Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Apparitions, Angels, and Aliens

Sometimes when hiking, one looks back on the route traversed before moving onward. In this book, we began our journey with a review of evidence for extreme human antiquity. This archeological evidence, which contradicts current Darwinian theories of human evolution, suggested that we need to look for a new explanation for the origin of human beings. But before starting to look, we decided we should first answer the question “what is a human being?” In that way, we could be sure that any explanation we proposed actually did the job of explaining what needed to be explained. Today, many scientists assume that a human being is simply a combination of matter, by which we mean the elements listed in the periodic table. But we saw that it is more reasonable to start with the assumption that a human being is composed of three distinct things: matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit). We saw that modern science itself provides sufficient evidence for this assumption. Therefore, if we are going to explain the origin of human beings, we have to explain from where matter, mind, and consciousness each came and how they came together in the form of human beings. The existence of matter, mind, and consciousness in the human form suggests that the cosmos is arranged in regions where matter predominates, where mind predominates, and where consciousness predominates. In other words, there is a multilevel inhabited cosmos, in which we humans find our particular place. We reviewed testimonial evidence for this multilevel cosmos in classical Western culture, and then showed how this same understanding has been present historically in varieties of cultures throughout the world. This multilevel cosmos is inhabited by varieties of extraterrestrial and extradimensional humanlike beings.

Up to this point, the evidence I have cited for the existence of these extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings has consisted of reports from peoples of the distant past, or from peoples of today who are not totally integrated into modern developed society. In this chapter, our sources will be mostly observations from persons representative of modern developed society, from the dawn of modern science to the present. This evidence adds credibility to traditional accounts of extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings, who, I propose, are responsible for producing the bodily forms of the living things within our normal experience. In chapter 9, we will see that it is in fact possible to produce changes in biological organisms by the action of mind and consciousness on matter. In chapter 10, we will consider the cosmological anthropic principle, some versions of which entail the idea that the entire universe has been designed with human existence in mind. And in chapter 11, I will bring together all the elements of the human devolution concept—the concept that we have not evolved up from matter, but have devolved from pure consciousness, or spirit, in a process guided by intelligent agents. I will relate various parts of this argument to their sources in the ancient Vedic writings of India, which inspired and guided my research.

In this chapter’s review of various categories of observational and experimental evidence demonstrating the existence of extradimensional, conscious, humanlike personalities, we will begin with examples of communications from departed humans now apparently existing in some other part of the multilevel cosmos. We shall then consider apparitions of departed human personalities and possessions of terrestrial humans by departed human personalities. Reports like these reinforce the evidence presented in chapter 6 for the existence of an embodied conscious self that is distinct from mind and ordinary matter. But the cases in this chapter particularly focus on the continued existence of this conscious self long after the death of its body composed of gross matter. We shall go on to consider another category of apparition and possession cases, involving beings of apparently superhuman type. We shall then consider the modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which will lead us into the realm of extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings revealed in the modern UFO and alien abduction reports, particularly those with a paranormal element. In this manner, I plan to show that the idea of extraterrestrial and extradimensional conscious beings is not something entirely alien to modern scientific thought.

Communications from Departed Humans

Several prominent scientists have investigated communications from departed humans. If their reports are accepted, we find ourselves in possession of evidence for some part of the multilevel cosmos and cosmic hierarchy of beings described in the last chapter.

Evidence of departed human intelligences continuing to have contact with terrestrial humans comes from a variety of sources, including mediums. William James, a prominent American scientist of the early twentieth century, and one of the founders of modern psychology, was especially impressed by the mediumship of Mrs. Piper.

During her trances, Mrs. Piper’s normal personality was apparently replaced by that of her “control,” a long departed spirit called Phinuit, who spoke through her, revealing paranormal knowledge of living persons. However, not everyone was convinced that Phinuit either existed or was the source of Mrs. Piper’s revelations about the living. For example, Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research, at first favored the hypothesis that Mrs. Piper was obtaining her knowledge telepathically from living persons. But in March 1892, Mrs. Piper’s communicator Phinuit was replaced by George Pellew, a young man who had died in a riding accident a short time before. One hundred fifty living subjects were introduced to Mrs. Piper when, in trance, she was under the control of Pellew. Out of these subjects, Pellew, speaking through Mrs. Piper, recognized thirty, and these thirty happened to be only those who had known Pellew when he was alive. Pellew conversed with them in a familiar fashion, demonstrating extraordinary knowledge about them. This convinced Hodgson that Mrs.Piper was indeed in communication with a departed spirit, George Pellew (Gauld 1968, pp. 254–261).

Hodgson himself died on December 20, 1905. By December 28, messages from him were supposedly coming to Mrs. Piper. William James believed that the evidence suggested Hodgson, or perhaps some remnant of him (in what we might call a cosmic memory bank), was communicating with Piper. The messages communicated by Piper from Hodgson, and others, were sometimes garbled, observed James. He nevertheless said that “there would still appear a balance of probability

. . . that certain parts of the Piper communications really emanate from personal centers of memory and will, connected with lives that have passed away” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 140). More specifically, he said, “Most of us felt during the sittings that we were in some way, more or less remote, conversing with . . . a real Hodgson” (Murphy and Ballou1960, p. 143).

James said about the Piper communications: “When I connect the Piper case with all the other cases I know of automatic writing and mediumship, and with the whole record of spirit-possession in human history, the notion that such an immense current of experience, complex in so many ways, should spell out nothing but the word ‘humbug’ acquires a character of unlikeliness. The notion that so many men and women, in all other respects honest enough, should have this preposterous monkeying self annexed to their personality seems to me so weird that the spirit theory immediately takes on a more probable appearance” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 147).

Frederick Myers, a leading member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), died in 1901. In that same year, Mrs. Margaret Verrall, the wife of the English classical scholar A. W. Verrall, took up automatic writing to let Myers communicate through her. In automatic writing, a medium allows her hand to form letters and words spontaneously. After some months Mrs. Verrall began getting cryptic messages signed by Myers, some with quotations from obscure Latin and Greek works. In

1902, Mrs. Piper, in Boston, also began producing similar writings signed “Myers.” These contained allusions to Mrs. Verrall’s writings. Mrs. Verrall’s daughter, Helen Verrall, also began receiving writings, without seeing her mother’s.Helen’s writings contained allusions to the same topics. Piper and the Verralls began sending their writings to Alice Johnson, secretary of the SPR. In 1903, Mrs. Alice Kipling Fleming, a sister of Rudyard Kipling, also began receiving messages from Myers through automatic writing. She began sending them to Johnson, under the name “Mrs. Holland.” Johnson filed them away, but in 1905 she began comparing the messages from all the writers and noticed some interesting correlations among them. Johnson and other investigators concluded that these “cross correspondences” were deliberate attempts by Myers to demonstrate his survival (Griffin 1997, pp. 162–163).

Purported communications from dead persons through mediums are sometimes explained away by appealing to telepathy. A medium engaging in automatic writing may consciously or unconsciously tap into memories of various living persons who knew the dead person and thus obtain the confidential information that appears in the messages. In other words, although the information in the message may have been acquired by paranormal means, the information might not be coming from a surviving spirit. One might therefore ask, “How could a dead person attempting to communicate with the living overcome this objection?” H. F. Saltmarsh, in his book on the Myers communications, explained (1938, pp. 33–34): “Suppose a message in cryptic terms be transmitted through one automatist [receiver of automatic writing], and another message, equally incomprehensible, through a second at about the same time, and suppose that each automatist was ignorant of what the other was writing, we have then two meaningless messages entirely disconnected with each other. Now, if a third automatist were to produce a script which, while meaningless taken by itself, acts as a clue to the other two, so that the whole set could be brought together into one whole, and then show a single purpose and meaning, we should have good evidence that they all originated from a single source. . . . Telepathy between the automatists . . . would not explain these facts, for none of them is able to understand the meaning of their own particular fragment, and so could not possibly convey to the other automatists the knowledge required to supply the missing portions. In most cases [involving the Myers communications] the puzzle . . . has been solved by an independent investigator, in fact, frequently the automatists themselves have remained in ignorance of any scripts but their own.” In other words, the cross correspondences among the independent communications, each apparently meaningless on its own, reveals the action of a departed intelligence.

Here is an example of such a cross correspondence. Early in 1907, Mrs. Margaret Verrall got a communication from the departed Myers that mentioned “celestial halcyon days.” This inspired her to telepathically send back to Myers a Greek quotation from Plotinus: autos ouranos akumon, which means “the very heavens waveless” (Saltmarsh 1938, p. 73). In the passage in which this phrase occurs, Plotinus had said that the soul, in order to attain enlightenment, must be peaceful, that the earth, sea, and air should be calm, and “the very heavens waveless.” Verrall knew that Myers had used this Greek phrase as a motto for a poem he had written about Tennyson. She also knew that he had included an English translation of the phrase in his book Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Mrs. Verrall telepathically sent the phrase to Myers on January 29, 1907, in the presence of the medium Mrs. Piper.

On January 30, Mrs. Verrall noticed the names of the trees “larch” and “laburnum” appearing close to each other in a communication to Mrs. Piper from Myers (Saltmarsh 1938, p. 74). She recalled that these trees are mentioned in a poem by Tennyson, “In Memoriam.” The verse that mentioned larches ended with the line “the sea-blue bird of March.” This is the kingfisher, and another name for the kingfisher is halcyon. According to ancient legend, when the kingfisher nests by the sea around the time of the winter solstice, this causes the seas to become calm and waveless, recalling the phrase from Plotinus, autos ouranos akumon (“the very heavens waveless”). Mrs. Verrall believed that Myers was deliberately responding to her by introducing these subtle allusions into his communications with Mrs. Piper.

On February 25, Mrs. Verrall received another phrase from Tennyson: “the lucid interspace of world and world.” On February 26, the communication from Myers contained the above mentioned quotation from Plotinus (autos ouranos akumon) written in Greek characters. The script also contained these words: “And may there be no moaning of the bar—my pilot face to face.” This was a reference to Tennyson’s poem “Crossing the Bar.” The names of Tennyson and Browning were also in the script. On March 6, Mrs. Verrall’s script from Myers contained many references to calm, including a passage from “In Memoriam” by Tennyson: “And in my heart if calm at all. If any calm, a calm despair.” In her final script in this series, produced on March 11, one can, according to Saltmarsh (1938, p. 75), find allusions to Plato and Tennyson, with “phrases about unseen and half-seen companionship—voiceless communings—unseen presence felt.” Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam” is about the poet communing with a departed friend. That these particular references should appear in the Myers scripts is, of course, meaningful, especially in the context of the complicated connections between Plotinus, Tennyson, the Greek phrase about the stillness of the heavens, and the many references to stillness and calm that appeared in the scripts. Some of these connections were discovered long after the scripts were produced.

