Lou Farish (right) with the mayor of Eureka Springs, at the opening of either the 1st or 2nd Ozark UFO Conference in 1989 or 1990. (Credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Friends of Lou,

I’m sorry to have to tell you that Lou died of cancer this afternoon at 4:55 PM CST in Morrilton, Arkansas at the River Chase Rehabilitation and Care Center where he had been under hospice care since early September. He died peacefully, was not in pain, and was surrounded by a small group of friends. A memorial service is tentatively planned for 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 4, at the Harris Funeral Home in Morrilton, AR. Confirmation of the date and time will be in an obituary to be posted in a day or two on the Harris Funeral Home website at www.harrisfuneralhomes.net. If I can provide additional information, please let me know.

If you cannot attend Lou’s memorial service, but would like to send me a short statement to be read at the service about how you knew and/or will remember Lou, I will be glad to do that for you. We may also include these statements in a program to remember Lou this April at the Ozark UFO Conference in Eureka Springs. Also, if you have any favorite photos of Lou that we can use in the service, I would appreciate it if you would scan or photograph them and send them to me, and especially any early photos from the 70s and 80s.

Since Lou did not have a wife, children or siblings, he left his estate, including 80 acres of land, to a trust to be used to encourage UFO research and education through awards, fellowships and mini-grants over the next several years.

Lou was one of the most interesting people I ever met, and like many of you, I thought of him as one of my best friends. He was one of a kind, and will be greatly missed, both as a person and for his many contributions to ufology. His circle of friends goes far beyond the e-mail list I’m sending this message to. If you have email addresses for others who knew and cared about Lou, please forward this message on to them.

Jerry Blackburn

Lou Farish (right) with Prof. James Deardorff at the podium in one of the early Ozark UFO Conferences in the early 1990s. (Credit: Antonio Huneeus)

A great and humble ufologist

Everyone would agree that Lucius Farish was one of the great American ufologists and yet he never published a book, stopped writing articles years ago, never lectured and almost never appeared on TV. So, how did people know about him and his work? Lou was a humble researcher that never promoted himself or his ideas. He lived for years in Plummerville, Arkansas, working for the U.S. Post Office and cultivating ufology on the side. He joined APRO, MUFON and other UFO and Fortean organizations in his youth, publishing articles for various magazines and newsletters in the sixties and seventies. Lou developed an interest in historical UFO research and wrote some articles about this topic with Jerry Clarke. Then sometime around the mid-seventies, Lou began compiling his monthly UFO Newsclipping Service, a 20-page digest on legal size with reproductions of local newspaper articles throughout the USA on sightings, events, etc. It had an international section (mostly UK and other English speaking press) and a “Forteana News” section on the last four pages for the latest about Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Atlantis, monuments in Mars, remote viewing, etc.

Front page of the December 2005 UFO Newsclipping Service.

It’s hard to fathom the importance for something like the UFO Newsclipping Service back in the old days when people didn’t have the web and all the new social media. Nowadays any UFO story anywhere in the world can be found instantly, but not back then when it took the dedication of someone like Lou to put together the pieces of what the print media was saying about UFOs. Then in the late eighties Lou found his second highly successful niche in American ufology. In the Spring of 1988, an Arkansas researcher called Bill Pitts organized a conference in Eureka Springs, a picturesque spot in the Ozarks, to launch what was supposed to be a New Project Blue Book. It was a historical event in that some of the people involved in the old air force project did attend and talk. (See my interview with Major Dewey Fournet on this site.)

Pitts’ New Blue Book didn’t prosper but Lou Farish, who was helping the conference with local MUFON people, saw the advantages of both the picturesque location of Eureka Springs and the need for a UFO Conference that could service the Midwestern and some southern states. Thus was born in 1989 the Ozark UFO Conference, held annually in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in April, which in a short time became one of the largest and most important American UFO events. In the early days it was also supported by MUFON, and counted with the appearance of many seasoned researchers like Linda Moulton Howe, Timothy Good, Dr. John Mack, George Knapp, Wendelle Stevens, and many others, including myself who attended many times in the 90s and will speak again later this year. I had the privilege of assisting Lou in a couple of things, including helping to bring a speaker (Sergei Bultantsev) from what was still the old Soviet Union, and presenting the year later the Russian documentary Planet of Aliens by Vladimir Avinsky.

A 1978 newspaper article and drawing from the March 1978 UFONS.

The Ozarks Conference continued to expand and Lou kept running it until the last couple of years when due to his health he turned over to the people who had worked with him. I have no doubt that Lou’s open and honest personality had much to do with the success of the Ozark’s Conference. Everyone liked Lou. It was obvious that you were dealing with someone who was both rational and passionate about the subject, who never engaged in self-promotion, fanatical ideas, personal attacks, and some of the other features that unfortunately accompany some of American ufology. He was unique, a great American ufologist who never published a book, gave lectures or appeared on TV, but whose contributions to the field via the Newsclipping Service and the Ozark Conference will be remembered for a long time. All those who knew Lou will miss him greatly.

You can check the 2012 program of the Ozark UFO Conference here.

Portrait of Henry Miller (credit: www.stryder.com)

It turns out that Henry Miller (1891-1980), one of the great American writers of the 20th century, was quite interested in UFOs and even had a sighting in Big Sur, California. Miller is best remembered for books like Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939) and Nexus (first American edition 1965). The two Tropics were considered so controversial because of their explicit erotic content based on Miller’s bohemian lifestyle in Paris during the 1930s, that they were banned in the United States as “obscene” between 1934 and 1961. Even after the ban was officially lifted in 1961, booksellers continued to be harassed for selling Miller’s books until 1964, when the Supreme Court declared that the sale of Tropic of Cancer was protected by the constitution.

Henry Miller is of course best known for his avant-garde literary work, but he was also interested in a number of off-beat subjects like the prophecies of Nostradamus, Indian mysticism and UFOs or flying saucers. His fascination with the 16th century French prophet Michel de Nostradamus is well documented—he is mentioned in several of Miller’s books and letters. Miller corresponded with and even visited in 1953 Dr. Max de Fontbrune, a well known French expert on Nostradamus in the period right before, during and after World War Two. It was while looking at the Miller-Nostradamus connection a while ago that I discovered that he had been fascinated also by the UFO subject when the so-called flying saucers first emerged in American popular culture in the late 40s and early 50s.

Cover of Donald Keyhoe’s first book on flying saucers published in 1950, of which Henry Miller became a fan. (credit: Fawcett Publications)

Mary V. Dearborn writes in her 1991 book, The Happiest Man Alive – A Biography of Henry Miller, that “Miller was also a passionate believer in UFOs, and during the 1950s he would come to believe that an invasion by aliens was imminent. For a time he promoted a book called Flying Saucers Are Real, by Donald Keyhoe; friends like [the British novelist Lawrence] Durrell were merely amused…” That was Major Keyhoe’s first book published as a paperback in 1950, which is considered with Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers as the first two UFO books published in the USA. Keyhoe went on to write several other books on the subject and became the influential director of the National Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in the late 1950s, one of the major UFO organizations back then.

I was able to track down some of the Keyhoe references in two of Miller’s books. In The Books in My Life, published in 1969, Miller mentions Keyhoe right in the Preface, together with Nostradamus and other “books and authors I intend to dwell in the future”:

And Nostradamus, Janko Lavrin, Paul Brunton, Péguy, Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, Letters from the Mahatmas, Fechner’s Life After Death, Claude Houghton’s metaphysical novels, Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise (another book about books), the language of night, as Eugene Jolas calls it, Donald Keyhoe’s book on the flying saucers, cybernetics and dianetics, the importance of nonsense, the subject of resurrection and ascension, and, among other things, a recent book by Carlo Suarès (the same who wrote on Krishnamurti), entitled Le Myhe Judéo-Chrétien [The Judeo-Christian Myth].

This partial list of authors and titles gives a pretty good idea of the range of metaphysical and occult books—what today we would call New Age books—that interested Miller. Later on in the same book, Miller writes: “At this point I think it important to mention the fact that SCIENCE has just discovered the efficacy, the therapeutic efficacy, of Love. The Sunday supplements are full of this subject. Next to Dianetics, the Flying Saucers and Cybernetics, it is apparently the great discovery of the age.”

In The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-1980, a book of his correspondence with the well known British novelist Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), author of The Alexandria Quartet, there is a letter to Durrell from Big Sur, California, dated May 7, 1954, where Miller writes in part:

Our projects are still tentative. Everything depends on proceeds from Japan and France. And whether or not war III this Fall, which I fear. Wouldn’t leave here before September anyway, as children would still be with us till the end of August.

Mailed you book on Flying Saucers. And – the Big Sur Guide.

Another portrait of Henry Miller probably in the 1930s or early 1940s. (credit: www.flixist.com)

Miller’s biographer Mary Dearborn mentions also a letter from August 6, 1950 written to a friend of Miller named Robert Fink, where the Keyhoe book is mentioned (this would have been right after publication of The Flying Saucers Are Real by Fawcett Publications in 1950). The letter is at the University of Texas’ Miller Archives, but unfortunately is not available online so I was unable to consult it.

Another letter to the French poet Joseph Delteil (1894-1978), a close friend of Miller, shows that the American writer was reading more UFO books than just Keyhoe’s. I haven’t been able to locate the letter itself but a reference to it in the article by Karl Orend, “Reveries of a solitary old man and his angels—Henry Miller’s unknown book and his encounter with the magician, Joseph Delteil,” published in Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, 7 (Annual 2010). Orend wrote that in a letter to Delteil dated February 4, 1954, “Miller recommended Les Soucoupes Volantes ont atterri [Flying Saucers Have Landed] by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski. Henry was convinced that we would soon have contact with extraterrestrials!” Although most readers probably associate this book with Adamski’s famous account of his contact with ETs in Desert Center, California, in 1952, the bulk of it was written by the British aristocratic author and musician Desmond Leslie, consisting in a well written historical overview of the UFO evidence up to that time. The Adamski section was only the last fourth of Flying Saucers Have Landed.

