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The Allies are closing in. Berlin is crumbling under the weight and impact of hundreds of Allied bombs. Deep in his fortified bunker, Adolf Hitler, once unshakable in his confidence in Nazi world domination, now admits that defeat is at hand. But Hitler is determined never to suffer the humiliation of being captured by his enemies. There is only one escape route - one he has planned for should he ever face just such a turn of events. Suicide is out of the question. Instead, Hitler and his corps of elite traverse through an underground tunnel to an isolated airstrip. There they board an unmarked plane and fly south. South to the pole. To the opening at the South Pole where they will enter the hollow Earth and disappear from history.
As with all such stories, it's often difficult to sort out facts, exaggerations, and outright fabrications. But it's an intriguing tale, and one that requires a little background
There are several hollow Earth theories. The most prevalent one holds that there are great but hidden openings at both the North and South poles, and that it is possible to enter those holes. Some - including the respected Admiral Byrd - claimed to have entered those holes. According to the legends, other civilizations live within the Earth on it's inner surface, warmed and lit by an interior sun. The idea has inspired novels by Edgar Allen Poe (MS Found in a Bottle), Edgar Rice Borroughs (At the Earth's Core), and Jules Verne (A Journey to the Center of the Earth). Hitler's Nazis were convinced that they were destined to rule the world, and they came to this warped conclusion through the acceptance of many occult beliefs and practices, including astrology, the prophecies of Nostradamus, and the hollow/inverted Earth theory...Hohlweltlehre. Because they suspected that our surface is on the interior of a concave Earth, Hitler sent an expedition, including Dr. Heinz Fischer and powerful telescopic cameras, to the Baltic
While the evidence for either hollow Earth theory is close to nil (although some folks claim to have proof in the form of photos), the story involving Nazis, war, and the romance of exploratory adventure sounds like the makings of a great Indiana Jones story.
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by Mark Harp 107 North Holmes, This article was published first in the January, 1995 issue of NEXUS, international science and freedom magazine. If unaltered, anyone is welcome to use this article. I permanently will retain the rights. On The title is A JOURNEY TO THE EARTH'S INTERIOR or HAVE THE POLES REALLY BEEN DISCOVERED? Although he seems not to have been aware of it, In the beginning, some 4 or 5 billion years ago, when the Earth was still an enormously expanded ball of superhot whirling gas, it gradually began to contract as it cooled. The laws of physics require cooling gases to condense and so the rapidly spinning sphere of tenuous gases began to concentrate as the heat loss continued. Self-centered gravitational attraction kept reducing the diameter of the whirling ball of cooling material...but only to a certain extent. This is the big logical distinction between the old inadequate theory of planetary formation and The crucial second factor to lay stress on is centrifugal force. Remember that while gravity is attempting to draw all of the material toward the center, there is an opposing force also at work centrifugal force. Just as a figure skater spins much more rapidly when she brings her outstretched arms tightly in against her body, so too did the ever contracting proto-planet begin rotating ever more rapidly as its size decreased. Like the glued water in a bucket that refuses to spill if one swings the bucket in a fast circle, so too was this same law of motion centrifugal force attempting to hurl all of the material outward from the forming planet's axis of rotation. So finally, in this silent titanic struggle between two natural forces, a balance was struck. When the swiftly whirling sphere had drawn itself down to an approximately 8000 mile diameter, the compromise between gravitational and centrifugal force was reached. But there is more. There is a special characteristic of centrifugal force and we must not overlook this important trait. The strength of 'c' force becomes greatly lessened as it approachs right angles to the direction of spin. A simple day-to-day example of this behavior is water in a basin. If you remove the drain plug and allow the water to start emptying from the basin, what will you eventually observe? A vortex or whirlpool, an empty space surrounded by rapidly rotating material. Now imagine this same principal in action concerning the contracting body which was to become our Earth. At right angles to the rotational axis, in other words the 'poles', the c force was considerably weaker than elsewhere, especially the