Cross correspondences to these references in the communications to Mrs. Verrall occurred in separate communications received by Mrs. Piper. On March 6, 1907, these words from Myers appeared in the Piper communications: “Cloudless sky horizon, followed by a cloudless sky beyond the horizon; in the waking stage following came the words: moaning at the bar when I put out to sea . . . Goodbye. Margaret.” Mrs. Verrall’s name was Margaret. The references to calm heavens and the bar are strikingly similar to images in the scripts of Mrs. Verrall, which are references to Tennyson’s poems “In Memoriam” and “Crossing the Bar.” According to Saltmarsh (1938, p. 77), neither Mrs. Piper nor the person sitting with her during this session, Mr. Piddington, had enough knowledge to bring these obscure literary allusions together on their own. Saltmarsh (1938, p. 77) also said, “As regards Mrs. Verrall, it must be noted that she had not grasped the significance of the combination of quotations from ‘In Memoriam’ and ‘Crossing the Bar’ until after this sitting with Mrs. Piper.” So that means it would not have been possible for Mrs. Piper to access this information from Mrs. Verrall’s mind by some kind of telepathic process, indicating that the best explanation for the information was the surviving persona of Myers himself.

On April 29, Mrs. Verrall sat with Mrs. Piper, whose scripts revealed not only words connected with “halcyon days” but also some mysterious and apparently disconnected references to Swedenborg, St. Paul, and Dante. On the next day, Myers, in a script produced by Mrs. Piper, said the Greek quotation from Plotinus reminded him of Socrates and Homer’s iliad. The connection between Plotinus, who lived in the third century ad, and Socrates, who lived in the fourth century bc, and Homer, who lived in the eighth century bc, was not immediately apparent. On May 1, Mrs. Verrall’s automatic writing session produced the words “eagle soaring over the tomb of Plato.” Mrs. Verrall recalled that Myers, in his book Human Personality, had used this phrase to describe Plotinus. Investigating further, she found that in the epilogue to Human Personality, Myers had mentioned a vision of Plotinus. Just before this comes the story of how Socrates had a vision of a fair woman dressed in white robes. (This story is from Plato’s Krito.) The woman in the vision of Socrates recites a line from the iliad of Homer. Saltmarsh (1938, p.

78) notes: “A further, and even more significant discovery was made. On the same page that contains the phrase ‘eagle soaring over the tomb of Plato,’ there is a list of ‘the strong souls who have claimed to feel it’ (ecstasy) and among these, after Plotinus and before Tennyson occur Swedenborg, St. Paul and Dante.” So here we can see that elements in the scripts of one medium gave clues to the meaning of elements in the scripts of another medium, which at first appeared meaningless, showing all the elements were known to Myers and associated by him in particular ways in obscure passages of his written works. Finally, on May

6, 1907, SPR member Mrs. Henry Sidgwick was about to ask Myers the name of the author of the Greek phrase originally sent to him by Mrs. Verrall. But Myers interrupted her inquiry, saying, through a script recorded by Mrs. Piper, “Will you say to Mrs. V. [Verrall] Plotinus?” Myers then said this was “my answer to autos ouranos akumon” (Saltmarsh 1938, p. 78).

Explaining the significance of this case, Saltmarsh (1938, pp. 78–79) says: “It seems to me to be one of the best examples which we have of the complex type of cross correspondence. The knowledge shown in the Piper sittings was completely outside Mrs. Piper’s own range, also was unknown to the sitter, Mr. Piddington and to Mrs. Verrall, but it had been in the possession of Fred Myers and was characteristic of him. The answers given were allusive and indirect, and thus avoided the possibility of explanation by direct telepathy; moreover, on more than one occasion the scripts themselves gave guidance to the investigators by supplying the necessary clues which led them to discover the associations, as, for example, when the phrase ‘eagle soaring over the tomb of Plato’ directed Mrs. Verrall’s attention to that part of Human Personality where she found the unlikely association between Plotinus, Socrates, Homer, Swedenborg, etc.”

Saltmarsh studied a huge amount of the Myers cross correspondence scripts, which accumulated over thirty years from many different mediums. He pointed out, “Were we to find in the scripts of several automatists one or two scattered cases of cross correspondence, we might reasonably attribute them to chance coincidence, but should they occur in large numbers, the tenability of that hypothesis is much lessened. Further, when this large number of cross correspondences is accompanied by definite indications of intention, and indeed, by explicit statements in the scripts that they are parts of a planned experiment, then explanation by chance alone can be confidently rejected” (Saltmarsh 1938, p. 126). And this is indeed the case with the Myers material, from which I have selected only one of hundreds of examples. That leaves survival of the Myers personality after death as the best explanation for the cross correspondences. The list of intricate cross correspondences in the communications received by various mediums in this particular case goes on and on. Interested readers should consult Saltmarsh’s book to get an idea of their full impact.

Sir William F. Barrett (1918, pp. 184–185), a physicist and Fellow of the Royal Society, was a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. He investigated an interesting case of communication with the dead. During the First World War, Mrs. Travers Smith, wife of a prominent Dublin medical doctor, and Miss C., daughter of another medical man, were attempting, with others, to establish communication with the dead through an ouija board. In using an ouija board, one places one’s fingers lightly on a movable pointer, and the spontaneous movements of the pointer toward letters printed on the board spell out words. Miss C.’s cousin, an officer in the British Army, had been killed in France a month before the sittings. During one sitting, the name of the dead officer was unexpectedly spelled out by the ouija board. Miss C. then asked, “Do you know who I am?” In reply came her name and the following message: “Tell mother to give my pearl tie-pin to the girl I was going to marry, I think she ought to have it.” None of the sitters knew of this engagement. They asked for the name and address of the girl. The full name of the girl was given, along with an address in London. But when the sitters sent a letter to that address, it was returned as undeliverable. The sitters concluded the message had not been genuine. Six months later, the sitters learned from personal papers of the deceased officer sent by the War Office that he had in fact been engaged to the very lady whose name was given by the ouija board communication. She was mentioned in the officer’s will. The officer had, however, never mentioned her to any of his relatives. Among his personal effects there was a pearl tie pin. Barrett (1918, p. 185) noted “Both the ladies have signed a document they sent me, affirming the accuracy of the above statement. The message was recorded at the time, and not written from memory after verification had been obtained. Here there could be no explanation of the facts by subliminal memory, or telepathy or collusion, and the evidence points unmistakably to a telepathic message from the deceased officer.” Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (1851–1940) made important contributions to research in electromagnetic radiation and radio communications. He also documented a famous case of communication with a departed human, his son Raymond. In his biographical encyclopedia of famous scientists, Isaac Asimov (1982, p. 530) wrote about Lodge: “He became a leader of psychical research, and is one of the prime examples of a serious scientist entering a field that is usually the domain of quacks.” I don’t agree with Asimov that psychical research is the domain of quacks. The number of serious scientists conducting psychical research, and getting positive results, is quite impressive. It is Asimov’s statement that seems rather quacklike.

Lodge (1916, p. 83) wrote: “I have made no secret of my conviction, not merely that personality persists, but that its continued existence is more entwined with the life of every day than has been generally imagined; that there is no real breach of continuity between the dead and the living; and that methods of intercommunication across what has seemed to be a gulf can be set going in response to the urgent demand of affection.”

On September 17, 1915, Lodge received news of his son Raymond’s death in military action in Europe during World War I. On September 25, Mrs. Lodge was having a sitting with a medium, Mrs. Leonard. At that time, Mrs. Lodge’s identity was unknown to the medium. The medium and her guests were sitting at a round table. The medium would begin to recite the letters of the alphabet until the table tilted. The letter sounded at the moment of the tilt would be recorded, and then the process would be repeated until a message was spelled out. (This may seem less quaint in light of today’s handheld internet communication devices, which compel one to spell out messages in ways hardly less cumbersome and time consuming.) From the standpoint of spiritualists, the tilting of the table was accomplished by the departed spirits. Skeptics would claim the medium controlled the table and composed messages using surreptitiously obtained information about the living and the dead. To counter such doubts, one has to demonstrate that the medium had no knowledge of the persons involved, as appears to be the case here. During her anonymous séance with Mrs. Leonard, Mrs. Lodge received the following message from a spirit called Raymond: “Tell father I have met some friends of his.” Mrs. Lodge asked for the name of one of these friends. Raymond gave the name Myers, the departed psychical researcher, who was in fact known to Lodge.

On September 27, Lodge himself showed up for a sitting, which had been arranged anonymously through a Mrs. Kennedy. According to Lodge, Mrs. Leonard did not know his identity. At this sitting, the communication with departed spirits was not through table tilting, but through the medium’s contact with her control, a young girl named Feda. When the medium went into trance, and came under the control of Feda, Lodge was told that there was present a young man, whose description matched Raymond. Feda said through Mrs. Leonard: “He finds it difficult, he says, but he has got so many kind friends helping him. He didn’t think when he waked up first that he was going to be happy, but now he is, and as he is a little more ready he has got a great deal of work to do” (Lodge 1916, p. 98).

On September 28, Lodge and his wife together attended a sitting with Mrs. Leonard. The communication was through table tilting (Lodge 1916, pp. 140–142). The first spirit contacted was named Paul, who said, in answer to a question posed by Lodge, that, yes, he had brought Raymond. The next message from Paul said, “Raymond wants to come himself.” Lodge asked Raymond to give the name of an officer. Lodge was anticipating that he would give the name of Lieutenant Case, who was one of the last persons to see Raymond alive, after he was wounded. Instead, Raymond spelled out the name Mitchell. Mrs. Lodge later said, “Raymond, I don’t know Mitchell.” Raymond answered, “No.” Lodge then asked, “Well, that will be better evidence?” Raymond said, “Yes.” Lodge asked, “Is that why you chose it?” Raymond again replied, “Yes.” Raymond then gave three letters: “a,” “e,” and “r.” The medium said, “No, that can’t be right?” But the letters continued coming, spelling out the word “aeroplane.” Lodge asked, “You mean that Mitchell is an aeroplane officer?” The answer was a firm “yes.” Also, Lodge asked Raymond to give the name of a brother. The tilting table gave the letters “n,” “o,” “r,” “m,” and “a.” Lodge interrupted the communication, thinking that the intended name, Norman, was a mistake. During this session, Lodge asked Raymond how he was working the table.The message, received letter by letter, was, “You all supply magnetism gathered in medium, and that goes into table, and we manipulate” (Lodge, 1916, p. 146).

The name “Mitchell” given by Raymond in connection with the word “aeroplane” was quite significant. No one present at the sitting knew an officer of that name. Lodge conducted extensive research, and for weeks obtained no results. Relevant personnel lists had not yet been published (Lodge 1916, p. 146). Lodge eventually did obtain some information about Mitchell: “After several failures at identification I learnt, on 10 October, through the kind offices of the Librarian of the London Library, that he had ascertained from the War Office that there was a

2nd Lieut. E. H. Mitchell now attached to the Royal Flying Corps. Accordingly, I wrote to the Record Office, Farnborough; and ultimately, on

6 November, received a post card from Captain Mitchell.” In his letter to Lodge, Mitchell said “I believe I have met your son, though where I forget” (Lodge 1916, p. 149).

The name “Norman,” of no apparent significance to Lodge and his wife when they heard it, turned out to be a name that Raymond used in a general way to refer to his brothers, especially when they were playing field hockey. This information was supplied to Lodge later by his surviving sons, who had not been present at the sitting (Lodge 1916, p. 147). The practice is believable to me, because I, and children in my neighborhood, jokingly used to do the same thing when I was young, using names such as “Holmes” to refer to almost anyone.

