Apparently what happens in Vegas, may not actually stay in Vegas.

A paranormal researcher named Joshua Warren claims he is the first person to ever discover a time warp, which he found near the city. Warren said he has been measuring the rate of time all over in areas between Las Vegas and the top secret Air Force site known as Area 51. Last week he found a spot in the desert just north of Vegas where he claims time has slowed down.

Using what's known as a "differential time rate meter," also known as a "DT meter," he claimed that for the first time ever he was able to record a measurement showing time had been slowing down for 20 microseconds - something that laws of physics prove should not occur.

Of the many and various UFO / extraterrestrial-themed documents and papers that have surfaced under the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, one of the more interesting ones is Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It was written back in the 1960s (specifically in 1965) by a man named Lambros D. Callimahos. He was a cryptologist with the National Security Agency. On September 23, 1965, Callimahos took part in a panel-style debate on the subject of his paper at a conference on military electronics in Washington, D.C.

Also present for the debate was Dr. John C. Lilly, perhaps best known for his work with dolphins and in the fields of psychedelics and altered states. Others included an astronomer, Francis S.J. Heyden. The American Astronomical Society note of Heyden: " Heyden's earliest research was performed in the fields of galactic structure and variable stars. He collaborated. with Fr. L.C. McHugh S.J. in photographing star fields in the Southern Milky Way. These images were combined into an Atlas, which has become a basic reference tool for students of galactic structure." And there was a noted linguist too, Dr. Paul Garvin. The event was moderated by a Dr. Harold Wooster, at the time the Director of Information Services of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Callimahos' words make for intriguing reading: "We are not alone in the universe. A few years ago, this notion seemed farfetched; today, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is taken for granted by most scientists. Sir Bernard Lovell, one of the world's leading radio astronomers, has calculated that, even allowing for a margin of error of 5000 per cent, there must be in our own galaxy about 100 million stars which have planets of the right chemistry, dimensions, and temperature to support organic evolution."

I would be remiss if I did not note that the Discovery Networks, which recently purchased the Travel Channel, moved Expedition Unknown from Travel to the Discovery mothership. That's about as far as my interest goes, however. I suppose it's nice that Josh Gates has a bigger platform, but I hope that the parent network will keep a tighter leash on quality control and avoid the forays into ancient astronautics and guest spots from problematic figures like Brien Foerster that marred the show's original Travel Channel run. ​

Anyway... I have been invited to write the cover feature for an upcoming issue of All About History magazine, but the deadline is rather short, and this will necessitate me taking some time off to work on the piece. I'm working out the details with All About History right now, but I imagine that over the next couple of weeks, I'll need to cut down my blogging or take a week off while I write the article. I'll post details as I figure them out. In the meantime, Erich von Däniken has some new things to say.

The Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung published a German-language interview with von Däniken earlier this month, and in it they asked him what the aliens really look like. "It is assumed that evolution has been different on planets other than ours," he said, in my translation. "I always scoff and say, maybe they're flying crocodiles or talking trees." He then told the interviewer that the panspermia hypothesis suggests that aliens look like humans because Earth was seeded from the stars. He then cited the ancient epics of India as "proof" that space aliens visited the ancient Earth. He cited an unnamed passage from one epic about "three cities" floating through the sky and called the ancient texts "scientific information." He asserted that the space aliens have already returned to Earth and are among us. He alleged that central European "journalists and scientists" have created a culture where belief in UFOs is heavily criticized and therefore Austrians, Germans, and Swiss are less likely to report UFO sightings than their American counterparts. What he really said is that in places where science and facts are still respected, people are less likely to indulge in open fantasy.

Ireland, like many parts of the world, experiences the odd mystery explosion. You know, those massive, one-off, rattling your doors and windows, driving your sleepy and confused neighbours out into the street in the middle of the night and leaving no trace kind of explosions?

Anyway, each explosion usually brings with it all manner of "explanations" - sonic booms; a backfiring heater in a warehouse at Dublin Airport; a World War II mine in Dublin Bay; terrorist activity; sound rockets; and a man blasting a large stone for his rockery, to name just a few - that are never proven. But sometimes, just sometimes, the mystery is solved:

A convicted double murderer has won the right to a retrial on the basis that four of the jury had used a Ouija board the night before finding him guilty. Does this mean that the UK judicial system now accepts the evidence of otherworldly agencies in court? Surely not?