equator, therefore although at the Earth's equator the c force was able to halt the material's inward progress at about an 8000 mile diameter, it was considerably less successful in the Polar regions, there stopping the contraction at about 1400 miles. The inevitable outcome of this natural compromise is that our planet concluded its evolution and solidified as an 8000 mile hollow sphere with 1400 mile diameter Polar Openings. Now it is at this stage in the logic that Based upon his studies of the planetary nebula through observatory photographs, Gardner was able to surmise that the very thick shell of the Earth is approximately 800 miles thick, the Polar Openings 1400 miles across, and the gravitationally suspended Central Sun (the incandescent orb locked by gravity in the exact planetary center) some 600 miles diameter. Because of the enormity and very gradual curve of the Polar Aperture, it is impossible to visually detect it; this is the same as the fact that we do not 'see' that the Earth itself is round. The curve is much too gradual to observe. Based on the nearly constant merger of warm interior air with very cold exterior Polar air, the Polar Openings are almost always covered by a thick cloud layer. This explains why when viewed from satellites the openings look just as they would if there actually were the mythical 'polar ice caps' which government policy claims are at the Earth's extremities. 1) a dramatically improving climate in the very far north, 2) the extreme peculiarity of the famous Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, and 3) the eccentric behavior of the compass in very high latitudes. We shall now proceed to hear from many witnesses who forfeited much comfort, convenience, and in several cases their lives, in order that we may fully understand the true greatness of our world, a world vastly more spectacular than officially acknowledged. In the preface of THREE YEARS OF ARCTIC SERVICE, Lt. Adolphus Greely of the U.S. Army expresses the amazement of his Fearing exaggeration, I have occasionally modified statements and opinions entered in my original journal, believing it better to underrate than enlarge the wonders of the Arctic regions, which have been too often questioned. Before focusing on our own world, let us look briefly at some of our interesting neighbors in Space. Renowned astronomer Percival Lowell comments on page 33 of MARS: ...round what we know to be the planet's pole, appeared to be a great white cap...It proceeded slowly to dwindle in size...As summer comes on, they dwindle gradually away, till by early autumn they present but tiny patches a few hundred miles across ...As it melted, a dark band appeared surrounding it on all sides...it was the darkest marking upon the disk, and was of a blue color. The temptation to think of this blue perimeter as water must be avoided because if this were indeed prodigous volumes of water, it would frequently be coursing through the many ancient riverbeds which crisscross the dry Martian surface. These riverbeds are permanently dry. Instead what we are really observing is the optical effect of vast cloud masses moving over the curving sides of the Martian polar aperture. The exterior of Mars experiences changing seasons; the interior does not. The degree to which atmospheric moisture and temperature vary at the pole, where the differing climates converge, will determine the amount to which the immense blue ring will manifest itself in terrestrial telescopes. Being unaware of the true configuration of Mars, Faraday made experiments on the relation of the congealing point of carbonic acid gas to the pressure...He further found that the curve for the liquifaction point lay very close to that for the congealing point, and approached yet closer as the pressure decreased. In other words, the gas passed almost immediatly from the gaseous to the solid state...Now the pressure is certainly very slight on the surface of Mars...In consequence, on a rise of temperature the frozen carbonic acid gas would there pass practically straight from the solid into the gaseous state. Now, from the existence of the surrounding polar sea, we remark that in the substance composing the polar caps of Mars this does not occur. A considerable portion of it is always in the transition state of a liquid. Carbonic dioxide would not thus tarry: water would." Robert Powers remarks in MARS: OUR FUTURE ON THE RED PLANET: There seem to be vast quantities of water in the polar caps,...Like the ice caps of Earth, they are bright white. Thomas McDonough says in SPACE: THE NEXT 25 YEARS Mars also has large, bright ice caps, which can even be seen from the Earth with a good telescope. In THE GREATEST CHALLENGE: The Incredible Adventure and Splendid Destiny Man in Exploring Space Martin Caidin notes that Both American and Russian astronomers in recent years have observed a series of