracks found are none of t hem truly hominid
or pongid. Although the Fouke Monster had/has three
toes, the footprint is quite different from the Westmoreland County prints which show three broad and
rather widely separated toes rather than three
thinnish ones directed straight forward. Nor is the
"ape" pr.int "right". The toes (or fingers) are much
too short if one compares them with, for example,
an orangutan's print (shown, not to scale, with the
"ape" print). In fact, the various footprints resemble
nothing known to us, but they are themselves facts,
and physical ones at that. Taken with the hair and
other specimens, it seems that the monsters must be
physical beings, wherever they come from. There are
those who have suggested that ABSMs (abominable
snowpersons generally) may be "projections",' i.e.
non-material entities, and that this explains why
none has been caught. Certainly t hey are exasperatingly elusive and, apparently, "immune" to bullet
holes!
The Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or what you will, of our
Northwest, Canada, and elsewhere, has a hominid
foot, as proved by casts of genuine prints, and
though parts of the description of the Westmoreland
monsters fits the 'ordinary' Sasquatch description,
some details do not. So far as we know, the "pricked"
ears are not reported of the Sasquatch, though it is
quite possible that this is actually a tuft of hair and
not actually a pointed ear. The sketches drawn by
Bob McCurry of WCUFOSG under the direction of
witnesses are somewhat dismaying. (The copies
given us were not reproducible and have been redrawn for Pursuit.) No. 1 reminds us of Charlton
Heston playing some dismayed prophet; No.2 has a
curiously catlike look about it; and No. 3 looks like
something out of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.
Please understand t hat this is not meant as any

reflection on Mr. McCurry's ability; I know he has


done his utmost to duplicate the witnesses' re=collection of what t hey saw and has done an ex'"
cellent job of it. This leaves us with two possibilities: either the creatures did look this way, or the
witnesses tended to see what ~hey 'expected' to see,
based on past experience with horror films and such,
and subconsciously coloured their descriptions of the
face. Since we "weren't there", it is impossible to
be certain on this point, but we are unnerved, to put
it mildly, to think that t here might be five types
wandering about in western Pennsylvania. Viewing
conditions were usually not the best possible, and
it seems best" to withhold judgment on the drawings
and go by the general description given. The "ape"
and the sphere-carrying creature do seem to form
totally separate categories and probably should be
kept separate from the other reports.
Just why there should have been this "population
explosion" among ABSMs in western Pennsylvania
and where they came from is, of course, unknown,
though there are a number of factors which may be
pertinent. We learned that reports actually go back a
number of years -witnesses were SCOffed at and
ridiculed and soon learned to keep their mouths shutso we must assume t hat these ABSMs have been
resident in that area for some time. In very recent
years there has been initiated a very active program
for filling in old strip mines and closing off old
mine shafts which the ABSMs may have used as
shelters. Also, many small farmers have simply
given up their farms, with resulting elimination of
salt blocks in pastures and t he return of considerable
acreage to its natural wild state. All this may have
combined to produce this "explosion". We will be
studying all the collected material most carefully
for both general information and specific patterns of
behaviour, appearance, etc., and as finances permit,
will make further "expeditions to the area if circumstances require it. We as a Society, and SCience
generally. owe a great debt to Stan Gordon and the
Westmoreland County UFO Study Group for the
tremendous job they have done, without compensation, in recording for study all possible details of
of this extraordinary series of events.
There are an increasing number of reports of
ABSM-type 'monsters' from many parts of this country,
and the cooperation of all our members is solicited
in this effort. Please report to us any such incidents
in your area, no matter how unlikely such reports
may seem from the standpoint of sightings near large
cities and other "built-up" areas. We will do our
best to investigate these reports.

"Researchers Get Windfall"


A Reuters report datelined Cranfield,. England, 29 June 1973, noted that "Researchers studYing the
effect of wind on buildings got some dramatic findings Wednesday when they discovered that a freak wind
during the previous night had blown the roof off their research station here."

--

-----------------.----------

90

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

NOT THE SALZBURG STEEL CUBE, BUT AN IRON


OBJECT FROM WOLFSEGG
by Hubert Malthaner (translated by H. Friedrich)
An increasing number of books today advocate the
theory that there existed, in remote so-called prehistoric times, civilizations on this earth far surpassing our own in technological development. It is
alleged that these civilizations were annihilated by
great natural catastrophes which might, perhaps, have
been t.riggered by global warfare employing 'superweapons' of some type.
As irrefutable evidence of such prehistoric supercivilizations the authors of several such books
mention a steel cube found in 1885 in a block of coal
in Austria. Although none of these authors apparently
was able to inspect this object personally, they all
wrote I~bout it, freely adding details. For an extended
period of years the famous Salzburg steel cube was
thought to be lost. But since the strange object has
now bElen rediscovered, so to speak, it seems proper
to follow its traces through the literature, beginning
with t.he first reports and ending with the facts
brought to light by the latest photographs and analysis.
Cha.rles Fort, that indefatigable collector of newspaper and journal articles about strange and enigmatic
occurrences, cites four reports from scientific
journals about 'our' object in his ~ ill t he Damned,
published in 1919. Two of them (Comptes Rendus,
103-70:!, and Science Gossip, 1887-58) I mention here
only for the sake of completeness because I have been
unable up to now to locate them. Fort says that in
ComptEls Rendus a full account of t his object is
given. Perhaps one of our members may succeed in
locating a copy. The third report mentioned by Fort is
~, 35th year, issue of November 11, 1886. This
report, on page 36, reads as follows:
"At a recent meeting of the Nieder-rheinische
Gesellschaft filr Natur- und Heilkunde at Bonn, Dr.
Gurlt described a fossil meteorite found in a block of
Tertiary coal, and now in the Salzburg Museum. He
said it belonged to the group of meteoric irons, and
was taken from a block of coal about to be used in a
manufa.ctory in Lower Austria. It was examined by
various specialists, who assigned different origins to

it. Some believed it to be a meteorite; others, an


artificial. production; others, again, thought it was a
meteorite modified by the hand of man. Dr. Gurlt,
however, came to the conclusion, after a careful
examination, that there is no ground for believing in
the intervention of any human agency. In form, the
mass is almost a cube, two opposite faces being
rounded, and the four others being made smaller by
these roundings. A deep incision runs all round the
cube. The faces and the incision bear such characteristic traces of meteoric iron as to exclude the
notion of the mass being the work of man. The iron is
covered with a thin layer of oxide: it is 67mm. high,
67 mm. broad, and 47 mm. at the thickest part. It
weighs 785 grammes, and its specific gravity is 7.75;
it is as hard as steel, and it contains, as is generally
the case, besides carbon, a small quantity of nickel.
A quantitative analysis has not yet been made. This
meteorite resembles the celebrated meteoric masses
of Saint Catherine in Brazil and Braunau in Bohemia,
discovered in 1847, but is much older, and belongs
to the Tertiary epoch."
Fort's fourth source is given as L'Astronomie,
1887-114, but this is not correct; it is page 463, and
the year is 1886, not 1887. There one finds, under
the headline "Une meteorite fossile", essentially the
same text as in Nature. But, in addition to the above
report, the French text reports that "the object was
discovered in 1885 in a big block of coal in the steel
factory of Mr. Isidor Braun at Schondorf near Vockla-bruck, Lower Austria. The block of coal originated
from the coal pit at Wolfsegg near Schwannstadt."
Thus Fort's source material from scientific journals
of the last century. There are some minor errors in
these articles: for instance, Vocklabruck is a small
town in Upper, not Lower, Austria; and the object
has never been in any Salzburg museum. Charles
Fort, too, I regret to say, is guilty of incorrect reporting, for he states of the object, "It's a cube" (p.
132, Collected Works). But later on, reports on the
stran ge object become even more unreliable. In
Science ~ ~ no. 516/September 1960, Georges
Ketman writes (in his article "Les cartes bouleversantes de ,Piri Reis, une carte de I' Antarctique vieille
10.000 ans", p. 89):
"QueUe est, par exemple, l'origine de ce Parallel-

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Our member 11761 has brought to our attention a 'review' in the New York Times of the 1st August
1973 of a program produced by an organization calling itself "SITU (an acronym for Society for Investiga';.tion ~f Things Unnameable) .. a loose alliance of dancers, film makers, musicians and artists who create
:multimedia events, and have been doing it for two years here and in Europe". We very much doubt that
this group's choice of name and acronym is accidental and, although "imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery", we must put on record most strongly that that group is in no way connected with our Society or
its founder, the late Ivan T. Sanderson, and any suggestion to the contrary is entirely false.

91

~pip'Me parfaitement regulier, compose d'acier, qui


est actuellement exposee au Musee de Salzbourg?"
[What is, for example, the origin of this ~erfectly
regular parallelepiped, composed of steel, which is
actually on view at the Salzburg Museum?]

meteorite because of a thin film of oxide on the


surfaces and the strange, hollow marks thereon. The
report was printed in Verhandlungen des Naturhistorischen Vereins der preussischen Rheinlande.
Verlag Max Cohen & Sohn. Bonn, 1886. page 188.
This was the first report on the object and the source
, The three words parall~lEfpip~de, parfaitement of all later reports. Translated into English. the most
regulier-, apparently stemming from Ketman's imagina- pertinent section reads as follows:
"Dr. Gurlt submitted a strange iron meteorite. sotion, were the cause of much confusion and premature
hopes. As we shall soon discover. there is nothing at called Holosiderite.... which was found in tertiary
all in Ketman's description that can be justified by brown coal. It is in the possession of the municipal
Carolino-Augusteum Museum at Salzburg and was
the actual appearance of the object. And two years
presented
to it by Messrs. Isidor Braun Sons at
later the Russian author Alexander Kasanzew in Jllg
Sowjetunion Heute (a German language Soviet infor- Schondorf near Vocklabruck in Upper Austria. The
mation monthly; Cologne 1962. no. 1-7) published a object was discovered at 'the steel and file factory
series of articles about contacts with superior civili- of this firm, accidentally. in 1885 by a workman
when he smashed a block of brown coal ...... The
zations arriving on earth from space. t According to
essential contents of this report were those included
him. the object is "A cube with parallel and smooth
surfaces of 67 x 67 x 47 millimeters with a weight of in ~ and L'Astronomie. Dr. Gurlt further told his
audience that a polished and etched surface showed
785 grams made of worked steel-. All of this. apno Widmanstatten pattern. He thought that the shape
parently stemming from Ketman and Kasanzew. found
of the iron object was caused by t he strong heat plus
its way into articles and finally into books by bestthe rotation of the "meteorite" during its flight through
selling authors such as Charroux and von Daniken.
the atmosphere. Dr. GurU also stated. erroneously.
The confusion became even worse w hen someone
that the object was kept in the Carolino-Augusteum
"translated Ketman's parallelepipede" a bit too
at Salzburg, but the object was in fact never
Museum
carelessly and thus transformed the Wolfsegg iron
at Salzburg. In my opinion, Dr. Gurlt was confused
object into parallel pipes! For instance, in ~
letter (edited by C. Honey. Anaheim. California). of by the similar-sounding names of two museums. one
at Salzburg and the other at Linz. The FranciscoJanuary 1963. and t hereafter in UFO publications
Carolinum Museum at Linz had the object from 1950
around the world. readers found the information that
to 1958 and I suppose that it had been presented to
"The Russian archaeologist Alexander Kasantsew is
this museum by its finders [this is not absolutely
going to Salzburg with the intention of analysing
certain. Ed.]. This museum. which is today the
parallel pipes of polished steel embedded in the deep
Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum. has tn its
veins of an Austrian coal mine and dating 30,000
possession a plaster copy of the "Wolfsegg Iron.
years before our era.
Photographs 1 and 2 are of this plaster copy because
With this lengthy but necessary prologue out of they show the uninjured outline of the object.
the way. we now turn to the facts.
The original "cube was in the possession of the
In the autumn of 1885 in the iron foundry of Isidor
Braun family at vocklabruck but in 1958 the Wolfsegg
Braun's sons at Schondorf near Vocklabruck in Upper
Iron was presented to a local museum. the Heimathaus
Austria a workman was smashing big blocks of coal
at vocklabruck. where it i.s in the loving custody of
which had arrived from the coal pit at Wolfsegg as
Herrn OberschuIrat Robert Bernhart. retired. I was
fuel for heating a smelter. During the course of this
able to inspect it personally this year. Photographs
work he found the now famous object. a find that was
3 and 4 show the original object in its present form.
In my opinion these photographs will eliminate all
then widely noticed because o(its form and circumstance of discovery. In 1886 a mining engineer. Dr.
speculation about a "cube. The only smooth surface
Adolf Gurlt, gave a lect.ure for the Naturhistorischer
occurs where a sample was taken for analysis in
Vienna in 1966 (A). One can see there also an older
Verein (Natural History Society) at Bonn concerning
cut and polished surface where. in Dr. Gurlt's time,
his investigations of the object. He told the audience
an unidentified scientific institution (allegedly in
that some specialists felt that. because of its roughly
Paris)
had tried in vain to find Widmanstatten figures
square form. the metal object might have been worked
on. but t hat in his opinion it was a fossil iron (B in photo).
In 1966/67 the object was subjected to the most
modern electron-beam microanalysis at the Vienna
Naturhistorisches Museum and it was found that the
.See Editor's Notes.
"Wolfsegg Iron- contained no traces of nickel
. chromium, or cobalt and that, therefore. it could not
t These issues of Die Sowjetunion Heute are now out be a meteorite. Because the object contains very
of print. but Kasanzew's report was reprinted in Die . little manganese. the final opinion of Dr. Kurat of the
Andere Welt. no. 6, 7/1962 (edited by Hermann Bauer
Naturhistorisches Museum and Dr. R. Grill of the
Verlag. D-78 Freiburg.)
Geologische Bundesanstalt in Vienna is that the

92

objec!; is cast-iron. Dr. Grill believes that such iron


objects were used as ballast with primitive mining
machinery.
Thus far in examining the iron find from Wolfsegg
we ha.ve approached truth through several statements
in the negative: it is not steel, it is not a cube, and
it is not Ii. meteorite. And, though Dr. Gurlt told his
audience that the object was found enclosed in
tertiary brown coal, there seems at the moment to be
no way positively to ascertain such an alleged age for
it. And as we have seen, there are several errors in
his report. Apparently Dr. Gurlt had neither visited the
correc:t museum nor had he examined the block of
brown coal with the intention of finding the cavity or
part of a cavity which might have contained the iron
object.. The man who is today the owner of I. Braun's
Sons file factory, Herr Diplomingenieur Martin Braun,
does not exclude the possibility that the object was
simply found between the coal fragments and might
perhaps not have been actually enclosed in any of
them. If the object is cast iron and was found in an

iron foundry, it might very well have originated there.


and in fact even have been cast there.
It seems to me that this strange object could well
have been made in the following way: to cast any
object one needs a pattern to make a mould. The rows
of hollow marks on the surface of the object show us
a possible way in which it might have been manufactured. The pattern was kneaded from some soft
material (clay or wax); and the marks are imprints of
fingertips. When the periphery of the two opposite
faces being rounded was pressed down, the four
edges were pressed outward. In this way the "deep
incision round the four sides of the cube" could have
originated. The pattern was moulded in sand and then
the "Iron of Wolfsegg" was cast.
This ends my report on the strange find which has
become known around t he globe and has posed an
enigma to several generations. In my opinion the
facts are now clear, though an intriguing residue of
unsolved problems still plagues my mind.

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::

. :';;:\:,;r~f'l:l
. .... :./'~
... ~
. :':'

1) P.laster copy, top view, scale 1:1. 2) Same, side


view. Both courtesy of the Francisco-Carolinum
Museum, Linz, and Herr Malthaner.
3) Original
"cube", top view, showing (lower right) the area from
which material was taken for analysis; and 4) The
same, transverse side view, showing the two cuts
made for material for analysis. Courtesy of Herr
Malthaner.

93

Editor's~:

Messrs. Malthaner and Friedrich are


both members of the Society, resident at Munich,
Germany. and we are indebted to them for this very
full report.
The term "fossil meteorite- is a bit misleading but
is presumably used here simply to indicate an old
meteorite rather than one that was 'picked up hot off
the ground as it were. One of the puzzles of meteorites is the fact that no meteorites have been found in
other than recent strata. It is not surprising that the
"cube- was thought by some to be a meteorite, since
both the coating of iron oxide and the "thumbprintson the surface, known technically as piezoglyphs, are
characteristic of many meteorites. The Widmanstatten
pattern is a complicated cross-hatching found on
certain types of meteorites, and on no other natural
formation, indicating an 8-faced, octrahedral crystalline structure.
And the parallelepiped is a 6-sided prism whose
faces are parallelograms. Ne-edless to Say, it has
nothing to do with parallel pipes. It is unfortunate
but true that translations are all too often made by
lazy or uneducated persons who do not know the
subject in any case. Hence the infamous canals of
of Mars; cannali means lines or striations, not canals.

THE CHINESE PYRAMID


One of the tantalizing stories we have been working on is that of an enormous pyramid in China, far
exceeding in size any in EgYPt or elsewhere. Our
member Ron Dobbins has found for us several of the
"initial- reports in the New York Times and a photograph of a pyramid (see below) from a book published
in 1902. The NYT article in a UP dispatch, datelined Shanghai,March 27, 1947, and reads in part as
follows:
"A, giant pyramid in isolated mountains of Shensi
Province in western China was reported today by
Col. Maurice Sheahan, Far Eastern director for Trans
World Airline.
"From the air, Colonel Sheahan said, the pyramid
seems to dwarf those of Egypt. He estimated its
height at 1,000 feet and its width at the base at
1,500 feet.
"The pyramid, he s aid, is at the foot of the
Tsinling Mountains, about forty miles southwest of
Sian. capital of the province. A second pyramid, he
continued, appears much smaller.
"The pyramid, Colonel Sheahan went on, is at the
far end of a long valley, in an inaccessible part. At
the near end, he said, are hundreds of small burial
mounds. These can be seen, he said, from the LungHai railroad.
" 'When I first flew over it I was impressed by its
perfect pyramidal form and its great size.' Colonel
Sheahan. said. 'I did not give it thought during the
war years partly because it seemed incredible that
anything so large could be unknown to the . world.

From the air we could see only small footpaths lead~


ing to a village at the site of the pyramid.'
"Chinese said that because of the almost complete
absence of communications, even trails, in some
parts of the West China mountains it was not impossible that a huge pyramid might have been long
forgotten .... The article goes on to note that Dr. James L.
Clark of the American Museum of Natural History and
Dr. Arthur Upham Pope of the Asia Institute both
considered the discovery to be one of "great scientific interest-. Dr. Pope, in a letter to the Times
-dated March 30, 1947, said,
"This raises the further question whether it" will
not perhaps verify the Chinese tradition of their first.
Hsia, dynasty, which it has been fashionable among
Western sinologists to question. The next dynasty,
the Shang, beginning about 1700 B. C. was long rejected by western scholars also, until Chinese excavations at An-yang established it beyond further
doubt. The Hsia Dynasty is now, I believe, accepted as
real (the latest dates that I have for it are, Traditional - 2205-1766 B. C.; and "scientific - 19941525 B. C.) but it is incredible to me t hat after the
An-yang discoveries there has ever been any doubt
that something must have preceded the Shang (or
Shang-Yin) Dynasty. This latter is noted for its exquisite bronzes, which certainly were not developed
overnight, and suggest a long period of sophisticated
technological growth. In any case, Pope speculates
that such a pyramid might be a Hsia royal tomb and
notes that it would be "one more demonstration of the
Asia-wide importance of t he cosmic mountain and
the astra-celestial cult of which it was a central
feature.-

Shensi Province

Approximate Location of Pyramids

94

Mr. Dobbins, using other references which are


not spE!cifically listed in his letter (we suspect a
previous loss in the mails here), says,
"The Great Pyramid of Shensi is interesting -a
virtual man-made mountain at 1000 feet high. This
dwarfs the so-called "Great Pyramid- at Giza, which
is about 470 feet high by 765 feet on the base line.
Despite' the claims of 'discovery' in '47, the Georgia
psychic and healer "Doc" Anderson visited the thing
prior to the War & testified to its size. He claimed
that it was made of earth or clay, and had a leveled
top on which perched the ruins of some kind of
temple. Apparently the locals wouldn't let him get a
closer look. And, apparently, it is located near the
'field' of smaller pyramids. This group covers an
area of some ten square miles -possibly more pyramidal structures here than in all the rest of the world
put together! And all oriented on the north-south line,
like the' Egyptian examples. These Chinese pyramids
have not been dated yet, and I wouldn't be too surprised i.f they are also t he oldest findable. II
This still leaves us with some problems. Issue
1121 of !~, edited by Tiffany Thayer, contains the

following article:
"The story of Col. Maurice Sheahan was sent out
by UP, under a Shanghai date line, 3-28-47 old
style. Sheahan had seen 'several years ago' a pyramid in China bigger than any in Egypt. He had taken
a photo from his plane. He had the photo at his home
in Ontario, Calif. Ontario is in San Bernardino
County, near LA [Los Angeles].

"The next day, the LA Daily News printed a fourcolumn photo, 'First Picture of Great Chinese Pyru,mid.' T he photo credit was to 'Acme Telephoto'. Mr.
Sheahan is not mentioned, neither is the picture
dated, but if this is the photo taken by Sheahan
's~veral years ago', why was it necessary to send it
by wire from Ontario [California] to LA, and since
when has a village the size of Ontario had the facilities to send 'telephotos'?
"Two days later, 3-31-47, AP sent its papers a
story under a Nanking dateline, stating that 'the
Provincial government had announced, following an
investigation, that the reported discovery of a giant
pyramid in Shensi province proved to be groundless.' ..
This last may have been 'political', i.e. a move
designed to discourage foreign investigators or
simply to provide an excuse for saying No to anyone
requesting permission to visit the area. On the other
hand, the photograph reproduced here is said to show
one of the smaller pyramids but contains nothing that
makes it possible to determine its actual size. Or
-let's be frank- its location. Still, the photograph is
itself a fact, and unless one wishes to call both Col.
Sheahan and "Doc Anderson liars, it is necessary
to accept the photograph as evidence that there are
enormous pyramids in China.
The largest artificial mound in western Europe is
Silbury Hill near Avebury in England. It is 'only' 130
feet high with a base covering more than five acres;
small compared with the Great Pyramid but still representing an enormous amount of labour, and,
because of its earthen construction, closer to the

95

Shensi Pyramid. Its age and purpose are unknown,


shafts dug into it at various times revealing no
burials, or in fact chambers of any kind.
Enquiries sent to t he Chinese on a number of

subjects have so
try again to see
minds about the
whether anything

far gone unanswered, but we shall


whether they have changed their
existence of these pyramids ana
at all has been done about them.

ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS
We are sorry to report that Mark Hall has had to return to his home for personal reasons. As we have
noted before, he has been of exceptional help to the Society during a most difficult period, and it had
been hoped that he could remain on the Board of Trustees after his return home. However, circumstances
have made this unfeasible.
With Mr. Hall's departure, Robert C. Warth takes over as Acting Director though he is not resident here.
Our Treasurer, Allen Noe, who lives nearby and is now on forced early retirement, has pitched in to help
with the work at our headquarters, and is here nearly every day.
Please, once again, let us know of any change of address as far in advance as you can. Third class mail
is not forwardable LInless you make a special request of the post office. If it is returned to us, the local
post office sometimes indicates your new address. but not always -in which case it becomes impossible to
get Pursuit to you until you get around to giving us your new address. And always include your zip code;
Pursuit does not go through without it. We have a zip code directory, but it does not give a complete breakdown of codes within major cities. Thank you.

MEMBERS' FORUM

Member It 1471 is interested in reports of large


snakes (really oversized ones) in the United States
in the 1950s. Anyone having such reports, or references to such, is asked to get in touch with us. He
is also interested in reports of UFOs between 1942
and 1946.
survival Kits: Since many of our members have at
least expressed an interest in visiting rather out-ofthe-way areas for one reason or another, it may be
appropriate to list here some basic items which
should be carried at all times. "Survival kits are
usually available at sporting goods stores and generally are small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. However, they can be assembled quite easily. The container can be made from a small metal box which
should be taped shut so that it is waterproof. Mrs.
Joyce MacDuffie, an expert on wilderness survival,
suggests the following contents: kitchen matches
dipped in paraffin, string dipped in paraffin, a wad of
very fine steel wool ("it burns even when wet-), some
picture-hanging wire (for snares), tape, safety pins,
leader for a fishing line, chlorine tablets, fish hooks,
aluminum foil, finishing nails, vitamin pills, salt,
antibiotic ointment (check with your pharmacist if you
have any allergies to !!!!l antibiotics!), adhesive
bandages, a whistle, and a piece of mirror glued to
the inside of the box cover. We would add a compass,
razor blades, tropical chocolate bars if you can get
them, salt and dextrose tablets, and a snakebite kit
(check for the most recent types -methods change
periodically) if there are any poisonous s.nakes in
your area. Needless to say, you really should not go

into any wilderness area without at least a general


map of that area and, if" it is really a wilderness area,
you should 'register' with the local police. telling
them where you plan to go and approximately how
long you intend to be there.
Member 111436 is investigating a particular "spook
light- and would like to hear from other members who
have experience in this field. Specifically. he would
like to know of any patterns that have turned up:
seasonal, associated with phases of the moon. time
of day or night, and the like; and will also be grateful for suggestions concerning equipment that might
be useful in studying this phenomenon.
THINGS TO COME
Work done by Marjorie Fish on a three-dimensional
star map which goes far toward confirming the star
chart drawn by Betty Hill while under hypnosis. will
be reported. on at length in a future issue or issues
of Pursuit. T he article which appeared in !&!
Magazine was inadequate in a number of ways, and
Ms. Fish will be given all the space she needs in
Pursuit to present a full and accurate account.

BACK ISSUES OF PURSUIT


Our. suppi y of some back issues of Pursuit ~s
dwindling rapidly and when these are gone, t he~e
issues
not be available even as Xerox 'copies.
Anyime wishing copies of these issues should order

will

96

promptly. Those in short supply are as follows:


Vol. 2, No. I, a fair supply
Vol. 2, No.2, few
Vol. 2, No.3, very few
Vol. 2, No.4, very few Xerox copies left ($2.00
each)
Vol. 3, No. I, few
Vol. 3, No.3, fair supply
Vol. 3, No.4, few
We have available the following papers (Xerox
copies); the price includes first class postage (for
the U.S., Canada and Mexico).
~.:;r:'he Two Gravitational Fields and Gravitational
Waves Propagation- by John Carstoiu, $1. 75
"Gravitation
and Electromagnetism-Tentative
Synthesis and Applications- by John Carstoiu, $1.75
"An ExPeriment in Dowsing- by Ivan T. Sanderson,
$1.75
"The Fitzgerald Report by Robert J. Durant, $2.50
"Journal of the Interplanetary Exploration Society,

Vol. I, No.3, (December 1961). Contains articles on


ancient space travel, plus Ivan T. Sanderson's "NonCuverian Cataclysms. $3.50.
We also have a very limited numb er of "tear
sheets of some of Ivan T. Sanderson's articles from
Argosy. These include "This 'Airplane' Is More Than
1,000 Years Old! (November 1969): "The Five
Weirdest Wonders of the World (a title not to be
taken too seriously) (November 1968): "Visitors from
Outer Space ... (February 1969): "The Spreading
Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle (August 1968): and
"Wisconsin's 'Abominable Snowman' (April 1969).
These are available on a f:irst-come, first-served
basis for $1.50 each including first-class postage.
For those who lacked the money to buy the hardcover edition of Ivan T. Sanderson's book Invisible
Residents, this is now available in paperback as an
Avon Book, 951/:. So far as we know, the paperback
rights to Investigating t he Unexplained are still
hanging fire.

THE IV AN T. SANDERSON MEMORIAL FUND


Members are reminded once again that contributions to the Society are deductible for income tax
purposes and that they will help us to serve you better. Our immediate need is a good copier; we are now
dependent on outside copying services, and these are more expensive - for you as well as for us - and
also a nuisance. Your contributions to the Ivan T. Sanderson Memorial Fund will help us to grow and
mate SITU a living memorial to Ivan and the work he began. We may never finish it, but we would like to
try.

DEPARTMENT OF LOOSE ENDS

Just in case there is any question about it, the


Banana River, mentioned in Ivan T. Sanderson's
articli~ on luminous men (July 1973), is in Florida.
Member 111176, discussing the prediction of 'geons'
by Pr-of. Wheeler (" 'Worm-Holes' in Space, July
1973, p. 64), notes that "Jules Verne 'predicted' the
submllline with such clarity and accuracy that when
it was finally produced by man it was unable to be
patented.Those who might like to experiment with building
"Pharaoh's Pump will want to get copies of Edward
J: Kunkel's patent from the Patent Office: they
should ask for "Hydraulic Ram Pump, Patent No.
2,887,956.
As: yet we have no further information on the
Caspar, Wyoming, mummy, but still want very much to
track this down. And we cannot resist quoting Paul
Willis of INFO who notes, "I doubt that the thing is
very modern though -obviously if the little guy was
anencephalic and had been alive in modern times,
he'd have run for Congress.

_ _" ._ _" ._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____"

~il

Further references to the Great Wall of Peru are:


Flights into Yesterday by Leo Deuel, St. Martin's
Press (New York), 1969; and The Geographical
Review, January 1932.
A CORRECTION
Nils O. Jacobson of Sweden, author of the book
entitled Life After Death, did not himself conduct
any, expetiiIients on "weighing the soul- by placing
terminally ill patients on scales and noting any
weight loss at t he moment of death. In fact, he simply
reported the earlier experiments by Duncan MacDougall. The allegation that he did so apparently
originated with an inattentive reporter at a press
conference in Dusseldorf, Germany. Dr. Jacobson's
book will be published in the U.S.A. late this year
by Seymour Lawrence Inc. of Boston, Mass. No
publication date or price are known to us.
We apologize to the Saturday Evening Post for
having labelled it extinct. It did indeed 'fold' several
years ago, but has been resurrected though not,
apparently, on a weekly basis.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ' _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _" ._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _
~

91

Members are reminded that dues -still $10 per annum- are payable before the end of this year. May we
also suggest that membership in SITU will make an excellent Christmas gift for that special person on
your list. We would advise that you renew your own membership and send in new ones before the 1st
January since skyrocketing costs may require us to raise our rates next year. If you wish to renew for
more than one year, you will not then be affected by any increase in dues.
Members are urged to find us new members. We will be happy to supply copies of our "brochure" to
anyone requesting them.