View of the Pacific Ocean around the area where Miller lived in Big Sur, California. (credit: iGuide Interactive Travel Guide/Big Sur Sights)

The Big Sur Guru

Before quoting Henry Miller’s own UFO sighting, it’s important to frame it within the context of his life in Big Sur, California, in the period of the late 40s and early 50s. Miller was a wanderer for most of his life: he was born in New York in 1891, but began traveling as a young man first to the West and then to Europe. His stormy life in Paris in the 1930s inspired his Tropics and the censorship controversy. He was in Greece in 1939 when World War Two began and made it safely back to New York in 1940. In 1944 he moved to Big Sur, which he called “my first real home in America,” first at Keith Evans’ cabin in Partington Ridge in 1945, then at a shack at Anderson Creek in 1946, and finally he was given access to Jean Page Wharton’s house with a magnificent view of the Pacific in Partington Ridge, where he wrote many of his famous books like Plexus and Nexus. The atmosphere surrounding Miller in Partington Ridge was described in an article by Mildred Edie Brady, “The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy,” published in Harpers Magazine in April 1947. Brady wrote:

There is no design or German orderliness in the mysticism of the California anarchists. Anything goes. Since Miller’s sojourn on the coast, the bag of wonders he brought with him has even been stuffed with a number of local additions; for besides the CO’s, the salacious curious, and the young literati, there were still other visitors to Miller’s shack. His appetite for the mysterious was soon widely known and a host of dealers in occult lore came to see him: astrologers, faith healers, sexologists, and spiritualists laid their experiences in the wonderful at his feet and marveled with him over the grandeurs of the Lost Continent of Mu.

You can see here the forerunner of both the hippie culture of the sixties and the New Age movement typical of California which blossomed in the eighties. Miller himself wrote a book about his life in California, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, published in 1957. Both the title and the covers of the American and British editions refer to the 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose religious paintings and particularly his triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, is a bizarre masterpiece foreshadowing surrealism. The publisher New Directions describes Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch as

one of his most appealing books… it tells the story of Miller’s life on the Big Sur, a section of California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place; one of the most colorful in the world; and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (& writers who didn’t write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (& the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children & adult innocents; geniuses, cranks & the unclassifiable. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy & brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book; the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints & clichés of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.

Cover of the British edition (Heinemann, 1957) of Henry Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, where the UFO account was published. (credit: Straight Jackets: the Art of the Book Jacket/University of Otago Library)

Literary scholar Raoul R. Ibarguen analyzes the book in the website Henry-Miller.com:

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), one of the best of Miller’s later writings, so deviates from the cultivated “confusion” of the Paris novels as to open with two short chapters entitled “Chronological” and “Topological,” telling how Miller came to live at Big Sur and laying out the human, geological, and natural history of the place. The abrupt change indicates not so much a redirection of Miller’s formal efforts as a repudiation of formal innovation per se.

The Big Sur UFO sightings

In Part 2 of the Big Sur book, “Peace and Solitude: a Potpourri,” Henry Miller describes in some detail his own UFO sighting as well as the emergence of the flying saucers among the off-beat literati and spiritual seekers hanging around the great writer. Here is the passage in full:

Just the same, it was at Anderson Creek that the first flying saucer made its appearance in Big Sur. The chap who told me the story said it happened early one morning. In shape it was more like a dirigible than the lamp-shade variety. It hovered close to shore, plainly visible, took off and returned two more times. Shortly after this two more sightings, one at dawn, another at twilight, were made by people staying at the sulphur baths. Then one day my friend Walker Winslow woke me up out of a sound sleep to witness a strange phenomenon just above the horizon, looking seaward. We observed the strange activity of what seemed like twin stars gyrating about an invisible pivot for about twenty minutes, after which the light grew too strong and it faded out. But it was reported—as a saucer phenomenon—next day by the government station along the coast. Soon thereafter a number of friends reported saucers, lights that followed their cars, and so on. None of them were drunks or dope fiends. Some of them were, or had been, downright sceptics about “this saucer business.” One of the most vivid accounts was given by Eric Barker, then living at the Hunt Ranch near the Little Sur. In broad daylight, about four in the afternoon, he saw six small disks flying above his head at a brisk but not phenomenal speed. They were going out to sea. Eric swore that they were not buzzards, balloons or meteorites. Moreover, he is definitely not the type that “sees things.” A few weeks later a visitor from Carmel was witness to a similar phenomenon. She was so moved by the sight that she became almost hysterical. Tom Sawyer and Dorothy Weston reported lights dancing in front of their car on the way home from Monterey one night. The performance continued for over five minutes and was repeated subsequently. Ephraim Doner, whose two feet are definitely planted in the earth, was escorted for over five miles by mysterious brilliant-colored lights one evening on leaving our home. His wife and daughter were with him and corroborated his words.

So there you have it: the intersection of American literature and ufology; or when one of the great writers of the 20th century became a ufologist, describing both his own sighting and the experiences of close friends and acquaintances around the Big Sur area. In all my years as a ufologist I never recall coming across a single reference in the UFO literature to Henry Miller’s interest in the subject, until now. Unfortunately, Miller didn’t provide exact dates, but from the general time frame of the book it should be more or less within the 1947-1953 period. Miller said his own sighting had been reported “by the government station along the coast,” so presumably there is a record of it somewhere in the Project Blue Book files or their predecessors Projects Sign and Grudge. Some of the other cases he mentions of objects following cars and the like are very interesting. There is a final “flying saucer” reference in Miller’s Big Sur book, although it is more of a sociological nature but still worth quoting:

The air is full of theories about the new order, the new dispensation. Marvelous pictures are painted of the period just around the bend, when we of this earth will see the end of making war, when atomic energy will be utilized for the benefit of all mankind. But no one acts as if this glorious age which is dawning were an imminent, wholly realizable, thoroughly practicable one, indeed the only viable one. It is a beautiful subject for discussion at cocktail hour, when all the current topics have been chewed to a frazzle. Usually a rider to the flying saucer business. Or to Swami So-and-So’s latest book.

A UFO in a painting by Bosch?

Detail with possible UFO of Hieronymus Bosch’s Temptations of St Anthony, at the National Museum of Old Art in Lisbon. (credit: Web Gallery of Art)

As a final homage to Henry Miller’s interest in UFOs, we are reproducing a detail from the triptych of the Temptation of Saint Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch, preserved at the National Museum of Old Art in Lisbon. On the upper left corner of the centerpiece of the painting by the Dutch master, dated 1505-06, there are a number of strange things in the dark sky. Some are purely fantastic—a landmark of Hieronymus Bosch—but the one in the middle emitting a beam of light curiously resembles a UFO. You can see the whole painting at the Web Gallery of Art. I am not claiming that this is based on a real UFO incident, like those possibly depicted in other Renaissance paintings and broadsheets, since Bosch was the ultimate master of dreamlike, fantastic and surreal imagery, but it provided a worthwhile conclusion to this piece.

Rupert Matthews at his desk. (Credit: www.rupertmatthews,org)

According to the rules of the EP, he was to be replaced by Rupert Matthews, a prolific writer and politician who has published many books on the paranormal and UFOs. “Mr. Matthews was behind Mr. Helmer on the Tory party list in the region at the 2009 European elections, a position that would normally guarantee his succession in the event of a vacancy,” reported Your Local Guardian. However, his interest in the paranormal and ufology quickly began to work against Matthews’ once promising political future. “Golly! Ghostbuster UK MEP may not be coming to Brussels” was the December 29 headline in NEWEUROPE online, dubbed “The European Political Newspaper.” The article was decidedly against the appointment of Matthews to the EP, who was described as “a sceptic over the EU, but on precious little else. He has several fascinating interests. Chief among these is ghost hunting. Of course, there is much more to him. He’s also an expert on UFOs and alien abduction.” After listing the titles of several of the paranormal and UFO books published by Matthews, NEWEUROPE added facetiously that “this led to him being nicknamed ‘The MEP for Roswell and Bigfoot’.”

On top of the bad PR brought by his paranormal interests, Matthews was also criticized because Bretwalda Books, a publishing house of which he is a director, published a book on Political Correctness featuring golliwog dolls on the cover. The golliwog is a racially demeaning black rag doll from a 19th century character in children’s books once popular in Britain, the U.S. and Commonwealth countries. Although the cover was not for one of Matthews’ books, it led the ruling Conservative Party to announce an inquiry into the matter. According to a BBC News story on December 31, MEP Roger Helmer finally announced he was delaying his resignation until his successor was chosen. “There do seem to have been one or two administrative queries arising with central office over the succession to the seat,” said Helmer. “Naturally, I want to get those sorted out before I formalize my resignation.”

Rupert Mathews (right) shaking hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Credit: Bretwalda Books)

Who is Rupert Matthews

According to his own official website, which describes him as “a historian and political activist”:

Rupert has written over 180 books, mostly on history or military subjects.
Rupert was born 1961 and was educated at the village Church of England junior school, then at his local grammar school. He later took up a career in publishing – which brought him face to face with militant trades unionism, especially in the print unions. That experience caused Rupert to turn against socialism, state control and restrictive laws. He began campaigning for Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives and Norman Tebbit’s trades union reforms. Rupert has never looked back. Rupert stood for Parliament in 1997 and for the European Parliament in 2009. He has served 8 years on his local council.

Rupert Matthews with a Roman helmet. (Credit: www.rupertmatthews.com)

The second largest category of books published by Rupert Matthews after history is undoubtedly the paranormal. Some of the many titles are Haunted Hampshire, The Ghosthunter’s Guide to England: On the Trail of the Paranormal, Paranormal Surrey, Haunted Sunderland, Haunted Places of Dorset, Mysterious Cornwall, Mysterious Yorkshire, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Poltergeists, Encyclopedia of the Paranormal, etc. And then there are the ufological titles which include UFOs – A History of Alien Activity from
Sightings to Abductions to Global Threat, Alien Encounters – True-Life Stories of Aliens, UFOs, and Other Extra-Terrestrial Phenomena, and Roswell – Uncovering the secrets of Area 51 and the fatal UFO crash. There are also his contributions to British editions of Readers Digest’s books on the Paranormal. As you can see, Rupert Matthews is not just a casual writer on these topics but one who has made quite a professional career out of it.

In an interview with Richard Thomas’ Room 101, Rupert Matthews describes how he became interested in the paranormal. “My grandma was very interested in ghosts and the supernatural,” he said. “When I was younger she used to tell me all about boggarts (we would call them poltergeists these days), white ladies, black hounds and ghosts of all kinds. I guess that is what started me off originally.” He then went on to work for a small publishing company and began writing history books; as he traveled around the country,

I started using the time to visit any haunted hotels, pubs or open spaces in the area. Over the years I built up a large amount of photos of haunted places, interviews with witnesses and so forth. It then occurred to me that I ought to try to get it published, and one of my publishing contacts was kind enough to take the book on. It sold rather well and since then I have been doing almost as much on the paranormal and unexplained as on history. Great fun.