The word "Ouija" is a combination of the French word "oui" and the German word "ja" and means "yes, yes". All over the ancient world, people have drawn shapes in sand and made prophecies by believing they were channeling data from demonic and spiritual sources. Most often today, Ouija boards are constructed from simple wooden panels painted with letters and numbers and the words "yes" and "no" and generally feature in horror stories as conduits for spirits to communicate with users. A Smithsonian Magazine article informs how the "19th century American obsession with spiritualism and the belief that the dead are able to communicate with the living" attracted millions of adherents before interest peaked in the second half of the 19th century.

There's been a lot of excitement in the past week over a wolf-like animal shot by a rancher near Denton in north Central Montana. It's some kind of canid, most experts agree, and possibly some type of wolf-dog hybrid. A few have gone so far as to call it a dogman or even werewolf, although it was only seen running on all fours. This week I received a Montana sighting report describing something much more like a typical dogman report in terms of size, appearance, and behavior. The witness had seen the news photos and felt that he should reveal what he had personally seen. At my request, he also drew the attached sketch of what he observed standing at the treeline of his own back yard less than a year ago.

It occurred only 150 miles southwest of Denton, near the northern edge of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and Wise River. Just a glance at a map will confirm what a great habitat it would be for any wild canid.

The witness has since moved from that area. He said I could call him Zach here, but I do have his full name for contact info. He is in his mid-twenties, and at the time of the event worked in the environmental science department of the state's Conservation Corps. Here is his own account of the 2017 incident:

Remember that undated report on the Nimitz UFO incident discovered by a news team in Las Vegas?

Not only did it detail the capabilities of the supposed alien craft, it also hinted at another mysterious object encountered by a different pilot during the training exercises: Something huge and submerged beneath the waves encountered by a Navy fighter pilot.

The details are vague, but they certainly deepen the mystery of what happened off the coast of San Diego.

According to the report (turn to page 6), a Lt. Col. was doing a Function Test Flight (a test to see if the plane was fully functional after being repaired) when he was asked to go check out an "unidentified airborne contact," along with two other pilots.

For years, decades actually, the skeptical community has wondered how the US has been able to suppress information about UFOs in foreign lands. Why would foreign governments submit to a US demand that UFO sightings and UFO reports remain hidden behind a curtain of secrecy? The answer is probably a little more complex than I can attack here, on this blog.

However...

First, let me point out that during the Ghost Rocket wave that began in Finland but swept into all of Scandinavia in 1946, the Finnish government response was to suppress the news reports about them while those in Sweden were free to report every sighting until it became nearly overwhelming. At that point the Swedish military and the government began to actively suppress the sighting reports as well. Their reasons were varied, but they enacted that policy with no guidance from the US. A policy, BTW, that seemed to have ended the reports though not necessarily the sightings.

I am a historian of alternative religions - I document, and deeply care about, outsider spiritual views, particularly with regard to the esoteric, supernatural, and occult.

I've managed to write about these things seriously in mainstream news outlets, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, and discuss them on CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, and NPR's All Things Considered. But it is a struggle. I find that the bar is raised much higher for writing about outside-the-fold topics than it is for things that editors and producers already believe (e.g., "Positive thinking is for dupes and dumbbells.")

Here are some of the reasons it's tough to find a mainstream mic for these issues - and some different ways to think about how we communicate:

1) Disavowal is the price of admission to the mainstream culture.

I love journalist Jon Ronson. But he plays this game all too well. He studies a fringe topic - like ESP in the military - depicting it as hooey. But then he says ingenuously in an interview: "The psychic spies do have some successes that you can't explain. There are stories of 'remote viewers' divining map coordinates or sketching something that does, in fact, lead to something. Maybe." That, to me, is where to start digging. But Ronson quickly slams shut the door. Critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times admiringly quotes him calling his foray into ESP "frivolous."

Kids just say the darndest most soul-crushingly terrifying things, don't they?

Meet Ruby, 3, who either has an extremely vivid imagination or is being haunted by a pregnant teen ghost. The little girl's description of her imaginary friend (who, frankly, sounds more like a trapped spirit from another era) was tweeted on Monday by actress Natalie Morales.