very bright flashes, lasting about five minutes, and followed by mushroomshaped clouds. Original Moon explorer Michael Collins writes in MISSION TO MARS A greater mystery is what happened to all the water and ice that gouged out those huge channels billions of years ago. Mars has a strong enough gravitational field to hold water vapor in its atmosphere rather than allow it to escape into space...What happened to all the water that carved out deep channels? John Noble Wilford says in MARS BECKONS: Mariners 6 and 7 ...The camera photographed a hood of clouds over the south polar cap, and infrared instruments measured temperatures there as low as 193 degrees Fahrenheit...The infrared spectrometer had appeared to detect temperatures at the edge of the south polar ice cap that were much too high to be from frozen carbon dioxide...scientists could see by the Soviet document that the range of possibilities for the 1994 flight was wide and challenging. Under serious consideration were plans to place two spacecraft into orbits of Mars passing over the poles. On page 22 of the March-April 1992 Final Frontier are some remarks about the planet nearest to the Sun, Mercury: ...temperatures that climb as high as 800 degrees Fahrenheit...Researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have identified what they believe is a water ice cap more than 180 miles in diameter on Mercury's north pole...the researchers saw a bright area at the north pole...'We were amazed'." Marshall Gardner devotes 27 pages of his book to the study of preliminary planets, better known as nebula. Here are a few comments. "The spectroscope supplies the answer...the spectroscope has proven absolutely that the nebula is not made up of stars...the typical nebula has a remarkable shell-like structure and a central star...a search made with a spectrograph and the Lick 36 inch telescope for rotation effects...Definite evidence of rotation was found... On page 63, in reference to comets as being planets in the process of destruction, Hecter MacPherson tells us in his book, THE ROMANCE OF MODERN ASTRONOMY that the great comet of 1811, with a tail stretching for a hundred million miles behind and fifteen million miles in breadth, had a nucleus that according to measurements by Herschell was only 428 miles in diameter. The comet of Donati, detected from a On page 80,
The snow-zone was at times so bright that, like the crescent of the young moon, it appeared to project beyond the planet's limb. This effect of irradiation was frequently visible; on one occasion the snow-spot was observed to shine like a nebulous star when the planet itself was obscured by clouds....that luminosity is precisely what our own aurora borealis would look like if our planet was viewed from a great distance. And the light is the same in both cases.
As lame as the official government position is in postulating ice, snow, or frozen carbon dioxide as composing the Martian poles, imagine their predicament in the case of Venus. By their own admission, the temperature on Venus is well in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit...quite a place to put an ice cap! Whether by choice or by chance, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a few remarkable radar-generated photographs of Venus in early 1989. One of these close up images, in which the cloud-piercing radar reveals with excellent clarity the north polar opening, boldly graced the cover of the April 1989 issue of Discover. Now back to Earth. Certainly one of the three greatest pioneers of Polar exploration was Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the acclaimed Norwegian scientist and Arctic voyager. Perhaps the most interesting expedition ever conducted in the Arctic area is chronicled in Nansen's 679 page two volume work whose complete title is: FARTHEST NORTH: 'Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration - the Ship "Fram" 1893-96 and of a Fifteen Months Sleigh-Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lieut. Johansen'. On page 120, when the 13 man crew had already reached almost 77*N. latitude, Nansen observes It was a strange feeling to be sailing away north in the dark night to unknown lands, over an open, rolling sea, where no ship, no boat had been before. We might have been hundreds of miles away in more southerly waters, the air was so mild for September in this latitude...We see 'nothing but clean water', as Henriksen answered from the crow 's nest when I called up to him...'They little think at home in Norway just now that we are sailing straight for the Pole in clear water'...I have almost to ask myself if this is not a dream. One must have gone against the stream to know what it means to go with the stream. Another of the major contributors to Arctic knowledge was U.S. Army Lieutenant (later General) Adolphus Greely. Like other Arctic voyages, the Lady Franklin Bay expedition encountered the truly bitter cold conditions in the lower portion of the Arctic region, but less harsh climate as they neared 80* latitude and especially mild weather beyond the 80th parallel. On page 369, when their party had attained the 81st latitude while map- making for the Army on Ellesmere Island, Greely comments "At that time a high warm wind was blowing from the interior, and the temperature was considerably above 40*(5*C.)