Some of the communications from Raymond gave interesting information about the spirit world. The following descriptions were obtained during a sitting Mrs. Lodge had with Mrs. Leonard on February 4, 1916. Raymond, speaking through the control Feda, indicated that the spirit world was divided into different spheres. For example, he said his sister (Lily) had “gone right on to a very high sphere, as near celestial as could possibly be” (Lodge 1916, p. 229). In the spirit world, like spirits gravitated towards each other. Raymond said, “I’ve seen some boys pass on who had nasty ideas and vices. They go to a place I’m very glad I didn’t have to go to, but it’s not hell exactly. More like a reformatory— it’s a place where you’re given a chance, and when you want to look for something better, you’re given a chance to have it” (Lodge 1916, p. 230). Raymond himself was on a middle level, the third, called Summerland, or Homeland. Beings from higher realms could visit there, and the persons on Summerland could come to the earth. He called it a “happy medium” (Lodge 1916, p. 230).

Raymond told his mother he was once taken up to another level: “I was permitted, so that I might see what was going on in the Highest Sphere. . . . He [Christ] didn’t come near me, and I didn’t feel I wanted to go near him. Didn’t feel I ought. The Voice was like a bell. I can’t tell you what he was dressed or robed in. All seemed a mixture of shining colours” (Lodge 1916, pp. 230–231). Raymond explained that he was somehow transported back to Summerland, with a sense that he was to be engaged in a spiritual mission, “helping near the earth plane” (Lodge 1916, p. 232). He said, “I was told Christ was always in spirit on earth—a sort of projection, something like those rays, something of him in every one” (Lodge 1916, p. 232). Raymond said, “Some people ask me, are you pleased with where your body lies? I tell them I don’t care a bit, I’ve no curiosity about my body now. It’s like an old coat that I’ve done with, and hope some one will dispose of it. I don’t want flowers on my body” (Lodge 1916, p. 235).

Lodge was concerned that many scientists would never take seriously any evidence for survival and other psychical phenomena. To such scientists, Lodge (1916, p. 379) addressed the following remarks: “They pride themselves on their hard-headed scepticism and robust common sense; while the truth is that they have bound themselves into a narrow cell by walls of sentiment, and have thus excluded whole regions of human experience from their purview.”

In the case of Lodge and Raymond, the communicator, Raymond, was of course known to Lodge and others in the presence of the medium. There are, however, some cases in which communicators not known to the sitters or the medium “drop in” to séances. These are of interest because one cannot easily propose that the medium has obtained the knowledge revealed by the drop-in communicator from the other persons at the séance. Nor would the medium have much reason to manufacture such a personage, given that the sitters have come to her specifically to communicate with some departed friend or relative, well known to them, not some unknown person.

Ian Stevenson and Erlendur Haraldsson (1975a) report an interesting case from Iceland. The medium was Hafsteinn Bjornsson. In 1937, a group of people began having séances with Bjornsson at a private home in Reykjavik. In the course of the sittings, a drop-in began to communicate through Bjornsson. He refused to identify himself, giving obviously false names such as Jon Jonsson, the Icelandic equivalent of John Doe. When asked what he wanted, the communicator said, “I am looking for my leg,” adding that it was “in the sea” (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975a, p. 37). In the fall of 1938, the same communicator appeared in another series of sittings. He still asked for his leg and still refused to properly identify himself. In January 1939, Ludvik Gudmundsson started coming to the sittings. He owned a house in the village of Sandgerdi, near Reykjavik. The communicator seemed pleased that Gudmundsson was present, but Gudmundsson could not understand why this should be so. When asked about this, the communicator said that Gudmundsson had his leg in his house at Sandgerdi.

After Gudmundsson became impatient with the communicator’s refusal to identify himself, the communicator finally said in one sitting: “Well, it is best for me to tell you who I am. My name is Runolfur Runolfsson, and I was 52 years old when I died. I lived with my wife at Kolga or Klappakot, near Sandgerdi. I was on a journey from Keflavik in the latter part of the day and I was drunk. I stopped at the house of Sveinbjorn Thordarsson in Sandgerdi and accepted some refreshments there. When I wanted to go, the weather was so bad that they did not wish me to leave unless accompanied by someone else. I became angry and said I would not go at all if I could not go alone. My house was only about 15 minutes’ walk away. So I left by myself, but I was wet and tired. I walked over the kambinn [beach pebbles] and reached the rock known as Flankastadaklettur which has almost disappeared now. There I sat down, took my bottle [of alcoholic spirits], and drank some more. Then I fell asleep. The tide came in and carried me away. This happened in October, 1879. I was not found until January 1880. I was carried in by the tide, but then dogs and ravens came and tore me to pieces. The remnants [of my body] were found and buried in Utskalar graveyard. But then the thigh bone was missing. It was carried out again to sea, but was later washed up again at Sandgerdi. There it was passed around and now it is in Ludvik’s house” (Larusdottir, 1946, pp. 203–204; in Haraldsson and Stevenson

1975a, p. 39).

Runolfsson said that his account could be verified by looking at the records of the church in Utskalar. These records confirmed that a person bearing his name had in fact died on the date he had given, and also that the person was of the age given by him (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975a, p. 40). Other records confirmed that he had lived at Klopp and later at another place near the Flankastadaklettur rock. And a report by a church clergyman said that the dismembered bones were found much later, apart from his clothes, which also washed up on the beach. But there was no mention of the missing leg bone. Gudmundsson asked old men in the village of Sandgerdi if they knew anything about any leg bones. Some of them recalled hearing something about a thigh bone being passed around. One of them said that he recalled something about a carpenter who put a leg bone in one of the walls of Gudmundsson’s house. Gudmundsson and others looked around the house, trying to guess what wall might be concealing the bone. Someone made a suggestion, but the bone was not found. Later, the carpenter himself was located and he pointed out the place where he had put the bone, and the bone was found there (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975a, p. 41). The femur was long, consistent with Runolfsson’s statements in his communications that he was tall. The bone was found in 1940, three year’s after Runolfsson first mentioned it. If this bone can be relocated, it may be possible to compare it genetically to the other buried bones of Runolfsson.

In 1969, a story about the case appeared in a Reykjavik newspaper, and a reader wrote in giving another source of information about Runolfsson’s death. This was a manuscript written in the nineteenth century by Reverend Jon Thoraeson, who had been a clergyman in Utskalar at the time. The manuscript was, however, published in 1953, many years after the sittings in which Runolfsson revealed himself.

As far as the medium was concerned: (1) He said he had never been to Sangerdi or met anyone from there prior to the sittings connected with Runolfsson. (2) He had visited the National Archives, where some records related to the case are kept, in November 1939, but this was six months after Runolfsson had identified himself and told his story. (3) He had never read the Utskalar church records. In any case, in none of these accounts is the missing leg bone mentioned. Residents of Sandgerdi who did know about a leg bone had not connected it with Runolfsson, who was also known by the knickname Runki (Haraldsson and Stevenson

1975a, p. 43). Haraldsson and Stevenson (1975a, p. 57) concluded that the simplest explanation of all the facts was “Runki’s survival after his physical death with retention of many memories and their subsequent communication through the mediumship of Hafsteinn.”

Here is another case. On January 25, 1941, the medium Hafsteinn Bjornsson was holding a séance for Hjalmar Gudjonsson, who was expecting to hear from dead persons known to him. The medium’s control was a spirit called Finna. But Finna, instead of passing on messages from persons known to Gudjonsson, passed on messages from a person unknown to him. This drop-in communicator, who called himself Gudni Magnusson, mentioned a place called Eskifjordur. He said he had died there from an accident involving a motor vehicle. Asmundur Gestsson, who heard about the drop-in communicator after the sitting, had a cousin, Gudrun Gudmundsdottir, who lived in Eskifjordur. Gudmundsdottir was married to a physician, Einar Astrads. On February 26, 1941, Gestsson wrote to his cousin, asking if her husband had ever treated a man named Gudni Magnusson. And if so, had the man died in an automobile accident? (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975b, pp. 246–247)

On March 14, Gudrun Gudmundsdottir wrote back to Asmundur Gestsson, confirming that her husband had treated a man named Gudni Magnusson who had died, adding more details: “There is a married couple here [in Eskifjordur] by the name of Anna Jorgensen and Magnus Arngrimsson. . . . One of their sons . . . who was about 20–21 years of age, was a truck driver and had been for the past two or three years. He had often worked with his father in road building. Last fall this young man, whose name was Gudni Magnusson, was very busy with his truck driving and he left in the morning to go to Vidifjordur, a rather long and strenuous journey. Then later in the day he went to Reydarfjordur. After reaching there he left for home. His truck was not running well and the trip tooklonger than usual. He was alone. When he was crossing the mountain pass between Reydarfjordur and Eskifjordur, the truck ran out of gasoline. So he left the truck and went down to Eskifjordur to obtain some gasoline in a can. That meant a walk of four miles each way and when he returned home he was exhausted. During the night he experienced extremely severe pain in the stomach. Einar was sent for and went to him, but could not diagnose his condition at first. The next day Einar had to go to Reydarfjordur and stayed there the whole day. In the evening he received a telephone call at Reydarfjordur asking him to come quickly [back to Eskifjordur] because Gudni’s condition had become very critical. Einar was also asked to bring with him the army doctor stationed at Reydarfjordur if that would make it easier to help Gudni. The [two] physicians arrived at nine o’clock in the evening and they saw immediately that the young man was in a very critical condition and probably suffering from some internal rupture or intestinal obstruction. They could do nothing with the patient where he was. They therefore decided to send the young man at once to the hospital at Seydisfjordur. They could not use an airplane because, being October, it was already dark.They therefore took Gudni in a motorboat, but he died on the way between Nordfjordur and Seydisfjordur” (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975b, p. 249).

Gestsson then obtained a more detailed account of the séance, written by Gudjonsson on March 31, 1941: “The first thing that Finna said to me was that a young man was with me and that he was of average height, blond, and with thin hair at the top of his head. He was between 20 and 30 years of age and was called Gudni Magnusson. She could easily see him. She said that he had known some of my relatives, and also that he and his death were connected with Eskifjordur and Reydarfjordur. He had been a car or truck driver. She saw clearly how he had died. He had been repairing his car, had crawled under it, stretched himself, and then had ruptured something inside his body. Then he had been brought by boat between fjords to medical care, but died on the way. That is all I remember” (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975b, p. 247). Gudjonsson later said that he wrote this before he had any knowledge of the letter to Gestsson from Gudrun Gudmundsdottir in Eskifjordur (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975b, p. 260).

Gudrun Jonsdottir, who had also attended the séance, also provided a statement, dated June 6, 1941. Hansina Hansdottir, the only other person at the séance, also signed Jonsdottir’s statement, saying it was correct. Here is Jonsdottir’s statement: “Hjalmar [Gudjonsson] . . . did not recognize in any way at all the man Finna described to him. I had the impression that he did not want to hear anything further from this unknown man, so I asked Finna about him myself. Finna said: ‘This man has living parents. . . .’ I asked: ‘Did he die immediately?’ Finna said: ‘No, he managed to get to his home, and then I see he was carried by boat. He was brought to a doctor. I see the boat between fjords and that he died on the way in the boat.’ I asked: ‘Can you tell me between what fjords he was to be brought?’ Finna said: ‘I cannot get that, but Eskifjordur is what he has most on his mind.’ I asked: ‘How long do you think it is since he died?’ Finna said: ‘I cannot see that clearly. I believe it to be some months, about four or five, but it could be more or less. This man seems to have become well oriented [in the after-life], but he does not feel secure.’ I asked: ‘What do you think he wants from Hjalmar? Something specific?’ Finna said: ‘He just came to him since they are both from the same part of the country and he is also trying to get strength from him. You should think well of him. That gives him strength’” (Haraldsson and Stevenson

1975b, pp. 247–248).