SLANDER AGAINST IV AN T. SANDERSON


We are informed that a Mr. Bob Parsons has been exhibiting a "specimen frozen in ice" -in fact
an obvious fake- labelled a "Missing Link" and alleged to be that reported in Argosy Magazine in 1969.
This is said to have been exhibited in Massachusetts this past summer, and Mr. Parsons is reported to
have claimed that he -rented the Missing Link from Ivan T. Sanderson last spring". We are making further
inquiries about this and will appreciate any help that our members can give us. Should the facts prove to
be as stated, suit will be brought against Mr. Parsons, asking damages for slander.

BOOK REVIEWS
by Sabina W. Sanderson
Elaine Morgan. The Descent of Woman. New York: Stein & Day. 1912. (Price unknown) New York: Bantam
Books. 1973. $1. 75. London: Souvenir Press. ?1972. L2.50.
This book has caused and will undoubtedly continue to cause considerable controversy, much of it -in
my opinion- for all the wrong reasons. Even the reviewer in the New Scientist, a woman at that, devoted
4" to the first ten chapters and S.z" to the last two which deal in cursory fashion with what is usually
called "Women's Lib".
As Mrs. Morgan points out:
"She was there all along, contributing half the genes to each succeeding generation. Most of the books
forget about her for most of the time. They drag her onstage rather suddenly for the obligatory chapter on
Sex and Reproduction, and then say: 'All right, love, you can go now,' while they get on with the real
meaty stuff about the Mighty Hunter . "
The basic thesis of Mrs. Morgan's book is,that human evolution was influenced far more by the female
of the species than the male. Obviously this will not and does not please many men, though it has always
been my observation that men who are certain of their masculinity do not worry about "competition" from
women.
The suggestion that truly human as opposed to general primate evolution actually took place in an
aquatic environment was first made by A. C. Hardy back about 1960, but it did not seem to catch on much,
and Prof. Hardy has not, to my knowledge, presented a really detailed picture of what may have happened.
Mrs. Morgan does, and it makes sense -much more sense than many if not most of the others that have
been published. She has used the examples of current primitive peoples' behavior as her model for the
behaviour of 'prehistoric' man, thus avoiding some of the absurdities that crop up in other books; and
when she does 'invent' incidents to suggest a possible, or even probable, origin of some facet of human
behaviour (in its widest sense), she keeps it within the bounds of common sense -an all too rare commodity in any case.
According to Mrs. Morgan's outline of Man's evolution, there never was a truly aquatic period but
rather an amphibian one: anli the reasons given for this shift to a semi-aquatic existence are very plausible, as are those for our return to terra firma. The gross differences between Man and Apes are due, ho~
ever, to this probably lengthy sojourn at the seaside, which resulted in our having in some ways more in
common with dolphins than apes.
For heaven's, sake, buy this book and r(!ad it thoroughly. Apart from stretching the mind, it is great
'
fun and unqualifiedly worth reading.

98

Lyall Watson. Supernature. Gar.den City, N. Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday. 1973. $7.95
;

This is an excellent book for confirmed sceptics and non-forteans; it will, most of it, make rather dull
reading for those already familiar with the borderlands of science. The author notes that
.. lUI the best science has soft edges, limits that are still obscure and extend without interruption into
lIleas that are wholly inexplicable .. On the fringe, between those things that we understand as normal
occurrences and those that are completely paranormal and defy explanation, are a cluster of semi-normal
phenomena... that I choose to describe as Supernature."
This book is divided into four PllltS: Cosmos, Matter, Mind, and Time. The last two are more interesting
than those on Cosmos and Matter, which deal primlllily with phenomena that are respectable enough to
ellln government grants for their investigators and thus put them outside the field of true forte ana. However, they lIle just the kind of thing needed to upset the agressively orthodox -for whom the book is
probably intended in any case. Also for their benefit, there are more than adequate references (called a
bibliographY) and a good index.
Lyall Watson does cover "Supernature" pretty thoroughly though he does not devote a great -deal of
spacE' to anyone thing. In some cases he gets a bit carried away, e.g. astrology, on which he waxes quite
eloquent, only to admit finally that "astrology is particularly weak and open to criticism in the field of
predietion". Inasmuch as this is the astrologers' basic claim, this weakens his argument rather seriously.
He displays a similar naivete elsewhere, but these lapses are not frequent enough to do any real damage.
Forteans will want to skim through this book for items and ideas that are new to them, but are advised
that it will make an excellent Christmas present for a stuffed shirt.
James B. Sweeney. ~ Pictorial History of
Crown Publishers. 1972. $9.95

Monsters and Other Dangerous Marine Life. New York:


--

This is a coffee-table book", i.e. oversize, with lots of illustrations (372 in fact), but with more text
than is found in many books of this genre. Unfortunately, the text leaves much to be desired. It will set
the informed reader's teeth on edge and will mislead the uninformed. In addition it suffers from rather
blatant 'padding'; in a number of cases the author has been reduced to saying that an animal is "totally
inoffensive" (the Basking Shark) but awfully big, or likely to retaliate if attacked (who wouldn't?), etc.,
and therefore is "dangerous".
The book is divided into two parts, Part One on "Sea Monsters" and Part Two on "Other Dangerous
Marine Life". Part Two is divided into four sections- "Killers and Their Close Relatives", "Dangerous
Through Size", "Stingers and Shockers of the Sea", and "Poisonous to Eat". There seems to be no particular seheme for the placement of illustrations in Part One -they are simply dumped in- though those in
Part Two generally accompany the text references (except for the' Giant Squid trapped in Trinity Bay,
Newfoundland, which is discussed on page 201; the illustration faces page 87). One also suspects that
the author ran out of captions for the illustrations; some of these are a bit bewildering, to say the least.
On page 120, an enormous 'fish' with very large fangs is attacking a boat (with two masts, yet), and the
caption req.ds "Some who have seen the Loch Ness monster have said that it resembles this sixteenthcentury sea monster, depicted by Olaus Magnus in 1555". Aside from the fact that this is a sixteenthcentury drawing of a sea monster, I cannot recall a single description of a Loch Ness monster that even'
remotely resembles this. Again, on page 27: "The terms sea monster and sea serpent became interchangeable. When erect, the creature is often called a sea monster; but when swimming, it becomes a sea
serpent. "
To be blunt, I fear the author does not write very well. In some cases he is guilty simply of vast oversimplification, as when he states ..... the elephantlike giants called mammoths, split into factions, some
preferring the sea. We now know them as the familiar manate~, or sea cow" (!); but in others he has either
forgotten how to write English or has been wretchedly edited. For example: "An inventory of shark
attacks reveals that the worst violators, in order of frequency, are: first, mackerel shark; second, requiem
shark; third, sand shark; fourth, hammerhead shlllk; and fifth, many sharks ofunknown species." Another
beauty appears on p. 28: "Germany's Lorelei has long been an inspiration as a tourist attraction that is
still pointed out to foreign visitors. This particular siren is said to sit on a cliff... II So far as I know, it is
the cliff, not the siren, that is the tourist attraction.
There are a fair number of outright mistakes sprinkled through the text (and the captions for illustrations), and several misspellings which cannot be attributed to simple typographical errors, e.g. Loch
Morar is invariably spelt 'Morer'. And this apart from the fact that neither Loch Ness nor Loch Morar has
any place in a book on sea monsters. Some of the infelicities are most probably the work of an 'editor'
(whoever it is, he or she apparently loathes hyphens, thus producing such monstrosities as 'eellike' and
'sentinellike').
.
Despite the fact that the author is pro sea monsters, we cannot recommend this book.

99

R. L. Dione. God Drives I! FlYing Saucer. New York: Bantam Books. 1973. $1.25.
Don't bother with this. It's largely drivel.
John Philip Cohane. The Key. New York: Crown Publishing Company. 1969. $7.50.
There was a man who was struck by the similarity in Waikiki and Wichita. So he said (p. 180) -The
only logical explanation I can think of is that the same names were taken in prehistoric times from one
common source, and then, through lack of communication, and with people remembering less from generation to generation, they took on a wide assortment of local meanings that had nothing to do with the
original ones. Being ancient, however, they were regarded with reverence and tampered with as little as
possible. - And he made it his life work to demonstrate, by means of the world-wide distribution of each of
six key "names-, that mankind in the person of far-ranging, Mediterranean-based Semites fanned out
across the face of the earth from one common origin point.
Concerning the efforts of dedicated Atlantists to prove by random linguistic similarities the existence
of Atlantis, L. Sprague de Camp (in Lost Continents, p. 101) snorted, Such considerations [Phonology,
inflection, syntax] never bother the Atlantists, however, who seize upon any chance resemblance of names
or other words to prove their case. By their methods I could, for instance, 'prove' that the Amerinds are
the descendants of colonies from ancient Greece: I could derive the Croatan Indians from Crotona in
Italy, the Cherokees from Kerkyra, the Chilkats from Chalkis, the Mandans from Mantinea, and the Aleuts
from Eleusia. Why not?- The scorned derivations of the Atlantists involved whole words. Imagine how
vastly the comparative process can be expanded, what unlikely relationships can be expounded, if instead
of randomly similar words the exponent seizes upon randomly similar combinations .of two or three letters
-in English, regardless of the language source- comprising a portion of a name of anything. The proof?
Builded of moonbeams, bottomed on quicksand.
Suppose -just suppose, mind you- that before there was a language identifiable as English, there
were two gods, or heroes, or whatever, whose names would be rendered in English as Haue and Oc. And
suppose that the victors of a particularly bloody fracas triumphantly saluted Haue! Oc! Havoc!
This author's search for linguistic evidence of mankind's common source is havoc indeed. A process
of indiscriminate removal, insertion, and change of vowels and consonants which the author unblushingly
asserts are "equivalent- proves that Avebury (Hauebury) in England and the Incan Empire (Anahuac)
share a common source. OCs,OGs, OCHs, HAWWAHs, ALAs, and AVAs are scattered through this book
with never a reminder that in most instances these name-fragments represent some Englishman's effort
to make familiar, if not intelligible, the gabble of a benighted heathen. [Just to indicate how helpful
'English' spellings can be, a pamphlet published in Boston in 1836 with a Seneca Amerind text is entitled
..
~
,."
.,
",
"
",,~.,
]
"DlUhsawahgwah GayBdgshiTh. Gg,w!h!s Goy8.dQh. Sgagyadlh dg,wanandenyg-. Ed.
So we are conducted from China's Yalu to Florida's Yellow to Mexico's Yalalag to Turkey's Yalak to
Australia's Yallock. Do they really prove worldwide distribution of the ancient Aya-Alal Ala-Ala! Ala-OgOC? We. are reminded of William S. Baring-Gould's jocular proof that Nero Wolfe was sired by Sherlock
Holmes: ..... and surely it is no coincidence that his Christian name contains the er-o of Shm'IQck, and his
surname the ol-e of HQ!m~s.We are not convinced that the worldwide distribution of OG, Hawwah, Ala, Mana, Tema, and Ash or
sounds more or less like them prove the author's thesis, but we must admit that new worlds of speculation
are opened by The Key.
",

J. Warner Mills III

INDEX - VOLUME 6
ONTOLOGY
'Worm-Holes' in Space, 64
PHYSICS
Coanda Effect, The, 32
CHEMISTRY
Alleged Fallout-Free Water, 10, 47
ASTRONOMY
Life on the Moon?, 13, 47
Mariner 7, 47
Moons of Mars, The, by Robert J. Durant,
II
Planet X, 66

Saturn's Rings, 32
Tunguska "Meteorite-, The, 82
GEOLOGY
Erupting Rocks, 33
Has the Earth Shifted?, 33
Lightning Again, 82
Mediterranean, The, 13
On the Subject of "Cold-, 13
Pre-Earthquake Phenomena, 83
BIDLOOY
.
ABSMal Affairs in Pennsylvania .and Elsewhere,
by Allen V. Noe, 84

100

Ancient Seeds, 16
Be,ware an Alleged 'Bigfoot' Skeleton, 37
"Blob, The, 67
Botanical Puzzle, A (Bamboo), 68
Current Search and Research of ABSMs, 36
Florida's Wild Wildlife, 37
Giant Herbs, 15
Giant Skeletons, 69
"Horrors from the Mesozoic, by Mark A. Hall, 40
Luminous People and Others, by Ivan T.
Sanderson, 66
More New Cats?, by Ivan T. Sanderson, 35
Nomeus-A Fish That Disappears, by Craig
Phillips, 38
Pa.raguayan "Barking Snake-, The, 14
Pearls in Hens' Eggs, 15
Scaly Beast, A, 17
Second Lobster Mystery, A, 16
That New Very Human-looking Skull, 14
Tropical Fish in Siberia, 16
ANTHROPOLOGY
Chinese Pyramid, The, 93
Julsrud Ceramic collection in Acambaro, Mexico,
The, 41
Kirkbride's Wall and the Great Wall of Peru, 43
Leys -Ancient British Power Network. by Janet
Bord. 70
Linguistic Surprise. A. 19
Metallic Balls from Here!. 19
More on Mercury Engines, 20
Not the Salzburg Steel Cube, but an Iron Object
from Wolfsegg. by Hubert Malthaner, 90
Pharaoh's Pump. by Adolph L. Heuer. Jr 71. 96
Yesu of the Druids, 18
UFOl,OGY
Can We Tick Off Another One? 4
Mystery Airship, The, 55
Possible Alien Space Probe. A. 28
CHAOS AND CONFUSION
Avenger Flight; and others, The. 79
Bermuda Triangle. Again. The. by
Robert J. Durant. 55
Ca.t Conclave, A, 6
Chipmunks and ITF, by Sabina W.
Sanderson. 59
e hopped-off Corn. 59
Ea.gie Requiem, by Stanley W. Tyler, 29
Entombed Toads. by Sabina W.
Sanderson. 60
He Talked with the Seagulls. 81
Light "Wheels Under the Sea, 7
Mary Celeste. The, 5
Me-rmaids. 80
One of the PKs to the Fore, 5
Spook Lights. 31
stone. England, Mystery Bell. The 20
That Disappearing Eskimo 'Village'. 58
Unnatural Darkness, 29. 82
We,ighing the Soul, 30. 97
Who's Down There?, 30

Whose Point of View? 78


Why Did the Foxes Sing? by John
St~art Martin. 57
MISCELLANEOUS
Books in Paperback. 48
Department of Loose Ends. 20. 47. 96
Editorials: by Hans Stefan Santesson. 78
Great Semantic Mess. The. by Ivan T.
Sanderson. 3
Our Greatest Crisis?, by Sabina W.
Sanderson. 54
Sensible Breakthrough at Last. The, by Ivan T.
Sanderson. 27
In Memoriam -Ivan T. Sanderson. by Sabina W.
Sanderson. 26
Members' Forum. 21, 73. 95
Papers Available in Xerox Form from SITU. 21,
97
Translating Charles Fort's Notes. by Carl J.
Pabst, 46
BOOK REVIEWS
(By Sabina W. Sanderson -UQ!!!-de-guerre Marion
L. Fawcett- unless otherwise noted)
Before Columbus: Links Between the Old World
and Ancient America, by Cyrus H. Gordon. 48
Beyond Stonehenge. by Gerald S. Hawkins, 74
Biological Rhythms in Human and Animal Physi~'
Q!Qg,y, by Gay Gaer Luce. 51
Body Time. by Gay Gaer Luce. 51
Children of the Sun, The: 4 Study ill the Early
History Q! Civilization, by W. J. Perry, 48
Crash Go the Chariots: An Alternative to Chariots
Q! the Gods?, by Clifford Wilson. 52Descent of '!!2!!!!!!. The. by Elaine Morgan, 97
Emergence 2! Man, The, by Time-Life Books. 51
God Drives i!: E!.lll!g Saucer. by R. L. Dione. 99
Great World Mysteries. by Eric Frank Russell. 23
Key. The, by John Philip Cohane. rev. by J.
Warner Mills III. 99
Limbo Qfthe Lost. by John Wallace Spencer, 23
Pattern Qf the Past. The, by Guy Underwood, 75
Phantoms Qf the Sea, by Raymond Lamont Brown,
74
Pharaoh'sPump, by Edward J. Kunkel. 51
Pictorial History of Sea Monsters and Qtb.ar.
Dangerous ~ Life.~. by James B.
Sweeney. 98
Record, The. 23
Sasquatch File, The, by John Green. rev. by Mark
A. Hall. 76
Search for Moras. The, by Elizabeth Montgomery
Campbell and David Solomon, 74
Self.. Publishing Writer, The, 23
Supernature, by Lyall Watson. 98
UFO's-A Scientific Debate, by Carl Sagan and
Thornton Page, Eds., 24
~, The Magazine of. Science Fiction. 74
Viking America: The Norse Crossings and Their
Legacy. by James Robert Enterline. rev. by
! Ivan T. Sanderson. 22
We Are Not the First. by Andrew Tomas. 73

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

GOVERNING BOARD
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee

(and
(and
(and
(and

Hans Stefan Santesson


Robert C. Warth
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
R. Martin Wolf
Robert J. Durant
Dante A. Costa
Stanley W. Tyler

President)
Vice-President)
Secretary)
Treasurer)

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Robert C. Warth
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert J. Durant
Carl J. Pabst
Walter J. McGraw
Dante A. (Don) Costa

Director (Acting)
Executive Secretary
Technical Consultant
Research Consultant
Mass Media
Public Relations
EDITORIAL BOARD

Hans Stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw.
Robert J. Durant

Editor and Publisher


Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor
SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute,
Eastern New Mexico University. (ArchaeologY)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of SCience, Palaeobiological Institute;
University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacatd - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia, (Mentalogy)
.
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University.
(Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of Geophysics, U.C~L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal- Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, N. J. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta,
Canada (Ethnosoclology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - Assistant Director, Baltimore Zoo, Baltimore, Maryland. (Ecologist & Zoogeographer)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
.
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison,
New Jersey. (Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanograph.y
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (Botany)
.:.

11:.

..... ~

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON. NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

...

SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINED"


VOL. 7 NO.1

JANUARY, 1974

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia, New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 201 496-4366

MEMBERSHIP

Membership is $10 a year and runs from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Members receive
our quarterly journal PURSUIT, an Annual Report and Auditor's Report, and all special Society publications for t hat year.
Members are welcome to visit our Headquarters if they wish to use the Library or consult the staff but,
due to limited facilities, this can be arranged only by prior appointment; and at least a week in advance.
o YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL OR EVEN AN AMATEUR SCIENTIST TO JOIN US.

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board of Trustees in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. The Society is also counselled by a panel of prominent scientists,
which is designated the Scientific Advisory Board.
The Society is housed on eight acres of land in the Township of Knowlton, Warren County, New Jersey.

IMPORTANT NOTICES

o The Society is completely apolitical.


o It does not accept material on, or presume to comment upon any aspects of Human Medicine or Psychology; the'Social Sciences or Law; Religion or Ethics.
o All contributions, but not membership dues, are tax deductible, pursuant to the United States Internal Revenue Code.
o The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in its
publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made bY any members
by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.

PUBLICATIONS

Our publishing schedule is four quarterly issues of PURSUIT, dated January, April, July, and October,
and numbered as annual volumes - Vol. 1 being 1968 and before; Vol. 2, 1969, and so on. These 8le
mailed at the end of the month. (Subscription to PURSUIT, without membership benefits, is $5 for 4
issues.) Order forms for back issues will be supplied on request.
PURSUIT is listed in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory and in the Standard Guide to Periodicals; and is abstracted in Abstracts of Folklore Studies. It is also available from University Microfilms,
300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. The price is $4.10 per reel. An annual index appears in the
October issue.

PURSUIT

Vol. 7. No. 1
JANUARY. 1974

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS
The Taxonomy of Knowledge
Editorial
Ufology
Validation of the Betty Hill Map, by Marjorie E. Fish
Additional Notes on Ufology
Chaos and Confusion
An Expanding Light Bulb
The Mystery of the Continuous Roll,
by Sabina W. Sanderson
Astronomy
More on the Moons of Mars, by Robert J. Durant
Biology
Giant Skulls
Pennsylvania ABSMery, Continued:
Voice Print Analysis, by Robert E. Jones
Journalistic Irresponsibility
And Still the Reports Roll In, by Allen V. Noe
The Bulgarian Cyclops
A Link Between Pollution and Crime?
Anthropology
The So-called .Salzburg Cube
More on the Chinese Pyramid
Members' Forum
Book Reviews

2
3
4
8

9
11

12

14
16
14
18
19
19

20
21
22

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1974

THE TAXONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE

TH~

TANGIBLES

GEOLOGY

VI
Almo.ph.'ICI and MeteorolOIY.
Ocaanolall-Y. Hydrology. and Gla.
ciolol Y, Tec'onici. VulcanolallY. Seismology. GeophysicS
and Geomorphology; Pe'
'rolog), and Mln.ralo9,;
Geode.y. Geography.
Cartography.

DO'lng.

MATTER
AlomlC i, Molecular
(heml "'y, C'Y' I.allography.

HUMAN
ENTERPRISE

APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

PERFORMANCE
Theor.tlcal Phyllca. Nucl.oftICI,
Cla .. oca!' Phys,c s. E lec"ico.
E I.ctromaln_'ici. Malne'lcl.

TECHNOLOGY ANU
ThE USEFUL.ARTS

Cultural Anthropology and

E .hnology (Archaeology is a
technique). Pre-Hulory.

H,"ory, and Fal~lore; Philol


agy and Linguu.ics.

MENTAL CONCEPTS
Lag'. and Ep, ...... ology.
Psychology. E.h,cs and A..
.hellc I, Campara .. ". Int.lligenc_,
Paropsyd'llc s.

Mechanlca.

MEASUREMENT
Number, Quon'"y,
ArithmetiC. Algebra,

Geometry, T "ganom.trv.
Calculus. Topology. Theory
of Game,. Probob.I"y,CoInclden,e.

THE

INTANGIBLES

Everything in existence, including "existence" itsel', and thu~ all 01 our pc>ssible concepts and all knawledge
that we passess or will ever possess, is cantained within th.~ wheel. Technologies and the useful arts lie
within the inner circle, having access to any ar all 01 the ten malar departments al organized lenawledge.
~am the KORAN: -Acqui ..e knawledge. It enables its possessor to know right from wrong; it lights the way to
heaven; it il our friend in the desert, our saciety in solit",de, aur campanian when Iriendless. it guides us to
happiness; it sustains UI in misery; it is an arnament amanglriends, and an armaur agains. enemles.- _
The Prophet.

EDITORIAL

In this issue of Pursuit we have the pleasure of publishing Marjorie Fish's paper describing her research on the Betty Hill star map. Saga magazine printed an article about Miss Fish, and the ufology
journals have reported the story, but Miss Fish was eager to publish in ~ because it. and it alone,
offered her carte blanche to present the facts. She has complained that all previous discussions of her
work have been incomplete or erroneous in important respects.
The SOCiety has been receiving a growing number of inquiries from the press and from scientists. This
is in part due to an expanding public consciousness of the subject matter that we deal with, but it is also
an index of confidence in SITU as an organization. Our publication of the Fish paper is a case in point.
Those wishing to read the definitive facts on this subject will find them in Pursuit.
To the extent that the Society has accumulated a truly extraordinary colleCt'iO'nof material on Forteana,
and to the extent that it has been able to publish this data regularly for six years, it has been agreat
success. The Society is self-supporting in the sense that membership dues are sufficient to pay the bills
for our current level of operations. We are, however, on something of a plateau. We do not have the funds
to upgrade the organization to a level consistent with the challenge of accomplishing real search and
research.
For example, Miss Fish paid all expenses for her star map project out of her own pocket. There is
little likelihood that she will ever earn one dollar from that labor. Mr. Carl Pabst has been working full
time for over a year transcribing the notes of Charles Fort. His project is being carried out under the
sponsorship of the SOCiety, which pays only for supplies; he receives no salary. Our ABSM experts, Allen
Noe . and Robert Jones, received no financial assistance for their expedition to western Pennsylvania.
Activities such as those described above are vital. and they ought not to be carried out in a haphazard
manner dependent upon great personal financial sacrifice. The answer to this dilemma lies in the bank
accounts of several thousand philanthropic Foundations in this country. To date we have been unsuccessful in interesting any foundation in subsidizing our work. Perhaps the readers of this journal are in a
position to bring our cause to the attention of such a source of funds. Think about it.
IMITATION IS ...
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced the
first major change in format in its 200-year publishing history, and it seems they have decided to cast
the venerable encyclopaedia in the mold of ~.
According to Mortimer J. Adler, the director of
planning for Britannica, the new Encyclopaedia will
be presented .in three basic sections. The first
section, to be called the propaedia, introduces the
reader to something called "The Circle of Knowledge." Adler explains that "A reader may enter or
leave at any point." Now we generally subscribe to
the dictum that imitation is the most sincere form of
Hattery, but this is Simply flabbergasting!
The Taxonomy of Knowledge, presented in the
form of a wheel, has been almost as much a SITU
trademark as the little critter that appears on the
cover of each Pursuit (it used to chase question
marks). And as if that were not enough, Adler
practically quotes Charles Fort's most famous line
word for word: "One measures a circle, beginning
anywhere." Fort, of course, is our literary and
scientific patron saint, and a man whom we consider
to be one of the major thinkers of this century. The
origin and context of Fort's circle" remark are
worth recalling. We quote from Tiffany Thayer's
introduction to the Henry Holt volume of Fort's
works:
"In the course of the manufacture of the book,!:!2.!
Aaron Sussman called Fort's attention to a page

which needed one line "to fill." Fort read the text:
We shall pick up an existence by its frogs .. Wise men
have tried other ways. They have tried to understand
our state of being, by grasping at its stars, oUts
arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying
oneness of all things, it does not matter where we
begin, whether with stars, or laws. of supply and
demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. He had a
pencil in his hand - and without hesitation "filled D
the page for Sussman. He wrote: One measures a
circle, beginning anywhere."
The Britannica might do its readers a profound
service by including the four books of Charles Fort
among its many volumes. The Henry Holt Company
"Books has long been out of print, but we wouldn't
advise anyone to hold his breath until the Britannica
takes up our offer. In any event, dear though Fort is
to all of us, we think the $550 price tag for the
Britannica is a bit much even for a morroco leather
set of Fort. Luckily, Ace Books, Box 576. Times
Square Station, New York, N. Y. 10036, has very
kindly filled the void. They will send each of the
four books (paperback) for $1.10 per copy.

This chart showing the taxonomy of knowledge will


be included in each January issue for the benefit of
new members.

-_._-

-----------------

UFO LOGY
As a rule, SITU skirts the "flYing saucer" issue.
We wish to avoid needless repetition of material that
is 'readily available elsewhere and, most importantly,
we must devote what resources we have to unexplained phenomena that no one else either will or can
investigate. However, t here is one recent developm ent
in the field of ufology that deserves the widest
possible dissemination, and we are presenting it
herewith.
In 1961 Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill were returning
from a weekend car trip in Canada to their home in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They spotted a UFO,
stopped the car, observed the object through binoculars at close range, returned to their car and continued
to Portsmouth. In the following year, both parties
sufferl3d from a variety of very troublesome psychological symptoms. In seeking professional help to
solve these problems they consulted a prominent
Boston psychiatrist who specializes in hypnosis.
Thl3 treatment revealed that after the original
sighting the Hills had experienced amnesia in which
a two hour period was blocked out of their conscious
memory. Under hypnotic interrogation administered
separately to Betty and Barney Hill, almost exactly
similar accounts of the events that transpired during
the two hour period were revealed. The couple had
been stopped by a group of crewmen from the craft,
taken aboard and given an intensive physical examination. Throughout this procedure they had been
under something like a hypnotic spell, including the
post-hypnotic suggestion that they would not recall
anything in connection with the encounter- with the
UFO crew members.
Thl3 psychiatrist stopped the treatment when the
Hills reported their anxiety symptoms had abated. His
very tentative conclusion was that the original
sighting was a "real" experience, and that it had so
frightened the couple that they reacted by fantasizing
the r est of the story, and then, because of the
trauma.tic nature of the fantasy, they reverted it
entirel.y to their unconscious minds. For a complete
account, see Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller
(Dial Press, 1966).
During one of the therapy sessions Mrs. Hill was
given the posthypnotic suggestion that she should
make a drawing of the chart of stars shown to her
inside the craft. The suggestion stipulated that she
should. make the drawing only if she could recall the
chart precisely, and that she should refrain from
exercising any conscious control over the drawing.
The drawing produced in this manner by Mrs. Hill
contains sOllle erasures, indicating that this last
instruetion, at least, was not followed completely.

However, given the general nature of the hypnotist's


instructions, the finished drawing is the equivalent
of what would have been produced in a trance under
his direct control.
One of the "saucer" crewmen told Mrs. Hill that
the chart depicted stars visited by their spacecraft.
Although many stars appeared on the chart, a small
number of them were connected by heavy solid lines,
light solid lines, am dashed (broken) lines. The
crewman explained these lines as "trade routes"
(the solid lines) and "exploratory routes", and added
that our sun was somewhere among the charted stars.
Miss Marjorie Fish, a school teacher from Oak
Harbor, Ohio, undertook the task of testing the authenticity of the chart drawn by Mrs. Hill. The work took
seven years of study and drudgery. After laboriously
poring over astronomical texts and catalogs., ::.nd
eventually building more than twenty three-dimensional models of stars in the vicinity of our s un, Marjorie
Fish confirmed the Hill chart as an accurate portrayal
of a group of stars as viewed from a point in space
far removed from our solar system. The impact of
this discovery is staggering, for if the Hill map is
"genuine", that is, if it could not have been drawn
from information available to terrestrials, the Hills'
story is not a fantasy but an accurate and detailed
account of an encounter with the inhabitants of another solar system. Miss Fish has prepared the
follOwing notes on her research for this issue of
Pursuit;

VALIDATION OF THE BETTY HILL MAP


by Marjorie E. Fish
I read Interrupted Journey shortly after its publication in 1966, and was struck by the possibility
that Mrs. Hill's map might provide a means of verifying the objective truth of her story. The task seemed
a formidable one; for even at t he beginning it was
obvious that it would call for much more than simply
searching for the Hill pattern in conventional astronomical charts. Such charts are constructed to show
the heavens as they appear to an observer situated on
earth. The Hill chart, being a (purported) view of a
set of stars from a position deep in space, would
show these stars in a completely different pattern
from that of the earth-oriented astronomical charts.
Thus only by building a three-dimensional model of
stars could that same vantage point and t he resulting
pattern be discerned.