." His use of the word 'interior' was more profoundly accurate than he realized. An example of how dramatically the warm winds from the Interior affect the far north exterior is demonstrated in this passage from page 192, when the winds had for a long while been from the south: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane recorded his extensive Arctic experience in ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, experiences which culminated near the 82nd parallel. The expedition progressed as far north as was practical in their ships and then when the amount of ice rendered additional progress impossible or at least unsafe, they continued their poleward journey on foot with sledges. But as with other Arctic explorers before and since, they were amazed to eventually find further advancement thwarted by the gradual encroachment of an open polar sea. He writes It is impossible in reviewing the facts which connect themselves with this discovery, the melted snow upon the rocks, the crowds of marine birds, the limited but still advancing vegetable life, the rise of the thermometer in the water, not to be struck by their bearing on the question of a milder climate near the pole. To refer them all to the modification of temperature induced by the proximity of open water is only to change the form of the question; for it leaves the inquiry unsatisfied. What is the cause of the open water? About 130 years later we have these remarks from Russian explorer Vladimir Snegirev in his 1985 ON SKIES TO THE NORTH POLE: On May 9 they crossed the 86th parallel...It was a strange thing indeed: you might have thought that as they approached the Pole the ice would become thicker, stronger, more solid, but in reality it was just the other way around. The closer they came to their goal, the more often they encountered open water... Writing about Admiral Richard Byrd's first journey to Temperature swings were so violent that, only three days after the record low, the reading rose to 15 above. 'That makes a range of 87 degrees, as much as the annual range over most of the eastern On page 144 of his book Nansen exclaims "Today we had the same open channel to the north, and beyond it open sea as far as our view extended. What can this mean?" When in the 79th parallel, he records on page 197 "...bringing northerly wind. It is curious that there is almost always a rise of the thermometer with these stronger winds...A south wind of less velocity generally lowers the temperature, and a moderate north wind raises it." After having reached the very far northerly position of 86* latitude, Nansen observes on page 391 "I was inconvenienced for the first time by the heat; the sun scorched quite unpleasantly." Page 407: "...last night I could hardly sleep for heat." Several months later Nansen and Johansen were heading back to the Fram, but were still above the 81st parallel, when he writes on page 527 "Fancy, only 12* (21.5*Fahr.) of frost in the middle of December! We might almost imagine ourselves at home..." When his group was at the 81st parallel, Greely records on page 370 "In its whole extent the valley was barren of snow, and in most places was covered with a comparatively luxurient vegetation." At latitude 81*49' Greely writes on page 372 "I there caught a butterfly, and saw three skuas two bumble bees, and many flies..." Page 374: "While at this camp, No. 3, we obtained but little sleep, owing to the large swarms of flies...On rising at 2 A.M. the temperature was found to be very high, 48*(8.9*C.), with a minimum of 47*(7.8*C.) since the preceding evening ...In this lake also there were many small minnows..." Page 376: "Corporal Salor brought in with his willows two small pieces of unworked pine wood...Near by I discovered the former site of an old summer encampment of the Eskimos." Page 377: " The surroundings of the encampment were marked by luxurient vegetation of grass, sorrel, poppies, and other plants." Page 378: " The sky was partly covered with true cumulus clouds, quite rare in Arctic heavens...the temperature was high and the gay yellow poppies and other flowers drew to them gaudy butterflies ...he could well imagine himself in the roaring forties instead of eight degrees from the geographical pole." Page 379: "At this point, and in its immediate vicinity, a large number of butterflies were seen...facing By far the three most significant categories of evidence proving the validity of 1) warmer