In June 1941, Asmundur Gestsson went to Eskifjordur and confirmed details about Gudni Magnusson, such as the fact he had blond hair, thinning on the top of his head. Later, Erlendur Haraldsson interviewed Gudni’s brother Otto and sister Rosa, who also confirmed the details of the reports from the séance. Haraldsson also, with some difficulty, obtained a copy of Gudni’s death certificate, which listed the cause of death as “intestinal perforation” (Haraldsson and Stevenson 1975b, p. 249).

On November 7, 1940, an Icelandic newspaper published a brief obituary of Gudni, but it did not give many details, and would not in itself have been of much help to the medium Hafsteinn in manufacturing the communications from Gudni. Neither the medium nor any of the sitters had any connection with Gudni or his family. Haraldsson and Stevenson (1975b, pp. 260–261) concluded: “Despite extensive inquiries we have not been able to find any channel for normal communication to the medium of the correct information he had about Gudni Magnusson and expressed at the séance under consideration.”

Possession by Departed Humans

The mediumistic communications we have just examined help establish that personalities of humans who existed on earth are still existing in some other, apparently nearby, dimension of the universe and are capable of interacting with us here through special channels. Frederick Myers, one of the principal researchers in this field, wrote that “the evidence for communication with the spirits of identified deceased persons through the trance-utterances and writings of sensitives apparently controlled by those spirits is established beyond serious attack” (Myers

1903, v. 1, p. 29). Some of the communications gave information of even higher levels or dimensions of the universe, inhabited by higher beings.

We shall now consider another category of evidence that conscious entities exist at some other level of the cosmos—reports of terrestrial humans possessed by departed human personalities. Mediumistic communications also represent a kind of possession, because the medium appears to be temporarily possessed by the communicating spirit. The possession cases that follow are, however, different in that they involve longer and more intense periods of possession. It also seems that the motivation of the possessing spirit to enter a terrestrial human body plays a larger role than in the mediumistic communication cases.

Psychologist William James was willing to consider the reality of spirit possession. The theory that a demonic spirit might take control of a living human body could explain some mental illnesses. In fact, up to the nineteenth century, many physicians in Europe and America did accept this theory. “That the demon theory will have its innings again is to my mind absolutely certain,” said James (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 207).

I found the case of the “Watseka Wonder” (Stevens 1887; Myers 1903, v. 1, pp. 361–367) especially interesting because of its detailed documentation of a possession. Watseka, a town of five or six thousand people, is the capital of Iroquois County in the state of Illinois. The Watseka Wonder was a girl named Lurancy Vennum. The daughter of Thomas J. and Lurinda J. Vennum, she was born on April 16, 1864 near Watseka. One night in early July of 1877, Lurancy felt the presence of persons in her room at night. They called her by her nickname, Rancy, and she felt them breathing on her face. The next day, she told her parents about this. On the evening of July 11, 1877, Lurancy was sewing. At six o’clock, her mother asked her to help make dinner. Lurancy said, “Ma, I feel bad: I feel so queer” (Stevens 1887, p. 3). She then fell upon the floor, and lay there, her body quite rigid. After five hours, she regained consciousness but reported she still felt “very strange and queer” (Stevens 1887, p. 3). She then rested for the night.

The next day, her body again became rigid, and during this state she was apparently aware of both her present physical surroundings and another dimension—a world of spirits. Among the spirits she saw a sister and brother who had died and called out, “Oh, mother! can’t you see little Laura and Bertie? They are so beautiful!” (Stevens 1887, p. 3) Lurancy’s visions of spirits and angels continued for several weeks, ending in September. On November 27, 1877, Lurancy suffered severe pains in her stomach, and these attacks continued for two weeks. On December 11, in the middle of these attacks, she entered into a trancelike state and again began speaking of spirits and angels she could see in a place she called heaven (Stevens 1887, p. 4).

On the advice of relatives and friends, Lurancy’s parents considered sending her to an asylum. Asa B. Roff and his wife Ann, on hearing of this, tried to persuade the Vennums not to do it and asked for permission to see Lurancy. Mr. Vennum finally agreed, and on January 31, 1878, Mr. Roff came, along with Dr. E. W. Stevens of Janesville, Wisconsin. Stevens was a medical doctor with spiritualist leanings. When he saw Lurancy, she was sitting on a chair near the stove, having adopted the bodily expressions and voice of an “old hag.” She refused to speak to anyone except Dr. Stevens. She said that only he could understand her, because he was a spiritualist. Stevens asked her name, and she answered without hesitation, “Katrina Hogan.” Further questions revealed the personality of an old woman from Germany, sixty-three years old, controlling Lurancy’s body from the spirit world. After some time, Lurancy’s personality changed. She was now Willie Canning, the delinquent son of a man named Peter Canning. He had run away from home and lost his life (Stevens 1887, pp. 5–6).

When Dr. Stevens and Mr. Roff were getting ready to leave, Lurancy rose up and then fell flat on the floor, her body rigid. Stevens ministered to her, using mesmeric and spiritualist techniques, and soon Lurancy was manifesting her own personality, although she was still in a trance state. She said she was in heaven. Stevens convinced her that she should not allow herself to be controlled by bad spirits such as Katrina and Willie. She should find a nicer spirit. Lurancy agreed and after searching announced she had found one who desired to make use of her. Lurancy said, “Her name is Mary Roff.” Mr. Roff recognized Mary as his daughter, who had died twelve years previously, when Lurancy was one year old. During her life, Mary Roff had displayed clairvoyant and other psychic powers, and these were tested and verified by leading citizens of Watseka. Mr. Roff advised Lurancy that Mary was a good spirit and that she should let Mary communicate through her. Lurancy accepted this suggestion (Stevens 1887, pp. 6–8).

After a few hours, Lurancy came out of her trance. But the next day, February 1, 1878, she claimed to be Mary Roff. Her father then went to Mr. Roff’s office and told him, “She seems like a child real homesick, wanting to see her pa and ma and her brothers” (Stevens 1887, p. 9). But Lurancy did not go immediately to be with the Roffs. She remained at home, continuing to manifest Mary Roff’s personality there. After a few more days, Mrs. Ann B. Roff and her daughter Mrs. Minerva Alter came to see Lurancy. The girl recognized them through a window as they were coming up the street, saying, “There comes my ma and sister Nervie!” (Stevens 1887, p. 13) When the two women entered the house, Lurancy cried for joy, and threw her arms around their necks in greeting, as if she knew them intimately. After this visit, she seemed quite homesick and desirous of going to the Roffs. The Vennums, on the advice of friends, finally allowed their daughter to go, on February 11, 1878.

When Lurancy was being taken by the Roffs to their house, she tried to get them to go to another house on the way. She insisted it was her house. The Roffs had to take her past this house, almost by force. It was the house in which Mary Roff had died. The Roffs had then moved to another house, the one to which they were taking Lurancy (Myers 1903, v. 1, p. 367).

Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research, published a report on Lurancy’s stay with the Roffs, during which “almost every hour of the day some trifling incident of Mary Roff’s life was recalled by Lurancy” (Myers 1903, v. 1, p. 366). Indeed, Lurancy appeared to forget her identity as the daughter of the Vennums. Once, Lurancy told Dr. Stevens about a cut on her arm. As she rolled up her sleeve to show him the scar, she said, “Oh, this is not the arm; that one is in the ground,” meaning that the cut was on the arm of Mary Roff, whose body was now buried. Lurancy (as Mary) recalled seeing her own burial, indicating the soul of Mary Roff had hovered near her body after death or observed the scene from heaven (Griffin 1997, p. 172).

On February 19, 1878, Mr. Roff stated to Dr. Stevens: “Mary is perfectly happy; she recognizes everybody and everything that she knew when in her body twelve or more years ago. She knows nobody nor anything whatever that is known by Lurancy. Mr. Vennum has been to see her, and also her brother Henry, at different times, but she don’t know anything about them. Mrs. Vennum is still unable to come and see her daughter. She has been nothing but Mary since she has been here, and knows nothing but what Mary knew. She has entered the trance once every other day for some days. She is perfectly happy. You don’t know how much comfort we take with the dear angel” (Stevens 1887, p. 17).

Lurancy had predicted the angels would let her stay as Mary with the Roffs until May. (Stevens 1887, pp. 13–14). Minerva Alter, Mary’s sister, wrote on April 16, 1878: “My angel sister says she is going away from us again soon, but says she will be often with us. She says Lurancy is a beautiful girl; says she sees her nearly every day, and we do know she is getting better every day. Oh, the lessons that are being taught us are worth treasures of rare diamonds; they are stamped upon the mind so firmly that heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot or one title shall be forgotten. I have learned so much that is grand and beautiful, I cannot express it; I am dumb. A few days ago Mary was caressing her father and mother, and they became a little tired of it, and asked why she hugged and kissed them. She sorrowfully looked at them, and said, ‘Oh, pa and ma! I want to kiss you while I have lips to kiss you with, and hug you while I have arms to hug you with, for I am going back to heaven before long, and then I can only be with you in spirit, and you will not always know when I come, and I cannot have you as I can now. Oh, how much I love you all!’” (Stevens 1887, p. 18)

On May 7, 1878, Mary told Mrs. Roff that Lurancy was coming back. As she was sitting with her eyes closed, Lurancy regained control of her body. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised by her surroundings, and displaying anxiety, said: “Where am I? I was never here before” (Stevens 1887, p. 19). She cried and said she wanted to go home. In five minutes, Mary returned, and began singing her favorite childhood song, “We are Coming, Sister Mary” (Stevens 1887, p. 20). Mary continued to inhabit Lurancy’s body for some more time. During this period, she continued communicating her visions of heaven to the Roffs, including an encounter with the baby that Minerva Alter had recently lost to death.

From time to time, during these last days, the personality of Mary would recede enough for the personality of Lurancy to partially appear. When the girl was asked, “Where is Lurancy?” she would reply, “Gone out somewhere,” or “She is in heaven taking lessons, and I am here taking lessons too” (Stevens 1887, p. 26). On May 19, 1878, Mr. Roff was sitting with Mary in the parlor of his house. Mary then departed, and Lurancy took full control of her body. Henry Vennum, Lurancy’s brother, happened to be visiting the Roffs and was called in from another room. Lurancy, weeping, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Everyone present began to cry. Henry left to get Lurancy’s mother, and while he was gone, Mary returned briefly. But when Mrs. Vennum came, Lurancy returned again. Stevens (1887, p. 35) said, “Mother and daughter embraced and kissed each other, and wept until all present shed tears of sympathy; it seemed the very gate of heaven.” Lurancy returned home, married, and lived a fairly normal life except that when she would see the Roffs sometimes “Mary” would briefly return (Stevens 1887, p. 35).