After two years of research and experimentation


the first star model was built. but an additiomi.l four
months and two more models were required for a
working model of sufficient accuracy and scope. This
model included stars to a distance of 10 parsecs. or
33.6 light years from the sun. and consisted of 256
beads hung by thread. with each bead placed according to t he angular direction and distance of the star
from the sun. Beads of different color were used to
represent different types of stars. stereoscopic color
photographs of the model were taken for future use.
Much of the" research that preceded the building
of t he star model concerned exobiology -the branch
of astronomy that deals with the possibility of life
in other parts of the universe. There were over 250
stars within the 10 parsec distance. Finding the Hill
pattern in this jumble of stars was indeed like searching for t he proverbial needle in the haystack. In
term s of effort alone this was an unappetizing
prospect. but of more importance was the possibility
that. given the huge number of possible combinations
of stars in a random grouping of 250. coincidence
could never be ruled out if the Hill pattern was found
[even if the odds were 'astronomical']. In fact. it is
unlikely that many combinations of stars could be
found in the model that approximately fit the Hill
pattern. This was a very serious and basic problem,

for if the Hill map was to be proved genuine it would


have to show a demonstrably unique group of stars.
Otherwise the sceptics would. quite properly. raise
the objection of chance or coincidence.
"
In an effort to surmount this problem. the stars in
the model were individually scrutinized for the
ability to hold life-supporting planets. Although
exobiology is at the moment a relatively inexact
science .it has produced some general guidelines for
judging whether a given star can have life-supporting
planets. For example. the star must be neither too
large nor too small. too hot or too cold. and so forth.
The "saucer" crew members were humanoid in
appearance and had landed and operated on this
planet. It was logical to assume that their home environments were roughly the same as ours. and that
therefore the parameters established by exobiologists
ought to hold true for the "base" stars. By the same
reasoning. the stars designated as parts of "trade"
routes and probably those stars designated as objects
of "exploratory" routes would also qualify as viable.
By applying the exobiological criteria the number
of stars which could still be considered qualified for
possible inclusion in the Hill pattern was reduced to
62. When" this set of stars was observed. the pattern
drawn by Mrs. Hill in 1964 stood out clearlY.

Gliese 67

,
\

Sol

,, , ,

107 Piscium

, D-- -

tJ

Tau 1 Eridani

0- --

--

Tau Ceti

-0--

-.

82 Eridani

Fomalhaut

54 Piscium

-- - - - -

__ ,

Alpha Mansae

- Gliese
..Ltr---=======::I
86

, ,
Gliese 59

Zeta 2 Reticuli

------------------------------------------------.
6

The pattern of stars in the model corresponded to


those on the Hill map with the exception that three
stars appeared to be out of place. Data in the star
catalogs was checked and rechecked. but the discrepancy remained unresolved. The basic pattern had
been found. with 9 out of a total of 12 pattern stars
corre,::tly identified and placed. but the anomalous
three stars made the effort less than the complete
success that was sought.
NE!Vertheless. the discovery of the bulk of the
pattern was a breakthrough. and it occasioned the
first contact with Mrs. Hill. I was eager to tell her
of the discovery and to elicit any further information
she might have concerning the star chart. During a
meeting with Mrs. Hill she revealed that. contrary to
the impression given in Interrupted Journey. the map
she had been shown was three-dimensional rather
than a flat two-dimensional picture. Other details
offerEd b,Y Mrs. Hill permitted a calculation of the
dimensions of the cube of space containing thE' stars
she saw. These dimensions are given in an accompanying illustration. That the chart seen by Mrs. Hill
should be three-dimensional is no argument against
the veracity of her story. Three-dimensional photography (holography) is widely used today in industrial
and laboratory applications. although the equipment
required for making holographs is very complex.
In December 1969 I received a copy of the new
Glies,e star catalog which contained the most up-todate information then available on stars. Because of
the small demand for such catalogs. and because the
data that go into them takes so long to compile. they

are issued at rather long intervals. The previous


Gliese catalog which was used for most of my model
data was issued in 1957. The new Gliese catalog
contained enough revised data to warrant a complete
review of both the placement of the stars in the model
and their exobiological fitness. The effort proved
worthwhile. for the complete pattern of stars drawn
by Mrs. Hill emerged from the revised model.
For reasons explained above. coincidence would
seem to be ruled out here. Could the drawing by Mrs.
Hill have been produced by fraud? The alleged encounter with the "saucer" took place in late 1961.
and the map was drawn in 1964. Was it possible that

A~------------

____

I
I
I

Zeta 1 Reticuli_

D~--------=----Point

Hour

Min.

Degrees

Distance from Sun


in Lightyears

24

-11

53.3

-50

38

23

24

-76

44

13

-24

57.4

49

+44

42

13

+34

17

18

26

-7.5

27.8

23

+19.3

47.3

Table of coordinates for the points that define the


volume of space viewed by Mrs. Hill.

__~

Figure 2 is the volume of space viewed by Mrs.


Hill. Our sun is located near point F at the top and
rear of the "cube" -actually a parallelepiped. Zeta 1
Reticuli (one of the base stars) is located near pOint
C. Plane ABCD is the side closest to the observer.
and corresponds with the surface of the wall of the
UFO. Mrs. Hill described her viewing position as
follows: " ... standing 3 feet from the base stars on the
map and only a few inches from the edge of the map ...
The bottom of the map was just about eye level. so I
needed to look UP and to the left to view the map."
Sides AB. AE. EF. DC. etc . are 48 light years in
length. Sides AD. BC. FG. am EH are 32 light years
in length. ABFE and DCGH are squares. These
dimensions are probably accurate to within 1-1/z light
years. The galactic plane as viewed from a planet of
Zeta 1 Reticuli lies nearly along the plane EBCH.
This might be a clue to the orientation of the three
dimensional map.

Mrs. Hill did some research similar to mine, determined the appearance of a group of stars v iewed from
some arbitrarily chosen point in space, and then
foisted the drawing of the pattern on a gullible
public?
To begin with, the details of the encounter with
the "saucer" and its occupants were revealed under
hypnosis. The hYpnotherapy as administered by the
psychiatrist served as a type of "lie detection". The
consensus of those who have studied this aspect of
the case is that regardless of the objective truth of

-"" ...~-

*0, .. ."""
.,
I

~'"

,.,':

.....

reader should see the introductory remarks to Interrupted Journey written by the Hill's psychiaTrISt.
The strongest argument against fraud is that the
data required to make the drawing was simply not
available to Mrs. Hill or anyone else in 1964. As
noted in the discussion above, the final model in
which the complete Hill pattern was found was not
and could not have been built prior to the publication

- - --...

C)- ...... -:-.--f'\

. .. . '

,.

their story, Mr. and Mrs. Hill very definitely believed


it to be true. For an elucidation of this point the

0..

~:~.

.~

.
*--'* ' .......
'-.
0"".........".

.... o

stars in Hill Map

*-

stars in Model View

....,0======::::---

o
" ....
---~*=====~
-:.------

-.-

.'

Figure 3. This is the map drawn by Mrs. Hill. with a photoprojection of the model view of the same
stars superimposed. The discrepancies between the two representations can probably be accounted for in
the following ways. First, some latitude must be given for Mrs. Hill's draftsmanship and recall. Second,
the map seen in the UFO was three-dimensional. and thus the relative pOSitions of the stars would change
with every movement of the observer's vantage point. The most reasonable interpretation of this problem
would be that Mrs. Hill's map represents a composite or integrated recollection based on a number of
small but significant shifts in her viewing angle. Third, the model may be in error, even with the most
up-to-date data. As an example of this last point. figures for the distance of Zeta 1 Reticuli taken from
four different star catalogs are 38.8 LY (light years), 30.7. 41.3. and 36.6.
In fact. we would be suspicious if the maps corresponded exactly; for further information on this, see
the letter from Betty Hill, reprinted with Marjorie Fish's article.
In addition to the obvious geometrical congruity between the two views, both are exobiologically valid.
Thus the Hill map satisfies two independent sets of criteria.

of the 1969 Gliese catalog. The insufficiency of the


previously published data was not merely a matter of
incorrectly printed distances or parallaxes. The exobiological considerations so vital to the final solution of the puzzle were unknown in 1964, and were
not fully developed until some time after 1969.
The search for the Hill pattern was pursued without many people knowing about it. A number of astronomers lent their assistance for the construction
of the star models and in the exobiological aspects
of the. case, but they did so without knowing the true
nature of the project. It was represented to them as a
purely astronomical exercise. Indeed, the astronomical
study became so fascinating that it served as the
impetus for continued work on the star models when
it appeared that the Hill pattern would never be found.
The construction of the models was met with some
enthusi.asm by astronomers. Graduate classes in
astronomy at Perkins Observatory, Ohio state University, studied them. Visual inspection of the models
revealE!d certain heretofore unknown distributions of
different types of stars, and subsequent computer
analysl~s have confirmed this discovery. But it must.
be emphasized that these studies have been concerned
entirely with the astronomical, and not the ufological,
aspects of t he star models.
There was never any intention on my part to be
deceitful about the basic purpose of the .construction
of the star models, but it did seem prudent to keep
that information in the background. I was an amateur
asking busy professionals for their time and expertise.
It is not likely that they would have been so cooperative had they known the controversial nature of the
researc:h.
Such considerations are no longer important. The
resear(:h described here has established beyond
reasonable doubt that the map drawn by Mrs. Hill did
not originate on this planet. If follows that the remainder of the story told by Mr. and Mrs. Hill is true.
The onus is on the scientific establishment to recognisl~ the extraordinary challenge and opportunity
presented by this case.

The following letter appeared in the July 1973


issue of the UFO Investigator, published by NICAP
(National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Inc.) Kensington, Md., and is reprinted here
since it contains some important points in connection
with the star map .
"I have just received a copy of the UFO Investigator with the article about the star map. I wish to
clarify two points. The first one is the statement
that the map rolled down like a window shade. In
Interrupted Journey, a question mark should have
followed this statement, for I am asking myself this

question. In my recall later, I was standing there


when the leader touched the wall. At that point,
something in the hall attracted my attention and I
turned in that direction. When I turned back to the
map, it was on display. So I asked myself -it rolled
down like a window shade? I was really asking how
this map came to be in this position, and I was acquainted only with maps in school which rolled down
in this manner. I have thought about this quite seriously and I am of the opinion now that the wall opening slid back in some manner.
"The second po!nt: 'Using this slim information
as her basis, Ms. Fish .' In July 1969 Marjorie Fish
drove to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and spent
several dli,YS as my guest. We spent hours discussing
the star-map, which she t aped. I described the map
as 3-D; it l;J.ad depth to it. It was like looking out, far
out into space. Also she saw the original map which
I drew. On this, I had made an erasure and changed
the line from zeta 1 Reticuli to GS6. On my first
drawing, I had made this line slant downward, then
erased this and changed the line to the position which
is shown on the published map. Now we know thaL
my first line was the accurate one. During t he years,
Marjorie has been dOing this research, we have
al ways been in contact with each other, and she.
always sent me copies of her latest work, although I
do not understand astronomy.
"I think that clarification of these two points
should contribute to a better understanding of the
star map. I neglected to say that prior to 1969,
Marjorie had written to me several times to question
me about the map.
(Signed) Betty Hill
Portsmouth, New Hampshire-

ADDITIONAL NOTES

ON UFOLOGY

For those who may have missed it, we report here


the results of a recent Gallup Poll regarding UFOs.
The results are rather startling, and indicative of a
change of 'climate' in this country concerning Unexplaineds.
The poll included 1,550 adults, 18 and older, and
51% of those interviewed stated that they believe that
UFOs are "real and not just a figment of the imagination or cases of hallucination. - And 11% say that
they have seen a UFO (i.e. believe that they have
seen -a qualification based on the known fact that
there are misidentifications, etc.). This is more than
double the percentage reported in the Gallup Poll
taken in 1966, when 5% believed they had seen a
UFO. And there was a 34% increase in the number of
persons who believe there is intelligent life elsewhere
in the universe -a jump from 12% to 46%. Also, of
these, the pollsters note that 7 out of 10 persons who

believe in intelligent life elsewhere say that UFOs


are real.
But perhaps the most startling statistic of all is
that 95% of all those polled had heard or read something of UFOs. This "awareness score" is one of the
highest in the history of the Gallup Poll which began
37 years ago. While most of us are sick to death of
Watergate, there are those who have not heard of it;
and then there was the Philadelphia woman who was
asked, during W.W.II, what she thought of the war
-she asked: "What war?"
A more than 'sad' commentary on official positions concerning ufology appears in the National

Enquirer of the 6th January 1974. Senator Barry


Goldwater, who states flatly that he believes UFOs
are real, has "been thwarted in his attempts to see
research files at Wright-Patterson Air Force Basei
where UFO investigations were conducted. 'I've
never been able to get into the Air Force Research
Office at Wright-Patterson. I asked Gen. Curtis
LeMay, who for years was head of the StrategiC Air
Command, for permission to check into the files and
he told me: "Hell, no, and don't ask me again".'''
According to our information, these files are not
classified. If Joe Doaks from Armpit, Nebraska,
barges in and asks to see them, one could understand
a certain reticence; but a highly respected senator??

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

AN EXPANDING LIGHT BULB


The Long Island Newsday of the 6th December
1973 reported, with a photograph, an "ordinary 100watt light bulb that evidently nursed ambitions to
become a table lamp". The article was written by
one Maurice Swift, apparently the owner of this not
very ordinary bulb, who noted that the bulb was
(originally) the usual pear-shape with a screw-in
socket "a fraction larger than regular bulbs" and
that "there was a concave area on the top that
appeared to have melted somewhat" -the significance, if any, of these facts is as yet unknown.
There is no brand name on the bulb but its socket is
marked loOW 120/5V DJ.
The bulb had been in a discarded lamp stored in
the attic and was used to replace a burned-out bulb
in the basement. It was put into use in the basement
on the 22nd November 1973 and was next seen early
in December, "a couple of days" before the 6th, when
it was discovered that the bulb was burning brightly
in a two-socket holder but was now the size of a
large grapefruit. The other bulb in this socket had
burned out.
Somewhat disconcerted by all this, Mr. Swift
called Ripley's Believe It or Not and General Electric where he talked with Mike Witte, mana"ger of
production service and reliability. Mr. Witte's department specifically handles abnormalities that
occur in G~ products but he professed himself
"flabbergasted" by this one and proceeded to make
some comments that must be classed as among the
understatements of the year: "The first thing I would
suggest is that you turn if off ... you don't have a

Redrawn from Newsday photo by Bob Luckey

10

normal lamp here ... Lamps that grow just don't seem
" right.'; 'To 'Quote a cl1che, y'ou c'an' say that again!
: 'Witte did s'uggest th:it.{t1i'e bulb 'might have 'been
, 'manufactured for use under water or with 'some 'type
, or' coolant and that the lack of any kind of coolant
might be 'the cause of thEi expansion, bu't it was clear
that he had' no definite kriowledge of any bulbs of
ttii~ sort. He promised to ' 'ask around among the
"old-timers at' GE and report'back~' So far as we can
find out, he has not 'yet dorie sci. "
We' have no eJ(planations' whatsoever. If any of
our" l,Ilembers' hll:ve e'ncountered siinilar bulbs or know
of any mechanism 'that could cause such 'expansion,
we wi.ll be"more' than happy to hear from them. Ordinarily it is necessary' to heat glass considerably
above the ordinary light bulb stage to make it "expandable" and it seems unlikely that even a rather
major power 'surge' would do this.
Pending further information we can only sympathize with Mr. Swift who reports that one of his
collea.gues said, "Listen, if you believe that, I have
some land in Florida you'd be interested in".

'THE MYSTERY OF THE CONTINUOUS ROLL


by Sabina W. Sanderson
I understand that there are, those who think I make
things up to take up space in Pursuit; I can assure
you this is not the case. No personaI" experiences of
a truly unexplaillEid, nature are reported unless there
is at least one other witness. The item under discussion here sits on my desk where, I can glare at it
at regular intervals and' is available for inspection
by v.isitors if they ~ish to see it and/pr have any
theoril~s concerning it. The ,facts' are 'as follows.
Ivan Sanderson long ago hit upon and developed
a splendid device to aid hirri ill- ,\liS writing. This is
the "continuous roU" -actually a'two-ply "tally roll"
manufa.ctured by Natiohal Cash Register Co.- attached to the i<Ypewriter with special b.rackets. It consists
of a white top sheet and a yellow pres!,ur e-carbon

behind this, and has the advantages that one almost


never 'has to cha~'ge paper (only every thousand feet
or what~ver it is!), a carbon is made automatically
(and corrections can also be made on top and carbon
copy Simultaneously), and one can just keep on
w'riting without distractions of paper changing, etc.
My own typewriter was fitted with such a device but,
, inasmuch as the carriage (plus roll) must be raised
for capitals, the typing comes out like something by
e. e',' cummings.: After Ivan's death I took over his
'typewriter, ,partly for practical and partly for sentimental reasons. So much for general history.
I had used approximately a third of the roll at,tached to the typewrite~ and ,then for several days
did no typing at all. When I. returned to it, I found
that about ten 'inches of the white sheet extended
beyond the yellow. This was somewhat puzzling, but
I Simply chopped off the excess and then proceeded
to feed the double roll through the platen on the
typewrUer, only to discover that the yeUow sheet
was on top. This was inexplicable. However, deciding to cut the Gordion knot", I took the continuous roll off the brackets and reversed it so tha~,
instead of feeding, as is normally the case, from the
back and under the continuous roll,"it now fed directly off the top of the roll. This put the white sheet
on top of the yel'low, but on doing a bit, of ty ping I
discovered that this did not produce a carbon 'on the
yellow sheet. 'Further experimentation showed that
the yellow sheet had to be' reversed back to front in
order to get a carbon -one assumes that only one
side of it is treated so that it produc,es a pressure
carbon.
At ,this point I gave up and put a new f'lll on the
typewriter; this has so far behaved normally.
There is no indication whatsoever that the faulty
roIl had been tampered with; you cannot unroll a
double sheet such as this (or even a single roll),
reverse one sheet, and then re-roll it with no sign
of unevenness along the edges,' i.e. at the ends
(sides) of the roll. Nor can I conceive of any way in
which such a swit,ch in the middle of a roll could
have occurred 'in thelI.lanufacturing .process. If anyone has any ideas about this, I shall be happy to
hear from them.
'

Escape Artist
A Reuters report from Brisbane, Australia: "Aboriginal prisoner 'William Charles Haines seemed unusually happy as he was released from Boggo Road jail here. No sooner had his smiling face disappeared
from sight than a complaint came from another William Charles Haines that he was due for release. A
qUi(:k check showed that the freed Haines still had ~hree years to serve.' Furthermore, he walked out
wearing the clothes and wrist watch of. tile man left inside. Police said that if they recaptured the first
Haines it was doubtful they could charge him with escaping custody. But they might be able to charge him
with st~aling the oth~r Haines's clothes."
'

11

v.

ASTRONOMY

MORE ON THE MOONS OF MARS


by Robert J. Durant
Immanuel Velikovsky, in his Worlds in Collision,
quotes Homer and Virgil to show that the ancients
knew of t he existence of t he moons of Mars (Iliad
XV. 119; Georgics iii.91). These passages are fleeting references to the two mythological horses that
pulled the war chariot of Ares (Mars).
The thesis of Worlds in Collision is that Venus
became a planet only about 3500 years ago, and that
in the process of entering our solar system as a
comet it wreaked havoc with Earth during several
very close passes. The memory of these events has
been recorded and preserved in mythologies throughout the world. The Book of Exodus, with its detailed
narrative of earthquakes, "parting of the waters, the
pillar of fire, and so forth, is held by Velikovsky to
be a literal record of the cataclysms caused by the
near collision of Venus. The planet-to-be also disturbed Mars to such an extent that it was wrenched
out of its orbit and came dangerously close to Earth.
Velikovsky suggests that Mars came so close that
its moons were clearly visible, and that Jonathan
Swift merely read the mythologized version of this
occurrence in Homer and Virgil and incorporated it in
Gulliver's Travels.
-In an attempt to get a better grasp of VelikovskY's
suggestion, I calculated the size of the moons of
Mars as they would appear to an observer on Earth
during a close transit. If Mars were close enough to
appear the same size as the full moon, it would be
about 475,000 miles away, or twice the distance of
the moon. At that distance Deimos, the larger moon
of Mars, would subtend an angle of 4.6 seconds of
arc. The planet Mars as seen today subtends an angle
of 5 to 25 seconds of arc, depending on its orbital
position. Mars is not an especially large or bright
body in the night sky, yet it is one to five times
larger in appearance than Deimos would be at the
hypothetical close passage. With Mars 475,000 miles
distant, its moons would be pinpoints of light. For
Deimos to be identifiable with the naked eye as a
solid object, rather than a point of light, Mars would
probably have to be no more than 20,000 miles away.
In its current orbit Mars is 35 to 63 million miles
from earth.
One wonders whether such a close approach of
Mars, with the attendant tidal and geological convulsions, would be conducive to the painstaking
observations required to determine t he periods and
orbital distances of its moons even within the crude

limits of accuracy of Swift's figures. On the other hand,


even at planetary velocities the errant Mars would
take weeks to make the passage during which its
moons could be discerned. If Mars did in fact make
such a close passage, the moons and t heir pattern
of behavior could have been observed and recorded.
However, it is most unlikely that the true nature of
the moons or the planet would be understood by the
observer.
Swift speaks of two moons, and gives their periods
and distances from the planet. Homer speaks of the
quasi-human god Ares and his two horses, Deimos
and Phobos. The anthropomorphism and zoomorphism
practiced by primitive civilizations is one thing, but
specific astronomical concepts and data are something
altogether different. The chariot of the god of war
drawn by two horses is not too strained an analogy
for t he uncultured observers of t he moons and their
subservience to the planet to invent. It does, in fact,
make quite a bit of sense in the context of mythology.
But ther~ is nothing more in Homer to suggest the
concepts of planets, moons, orbits, periods of rotation, and other modern astronomical ideas. These are
relativelY new and sophisticated concepts that could
hardly have occurred to the ancients. If by some
means t he ancients acquired a knowledge of these
matters, it seems likely that they would have stated
the case plainly without resort to inventing the myth.
The very terms of t he mythology would seem to
obviate the possibility that either the authors or the
propagators of t he mythology understood the true
nature of the heavenly bodies. The conceptual transition from the god Ares to the planet per se, and
from the two horses to the moons of the planet is no
small matter. When Swift adds t he periods and orbital
distances of the moons, he has gone far beyond what
one could plausibly characterize as a simnlp. nnotRtion from the classics.
In the previous article on the Moons of Mars
(~, vol. 6, p. 11) it was noted that Kepler made
a "Freudian slip" of sorts with respect to the moons.
This arouses the suspiCion that both Swift and Kepler
had a common source of information about the moons.
That is, a source other than the legends discussed
above. The source would be a book or a fragment of a
book of ancient origin that spelled out the facts about
Mars and its moons. It should not be too surprising to
find such a text in view of the multitude of puzzlingly
"modern" scientific ideas to be found in the surviving
writings of the Greeks. Also, there is the so-called
Antikythera, a not so primitive orrery -a mechanism
devised to show the motion of the planets around the
sun by means of clockwork, ["invented" ca. 1700

12

A.D . .]-named after the bay where it turned up in


dredging operations.
The 'Greeks, in turn, were at pains to explain that
they lilarned it all from the Egyptians. And if you
want a good idea of what the Egyptians were up to,
see Seerets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tompkins.
Through all of this runsthe theme of avery considerable body of knowledge that was held, though perhaps
by a priestly elite, very long ago.
If Keple r had such a text he would be inclined to
take it seriously, though he would not be in a position
to diseriminate between it and the mass of other
astronomical (and astrological) manuscripts that
served as the basis of his researches. Swift, a writer

of vicious satire, would be inclined to use the book


as ammunition. The section of Gulliver's Travels
containing the "moons" passage is precisely that, a
broadside, against mathematical astronomers.
The library at Trinity College, Dublin, would seem
to be t he logical place to begin the search for the
text. Literary scholars have identified many of the
historical events and personages that became the
objects of Swift's famous satire. Perhaps the historians of science ought to do some checking here as
well. What was the occasion of Swift's venomous
attack on astronomers, and where, exactly, did he
read that Mars has two moons & etc.?

VII. BIOLOGY

GIANT SKULLS
Chapter 6 of Ivan T. Sanderson's book ~
is devoted to a story -and he notes that it
is just that, not a "report"- of some alleged giant
"human" skulls. We now have the answer to this one.
For the benefit of those who do not have the book
(both it and "Things are out of print), we present
here a summary of the story as originally told Ivan
Sanderson, quoting in part from More "Things".
After the publication of Abominable Snowmen:
Legend Come ~ Life (and this is in print, Chilton
Books) a great deal of mail was received, most of it
either confirming reports included in the book or
adding new ones from other areas. Among these was
a very long and quite remarkable letter from a lady in
Idaho, relating a story told her by one of her sons
who had been an engineer in the U. S. Army during
World WILr II:
"Things~

"Having volunteered in 1940 for active duty, he


was sent to join an engineering unit that built the
Alcan Highway to Alaska. When this was completed,
he was sent, with this unit, the 1081st Company,
Maintenance Engineers, to the island of Kodiak for a
rest period, and was then shipped with his unit to a
tiny island named Shemya that lies east of Attu that
is the last of the Aleutians going towards Asia. The
Japanese were still on Attu and the purpose of landing on Shemya was to turn the island into an airstrip,
it being flat and low, except for a small rise at the
eastern end. Enemy resistance had been expected
here but, on landing, only one dead Japanese soldier

was found. However, there were neat signs all


around the island stating that it, and anything found
on it, was the property of the Smithsonian Institution! When these signs were erected was not known
to this engineering outfit- whether they were prewar and left by the Japanese, erected by the enemy,
or by some military unit that had got there before
them. This business is odd to say the least; but wait.
"According to my correspondent, her son stated
that when the bulldozers arrived, they started leveling the whole island of small bumps :tnd finally
tackled the Slight elevation at the east end. Curiously, this was said to have been composed of many
layers of 'muck', silt. and soil, with underlying
sedimentary rock, while the lower land and the
beaches were composed of a mixture of sedimentary
and non-sedimentary rocks and boulders. As this
eastern bump was scooped off, bones of aU kinds
began to come to light; first, those of whales, seals,
walrus and such, but later and lower, those of
extinct animals like mammoths. Finally, at a depth
of about six feet, what appeared to be a graveyard of
human remains was uncovered. These were wholly of
crania (not whole skulls) and the long bones of the
legs. Associated with them were numerous doll-like
artefacts carved out of mammoth and walrus ivory,
but 'fossilized'-after they had been carved. There
were also chipped flint instruments (no flint on the
island) and other bone and stone implements of both
very small and a rather large size.
"The crania of the human skulls, which are categorically stated to be of modern human conformation
with full foreheads (not sloping, ape-like ones with
big brow-ridges) measured from 22" to 24" from base

.,

13

to crown. What is more, everyone of them is said to


have been neatly trepanned!"
The lady was asked for further information and
replied that her son absolutely refused to say more
about the matter, primarily hecause he had been
harrassed by an English author who was both patronizing and demanding and had thoroughly infuriated
her son. However, he did provide the name and
number of his unit; and the names of four officers,
including the senior Intelligence Officer,' were obtained from the General Services Administration,
National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis,
Missouri. Two of these replied to letters sent them,
one stating that he had indeed been with the outfit
on Shemya but had not heard of any archaeological
finds there, and certainly not of any giant "human"
skulls. The other gentleman stated:

"I recall that as we were building a road around


the south east end of Shemya Island, the bulldozers
did uncover some human bones, ivory carvings, etc.
There was considerable excitement over this .... I
recall that this area was put under the control of the
Base Commander and all of the findings were to be
handled by this base unit ...

I'~I.
AttuI~

Niski Is.

"Shemya Is.

The Aleutian Islands; inset shows enlarged 'view'

There was a further allegation by the lady and


her son: "that the men on the island made a sort of
hobby of collecting the artefacts found with the
bones, but that they were told to turn them all in,
under penalty. However, one man who had been a
museum preparator, knowing something of their value
and possible significance, made a small collection
which he hoped to take back to the mainland. This
was discovered, and the man was immediately arrested and held incommunicado. Later, when a
civilian crew of engineers came to relieve the enlisted outfit, this man was allegedly shipped back to
the States 'in irons', .....