Some of Matthews' books (credit: Book Sales, Inc., Heinemann, Arcturus Publishing Ltd., David Brown Book Co.)

Rupert Matthews’ views on UFOs

Rupert Matthews’ UFO books are basic introductions to the subject geared for a younger and general audience. In the interview with Richard Thomas he discussed some of his views on the subject. When asked about the closing of the UFO desk at the Ministry of Defence a year or so ago, Matthews said:

I spoke to a fairly senior RAF officer about this. His view was that UFOs were not the business of the RAF. He said that the RAF was there to fly missions over Afghanistan, keep an eye on Russian spy planes and such like. He was prepared to accept that there MIGHT be an objective reality to the UFO phenomenon, but seemed to think it was a job for the intelligence services. Until we know what UFOs are and why they are here, he did not think the RAF should be involved. The RAF has more than enough to keep itself busy. Whether that is the real reason I have no idea, but that was his view.

Thomas then asked him about “rumours of an ultra covert British UFO group and recovered alien technology,” to which Matthews responded:

I know that the US and UK intelligence services share a lot of information, but not everything. I would expect them to share the broad outlines about what they know about UFOs, but would maybe keep juicy details to themselves. As for alien technology, that presupposes that UFOs are alien spacecraft and that one or more has crashed and been recovered. I’m not entirely convinced by either of these suggestions. I know the alien spacecraft theory is the most popular among UFO researchers, but while it may well turn out to be the case, I think it is a case of “not proven” for now.

We also found and read a number of interesting UFO articles by Matthews posted on Richard Thomas’ blog. In one of them, “The truth behind Roswell,” he described the research he did for his book on Roswell, concluding that “in the final analysis something fell out of the sky in early July 1947. The United States Air Force did move quickly to collect the wreckage, then quickly launched a determined effort to kill the story and keep the find secret. Can I tell you what it was that fell from the sky? No. There are several possibilities that would fit the evidence – and an alien spacecraft is but one of those.”

Another article, “UFO Crashes in Britain,” described the evidence, such as it is, for these types of incidents in the UK. He noted that there isn’t anything remotely close to Roswell in terms of evidence and fame (the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case is sometimes compared to Roswell, but it clearly didn’t involve a UFO crash). Probably the most interesting case reviewed by Matthews is the Berwyn Mountain incident of January 23, 1974 in northern Wales, when many witnesses reported “spherical or saucer shaped” lights “moving erratically in odd patterns and formations. Then, at 8.38pm,” continued Matthews, “residents around the Berwyn Mountain in Wales heard a deafening rumbling explosion and the ground shook. People came out into the streets. One man said he had seen lights over the mountain just before the crash and speculated that an aircraft had crashed.” The local police went to the mountain with a nurse to check if there were casualties. The plot thickened shortly thereafter as explained by Matthews:

Not long afterwards a convoy of army trucks arrived, the men cordoned off the mountain and refused admittance to anyone. The policeman and nurse came back down under army escort. They said that they had seen lights and debris as if from a crash, but had been instructed to leave. The nurse would later say that she had got close to the crash and seen bodies that did not seem to be human.

The official explanation for the events at Berwyn are that an unusually large meteor hurtled across the sky at the same time that an earthquake struck Berwyn. Some geologists have speculated that the lights were the rare, and largely unexplained phenomenon, of earthquake lights which are sometimes reported in the air just before earthquakes strike. Others remain convinced that it was a UFO that crashed at Berwyn, though very little of the craft seems to have survived the impact.

The gate to Rudloe Manor in Bath. (Credit: Derek Hawkins/Wikimeda Commons)

The mystery of RAF Rudloe Manor

Another fascinating article posted by Rupert Matthews in 2010 is “RAF Rudloe Manor and the UFO Files,” which describes the history of this top secret RAF installation in Bath. Its link as a UFO reporting center was first outed by Timothy Good in his 1987 bestseller Above Top Secret. Matthews tells the history of the base since it was first set up by the RAF during World War II; how he used to poke around the area in the 1970s when visiting relatives in Bath; and how “I began to hear rumours that the well guarded base at Rudloe Manor might have some UFO link.” Although the details are obviously classified, Matthews mentions underground facilities housing “the Central Computer Complex” and how “Rudloe Manor has long been the HQ of the RAF Provost & Security Services (PSS), which is responsible for all aspects of security affecting the RAF. It includes personnel from MI5 and MI6 who liaise with the PSS and – at least from time to time if nor permanently – CIA personnel as well. We know from declassified government documents that the PSS collated and sifted UFO reports for several decades.” Then comes the punch line:

In the early 1990s UFO investigators in Britain began to notice that there was a cluster of high quality sightings over the Box-Rudloe-Corsham area of Wiltshire. This reminded some of a similar cluster of sightings over Warminster, a few miles to the south, in the 1960s. Intrigued, investigators began paying more attention. The sightings were found to centre over Rudloe and to consist largely of UFOs without wings that pulsated with colours of blue, red or green. Often they were said to be diamond or conical in shape.

These are just some samples of the type of research conducted by Rupert Matthews, a prolific author, paranormal expert, ufologist and, yes, politician with the ruling Tory Conservative Party. Whether he can navigate successfully around the series of obstacles preventing him to become a member of the European Parliament remains to be seen. According to the British rules, the EP seat for East Midland should be his upon the resignation of the current member Roger Helmer, but politics as we know can be a dirty game and the Tory machinery may block him. If he does make it, however, there is no doubt that he will instantly become the best informed MEP on all matters relating to UFOs and the paranormal.

The “space ball” found recently in Namibia, now in the possession of that country’s National Forensic Science Institute. (Credit: AFP Photo)

The recent story of a mysterious “space ball” found in Namibia, Africa last November, which baffled for a while that country’s National Forensic Science Institute, has now been identified as a type of space debris known as a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV), according to a story posted by Discovery News. The metallic ball discovered in a Namibian grassland is 1.1 meter in diameter and weighs 13 pounds.

One of the space spheres on display at the UFO Vision Museum in Victoria, Argentina; photo of George Adamski in the background. (Credit: Open Minds Production)

The sidebar, “The Metallic Spheres – a case of mistaken identity,” however, did not remain unidentified, and was put there as an example of so-called space mysteries that can be successfully explained, although some ufologists prefer to keep the mystery alive and suggest they may be of alien origin. These metallic balls have been falling to different parts of the Earth—mostly in Africa and Latin America—for a number of years, causing sometimes a bit of stir in the local press. They are on exhibit in at least two museums in Argentina. Hoping to discourage further confusion with real UFO-related stuff, we post below my article from Open Minds magazine, adding several photos that were not used in the original print copy.

THE METALLIC SPHERES – A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Two space spheres on display in the patio of the Firmat Museum in Santa Fe, Argentina. (Credit: Open Minds Production)

Here is a representative Moon Dust memo from the Republic of Chad in Africa, dated October 10, 1970:

This report forwards photographs of object believed to come under Project ‘MOON DUST’. The object was seen falling in an area 30 kms N.E. of LAI (0924N-1618E) on 1 August 1970. It produced three loud explosions on landing and was said to have burned for five days. The sphere weighs 30 pounds and has a circumference of four feet. A second object was found in the same general area. It however, resembles an automobile shaft. Photographs of this object are forwarded.

A longer Moon Dust document, dated August 17, 1979, concerns “an unidentified object having been found on a farm near Santa Cruz” in Bolivia, described as “about three times the size of a basketball.” The document quoted the director of the Air Force Academy, Col. Ariel Coca, as stating, “The sphere is made of special light alloy but very resistant, possibly a fuel tank or a part of a satellite! The object does not have any signs or marks that could identify its origin nor the country to which it belongs.”

Two views of the space sphere that fell in Mexico in 2008, now in the possession of Jaime Maussán. Notice the extensive damage inflicted due to reentry. (Credit: Open Minds Production)

The argument in favor of the extraterrestrial origin of these spheres made by some ufologists in Mexico and Argentina is that they are extremely hard, almost impossible to burn or cut.

Cover of the Mexican magazine Contacto Ovni in the 1990s with the headline, 'The Mystery of the Spheres.' (Credit: Contacto Ovni)

If you still have any doubt about the provenance of these objects, checkout Paul Maley’s Space Debris website, to see images of a number of these “space balls” of varying sizes and conditions found around the world. These spheres provide a useful cautionary tale in learning how to distinguish prosaic man-made space objects from true unknown devices. There is a good possibility that many so-called UFO crashes have a terrestrial origin, but others are still enigmatic and so far unexplained.

Marble portrait of Alexander the Great, 2nd-1st century BC (Credit: The British Museum)

Ever since the well known radio broadcaster, author and ufologist Frank Edwards published it in his book Stranger Than Science, the story of a UFO incident during the military campaigns of Alexander the Great has been repeated endless times in books, articles, TV programs and the web. Its latest incarnation appears in the just released book, UFOs in Wartime – What They Didn’t Want You to Know (Berkley Books) by Mack Maloney. It’s understandable than Maloney included this case since Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) is one of the most successful and iconic military commanders of all times. Unfortunately, Maloney didn’t do any research on this particular story, limiting himself to paraphrasing the Edwards account and a second story where “flying shields” supposedly helped Alexander’s army to conquer the city of Tyre in modern-day Lebanon.

Despite the many repetitions of Alexander’s UFO story, there are only two modern versions of it and neither one provides historical references or sources. All efforts by various historians and researchers to find ancient sources have failed so far. Before mentioning these efforts by Jacques Vallee and others, let’s see first what was supposed to have happened. The first version published originally by Frank Edwards in 1959 is very brief. It comes at the end of his book in Chapter 72, “Spies in the Skies.” Edwards wrote:

Alexander the Great was not the first to see them nor was he the first to find them troublesome. He tells of two strange craft that dived repeatedly at his army until the war elephants, the men, and the horses all panicked and refused to cross the river where the incident occurred. What did the things look like? His historian describes them as great shining silvery shields, spitting fire around the rims… things that came from the skies and returned to the skies.