Is it possible that the Watseka Wonder can be explained as a hoax manufactured by Dr. Stevens, the author of a book about the case? This seems unlikely. Both the Vennum and Roff families testified to the accuracy of the account given by Stevens. Many details can also be corroborated from newspaper reports, and the case was thoroughly investigated by outside researchers such as Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research. Furthermore, William James, a world renowned psychologist, accepted the case and published it in his Principles of Psychology. In a footnote, James (1890 v. 1, p. 398, footnote 64) wrote, “My friend Mr. R. Hodgson informs me that he visited Watseka in April

1890, and cross-examined the principal witnesses of this case. His confidence in the original narrative was strengthened by what he learned; and various unpublished facts were ascertained, which increased the plausibility of the spiritualistic interpretation of the phenomenon.” What about Lurancy? Could she have been responsible? It does not seem likely that she could have acquired by natural means the extensive knowledge she displayed about numerous details of the lives of Mary Roff and members of the Roff family. Mary died when Lurancy was one year old, and the Roff and Vennum families had little contact with each other (Griffin 1997, p. 173).

The obvious paranormal explanation is that the soul of Mary Roff temporarily possessed the body of Lurancy Vennum.This would, of course, support the idea that there is a conscious self that can survive the death of the body. Supporters of the “superpsi” hypothesis might suggest that Lurancy picked up information about Mary from the minds of her living relations. But this would not easily account for her forgetting her identity as Lurancy Vennum and functioning for fourteen weeks, without a break, as Mary Roff. One researcher (Griffin 1997, pp. 173–174) has proposed that although Mary’s personality did not survive, perhaps some of her memories survived in a recoverable form and were used by Lurancy to construct the personality of Mary. But these memories should have stopped with Mary’s death. This would leave unexplained Lurancy’s account of Mary witnessing her own funeral. All things considered, the idea that the surviving personality of Mary Roff temporarily possessed the body of Lurancy Vennum seems the most economical and reasonable explanation of the facts.

The Watseka Wonder was cited by Frederick Myers of the Society for Psychical Research as one of the main evidences for survival of the human personality after death. From the total body of evidence available to him, Myers drew the following conclusions about spirits and the spirit world: “Spirits may be able to recognize spatial relations (so that they can manifest at an agreed place) but they are themselves probably independent of space; their interactions with each other are all telepathic, and the laws of telepathy are non-spatial laws . . . The spirits of the recently dead may retain telepathic links with spirits still in the flesh and may endeavor to contact them, or to ‘guide’ their activities. Beyond and behind such spirits, but still with affinities to them, are the spirits whose advancement in knowledge and understanding has linked them in fellowship to higher souls” (Gauld 1968, pp. 309–310). These are, according to Myers, linked to still higher ones, and all are linked to a Universal Spirit, the source of love and wisdom.

Ian Stevenson, known for his work on past life memories, also did work on xenoglossy cases, in which subjects manifest inexplicable abilities to speak foreign languages. Xenoglossy cases can sometimes involve past life memories, but possession is another possible explanation. One of Stevenson’s principal xenoglossy studies involved an Indian woman, Uttara Huddar, and her case does seem to involve possession.

Uttara Huddar was born on March 14, 1941, in the town of Nagpur, in the Indian province of Maharashtra. Like most of the inhabitants of this province, Uttara was of the Maratha group and spoke the Marathi language. Both of Uttara’s parents were Marathas. In her twenties she was hospitalized for some physical disorders. During her stay in the hospital, she took lessons in meditation from a yogi, and afterwards, during altered states of consciousness, began speaking a new language and manifesting a new personality. Dr. Joshi (pseudonym), one of the physicians at the hospital, recognized the language as Bengali. Because the Bengali she spoke contained no English loan words, it appeared to date to the nineteenth century. After Uttara returned from the hospital, her parents began to try to find an explanation for their daughter’s strange behavior. They consulted M. C. Bhattacarya, a Bengali who served as a priest at a temple of goddess Kali, in Nagpur. To Bhattacarya, Uttara identified herself as a Bengali woman named Sharada, and gave many details about her life. All of this was communicated in Bengali. From the information given by Sharada, it appeared to Bhattacarya that she considered herself to be living some time in the past. She said her father, whose name was Brajesh Chattopadaya, lived near a Shiva temple in the town of Burdwan. Her mother’s name was Renukha Devi, and her stepmother’s name was Anandamoyi. She gave her husband’s name as Swami Vishwanath Mukhopadaya, and said her father-in-law’s name was Nand Kishore Mukhopadaya. When asked where she had been living before she came to Nagpur, Sharada replied that she had been living with her maternal aunt in the town of Saptagram. This information was recorded in Bhattacarya’s diary for the year 1974 (Stevenson 1984, pp.73–75).

In May of 1975, Dr. R. K. Sinha, making use of this information, visited the Saptagram region of Bengal, and attempted to verify some of the details of Sharada’s life. Satinath Chatterji, a living member of the Chattopadaya family, gave a genealogy of his male ancestors in which the name of Brajesh Chattopadaya appeared. Dr. Sinha got from Chatterji further names of Brajesh Chattopadaya’s relatives and contemporaries. Returning to Nagpur, Dr. Sinha questioned Uttara, without revealing any of the new genealogical information he had obtained. Stevenson (1984, pp. 88–89) reported: “The names Sharada gave for her father, grandfather, one brother (Kailasnath), and two uncles (Devnath and Shivnath) all appear in the genealogy with the relationship she attributed to them. In addition, she told him the name of another male relative, Mathuranath, without specifying how he was related to her. The genealogy does not include the name of Srinath, one of the brothers mentioned by Sharada. His existence, however, is established in a deed of agreement for the settlement of property between Devnath, on the one hand, and Kailasnath and Srinath, on the other. The deed is dated March, 1827. This property settlement between the uncle and two nephews indicates tacitly that the nephews’ father, Brajesh, had died by March 1827, and presumably not long before the property settlement. Satinath Chatterji had another deed (also dated in 1827), which identified Mathuranath as the grandson of Shivnath, who was one of Sharada’s (presumed) uncles.”

How are Uttara’s impressions to be explained? One explanation is that she was getting this information from living sources, by a process of “super-extrasensory perception.” In other words, perhaps she had drawn on knowledge existing in the mind of Satinath Chatterji and other persons living in Bengal in the 1970s. But Stevenson pointed out that Sharada’s language abilities could not have been acquired by simple extrasensory perception. Such a skill requires actual practice for its acquisition. Stevenson (1984, pp. 160–161) therefore concluded: “Any person (or personality) demonstrating the ability to speak a language must have learned the language himself some time before the occasion of demonstrating this ability. And if we can further exclude the possibility that the person concerned did not learn the language earlier in his life, it follows that it was learned by some other personality manifesting through him. That other personality could be a previous incarnation of the person concerned or it could be a discarnate personality temporarily manifesting through the living subject—possessing the subject, we might say.” In the case of Uttara, Stevenson showed that she had not learned Bengali before the time of the manifestation of the personality of Sharada. She had learned a few words of Bengali, but did not possess the fluent command of the language demonstrated by Sharada (Stevenson 1984, pp.

134–135, 137–138, 140, 146).

Philosopher David Ray Griffin proposes that Uttara was very unhappy with her childless, husbandless life, and wanted to adopt another personality (Sharada had a husband and children). Making use of his theory of surviving mental impressions (as opposed to surviving souls with memories), he concluded that Uttara, using a superpsi faculty, selected Sharada’s memories from some cosmic reservoir of memories and constructed from them an alternate personality for herself (Griffin

1997, pp. 180–182). This does not, however, account for Uttara’s mastery of Bengali. Recollection would allow only simple repetition of things said in the past, not the ability to compose new speech. Possession of Uttara’s body by the surviving Sharada personality seems to be the most reasonable explanation.

Here is a final detail. Uttara, speaking as Sharada, recalled that she had been bitten on her right toe by a snake and had died. Uttara’s mother said that when she was pregnant with Uttara, she repeatedly dreamed that a cobra was about to bite her on the right toe. The dreams stopped upon Uttara’s birth. Uttara herself had a great fear of snakes as a child. When the personality of Sharada overtook Uttara, she would sometimes experience physical transformations suggestive of a snake bite. Her tongue and mouth became dark, and there was a black area on her toe. During one such episode she pointed to the toe and said that a king cobra had just bitten her there. Stevenson (1984, p. 112) noted: “A present-day member of the Chattopadaya family, furthermore, reports hearing that during the time of his great grandmother a female member of the family had died of a snakebite.”

Apparitions of Departed Humans

Having considered cases of communication through mediums and cases of possession as evidence for spirits of departed humans continuing to exist in some other level of a cosmic hierarchy, let us now look at cases of apparitions of departed humans. Prominent scientists have taken such cases seriously. For example, William James said: “Science may keep saying: ‘Such things are simply impossible’; yet so long as the stories multiply in different lands, and so few are positively explained away, it is bad method to ignore them. They should at least accrete for further use. As I glance back at my reading of the past few years . . . ten cases immediately rise to my mind” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, pp. 62–63). Let’s now look at a few cases. I agree with James that it is “bad method to ignore them.”

The astronomer Camille Flammarion (1909, p. 303) accepted “the possibility of communication between incarnate and discarnate spirits.” He added (1909, p. 303) that his own research had led him to conclusions favoring “the plurality of inhabited worlds . . . and the indestructibility of souls, as well as of atoms.” Flammarion’s masterpiece was Death and its mystery, a three volume compilation of evidence for the existence of the soul apart from the body and its survival after the death of the body. The book contains several apparition cases.

The following is an account of an apparition that appeared about two hours after death (Flammarion 1923, v. 3, pp. 133–136). It was recorded by Charles Tweedale of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in the english mechanic and World of Science (July 20, 1906). Tweedale recalled an incident from his boyhood. He went to bed early on the evening of January 10, 1879. He awoke and saw a form taking shape before him in the moonlight. He noticed that the moonlight was coming in from the window on the south side of his room. The form gradually became clearer until he recognized his grandmother’s face. She was wearing “an old-fashioned cap which was fluted in a shell-like design.” After a few seconds, the form gradually disappeared. At breakfast, Tweedale told his parents about his vision. His father left the table without speaking. His mother explained, “This morning your father told me that he had waked up in the night, and that he had seen his mother standing near his bed, but just at the moment when he wished to speak to her she had disappeared.” A few hours later the family received a telegram bearing the news of the death of Tweedale’s grandmother. Tweedale later learned that his father’s sister (Tweedale’s aunt) had also seen the apparition on the night of the old woman’s death. The death occurred at fifteen minutes past midnight. Tweedale’s father had noted the time of his vision as two o’clock in the morning. Tweedale himself did not have a timepiece, but from the position of the moon, he estimated that his vision had also taken place at two in the morning. The vision of Tweedale’s aunt also took place well after the reported time of death. Tweedale stated: “This proves that we are not concerned with a telepathic or subjective manifestation, occurring before death or at the very moment of death, but with a really objective apparition occurring after life had left the body. We may conclude, therefore, that the dead woman, though apparently lifeless, was sufficiently alive some hours later to manifest herself to different persons separated by considerable distances” (Flammarion 1923, v. 3, p. 135). Details of the report given by Tweedale were confirmed by his mother and his aunt’s surviving husband.