Inquiries were made of the Smithsonian concerning


this, but thf!re was never any reply. There did come
eventually, however, a letter from a very old friend
of Ivan Sanderson's saying, more or less, why didn't
you ask me? To which the answer was, of course,
"1 didn't know you were there!" We do not have permission to use names, but our informant is thoroughly reliable and, in any case, his report makes good
sense:
"Your source material stated that the distance
between Shemya and Attu was Y.z mile when, in

reality, it is 33 miles. [This should have been


spotted but was not -possibly because of the general
'state of shock' induced by the report.]
"The island on which the skulls were found was
not Shemya but the adjoining island of Niski. I
personally saw the signs posted by the Smithsonian
prohibiting entry onto this iSland, and I know this
dictum was strictly enforced by the Commanding
Officer, U. S. Army, Shemya [name deleted]. At the
time I was serving as DeCK Engineer in the old
steam schooner S. S. Morlen [spelling uncertain],
engaged in the transporting of men and supplies from
Attu to Shemya. In addition to my ships work, I was
collecting bird skins and eggs for museum display,

14

so was regarded as being rather 'peculiar' by the


officers and men. I enlisted the aid of one soldier
(name deleted] by means of two cases of sea-stores
whiskey and the use of my personal long dory and a
weeks detached duty, to make a foot tour around
Niski and bring back anything of interest. This man
was witnessed returned from Niski by the sentries,
apprehended and placed in the detention barracks. I
was a.sked to identify and reclaim my dory and file
charglls against the man (which I most assuredly
would not 40). However, in the dory was a skull, 33
inches in total length and 20 inches total height, one
half the length being a beak and in a deteriorated
condition.
"When it came time to get this man 'off the hook'
at the courts martial, the 'prima facie' evidence had
been dropped and broken and the skull appeared sans
beak. I would say (from referring to a standard text)
that t.his was the skull of an Icthiosaur (sic], but I
heard it referred to by army officers as a large human
skull! Nothing further came of this and I wafl not
given possession of said skull.
We disagree with the identification of the skull as
that (If an Ichthyosaur but assume that our informant
considered it to be truly a fossil skull of these fishlike I'eptiles which became extinct sometime during
the Cretaceous period. In any case, he saw it and
we didn't. However, it seems unlikely that an
Ichthyosaur's skull, even without the 'beak', would
be mistaken for a modern (if gigantiC) human skull,
On the other hand, the Ziphioids or beaked whales
might very well be so misidentified. In particular,
the
Northern Bottle-nosed Whale (Hyperoodon
rostratus) has a very bulbous forehead. And there is
an off-center blowhole -the "trepanning" of the skull
mentioned by our original informant. The Ziphioid
crania do look astonishingly like human crania, and
an attempt was made to get a plaster model of one
for exhibit at Terre des Hommes (Man and His World)
in Montreal, but the price asked was frankly a bit
outrageous and the project was dropped. Unfortunately we have been unable to find a picture of such a
skull but show here an outline of the fleshed-out
head; this is probably an old male in view of the
somewhat exaggerated bulging of the f.orehead.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the
original informants but also no good evidence that
the son was ever more than an 'indirect' observer.
His I~ood faith is attested to by his mother's
comments concerning the English author's letters:
II . . . it
was his insistance that Ed tell him more and
more, after he had already told him everything he
could remember about it, and also perhaps that the
things Ed did tell, did not quite fit in with what Mr.
"X" hoped he would say". In other words, her son

refused to lie to please the author. Also, she points


out that her son left Shemya in 1944 and was not
formally quizzed about this until about 1955 and
then, by Ivan Sanderson, in 1961 -"After all, a man
with no scientific training and little interest in such
things, is so busy making a living these days that
he tends to forget about something not connected
with his own line of work ..... We might add, particularly if you have been made so angry that you never
want to hear of the subject again.
This story serves as a good example of the old
adage "Where there's smoke, there's fire" -even if
it proves to be one that splutters out. In other words,
even if it sounds utterly bIzarre, you'd better check;
there just might be something to it. In this case we
admit to being mightily relieved not to have to deal
with 20" human skulls.

PENNSYL VANIA ABSMERY, CONTINUED


The following is a very preliminary report on one
aspect of our investigations of reports of large, hairy
bipeds in western Pennsylvania. We hope to have a
much more definitive report later on; and ask that
any of our members who might be able to assist us
in the very specific project described below, get in
touch with us.

Print Analysis

by Robert E. Jones

One item which was brought back from Pennsylvania in September 1973 was a tape recording, allegedly of the creature howling (or bellowing). At
present, an attempt is being made to analyze the recording through son agraphic (i.e. voice print) analysis. In November 1973 a number of sonograms were
made through the courtesy of Kay Elemetrics, a firm
in New Jersey that specializes in the manufacture of
Sonagram equipment.
The first sonogram was taken in the 80 Hz to
8000 Hz (hertz -a unit of frequency equal to one
cycle. per second) range using a wide band filter.
The results indicated that the major portions of. the
sound were in the lower range, so the second sonogram was made in the 40 Hz to 4000 Hz range. Two
other sonograms were made: one similar to the
sec:ond, using a narrow band filter, and the other my
voice for purposes of comparison.
In December the sonograms were studied by a
biologist who had had some experience with sono-

,--'........ .

i .~ry

-,.

i -~
'~

"~

;1'
;;

.~

'.

.~ ~

'.

Ii
I

'H.I Hi!
I

t~

iii

.{

- - ------------- -.-

Figure 1. Print of Robert Jones' s voice.,


I:~-~-~C.:~---.---

11- :.

. .f. :; 1 ,

),;'-~ J ~ji;'f!; h;;;)/'f:';. .i-i-' !

.. J

f
;:..

. '-.. ~,"

:.',

{(;~(";k ~<;'. . ;, t C' 'i


..

-,

lr ..
.~:\

~.-

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!
I

Figure 2. Print from "creature tape". Two points that


have particularly interested the analysts are the
jumps in the frequency and the sustained tones,
neither of which is characteristic of the human voice.

Both these prints are reproduced from copies and


lack the definition of the originals, and no formal
attempt should be made to draw any conclusions from
these reproductions.

---------'----------_._-----------16

grartlanalysis of primates. Although his studies had


be'en r-ather limited, his opinions were such as to
justi,fy further analysis of the tape. His conclusions
were:
1) 'that the frequencies fall within the usual
an:j.inal range
2) that the patterns appear not to be humanly or
mechanically produced, and
3) that the sounds are not those of any primate
with which he is familiar.
At present I am attempting to find any persons
who may have experience in the sonogram field to do
further analysis of the tape, and references to any
written works related to this field.

JOURN ALISTIC IRRESPONSIBILITY

'one OctQber night after one of the creatures, upon'


being Sighted, eluded pursuers and took refuge on a
hilltop inaccessible to man". The truth is that the
cry was recorded by an anonymous individual in
western Pennsylvania, who played the tape over a
local hot-line radio program over the phone. I have
never made any other statement to anyone, at any
time."
The balance of the article was reasonably factual,
and was probably obtained from another reporter who
had interviewed us some time before, and from the
October 1973 issue of ~.
Th'e major portion of the data on the Pennsylvania
ABSMs was based upon the investigations made by
the Westmoreland County UFO Study Group of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, directed by Stan Gordon. It is
most regrettable that this irresponsible bit of journalism makes it appear that SITU has been making inaccurate and irresponsible statements, or that we
have failed to give WCUFOSG all due credit for their
most valuable contributions to the scientific study
of these baffling creatures. Unfortunately, such
journalistic irresponSibility is often typical of the
National Tattler.

Many reporters, in preparing a news story, do


interview the subject personally, and then embark on
a work of fiction designed to make sensational reading, ,putting words into the mouth of the interviewee
which he never uttered. A certai~ amount of "journalistic freedom" must be overlooked, provided that the
facts are straight, and that only actual statements of
subject are quoted.
The National Tattler, in their 13 January 1974
issue, wrote just such a "story", purporting to be a
first-person interview with Allen V. Noe, our Director of Operations.
WE! quote from our letter of 3 January 1974 to the
National Tattler:

By Allen V. Noe

"In reference to the article entitled, '"Tape,


Witnesses Finally Prove Abominable Snowmen Do
Exist," " on page 24 of the National Tattler dated
13 January 1974, I want to congratulate Jeanne, King
for a, great job of reporting her interview with me.
Especially since I have never met the lady' The
article quotes statements I purportedly made to the
Tattlgr-I think that is remarkable in view of the fact
that I have had no contact with the Tattler or any of
its representatives.
"I never told Jeanne King, or anyone else for that
matter, that the cry of the creature was recorded by
an investigator for the Society for the Investigation
of the Unexplained, or that the recording was made

In our October 1973 issue (Vol. 6, No.4) I gave


an indication of the great numbers of huge, hairy
bipeds that have been Sighted in the United States
during 1973. Since writing that, there have been
many more reports which read like something out of
some old book on spook'S, hobgoblins and demons'"
Have these creatures always been with us-but stayed away from man? In view of some of the descriptions, one may ask, Has the proliferation of
electric distribution lines, radio and TV transmiSSions, radar, telemetering of data from satellites,
etc. distorted the "fifth-dimensional veil" which
separates our world from some parallel existence
where these things exist, and permitted an ever-

. .... AND STILL THE REPORTS ROLL IN .....

John Lombard, a farmer in Harrismith, South Africa, sold five homing pigeons to a neighbor who lives
a mile away. To keep the birds from flying back to him, John suggested that the new owner clip their
wing feathers until they got adjusted to their new environment. Two days later farmer John saw a strange
sight coming down the dirt road. The five pigeons were walking home.

17

increasing number to become apparent to us? Are


they "planted" here from UFOs? Or are they, despite
the descriptions, terrestrial in origin?
In the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area, "Big
Valley" residents saw a creature "the size of a good
heifer, gray in color with a white mane. It had tiger~
like fangs and curved horns like a billy goat. ran
upright on long legs and had long grizzly Claws.';
Two brothers saw the creature approaching while
they were bringing in a load of hay. The team of
horses bolted, and both brothers were thrown from the
wagon. Neither was seriously injured. The ground
was dry and hard, and no tracks were found. The
next evening another farmer was clearing weeds from
a fence row near the foot of a. mountain about five
miles from the first occurrence. He heard a ferocious
roar, and turned to see the appalling creature charging toward him. At the last moment, he swung his
scythe in an effort to defend himself, but it was torn
out of his hands. He fled, and luckily escaped with
his life. This man added to the first description that
the creature had three horns and a tail! The next
morning, investigators found that the creature had
apparently eaten all the wooden parts of the scythe,
Nothing was left except the blade and some bolts.
It was speculated that the creature craved salt as
the result of the prolonged heat wave.
Again, on the following evening, at a farm about
midway between the first two, a woman was feeding
her chickens when she heard a commotion. She turned to see the creature grabbing two of her largest
geese, one in each paw. With more indignation than
common sense, she gave chase, waving her apron
wildly. The creature turned and threw one of the
geese at her with such force that it knocked her to
the ground, then made good its escape. The report
stated that there were a lot of nervous farmers in the
"Big Valley".
In late December, Member #1567 wrote us from
Florida, stating that he had heard a radio broadcast a
few nights before, and that a man had Sighted one of
the "Big Hairies" near Brooksville, and had gotten a
recording of two or more communicating with each
other. We have written to the man hoping to get a

copy of the taped cries of the creatures for comparison with an anonymous recording made in western
pennsy'lvania last summer.
A letter dated 15 October 1973 from a young lady
who lives in western Ohio, stated: "I've been follow~
ing with great interest the happenings in Greensburg
and Derry, Pennsylvania. The reason for this is that
for a great number of years there has been a similar
animal-man around where we live. Over the past ten
years it has been heard and recently seen. The
location is about one mile south of (deleted) on a
deserted farm road that dead ends into Interstate 75.
I myself have seen this animal, can tell you he's
very real. I have numerous friends who have heard
him and know that he exists." Upon inquiry, she
stated that the creature was seen at about 12:30 AM
on a moonlit night on the deserted farm road described above. It was close enough to I 75 that the car
headlights reflected a red glow from the creature's
eyes. It seemed the face was quite human, he was
covered with dark hair, and the arms were very longalmost knee length. The height was estimated at
about 10 feet, since the witnesses saw him step
over a fence nearly five feet high. The cries of the
creature were described as "a cross between the cry
of a man in pain and the high pitched howl of a
wolf". The woods where the cries were heard seems
to be dying, and many trees have fallen. There
appears to be an almost complete absence of birds
or animals in Lhis woods, yet across a field there is
another wooded area where everything is lush and
green, and where animal and bird life abounds. I
have made further inquiry to ascertain whether there
has been any evidence of UFO activity in the seemingly blighted area.
.
In northern New Jersey (that's mighty close to
home), a man who prefers to reIpain anonymous r eported pulling into the driveway of his home in the
mountains
near High Point one evening in late
summer, and seeing a huge, hairy creature standing
upright on two legs at the corner of his house. It
walked around the corner, whereupon he got his
flashlight out of his car and went into his back-yard.

Happy Headlines
A local New Jersey newspaper reported on a new book by our member Leonard Lee (Lennie) Rue with
the heiuUine "Rue - Nationally known wildlife Photographer PUblishes Book on Ruffled Grouse and
the Winnipeg Free ~, an excellent newspaper by the way, produced some confusion with "Executions
Reported After Afghan Cow. It should have read "coup.

19

at birth -both attitudes have been recorded by


cultural anthropologists.
Should we obtain further information on this, we
will of course pass it on to you.
A LINK BETWEEN POLLUTION AND CRIME?
One of our New York State members sent us an
excerpt from the Ithaca New Times dated 25 November 1973. which is reproduced in its entirety as
follows:
"In case we need any more reasons to clean our
foul skies, a new study points out an unexplained re-

lationship between air pollution and the commission


of criminal acts.
"Two medical researchers, Dr. Harold Feldman
and Robert Jarmon, uncovered unexpected correlations between air pollution and crime in Newark,
N. J. (a city which has plenty of both). They recorded a parallel between the level of oxidants in the air
from auto. emissions and the rate of assaults. Perhaps
we are dealing with chemical neuro irritants, the researchers speculated.
"Other doctors have expressed interest in pursuing
this study, which may explain some of America's
social malaise and which may help speed remedial
action."

VIII. ANTHROPOLOGY

THE SO-CALLED SALZBURG CUBE


The author of the article on the so-called Salzburg
Steel Cube in the October 1973 issue of Pursuit was
unable to locate two of the four references cited by
Charles Fort. One of our members has dug these out.
and we present them here. The fi.rst is from the
Comptes Rendus of the French Academy of Science.
volume 193. page 702. as translated by our member:

hibit Widmanstatten figures. It has a cleavage that


gives it the appearance of the holosiderites of
Braunau and Saint Catherine. The lignite in which
the object wa~ found is mined by underground work,
so ~t follows that the object could not have arrived
there recently, but must have been deposited during
the tertiary period.

"Note from M. Gurlt. introduced by M. Daubree

There follows a commentary by M. Daubree. The


of this commentary was reported in the
second missing reference. Hardwicke's ScienceGossip. 1887. page 58.

" A piece of meteoritic or holosideric iron was


discovered in a block of tertiary lignite from Wolfsegg, when a worker, Mr. Riedl, of the firm of
Isidore-Braun & Son, was breaking the lignite in
order to burn it. The shape of this iron object was
roughly that of a right parallelopiped with greatly
repond
rounded edges. (La forme de ce, .fer
grossi'erement
celle d'un parallelepipecte droit,
it aretes fortement arrondies. Emphasis ours.) The
dimensions of the object are 67mm by 62mm by 47mm,
and it weighs 785 grams. All of the surfaces contain
the minute indentations that are characteristic of
meteorites. The object is covered by a thin wrinkled
film of magnetic oxide. The iron contains carbon and
a bit of nickel, but a precise analysis of the amount
of each element present in the cube has not been
made. A polished section of the object does not ex-

"Meteorite in Coal.-If the fall of meteoric stones


is an old-established proceeding, there must be
specimens imbedded in the stratified rocks of all
ages. This may be the case 'although none have yet
been found, for the simple reason. that the total area
of any given formation which human beings have explored bears so small a proportion to the total area
of the globe. The non-firiding of them in rocks of any
particular date no more proves their non-falling at
that period than the non-finding of specimens on the
present surface of the county of Middlesex proves
their non-falling in the present geological epoch. As
the best-explored regions of the geological past are
those containing coal. it is ther e that we may expect
the first find, and in accordance with this natural
probability a fossil meteorite has been found in a
block of Tertiary coal. It was described by Dr. Gurlt,

ess~nce

Cosmology - Meteorite Found in Tertiary Lignite

One goldfish to another: All right. wise guy; ifthere's no God. who changes. the water?-

~--~"--I------------------~'''''''''''~--''''''.~''_.''''I''''''l''''''

20

at Bonn. The block of coal from which it was taken


was about to be used in a manufactory in Lower
Austria. It weighs 785 grammes (about 1~ Ibs.) its
specific gravity is 7.75; it is as hard as steel; is a
mass of iron alloyed. as meteoric iron usually is.
with nickel. and combined with some carbon."

MORE ON THE CHINESE PYRAMIDS


We have received from Ronald Dobbins a copy of
the material which should have accompanied the
"photograph" of the Chinese pyramid reproduced in
our October 1973 issue. The picture originally
appeared in Through Hidden ~ by Francis H.
Nichols (New York: C. Scribner's Sons. 1902). with
the following comments.
"Besides ruined and deserted mud villages. the
only objects which broke the monotony of the landscape were mounds which dotted the plain between
Sian and fords of the Wei Ho River. The mounds were
built by men. but when or for what purpose is a
myste'ry. The mounds were all pyramidal in shape.
They were made of a kind of' clay. apparently a
different material from the loess of the plain. Their
sides were covered with a verdure of coarse grass
and low bushes. Although the action of time and the
eleme'nts had partly obliterated the former angularity
of the outline of the mounds. their original shape
was still plainly discernible. They were all square
pyramids. about eighty feet in height from the centre
of thl3 plane of the base to the apex. The four base
lines of each pyramid are of equal length. usually
about 300 feet. It seemed as though an intention were
apparent in their construction to have the sides four
square with the points of the compass. The road
from Sian to San Yuan runs directly north. and as we
passed a succession of mounds on either side of it.
I noticed that we were always confronted by the face
of the pyramid. and never by one of its corners. The
base lines of its northern and southern sides were
invari.ably at right angles with the road. I found also
.that, although scattered over an area of ten square
'miles. the corresponding sides of any two of the
~pyramids always faced in the same way. Although I
did not test accurately their points of direction. I am
. stronl~ly of the opinion that lines drawn at right
. angles with the four bases of the sides of any of the
pyramids would lead directly north. east. south. and
west.

"The mounds have always been held .in great


veneration by the people of the surrounding country.
They are situated in the midst of a plain where until
the famine every square foot of ground was in demand
for cultivation. yet no crop was ever sown or reaped
on the sides of the mounds. They are regarded as
mysteries. and consequently it would be bad luck for
anyone to attempt to dig into them. The Sianese
explain them by saying that they mark the burialplaces either of some of the early emperors or of the
great characterq in Chinese history ....
"But to my mind this theory does not satisfactorily explain the mounds of the plain of Sian. More than
most nations, the Chinese keep a careful record of
their monuments. An accurate knowledge of the
places where the great ones of antiquity are buried
is part of the ancestor-worship of the country. If each
of the Shensi mounds covered the tomb of an emperor
the fact would be generally known. and a tablet recording the fact would be placed near it. But such is
not the case. No inscription of any kind is found
near the pyramids .... The shape of the mounds. too,
is another objection to the idea that they are the
burial-places of emperors. Over an emperor's tomb
was usually piled a huge heap of earth of indiscriminate size and shape that in time assumed a rounding
oval form. not unlike a natural hillock. But the pyramid, or anything like it. was never attempted."
Mr. Dobbins has protested, rather vigorously, that
the presence of a horseman in the picture of the
pyramid should enable us to determine the size of
the pyramid quite readily and wishes to 'dissociate'
himself from the view expressed there, to the effect
that the actual size was problematical. No such view
was attributed to him in any case, but we would not
attempt to guess how far the horseman is from the
pyramid, particularly on the basls of a Xerox copy of
a halftone plate. Details are not clear, and he could
be quite some distance from it. If one knows the size
of the pyramid, of course, this l'!1akes it a different
matter altogether.
This still leaves Col. Sheahan'S "great" pyramid,
described as a thousand feet high and fifteen hundred
feet .. wide ..... though, as Mr. Dobbins points out, "it
seems . possible that the 'hundreds of small burial
mounds' mentioned by Colonel Sheahan in his account
are the very same weathered earthen structures seen
by Mr. Nichols earlier. This is certainly possible
-despite the fact that 300 feet square and 80 feet

. Bear in mind that donations to SITU above and beyond the usual dues are tax deductible for Internal
Revenue Service returns.

21

high is not exactly a mole hill. We have not as yet


had any reply to our inquiries made to the Chinese
and are not overly sanguine about the possibility of

getting one, but one can always hope. The basic fact
remains: there are pyramids in China -unless you
wish to call Mr. Nichols a liar.

MEMBERS'FORUM

Member #1416 suggests an addition to any sur-,


vi val kit" -a can or plastic jar of "Adolph's Meat
Tenderizer", the unseasoned type. "On fresh insect
bites rub in a fresh paste of Adolphs. It's also good
for fire coral cuts if you're a skin diver. Try it,
you'll like it."
II

We neglected in our October issue to report that a


preliminary but quite thorough survey was made in
north-central Pennsylvania concerning Thunderbirds
last summer and that further investigations are
planned for this year. And we are still looking for
that photograph (see the April 1972 issue of Pursuit).
Ivan Sanderson's Invisible Residents is once
again available in hard cover, with a new introduction, written in December 1972. The jacket has
been somewhat improved in that you can now read
the author's name without a magnifying glass.
Published by Thomas Y. Crowell, price $7.50. On
page 124, the John and Mary should be deleted from
the list of disappearances. And, alas, the publisher
has managed to misspell the word "forteana" on the
first page of the Introduction. For our British readers, Universal-Tandem Publishing Company will be issuing I a paperback edition of
Ivan T. Sanderson's Invisible Residents. The date of
publication and the price are unknown.

BACK ISSUES OF PURSUIT


Volume 2, nos. 3 and 4, and Volume 3, no. 2, are
now out of print and not available; and Volume 2,
nos. 1 and 2, and Volume 3, nos. 1 and 3, are in very
short supply and may be out of print by the time you
read !his. There is a reasonable supply of Volumes
4,5, and 6.
Also, Bob Durant found a supply of the original
printing (not Xerox copies) of his Fitzgerald Report
-a case of documented Governmental dishonesty in
investigating a UFO case; these are available at
$1.50 each, including postage.

Member 1161 asks a pertinent question: "If a 'black


hole' passed through the earth, why weren't we
captured by its super strong gravitational field?
Remember that the earth's comparably weak gravitational force holds the moon." It wasn't our idea in
the first place, and we understand that it is not
'popular' with the scientific community. This time
they would seem to have a good reason for their
scepticism.
However, it could (watch that qualifying word)
have been a black hole. Descriptions almost invariably give the impression that black holes swallow
whole planets for lunch, as it were. In fact, one of
the size postulated -a "grain of dust"- could have
punched its way through the earth without picking up
more than a handful of atoms en route. The reason
for the general scepticism concerning this theory is
that if such infinitesimally small black poles were
even relatively common in the uriiverse, their effects
should be more 'visible'; they aren't.
Member #61 also encloses a sk.etcn his brother
made of a shipping crate for a Sasquatch, noting that
kits are available from them fOJ a small charge. We
suggest that you study this carefully before ordering;
perhaps you can build your own.

-----

---

----------------,-

22

THE IV AN T. SANDERSON MEMORIAL FUND


We are aware that there is not exactly an overabundance of money in this country. but our members
have now contributed enough to this fund to enable us to buy the copier which we so desperately need.
Special thanks are due to W. M. "Gerald- Russell. one of Ivan's oldest friends. for the substantial contribution which made this a reality rather than a "maybe next month-. This does not mean that we have all
the money we need to carry out the projects we have in mind. In fact. there are many items we can use
...-a,nd should like to have- if we are truly to "preserve and continue the work begun by Ivan T. Sanderson-.
Our Board members (and we now have what I. S. W.S . consider to be the best -most active and interested- Board we have ever had) have been given a list for use in applying to both foundations and individuals
for general and specific funding. This includes such things as the following: walkie-talkies and other
communication equipment; professional still and motion picture camera equipment. various types of detectilij~ equipment -gas. metal. (general) electronic. infrared. etc; field analysis kits; optical equipment (including a telescope. for which Dick Palladino set up a base in our "back yard- several years ago); an
equipped camper or trailer for field trips; meteorological equipment. etc. ad infinitum. Bob Jones. who
accompaniM Allen Noe on one of his trips to western Pennsylvania to investigate the ABSMs there. has
donated an air conditioner for the Annex in which we have our library; this is primarily for the benefit of
our books and files -both for temperature and dehumidification to protect truly unique materials. Weare
more than grateful for this. and would like to point out that such donations are tax deductible. Bob has
rec:eived a receipt for the cash value of the air conditioner. and can and may take this off his income tax.
If any of our members work for companies which might be able to supply equipment that we can use. we
will be more than happy to hear from them.
Two most important projects are presently 'exercising our minds' as Ivan would have said. ,One is
Charles Fort's Notes. being transcribed by Carl Pabst -who quit his job and is dOing tills monumental
task at his own expense except for supplies. It is all very well to congratulate him on his "labour of
love-, but good wishes are not edible, nor do they pay train fares; and we hope to find the money for an
honorarium for Carl Pabst.
The other project is the microfilming of our clipping files. These are unique. either individually or as
collections of material from often obscure sources. All possible precautions are taken to ensure their
sa1~ety, but nothing is absolutely guaranteed; a second copy -stored in as safe a place as can be foundis an urgent requirement.
Again, anything our members can do -either through financial contributions or advice or 'useful contacts'- will be to the benefit of all of us.

Pie i:l.Se , please, let us know of any change of address as long in advance as possible, and include your new
zip code.--

BOOK REVIEWS

by Sabina W. Sanderson
Hannes Alfven. \.YQlli!-Antiworlds: Antimatter ill Cosmology. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.
1966. $3.50. (Order from the publisher, 660 'Market St .. San Francisco, California 94104.)
This is a splendid little book, a kind of "primer on cosmology" specifically written with the layman
in mind. Although it deals with what are probably the most complex problems facing scientists today, it
doe!! so very clearly, yet without' talking down' to the reader.
The chapter titles are "Cosmology and Natural Science", "Matter and Antimatter", "Plasma Physics",
"Antimatter in the Cosmos", "Development of the Metagalaxy" (our universe), and "The Cosmological
Problem". If you have any interest in the subject at all, do not let these headings frighten you. At $3.50
it is one of the best bargains around.
There is no index, but the table of contents gives a breakdown of the chapters that provides a good
substitute.

23

Project CYclops, ~ Design study Q! ! System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent W!e. Prepared
under Stanford/NASA/Ames Research Center 1971 Summer Faculty Fellowship Program in Engineering
Sy"stems Design. Copies available by writing to Dr. John Billingham, NASAl Ames Research Center, Code
LT, Moffett Field, CA 94035.
This is, for the most part, a highly technical report on an 'official' long-range attempt to communicate
with other intelligent beings in our universe and the methods and equipment most likely to be successful
in such a search. It is too technical for the general reader but will be of interest to those with training in
radioastronomy or related fields, and may eventually prove most important -though none of us may live
long enough to see the results.
George Thommen. Is :This Your Day? Crown Publishers, Inc. 1964. $4.95
Much has been written recently about biorhythms, a good deal of it so technical as to be unintelligible
to the layman, and some of it so oversimplified and exaggerated as to suggest some sort of panacea.
George Thommen's book falls squarely between the two and should prove most valuable to the sO-called
average citizen.
The first half of t he book is devoted to the 'history' of biorhythms. This is not really terribly interesting but will serve to convince the sceptics that biorhythms are not something dreamed up by some mathematics-happy biologist. The second half concerns biorhythm(s) as such and presents detailed instructions
on how to chart your own biorhythmic cycles: both a complicated and a simple method are given, and the
book includes all the necessary tables, blank charts, and calibrated cycle rulers. (Additional forms, rulers,
etc. are available from Biorhythm Computers, Inc., 298 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10001.)
The author makes it quite clear that while the cycles themselves are inexorable in their progress, they
cannot be used to predict future behaviour or accide.nts "for the way a person acts depends on what is
happening to him, as well as on the condition he happens to be in physically, emotionally, and intellectually at a particular time". In other words, the chart is valuable as a warning device and enables a
person to be at least somewhat on guard on "bad days". The cycles are not of equal length: the phySical
cycle is 23 days, the 'sensitivity' (mood or emotional) cycle 28 days, and the intellectual 33 days.. Hence
you may feel on top of the world emotionally but be in a "recuperating" stage physically: and thus you
might at.tempt something which in fact your reflexes are unable to handle at that time, resulting in an
accident. Much is made of "critical days" but the author points out that these are not dangerous in themselves. Two days in each cycle are considered critical, the first day of a new cycle and the day when the
cycle shifts from its high to its low or recuperating phase. Again, this does not mean that you will have
an accident: it simply indicates that your reactions -physical, emotional, or intellectual- may be out of
gear" and that allowance should be made for this. Depending on general and special circumstances, this
may or may not prove valid. An article in the National Observer explained why, on the basis of biorhythms,
Mrs. Billie Jean King could not beat Mr. Bobby Riggs in their tennis match: her cycles were all at their
lowest point, his were high. For the benefit of future readers, she beat him in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.
There are other interesting and helpful computations outlined in Mr. Thommen's book which is recommended for its practicality.

F. W. Holiday. The Dragon and the Disc. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. 1973. New York: W. W. Norton
Co. 1973. $7.95.
Ted Holiday's latest book may properly be said to consist of two parts. The first is an excellent and
most interesting account of investigations of Irish lake monsters, both current and historical, and much,
if not most, of this material will be new to the majority of readers. These 'dragons', though possibly related to those in Loch Ness and other northern lakes, seem to behave quite differently and even to be at
least apparently rather agressive. Also, the loughs they are reported to inhabit are generally best described as ponds, and one of the puzzles is how beasts of the size indicated by witnesses could survive
in such small bodies of water. No one has figured out what, if anything, the beasts eat. Which brings us
to "part two".
This is far less satisfying, in part because Holiday has a tendency to be guilty of just those faults
he attributes to others; i.e. he castigates the archaeologists and cultural anthropologists for identifying
certain symbols or representations categorically as "the sun" or wbatever; and then announces himself

...----------------------.-----II

-------------------------------------------------------~------------

24

that "There is really not the slightest doubt that they [cup-marks-circular or oval depressions cut in
rock] represented the Disc", i.e. a UFO. Rather a categoric statement and not based on absolute proof
eIther.
From lake monsters to UFOs may seem a rather large jump, but Holiday believes that they are related
and that neither is .. real" in the sense of being organic or truly physical, despite the fact that both are
visible and do on occasion produce tangible effects or leave material traces, e.g. slime trails left by the
Irish lake monsters. It is true that lake monsters (and ABSMs for that matter) and UFOs have thus far
eluded capture and proved nearly impossible to pin down, this in the face of often monumental expenditure
of time and effort, and one does sometimes wonder if we are dealing with some 'unearthly' type of entity
which cannot be caught. Nevertheless -and Ted Holiday has a tendency to more or less ignore this
faet- there are photographs and films of monsters in Loch Ness, and some of the difficulties experienced
by the camera crews at Loch Ness and attributed by Holiday to "supernatural" (for want of a better word)
influences, also be-devil chaps simply trying to photograph their infants in the back yard, e.g. film failing
to wind through properly.
Holiday has made a very thorough study of depictions of 'dragons' in church architecture and other
religious monuments (Celtic crosses, etc.) and believes that the dragon (freshwater rno nsters under
various names) and the disc (UFOs) were very early objects of worship in its broadest sense. The dragon
wa.s, according to him, often represented simply by a beaded border surrounding a central disc, as on the
Celtic crosses. He certainly has done a thorough job of cataloguing these various depictions, and his
thlwry is interesting -if, as the publisher notes, rather fantastic- but I am not convinced. It is indeed
possible, but his coverage is so broad that this alone makes me a bit sceptical. He includes both long
and round barrows (cigar- and disc-shaped UFOs) and even the leys discussed by Janet Bord in the July
1973 issue of Pursuit. In fact, he finds right-angle triangles all over the place, allegedly linking dragondisc monuments, etc. The map on page 144 is not, however, impressive, if only because few of these
alleged 'points' are identified. And in any case I am not enthusiastic about any type of so-called orthoteny: given enough points, you can find all sorts of linkages which mayor may not mean anything.
There are references and a good index, and the book is recommended for the material on Irish lake
monsters. For the rest, you will have to make up your own minds.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee

(and
(and
(and
(and

Hans Stefan santesson


Robert C. Warth
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
R. Martin Wolf
Robert J. Durant
Dante A. costa
Stanley W. Tyler
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.