The second version was published in 1966 by Alberto Fenoglio in the Italian ufological publication Clypeus (issue #9, 1st Semester 1966) in an article titled, “Cronoistoria su oggetti volanti del passato – Apunti per una clipeostoria” (Chronological History of Flying Objects in the Past – Notes for a History of Shields). Fenoglio’s account, which like Edwards didn’t cite any historical sources, was in turn translated and published by the English ancient astronaut author Raymond Drake in his 1967 Gods and Spacemen in Greece and Rome (recently reprinted by Tim Beckley’s Global Communications as Alien Space Gods of Ancient Greece and Rome). After repeating the Edwards account, Drake goes on to say that Fenoglio based his version on the 19th century historian Johann Gustav Droysen, revealing the following startling information during the Macedonian siege of Tyre on 332 BC:

The fortress would not yield, its walls were fifty feet high and constructed so solidly that no siege-engine was able to damage it. The Tyrians disposed of the greatest technicians and builders of war-machines of the time and they intercepted in the air the incendiary arrows and projectiles hurled by the catapults on the city.

One day suddenly there appeared over the Macedonian camp these “flying shields”, as they had been called, which flew in triangular formation led by an exceedingly large one, the others were smaller by almost a half. In all there were five. The unknown chronicler narrates that they circled slowly over Tyre while thousands of warriors on both sides stood and watched them in astonishment. Suddenly from the largest “shield” came a lightning-flash that struck the walls, these crumbled, other flashes followed and walls and towers dissolved, as if they had been built of mud, leaving the way open for the besiegers who poured like an avalanche through the breeches. The “flying shields” hovered over the city until it was completely stormed then they very swiftly disappeared aloft, soon melting into the blue sky.

Detail of the Alexander Sarcophagus in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, showing Alexander fighting the Persians at the Battle of Issus. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Unverified account

There is a rather modern tone in this account by Fenoglio, reminiscent of contemporary UFO stories, with phrases like the objects “flew in triangular formation” and “hovered over the city until it was completely stormed.” If this was a true story and the “flying shields” played such a decisive role in a key battle, one would expect to find it mentioned by Plutarch, Quintus Curtius and all the other historians of Antiquity who wrote extensively about Alexander the Great, and yet none have been found. I looked at French translations of Droysen’s German biography of Alexander, where he described the siege of Tyre in detail. Needless to say, the flying shields and lightning-bolts are not there. He describes how the Greek army bombarded the walls heavily with catapults until a part of it finally collapsed. Moreover, I later found a more complete translation of Fenoglio’s Clypeus article where he writes that, “during the siege of Tyre in the year 332 BC, strange flying objects were observed. Johann Gustav Droysen in his History of Alexander the Great [Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (1833)] does not cite it intentionally, believing it to be a fantasy of the Macedonian soldiers.” So Drake misunderstood completely the Droysen reference or else translated a distorted version of the original article, but either way the Fenoglio story lacks any valid ancient or modern sources.

Cover of the book Wonders in the Sky by Vallee and Aubeck, showing an artist’s rendition of Alexander’s silver shields. (Credit: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

By far the most thorough analysis of this case was made by historian Yannis Deliyannis in his excellent website “Chronicom Mirabilium – A historian’s look on ancient anomalous celestial phenomena and mysterious history,” specifically on his piece, “Did Alexander the Great really see UFOs?” posted in November 2009. After going over the same material by Edwards and Fenoglio discussed already, Deliyannis made an honest effort to find some sources to the legend. He discovered that the classical historian Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote the following in his Historia Alexandri Magni (lib. IV, cap. V):

Furthermore, they [the Tyrians] would heat bronze shields in a blazing fire, fill them with hot sand and boiling excrement and suddenly hurl them from the walls. None of their deterrents aroused greater fear than this. The hot sand would make its way between the breastplate and the body; there was no way to shake it out and it would burn through whatever it touched. The soldiers would throw away their weapons, tear off all their protective clothing and thus expose themselves to wounds without being able to retaliate.
(From Heckel, W. and Yardley, J. Alexander the Great: historical texts in translation, 2004, p. 147)

“This is as close as we can get to Fenoglio’s ‘flying shields’ by looking at ancient sources,” commented Deliyannis, “and I believe this passage from Quintus Curtius is the basis Fenoglio used for his version, whether intentionally or as a result of a (hard-to-believe) misunderstanding or mistranslation.” As for the description of “silvery shields,” Deliyannis points out that an elite unit of Alexander’s army known as the Hypaspists changed their name at the beginning of the campaign in India to Argyraspides, which means “silver shields” because they decorated their shields with silver, so that could be another source of confusion for modern writers like Edwards, Drake and Fenoglio.

The Alexander Romance

A naval action during the siege of Tire in 332 BC by the 19th century artist André Castaigne (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The personality of Alexander the Great was already larger than life even in his own lifetime. There were rumors that he was not the son of King Philip II of Macedon, but that the chief god Zeus had seduced his mother Queen Olympias (played by Angelina Jolie in the Oliver Stone movie), thus becoming a semi-god. This rumor was probably used as propaganda to discourage any resistance to his invasions. In just 12 years, Alexander changed completely the ancient world, conquering the mighty Persian Empire and pushing all the way to India in the east and Egypt to the west. Many cities still bear his name, such as Alexandria in Egypt and Kandahar (from his name in Persian, Iskandar) in Afghanistan. Although his empire was divided among his main generals after his death in Babylon in 323 BC at the age of 32, the era of Hellenic civilization spread through the Mediterranean and beyond, symbolized by the famous Library of Alexandria.

Although the known facts about Alexander the Great were fantastic enough, the Pseudo-Calisthenes and a series of Byzantine, Armenian, Arab and European variants developed through the Middle Ages converted the “Alexander Romance” into a kind of medieval science-fiction. There are dozens of variants—some of the more famous are the 15th century French illuminated manuscript, La Vraye Histoire du Bon Roy Alixandre (The True Story of the Good King Alexander), now in the British Library, and the Spanish epic Libro de Alexandre (Book of Alexander), written between 1178 ad 1250 AD. Many of these versions are magnificently illustrated. Among other fantastic deeds of the Alexander Romance, the Macedonian hero built a wall in Asia confining the armies of Gog and Magog, which will not be unleashed until the end of times; reached Eden or the primeval Paradise of Adam and Eve; flew in the sky in a chariot propelled by griffins and descended to the bottom of the ocean in a barrel-shaped submarine; fought and killed dragons and many other exotic monsters; encountered all kinds of strange creatures including the fabled Amazons, a bigfoot-type Wildman, and the legendary headless beings known in Antiquity as Blemmyes, who had eyes and mouth on their chests.

Beautiful illustration by medieval artist Jean Wauquelin showing Alexander’s aerial voyage in a cage flown by griffins, from the Histoire du bon roy Alexandre, 1438. (Credit: Biliothèque nationale de France)

Illuminated manuscript from the XV century showing Alexander the Great’s diving bell submarine. (Credit: British Library)

Alexander encounter the Wildman in his voyage to Asia, from a medieval manuscript of the Alexander Romance. (Credit: Biliothèque nationale de France)

One of the most delightful stories of the Alexander Romance is the King’s flying chariot pushed by griffins, which exhibits the most quaint propulsion system ever devised in literature. According to the various versions of the Romance, Alexander had captured two griffins during his campaign in India. He built a cage for one man to stand up and kept the animals without eating for three days, so they would be really hungry. He then tied the griffins to the cage and put a big piece of meat on top of a spear, dangling the meat in front of the griffins. “Trying to grab it, the griffins kept flying,” says the Libro de Alexandre. This scene was particularly popular with medieval illustrators, and so was another science-fiction type episode of his descent into the bottom of the ocean in a barrel-shaped submarine, which is mentioned in a famous letter on future inventions by Friar Roger Bacon, one of the wisest men of the Middle Ages. In this letter written c. 1260, Bacon wrote:

A machine can be constructed for submarine journeys, for seas and rivers. It dives to the bottom without danger to man. Alexander the Great has made use of such a device, as we know from Ethicus the astronomer. Such things have been made long ago and they are still made in our days, except perhaps the flying machine…

Alexander the Great in his griffin-powered flying machine, XV century, from La Vraye Histoire du Bon Roy Alixandre. (Credit: British Library)

It is clear that the many exploits of the Alexander Romance are fanciful and not factual, although they deserve a spot in the history of science-fiction. The historian Yannis Deliyannis found a “celestial prodigy” in the so-called Letter to Aristotle worth citing:

Immediately after that the sky grew very black and dark, and from the dark sky there came burning fire. The fire fell to the earth like a burning torch, and the whole plain was burning from the fire’s flame. Then men said that they thought it was the anger of the gods which had fallen upon us. Then I ordered old clothing to be torn up and used as a protection against the fire. After that we had a quiet and peaceful night, once our difficulties assuaged.
(Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript, Cambridge, 1995, p. 245)

Deliyannis points out that this account is not as fantastic as the one described by Edwards and, in any case, “the historiographical value of the documents belonging to the Romance of Alexander” are not reliable. He concludes his thorough study of Alexander’s alleged UFO incidents by pointing out the amusing fact that “the aforementioned UFO writers have somewhat become the spiritual continuators of the tradition of the Alexander Romance in our century, still adding marvelous events to it, as had done before them their medieval predecessors…”

We have to agree with Deliyannis. Until ufologists and ancient astronaut writers find legitimate historical accounts that back up the alleged UFO incidents of Alexander the Great, the story should not be repeated as factual.

The Bundestag Building in Berlin (credit: Julian Herzog/Wikimedia Commons)

Germany is falling behind the curve within all major Western democracies when it comes to the release of official UFO files. While the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Denmark, among other NATO countries, have declassified a substantial amount of official UFO documents, Germany has done no such thing, maintaining officially that no federal agencies have investigated UFOs.

Seal of the Deutsche Bundestag


I want to know facts and it bothers me that in France, England, USA, Canada, the citizens can see the UFO files, and I am not informed as a German from my German government. It is therefore such a glaring discrepancy…In France, a citizen is automatically informed by his government because the government provides the UFO files to the website of the space agency, so officially on the government side, anyone can view the documents free at home. I, as a German in Germany, must also send faxes, make phone calls, file a claim. This has a cost and stress, which I do not think is proper.