From all the evidence recorded in his books, Flammarion (1923 v.3, p. 348) arrived at five conclusions: “(1) The soul exists as a real entity, independent of the body. (2) It is endowed with faculties still unknown to science. (3) It may act at a distance, telepathically, without the intermediary of the senses. (4) There exists in nature a psychic element, the character of which is still hidden from us. . . . (5) The soul survives the physical organism and may manifest itself after death.”

Concerning the relationship of the soul to the body, Flammarion (1923 v. 3, p. 346) said: “The body is but an organic garment of the spirit; it dies, it changes, it disintegrates: the spirit remains. . . . The soul cannot be destroyed.” This is remarkably similar to the following statement from Bhagavad Gita (2.22): “As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.”

On a Friday night in April of 1880, Mrs. N. J. Crans went to sleep in New York. She reported in a letter to Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research: “After lying down to rest, I remember feeling a drifting sensation, of seeming almost as if I was going out of the body. My eyes were closed; soon I realized that I was, or seemed to be, going fast somewhere. All seemed dark to me; suddenly I realized that I was in a room; then I saw Charley lying in a bed asleep; then I took a look at the furniture of the room, and distinctly saw every article—even to a chair at the head of the bed, which had one of the pieces broken in the back.” Charley was her son-in-law, Charles A. Kernochan, who was living in Central City, South Dakota. Mrs. Crans continued: “In a moment the door opened and my spirit-daughter Allie came into the room and stepped up to the bed and stooped down and kissed Charley. He seemed to at once realize her presence, and tried to hold her, but she passed right out of the room about like a feather blown by the wind.” Allie was the daughter of Mrs. Crans and the wife of Charles Kernochan. She had died in December 1879, about five months before this incident. Mrs. Crans told several people about her dream, and then on Sunday wrote a letter to Charles. Meanwhile, Charles himself had written a letter which crossed hers in the mail, delivery of which took about six days between New York and South Dakota. In this letter, Charles wrote, “Oh, my darling mamma Crans! My God! I dreamed I saw Allie last Friday night!” Mrs. Crans said that Charles described Allie “just as I saw her; how she came into the room and he cried and tried to hold her, but she vanished.” After Charles sent this letter, he received the letter sent by Mrs. Crans, and wrote another letter in reply. Mrs. Crans said that Charles “wrote me all that I had seen was correct, even to every article of furniture in the room, also as his dream had appeared to him” (Myers 1903, v. 1, p. 244). In this case, it appears that both percipients were in the dream state when Allie appeared to them. One might propose that there was an unconscious telepathic link between Mrs. Crans and Charles, and that together they manufactured the joint appearance in an intersubjective dream state. But there is hardly any less reason to suppose that there could have been a third party to this intersubjective encounter, namely Allie herself, in some subtle material form.

General Sir Arthur Becher was serving with the British Army in

India when he saw an apparition (Myers 1903, v. 1, pp. 250–251). In March,

1867, he went to the hill station of Kussowlie (Kussoorie) to inspect a house where he and his family were planning to reside during the hot season. He was accompanied by his son. During the night, the General woke up to find an Indian woman standing near his bed. As he got up, the figure went through a door leading from the bedroom into a bathroom. The General followed, but the woman was not there. He noticed that aside from the door by which he had entered, the only other exit, a door leading from the bathroom to the outside of the house, was securely locked. The General went to sleep again, and in the morning wrote in pencil on a doorpost a brief note that he had seen a ghost. But he mentioned the matter to no one.

After a few days, the General and his family, including his wife Lady Becher, arrived to set up residence in the house. Lady Becher decided to use the room in which the General had slept as her dressing room. On her first evening in the house, Lady Becher was dressing for dinner in this room when she saw an Indian woman standing in the bathroom. Thinking the woman to be her own ayah, or maidservant, Lady Becher asked her what she wanted. There was no reply, and when Lady Becher went into the bathroom she found the woman gone and the door to the outside locked.

At dinner, Lady Becher mentioned the strange occurrence to the General, who replied with his own account. Later they went to sleep in their bedroom. Their youngest son, who was eight years old, was sleeping in a bed in the same room. He had no knowledge of the apparition. His bed was near the door to the dressing room and bathroom. During the night, the boy woke up, and his parents heard him cry out in Hindi, “What do you want, ayah? What do you want?” He had obviously seen the form of an Indian woman. On this occasion neither the General nor his wife saw the form. In fact, none of them ever saw it again. The General wrote about this last appearance: “It confirmed our feeling that the same woman had appeared to us all three, and on inquiry from other occupants we learned that it was a frequent apparition on the first night or so of the house being occupied. A native Hill, or Cashmere woman, very fair and handsome, had been murdered some years before in a hut a few yards below the house, and immediately under the door leading into the bath and dressing room, through which, on all three occasions, the figure had entered and disappeared. . . . I could give the names of some other subsequent occupants who have told us much the same story” (Myers 1903, v. 1, p. 251).

Charles Lett, a military man, recalled the following apparition incident, noteworthy because of the multiple simultaneous percipients (Griffin 1997, pp. 218–219). On April 5, 1873, his wife’s father, Captain Towns, had died in his house. Six weeks later, Lett’s wife was in one of the bedrooms of the house and saw reflected on the polished surface of a wardrobe a very detailed and lifelike image of the head and torso of Captain Towns. Accompanying her was a young lady, Miss Berthon, who also saw the image. At first they thought someone had hung a portrait of the Captain. At that moment Mrs. Lett’s sister, Miss Towns, entered the room, and before either Mrs. Lett or Miss Berthon had a chance to say anything, Miss Towns said, “Good gracious! Do you see papa?” Several household servants were summoned individually, and one after another they expressed astonishment at the apparition. Charles Lett recalled, “Finally, Mrs. Towns was sent for, and seeing the apparition, she advanced towards it with her arm extended as if to touch it, and as she passed her hand over the panel of the wardrobe the figure gradually faded away, and never again appeared.”

Was the apparition really caused by the surviving soul of Captain Towns, who manifested his form in space? Superpsi theorists would say no. But such multiple perception cases are difficult to account for by the superpsi explanation. One would have to propose that the main percipient generated in her mind an image of Captain Towns, acquiring it from her own mind or by extrasensory perception from the mind of a living person. The main percipient would then have to experience this image in the context of the room. By a process called telepathic contagion, the same image would then be transmitted to the minds of others. But extensive experiments in telepathic image transmission, reviewed in chapter 6, show that it is not easy to transmit a complete image from one mind to another. Another possible explanation is a kind of super psychokinetic (super-pk) ability, whereby the main percipient generates an actual form in three dimensional space. But whether we are talking about superpsior super-pk, there are difficulties. In this particular case, seven individuals saw the image and it looked the same to all of them. Also, the individual percipients were standing in different places in the room, and the image was placed in proper perspective for each of them. It is also significant that the percipients saw the image only as they entered the room, and later it faded at the same time for all of them. This discussion is based on an analysis given by Griffin (1997, pp. 219–221), who, after noting that multiple perceptions of apparitions are not uncommon, said (1997, p. 221), “The view that at least some of the apparitions are due to postmortem agency of the apparent could certainly provide the simplest explanation.”

Superpsi and super-pk explanations of apparitions with multiple percipients usually place the motivation for the apparition in the mind of the main percipient. This requires that the main percipient know the deceased person, and have some reason for wanting to perceive the person. Otherwise, the motivation would then lie with the deceased, which would give evidence for survival, the very thing the superpsi and super-pk explanations are meant to exclude. But there are cases of collective apparitions where the primary percipient did not know the deceased. Here is one such case from Myers’s Human Personality. On Christmas Eve of 1869, just as a woman and her husband, Willie, were about to go to sleep, the woman saw a man dressed in a naval uniform standing at the foot of the bed. She touched her husband, who was facing away from the image, and drawing his attention to it, said, “Willie, who is this?” Her husband said loudly, “What on earth are you doing here, sir?” The figure said reproachfully, “Willie, Willie!” The figure then moved toward the wall of the bedroom. The woman recalled, “As it passed the lamp, a deep shadow fell upon the room as of a material person shutting out the light from us by his intervening body, and he disappeared, as it were, into the wall.” After the disappearance, Willie told his wife that the image had been that of his father, a naval officer, who had died fourteen years earlier. She had never seen him. Her husband had been in anxiety about a large financial transaction, and he took the apparition of his father as a warning for him not to proceed (Griffin 1997, p. 222,). Taking the wife as the principal percipient and the apparition as a hallucination, it is unusual that she should hallucinate an image of her husband’s dead father, whom she had never met or seen. A paranormal researcher might propose that by super-esp the wife picked up on her husband’s anxiety and his unconscious thoughts of his father, and from that material manifested a real apparition by super-pk, causing it to be visible not only to her but her husband. But this is straining perhaps too much to avoid the survival hypothesis. In this case, it is simpler to propose that the surviving spirit of Willie’s father, desiring to save his son from financial ruin, was responsible for his own apparition. Griffin (1997, p. 223) points out that in such cases “Frederick Myers suggested that the postmortem soul, or some element thereof, produces quasi-physical effects in the region of space at which the apparition is seen.”

Evidence for Superhuman Personalities in the Cosmic Hierarchy

In the apparition, possession, and communication cases we have considered above, the appearing, possessing, or communicating entity appears to be a departed human. But in some cases the entity appears to be superhuman, giving evidence for contact with beings at a different level of the cosmic hierarchy than that occupied by departed humans.

Demonic Possession

On January 15, 1949 members of the Doe family in the Georgetown district of Washington, D. C., heard strange knocking and scratching noises in their house (Doe is a pseudonym used in the reports of the case). At first they thought it was the ghost of a departed relative. Eventually, the sounds stopped, and small objects began to disappear and reappear in the house. Pieces of furniture moved inexplicably, and paintings shook on the walls. After a few weeks, the Does’ son Roland, thirteen years old, began to manifest strange symptoms. He talked in his sleep and shouted obscenities. One night the family members heard him screaming and went into his room to see him. They found him and his mattress floating in mid air. The Does, who were Lutherans, sought help from a clergyman. A few nights later, this clergyman witnessed a similar levitation by Roland. These levitations were repeated, not only in the Doe home, but in other houses and hospitals. After the levitations started, Roland started manifesting symptoms of possession. He suffered violent seizures, and a demonic personality took control of his body and speech (Rogo 1982, pp. 41–42).

At this point, the parents concluded that the only cure was a Roman Catholic exorcism. Church officials accepted their petition, and Roland was taken to a Catholic hospital in St. Louis for the exorcism. The priests conducting the exorcism were Father Raymond Bishop, Father F. Bowdern, and Father Lawrence Kenny. They kept a diary, which recorded the many supernatural events that took place during the exorcism. Roland levitated, read the minds of the exorcists, manifested understanding of Latin, and exercised unusual strength, breaking away from attendants who were trying to hold him down on his bed. Father Charles O’Hara, of Marquette University in Milwaukee, was present for some of the sessions. He later said to Father Eugene Gallagher of Georgetown University: “One night the boy brushed off his handlers and soared through the air at Father Bowdern standing at some distance from his bed [with] the ritual [book] in his hands. Presumably, Father was about to be attacked but the boy got no further than the book. And when his hand hit that—I assure you I saw this with my own eyes—he didn’t tear the book, he dissolved it. The book vaporized into confetti and fell in small fine pieces to the floor” (Rogo 1982, p. 43).