President)
Vice-President)
Secretary)
Treasurer)

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Robert C. Warth
Allen V. Noe
Marion L. Fawcett
Robert J. Durant
Carl J. Pabst
Walter J. McGraw
Dante A. (Don) Costa

Administrative Director
Director of Operations
Executive Secretary
Technical Consultant
Research Consultant
Mass Media
Public Relations
EDITORIAL BOARD

Hans Stefan Santesson


Marion L. Fawcett
walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

Editor and Publisher


Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor
SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute,
Eastern New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute;
University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. Philadelphia. (Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill - Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University.
(Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology. Institute of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of BiologY. Rutgers University. Newark, N. J. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology. University of Alberta,
Canada (Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology. Emeritus, Harvard University. (Geology)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology. Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - Assistant Director, Baltimore Zoo. Baltimore, Maryland. (Ecologist & Zoogeographer)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head. Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture. Utah State University.
(phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave LaboratorY). Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman. Department of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison.
New Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer. U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanographl')
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany. Drew University. Madison. New
Jersey. (Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY.

37 BELVIDERE AVENUE

WASHINGTON. NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

.::=:-

-===- -

=
-

...

s.--

----~-

SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEXPLAINEO ft


VOL. 7 NO.2

APRIL, 1974

SOCIETY FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Columbia, New Jersey 07832


Telephone: Area Code 20 1 496-4366

MEMBERSHIP

Membership is $10 a year and runs from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Members receive
our quarterly journal PURSUIT, an Annual Report and Auditor's Report, and all special Society publications for t hat year.
Members are welcome to visit our Headquarters if they wish to use the Library or consult the staff but,
due to limited facilities, this can be arranged only by prior appointment; and at least a week in advance.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL OR EVEN AN AMATEUR SCIENTIST TO JOIN US.

ORGANIZATION

The legal and financial affairs of the Society are managed by a Board of Trustees in accordance with
the laws of the State of New Jersey. The Society is also counselled by a panel of prominent scientists,
which is designated the SCientific Advisory Board.
The Society is housed on eight acres of land in the Township of Knowlton, Warren County, New Jersey.

IMPORTANT NOTICES

o The Society is completely apolitical.


o It does not accept material on, or presume to comment upon any aspects of Human Medicine or Psychology; the Social SCiences or Law; Religion or Ethics.
o All contributions, but not membership dues, are tax deductible, pursuant to the United States Internal Revenue Code.
o The Society is unable to offer or render any services whatsoever to non-members. Further, the
Society does not hold or express any corporate views, and any opinions expressed by any members in its
publications are those of the authors alone. No opinions expressed or statements made by any members
by word of mouth or in print may be construed as those of the Society.
'PUBLICATIONS

Our publishing schedule is four quarterly issues of PURSUIT, dated January, April, July, and October,
and numbered as annual volumes - Vol. 1 being 1968 and before; Vol. 2, 1969, and so on. These are
mailed at the end of the month. (Subscription to PURSUIT, without membership benefits, is $5 for 4
issues.) Order forms for back issues will be supplied on request.
PURSUIT is listed in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory and in the Standard Guide to Periodicals: and is abstracted in Abstracts of Folklore Studies. It is also available from University Microfilms,
300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. The price is $4.10 per reel. An annual index appears in the
October issue.

J..........................................................._ .....I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~

PURSUIT

Vol. 7. No. 2

APRIL. 1974

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
FOUNDED BY IVAN T. SANDERSON
DEVOTED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF -THINGS
THAT ARE CUSTOMARILY DISCOUNTED

Editor & Publisher:


Executive Editor:
Consulting Editor:
Assistant Editor:

Hans Stefan Santesson


Sabina W. Sanderson
Walter J, McGraw
Robert J. Durant

CONTENTS
Fortean vs. Orthodox Science, by Robert J. Durant

26

Ufology
UFOs in New Jersey, by Berthold E. Schwarz, M.D.

31

Chaos and Confusion


The Continuous Roll, Explained, by Sabina W.
Sanderson & #1205
Fire Walking, Again
Ontology
An Extraterrestrial Space Probe

35

36
36

Biology
All Quiet on the Western Front: Bigfoot,
April 1974, by Peter Byrne
Mystery Animals
"Mystery Animals", by Charles Bowen
An Addendum on "Mystery Cats"
Loch Ness
Loch Ness 1972--The Rines/Edgerton
Picture, by Tim Dinsdale
Members' Forum
Book Reviews, by Sabina W. Sanderson

41
42

43

46
46
47

48
49

Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained 1974

26

FORTEAN VS. ORTHODOX SCIENCE


SITU concerns itself with the study of unexplained
phenomena of a tangible nature that orthodox science,
for one reason or another, refuses to study. The
reasons for this reluctance to come to grips with the
"things" that swell our files are worth some detailed
discussion. Is SITU a "crackpot organization" at
odds with the rest of the intellectual world? Are we
"all right" and they "all wrong"?
The fact is that SITU, as an organization, has
never been attacked is specific terms, but it does
take very seriously a w ide range of subjects that
have been subjected to downright contumely at- the
hands of various "professional scientists and journalists . at one time or another. By association with
subjects, and by our insistence that they be studied
in some small way before consigning them to the
trash pile, we have placed ourselves directly in the
line of fire of these aforesaid scientists and journalists. Nevertheless, we have to date escaped denunciation, and have in recent times experienced quite the
opposite phenomenon, in that scientists and journalists have begun to rely upon us as a reliable source
of information on certain currently topical unexplainecis, particularly the ABSMs.
But whatever the Society's fortunes may be in this
respect, the basic problem remains - there is a great
range of physical phenomena that has been reported,
and reported tim e and again for centuries, often in
every part of the globe, but that orthodox science
ignores. The records of these strange events threaten
to burst the walls of our library, but one can search
forever in the textbooks of all the arts and sciences
withoul; finding mention of a single one. [Even this
may be changing. A publisher has borrowed one of
Ivan T. Sanderson's drawings of sea monster types
for inclusion in a textbook!] There are those who would
postula.te some great conspiracy of silence to explain
th is peculiar fact. We don't subscribe to any such
theory.
Unexplaineds, or anomalies, or forteana, or whatever denomination you choose, represent a class of
event that exhibits certain very special characteristics setting it apart from what, for the purposes of
this discussion, we will call "ordinary" events. The
methodology of orthodox science has develQped
certain characteristics of its own for analysing the
external world. This methodology has been eminently
successful in most respects, and we would be the
last to criticize it in general. Certainly it has eclipsed its competitors in the search for knowledge, i.e.,
the scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the "who
cares?- of the Orientals. But it has failed to catalog
or anal;yse, or even to detect, forte ana in most cases.
It would seem that the characteristics of forteana
events are somehow at odds with the characteristics
of the methodology of mortern Rcip.nce.
Our anomalies have Slipped through the scientific
net. This may not be an inapropriate metaphor, for

one is reminded of other scientific problems which at


first seemed to defy logic but ultimately yielded to
improved Investigative techniques. The invention of
the microscope revealed a hitherto unknown or undreamed of world in a droplet of water. The electron
microscope, with its vastly increased magnification,
revealed yet another world teeming with "life". In
this case, the unexplained "thing" remained unexplained, or unknown, because of a rather simple
characteristic, namely its size. What, then, are the
characteristics of forteana that have kept these
particular "things" beyond the scientific pale?
To begin with, fortean e vents are generally of
short duration and they occur sporadically. This is
the case with UFO's, ABSM sightings, appearances
of Loch Ness Monsters, and so forth. These characteristics make it very difficult to make the sort of
study of a phenomenon that science has traditionally
made. To put it another way, science is geared to the
study of "events that occur regularly or periodically,
or in the case of most matters, Simply stay put indefinitely for the leisurely inspection of the researcher. If one desires to study clouds, there are clouds in
great supply in most parts of the world on almost any
day of the year. If one wants to study fish, a supply
of fish can be kept under the most carefully controlled conditions for minute examination at a moments
notice. These characteristics of clouds and fish
make it a convenient matter, relatively speaking, to
learn about them in a systematic manner. Now compare the neat little arrangement of the ichthyologist
with the problem faced by the ufologist.
We can see that there is an enormous problem here
in terms of efficiency alone. How long can a researcher wait for a "saucer" to appear? How is one to approach the study of events for which there is little
evidence other than an eyewitness report? To be
sure, there is a great deal of secondary or circumstantial evidence to back UP the eyewitness reports.
I refer here to footprints, feces samples, photographs

in the case of the ABSMs, and to the various deformations of the ground and surrounding foliage in the
cases of UFO landings, as well as all of the "EM"
effects, movies, etc., that form the UFO evidence.
But the scientist is neither trained nor accustomed
to process anecdotal or circumstantial evidence.
That is the domain of another highly developed,
though rather inexact, field of knowledge - Law.
The scientist must have a specimen to work with,
and he must be able to observe the specimen under
controlled conditions. Under any other conditions the
typical scientist is lost. Events that are of short
duration and that occur sporadically usually slip
through the net.
That science has been remiss in ignoring events
ha ving the """characteristics outlined above has been
noted by that most admirable organization, the Smithsonian Institution. In 1968, the Smithsonian came to

------------...--------_.--

...................._...........

grips with this problem by establishing the Ce,nter


for Short-lived Phenomena, Writing in the ~~
tist, 30 August 1973, Dr. Joseph Hanlon described
the Center as follows.
"One test of any scientific theory is tha:t it
should explain any sudden abnormal event as '",ell
as the normal pattern of things. But the very na;~ute
of these events is that they cannot be set up :iIi a
lab - and when they occur in the real world,they
are over almost before anyone knows about them.
"Getting scientists to these events while they
are still happening is the goal of the Smithsonian
Institution's Center for Short-lived Phenomena, based
at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory In
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"More than 2300 people in 138 countries have
agreed to send reverse charge telegrams in case of
any sudden event in their area. Twice a week on
average, the center jumps into action - telephoning
or telegraphing interested' scientists who have already said they might go to such an event: and contacting the original source with questions."
This sounds like the sort of thing we might put in
a brochure advertising SITU, but on closer inspection
it develops that the Center has not really strayed too
far from the traditional lines of scientific inquiry.
This is the Center's selection criteria for events
reported by the Center:
EARTH SCIENCES EVENTS: Earthquakes greater
than magnitude 7.0 or earthquakes occurring in unusual areas or those creating exceptional interest.
Crustal movements, faulting and fissuring, major land
movements, and landslides.
Volcanic eruptions, submarine eruptions, the birth
of new islands, island eruptions, the disappearance
of islands, caldera collapses, fissure extrusions,
nuees ardentes, and major mudflows.
Earthquakes under the sea floor greater than
magnitude 7.0 or having a considerable effect on the
marine geophysical environment. Island earthquakes,
tsunamis, sea surges, and severe storm erosion.
Polar and subpolar events, formation of ice
islands, unusual sea ice break-ups, surging glaciers,
l:J.nd sudden release of glacier-dammed water.
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES EVENTS: Sudden changes
in biological and ecological systems, invasion and
colonization of new land by animals and plants, rare
rapid migrations, unusually abundant reproduction or
death of vegetation, establishment or re-establishment of flora and fauna.
Severe climatic changes affecting ecosystems,
ecological aftereffects of short-term human intrusion
into an area previously unvisited by man, and potentially imminent species extinction.
Sudden changes to marine and aquatic environment, oil pollution, unusual occurrences of marine
vegetation, marine bioluminescencb , red tides, plankton blooms, and fish kills.

Fires that have a major ecological impact on


animals and flora; those that have a major environmental impact and that cause major devastation.
ASTROPHYSICAL EVENTS: Large fireball events,
meteorite
falls,
and
crater-producing impacts.
Transient lunar events; obscurations on lunar surface,
brightenings, lunar volcanic activity, moonquakes,
and meteorite impacts recorded by imp laced lunar
seismometer.
URGENT ARCHEOLOGICAL EVENTS: Discovery of
archeological sites threatened with imminent destruction.
URGENT ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVENTS: Newly
discovered tribes; rapid changes in human ecological
systems; short-lived acculturation: dying languages,
customs, and people; and major human migrations.
The Center issues "event cards" describing in
summary form the results of investigations into particular events. (See illustration) A compilation of
these event reports was issued in 1972 under the
title The Pulse of the Planet, Crown Publishers,
Inc., 419 Park Avenue South, New York, N. Y. 10016.
Some of the reports contained therein would appear
to be of fortean nature, despite the rather restrictive
"selection criteria" employed by the Center. This is
especially true in the case of "fireballs". The compilation lists 40 fireball events during the four year"
reporting period, 1968-71. and a number of these
have the odor of UFOs. But even though the Center
is, from all outward appearances, ideally suited for
the study of fortean events, both by virtue of its
ex cellent reporting network and its purported philosophy, neither UFO's nor ABSMs seem to find their way
into the published reports. We rather doubt that the
Center has never heard of e.ither of these subjects,
or of the multitude of oth'ers that would be amenable
to their technique, so there must be some other compelling reason for this shying away from the truly
anomalous events. This leads us to the next characteristic of fortean phenomena.
It has been said that at about the time of Leonardo
Da Vinci, it was possible for one person to assimilate all of the knowledge then extant. The explosive
growth of knowledge since then has made such a feat
impossible, and has resulted in the increasing
specialization of knowledge. Even 50 years ago it
was still possible for one to undergo a course of
instruction in the general field of phYSics, and to
emerge with a good comprehensive grasp of everything of importance known in that field. But those
days have long since passed, and today there is
really no such thing as a physicist" or a "biologist"
,in the .sense of anyone individual having a comprehensive knowledge of the entire subject. In the
nineteen-seventies, a PhD in Physics is a specialist
in a very narrow branch of the bewilderingly complex
general subject. He is probably ignorant of many of
the recent developments in other specialized branches
of physics, and is almost certainly ignorant of even
the basics of the other sciences. An increasingly

------------------------------------------------------------.----~.

28

seriOU!1 problem in physical research is the inadvertent duplication of previously accomplished experimentation. This has resulted from the sheer glut
of information being produced, compounded by a
serious lag in the development of methods for informing the scientific community, or even those engaged in roughly similar research, of the work already done.
This problem becomes quite unmanageable in the
case where communication between two or more
entirely separate and distinct scientific disciplines
is involved. An example of this is presented in the
field of cancer research, where the "shotgun'" approach is being attempted. That is, the research is
of a very basic nature, involving a multitude of
different approaches, and so far there are very few
clues to pursue. The researchers represent a variety
of disCiplines, and of specialties within those
diRcipline s.

EVENT 1'5-71

question. We are no better prepared to deal with such


unclassified events than we are, (or were before the
advent of the Center for Short-lived Phenomena),
with even's of short duration that occur sporadically.
For instance, when the saucers" first came to the
attention qf the public in the late forties and early
fifties, there was a mad scrambling about to find the
gentleman in charge of the proper pigeon hole. By
some strange process it was generally agreed that,
since the saucers apparently were spaceships, or
at least the best selling book on the subject said so,
and since they appeared in the sky, this must be a
task for astronomers. It so happens that both the
very best scientific thinking and the very worst
scientific thinking on the subject of UFO's has been
done by astronomers, but everyone will agree that in
neither case did their. specific training in astronomy
have much to do witn their analysis of the phenomenon.

SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND BEACHED WHALES

18 JANUARY 1971

11090.

''On or about 0100-0400 hours, 8 January 1971, a pod of 29


EVENT NOTIFICATION REPORT
pilot whales, Globlcepl!ala scalllllOni, were stranded on the ........
beach at Pyruid Cove, San CIeiiieiiie Island The pod appear TYPE OF EVENT
BIOLOGICAL
ed to be cOlllJlosed of . . ture fellales and juveniles of both
sexes. Anillals were strewn alonl the hilh tide line fOl'
DATE OF OCCURRENCE 8 JANUARY 1971
about 200 yards. Most.were oriented in parallel axis with
the beach. In general, the skin fro.. many contact surfaces LOCATION OF EVENT PYRAMID COV[, SAN
(chin, flukes, etc.) was abraided off, presllll8bly due to
thrashinl, post-lIOrtem degeneration and tidal action. Thre i:L~MENTE ISLAND, off coast of CALIF.
animals had been extensively 'carved-up' prior to arrival 0
NOC (Naval Undersea Research and Development Center) person REPORTING SOURCE W.E. EVANS, /lEAD
nel. Carcasses especially the viscera. were bloated and
discolored due to post-morte... changes. Due to advanced de- I~R~I:e. ,;!~~CI~~~E n~!~~SI~~(~;t~;~ ;~EP
composition the gastro-intestinal system was not syst .... tic jI.t.....I'iLau...;u.,~...:..aJIIL1l~ill,.....u.L.U...!i.<t,U;L--f
ally explored. Bacterial, toxicological !'I'd histological
SOURCE CONTACT
W.E. [VANS, IlEAD
specimens were taken from several animals'.' The visceral anc MARINE BIOSCIENCE DIYISION(Actg.),
parietal serosal surfaces of thorax and ~bdo.. en appeared to DEPT. OF TIlE NAVY. NAVAL lJIiOERSEA
be noma) except for post-mortem changes and the presence 0 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER (HOC)
several parasitic nodules .. It is the current opinion of NUC ISAN nIH",o I:AU~nRNIA Q2Ll2
Code 502 personnel that th"e grounding of this pod of pi lot
:::;.::::..;: ::.:~,~,::~~:;::-;,:.~~:=,::: .:.~. . ~:'::;:
whales was a natursl event comparable to those recorded for
' ....... a_... '.11 ..... ' ......... ,.,:-,,""111, , III uu......
the same area for some 200 years. Meteorological and bioSMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
logical conditions (high tide, no surf, very slight wind,
I r~TlR FOR ~HORT.LlVH) PHFI"IIMU'':A
s loping beach wi th steep drop-off, and presence of spawning
,,,. (i."IUI ~I"C'I
squid) created optimal conditions for stranding.
I AMIIRlIlI.r .\IM_~Alln'\r,rr~ ""'"
"On 12 January 1971, the Los Angeles County Museum sent a
I NITII>STATI~'()f AMlkllA
sci ent i fi c part)' to the 5 trandi ng 5 i te to remove and prepare
(aBLE
SATELLITES ~EW .,Oft"
the skeletal material on all 28 animals,"
TLEPw,:,~E
(617)- 864- 7911

------------r------------....
-----------+------------....

What we have developed since Leonardo's time


is actually a multitude of pigeon holes for knowledge
to replace the all-encompassing "natural philosophy"
of the older and simpler days. The specialization of
scientists has resulted in the very rapid growth .of
know ledge - in the areas encompassed by the pigeon
holes. And that is the secret of the second problem
faced by fortean events when they face the jury of
Science. Fortean events very often are most difficult.
if not impossible, to classify in any established
scientific pigeon hole. Here we would list falls from
the sky, the physical phenomena that are popularly
but, we think, falsely, deSignated "psychic" phenomena, the ." flying saucers", and so forth.
This taxonomic difficulty has had an effect that
at times has been humorous and at other times pitiful,
but that has seldom produced any noteworthy progress
in the better understanding of the phenomena in

Similarly, the so-called psychic phenomena were


until very recently the exclusive property of the
mystics and religionists. Then several decades ago
a particularly enterprising and courageous psychololist entered the field and began the study of certain
very limited aspects of the subject. Today advanced
degrees .in the. specialty' of .. para-psychology" are
conferred, and a new pigeon hole has been established. Only in the past two or three years have the tecn.
.nologists recognized psychic phenomena as a subject
worth looking into, but these researche rs have had
to do some very fancy footwork around the pigeon
holes. To us at SITU, it would seem perfectly
natural, not to say long uverdue, for electrical
engineers, say, to wire up some of these psychic
performers, or to instrument the sites of "hauntings"
or poltergeist manifestations. But the attitude of the
electrical engineers, and here we refer to the aca-

29

demics, for the scientists working in the p:ublic


sector haven't the flexibility owing to the demands
of their jobs, to even contemplate this sort of "pureresearch, has been very mixed. Their objecti9n is
that psychic phenomena are in the psychology p~geon
hole, and unless and until the head of the psychology department sends over a formal memorandum requesting help, they dare not infringe on the other
fellow's turf. A slight twist on this reasoning;
which we have heard so often when bringing up
specific anomalies in the presence of scientists,
goes like this: "That certainly is fascinating,'. but,.
you know, its not in my field." And this is not said
as a polite brush-off, but as a simple statement of a
political fact of life in the scientific world.
The problem of terminology plagues SITU as well.
We have invented a number of descriptive terms for
various classes of "things" that hold our interest,
and for the most part these terms result from an
attempt to systematize the reported events in some
logical manner. For example, ABSMs is used in
PURSUIT as a general term for all unknown bipeds,
although we often use the more common names such
as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, etc. How is one to designate
the category of events comprised by the fall from the
sky of various objects? We have a list of over 500
"things" that have fallen from the sky and, we hasten
to add, that did not fall from an airplane or from a
"whirlwind. Charles Fort catalogued a huge number
of these extremely puzzling occurrences. At SITU
they are referred to by the acronym, FAFROTSKY,
(.FAlls FROm The SKY). OOPTHS are Out Of Place
THings, another general category. As absurd as these
names may sound, they nevertheless serve a most
useful and basic function in the process of gathering
information. In a manner of speaking, we have created
some pigeon holes of our own. See the book review
section of this issue for a discussion of an excellent
system of classification of fortean phenomena proposed by William Corliss.
The usually austere ~ York. Times did a long
and straightforward article on a rash of ABSM sightings in Murphysboro, Illinois, and followed it with a
very well researched summary of the latest discoveries in the search for the sasquatch in their Sunday
Times Magazine. The magazine article quoted only
one really negative comment from a scientist, but
this was notable for its reasonable tone. His objection seemed to rest on the grounds that no specimen of the alleged monster is available for study,
and that he could not justify taking time away from
other projects to deal with such a speculati ve matter.
This we consider a valid argument when expressed
by an individual, although it is obvious that progress
would quickly come to a halt if science in general
were to take this approach. Every researcher must
weigh the probability of a "payoff" when planning
new research, and few scientists can afford to lavish
their resources on problems that seem to defy solution. There are times, however, when the pay off"

is potentially so great that the ordinary considerations of prudent use of resources ought to be
waived. Such was the case with the development of
the atomic bomb, and this is essentially the approach
being taken in the search for a cure for cancer.
Several years ago a group of scientists were invited
by a congressional committee to state their case for
a federally funded study of UFO's. The scientists
rested their arguments almost entirely on the pay
off" theory.
A third characteristic of fortean events that makes
them unappealing to the scientific community is that
they so often seem to present an enormous challenge
to established theories. The first two characteristics
really involved technical problems in the methodology
of modern science, and in the case of the first
characteristic, a fairly straightforward "fix has been
found. The second problem, that of the pigeon
holes", has also been recognized by the practitioners
of science, and various attempts have been made to
solve it, for example, the use of computers to store
summaries of all research work being done, and the
use of librarians specially trained in the storage and
dissemination of scientific information. But this third
objection, or problem, has more to do with human
psychology than we would prefer to be the case. It has
to do w.ith that almost universally expressed human
frailty. the closed mind. It is the blind refusal to
even consider any alleged fact or event or theory
that conflicts with a .predetermined viewpoint.
We deliberately list this problem after the first
two because in our experience its power is waning
with every day that passes. The discoveries of
modern science, particularly in the field of physics,
have made it very difficult for a scientist to maintain
a posture of unreflective opposition to any set of
ideas on principle alone. The enterpriSing journalist
still has no problem finding a scientist" who will
denounce UFO's as nonsense, but there has been an
enormous shift in the attitude of the average scientist
with respect to that subject in recent years. In a
similar vein, a recent survey of scientists in England
showed that the majority of those surveyed thought
that psychic phenomena should be studied in a
serious manner. This is a radical departure from the
previously held position that this was Simply not fit
for serious consideration, period. It is interesting to
note that many of these scientists thought that "parapsychology ought to be renamed para-physics. We
believe that this simple change in terminology alone
would be sufficient to open the door to a vast new
field of research.
The classic case of 'the "closed mind" is worth
repeating here. It concerns the great French sCientist,
Lavoisier, and a phYSical phenomenon that he set
out to investigate. The then anomalous event shared
each of the three characteristics of forte an phenomena, though it has long since been thoroughly explained a nd is now understood by grade school

30

students. The best account of Lavoisier and the


meteorites is contained in, of course, Charles Fort:
"About one hundred years ago, if anyone was so
credulous as to think that s t.ones had ever fallen
froin I;he sky, he was reasoned with:
"In the first place there are no stones in the sky:
"Therefore no stones can fall from the sky.
"Or nothing more reasonable or scientific or
logical than that could be said upon any subject. The
only trouble is the universal trouble: that the major
premise is not real, or is intermediate somewhere
between realness and unrealness.
"In 1772, a committee, of whom Lavoisier was a
member, was appointed by the French Academy, to
.investigate a report that a stone had fallen from the
sky at Luce, France. Of all attempts at positivene ss,
in its aspect of .isolation, I don't know of anything
that has been fought harder for than the notion of this
earth's unrelatedness. LavQisier analyzed the stone
of Luce. The exclusionists' explanation at that time
was that stones do not fall from the sky: that luminous objects may seem to fall, and that hot stones
may be picked up where a luminous object seemingly
had landed - only lightning striking a stone, heating,
even melting it.
"The stone of Luce showed signs of fusion.
"Lavoisier's analysis "absolutely proved" that
this stone had not fallen: that it had been struck by
lightning.
"So, authoritatively, falling stones were damned.
The stock means of exclusion remained the explana-

tion of lightning that was seen to strike something _


that had been upon the ground in the first place."
The modern analogies to Lavoisier and the meteorites are too obvious to dwell upon here, but the
point, we, think, is well taken.
Thus we are not quacks after all, but a group of
acting as an adjunct to
orthodox
science. The Society stumbles along, ,frought with
deficiencies and inefficiencies, but in the final
analysis its aims are quite consistent with those of
traditional science. The essential difference between
SITU and the mainstream of science is seen to lie in
the mechanics of information gathering and analysis,
rather
than in some .fundamental philosophical
dispute.
It should come as no surprise that on occasion a
torrent of abuse is directed at UFO's or ABSMs. Nor
should it surprise us that, on balance, the systematic
study of these subjects is met with the approval of
most members of the scientific community. For the
most part, those scientists who have gone so far as
to join the Society continue to insist on the anonymity
of our Swiss Bank Account- system, of identifying
our members. We can fully understand and appreciate
the reasons for their stance. The important thing is
that they recognize that SITU, with all its warts, is
an eminently worthwhile organization, right up there
on the wild frontier of human knowledge.
researc'~ers

Robert J. Durant

UFO LOGY

Do "nuts" see "saucers" ? This is the conventional thinking on UFOs, or was until recently when the
Gallop Poll revealed that a majority of the American
public thinks that UFOs are real. An enormous
amount of damage has been done by the proponents
of the theory that those who report unidentified flying
objects, and those who take the subject seriously,
are in some way mentally unbalanced. Unfortunately,
a great many members of the working press have
adopted this view and used it to editorialize on their
newspaper accounts of sightings. Usually this has
been clone in a humorous manner, but the message has
not bE!en lost on those who were unfortunate enough
to be the subjects of the joke. The attitude of the
press has changed considerably in recent years, but
it appears that there are still a few left who hold to
t.he "r,ut" theory. One such is Mr. Harry Reasoner. a
prime-time newscaster on a major television network.
Mr. Reasoner was fAatured in an advertisempnt that
appeared in the radio page of the New York Times
and elsewhere, and the profundity ascribed to him.
presumably by way of inducing viewer!; to tune in for

more of the same, reminded us of those bad old days


wneu each newspaper UFO story started out with
.. Its the s illy season again .... " '
Mr. Reasoner quoted the Gallup Poll figures that
51 percent of the American public be lieve that UFOs
are real. He also quoted Gallup's latest figures on
the President's popularity' - 27 percent. This, concluded Reasoner, might mean that we' need a new
President, but it certainly means that we need a new
American public. End of profundity from Mr. Reasoner.
Doctor Berthold Schwarz, a psychiatrist practicing
in New, Jersey, has been a member of the SOCiety
since its inception. He has addressed the question of
the connection between "seeing saucers" and mental
illness directly, and found that no such correlation
exists. If "nuts" see "saucers", it should be a rather
commo n thing for a psychiatrist to encounter patients
who are obsessed with thought aboul UFOs, or dreadfully afraid of them, or in communication with them,
or whatever. But, as Dr. Schwarz relates in his
pa per, this is simply not his experience in treating
nearly 3,400 individuals with mental problems. Nor