The plaintiff Frank Reitemeyer (right) in court. (credit: German Exopolitics)

The Court had to decide “if the right to official information under the Freedom of Information Act (German acronym IFG) also applies to the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag.” The defendant alleged it did not because it’s protected under intellectual property laws (copyright). The Court, however, didn’t buy this argument, stating that “the plaintiff did not intend to bring this [UFO] study into the market but simply wanted to read it.” The German Bundestag plans to appeal the decision at the Supreme Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg.

The 2009 Bundestag Study

Cover page of the secret German Bundestag UFO study (credit: German Exopolitics)

For years the German Federal Government has denied any knowledge of UFOs, and the only reason we know about this study is because a draft of it was leaked to Robert Fleischer, coordinator of Exopolitics Germany, and some excerpts were published in the German newspaper Welt Kompakt. It all started back in 2009 and Robert Fleischer explained its genesis in an interview with Andreas Müller, one of the editors of Cross-Aktuell.de, the coordinator of the German Exopolitics Initiative:

CDU member of the Bundestag Gita Connemann, who requested the UFO study. (credit: Gita Connemann website)

A freelance journalist and photographer from Lower Saxony, Thorsten Wachten called me one day. He was about to interview a member of the Bundestag, Gitta Connemann (CDU, Christian Democratic Union), and asked for reliable information on the UFO issue that he could address to the Congresswoman Connemann. I sent him our briefing document for journalists and some other documents. When Mr. Watchen presented the documents during the interview and then asked for her views, Mrs. Connemann had no immediate answer. She was amazed that there were so many [documents] on this subject with unknown facts, so she promised to instruct the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag with an elaboration on the subject, to find a suitable partner for Exopolitics Germany. Mrs. Connemann kept her word, and a few weeks later I received the draft, together with a nice cover letter.

The German Bundestag report is titled, “The search for extraterrestrial life and the implementation of UN Resolution A/33/426 on the observation of unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life forms.” This pertains obviously to the famous United Nations General Assembly Decision 33/426 of December 18, 1978, “Establishment of an agency or a department of the United Nations for undertaking, coordinating and disseminating the results of research into unidentified flying objects and related phenomena,” brought about by the initiative of then Prime Minister of Grenada, sir Eric Gairy, and discussed previously in this website. The Bundestag report analyzed the German response to this UN initiative as well as a historical discussion of whether or not there were official UFO investigations in the Federal Republic during the Cold War.

Robert Flesicher (left) with Frank Reitemeyer (credit: German Exopolitics)

The proceedings of the Berlin Court are highly significant for many reasons. It may force Germany to abandon its lone wolf policy of UFO denial and join the majority of other Western democracies in Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand and release at least partially some of its UFO files. This is the argument that Robert Fleischer and his German Exopolitical movement is making. “It’s just unbelievable that Germany should not have any UFO files,” Fleischer told the German newspaper Express. “After all, already 19 countries worldwide have opened their secret archives.”

Moreover, thanks to the work of pioneer German ufologists like the well known author Michael Hesemann and Illobrand von Ludwiger of MUFON-CES, many German cases—some with military implications—have been already uncovered, although the official documentation is still missing. In his interview with Andreas Müller, Fleischer mentioned one particularly interesting case from 1976 investigated by von Ludwiger:

At that time, a civilian pilot in the cockpit of his Piper encountered in Diepholz (Lower Saxony) a large glowing ball. From this object came such a strong magnetic effect that the small plane began to spin around its own axis. The pilot was injured by flying objects and asked for military assistance. Shortly after, two F4 Phantoms pursued the object. After his arrival in Hanover, the pilot was received by Germans and Americans and subjected to a rigorous interrogation and forced to sign a confidentiality agreement. A subsequent investigation revealed the strong magnetization of the Piper, the compass had to be replaced.

Plenary session of the German Bundestag (credit: Kopp Online)

As for the copyright defense raised by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag (German acronym WDBB), this is a particularly specious argument. The WDBB is not a private business but a government agency paid by the German taxpayer, including the plaintiff Frank Reitemeyer, and its research is made for the benefit of the members of the Bundestag (Parliament) who are elected by the German people to represent them. That this lame “intellectual property” argument could win in court under these circumstances is hard to believe, but the Supreme Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg will have the final word.

For more information in German you can check the aktuell.de website and the Exopolitik Deutschland site.

Inner wall of Ciudad Rodrigo (credit: Miguel A. Monjas/Wikimedia Commons)

Years ago I received a package of Spanish UFO-related clippings and documents and I was intrigued by one particular article titled, “Un OVNI en el siglo XV” (A UFO in the 15th century). The story was not written by an ufologist but by a literary editor, Luis Bonilla, in the magazine La Estafeta Literaria, published by the prestigious cultural organization Ateneo de Madrid in 1978. It told the story a UFO sighting on January 5, 1433 in Ciudad Rodrigo, seen by the entire court of King Juan (or John) II of Castile (1405-1454), father of the famous Queen Isabella who backed Columbus. The source of the account transcribed by Bonilla was a letter written by a certain Bachelor Fernán Gómez de Cibdarreal, said to have been the physician of the King, to the Royal Chaplain Pedro López de Miranda. Although there is quite a bit of controversy concerning the authenticity of this document, as discussed below, let’s see first its contents.

Fernán Gómez begins his letter to López de Miranda describing briefly how the court had arrived to Ciudad Rodrigo (currently in the province of Salamanca in western Spain) on its way to Madrid. The retinue included a number of important figures like the Bishop of Palencia and the Condestable (Constable) Don Alvaro de Luna, one of the era’s most powerful military leaders. The letter continues:

Medieval castle in Ciudad Rodrigo (credit: Miguel A. Monjas/Wikimedia Commons)

I shall not tire your lordship with this narration, since we had just arrived [to Ciudad Rodrigo] when, walking on Wednesday the 5th of this month of January [1433], we suddenly saw a great flame of yellow fire attached to the sky move from one end to the other; it had inside like a black root and all its borders were more whitish than the middle; and it left with a great roar, causing horses and mules to ran in fear, and my own mule didn’t stop until it touched another mule. Great disputes about this arose between the learned ones and those with no degrees who, without having seen the words of Aristotle, talked about how this light was up there, and how its interior could be lit like a log. The dean of Burgos stated he believes it must be the matter from the first region [in the sky], viscous and condensed, lit by the Sun, and how its weight prevented its quick dispersal, and the nature of fire brought it from here to there while its viscous part was spent, and the roar was its end. I concur with his opinion, because it could not have been what Aristotle calls the nature of comets… because it would have not moved in such varied manner, nor any other, and it would have not ended with that roar. The enemies of the Condestable [Don Alvaro de Luna, Commander of the Army] said this flame was the Condestable, who would set ablaze Castile and the roar was his last gasp. These are fables as each one desires. We don’t know how is the earth beneath us, and we want to know how are the hidden places of the sky; and I think that Aristotle found something else in his century from what he says for sure in his writings. Our Lord, etc.

Title page of the apocryphal 1499 Burgos edition of the Centón Epistolario. (credit: Fondo Antiguo de la Universidad de Granada)

This is a remarkable letter in that it not only describes the celestial phenomenon quite thoroughly, but adds fascinating philosophical, scientific and sociological attempts to understand it according to the limited knowledge available at the time. The fact that the object made a big noise that scared all the horses and mules would tend to rule out a meteor or a comet. The account is contained in the “Epistle” (or Letter) LV (55) from a book entitled, CENTON EPISTOLARIO DEL BACHILLER FERNAN GOMEZ DE CIBDAREAL, supposedly published in the city of Burgos in 1499. Centón is an old Spanish word for a literary piece composed of another author’s phrases and fragments, like a literary collage or pastiche. The Epistle or Letter LVI (56), addressed to Juan de Mena (1411-1456), a well known Spanish medieval poet, alludes to the same celestial event, although the text was edited out to avoid repeating the same description. It reads:

The Printer to the Reader.

In this epistle the Bachelor of Cidareal narrates the same that was narrated previously to the first Chaplain of the King concerning the flame that showed itself in the sky, until the end of the narration, telling again the same event.

Your Lordship may have his say as someone who knows so much, and like that who puts his hands up to the elbows in the frame of Mercury.

Juan de Mena was the author of a remarkable allegorical poem entitled Laberinto de Fortuna (Labyrinth of Fortune) full of mythological metaphors and hermetical references, thus the phrase of “the frame of Mercury” and “someone who knows so much.” The rest of the letter deals with political news like an army of six hundred spears sent by the King of Castile to the border with the Moorish Kingdom of Granada.

Page with the 1433 UFO incident in Ciudad Rodrigo from the first edition of the Centón Epistolario. (credit: Fondo Antiguo de la Universidad de Granada)

A controversial document

Unfortunately, as is often the case with UFO documents—even ancient ones—there is quite a bit of controversy regarding the authenticity of Fernán Gómez’s Centón. However, we are not talking of a modern forgery but an old one going back to the 1600s, when this book was first commented in Spanish literary circles. Back when I received the original package it was very hard to research this kind of case. You had to go to a public library or university library and find some reference book, but surely not an original edition. Nowadays, using Google Books or the massive site Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, which has a huge amount of resources for Spanish literary and historical texts, one can easily find all the original editions and commentaries with a little patience and skill.

King Juan II of Castile in battle with all the royal insignias from an old Spanish manuscript. (credit: Sílex Universidad)

Luis Bonilla alludes briefly to the controversy but cites a couple of scholars who believed in the authenticity of the letters: Father Benito Feijoo, an important encyclopedist author from the 18th century, and Eugenio de Ochoa, a literary scholar from the 19th century, who reprinted the Centón in 1850 in his Epistolario Español – Colección de Cartas de Españoles Ilustres Antiguos y Modernos (Spanish Epistolary – Collection of Letters from Illustrious Spaniards Ancient and Modern). In his Introduction, Ochoa wrote:

It is a fairly generalized opinion that the letters of the Bachelor Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal are forgeries and that its author is a made-up character that never existed, supported principally by the fact that there is no mention neither of him nor of his letters in our histories until very modern times; and that according to the consensus of bibliographers, the primitive edition of the Centón (Burgos, 1499) is notoriously apocryphal. Nevertheless, we cannot even agree with the hypothesis of a such fraud: its goal is not clear nor it seems credible that fiction would get so close to the truth up to that level. The Bachelor’s letters are a model of language and a treasure of curious news about the reign of Don Juan II . . .