After several weeks, Roland was finally freed from the demon’s control. Rogo (1982, p. 43) says: “Unfortunately, a large portion of the diary kept by Roland’s exorcists is now lost. The case report written by the priests was in the possession of Father Gallagher until 1950, at which time he lent it to a colleague. Somehow a number of its sixteen pages were misplaced at that time. However, many of the original witnesses who took part in the case, in both St. Louis and Georgetown, are still alive.” It was on this case that William Peter Blatty based his novel the exorcist, which was turned into a film that became a classic of its kind.

On December 22, 1693, Carlo Maria Vulcano, a boy sixteen years old, entered the monastery of the Hieronymite order in Naples for training as a novice (Gauld and Cornell 1979, pp. 158–166). During the night of May 4, 1696, stones mysteriously fell into the hallway outside the room where Carlo and some other novices were sleeping. The same thing happened the next night. The novices rushed into the hallway, but saw only the stones lying on the floor of the hallway. Later that night, Carlo, alone in his room, noticed some movements in the dark. Then a voice cried out in his room, pleading for a prayer to be said for him. Carlo ran out the room screaming, “Jesus, Jesus, help me, help me” (Gauld and Cornell 1979, p. 162). One of the masters, Master Squillante, pacified Carlo, blessed the room, and told Carlo to go to sleep.When Carlo was lying in his bed, he saw a figure dressed as a Benedictine monk in the doorway. It came into the room, again crying out for prayers to be said on its behalf. Carlo and the novices ran to the prayer room, where they said prayers and chanted the rosary. As they did so, they heard a great commotion in the hallway, and then everything was quiet.

During the first part of the next day, stones fell in different rooms throughout the monastery, and then things became quiet. That night, as Carlo was trying to go to sleep, he again heard a voice calling him. He ignored it, thinking it a product of his imagination. But then the voice challenged, “You do not want to reply?” At that moment, his bed collapsed and the sheets and blankets flew into the air. Carlo ran out of the room, as behind him all the furniture crashed down and the window burst open. On the days that followed, stones continued to fall in various places. The demon pounded on doors, all the while crying out loudly. During the attacks, mattresses, sheets, and pillows were flung wildly around. The demon put pots of excrement in front of sacred images, threw excrement at Carlo, and threw paving stones at other persons.

On the night of May 11, the demon addressed the master of the novices in loud impolite language. The demon, upon being interrogated, identified himself as “the devil of the inferno” and declared that he had been ordained by God “to ceasely torment that novice” (Gauld and Cornell 1979, p. 163). On May 13, two brothers of the order, bearing sacred relics, posted themselves at the door to Carlo’s room, to prevent the demon from entering. Nevertheless, that night Carlo woke to find sitting near his bed a fiery-faced figure dressed in black. The demon shouted, “Now I will make you know who I am” (Gauld and Cornell 1979, p. 163). Carlo took a sacred image and pushed it into the demon’s face. In response, the demon burst into activity, scaring away the two brothers. The master and some novices came to the door of the room. Carlos tried to come out, but the demon grabbed him by his cassock and pulled him back. Recitation of the names of Jesus and Mary caused the demon to loosen his grip, and Carlos released himself. But upon his cassock was the print of a hand. The mark could not be removed. Demonic figures impressed in the wall of the room also could not be erased, and therefore the plaster was removed.

The boy was taken to the home of an uncle, Domenico Galisio. On May 22, Carlo was taken to Sorrento to see the remains of Saint Anthony, and there again the demon started to cause trouble. Carlo was then taken back to the monastery in Naples, where demonic phenomena resumed with increased ferocity. At times, the buildings shook as if being hit by earthquakes. Once Carlo and some monks were in a room, and part of the ceiling crashed down on them. No one was injured. The master of the novices commanded the demon to restore the ceiling, and to their amazement those present saw all the pieces of wood and plaster rise up and reassemble themselves. Still the disturbances continued. Cardinal Ursini performed an exorcism, but it failed to stop the activities of the demon. Carlo was sent from place to place, but the phenomena followed wherever he went. At another monastery in Capri, a Father Pietro wanted to perform an exorcism, but could not do it because he had left in Naples a book containing the proper procedures. When he began to pray, the demon appeared and threw the book at his feet. The demon said, “To my great confusion, I am obliged by that accursed name of that lad to bring you this book” (Gauld and Cornell 1979, p. 165).

On January 12, 1697, Carlo returned to his home. Sometimes when Carlo was away from the house, attending church services, the demon appeared in the shape of Carlo and beat Carlo’s brother and tormented his mother. Shortly thereafter things quieted down for a couple of months. On March 30, Carlo therefore returned to the monastery, but immediately the phenomena began again. At that point the leaders of the monastery decided that Carlo should give up all plans for becoming a monk. After that, the demon never returned.

Gauld and Cornell (1979, p. 158) explain: “The case was recorded by one of the brothers . . . who seems to have kept notes of the occurrences, and his account survives (or survived) in two identical contemporary manuscripts, entitled Caso successo in napoli nell’anno 1696 a 4 maggio nella casa dei P.P. Gerolomini (Case which happened in Naples, in the year 1696 on the 4th of May in the house of the Hieronymite Fathers). One of these manuscripts was obtained by a well-known Italian writer on psychic subjects, Francesco Zingaropoli, and was published by him with introduction and notes in a small and extremely rare book Gesta di uno ‘spirito’ nel monastero dei P.P. Gerolomini in napoli (Naples, 1904).” Laurence G. Thompson of the University of Southern California,

in his book Chinese Religion: an introduction, includes an account of an exorcism by a Taoist priest. The exorcism was witnessed by Peter Goullart, who recorded it in a book published in 1961.

Goullart and his traveling companions arrived at a Taoist temple in China. In a courtyard in front of the temple, they saw a young man, twenty-five years old, who had been possessed by a demon of a kind the Taoists call kuei. The emaciated young man, who had a wild look in his eyes, was lying on a straw mat placed on an iron bedstead. A Taoist priest and two assistants were standing nearby, with ritual paraphernalia on a small portable altar. Four strong men stood guard around the possessed young man. After repeating mantras from a book of incantations, the priest approached the possessed man. Goullart said, “His eyes were filled with malice as he watched the priest’s measured advance with a sly cunning and hatred. Suddenly he gave a bestial whoop and jumped up in his bed, the four attendants rushing to hold him.” The priest said to the kuei who had possessed the man, “Come out! Come out! I command you to come out.” From the mouth of the young man came the words “No! No! You cannot drive us out . . . Our power is greater than yours!” These words and more were spoken rapidly “in a strange, shrill voice, which sounded mechanical, inhuman—as if pronounced by a parrot” (Nicola 1974, p. 102).

The priest repeated his commands, while the four strong men held the violently struggling young man down on the iron bed. He howled like an animal, showing his teeth like fangs. Suddenly, he broke out of the arms of the men holding him and threw himself at the priest’s throat. The four men dragged him back down on the bed and tied him to it with ropes. Then the young man’s body began to swell. Goullart stated, “On and on the dreadful process continued until he became a grotesque balloon of a man. . . . Convulsions shook the monstrous, swollen body. . . . It seemed that all the apertures of the body were opened by the unseen powers hiding in it and streams of malodorous excreta and effluvia flowed on to the ground in incredible profusion. . . . For an hour this continued” (Nicola 1974, p. 103). After this ordeal, the man resumed his normal size.

The priest then took a ritual sword, and standing over the possessed man, commanded the demons: “Leave him! Leave him, in the name of the Supreme Power who never meant you to steal this man’s body!” (Nicola

1974, p. 103) Now the possessed man’s body became rigid and heavy, causing the bed to bend beneath his weight. The four guards could not lift him. Only when three other men joined them from the onlookers gathered around could they move him. Then the possessed man suddenly became light. The guards placed him on a wooden bed. The Taoist priest again began to recite mantras from his book of incantations. Then he sprinkled the possessed man with holy water and came up to him with the sword. This time his efforts were successful. He cried out to the demons, “I have won! Get out! Get out!”(Nicola 1974, p. 103) The possessed man went into convulsions, foaming at the mouth and clawing his body with his fingernails until it became covered with blood. From his foaming lips came the words, “Damn you! Damn you! We are going but you shall pay for it with your life!” Goullart stated, “There was a terrible struggle on the bed, the poor man twisting and rolling like a mortally-wounded snake and his colour changing all the time. Suddenly he fell flat on his back and was still. His eyes opened. His gaze was normal, and he saw his parents who now came forward to reclaim their son” (Nicola 1974, p.104).

Marian apparitions

Earlier in this chapter, we considered postmortem apparitions of ordinary people as evidence for the existence of disembodied human beings. We then considered demonic possession as evidence for the existence of superhuman beings, albeit of the malevolent type. We shall now consider evidence for the existence of benevolent superhuman beings, beginning with Marian apparitions, apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

Juan Diego was an Aztec Indian who converted to Christianity shortly after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He lived in a town called Quahutitlan, near Mexico City. Each day, he would walk to a church in a place called Tlatiloco. On the way, he would pass a hill called Tepeyacac. On the morning of December 8, 1531, as Juan Diego was passing by Tepeyacac, he heard music coming from the top of the hill. The music stopped, and then he heard a female voice calling his name. He climbed the hill and saw the glowing form of a beautiful young woman with a dark complexion, like an Indian. She spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. She identified herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary and asked him to tell the local bishop to build a church for her on the Tepeyacac hill. Interestingly enough, the Tepeyacac hill was the site of a temple to the Aztec earth goddess Coatlique (Mini 2000, p. 92).

Juan Diego went to the residence of Bishop Zumárraga and waited until he was allowed to see him. The bishop listened for a short time, and then suggested that they could talk more later. It was apparent to Juan Diego that the bishop did not believe his story. He went again to Tepeyacac and saw the apparition, who told him to go once more to the bishop. The next day, he again went to Mexico City, and with great difficulty, again managed to see the bishop. This time Zumárraga was more receptive. He told Juan Diego to ask the apparition for a sign that would authenticate her divine nature. Juan Diego said he would do this and left. When he saw the apparition for a third time, she told him she would give him the sign he requested on the next day.

On the next day, Juan Diego found that his uncle had become sick. His uncle wanted a priest. So instead of going to the hill to see the Virgin, Juan Diego went searching for a priest. On his way to get a priest, he passed the hill and heard the voice of the apparition calling him to see her, as he had promised. He replied that he would come, but he must first get a priest for his uncle. The voice replied, accusing Juan Diego of not having faith. The voice said his uncle would recover from his illness. Hearing this, Juan Diego agreed to come up to the top of the hill, but only if the apparition would give him the miraculous sign she had promised. She agreed. When Juan Diego reached the top of the hill, he saw it had been transformed. Where previously there had been only weeds and cactus plants, there was now, on December 12, 1531, in the iciest part of winter, a beautiful garden of blossoming, fragrant flowers, including Castilian roses and other Spanish flowers, all out of season. The apparition gathered some of these flowers, and placed them in the cloak that Juan Diego was wearing. She told him to present the flowers to the Bishop as the sign he had asked for. She also told Juan Diego not to open the cloak and show the flowers until he saw the Bishop.