31

could anyone recall such symptoms in the records of


the 30,000 patients institutionalized or treated '~inc~
1900 at the Essex County Overbrook Hospital.
The following article is reprinted with perm~ssion
from the Journal of the Medical Society of New J~rsey,
August 1969, Vol. 66, No.8, pages 460-464.
UFOs IN NEW JERSEY
by Berthold E. Schwarz, M.D.
Few subjects have aroused more controversy than
unidentified flying objects. The atmospheric physicist, McDonald,l has called them the greatest international scientific problem of our times." The recently released University of Colorado study (by the
Condon Group) concluded that " ... nothing has come
from the study of UFOs in the past twenty-one
years that has added to scientific knowledge ... and
that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot
be justified.- 2
Hynek,3 professor of astronomy and chief scientific consultant to the Air Force on the subject, in a
marked departure from his earlier skepticism, called
for Congress to establish a board of inquiry for the
specific purpose of an in-depth investigation. of the
UFO phenomenon.
The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in
its APRO Bulletin and the National Investigation
Committee on Aerial Phenomena in its The U.F .0.
Iuvestigator, and other publications, have mentioned
many possible UFO effects of interest to physicians,
but there has been little in the medical literature.
Meerloo,4.5 a pioneering psychiatrist in so many
fields, gave an analysis of possible errors of observation, and Walker 6 presented various procedures
for establishing the credibility level for observers. It
Walker used a hypothetical case to illustrate his
methods of combining different branches of medical
knowledge.
A Brazilian phYSician, Olavo Fontes,"7 studied an
extraordinary alleged contactee case. In two recent
reports 8 9 of close UFO encounters much of the
relevant medical literature was mentioned. The firsthand studies showed how medicine could be useful
(1) in evaluating possible UFO-induced biologic
effects, and (2) in determining whether the alleged
UFO episode was a reality, a delusion, an illusion,
a hallucination, or a fabrication.
In thirteen years of private practice in which I
have seen 3,391 patients in psychiatric examinations
and have participated in thousands of hours of psychotherapy, I have never noted symptoms related to
UFOs. A similar finding was confirmed on questioning Theodore A. Anderson, M.D., a senior psychiatrist,
and Henry A. Davidson, M.D. (then Medic;:al Director)
of the Essex County Overbrook Hospital. Dr. Davidson recalled no patients with gross UFO symptoms
out of three thousand in-patients, nor among all those
presented to the staff while he was superintendent:

nor of thirty thousand patients who had been hospitalized since the turn of the century. My own check
of standard textbooks and journals in psychiatry,
psychoanalysis, and neurology also confirmed this
absence of UFO-like experiences in various "nervous"
and mental diseases.
The physician can often be the first to obtain
reports of possible UFOs and to uncover hidden
cases because a patient will often turn to a family
doctor as a trusted friend. With the kind assistance
of colleagues and friends, I have learned of, and
studied, numerous well-documented UFO sightings
involving people from all walks of life, including
professionally trained observers, such as physiCians,
engineers, psychologists, airline pilots, special
police, and state troopers.
Let me here present five close-range sightings
which occurred under favorable conditions in northern
New Jersey and which involved trustworthy witnesses.
In each case, I undertook telephone, and later psychiatric, interviews in the homes or offices of the
witnesses. In each case, I inspected the actual
place where the UFO episode allegedly took place.
Case 1
"Mrs. Janet Ahlers, age 32, of Oakland, New
Jersey, is an artist-housewife and proprietress of an
antique store. In excellent health, Mrs. Ahlers has
had no serious previous illness or emotional disturbance. Excerpts from an interview with her follow.
"It was late spring, about 2:30 a.m., in 1957. I
was expecting a baby and was up during the night.
Our bedroom window faced east. I was lying in bed
and was disturbed by a pulsating sensation in my
head, like a sound that was tuo high-pitched to be
heard. As it came closer it became a whining, pulsating, high-pitched sound. I tried to wake my husband but he didn't stir quickly enough. I got to the
window just as the thing went over the house. I could
see it clearly. It was close to the tree tops and it
seemed to stir them. It was saucer-shaped and seemed
to have a hard edge around the circumference where
the lights were - the (port) holes. It had one light in
the center, on the bottom, and it was circled by six
to eight other bright orange-red discs.
"It seemed to be a solid metallic object with holes
on the bottom. The one in the center was larger and
lighter in color. The UFO seemed to make everything
reddish as it very slowly went over. I had to look up
at it and could see under it (Figure 1). It just seemed
to clear the knoll which was a few hundred feet from
the house. It lasted less than a minute. This UFO
was much larger than an automobile and wider than
the house or a lot . . . more than seventy-five feet.
I woke my husband. I trembled for about two hours.
There were no physical effects."
Shortly after this episode Mrs. Ahlers told her
mother about it and at a later time a circle of her
friends, one of whom informed the author.

----------------------.
32

Case :l
"John A. Collins of Glen Rock, New Jersey, age.
49, has a responsible job in the world of banking. He
is ~ lifelong outdoorsman, skilled in hunting and
fishing. In his occupation he has flown all over the
world and has dealt with many technically trained
people, highly situated in the space-age industries.
He is in excellent health and has never had any
emotional disorder.
"It was one hour before sunset on July 8, 1958,
the day of the All-Star Game. I was fishing with a
friend at Canistear Reservoir in northern New

motive: cherry red in color. The rest of it was 'white,


like two railroad ties attached end to end. We watched
it for forty-five minutes in all. It was once 'less 'than
400 feet tip and we were afraid it was going to land
on the water. Then'it went' faster, rose quite 'st"ee'piy,
and rode' away. My fishing' partner' "and" I' had' had
nothing to drink. I have never seen anything like
it berore or since.
..'
"When my partner got home and tQld his wife, she
wouldn't listen. She was so' scared. Once when I
went to their home for dinner, about three months
later, I thought I'd mention it as a' conversation
piece, but.she wouldn't.l~t me tal~' about it.(confirmed

( ',.'
..

I~
LJ

.;.;.-....-:---.---:--...~

.,.....-;:...
'----._

.'
.

1:

.... '
i

'.'

:....;.

Jersey. It was bright and clear... cloudless.


There was a slight surface wind (on the water) .. In
the f;outh, we saw in the sky what I thought was a
shootin g star, a big light. (Figure 2a). When we (i.rst
look~d at it, the size was that of two thumbnails of
an outstretched upper extremity. We sat in the b.oat
talking about it. 'Do you see what I see?' Instead of
disappearing it kept coming along. As it got cl~ser
it was plainly visible. At first it looked like a bar of
hot steel pressed in a rolling mill . : about the size
of a railroad tie and uniformly cherry red in color
(Figure 2b). It was low in the sky and came directly
toward us. It [UFO] moved slowly. I had a "Rollie"
(camera) in the boat, but I was so scared I was
afraid to take a picture. It was heading right for us
and we didn't want to excite it. We watched for ten
minutes and it was ever with us. It tilted 45 degrees,
then (F'igure 2c), leveled off, and took another 45
degree tum. It was turning from red to bluish-white to
white a.s it went up. There was still no sou nd,' no
hum, no vibration, no odor, nor anything. It leveled
off and took a 90 degree turn. It was still the same
color, then it turned more than 90 degrees and was
coming back toward us. When we faced the end of the
bar, it was like looking into the firebox of a loco-

'

....

....

by. author's interview of the gentleman, whose wife


-interfered' .' in the telephone conversation). Shortly
after the event, I told my. wife, a .close friend (a
neighbor of the author), and a man that I do ou!?iness
with.' Strangely enough, another friend of mine, who
was in the Catskills a hundred miles north of us,
had noticed'the ttiing'the'same day and at approximately the. ;same time. I learned this one week after, my
experience.
,
Mr. Collins' trustworthiness was attested by three
people~ wQo 'have known him for many years: the
author's neighbor, the author's father and the friend
who had been in the Catskills'.
'
.
Although there were no' log-book fishing rec9rds
.going back to 1958,' the time. of Mr. Collins' experience, interviews with Officer Clyde Conway of
the. Canistear Reservoir Police, Mr. Conway's wife,
his daugl:1ter, and his two sons revealed several
sightings of possible UFOs in that area in the past
thre~'.yeius. No member of' Officer Conviay~s iml!Iediate
family has had any emotional or psychosomati~ illness.
Case 3
"Mrs .. Carol Vander Plate, age 27, a high school
graduate, licensed practical nurse and housewife,

33

lives on a mountain top in Hardyston, New Jersey,


where her husband owns and operates a radio station,
WL VP. Her past life is free of any emotional or
psychosomatic disease. It was on April 1. 1966 at
!!:45 p.m., during a clear day, followed by moonlight:
Our two French poodles started barking and carrying
on. They refused to obey and be quiet. They went
crazy, running in circles and jumping over the furniture. There was a horrible rumbling sound. It sounded
like a jet coming over and about to crash. 1 looked
out the window and saw this thing sitting on top of
the trees about four hundred feet from the house. 1
watched it for more than thirty seconds. It turned
pink. It had three port-holes that were black inside.
The TV went off. When 1 turned on the porch light,
the object seemed to turn off two big spotlights. It
was white, then pink, then green; and then it took off
like a streak of lightning. There was no trail of
gaseous vapors. My husband announced it over 'open
mike.' and from then until midnight four lines were
steady with calls on each line from others who had
seen it. It was fantastic. It was twice the size of a
jet. Much bigger than my house. There were no effects
on the trees; I checked that the next day. But we've
had no robins or cardinals in this particular area
since then." (See Figure 4.)
This experience was confirmed upon questioning
Mr. Louis Vander Plate and five other observers from
the town and neighboring area. Mrs. Vander Plate
uses no alcohol or drugs. She became pregnant two
months after this experience and delivered a healthy
baby. She and her husband estimate they have seen
and/or heard of similar sounds seven to ten times
since this initial episode. Many of these accounts
have been verified by others in the vicinity. One year
after this particular sighting, Mrs. Vander Plate
developed an allergy to nickel and her husband a
severe reaction to "foam rubber - as in earphones I turn beet red: it swells." The possible allergic
condition was never related to the UFO experience,
but is included should other similar observations be
made.
The Vander Plates' eXperience might have been
related to another sighting that occurred over the
near-by Oak Ridge Reservoir that same night at
approximately the same time. The Newark Evening
News reported "a white light with red revolving
lights under it. It was hovering over the reservoir. It
remained stationary and then darted across the clear
night sky and halted tantalizingly in midair." Many
people telephoned in to the Milton Township police
headquarters.
.. As a clinical check of the veracity of the witnesses,
the author first learned of this event from a nineteenyear-old boy who lives near Oak Ridge Reservoir. He,
with his teen-age sister and brother, had seen UFOs
at close range over the reservoir on two previous
occasions.

Case 4
"Mrs. Estelle Conway, age 51, a business-school
graduate, housewife, and postal subclerk of Highland
Lakes, New Jersey, looked out of her dining room
window one fall day in 1966, at 7:30 p.m. She noticed
a large "orange ball" with a dark vermilion border,
suspended, or hovering by itself, over a pond a
quarter of a mile away from her home. At that distance,
she estimated the size to be that of a chicken coop,
and guessed that it would have beeh much larger than
an automobile. She couldn't make out any other details, but wondered if it was somebody's auto headlights shining on the trees in the woods. The lake
is 1,100 feet above sea level and the hill about
1,400 feet; therefore, the object was estimated to be
less than 300 feet above the water. The object didn't
change color or shape; it had no sound; and it did
not influence the radio or electrical devices in the
home. The object was some 700 feet from high-tension
wires.
"Mrs. Conway was embarrassed because people
would not believe her wh en she told them what she
saw. She does not use drugs, and only occasionally
does she have a cocktail. She told her husband and
other members of her family about the episode. The
husband told a neighbor, who was a state policeman.
Her experience was confirmed on telephone interview
of the kooper. Mrs. Conway had no past history of
any emotional disorder or other illness. When she
looked for the object, approximately fifteen minutes
after first seeing it, it was no longer there. (See
Figure 3.)
"At the same time of Mrs. Conway's experience,
Mr. Guy F. Adams, age 46, an electrical engineer, of
Glenwood, N.J .. while driving on the road and approaching the Conway's home, had the "surprise of
my life" when he noted, "a big opalescent-like neongreen ball, 500 to 600 yards out. Not on a ballistic
course, but gliding - not enough speed to maintain
flight itself. It slowly went across the road - treetop to tree-top - for an estimated six to eight seconds.
It was a ball, straight ahead, right across the road. I
have good depth perception. It was aquamarine in
opalescence. However, it kept perfect geometry all
the time. (It did not shimmer.) It passed over thE'
mountaintop store. There were no effects in the car.
If it had been a ballistic trajectory, it would have
had to crash into the lake (in the valley).
"I stopped the car near the store and jumped out
to see. 1 went down to the point where it had crossed
and where 1 thought it should have crashed. But it
had by then disappeared. There was still good light
out. The sun was setting. Obviously the light of the
object had to be greater than the light of the sun to
be seen. 1 was very excited and wondered how could
a thing appear to have no weight and "fly" across the
road at such a very low speed. It traveled in an eastto-west direction. The estimated size was 50 to 55
feE:t across - apprOXimately the size of a dime on the

_._._----

--------------------------

34

windshield - roughly half the size of a B-17 bomber.


J was aU. S. Army Air Force gunner in World War II,
and saw active duty. I'm a student pilot and have designed beacons for space probes, and such, but have
never eome across anything like this in my life."
Mr. Adams told his wife and a state trooper at the
time. The locale of the Conway-Adams sighting is
only a few miles from radio station WL VP-FM. Aside
from two weeks of a "nervous breakdown" in 19.44
(when in the Service) he has had excellent health.
Following the "breakdown" he returned to active duty
in the Air Force, and served six more year s as a
career man. He does not use drugs unless prescribed
and has had excellent emotional health.
The Newark Evening News contained several
articles of similar sightings in northern New Jersey
during the fall of 1966.
Case Ei
"Frank Scanlon, age 56, has been a United Parcel
Service driver for 37 years. He is a union steward.
He has had a northern New Jersey route for twelve
years. As a U.S. Air Force veteran of World War II
(Fifth Air Force, ground crew in Japan) he is familiar
with aircraft. He is respected by his boss and fellow
employees. He neither smokes nor drinks. He enjoys
excellent health. Psychiatric interview revealed no
emotional illness. Although he could not recall the
exact date of his alleged UFO experience, at that
time l1e told his immediate family, his boss, many
fellow workers, and several other people. Interviews
with his wife, two of his children, and four other
people, including a police officer, confirmed Scanlon's
excellent reputation and his report of the experience
shortly after it happened. It was stressed how excited
and frightened he was.

"It was November, 1967. It was bare and there


were no leaves on the trees. It was on Rudeville
Road on the way to Great Gorge (within a mile of the
Vander Plates' radio station) at twelve noon, on a
clear clay, I went to the back of the truck and heard
this terrific pounding noise. As I went to the front, I
stepped away from the truck as I thought the noise was
from the well digger across the street. But he had
dived into the hole. At tree height, I saw a cylindrical
object, like a dirigible, more than twice the size of the
von Hindenberg. It was big enough for several Mack
trucks to get into it. It had no cabins or propellers, no
markings of any kind. It was a duller grey than aluminum. There was no smoke, heat, or exhaust. There was
no -effect on my truck motor. It was unbelievable. It
had :roundish windows that looked black inside. There
was no reflection on them. It took off with such force
toward Newton that it disappeared in an estimated
two minutes.
.. I never saw such a burst of speed after hovering.
I was amazed. There were no exhaust fumes. I wonder~d what could defy gravity and hover tnere. It was
gigantie." (See Figure 5.)

Comment-- Single-witness UFO examples,


and, in some cases, lack of specific dates, have
drawbacks. However, the favorable close-range circumstances support the validity of the experiences.
The witne.sses were healthy and trustworthy. They
had no gross defects of vision or hearing. They had
ample time to observe the UFOs. There was nothing
suggestive of malobservations, behavioral aberrations,
mass hypnosis, contrived posthyphotic suggestion, or
fraud. The unique characteristics of the episodes anJ
the backgrounds of the witnesses excluded such explanations as satellites, airplanes, balloons, helicoptors, or birds, although very atypical ball lightning
could have been a possibility for Case 4. There was
nothing suggestive of a parapsychologic explanation
in any ~f the examples. Most of the witnesses were
frightened and had a vivid memory of their unique
experiences. In Case 3, it was possible to see how
easily mass paniC could have developed. The physician, by having an awareness of UFOs, can help to
avert mass hysteria.
Five hidden reports of UFOs from a relatively
circumscribed area in northern New Jersey are but a
small sample of the thousands of documented accounts
from all over the world. UFOs indeed, do 8eem to be
real. Physicians are in an excellent position to uncover "hidden reports" of UFOs and help to establish
the reliability of the witnesses. By study of the
possible emotional and physiologiC effects of the
UFOs, and of the witnesses themselves, the physician can go beyond merely establishing the event
and contribute to the more meaningful questions of
(1) what UFOs are (2) where they come from, and (3)
what is their purpose.
Bibliography
1. McDonald, J. E.: Paper on UFOs presented at the
Canadian Aeronautics and Space Symposium in Montreal. March 12, 1968.
2. Boffey, Philip, M_: Science (News and Comment)
163:260 (January 17, 1969)
3. Hynek, J. Allen: Hearings before the Committee
Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, July 29, 1968, pp. 2 to 17.
4. Meerloo, J. A. M.: Le Syndrome des Soucoupes
Volantes, Med. Hyg., 25:992, 1967.
5. Meerloo, J. A. M.: JAMA, 203:1079 (1968)
6. Walker, Sydney: Hearing before the Committee on
Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives Ninetieth Congress, Appendix 2: 152 and 2: 185
(July 29, 1968)
7. Fontes, Olavo, Martins, Joao (Irene Granchi, translator): Report on the Villas-Boas Incident, February
22, 195.8. In Lorenzen, Coral and Jim: FlyingSaucer
occupants, Chapter III, 42 to 72, Signet Book, New
York, 1967, pp. 215.
8. Sch\varz, B. E.: UFOs: Delusion or Dilemma,
Medicat"Times, 96, 10:967 (1968)
9. Schwarz, B. E.: UFO Occupants: Fact or Fantasy?
In publication.

35

CHAOS AND CONFUSION


THE CONTINUOUS ROLL. EXPLAINED

Paper roll

by Sabina W. Sanderson & #1205


The answer to this apparently insuperable PJoblem
is so absurdly simple that I (S.W.S.) feel like two
species of idiot. though I must also confess tha~ it
has the effect on me that the International Date Line
had on Ivan Sanderson's mother: intellectually it is
very clear. but I still don't understand it. Herewith
some diagrams and the explanation supplied by member #1"205.

platen

W - white sheet
Y - yellow sheet
F - front

B - back

"The figures are drawn as if looking at the end of


the paper roll and typewriter platen from the side on
your right as you face the typewriter. I called the
front of each sheet the side toward you and the back
the side toward the platen when the paper was working normally.
"Figure 1 shows the arrangement when things
working normally and the two sheets are fed from
bottom of the roll and around the platen so that
white sheet is on top where the keys will hit it
the yellow sheet is behind it, to make the copy.

are
the
the
and

"Figure 2 shows what I think was the arrangement


after you finished typing the last time ... and left the
two sheets hanging down. [Accepted as probable.
S.W.S.]
"Figure 3 shows the situation after the cause of
the problem occurred. Somehow, during the time
between 'Figure 2 and 3', the white sheet only was
unwound from the roll one turn. This left it hanging
down longer than the yellow sheet. It also makes the
white sheet come off the roll inside the yellow one
instead of outside as in Figure 2.

o
w

"Figure 4 is after you cut the extra ten inches off


the white sheet.
"Figure 5 shows the arrangement with the two
sheets put around the platen after the extra 10" of
white sheet had been cut off. Here we see that the
yellow sheet now comes out on top of the white one,
just as you found when the problem was discovered.

The solution is simply to cut off 10- of the yellow


sheet. This I did, and the roll instantly reverted to
its normal and proper state. As I say, I still don't
understand it: but it works. Presumably it is the
paradox involved: in the 'abnormal' condition, one
sheet is shorter than the other. but they're still the
same length!

o
Y

p(oJ
'~\
w

36

FIRE WALKING. AGAIN


The two gentlemen in the accompanying illustration who are apparently enjoying themselves so much
are in fact engaged in a demonstration of "fire walking," a feat that ranks high in the list of "psychic"
phenomena. Fire walking consists of taking a leisurely stroll over either glowing coals or, as in this case,
over stones that have been immersed for many hours
in coals. The conventional explanation for this has
been to write off the fire walkers as frauds who cover
their feet with some sort of insulating substance.
However, on a number of occasions skeptical observers have very carefully checked the performer's
feet both before and after the walk. In each instance
the feet have proved to be free from any foreign substance. The same observers have checked the temperat,ure of the coals andior stones and found that
scraps of paper dropped on them will inst,antly burst
into flame.
Pire walking is still unexplained, but an explana-

tion that seems to go far toward the ultimate solution


was published in Pursuit, vol. 5, no. 1. To date we
know of no attempts to check this theory, but with the
recent interest of some medical researchers into other
quasi "psychic" things such as acupuncture and
various feats performed by "yogi's", it would seem
that fire walking is next in line for investigation, and
that the eXplanation published here would be the
logical one to check first. In sum, the writer suggested that fire walking is an example of something called
the Liedenfrost Effect. This is seen when a drop of
water is placed on a very hot surface such as a frying
pan. The drop does not evaporate at once, but sizzles
around fpr a long while. The water that is in direct
contact with the hot surface of the pan is vaporized
almost at once, but it then forms an insulating barrier
between the droplet and the pan. This slows down
the complete vaporization of the water droplet. The
fire walkers, according to this reasoning, are experiencing the same effect, with the perspiration from
the soles of their feet acting in exactly the same
manner as the droplet in the pan. Thp. proponents of
this explanation add that it is the extreme heat of the
coals -,that mak-es the feat pos'sible and that, conversely" " if the walk were 'attempted on a relatively
cooler surface, say 200 degrees, it would result in
severe burning,
After we published this explanation a number of
readers objected to it on several grounds, not the
least of which i~ the fact thfl.t fire walking ,simply
does "not work for everyone who tries it. Many wouldbe fire walkers have been seriously injured on the
first 'few steps. The fire walkers themselves have
been fairly unanimous in making the claim that they
are essentially practicing a spiritual exercise involving mind .. ovet matter. In the main, fire walkin'g has
been a religious ceremony, though the photograph
SMwn here is' t'aken 'from a brochure published by
an airlin'e' advertising a tour of the South Pacific. All
of those .folks sitting in the background are tourists,
not~" mystics. The fire walking feat is presented for
their edification promptly at 8:30 p.m., five nights
per week.

II. ONTOLOGY
AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL SPACE PROBE
The principle by which radar works can be stated
quite simply. A short pulse of radio energy is transmitted, and if the pulse should strike an object that
reflects radio waves, such as an aircraft, the pulse is
reflected back to the transmitter site. The speed of
propagation of the radio energy is known to be about
186,000 miles per second, and thus it is possible to
calculate the distance of the reflecting object by
timing the elapsed interval between the transmission
of the radio pulse and the reception of its reflection.

The direction of the "target" from the radar site can


be found by using highly directional antennas. In this
way both the bearing and the distance of aircraft can
be found electronically. Of course, in practice it is
much more involved than this outline would suggest putting this theory into operation taxed the best
minds in Europe and America for many years.
The' first systematic use of radar, and the real
reason 'for its development, was as a defense against
attack by enemy aircraft. The military soon found,
howeve"r, that the great advantage of early',warning of
the approach of aircraft was somewhat blunted because

37

the radar screen could not discriminate between the


"good guys" and the "bad guys." A flight of returning
friendly bombers often could not be distinguIshed
from a wave of attacking enemy craft. Directing the
interception of enemy bombers or fighters was impossible when the two forces came close t~ each
other.
The engineers went back to work, and produced a
device that overcame this serious deficiency. The
modern name for this device is "transponder," but in
the early days of World War II and for some time
thereafter it was called IFF, for Identification Friend
or Foe. The transponder was a small electronic
device containing a receiver and a transmitter that
could easily be fitted aboard an aircraft. The receiver
was tuned to the frequency of the radar station and
served to pick up the pulses sent from the ground. The
transmitter then sent the pulses back to the ground
station.
However, there was a third operation involved
within the transponder, and this we should note very
carefully. The transponder was not merely a repeater,
that is, the signals retransmitted were not precisely
the same as those received. The received signals
were changed slightly before being retransmitted, with
the result that the transponder-equipped aircraft, in
this case the "friendly" aircraft, took on a very
special appearance on the radar screen. Thus it was
possible for the radar operator to immediately identify
the friendly aircraft within a mass of otherwise
similar targets. Shortly thereafter, another modification allowed the pilot to change the electronic circuitry in his transponder at w ill so that the "programming" of the retransmitted signal could be varied to
avoid enemy jamming. In effect, this produced something like a password or a lock combination. Transponder codes were eventually aSSigned as part of the
briefing on each individual mission.
The airborne transponder is still with us. Modern
air traffic control is largely based on the use of the
transponder, which now is required equipment for all
large commercial aircraft.
The point of all this is that the transponder has
certain abilities t hat make it the logical basis for
the construction of a mechanical device sent by one
planetary civilization to contact another planet.
Though there are a great many possible means of
making contact with alien civilizations, one of the
favorite systems of those who have devoted some
thought to this problem is the orbiting space probe
equipped to detect intelligent life and to communicate
with it. Of course, one must make a number of rather
basic assumptions here, not the least important of
which is that both civilizations have evolved a
similar logic. That consideration, however, is well
beyond the scope of this introductory discussion.
The way such a probe would work is as follows.
Once placed in orbit near a planet suspected of
harboring intelligent life, the probe would passively
listen for radio signals, or perhaps for other forms of

advanced communication. It may be the rule in cosmic


evolution that the development of radio is the turning
point in the advance of a civilization. In any event,
it is difficult to imagine even the most preliminary
sort of space travel without having first developed
something of a nature similar to radio.
Next, the probe would attempt an "attention
getting" maneuver, such as sending radio messages
that would call attention to its presence. This could
take the form of simply repeating the signals sent
from the planet. An ingenious method might consist
of repeating the signals being generated on the
planet, but to delay them in such a way that the
"echoes would obviously be artificially produced. It
has also been suggested that the probe could send
series of pulses, or "dots" in the morse code, giving
the prime numbers. This would rule out coincidence
or natural phenomena, but as Professor Bracewell has
pointed out, it would only prove that the signals are
coming from someone who can count. And we must
add, with a sigh, that to a great many inhabitants of
this particular planet, at least, it is not possible to
rule out coincidence or natural phenomena, viz., the
standard reaction to UFO's, ESP, and so forth.
Another twist on the question of precisely what is
acceptable evidence of intelligence elsewhere in the
universe, and whether that intelligence is attempting
communication with us. is quite aptly demonstrated in
the report below taken from the New York Time?,
March 14, 1974. Apparently these scientists are
taking an extremely narrow view with respect to the
means an alien civilization might use to contact us.
"A systematic search of the 500 nearest stars that
seem the likeliest centers of planetary systems like
that of the sun has failed in a preliminary anarysis to
reveal any radio emissions suggestive of other technological civilizations.
"However it was theorized here recently that a far
more ambitious 'eavesdropping' approach would have
a strong chance of success.
"Dr. Frank D. Drake, professor of astronomy at
Cornell University, told an audience that emissions
from such civilizations 'certainly are now going
through this room.'
"The problem, he explained, was finding ways to
detect them. He spoke at a session of the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"The scanning of some 500 stars was carried out
by Dr. Benjamin M. Zuckerman of the University of
Maryland and Dr. Patrick E. Palmer of the University
of Chicago. It was performed last year, but the data
are still under analysis.
"They used two movable radio antennas 140 and
300 feet in diameter at the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory in Green Bank, W. Va.
"In noting this and earlier Soviet and American
experiments-the first of them Project Osma, carried
out by Dr. Drake himself-he said a search of millions

38

of stars would be needed for a reasonable chance of


success.
"The 500 stars are thought to include all the
likely eandidates within 80 light years of the earth,
one light year being the distance traversed by light in
a year. The distance to the sun is eight light minutes.
"It may well be, Dr .. Drake said, that no one is
seeking to make contact via radio transmissions and
that eavesdropping .will be the only way to find other
civilizations. To this end, the array of 1,400 antennas
proposed in Project Cyclops would have a high likelihood of success if a civilization exists within 200
light years, he added.
"ThE! project, a study under the auspices of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
proposed stage-by-stage construction of a 10-milewide field of antennas, each of them 100 yards in
diameter, at an ultimate cost of $5-million. If done in
increments, scientific research could be performed
early in the project and, in daytime, the system
could be a Dotent source of solar energy.
"This, it was noted, would be cheaper than the
Apollo moon landings and, Dr. Drake said, would give
mankind 'a very great chance' to make contact with
the '. galactic community' of other civilizations with
their libraries of information concerning science, their
own histories and cultural evolution.
"The outcome, he said, depends on motivation. 'If
we want, we can and will,' he said. 'I do not know
if we wi.ll or not.' "
It is suggested that the taxpayer fund a huge
listening network at a cost of some five billion
dollars in the hope that an alien civilization, somewhere in the universe, will have in operation an
equally huge transmitting network patiently tapping
out the prime numbers. And the alien transmitters will
also be using what we call "radio" rather than some
other means of communication. Much as we admire
the determination of Dr. Drake and his colleagues,
this scheme makes about as much sense as our own
1974 civilization on Earth maintaining a network of
vast signal fires:::Oon mountain tops for the possible
benefit of relatively primitive aliens. If, on the other
hand, advanced alien civilizations were to be listening to us, rather than vice-versa, they could hear a
veritable barrage of Signals, though these would
contain precious few prime numbers. Radio emmissions
in the frequency range above 50 megahertz go right
through the ionosphere into outer space. It is rather
frighteni.ng, then, to learn that by far the most powerful sources of radio transmission on this planet in
the over 50 MHZ range are those of the American
television stations. Little wonder that the alien
civilizations have been a bit circumspect about visiting us openly. Charles Fort, writing long before the
appearance on our airwaves (or on the cosmic airwaves) of Archie Bunker or the Roller Derby, concluded that aliens did not communicate with us "for
moral reasons." He probably had a point there.