Despite his eloquence, Ochoa seems to be definitely in the minority regarding the authenticity of the Centón. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, one of the towering figures of Spanish literary scholarship in the 19th century, believed them to be a forgery and so did the great majority of literary experts and historians, particularly in modern times. Moreover, the probable culprit was already identified as far back as the late 17th century. He was Juan Antonio de Vera, Count of de la Roca (1583-1658), a diplomat and minor literary figure in baroque Spain. He was a friend of the famous playwright Lope de Vega and published a book under his own name, The Ambassador, which had moderate success. Beginning in 1624, he served in several diplomatic missions to the Holy See in Rome, the Kingdom of Savoy and the Republic of Venice. But more germane to our subject, Spanish historian Julio Caro Baroja stated that Vera suffered from a “genealogical psychopathology,” which would explain his forgery of the Centón. As it turns out, spliced here and there throughout the 105 alleged letters of Fernán Gómez, there are references to the Vera family to pump up their importance in early Spanish history.

A study by Carmen Fernández-Daza Alvarez of Madrid’s Complutense University, “The Epistolary Centón of Juan Antonio de Vera,” published in the Revista de Filología Románica, 1994-95, discusses all the ins and outs of this affair. It even includes a mention of “a full epistle debating certain cosmetological phenomena that Aristotle had studied and that didn’t seem similar to the balls of fire they had seen.” Fernández-Daza also sketched what she believes to be the way Count of de la Roca forged the 1499 apocryphal edition of the Centón. The Count was the Spanish Ambassador to the Republic of Venice in the 1630s and, according to Fernández-Daza,

Tomb of King Juan II of Castile in Burgos. (credit: Ecelan/Wikimedia Commons)

The Spanish Embassy in Venice had a clandestine printing press organized by Count of de la Roca, to which types bought in Germany arrived often. There he indulged with gusto in his falsifications, supporting the provocations and responses of Italian authors and paying for chimeric editions. Sometimes he printed in Trieste books which were said to have been edited in Orleans. It is almost certain that the Centón was printed in that Venetian “stamperia” [printing press] between the years of 1636 and 1640 and Spain received it full of Italianisms.

The real UFO of 1433

All the experts who questioned the authenticity of the Centón also agreed that, for the most part, the Count of de la Vera utilized real events during the reign of King Juan II to compile the letters of his supposed physician. The main source for this material was the Chronicle of Juan II of Castile, a massive chronological history of his reign beginning with his childhood in 1406 up to his death in 1454, which was compiled and edited by several authors including Alvar García de Santa María and Fernán Pérez de Guzmán.

Title page of the Chronicle of King Juan II from a 1591 Pamplona edition. (credit: Universidad Complutense de Madrid/Google Books)

This book was printed several times in the 16th century, including its first edition of 1517 printed in Logroño, which the Library of Congress calls “one of the masterpieces of early Spanish printing.” Its full title is Cronica del serenisssimo Rey Don Juan Segundo deste nombre (Chronicle of the Most Serene King Don Juan the Second of this name). Unlike the Centón, there is no doubt whatsoever about the authenticity of this book. If we turn to the Table of Contents for “the year of thirty three” (1433), we see Chapter ccxxxvi (236), “Of how when the King left Ciudad Rodrigo, a great flame appeared in the sky, which lasted a long time, and which all that saw it were marveled.” The full text of Chapter 236 dealing with this event is the following:

While the King was in Ciudad Rodrigo, he decided to call the procurators, ordering that they should come to the town of Madrid, and he left from Ciudad Rodrigo at the beginning of the year of one thousand and four hundred and thirty three years, on Wednesday on the fifth day of January, and as they marched they all saw a great flame that was running in the sky, which lasted a long while, and which gave such a big roar that was heard up to seven or eight leagues from there. The King continued his march to Madrid . . .

This text clearly confirms that some unusual celestial object was seen in the sky sometime during the day on January 5, 1433. The report adds that the phenomenon lasted for a long while and was followed by a loud roar. The old Spanish league is a unit of measurement roughly equivalent to about 4.2 km or 2.6 miles, which means the UFO roar was heard from a distance of about 16 miles. This was obviously the original text from which the Count of de la Roca added a couple of colorful details like the horses and mules running in fear and all the talk about Aristotle and the viscous matter from the first region of the sky, etc., stuff that a cultivated literary man like Juan Antonio de Vera could have added easily. But the basic report is still valid.

A weird Fortean phenomenon in 1438

The old medieval town of Maderuelo (credit: Tuispi/Wikimedia Commons)

When the King was in Roa in that year [1438], he was told how in Maderuelo, a town of the Condestable [Don Alvaro de Luna], a marvelous thing occurred which has never been seen nor heard in the world: which was that they saw coming from the air very large stones, like light sparrows, which didn’t weight more than a feather, and even though some of them hit the heads they didn’t cause any damage: and these fell in very large numbers over that town and near it, and because the King and all those who heard of it had doubts, he sent the Bachelor Juan Ruyz de Agreda, a military officer of his court, to go there to inquire if this was true: and he went, and not only certified that these were seen, but he brought some of those stones, as large as a small pillow and as light as a feather, and they were all hollow and floxas, so that the King and all those who saw them were totally marveled.

I was unable to find the meaning of the old Spanish word floxas; another old word used in the text, tova, also gave me some trouble, as it was not mentioned in any modern Spanish dictionary, though the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy identified it as a cogujada, a type of bird of the same family than the sparrow. The old medieval town of Maderuelo is located in the province of Segovia in Castile. As for the cause of this event, I can’t find no explanation whatsoever, but it seemed important enough for King Juan II to send a high ranking military officer of his court (the old Spanish word is adalid, a military leader) to investigate and bring back some of the stones that fell from the air . Strange things were going on in Castile in the 1430s indeed.

	You can download the original letters of Fernán Gómez de Cibdarreal about the 1433 UFO sighting in Ciudad Rodrigo from a 1775 Madrid edition of the Centón Epistolario by clicking the image.
	You can download the original text of the 1433 and 1438 incidents from this 1591 Pamplona edition of the Crónica de Juan II in Madrid’s Complutense University, by clicking the image.

Eade's Prince Philip biography (credit: Henry Holt and Co)

As reported in previous articles in this website about the Royals and UFOs, the Duke of Edinburgh’s interest in ufology, which included a subscription to Flying Saucer Review, the UK’s top magazine in the period between the 1950s and the 1980s, was spearheaded by his uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten. The Earl of Mountbatten was a famous Admiral of the Fleet who served as Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia during World War II and was the last British Viceroy of India. He even investigated personally a UFO landing and CE-III right in his Broadlands Estate in Romsey, Hamphisre, in 1955 (all the relevant documents were posted in that story).

Another key UFO player in Prince Philip’s entourage was Air Marshal Sir Peter Horsley, who served as Equerry to Princess Elizabeth and later the Duke of Edinburgh in the period between 1949 and 1956. The Equerry, now a senior aide to the royals, is a historical position that goes back to medieval times for the man who was in charge of the King’s horses, a key job in the days when horses were the main means of transportation and battle. As revealed in his 1998 autobiography, Sounds from Another Room, Horsley arranged for UFO witnesses to give their testimony at Buckingham Palace and, even more incredibly, stated he once met and talked at length with a man at a house in Ealing who claimed to be an extraterrestrial. Horsley’s military career included serving as Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations) and Deputy Commander-in-Chief RAF Strike Command, from where he retired in 1975. An unnamed senior Ministry of Defence (MOD) official told Eade, “how unfortunate that the public will learn that the man who had his finger on the button of Strike Command was seeing little green men.” But of course the alleged ET he met in Ealing was neither little nor green, but a highly cultivated human looking person. Whether he was truly an ET is impossible to know at this stage, but it’s highly unlikely that a military officer of Horsley’s rank and character would have made up such a story.

Another significant sign of how deeply the interest in ufology had penetrated the upper crust of British society was the famous UFO debate that took place in the venerable House of Lords on the evening of

Palace of Westminster where the House of Lords meets (credit: Mgimelfarb/Wikimedia Commons)

For the full details of this historical event, we reprint below another of my classic articles written under the pseudonym of “A. Hovni” for a UFO Supplement in the long-defunct New York City daily The News World in the early eighties, when the story of the House of Lords UFO debate was still fresh. Other than adding illustrations, we transcribed the article exactly as it was published back on November 21, 1981.

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Britain’s Lords studying UFOs

By A. Hovni
Special to The News World
New York City, November 21, 1981

“It is with much pleasure that I introduce this debate this evening about unidentified flying objects – known more briefly as UFOs and sometimes as flying saucers. I understand that this is the first time the subject of UFOs has been debated in your Lordships’ House, so that this is indeed a unique occasion.” With these words, his noble lordship, the Earl of Clancarty, initiated on the evening of January 18, 1979, a historic debate in Britain’s venerable House of Lords, over a “question” previously requested by him. The debate lasted almost four hours, and not less that 14 lords stated for the record their pro and con positions concerning UFOs, and specifically , Lord Clancarty’s motion that Her Majesty’s initiate an “intra-governmental study” of UFOs, as well as his suggestion to set up a UFO Study Group within the House of Lords to look further into the matter. It was reported that within 48 hours of this debate, every single copy of Hansard—the official Parliamentary Debates records—with the UFO transcript was sold out.

Cover of LePoer book Mysterious Visitors (credit: Stein and Day Pub)

Lords get UFO rundown

With his credentials, then, it wasn’t a very difficult task for Lord Clancarty to give his peers a brief and complete rundown of the UFO story, from ancient times to the 1947 sighting by Kenneth Arnold up to the buzzing over a 13-day period of several Strategic Air Command nuclear bases in the United States. And from the candid declarations of the French Defense Minister, M. Galley, in 1974 to the famous Iranian UFO battle near Teheran two years later, in which all the communications and firing systems of a U.S.-made F-4 phantom jet were immobilized by a UFO. “There are literally vast numbers of these astounding reports,” said Clancarty. “Indeed, my lords, this worldwide UFO invasion of every country’s air space is of growing importance and therefore I suggest that Parliament keeps a continuous watch on the situation.”

Following Clancarty’s 20-minutes presentation, Lord Trefgarne, a young and experienced pilot speaking for the Tories, gave a skeptical view of the UFO problem, only to be followed by a strong denunciation by the Earl of Kimberley, a former chairman of the military committee of NATO, of the international UFO cover-up.