climate in Polar region, 2) eccentric behavior of the compass, and 3) the peculiar polar lights known respectively as the Aurora Borealis and, in Although the brevity of this article prevents all but a cursory examination of the voluminous available evidence, there are several other categories of proof as well. These include: 4) a dramatic increase in plant and animal life at the far north, also extreme northward bird migrations at the onset of Winter; 5) stones, wood, dust, pollen, and mud found both on and imbedded in ice bergs; 6) anomalous radio wave behavior in polar region; 7) gravitational increase measurable at the Polar Curve, sufficent to cause a significant segregation of salt water and fresh water; 8) strange situation of the far north Eskimo, a people with a completely unique language and whose oral tradition states that they originated from much farther north in a warm land of perpetual daylight; 9) polar sea depth and strong southgoing current in the high 10) the perfectly fresh mammoths found encased in the ice A) if, as the official government position postulates, these elephants died during a climate shift from tropical to frigid, it is logical to inquire why didn't these shivering elephants simply 'pack their trunks' and move south? or B) if this alleged climate shift happened suddenly, then why aren't these 'flash frozen' pacyderms found alongside the inevitable 'flash frozen' thousands of acres of forest in which they lived?; 11) the peculiar chemistry and mathematics of ice bergs, enormous objects composed of fresh water and which, although there is almost no annual precipitation with which to replace them, travel by the thousands slowly southward to melt every year. The compass has been trying to indicate the true configuration of the ...the magnetic pole...makes some kind of tricky curve...inconvenience of traveling by compass alone. The arrow would point northward, then suddenly it would veer to the west, and then almost reluctantly it would return to its former position. Walter Sullivan comments in QUEST FOR A CONTINENT "...compasses which behaved erratically so near the Pole. ' Chauncey Loomis observes in his biography of Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall, WEIRD AND TRAGIC SHORES "...be buried so far north of the magnetic pole that the needle of a compass put on his grave points southwest." On page 536 of his book Nansen says "There were other things, too, that greatly puzzled me. If we were on a new land, near Spitzbergen, why were the rosy gulls never seen there, while we had them in flocks here to the north? And then there was the great variation of the compass." Greely records on page 128 of his book ''In the magnetometer a small magnet, freely suspended by single fibre of untwisted silk, swings readily in any horizontal direction. This magnet, at Conger...swung to and fro in a restless, uneasy way...A magnetic needle, nicely and delicately balanced, in the middle latitudes assumes a nearly level position. At Conger, however, the needle, adjusted so that it can move freely in a vertical plane, shows a strong tendency to assume an upright position. At a dip of 90* the needle would be erect, while at Conger the inclination was about 85*." The single most spectacular feature of the high The official government explanation is essentially the same as that expressed in nearly all large circulation publications, such as the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS: ''These luminous displays are caused by showers of electrons streaming from the Sun (the solar wind) and striking the atoms of the upper atmosphere, so making them glow. The shape of the Earth's magnetic field confines these displays to polar regions and high latitudes.' Were it not for its wholesale omission of the facts, this conjecture sounds nearly plausible. There are large problems, however, with an electromagnetic hypothesis in accounting for the polar lights: 1) electricity and magnetism do not move haphazardly about in enormous curtain shapes; 2) the 3) the 4) the magnetic needle functions even at the equator, but the 5) actual electrical phenomena, such as lightening, are noisy, yet the 6) particles from the Sun are mainly hydrogen, yet very little hydrogen is recorded in the spectograph's annalysis of Auroral light; 7) If caused by a perpetual flow of electrons from the Sun, then why are Auroral displays sometimes present and sometimes absent?; 8) the most powerful refutation is that Peter Freuchen writes in THE ARCTIC YEAR: "These peculiar lights ...brighest by far and best developed in the The kaleidoscopic behaviour of the "Despite the fact that Venus has no magnetic field, it seems to have auroras high in its atmosphere; their origin is not understood." Greely states on page 158 of his book ''The aurora...magnetic disturbances were rare during colorless and slowly changing forms." Page 184: "Despite