What is really fascinating about the work of Dr.


Drake and other exobiologists is the extent to which
these scientists have utterly refused to even consider
the evidence for the existence of other - and more
logical - forms of alien communication. As a start
we would recommend the extraordinary results of the
research done by Marjorie Fish (~, vol. 7,
no. 1). But her work proves the existence of the most
logical and effective of all interplanetary exploratory
and communication devices, namely, the manned
space vehicle. The idea that personalities, and embodied personalities at that, must ultimately be the
source of intelligent Signals from outer space seems
to cause a profound psychological aberration. So
long as the problem can be stated in purely abstract
terms there is little resistance to the concept of life
elsewhere in the universe. We are fully prepared to
enter into a discourse with the intelligent life, but
only if they will "de-humanize" themselves to the
point of speaking strictly in mathematical abstractions such as series of prime numbers.
Nor is this strange and illogical approach to extraterrestrial contact limited to orthodox scientists.
For many years American UFO researchers refused
to take seriously any report of a landing of a saucer"
and actually spent considerable effort denouncing any
and all reports in which humanoids were allegedly
seen to emerge from the saucers. Ivan Sanderson got
himself in trouble with these ufologists very early in
the game when he urged that this attitude was eminently .illogical. If, as was popularly thought, the saucers
are interplanetary craft, then they must on occasion
land. Embracing only those reports that had the
saucers continuously airborne, and rejecting as prima
facie frauds those in which the saucer landed, just
wouldn't stand up as a logical way to study this
phenomenon. Furthermore, if the saucers were manned
craft, rather than robots, it seemed quite natural that
the crew members wouid step outside for a look-see
now and then. This heresy got Sanderson little more
than a hail of brickbats, but as in so many other
matters, he was well ahead of the pack. Today few
would deny that the study of precisely those cases of
close encounters with UFOs that were initially
anathematized has been the most fruitful avenue of
UFO research.
Returning to our discussion of the hypothetical
space probe, the next act in the scenario would consist of a listening period, this time searching for
some indication that its presence and its initial
messages had been properly understood. Presuming
that the proper responses have been sent back to it,
the space probe would presumably launch into a more
complex series of messages conveying a great deal of
information regarding its origin, purpose, etc ..
It would appear that something along the lines of a
transponder in orbit close to Earth has been sending
signals of several sorts back to us over a period of
many years. We have some data that indicates that
this might be the case (Pursuit, vol. 6, no. 2). We

39

were also aware of the fact that Guglielmo Marconi


was convinced that he had received signals originating from an extraterrestrial source, and had s,poken
openly about this to many other pioneers of radio.
Several year.s ago, Mr. Duncan A. Lunan, then
president of the Association in Scotland for Technology and Research in Astronautics, began to study
reports that had been published in scientific journals
in the late 'twenties concerning a phenomenon known
as "long delayed echoes." Radio engineers sending
test signals had heard echoes of their signals that
could not be accounted for by any known laws of
radio propagation. Most of these echoes were recorded, though without the degree of precision that would
be possible today. and certainly without the degree of
attention that we would devote to them if they were to
occur again. Mr. Lunan did something that apparently
no one else had thought of dOing before. He plotted
the echoes on graph paper, and discovered that when
viewed in this manner, the echoes seemed to form a
series of messages containing a great deal of information. If one is to accept Mr. Lunan's interpretation
of these signals, they were sent by a space probe
transponder placed in orbit around our moon about
13,000 years ago.
Before we see specifically what Mr. Lunan has to
say, it might do to review the technical aspects of
radio wave propagation as they apply here. In other
words, how do radio Signals ordinarily act, and why
did the various researchers find those echoes that
they were receiving so strange? Radio waves of most
frequencies are reflected from layers of ionized air in
the upper atmosphere. This effect makes long distance
radio communication possible, and is particularly
notable on the short wave bands. The degree of
ionization varies throughout the day, as does the
height of these layers of ionized air, with the result
that the radio reflections are at a maximum at certain
times of the day on certain frequencies and practically nonexistent on other frequencies at other times.
In the '20's, the causes of these reflections were
still very much an open question. The existence of
the phenomena was being explored in an empirical
way by radio amateurs, but the theoretical aspects
were still cloudy. The data used by Mr. Lunan was
produced by scientists attempting to secure definitive
data on these reflections. Most of their results showed
a reflecting layer in the upper atmosphere, but on
some occasions they received echoes which were
delayed so long as to make reflection from the upper
atmosphere completely out of the question. The delay
caused by the transit of a radio signal around the
world is about 1/7 second. The delay resulting from a
reflection from the ionized air layers is about 1/10 of
the round-the-world delay. Yet some of the delays
recorded by these experimenters were on the order of
3 to 15 ,seconds. The best explanation offered at the
time for the delays was that some were reflections
from the moon, and that others were reflecting from a
stream of electrons emitted by the sun. The delay

time for a moon reflection is about 2Y.1 seconds. However, it was generally ,agreed that neither of these
explanations was at all satifjfactory. One explanation
that never occurred to the scientists was that the long
delayed echo phenomenon might be caused by a space
probe.
The mechanics of these propagation tests consisted of sending a short pulse of radio energy and then
listening for the echo. Signals reflected from the ionized upper atmosphere were heard after a very short
lapse of time and with a weak signal intensity. It is
most important to' note that the researchers were
prepared to measure several parameters, such as the
time lapse, the intensity of the reflected signal, and
changes in. the frequency of the reflected Signal. The
long delayed echoes showed characteristics remarkably different from those of the ordinary echoes
in each parameter. The echoes often had an intensity
of 1/3 that of the pulses sent by the ground station,
which is quite astounding. Furthermore, there was no
detectable frequency shift, which is also inexplicable
if these signals were in fact being reflected from a
great distance. In short, everything about these "reflections indicated that they were not echoes at all.
The data was, however, perfectly consistent with the
operation of a transponding space probe.
Now a word about the method used by Mr. Lunan
to decrypt the information contained in the echoes. As
we have indicated, it was something of a flash of
genius on Mr. Lunan's part to even begin thinking of
the long delayed echoes as the result of messages
sent by a space probe. Then came the problem of
extracting the information contained in the echoes. We
admit to being stumped by some of Mr. Lunan's
reasoning, particularly in his analysis of the more
complicated sets of echoes, but the simpler decoding
seems to make good sense. We hope in the future to
get further information on this from Mr. Lunan. We
also hope to reprint some of the original papers
written by those who accomplished the experiments
that produced the long delayed echoes.
Let us take a practical example to illustrate
exactly what Mr. Lunan did with the echo data.
Assume that the ground station is sending a short
pulse of radio energy once every 30 seconds, Le., a
morse code "dot- followed by 30 seconds of silence.
Very shortly after the pulse is sent, the experimenters
hear the weak "natural" reflection. Then, after a
lapse of some seconds, they hear a strong echo.
Now assume that during the first 30 second quiet
period there are two strong echoes, one coming after
3 .seconds, and the second coming after 6 seconds.
No long delayed echoes are heard after the second,
third, and fourth pulses are sent. After the fifth pulse
is sent, a long delayed echo is heard with a delay
time of 6 seconds. No further long delayed echoes
are heard for the remainder of the day.
The original researchers merely recorded the long
delayed echoes and scratched their heads in wonder.
Mr.. Lunan took the data and plotted it on a sheet of

---------------"---40

graph paper, with the pulse sequence shown on the


vertical axis, reading upward, and the delay time on
the hodzontal axis, reading left to right. By plotting
the echoes in this way a series of dots appears. It is
now the task of the analyst to connect the dots with
straight. lines, or to otherwise make sense out of them.
In the hypothetical example given here, there are
only three dots in the "message," and if one connects
three dots with straight lines the result is always a
triangle. But this particular triangle is a 3,4,5, right
triangle and thus a bit special as triangles go. Now
SUPPOSE! that in subsequent rUlls the dots plot more
triangles, and these turn out to be right triangles

whose sides are all whole numbers. It would then be


obvious to all but the most obdurate Project Bluebook
officials that the signals were coming from an intelligent source.
The example given above is for purposes of illustration only. When Mr. Lunan made a graph of the
simplest set of echoes, it resulted in a much more
complex picture. The later sets of echoes are increasingly more complex. Remember that the dots on
the graph paper were produced by some unknown
source. This is the raw material. And though we have
the greatest respect for Mr. Lunan, we feel compelled
to point out that the connecting lines in the diagrams
are his personal interpretation and must be recognized as such. In other words, the dots stand by themselves, but the interpretatlon of the meaning of the
dots is Mr. Lunan's creation.
We have been unable as yet to secure permission
to reprint the full text of Mr. Lunan's article describing the various messages received from the space
probe. We shall, therefore, reconstruct the first set
of echoes. Mr. Lunan has written detailed descriptions of his work for the January, 1974 issue of
ANALOG Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine
and for the April 1973 issue of SPACEFLIGHT, the
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

6
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Figure 2 is a graphical representation of a series


of echoes received by researchers on October 11.
1928. The delay times received were 8, 11, 15, 8, 13,
3, 8, 8, 8, 12, 15, 13, 8, and 8 seconds. The second

Echo Delay in Seconds


Figure 1
13

r;

12
11

10

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3
2
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5 6

Echo Delay
Figure 2

10 11 12

13

14 15 16

41.

and third delays came within the quiet period following the eighth pulse transmitted from the ground
station.
Mr. Lunan thinks that the row of vertical dots
formed by the seven eight-second echoes is meant to
be an attention getting device, as well as an invitation to move the three second delay dot over to the
right of the vertical line. It is probably also an
internal check of the "code" because, if the 3-second
dot is moved an equal number of spaces into the right
side, or reflected about the vertical dot axis, one
finds seven dots in the pattern. When all of the dots
are placed in the right hand side of the diagram, the
constellation Bootes appears. The position of alpha
Bootes, commonly known as Arcturus, corresponds to
the position of that star approximately 13.000 years
ago. The special operation that had to be performed
on Epsilon BoOtes, thus calling particular attention
to it in the completed constellation, indicates that
this is the "home" star of the space probe.

As we have said earlier, the patterns sent by the


probe on following occasions are all quite a bit more
complicated than this first one. They eventually forin
a map of a large section of the sky bounded by and
including the constellations Lyra, Libra, Spica, Ursa
Major and Ursa Minor. Bootes is in the center of
these. The final echo sequence forms an extremely
complex pattern which Lunan interprets as detailed
information regarding the planetary system of origin
of the space probe. It is at this point that Mr. Lunan
lost us, but this is not to say that we disagree with
his interpretation. We simply can't follow it. In any
event, the message in this last series is as follows.
The probe originated in EpSilon Bootes, which is a
double star. The home planet is the sixth of seven
planets counting outward from the larger of the two
suns. The sixth (home) planet has one moon, the
fourth planet has three, the first and third planets
each have one moon. And finally, the probe is located
in the orbit of our moon.

VII BIOLOGY

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: BIGFOOT.


APRIL 1974
by Peter Byrne
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the western front
as we Bigfoot searcher-investigators call it, it has
been a very quiet time. Through 1971. 1972. sightings
averaged two a year and footprint findings averaged
three. Then came 1973 and a long dry spell broken
only by one sighting - by four commercial fishermen,
Bute Inlet, B. C., in March-and a footprint finding by
myself in B.C. in the fall. There were no other s'ightings in 1973 of which we can write and it was not
until last month (March 1974) that another sighting
was reported. The incident took place in Florence, a
small town on the Oregon coast, where a young boy
(age 14) said that he saw one. A search of the area
revealed a1most no evidence but intensive questioning of the boy convinced me that he was telling the
truth and that he probably did see a medium-sized
(about six feet) young male Sasquatch. I s pent three
days in the area and then returned later to look at
what might have been old tracks.
In 1973 I and my associates made a total of twelve
field trips, each lasting from one to four weeks. Three
of these were in the coastal ranges of Oregon and
Washington. Four were into British Columbia, and of
these latter four, one was by plane with Explorers
Club writer-photographer Russ Kinne, the remainder
by chartered boat. Several of the deep inlets'. were
explored (some of which go back 80 or more miles
into the mountains), including Bute Inlet. the scene
of the March sighting. An interesting discovery was

made at the head of Bute: Sasquatch Pass, a high


pass out of the Homathko Icefield. It is so marked on
the Canadian geological survey maps.
In the full-time search and investigation field
here, there is presently only one group, and that is
the group which I operate from The Dalles, Oregon.
Various individuals make temporary sorties into the
mountains, and among these the Colville, Washington
searchers are probably the most active. PrinCipal
among these are Bob Hewes and Dwane Scott, Don
Byington and Norm Davis. In other areas, mostly in
northern California, serious searching is done during
the
summer months by George Haas and his colleagues. Haas is based in Oakland and each year
spends a total of about 100 days in the field. There
are no other fulltime or seriously interested searchers
at present in the Bigfoot field.
This situation, however, is soon to change. In
mid-May the National Wildlife Federation, of Washington, D.C., the foremost and most respected wildlife
conservation society in this country and one of the
biggest in the world, is to sponsor a serious, well
organized, long-term scientific search. Leader of the
expedition will be Bob Morgan, explorer and adventurer and one of the few men who has actually seen one
of the objects of the search, as well as the leader of
the 1970 expedition to the Mt. St. Helens area, which
found footprints on two occasions. I shall be working
with this group, probably for a period of at least a
year. General areas of search are at present confidential but this information will probably ile released
for Pursuit readers in the coming months. The !J.pproach that Morgan and the NWF are taking is one
I personally support. None of the group will carry

42

guns, and the object of the expedition is a humane


temporary capture and release of one of the giant
primates. A few misguided people still think that a
Sasquatch should be shot, simply to prove that they
exist. (A small boy said to me recently, what if the
one thE!y shoot is the last one?) Morgan and his team
think otherwise and I personally believe that his
approac:h is one that will payoff.
What else is happening in the Bigfoot field? Here
in the Dalles, to open on May 1st, a scientific and
educational museum/exhibition based on the theme of
the Bigfoot. Presently under construction by myself
and designer Celia Killeen, the exhibit will contain
panels depicting the search and investigation to date,
using both colour ahd black-and-white photographs:
the Himalayan searches (as a comparative phenomenon), various groups of prehistoric men that might
have been related to the Sasquatch, the Loc'). Ness
investigation (again as a comparative phenomenon),
old newspapers dating back to 1842 that contain
references in various form to the Sasquatch, drawings
and photographs of footprints of bear, man, gorilla,
sasquat.ch, etc. And in glass cases, 3-D maps of the
Pacific Northwest showing where the various findings
have been made, edible plants of the Pacific Northwest of the type that a Bigfoot would eat, plaster
casts of the various footprints (man, apes, bear,
sasquatch, etc.) and fossil skull reproductions of
some of t he prehistoric men, including Gigantopithecus, etc.

MYSTERY ANIMALS
Ivan Sanderson, the founder of SIT U, was a
zoologist of considerable accomplishment in that
science who worked for many years "in the field"
collecting specimens for the British Museum of
Natural History. Perhaps as a natural outgrowth of
this professional specialty Sanderson developed an
intense interest in unknown" animals, that is,
animals reported on numerous occasions but as yet
uncaught and unclassified. His writings on the subject stand as the definitive scientific works on unknown animals, and the Society has continued to
collect data to further his pioneering work on unknown animals.
The bipeds commonly known as Yeti, Sasquatch,
Bigfoot, etc., and the Loch Ness Monster are the best
known of these anomalous animals, though they represent only a fraction of the total number of reported
"unknowns on record. In very general terms, there
have been three major explanations put forward in an
attempt to account for these reports. The first holds
that the reports are the result of misidentification of
known animals, or simple frauds and hoaxes. For an
example of this see the Encyclopaedia Britannica
under the heading of "Abominable Snowman." The
second explanation, which seems to be the consensus
of most students of the subject, is that the animals

are indeed real, and in most cases are well known to


the indige,nous "natives", but that they have merely
avoided being caught to date. The third explanation
is to the, effect that the reported animals are the
product of some paranormal or even extraterrestrial
agency, perhaps ghosts or phantasms.
It is in,teresting to note that the adherents of all
three theories recognize the fact that despite considerable effort we have yet to capture a specimen of
any of these animals. Of course, each group explains
this rather embarrassing fact in accordance with its
own idea of the nature of the beasts. Group One says
that one, can't very well capture something that is
not there in the first place. Group Two asks us to
wait a while. Group Three seems to believe that the
phenomenon is by nature so far removed from our
usual understanding of the words "animal" or "capture"
that capturing one is a practical impossibility. This
we shall examine in more detail later on, and not
merely as an exercise in liberality, but because some
of the keenest students of monster reports have
collected an impressive amount of data that we feel
deserves careful consideration regardless of how
bizarre this theory may sound at first glance.
Most ABSM hunters are very firmly of the opinion
of group number two. We have had the opportunity to
ask a number of them, including some genuine professional "big game" trappers, why they suppose it
has been impossible to capture an ABSM. They are
fairly unanimous in the opinion that capturing a large,
extremely strong, extremely swift, and most importantly, presumably intelligent animal such as the
ABSMs are reported to be, is a most difficult task.
What follows is a gross oversimplification, but when
setting about trapping any animal one must first learn
the habits of the animal. Then a hunting scheme
based on the animal's habits is formulated. Finally,
the hunter must be a very patient and diligent fellow.
The popularly held view of trapping, with a mob of
people roaring off into the bush in a caravan of Land
Rovers, is, we are told, strictly Hollywood. The
"native" assistants on hunting expeditions for rare
animals are valued mainly for their intimate knowledge
of the terrain and the habits of the hunted animal,
rather than for their strong backs. To sum up, it is
the opinion of the "pros" that ABSM hunts have been
lacking in most if not all of the essential ingredients,
namely, sufficient manpower, sufficient staying power,
and, most especially, an adequate knowledge of the
creature's habits.
This was brought home to us in a very vivid
manner several years ago in a nearly tragic event that
made headlines throughout the country. A young
couple had been picknicking in a state park with
their nine-year-old mentally retarded son. Sometime
during t he afternoon the boy wandered oft His
parents searched for several hours for the lost child,
and were eventually forced to call for help. By nightfall over four hundred searchers had been assembled
and were combing the area. At daybreak helicopters

43

and light airplanes were pressed into the search. The


aircraft and key personnel on the ground were in
constant two-way-radio communication. The boy was
spotted a number of times, both by aircraft and
members of the ground party, and at times was seen
no more than 50 yards away. Nevertheless, he managed to a void capture. After three days the boy surprised one of the searchers by walking directly up to him
in a clearing and asking for help. The moral for
ABSM hunters, and especially for those who are inclined to dismiss the subject because we have not
yet captured one, is quite plain.
More recently, a crocodile was the sub.ip.et of a
large scale search in a small, shallow lake in Florida.
This one was finally caught, but only after three
weeks of Keystone Kops chases through the clear
water, and the combined arsenal of grappling hooks,
nets, electric Rhock and baited buoys. All of this was
to no avail. Finally, the temperature dropped to 30
degrees, and the croc decided to end the game by
leaving the water for a sun bath. Little wonder, then,
that Nessie has avoided capture in the depths of Loch
Ness, where the water even a few feet below the
surface is nearly opaque with suspended particles of
peat.

All of this makes fine sense to us, but we are


nevertheless forced to admit that a number of cases
of unknown animals present an array of most unsettling circumstances that would seem to require an
"unnatural" explanation. In these cases the animals
apparently share some characteristics with what have
com!:: to be known as "ghosts - though what "ghosts"
are is something we don't know at all. To be specific, the tracks of these animals at times seem to
suddenlY appear, meander about in a "normal" fashion,
and then disappear. The animals themselves often
inhabit a small area for weeks or even months, but
event ually disappear just as suddenly as they appeared. Sometimes they glow in the dark, or glowing
objects are seen near them. Ordinarily courageous
and even fierce dogs absolutely refuse to track them.
It is claimed that in a number of instances the animals
have been seen immediately after the appearance in
the vicinity of UFOs, though to date we know of no
case directly linking the two phenomena. That is, no
one has spotted a UFO depositing an animal, or
collecting same (we are not here referring to reports
of "attacks" on domestic animals).
In the main, the animals we are des cribing her~
are the large "cats" variously described as pumas,
cougars, panthers, etc., though in the few instances
where the witness was qualified to make a fairly
precise identification as to the species of the animal,
the anatomical details have been st.rangely inconsistent with those of any known animal. Often these
visitations are accompanied by the widespread

slaughter of livestock and other domesticated animals,


and indeed there are many instances in which such
depredations have been the only indication that any
animal was about. Some of the most chilling reading
in Fort concerns the panics caused by these "mystery
cats."
Charles Bowen, the editor of the preeminent
ufological journal, Flying Saucer Review, wrote about
these mysterious animals in the November/December
1964 issue of FSR. The case he details is an excellent illustration of the problems, both practical and
theoretical, posed by these appearances, and we are
reprinting it herewith.
MYSTERY ANIMALS
By Charles Bowen
The increase in the appearance of large mystery
animals of the cat family has been most marked in the
past eighteen months. Reports of the sudden advent
of feline predators in regions where they are normally
unknown among the local fauna, have filtered through
from far and wide. Not so far, either. in some cases,
for there has been a veritable rash of reports from
Southern England.
It may surprise the general public, but not, surely,
readers of this REVIEW, to learn that the "lion"
hunts that have been mounted are neither isolated incidents, nor are they peculiar to the 1960's. There
have been several instances in England alone during
the last hundred years.
For example, in March 1906, the good people of
Windsor were greatly perturbed by the ravages of a
strange animal which mauled sheep so severely that
they had to be killed. Before the disturbance died
down, fifty-one sheep had been killed outright.
Little purpose will be served by cataloguing
numerous other incidents from the past. Suffice it to
say that the works of Charles Fort abound with
evidence of identical scares!
Not unnaturally, Ufologists have been interested
in the recent developments, and more than a year ago,
I heard the view expressed that it would be only a
matter of time before there would be evidence of a
tie-up between the animals and the flying saucers.
That remark was made after the fuss about a
cheetah which was encountered in the Shooters' Hill
area of Kent, had died down. There were several
cheetah "sightings, and a serious and well-organised hunt was mounted in this populous district in the
south-east corner of London. Police and tracker dogs
joined in, but to no avail.
The Shooters Hill affair was in July 1963, a time
when we were deeply interested in the happenings at
Mr. Blanchard's farm in Charlton, Wilts., (see FLYING
SAUCER REVIEW of September/October 1963).
On February 14, 1964, a new mystery animal was
reported, this time in the Hawkhurst-Cranbrook area
of Kent, some 50 miles from London. This animal

44

FarnborDUGh

(OcI61)
ODIHAM

::::::":':::.:JShOote,.

Hill

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IJul&l1
1lI~ (l)GUILDFORD

BU'Ihe,l.n."

f"~I:~~hot

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eCranleigh
(S.p64)

Is.tu,d
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BRIGHTON

was alleged to be "huge", with two-inch razor-sharp


claws. A Mr. John Golding, of Park Cottages, Hawkhurst, found a set of giant paw marks on Duval's
Farm. He and the owner, Mr. F. C. Brinsley, followed
the trail across the farm. The marks were described
by the local veterinary surgeon, Mr. Douglas Good, as
probabl;v having been made by a member of the "Big
cat" family with front feet nearly twenty-four inches
apart. and heavy enough for the feet and claws to
sink nearly two inches into fairly firm ground.
Five days later, a tiger was reported at large in
East Anglia. This creature was seen on a railway
enbankment at East Runton, near Cromer. Appeals
were made on television for further information: some
thirty police dogs were employed in a search, again
to no avail, although there were persistent eyewitness reports describing the animal variously as a
tiger, a puma and a cheetah.
The Vereeniging Story
It wa.s at this time that we heard tell of an amazing
story which had been published in "Die Brandway",
an Afrikaans language magazine from South Africa.
A translation appeared in the May/June 1964 issue
of the F'LYING SAUCER REVIEW.
The two men, who were driving at night on the
Potchefstroom/Vereeniging road, were surprised to
see a strange, large animal. In a land which boasts a
vast arl'ay of magnificent beasts, they were surprised
enough to stop to investigate this creature, which
they merely supposed could be a large dog. They
weren't too sure on that point, and events which
followed must have driven thoughts of the animal
right out of their minds, for their car was "buzzed" by
a UFO. Several spectacular passes were made at
them, and they were petrified.

To us, in the comfort of our armchairs it seemed


that the 'UFO was trying to distract the attention of
the men while the animal escaped. This then, was the
first hint of an apparent connection between mystery
animals and flying saucers. There would have to be
closer investigation of any future mystery animal
story.
Of one thing we could be certain: mystery animals,
and those who saw them or suffered their depredations,
would be accorded the full ridicule treatment, and
there would be an ample flow of evasive official
explanations and denials. Indeed. there was a precedent in the 1906 case at Windsor, for a sentry who
shot at the animal was put on a charge, and confined
to barracks for firing without cause!
There was also the engaging possibility that
Randallism (defined by Waveney Girvan in page 7 of
the September/October 1963 issue of FLYING
SAUCER REVIEW) would again rear its ugly head!
Surrey-Hampshire Border Country, 1964
In August a mystery puma was the subject of a
wave of reports from the area around Godalming,
Farnham and Odiham. Much of the country is farmland,
but there are large tracts of woodland and dense
bushy undergrowth. Hunts were organised, with headquarters at Godalming Police station, and when farm
manager Edward Blanks reported that one of his
steers had been savaged, the search was intensified.
It was then that seriousness gave way, at least in
some sections of the national press, to ridicule, and,
as was expected. Randallism appeared in the form of
a Canadian lion-hunter who called himself Billy
Davidson.
It was time to investigate the mystery.
A quick perusal of a volume from Allen's Natura!ill.:.. Library, Cats, by R. Lydekker, revealed that
the Puma (Felis Concolor) is one of the largest cats
of the New World. The native Indians, and the French,
call it the "Cougar", whilst U.S. hunters called it the
"Panther". The average size of the Puma is 40 inches
from nose to tail root, with a tail of some 20 inches.
It has a small head, with no mane, but with large
rounded ears, and is tawny coloured on its upper
parts, dirty white underneath. It often attacks its
prey for the sheer pleasure of killing, leaping from
prominent rocky positions or from overhanging trees.
It rarely attacks man, and will usually only do so if
cornered. In fact, there are records of Pumas actually
defending men from attacks by other wild beasts.
Bushylease Farm, October 1964
Fortified by this reassuring information, I made
my way to Bushylease Farm on October 11.
The well-appointed farm comprises about 300
acres, and the houses and outbuildings are some
quarter of a mile from the main road. Access is by a
roadway which rises over a low ridge, and then drops
down to the farm, flanked by woodland (mostly silver

45

birch and pine) and large areas of bushy undergrowth


which are quite close to the farm buildings.
. Two fiercely barking dogs, one an alsatian, gave
the alarm at my approach.
Mr. Blanks, weather-beaten and down to~arth,
told me that the woods were not preserved by ~ame7
keepers, and are known to contain foxes.
It seems that the mystery puma has been around
the farm on and off for two years. During the severe
winter of 1962/63, when the farmer expected to trail
it easily in the snow, it failed to put in an appearance .At other times during its earlier visits, Mr.
Blanks let the dogs off their leads, but they flatly
refused to go after it. They were terrified,
Apparently the animal has a very strong smell,
with a tang of ammonia, which Mrs. Blanks can detect
at some considerable distance-surprising, seeing
that it is in the open air.
. The mystery animal is usually nocturnal. There
have been daytime visits, but these were in fog, It
betrays its presence with a screaming, or "yowling"
noise, like one would expect, says Mr. Blanks, from
a dozen cats whose tails are trodden on simultaneously! The "yowling", furthermore, only appears to
be made when the animal crosses .open ground.
. The puma has been seen on a number of occasions:
once . ~t f!itopped when caught in the headlights whilst
crossing the approach road in front of the Blanks'
c~r .. For an instant or so it stared at them, then made
off with a swish of its tail. Quite recently Mr. and
Mrs. Blanks and their son, had walked under a tree
which overhangs the road, unaware that the puma was
lurking in the branches. They heard it jump down after
they had passed, and just caught a glimpse of it in a
torch beam. It had landed on, and crossed, a manure
heap, and its pad marks have been preserved: they
were more than four inches long. I also saw claw
marks and scratches on the smooth-barked tree,
By this time, Mr. Blanks was talking freely: at
first one had the feeling that he was apprehensive of
being thought ridiculous. He had been perturbed by
the attitude of authority, and disappointed by the
reactions of the press. Then there was the search by
the Canadian hunter-but more of that in due course.
By now, satisfied that here at last was an interviewer who was prepared to treat the matter seriously,
Mr. Blanks ventured to tell me the most surprising
part of his story-the matter of the STRANGE LIGHTS.
I should point out that at no time did I mention my
interest in flying saucers.
Part of Mr. Blanks' routine is to make the rounds
of his farm before retiring for the night.
On two occasi<:ms he suddenly became aware of a
mysterious light on the roofs of the farm buildings.
The light moved from roof to roof, yet he c oul d not
see the beam which produced the light. It was certainly not produced by car headlights from the Odiham
Road: the local topography precluded that possibility.
Mr. Blanks could not trace the source of the light,
and he was puzzled and worried by the phenomenon,

because on each occasion the mystery puma arrived


on the scene shortly afterwards!
I can only presume Mr, Blanks did not give this
part of his story to the press for fear of further
ridicule.
The story "blew wide open" when one of Mr.
Blanks' steers was attacked. The mystery animal had
been around on the night of the attack, and when the
farmer found that his herd had panicked and smashed
through a fence in three places, he rounded them up
and discovered that one steer was missing. It was
found lying in a pool of mud and blood in the undergrowth, with terrible claw marks down its shoulders,
on both ::;ides of the neck and along its flanks. It
was still alive, and subsequently the veterinary
surgeon's treatment cost
20. Six days elapsed
before the steer could get back onto its feet.
The visit of the Canadian hunter must have been
quite a pantomime. "Give me 48 hours", said Mr.
Billy Davidson, "and I'll get me a cat!" Much hard
work was done in the undergrowth, with more than 40
reporters in tow; the one thing missing from the proceedings was stealth! This strange interlude was
treated lightheartedly in sections of the press, particularly by the London Evening News of August 31Mr. Davidson retired defeated, and one is left
with the feeling that this was another instance of
Randallism, that he had been put up to his task
merely to be shot down like an Aunt Sally, with the
object of discrediting the whole affair.
Mr. Blanks assured me that the puma had returned
several times since the Davidson fiasco: the frequency of appearance is about once in every five days.
He had concealed himself in carefully constructed
tree hideouts, but has never seen the puma on these
occasions. Strange droppings, some covered, have
been found.
As one would expect of a countryman. Mr. Blanks
knows a great deal about foxes, and he laughs at the
suggestion that he has mistaken a fox for the mystery
puma. He pointed out that when the animal is in the
vicinity, foxes have broken cover, which is most
unusual: perhaps they, like the dogs, are terrified,
but for them it is merely a case of "out of the frying
pan and into the fire", because in one fortnight alone
Mr. Blanks shot eight of them in the open!
No doubt our farmer, and many others who have
seen the mystery animals, will be amused by the
recent attempt in the press to say that the U puma"
chased at Farnborough airfield, proved only to be a
fox. If it was a fox, then what was it doing on the
runways? Perhaps it was scared of the terrifying thing
in the nearby woods!
As usual, any old explanation is seized upon to
kill an inexplicable mystery. Authority does not like
a mystery: nor does the press, when it remains a
mystery!
And mystery it does remain. Even as I finished
this article, I learned of a report of two more sightings
of the Hampshire puma by new witnesses. This report

46

was in the B.B.C. "Today" programme of October 18.