Super-power secrecy pact?

Kimberley’s speech cut straightforwardly through the control of the UFO problem by military establishments everywhere. “It has been reported,” he said, “that the United States and the USSR signed a pact in 1971 to swap UFO information, but the pact stated that they were to keep the rest of the world in the dark. I believe that the pact was signed so that neither superpower would make mistakes about UFOs being atomic missiles.”

The debate would still go on for another two hours. Some peers, such as Lord Hewlett, complained the debate had “precious little to do with the facts,” and declared his mission was “to explode the myth” of flying saucers. Others like Lord Gainford, explained that “I saw a UFO a little while ago,” and reassured Lord Clancarty that he would “enjoy volunteering for working in a UFO information centre.” Before Clancarty’s closing remarks for the night at almost 11 p.m., Lord Strabolgi, the peer speaking officially for the Ministry of Defence, sent a clear signal to the effect that Her Majesty’s Government would not start an official UFO investigation, nor would the government open its UFO files to the public because of Britain’s tight Official Secrets Act. An annotated, illustrated full transcript of The House of Lords UFO Debate, edited by John Michell, was later published by Open Head Press in London.

Study Group keeps going

Lord Clancarty and Major von Keviczky in 1980 (credit: ICUFON Archives)

Major von Keviczky, for instance, presented substantial evidences both in terms of photographic analysis and declassified U.S. military and intelligence documents on UFOs, to justify the establishment of a World Authority for Spatial Affairs (WASA Project) to deal with the “endangered international situation” posed by UFOs. The Study Group supported ICUFON’s motion to call for an end of the UFO secrecy through the release of military documents on the UFO level only, a request that was ignored in Britain and elsewhere.

Raymond Drake, the distinguished historian author of several books on ancient sightings, listed over 50 of such incidents extracted from mankind’s holy books, legends, traditions, historical and mythological records, etc. Antonio Ribera gave some fascinating insights of the work he has done to categorize and classify the UFO phenomenon according to its various manifestations from “daylight discs” and “E M [electromagnetic] Effects on engines, television sets, etc.” to “telepathic ‘messages’ from ‘extraterrestrials’” and “Cultism and Messianism.”

“The trouble arises from the fact that the problem is wider than the yardsticks used to measure it,” he said.

Italian military eyes UFOs

Roberto Pinotti from Italy also gave a well-documented lecture. Pinotti is the founder and president of the Centro Ufologico Nazionale (CUN) with headquarters in Milano, and his latest and perhaps most interesting contribution to ufology was that he obtained a number of military UFO reports from the Italian Ministry of Defense. Incidentally, NATO’s Italian military forces use standard UFO reporting sheets quite similar to those used by the Pentagon. More about the Italian documents on a future article in these pages.

There were still the lectures of Major Petersen, Charles Bowen and others. Some ufologists were unable to deliver a lecture in person, but they sent it for the record anyway. One case was that of Jerome Eden, president of the Planetary Professional Citizens Committee and a follower of Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s study of UFOs through what he called “orgone energy.”

Admittedly, the House of Lords’ UFO Study Group has been pretty quiet lately. Unfortunately, the initial thrust of the group seems to be slowing down, and the enthusiasm is perhaps drying out by the lack of official response or encouragement from governments around the world. There is also the undeniable fact that most day-to-day State businesses in Britain are discussed next door at the House of Commons, and the Study Group does not represent the full House of Lords, either.

Parallel with U.S. Congress

A somewhat similar parallel exists in the American history of UFOs, when a number of top scientists briefed the House Science and Astronautics Committee in 1968. Although the majority of the scientists urged the Congressmen for more research and an open policy towards UFOs, the official government machinery was preparing then its final blow against the saucers with the University of Colorado’s Condon Report. Just as the Congressional Hearings ended, so did any further interest on UFOs in Capitol Hill up to this day.

Will the same thing happen in the venerable House of Lords, guarded by the Victoria Tower on the side of the Thames? Only time will tell, yet there is a difference. Unlike the U.S. Congress, the House of Lords has among its peers a professional UFO writer and researcher, the Hon. Brinsley LePoer Trench. We are sure that no matter what are the odds against it, this gentleman will keep the subject alive in the House. And since membership in the House is for a lifetime, the Earl doesn’t have to campaign for UFOs at the polls.

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Update

After I sent him a copy of this article, Lord Clancarty responded to let me know that the House of Lords UFO Study Group was still active and it remained so for several years in the 1980s. Eventually it did fade away as the Earl aged and finally passed away in 1995. By that time, however, he had passed the UFO torch to a formidable personality, Lord Peter Hill-Norton, a retired Admiral of the Fleet and former Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee in the late seventies. It was, in fact, after retiring from this top military position that the admiral was made Baron Hill-Norton and joined the House of Lords in 1979. This was right after the debate and there can be little doubt that his ufological apprenticeship took place at the House’s Study Group.

We profiled the exo-political activities of Lord Hill-Norton in the recent article in this site, “British Admiral was tireless UFO advocate at the House of Lords”, based on a significant number of documents recently released by the British Ministry of Defence. Although Lord Clancarty and his allies failed to convince the MOD to release its files back in 1979, the Ministry finally revoked its policy in 2008, and has since declassified thousands of UFO-related documents.

Earl of Kimberley (credit: Phooshot/The Telegraph)

Despite his controversial private life, Lord Kimberley seemed very well informed about the UFO situation. When he mentioned that “a pact” existed between the USA and the USSR to deal with UFOs, this was actually true and not a conspiracy theory. As mentioned in a previous article in this site about UFOs sighted at nuclear weapons installations, “Soviet nukes and UFOs”, an Agreement on Measures to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was signed on September 30, 1971 by Secretary of State, William Rogers, and Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko. In that article we quoted verbatim the section in this Agreement dealing with “unidentified objects” that could trigger a nuclear reaction and how the parties should notify each other before undertaking any aggressive action.

Most of the players of the House of Lords UFO Debate and those who participated in the Study Group are now gone, but not all. One of the speakers at the all-party UFO study group, the prominent Italian author and researcher Roberto Pinotti, is still very much active and he will be in fact be one of the speakers at our forthcoming International UFO Congress next February.

You can download a PDF file of the entire official Hansard transcript of the 1979 House of Lords UFO Debate here.

Ciclope la incognita del espacio

In May 2010, a blogger with eltiempo.com, Colombia’s leading newspaper, posted an interview with world renowned author Gabriel García Márquez about the UFO subject. Author of the hugely popular One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other novels, García Márquez is one of the world’s most prominent literary figures and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. The interview posted in eltiempo.com was picked up quickly by dozens of other Spanish language websites throughout Latin America, but it soon transpired that this was not a new interview, but an old one done by the Spanish publication Cíclope back in 1969, which I recalled buying in Buenos Aires during a trip in the 1980s and which I was able to find in my files.

Cíclope published in the late 60s a newsstand encyclopedia in 45 installments called “la incógnita del espacio” (The Enigma of Space), which covered the space race, life in other planets and ufology. Among its editors were the Spanish UFO experts Antonio Ribera, Eugenio Danyans and Mario Lleget. Issue Nº 16, “La gente opina” (People’s Opinions) included a number a short interviews about UFOs with both regular folks and cultural figures like writers, art critics, movie directors, etc. Most of these people like Terenci Moix, Joaquín Jordá, Mario Gas Cabré, etc., are virtually forgotten now, but one of them, the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, went on to become one of the world’s leading authors.

García Márquez was born in 1927 in the remote town of Aracataca in Colombia’s tropical Department of Magdalena. The rich geography and folklore of his hometown would later inspire much of his mythical town Macondo. While studying law at the University of Cartagena in the late 1940s, García Márquez became a journalist, a profession he continued to exercise for many years. In the early 60s he began to publish short stories, leading eventually to his phenomenal literary bestseller One Hundred Years of Solitude, published originally in 1967, and followed by other acclaimed novels like The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera and The General in His Labyrinth. García Márquez was a master of the literary school known as “magical realism” which was very popular in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century.

“My most important problem was to destroy the demarcation line which separates what looks real and what looks fantastic,” he explained once, “because in the world that I was trying to evoke that barrier didn’t exist.” The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.” In a way it’s not surprising that the Colombia author would have an open mind about UFOs and other paranormal subjects, some of which are weaved in the rich fabric of his literary creations. I remember reading long ago one his newspaper columns in the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, which dealt with phantom hitchhikers.

As far as I know, the interview with García Márquez done by Cíclope has never been translated to English until now. We also reproduce the original in Spanish just as it was published in 1969. While some of it is perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, other ideas come across quite clearly. García Márquez believes that UFOs are “craft from other planets” and that “luminous discs” have been coming to Earth since Biblical times. He also believes that science should be more “clairvoyant” like alchemy used to be and less reactionary and dogmatic.

Gabriel García Marquez talks Nobel Prize (credit: Biografías y Vidas)

Translation of the Cíclope interview

Gabriel García Márquez. Born in Colombia. Won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Writer. His book One Hundred Years of Solitude became one of resounding world successes in recent years.

Q: What is your opinion about UFOs?

A: My opinion about UFOs is of common sense: I believe they are craft from other planets, but whose destination is not Earth.

Q: Do you believe in the existence of life in other planets?

A: The arrogance of those who assert that ours is the only inhabited planet is touching. I think that rather we are something like a lost village in the least interesting province of the Universe, and that the luminous discs that are passing in the night of the centuries are looking at us like we look at chickens.

Q: From where do you believe they come or who is directing them?

A: The UFOs must be manned by beings whose biological cycle is considerably wider and fruitful than ours. They are not concerned with us because they finished studying us thousands of years ago, when they conducted their last explorations of the Universe, and they not only know much more about us than ourselves, but they know even our destiny. In reality, the Earth must be for them like an emergency island in the hazards of space navigation.

Original Ciclope la incognita del espacio Interview in Spanish (click for full article)

Q: Do you think that the public is properly informed about this subject?

A: I don’t believe there is a conspiracy by the great powers to hide the truth about UFOs from us. That would attribute the owners of the world more intelligence than what they have.

Q: To what you attribute the persistence of some scientists to deny not only the possibility that extraterrestrial spacecraft could exist, but the [UFO] phenomenon itself?