the remarkable duration and extent of the aurora, the magnet was but slightly disturbed." Page 187: ''The halo was preceded by an aurora, which was unaccompanied by magnetic disturbances." Acclaimed South Polar explorer Finn Ronne notes in his autobiography, "...I beheld an unimaginable crystalline beauty; and I felt myself a part of a surrealistic scene as I stood transfixed while the aurora australis washed over me." Nansen writes in his book on page 163 "The whole sky was ablaze with it...No words can depict the glory that met our eyes...It was an endless phantasmagoria of sparkling color, surpassing anything that one can dream." The evidence presented in the science books of William Reed and especially Marshall Gardner prove beyond any reasonable doubt the accuracy of United States patent 1096102, the Hollow Earth Theory. When one couples the monumental importance of this discovery with the nearly total non-acknowledgement of it in the major press, it is readily apparent that it has the dubious distinction of also being the single most pervasive conspiracy in the world. Why? The famous unregistered aircraft commonly described as unidentified flying objects are the logical answer. Even ignoring all other aspects of the UFO situation, the authentication of at least some of these vehicles is fully established by the countless number of firm radar contacts measured on both military and commercial scopes. Common sense easily discerns the logical connection between the dramatic arrival of these aircraft in large numbers in 1947 and our own extraordinary technological leap of the 1940s i.e. Atomic Bomb, trans-sound barrier flight, radar, television, etc. If the civilization operating these unregistered aircraft was headquartered on a distant planet, they would not be interested in the slightest; if, on the other hand, they occupy our interior sister world, in that case they would be extremely interested...especially by our harnessing of the atom. It may very possibly be that atomic energy will lead (or has led) to the ultimate technology of antimatter, gravity inertia reversal. Second only to national security, is a nation's desire to explore. As a peaceful pursuit, Mankind's most exhillerating ambition is Space exploration, an undertaking which we have barely begun. That will change soon if recent indications out of 'Sentido komun, katotohanan at sake katarungan'; common sense, truth and justice." |
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On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and commercial pilot from Boise, Idaho, was flying past Mount Rainier, in Mount Rainier National Park, State of Washington, when he sighted a strange formation of nine luminous saucer-shaped objects. He related this unusual experience to newsmen and news of the mysterious objects dubbed "flying saucers" was spread nationwide. UFOs are quite common in the area. In fact the thousands of miles of untrodden land that makes up the extreme Northwestern part of America hides many unexplained mysteries. This is the land of Bigfoot & Sasquatch (as the local Native Americans call him).
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Roger Sandell Many of those interested in UFOs are also interested in other branches of fringe knowledge, so it is not very surprising that there have been so many theories, such as those about the Bermuda Triangle and Ancient Astronauts, that link UFOs with other mysterious phenomena. For some years ideas of this nature have been circulating regarding UFOs and 'mystery animals'. At first these ideas were propounded by those who believed UFOs were interplanetary probes, and took the form of suggestions such as that the Bigfoot of the North American forests was a robot released from a UFO, or that the mysterious puma-like animals reported from various parts of
The sociological side of one mystery animal is examined in The Meaning of the Loch Ness Monster, by Roger Grimshaw and Paul Lester, a pamphlet published by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, a group of radical sociologists. [1] The role of the scientist and the independent researcher are analyzed in terms equally applicable to the UFO field. The increasing interest in such fringe beliefs by scientists is seen as a result of increasing controversy about the political role of science, brought about by the ecological movement and protests against the involvement of scientists in war research. In this climate, when science becomes a matter of political controversy and general discussion, many scientists no longer maintain an Olympian detachment from the man in the street. They do not look down on phenomena largely reported by non-scientists, and often reported by the more sensational press, but consider them reasonable subjects for investigation. The independent researchers, or 'monster entrepreneurs' as the authors describe them, are