Where do these animals come from? Certainly not
zoos and circuses, for no such losses have been reported. It seems highly unlikely that a number of
private persons have had cheetahs and pumas as
pets which they cannot report as lost because they
smuggled them into the country in the first place. So
I repeat, where do they come from, and what is their
purpose?
AN ADDENDUM ON "MYSTERY CATS"
Janet Bord has been keeping track of "mystery
puma reports in England, and has furnished us with
a compilation of newspaper accounts. Her initial
contribution includes 19 reports, but these newspaper
accounts are so stereotyped and lacking in detail
that we think it instructive to reprint an example or
two after Mr. Bowen'S article for the sake of comparison. Just a little investigative "legwork" can
yield a wealth of detailed information about these
strange appearances. Mrs. Bord commented that it is
a wonder the reporters who cranked out these reports
can make a living, and we quite agree with that
sentim ent. Members who come across reports of this

sort should make an effort to .interview the witnesses


in order to gather all the facts for us.
From The (London) Times. 23 July 1971: police
seeking a dangerous wild animal that attacked a dog
in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, have enlisted the aid of a
big game hunter. They have sent him plaster casts of
the animal's paw prints in an attempt to identify it.
People who have seen the animal in the forest, including two policemen, describe it as like a puma,
black and tan coloured with streaks of yellow and
pointed ears. It attacked a dog belonging to Mr.
Alistair Whitley, a farmer of Outback Farm, Nutle'y.
From the London Evening News, 14 June 1972: "A
large, catlike animal, that can run at speeds up to 35
mph. has been sighted for the secor.d time near
Polegate, Sussex. A taxi-driver told police that
early today he saw the animal, which is several times
larger than a normal cat, running along the road
between Folkington and Polegate. The first report
about the animal came last week from a man who saw
the animal jump a five foot fence."
LOCH NESS
Tim Dinsdale began studying the Loch Ness
Monsters in 1959, and has been personally responsi-

The extraordinary photograph obtained at Loch Ness from a camera suspended at a depth of 50 feet.
This is reproduced from an off-print of Tim Dinsdale's article; the white line down the middle is simply
the separation between the pages.

47

ble for so much of the really serious study of this


phenomenon that when one thinks of Nessie the name
Dinsdale automatically comes to mind. He has made
a total of 25 expeditions to date, seen Nessie three
times, and filmed one once. The film was analyzed by
a number of photographic experts including the
British
Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence
Centre. and is accepted as proof of the existence in
Loch Ness of a very large and unknown mar-ine
animal.
Mr. Dinsdale was born in 1924 and spent his youth
travelling extensively up and aown the China coast
where his father was a shipping agent. He was educated in England, thp,n joined the De Havilland
Aeronautical Technical School working under the
famous aviation pioneer. Sir Geoffrey De Havilland,
and took part in the development of the renowned
"Mosquito" fighter plane. Later he worked for Rolls
Royce in the development and flight test of the first
jet engines.

... number of small fish


rlitlning away from a
larger m<:Ning creature."

He has written five books on the Loch Ness


Monster, Loch Ness Monster (1961), ~ Leviathans
(1966) (Routledge & Kegan Paul). Project ~
Horse, by the same publishers. due for publication
this coming fall, Monster !!!!ill, Acropolis Books.
Washington, D. C., and for young people, The.!w
2.! the Loch Ness Monster. Target Books, 14 Gloucester Road, London SW 7. for a mere 25 pence. Loch
Ness Monster is still available from Routledge for
1.25.68 Carter Lane. London, EC 4.
The following article by Mr. Dinsdale was reprinted
from the Journal Q! the Royal Photographic Society..
LOCH NESS 1972 - THE RINES/EDGERTON PICTURE
By Tim Dinsdale
In years past, the cry at Loch Ness would be "Where is your scientific evidence?- Today. no one
who is aware of the facts concerning the phenomenon

;~~.~.: ~. ~ "~7~::

~ .. the animal(s) has(have) a dimensional


extent of approximately 20 to 30feet as
determined from the length eX the echo.....
P SKITZKI. RAYTHEON CO

. i ..

M KLEIN. KLEIN ASSOC

~ ..about 30feet long... with projecfialsorhumps."


R. EIDE. SIMRAD

.~.
.. ~-,--.,,'"

.~ ..rea/ ... large .. .moving...trace indicating the


possibility that the creature has several
segments, body sections or projections such
as humps .
.. .there are at least TWO large things moving~

M. KLEIN, KLEIN ASSOC

'~.. an~ther large marine animal. or a school


of fish."
"A sudden echo protuberance exists with a

_ _ _ _ dimension ofabout 10feet...wauld appear to be

an appendage... n
P. SKITZKI, RAYTHEON CO.

~.. target projections ... are 5feet or more apart."


I. DYER, OCEAN ENG. DEPT. ,M.I.T.
~.. large

oblect is intruding into the zone of beam

coverage!
J. V. BOUYOUCOS, HYDROACOUSTICS

EDGERTON

STRtOeE~-C-'IMEi~~:!:~:::::""

o 1972 ACAD. APPLIED SCIENCE, BELMONT, MASS.;


LOCH NESS INVEsrlGATION BUR., LONDON, ENGLAND

How the picture was made and the sonar record of the event with comments by technical analysts Also
reproduced from the off-print.
.

48

of t-he "~onster", and the results obtained from recent


probings, would bother to ask the question. He would
know that, since 1966, reports have been published
which are scientifically based, analysing the results
of photographic work above and below the surface and
the sonar contacts obtained-indicating large midwater
moving: objects-the echoes from which are not apparently spurious or from any known species of fish.
To establish credibility, and to gain a sense of
perspective, it is useful to list these more important
resu.Its starting with the RAF's Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre Report on the film I
shot (If the Monster at Loch Ness, in 1960. This
report, which was published as an HMSO document
in 1966, accepts the film as genuine and as showing
an object which moved at some 10 mph- a cross
section through which would be at least 6 feet wide
and 5 feet deep. As it submerged during the course
of the film and travelled half a mile without a propeller wash, it was clearly animate.
In 1967, Richard Raynor obtained a short sequence
of 35mm black and white film through one of the Loch
Ness Investigation Bureau's ultra ,long-range cine
cameras. It showed a big V wash moving on calm
water, which ceased when Scott 1, a local passenger
boat, appeared in frame, proving the locality beyond
doubt. The RAF analysis found a 7 foot object at the
apex of the wash, just breaking surface.
In 1968, Professor D. Gordon Tucker and Hugh
Braithwaite of the University of Birmingham tried out
a new type of digital sonar at Loch Ness ove r a
period of two weeks. Filmed recordings of the display showed echoes from large moving objects, the
behaviour of which ruled out fish.
In 1969. Robert E. Love. Jr., sponsored by Field
Enterprise of Chicago in conjunction with the Loch
Ness Investigation (LNI) obtained more contacts,
using a Honeywell sonar mounted at the bows of a
patrolling boat. Both these sets of photographed
results were published by the LNI in its 1968 and
1969 Annual Reports.
In 1970. a small team of sonar experts from the
Academy of Applied Science, Belmont. Mass., including its president. Dr. Robert H. Rines. and the
designer of a highly definitive sidescan sonar. Dr.
Martin Klein. obtained more clear contacts in both
the static and mobile sonar modes. These were
described at a national news conference in London,
and after further analysis details were published by
Klein in the USA.
In 1971 calibration tests were run in Loch Ness
and Loch Morar by the Academy /LNI teams using a

flashing strobe-light cine camera underwater, working


on the time-lapse principle. In the spring, at the
Academy's invitation, I had talked about the research
to audiences in America and Professor Harold
Edgerton, Han. FRPS, pioneer of strobe-light photography had attended. Afterwards he invited us
round to his lab at M.1. T. and promised to put some
special gear together. Thus, Bob Rines was able to
obtain photographs even through the peat-stained
soup of Loch Ness in 1971.
In August of 1972, working from boats in Urquehart
Bay, the Edgerton camera was suspended at a depth
of some 50 feet. Nearby, from the LNl's workboat
Narwhal, a compact Raytheon sonar chart recorder
scanned the depths surrounding it.
During the very early hours of 8 August 1972, a
large intruding echo appeared on the Raytheon chart,
and remained in the viCinity of the sonar transducer
and the strobe-camera which was flashing every 15
seconds. It was moving, and fish echoes which came
up as tiny dots on the chart turned into streak s as
the fish swam away from it.
The 16mm film cassette was subsequently removed, flown back to the US and developed under
bond by Eastman Kodak. In several frames, coincident with the sonar trace, a large but indistinct body
had imposed itself.
Next, the sonar chart was SUbmitted for analysis
to no less than five separate authorities-and the film
duly "computer enhanced" by the same process used
to clarify some spectacular pictures from space, most
recently in the case of the Mariner unmanned probes
to the planet Mars.
In one frame of the film there is a remarkable
improvement, showing what appears to be a huge
paddle-like structure-an obvious limb; the conservative photo optical measurements of which establish a
length of 6-8 feet and a width of 2-4 feet. It was
photographed at near to maximum range, which in the
impenetrable gloom of Loch Ness water is about 20
feet.
In view of the inescapable reality of this underwater picture (and its stunning significance) comment
is superfluous; unless it is to pay credit to the
technical brilliance and sheer persistence of the two
Americans who helped to make it possible. In this
connection, and in keeping with a now established
Loch Ness tradition. the picture deserves an identifying title.
I can think of no better one than the "Rines/
Edgerton Picture".

MEMBERS' FORUM
Mrs. Janet Bard. 34a Barnsdale Road. London W9
3LL. is researching the subject of mazes and labyrinths. She is trying to find examples of these from
any geographical location, in any source. ancient or
modern.

We are more than grateful to our member David


Weidl who has donated a telescope to our Society. It
is all the more gratifying because he is still a student
and not one of the "idle rich". We are also investigating, through one of our members, the possibility of

49

microfilming at least the most. important. ~ctions of


our files. He remains anonymous for the moment,
since he suggests that their prices are due to the low
salaries they pay their employees!
Members should not be alarmed by the apparent
disappearance of "Marion L. Fawcett". She and
Sabina W. Sanderson are one and the same persoll, and
Mrs, Sanderson notes that having two names confuses
everyone, herself included. Apparently even sori)e of
our oldest members failed to read (or at" least reme mbet)
Ivan T. Sanderson's note announcing their marriage
aud the fact that he had asked her to "revert" to her
original
name, thus-by marriage-acquiring -. his
mother's initials.
We are more than pleased, also, to report that Mrs.
Sanr.~rson, by the time you read this, will have finished the manuscript for Green Silence, started by Ivan
Sanderson bl,fore his death and telling of his trip to
the jungles of the Orient at the age of 17. The book
is scheduled for publication by the David McKay
COlT,pany in November of this year. Please do not
ask Mrs. Sanderson to place an order for you-this is
not her department.
Member 949 would like to hear from other members
in the southern California area. He is interested in
investigating ancient desert ruins or any forteana in
the area.

with the membership of the Society, and it Is the only


tangible reward that most members receive for their
annual dues. Thus it is .imperative that we continue
to make that reward as attractive as possible. We are
quite certain that the. intangible rewards of membership in the Society would be quite sufficient to keep
most of our members on the rolls even if Pursuit were
indeed a seed catalog. We refer here to the intrinsic
fascination of the subjects that SITU studies, and
the desire .we share to pursue the study of unexplained events in a systematic manner. When the
Society was founded it had nothing more to offer than
this intangible reward, but it was nevertheless adequate incentive for several hundred individuals to
join.

We have never solicited material in the past for


several reasons,. mainly because the amount of
material we could produce "in house" was approximately equal to the amount that we could afford to print.
This seems the appropriate time and place to put it
directly to "the readers of Pursuit - please write
articles for possible inclusion in our journal. The
. editorial staff is, of course, fully prepared to render
every :sort of assistance from correcting spelling to
doing considerable re-writing of your material, so
don't be shy about it. We cannot guarantee publication - articles submitted may be unsuitable for a
number
of reasons - but all manuscripts will be
WRITE FOR PURSUIT
given equal consideration.
Those readers who are not in a position to write
Each issue of Pursuit contains between 20,000 and
for Pursuit can render a gr eat service by recommend25,000- words, with the bulk of this space devoted to
ing articles that have appeared in other publications.
in-depth analysis of unexplained phenomena. CompilOn occasion, we intend to reprint articles that have
ing this much material on a regular basis is no small
matter, especially in view of the fact that nearly all
appeared elsewhere, if they contain information of
of this wri ting has been done by one person - Sabina
special interest to our readers. SITU receives a
number of per,iodicals, but there are always it. few
W. Sanderson - With occasional assistance from a
few others.
that we miss or that we are not really able to assess
properly. In this connection, the Society is in need
Pursuit clluld be published with a great deal less
of an individual who is thoroughly conversant with
effort by simply turning it into a seed catalog, i.e., a
the "psychic" field, and who can write for us on
collection of newspaper Clippings' and quotatlOns trom
developments in the study of the physical aspects of
articles published elsewhere, and with little or no
psychic phenomena. .
additional commentary. "lVe have always felt, however,
And finally, please send us newspaper clippings,
that the extra time and energy expended in order to .
with the date and name of the newspaper clearly
make Pursuit a highly readable and interesting journal
has been well worth the trouble involved.
.
shown. Stories on unexplained events that are printed
in local newspapers are especially valuable.
The journal is our major means of communicating

BOOK REVIEWS

by Sabina W. Sanderson

William R. Corliss. Strange Phenomena: A Sourcebook of Unusual Natural Phenomena. Volume G-l. Order
from Mr. Corliss, P. O. Box 107, Glen Arm, MD 21057.$6.95 postpaid (Maryland residents add state tax).
1974.
.
This is a splendid addition to fortean literature and is the first of a series (two more volumes are nearly
ready). It is, as its compiler makes clear in both the title and his preface, a sourcebook and quotes the

50

original reports, complete with old spellings, punctuation, and typos, as garnered from scientific and more
popular journals. Mr. Corliss also emphasizes the fact that the collection of material presented here -this
volume is limited to geophysical phenomena- is a mere sampling from the literature and includes only a
small portion of his own collection. We herE! quote from the author's Preface and the ~ection entitled
"Organization of the Sourcebooks":

"The data included have been filtered only slightly. Doubtless some hoaxes and honest misinterpretations will be found in the pages that follow. This is unavoidable in a project of this scope. Indeed, it is
unavoidable in all phases of inquiry, especially those relying heavily upon observational evidence. Data
were selected for inclusion according to their 'strangeness' and their tendency to contradict current scientific hypotheses or stretch them beyond their present bounds. There has also been a de liberate effort to
gather in observations from the 19th Century that have gathered dust too long on library shelves. Anomalous events are too rare to let them be discarded merely because they are old or money cannot be found to
put them into computerized data systems ....
"Data selected for the data banks must have current relevance and be acceptable to the science of the
day. Hopefully, these sourcebooks will preserve something of value and help focus the diverse, widely
dispersed anomalies on the frontiers of science .... "
Volume Gl deals, as noted above, with geophysical phenomena, and a second volume, G2, is nearly
ready, as are volumes on ancient man and on "unresolved geological problems". Judging from the first, the
whole series" should be most valuable, in part because of its most unusual format. Strange Phenomena
comes in a 7 x 9 inch loose-leaf ring-binder, and for a very good reason. Mr. Corliss has devised an organizational system which looks, at first glance, rather complicated -almost excessively so- but is actually
very simple and easy to use in" practice. Each entry is given a label consisting of three letters and three
numbers; e.g. GLB-012. This conglomeration indicates that the entry concerns GeophYSics (G), a major
field of science; Luminous phenomena (L), a section of that field; Ball lightning (B), a subsection. The
number is simply the "accession number", Le. the 12th item on that subject. The running heads on each
page give both the "label" and the speCific category, so that one may find what one wants with ease: for
example. the running head on page GI-28 is "GLA-Oll Aurora-like Phenomena". And there are no less than
five indices -subject, date-of-event, place-of-event, author, and source- which give, not the page number,
but the entry number. And herein lies the beauty of the general arrangement. "
In the first volume there is given a complete list of the section codes and titles for geophysics, but not
all of these categories are included in this first volume. Section GG (Gravitational and temporal phenomena) is missing entirely but can be inserted in its proper place when it becomes available. Mr. Corliss has
also left space for additional entries or, since the page numbers are not really useful in any case, you
~ay add your own pages, continuing on from the last accession number.
One of the most difficult problems facing us is the organization of material into 'proper' categories,
and here.J feel that William R. Corliss has done a truly excellent job. Presumably one might quibble in a
few cases but we have not noticed any gross areas of contention.
There is virtually no 'editorializing' included, though the compiler has commented briefly on a few
reports. This is not for most people a book to be read straight through, though each section does constitute
a "chapter" on a particular subject, but it is great for browsing, and it is my impression that Mr. Corliss
has obtained some of his material from sources not culled before.

Jean-Pierre Hallet with Alex Pelle. Pigmy Kitabu. New York: Random House. 1973. $10.00 (Autographed
copies are available from Jean-Pier~letProductions, 5630 West 79th St., Los Angeles, California
90045, for $10 postpaid; indicate to whom the book should be inscribed.)
The 'blurb' on the front of the flyer for this book reads "Who is God? Where was the Garden of Eden?
" "What is Hell? Is there a life after death? The Pygmies ... -living fossils from the dawn of time- reveal the
-answer to these, and many other Questions that have puzzled "man for centuries --" Inside the anonymous
" writer asks "Were your ancestors Pygmies?" and promptly replies "This revealing book proves HI"
Now all this is enough to set anyone's teeth on edge, "and "I am ever sceptical of a book alleged to
"prove" anything that is incapable of concrete proof, particularly when the author is well known to be "in

51

'loveD with his basic subject -in this case 3'ean-Pierre Hallet and the African Pygmies. I therefore approached this book with a considerably jaundiced eye -and was most pleasantly surprised.
Chapter 1 provides an excellent introduction to the Pygmies and their way of life; who and which have,
by the way, been assiduously ignored by such as Robert Ardrey and ,others who insist that Man is descend,ed from "killer a~es" and is innately aggressive., As Hallet points, out, the Pygmies have a moral code
which sounds remarkably like the Ten Comn'land'ments (about which more later) "But the laws are much
more faithfully observed in Pygmy society [than in ours], in which there is no 'crime of any consequence
and no war at all". In fact, the Pygmies are "very amiable, warm-hearted, fun-loving, sometimes mischievous, but wholly non-agressive characters who behave more like the elves of European legend than the
awful killer apes of modern myth". This applies only to the Pygmies .who have not been ruined by "civilization"; Hallet states quite biuntly that "Wherever alcohol has been introduced into Pygmy territories, the
physical and moral health of the community has been all but destroyed. The Efe bands of western Uganda,
near Fort Portal, offer a particularly tragic example. Some are chronic alcoholics and most of them behave
like hoodlums. Tourists who visit Uganda have gathered the very false impression that these grossly
corrupted Efe bands are typical Pygmies".
Though generally classed as a branch of the Negro race, the Pygmies p)1ysically have more in common
with the Caucasoids: thin, uneverted lips, prominent eyebrow ridges, and 'very heavy body hair and beards.
Their skin color ranges from yellow-tan through a warm red brown; many have gray-blue or even, in some
cases, dark biu'e eyes;' and some have dark auburn-hair (blond or red-gold in childhood). Hardly typical
Negro characteristics, or even closely related to them. Nor is their culture, admittedly most "primitive",
anything like that of their Negro neighbours. As for their religion with its attendal'!t legends and customs,
it bears a striking resemblance to our Old Testament, except that it antedates' even Moses by at least a
thousand years, possibly many millenia; and here I believe that Hallet does prove 'conclusively that they
did not 'borrow' their beliefs from early Christian missionaries, or even eariier Hebrew wanderers or the
like. The ancient Egyptians appare':ltly borrowed their idea~ from the Pygmies.
Much of the book is devoted to what I can only call a relentless recital of Pygmy legends -the creation;
the "Garden of Eden", whatever it was called by those of various religions; the first man and woman; the
sacred tree or fruit; the Deluge; a law-giver deity; a saviour; the apocalypse; death and its aftermath; the
theft of fire; serpent-dragon legends; and underworld journeys- all of which should sound extremely familiar to those of the Judaeo-Chri::;tian faith and are also to be found in many other areas of the world
among "primitive" peoples and in the early European pagan legends, ancient Egypt, etc. etc. Jean-Pierre
Hallet gives full credit,for this exhaustive research, and that on linguistics, to his collaborator, Alexandra
Pelle, who is said to have spent more than seven years on this study. The religious evidence is impressive
indeed. The mere fact that the Pygmies have all these legends is in itself much too remarkable to be dismissed, as coincidence", and means that, however controversial the basic thesiS, it deserves very serious
consideration. I am personally less impressed by the linguistic evidence, partly because much of it
,constitutes a comparison between European languages which have been known for a longtim,e to be related;
nevertheless, the similarities to the Efe Pygmy language are, I believe, sufficient to warrant further study.
Another section of Pygmy Kitabu ("kitabu" means "book") deals with the dispersal of Pygmy ideas and
of the people themselves. In general, the legends "prove" this, but Hallet has added quite a number of
sometimes rather unusual 'artefacts' such as string games (i.e.cat's cradle, etc.), macrame writing (even
the Pygmies can't explain how this works); etc. Too, there has been the recent discovery of no less than

The "Primitive!' Pygmy Laws:


The Eighteen Sins of Man

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

10. Cowardly behavior during the hunt


Cruelty toward children
11. Husband-beating
Murder
12. Wife-beating
Wanton slaughter of animals
13. Cutting the tall trees
Disrespect toward parents and elders
Failure to' help a wounded or stray Pygmy from elsewhere 14. Blasphemy
15. Setting traps for animals, it is wasteful and unmanly
Wasting food
Fouling water
16. Theft
17. Eating eggs, which are like "seeds of life"
Sorcery
18. Slander
Adultery

52

sevlm Pygmy graveyards in Venezuela, definitely identified as African Pygmies (the first of these was
noted in Pursuit some time ago), coupled with traditions in the Americas of ancestors who were of very
small stature. Hallet quotes a charming story anent the latter:
"The Eskimos tell many stories concerning a first or ancestral race of very diminutive stature. In
Alaska, for example, the Eskimos of the Cape Denbigh area say that a 'little chief' and his people left the
artifacts and ruins of an ancient village that was excavated by archaeologist J. Louis Giddings. He argues
with a group of Eskimos, trying to convince them that 'there were no miniature people ... , The first men in
America, whenever they came and whoever they were, and all of those who descended from them, wer.e most
likely full-sized people-no larger, no smaller, than the tall and short people we know today,'declared
Giddings. After a moment of silence, an Eskimo named Nakarak politely replied, 'We thank you for expla-ining a.ll these things to us. We do read a little, and we go to Bible School in the winter, but no one has ever
explained these things to us before.' Then he added, 'We understand those things better now. The world
has had big people and small people-and we think it must be true that the little chief was one of the
~l!Iallest, all right, and we think all the other people in this village were pretty small, too!' ..
So where did these "primitive" people get their very 'sophisticated' religious ideas (monotheism for
one), an at least possible ability to travel widely, and such? According to them, they were once a technolol~ically advanced group and derived their religious ideas, at least, from a tall, bearded, white-skinned
man. The technology they abandoned because they found it spiritually debilitating. They do not even make
fife -for religious reasons- but carry it from place to place. This general concept is virtually impossible
of proof, but there are some extraordinary bits and pieces that must make anyone wonder: why (and "how
come?") do they traditionally describe Saturn as "the star of nine moons"? Telescopes maybe?
Though many readers may wish to skim some of the material on legends and linguistics, there is much
here to interest any reader but particularly those of fortean bent.
There is a detailed map (on the end papers) and other illustrations, both line cuts and halftones, and
there is an index though this has some irritating deficiencies -e.g. there is no entry for linguistics as
such, or technology, and some of the entries are confusing or unclear.

Alwyn T. Perrin, Ed. The Explorers Ltd. Source Book. New York: Harper & Row. 1973. $4.95 (paperbound).
This is not a fortean book (exc~pt for mention of INFO and SITU in the front) but is a very good source
of information that may be useful to our members. Most sections, of which there are 26, are divided into
three parts: 1) sources of information: organizations, publications, places to learn; 2) descriptions of
equipment, basic equipment kits, sources of equipment; and 3) application of these two in the field. As the
editor states emphatically, this is not a catalogue, i.e. don't order equipment as listed, write first for
information and prices.
The subjects covered include some rather specialized fields such as caving, ballooning, and dog sledding, which are not likely to be indulged in by the "average citizen", but others, photography for example,
will be of considerable interest to many if not most of our readers. In fact, the amount you can save by
buying (by mail) a camera in Hong Kong, is many times the cost of this book.

Robert R. Lyman Sr. Amazing ~: Strange ~ !!! the Black Forest, Vol. 2.Coudersport, Pa.: The
Potter Enterprise. 1973. Hard cover $4.50; paperback $2.50; add 25 postage and handling (Pennsylvania
residlmts add 6% sales tax).
The Black Forest referred to here is the Black Forest of Pennsylvania, not Germany, and this is the
second book recounting unusual, unexplained, or otherwise strange events from that area, compiled by
Robert R. Lyman, an indefatiguable local historian. The previous volume contained relatively little of
spe~ific interest to forteans though much to interest those int~rested in folklore generally and local history
in particular. This second volume includes quite a number of accounts which can be called truly fortean,
not the least of which is the difficulties they ran into in printing volume one! Mr. Lyman has done his
utmost to confirm the stories recounted herein.
though the printing leaves much to be desired, this little book is certainly entitled to a place in
fortean literature. There is a full table of contents and an i~dex of proper names .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
I . .~. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .-

. . .~. . . . . .- - - - - -

THE SOCIETY FOR THE


INVESTIGATION OF THE UNEXPLAINED
GOVERNING BOARD
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee

(and
(and
(and
(and

Hans Stefan Santesson


Robert C. Warth
Sabina W. Sanderson
Allen V. Noe
R. Martin Wolf
Robert J. Durant
Dante A. costa
Stanley W. Tyler
Adolph L. Heuer, Jr.

President)
Vice-President)
Secretary)
Treasurer)

EXECUTIVE BOARD
Robert C. Warth
Allen V. Noe
Sabina W. Sanderson
Robert J. Durant
Carl J. Pabst
Walter J. McGraw
DanteA. (Don) costa

Administrative Director
Director of Operations
Executive Secretary
Technical Consultant
Research Consultant
Mass Media
Public Relations
EDITORIAL BOARD

Hans Stefan Santesson


Sabina W. Sanderson
Walter J. McGraw
Robert J. Durant

Editor and Publisher


Executive Editor
Consulting Editor
Assistant Editor
SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. George A. Agogino - Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director, Paleo-Indian Institute,
Eastern New Mexico University. (Archaeology)
Dr. N. Burtshak-Abramovitch - Academician, Georgian Academy of Science, Palaeobiological Institute;
University of Tblisi. (Palaeontology)
Dr. Carl H. Delacato - Associate Director, Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia, (Mentalogy)
Dr. W. C. Osman Hill- Dublin and London (Comparative Anatomy)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek - Director, Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, Northwestern University.
(Astronomy)
Dr. George C. Kennedy - Professor of Geology, Institute of Geophysics, U.C.L.A. (Geomorphology and
Geophysics)
Dr. Martin Kruskal - Program in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University. (Mathematics)
Dr. Samuel B. McDowell - Professor of Biology, Rutgers University, Newark, N. J. (General Biology)
Dr. Vladimir Markotic - Professor of Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta,
Canada (Ethnosociology and Ethnology)
Dr. Kirtley F. Mather - Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University. (GeologY)
Dr. John R. Napier - Unit of Primate Biology, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. (Physical
Anthropology)
Dr. W. Ted Roth - Assistant Director, Baltimore Zoo, Baltimore, Maryland. (Ecologist & Zoogeographer)
Dr. Frank B. Salisbury - Head, Plant Science Department, College of Agriculture, Utah State University.
(Phytochemistry)
Dr. Berthold Eric Schwarz - Consultant (Brain-Wave Laboratory), Essex County Medical Center, Cedar
Grove, New Jersey. (Mental Sciences)
Dr. Roger W. Wescott - Professor and Chairman, Departmert of Anthropology, Drew University, Madison,
New Jersey. (cultural Anthropology and Linguistics)
Dr. A. Joseph Wraight - Chief Geographer, U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. (Geography and Oceanograph3
Dr. Robert K. Zuck - Professor and Chairman, Department of Botany, Drew University, Madison, New
Jersey. (Botany)

HICKS PRINTING COMPANY. 37 BELVIDERE AVENUE. WASHINGTON, NEW JERSEY. TELEPHONE

201-689-0194

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