A: What happens is that humanity wasn’t able to merit the wisdom of the alchemist, who considered the laboratory like a simple kitchen for clairvoyance, and now we are at the mercy of a reactionary science whose coarse dogmatism cannot admit any evidence that it doesn’t have inside a jar. They are regressive scientists who deny the existence of Martians because they cannot see them, without even asking themselves if the Martians could be the microbes which make war to us inside our bodies.

So long as science is experimental—and not clairvoyant as was alchemy and which in our times only poetry can be—humanity will continue to be part of the kingdom of the barnacles. We will continue to see with an open mouth those luminous discs which were already familiar in the night of the Bible, and we will continue to deny their existence if their crew sit down to have lunch with us, as it occurred so many times in the past, because we are the inhabitants of the most provincial, reactionary and backwards planet in the Universe.

Launching of the Mayan World 2012 Program poster. (image credit: government of Tabasco)

We quoted extensively from the president’s speech, which certainly didn’t mention anything about aliens, but did address the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012, the scientific and cultural achievements of that Mesoamerican civilization, and the official program to promote tourism and revamp the infrastructure in the Mayan Riviera region. Lots of people are waiting “precisely for this end of an epoch, which has been given many interpretations,” said the president of Mexico. “I believe the world will have its eyes upon the Mayas and we must take advantage of it.”

The film’s director, Juan Carlos Rulfo

Juan Carlos Rulfo, director of the 2012 documentary. (image credit: Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara/Wikimedia Commons)

One of the key players in the “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond” documentary is its director, Juan Carlos Rulfo, who was only mentioned in The Wrap articles. He is the son of Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), one of Mexico’s most important writers of the 20th century, whose novel Pedro Páramo is considered a classic in modern Latin American literature. Although better known for his literary work, Rulfo was also an outstanding photographer who documented with his camera the deep roots of Mexican history and life. He also wrote some film scripts, a career which was followed by his son Juan Carlos, who graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC, Film Training Center) in Mexico City and became an award-winning documentary film director.

Juan Carlos Rulfo began his career in the 1990s with documentaries about life in Jalisco, from where his family came. Rulfo’s 2006 movie In the Pit won the Grand Jury Prize for International Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and he also won the Ariel and Goya Awards for some of his other films. The Mexican media site Milenio online published on September 14 an extensive interview with Juan Carlos Rulfo, where he discussed the Maya prophecies and 2012.

“I know the government is allowing us to do what is necessary but this cannot be a government film,” said Rulfo, adding that “if it becomes that, I have nothing else to do.” Rulfo stated that, “according to the Mayan prophecies, an era of the world will end and another will begin,” but in this process “humanity will face a catastrophe and this is precisely what the documentary will explore, since it talks of certain secret archives and certain discoveries that the Mexican government has had in its possession for 80 years, which will be revealed in this production. The prophecy is already known by the public, but we don’t know yet what are the secrets kept by the Mexican government. What we are living is a Katun (the end of an era). The Mayas said that before the end of an era, you must cross for a period of about 12 years, where you live in disaster and uncertainty.” According to Rulfo, this 12-year period began with the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and will end with the change of era at the end of 2012. “We will interview old Maya shamans,” Rulfo went on, “Church people and several presidents from different parts of the world that will talk about this.” You can read the full interview with Juan Carlos Rulfo in Spanish here.

The Haab, the Maya solar calendar of 365 days; the glyphs in the wheel represent a month.

Juan Carlos Rulfo mentioned several times the so-called “Mayan prophecies,” although this is sort of a misnomer. The Mayan calendar with its Long Count beginning on 4 Ahaw, 8 Kumk’u (August 11, 3114 BC in the Gregorian calendar) and ending the final baktun (a cycle of 144,000 days) on December 21, 2012, is a mathematical device that all experts agree on, although the interpretation of what it means can certainly differ. But there are no legitimate ancient Mayan prophecies as such. There are plenty of spurious, new age-type prophecies alleged to be of Maya origin, but no ancient document of prophecies like the Biblical Book of Revelation or the Centuries of Nostradamus is known to exist regarding the Mayas. Such a book might have existed, but as we know the Bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, tragically burned all the Maya manuscripts he could get his hands on during the Spanish conquest. The surviving, richly illustrated Maya Codices contain astrological predictions, and many myths and traditions are collected in the Books of Chilam Balam, which are a compilation in Yucatec Maya language done in the 18th century. None of these documents, however, refer to 2012 or provide specific prophecies for our times.

The Tortuguero Monument 6 and Bolon Yokte K’u

Tortuguero Monument 6, with a reference to the end of the baktun in 2012. (image credit: Literatura y Mundo Maya)

The one exception that refers to 2012 is the inscription in monument number 6 in the Mayan site of Tortuguero, which lies to the west of Palenque and is located in the state of Tabasco. President Calderón mentioned this monument is his Mayan World speech. According to the Mayan experts Marc Zender and Stanley Guenter in their article Three Kings of Late Classic Tortuguero, “Monument #6, dating to 668 A.D., is the single longest inscription from the site, and details the major events of B’alam Ajaw’s life. Included in this history is a brief parentage statement for the king.” B’alam Ajaw (AD 612-679), which means “Jaguar Lord” was a king of Tortuguero, conqueror of Comalcalco and a contemporary of the famous King of Palenque, K’inich Janahb Pakal. We reproduce below the key passage, as translated by Sven Gronemeyer from the University of Bonn in Germany and Dr. David Stuart from the University of Texas in Austin, showing the original Maya glyphs, their transliteration to Latin alphabet and the English translation:

Translation of Tortuguero Monument 6 by Stuart and Gronemeyer. (image credit: The Pakalian Group of Mexico)

As you can see, the passage is extremely obscure for us, but there are some curious remarks about “darkness” and the descent of Bolon Yokte K’u, “of the Nine Support God(s).” Who was this mysterious Bolon Yokte K’u? According to the “Lord Pakal Ahau’s Maya Diaries” website, the Maya God Bolon Yokte K’u “represents the whole solar system with the nine planets orbiting our Sun,” although this is not an interpretation endorsed by archaeologists. For two academic experts, Markus Eberl of Tulane University and Christian Prager of the University of Bonn, “the deity Bolon Yokte K’u is shown here to have had a consistent association with underworld, conflict, and war from the beginning of the Classic period into Colonial times… The identification of Bolon Yokte K’u on the ‘Vase of the Seven Gods’ (K2796) underscores its importance as one of the gods that were present during the creation of the present world.”

John Major Jenkins, the well known popular author on 2012, has this to say about Bolon Yokte K’u:

One thing about Bolon Yokte’s presence in the 2012 text should be emphasized. Apart from symbolizing war, conflict, and the underworld, Bolon Yokte is a god that is often present during Creation events, often referring to the Creation event of 13.0.0.0.0 in 3114 BC, and most notably on the Vase of the Seven Lords. So, what does it mean that a Creation Lord is present on the next 13.0.0.0.0, the one that falls in 2012 AD? Although some scholars have commented that the incomplete text on Tortuguero Monument 6 doesn’t tell us much, they have overlooked the obvious: Bolon Yokte’s mere presence suggests that 2012 was thought of as a Creation, a world renewal that, after all, makes perfect sense in the context of a World Age doctrine that sequences forward in intervals of 13 baktuns. This may seem to go without saying, but in fact my work has been criticized for characterizing 2012 as a “cosmogenesis.” Here the scholars are one step closer to understanding 2012 for what the Maya knew it to a be: a rebirth and the beginning of a new World Age.

You can read Jenkins’s paper, “Comments on the 2012 text on Tortuguero Mounment 6 and Bolon Yokte K’u” here.

The UNAM and 2012

Mayan priests predicting the future, from the Madrid Codex. (Image credit: Raíces/Arqueología Mexicana)

Both the Campeche Tourism Minister García Rosado and the 2012 documentary director Juan Carlos Rulfo hinted at secret codices or artifacts that have been kept hidden by the Mexican government for many years and that will be disclosed in the upcoming film to be released a short time before the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. Because of its rich history and heritage, Mexico has a very strong archaeological community, much of it funded by the government, and you would expect that any kind of evidence would have been vetted by at least some of these academic experts. However, all the statements about 2012 so far coming from either the Mexican or the international archaeological community specialized in Mayan studies have been dismissive of both apocalyptic or ET-oriented interpretations about the end of the calendar.

María del Carmen Valverde, coordinator of the Center for Mayan Studies at the UNAM. (image credit: UNAM)

This was made quite clear in an official release issued on January 1, 2011 by experts from the Center for Mayan Studies (Spanish acronym CEM) of the Institute of Philological Investigations (IIFI) with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “The world will not end on December 22, 2012 nor there will be a catastrophe,” began the statement. “There is neither any prophecy in that regard, as has been claimed in some statements without scientific basis.” The coordinator of CEM, María del Carmen Valverde, explained that, “in their calendar, the Mayas didn’t describe a prophecy but the end of a cycle of 13 baktuns, equivalent to 5,125 years and the beginning of another cycle. This culture had a circular notion of time, which means that history will be repeated at a given moment. For them, they are making a prophecy when they write their annals because of their cyclical concept where events are repeated.”

Tomás Pérez Suárez, another researcher with the CEM, explained the cycle of 13 baktuns—a baktun is a unit of time equivalent to 144,000 days in our calendar—adding that when that cycle ends in December of 2012, “a period ends and another one begins, but there is no glyph that talks of the end of the world or of humanity.” The UNAM experts are in agreement with international Mesoamerican scholars like Anthony Aveni of Colgate University or Dr. John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy at the University of Maryland, according to whom the dreaded December 2012 date is simply a reset in the Maya calendar system.

It remains to be seen what concrete disclosures will be presented in the “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond” documentary. That the Mexican government will allow them to film in previously restricted archeological sites or show them historical artifacts that were kept in museum vaults and were not on public display, makes perfect sense. Yet based on what I’ve seen so far, I remain skeptical that the Mexican government would choose to reveal important secrets about the Mayas through a movie instead of using the standard procedures of vetting them through its own archaeological experts at the UNAM and other official academic institutions. It sounds to me that the “revelations” published by The Wrap are part of a PR campaign by the producers of the documentary to drum up expectations for their movie and that some Mexican officials like the Minister of Tourism of Campeche are going along to take advantage of the 2012 cultural hype. Time will tell, I suppose, and we won’t have to wait too long for that.