seen as often strongly individualistic people seeking a field of study in which knowledge is not the possession of an anonymous bureaucracy can be extended by the efforts of the individual. (It should be made clear that the use of the term 'entrepreneur' refers solely to their individuality, and is not intended to imply that researchers are 'in it for the money'.) One matter that is not explored by the authors is the equivocal relationship between fringe entrepreneur and the established scientist. The entrepreneur is often uncertain whether he hopes to solve the mysteries of his chosen field himself, or act as a semi-political pressure group to persuade scientists to investigate the matter in question themselves In the UFO field this has led to suggestions that some researchers have censored some of their 'high strangeness' data to make reports acceptable to the scientists they wish to impress. Finally, the pamphlet examines the mechanisms of belief and scepticism:
We see in the phenomena of However, the belief that the monster is a 'tourist stunt' or a 'silly-season story' is equally sustained by irrational considerations:
Although the authors confine their analysis to the Loch Ness Monster their observations apply if anything more strongly to the reports and rumours of abominable-snowman type creatures in the Another recent publication, Bigfoot, by Anne Slate and Allan Berry [2], contains data that supports this analysis by strongly suggesting that rather more is involved than a simple hunt for an unknown animal. Some items included will be familiar to anyone with knowledge of UFO contactee stories. Witnesses encounter Bigfoot after being drawn into the forest by impulses they are unable to explain. One witness submitted to hypnosis to elicit details of his experience, and claimed while in a trance to be in telepathic contact with Bigfoot, and delivered a warning that "we are ruining the planet". Another witness, when interviewed by researchers uttered animal-like noise and delivered an incoherent prophecy of the doom of Weirder still, there are cases in this book which if accurately reported suggest that Bigfoot sightings, unlike most Loch Ness Monster reports, have an apparition-like air to them. There are cases where a particular individual or family seems to have been singled out for attention over a long period. There are other cases where a creature seem to have vanished after the sighting in circumstances where it was hard to imagine any large animal disappearing. In one case a witness after his sighting is visited by a mysterious Man-in-Black figure who asks for money for a telephone call. When passing over the money the witness is unable to feel his visitor's hand. Most striking of all are the cases where the Bigfoot witnesses state that even before the creature was encountered the whole forest landscape seemed somehow wrong and unsettling, and without the normal forest sounds. This detail is similar to the experiences of witnesses in apparition cases and has led to the suggestion that in these cases the witness is hallucinating not merely the apparition, but his whole field of vision. [4] As always, one is faced with the problem of how seriously or literally to take these reports. In the authors' forward it must be said that they themselves seem for the most part puzzled by the odd and inconvenient nature of many of their cases. In any event, the fact that such stories are circulating is eloquent testimony that for some people the Bigfoot mystery has taken on overtones very far removed from the mere hunt for a mystery animal. When we read of people propelled by strange impulses to a weird, silent part of the forest to meet a monster, we are surely not in the realms of natural history but in the magic forest of a fairytale inhabited by supernatural beings, such as in Keats' Belle Dame Sans Merci: Oh, what can ail the knights at arms So pale and loitering? The sedge hath withered from the seeds And no birds sing. If some at least of the Bigfoot sightings belong to the realm of apparition, such a phenomenon would not be unprecedented. The ghostlore of In the 1950s when reports of the Himalayan Abominable Snowman were appearing in the press, the dramatist Nigel Kneale (creator of Quatermass) wrote a play about an expedition to hunt down the animal. When a hunter closes in on the creature it turns to look at him, and its face is seen to be identical to his own. In their very different ways the two books reviewed here show that however they may be explained, mystery animal reports tell us much about the way we perceive reality, react to it, and transmit it to others. References 1. Roger Grimshaw and Paul Lester. The Meaning of the 2. Anne Slate and Allen Berry, Bigfoot. Bantam, 1976. 3. This case is detailed in 'Berserk', by Dr. Berthold Schwarz. FSR. 4. Celia Green and Charles McCreery. Apparitions, Hamish Hamilton, 1975. |