Juan Diego came to the Bishop’s residence, and after making his way through hostile servants and guards who tried to see what he was carrying, came before the Bishop himself. When he opened his cloak, not only did the flowers fall out, but there was visible on the cloak itself a colorful image of the Virgin Mary. The radiant image was that of a beautiful young dark-skinned woman in prayer. She was standing on a crescent moon, and the crescent moon was being held by an angel. It could be seen that it was not a painted image, but was part of the fabric of the cloak. Bishop Zumárraga was overwhelmed by this miraculous sign, and agreed to build a church on the hill. The cloak, with its image unfaded, is on display even today in the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Villa Madero (Rogo 1982, pp. 117–120).

Rogo (1982, p. 120) says, “Between 1531 and 1648, no fewer than thirty-three documents describing the events of December 1531 were placed on record. As Father José Bravo Ugarte, an expert on Mexican history, states in his Cuestiones historicas guadalupanas (1946), ‘There can be little doubt that the story of the Guadalupe miracle rests on firm historical fact.’ Even Zumárraga apparently wrote out an account of the miracle, though his description was destroyed in 1778 by a fire that struck the archive room of the monastery where it had been deposited. In 1666 the Church officially investigated the miracle, retraced its history, and documented the evidence supporting its authenticity.” As part of the 1666 investigations, a group of painters examined the image and concluded it could not have been made by even the finest human artists. They stated: “It is impossible for any human craftsman to paint or create a work so fine, clean and well formed on a fabric so coarse” (Mini 2000, p. 167).

Over the years, there have been many investigations of the cloak and its image. The miraculous preservation of the maguey fabric was noted long ago. In 1660, Father Florencia wrote in his historical book la estrella del norte de mexico, “The permanence of the coarse maguey canvas. . . has lasted more than a hundred years. This is miraculous, since it is as entire and strong as it was the first day; especially when we consider the place in which it is subject to wind and saline dust and the heat of the candles and the incense which the devout continuously offer—without fading, or darkening or cracking” (Rogo 1982, p. 120).

In the twentieth century, enlarged photographs of the eyes of the Virgin showed a human face, apparently that of Juan Diego, reflected in each eye. In 1956, a group of eye and vision specialists looked at these images. Mini (2000, p. 169) stated: “They found that the images were reflected not only from the corneas of both of her eyes, but also from the lenses. . . . The image of Juan Diego’s face appears three times in each of the Virgin’s eyes. It appears once at the surface of the cornea, again at the anterior surface of the lens, and a third time at the posterior surface of the lens. . . . The images of Juan Diego in the Virgin’s eyes maintain perfect optical proportions under the closest scientific scrutiny. The scientists discerned that the images in each eye are in the exact locations required by optical physics.”

In 1979, Philip Callahan, a biophysicist from the University of Florida, tested the image on the cloak and found no brushstrokes or any “underdrawn blueprint” (Rogo 1982, p. 121). He also confirmed that the image has suffered no fading or cracking, which is unusual for an image produced by painting four hundred years ago. Callahan did find that there had been some additions to the original image. A sunburst had been painted around the Virgin’s figure and some stars and a golden border had been added to the Virgin’s cape. But Callahan pointed out that these additions had faded, while the original image retained its full colors. The cloak bearing the image is made of maguey cactus fiber, which should have rotted away hundreds of years ago. Callahan inspected the fibers to see if the cloak had been treated to prevent rotting, and found that this was not the case (Rogo 1982, p. 120).

The village of Pontmain is near the city of Le Mans in northwestern France. On the evening of January 17, 1871, Eugene Barbadette, who was twelve years old, and his brother Joseph, who was ten years old, were working in the barn on their father’s farm. Eugene decided to take a break from their work and went outside into the winter night. The sky was clear and filled with stars. Then Eugene noticed the figure of a beautiful woman floating in the sky. She was dressed in a blue robe, studded with golden stars, and wore a blue veil. At first, Eugene took the vision as a sign that his brother, who was in the French army, had died in battle with the Prussians, who had invaded France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. But he then noticed that the woman was smiling, and decided the vision must mean something favorable. Jeanette Detais, a neighborhood woman who had come for a visit, was standing nearby. But she could not see the apparition. Eugene’s father Mr. Barbadette and Eugene’s younger brother Joseph also came out. The father could not see anything, but Joseph could. Joseph and Eugene then began speaking to each other about what they were seeing. During the course of the evening, the boys continued to see the apparition, while others arriving on the scene, including Mrs. Barbadette, her maid, and a local nun, Sister Vitaline, could not.

Sister Vitaline concluded that perhaps the apparition was visible only to children. She went back to her convent to get two girls who were staying there. The girls were Francoise Richer, who was eleven years old, and Jeanne-Marie Lebosse, who was nine years old. Sister Vitaline deliberately did not tell them anything about the vision, but as soon as the girls came out into the street, they started telling Sister Vitaline about the apparition. They could see a beautiful woman in the sky, wearing a blue robe with stars on it. Soon thereafter, Joseph Barbadette came over from his house, and, as previously, he also saw the vision. Other children were also brought to the scene, and they could all see the apparition, although the adults could still see nothing. The children then began to describe changes in the apparition. An oval frame with four candles appeared around the figure of the woman. Then, letter by letter, a message began to form under the woman in the sky. The final message was mais priez, Dieu vous exaucera en peu de temps mon Fils se laisse toucher, which means: “But pray, God will hear your prayers in a short time. My Son allows himself to be moved.” By the time the message was being spelled out, the children had dispersed to separate locations, and were thus out of communication with each other, but the same letters appeared to all of them.

At the same time, a messenger arrived in Pontmain, saying that the Prussians were marching in the direction of the village. After the message in the sky was spelled out, the woman in the sky, identified by the faithful Catholics of Pontmain as the Blessed Virgin Mary, raised her arms in benediction. Then the message faded, and the Virgin began to frown as a crucifix formed on her chest. Finally, after the apparition had been visible for two hours, it faded away.The Prussian armies mysteriously stopped their advance at the town of Laval, and did not proceed any further. In 1875, the Bishop of Laval attested to the reality of the Marian apparition at Pontmain and a church was erected at the place where the apparition was seen (Rogo 1982, pp. 214–217).

Fatima, in Portugal, was in 1917 the site of the most famous of Marian apparitions. The apparition was seen several times by three children: Lucia dos Santos (nine years old), Francisco Marto (eight years old), and Jacinta Marto (six years old). All three were shepherds, and would take out their flocks together. They were related as cousins.

The Marian apparitions were preceded by apparitions of angels. The first angel apparition occurred to Lucia in 1915, when she was out herding sheep with three other girls. Lucia recalled: “We saw a figure poised in the air above the trees; it looked like a statue made of snow, rendered almost transparent by the rays of the sun. . . . We went on praying, with our eyes fixed on the figure before us, and as we finished our prayer, the figure disappeared” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 61). Lucia and her friends saw the figure twice more.

By 1916, Lucia was herding sheep with Francisco and Jacinta. One day they were watching their sheep in an olive grove at the foot of a hill. After taking their lunch, they chanted their rosary prayers and then began to play a game they called “pebbles.” Then a strong wind moved the branches of the trees. The children thought this unusual, because it had been a calm day. Then the same figure Lucia saw in 1915 appeared again, but this time she could see it more clearly. It was moving toward them over the olive trees. “It was a young man,” said Lucia, “about fourteen or fifteen years old, whiter than snow, transparent as crystal when the sun shines through it, and of great beauty. On reaching us, he said, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me’” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 63). Some time later, during the summer, the angel appeared again, near a well on property owned by Lucia’s family.

About these experiences, Lucia wrote (1998, pp. 161–162): “The force of the presence of God was so intense that it absorbed us and almost completely annihilated us. It seemed to deprive us even of the use of our bodily senses for a considerable length of time. During those days, we performed all our exterior actions as though guided by that same supernatural being who was impelling us thereto. The peace and happiness which we felt were great but wholly interior, for our souls were completely immersed in God. The physical exhaustion that came over us was also great.”

On May 13, 1916, the children, out with their sheep, were playing on a slope at a place called the Cova da Iria. Suddenly they saw a flash of light. “We’d better go home,” said Lucia. “That’s lightning; we may have a thunderstorm.” The children took their sheep down the slope. As they were going, they saw another flash of light near a large holmoak tree. “We had only gone a few steps further,” said Lucia, “when, there before us on a small holmoak, we beheld a Lady all dressed in white. She was more brilliant than the sun, and radiated a light more clear and intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through. We stopped, astounded before the Apparition. We were so close, just a few feet from her, that we were bathed in the light which surrounded her, or rather, which radiated from her” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 164).

The lady said to the children, “Do not be afraid. I will do you no harm.” Lucia asked, “Where are you from?” The lady replied, “I am from heaven” (Maria Lucia 1998, pp. 165–166). She told the children she wanted them to come on the same day and hour for the next six months. She said, “Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want.” Lucia asked if she (Lucia) would go to heaven. The lady said yes. In response to further questions from Lucia, she said Jacinta would also go, and so would Francisco. The lady asked if they were willing to offer themselves to God and, for the sake of the sinners of the world, bear all the troubles He would send to them. The children replied that they were willing. The lady said the grace of God would be their comfort. Then, said Lucia, the lady “opened her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 166). The lady asked the children to pray the rosary every day, to end World War I and bring peace. “Then she began to rise serenely,” said Lucia, “going up towards the east, until she disappeared in the immensity of space. The light that surrounded her seemed to open up a path before her in the firmament.”

On the spot, at Lucia’s urging, the children agreed to keep silent about the apparition. But that very night Jacinta spoke about it to her family. Once the word was out, they all found themselves speaking. Lucia experienced a lot of opposition from her family, particularly her mother. Lucia said, “My mother was getting worried, and wanted at all costs to make me deny what I had said. One day, before I set out with the flock, she was determined to make me confess that I was telling lies, and to this end she spared neither caresses, nor threats, nor even the broomstick. To all this she received nothing but a mute silence, or the confirmation of all that I had already said. . . . She warned me that she would force me, that very evening, to go to those people whom I had deceived, confess that I had lied and ask their pardon” (Maria Lucia 1998, pp. 32–33).

On June 13, the children waited at the appointed time and place for the lady to appear. Once more they saw a flash of light, and then the lady appeared again in the same holmoak tree as before. This time about fifty villagers were present, but they saw nothing. Lucia said to the lady, “I would like to ask you to take us to heaven.” The lady replied, “Yes, I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved.” The lady assured Lucia that she would not be alone. Then the lady opened her hands, and light streamed forth. Lucia said, “We saw ourselves immersed in this light, as it were, immersed in God. Jacinta and Francisco seemed to be in that part of the light which rose towards heaven, and I in that which was poured out on the earth” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 169). The revelation that Jacinta and Francisco would soon be taken to heaven was the first of three famous secrets of Fatima, later revealed by Lucia. In 1918, both Jacinta and Francisco were struck by influenza. Francisco died in 1919, and Jacinta died in 1920. Before her death, Jacinta had some personal visions of the lady.

Although no one else saw the figure of the lady on June 13, some of the people present did notice some paranormal phenomena. Reverend V. Dacruz, a Spanish priest who studied the history of the Fatima events very deeply, noted: “The day was bright and hot as it usually is in Portugal in the month of June. Now, during the entire period of the apparition the light of the sun was dimmed in an exceptional manner, without any apparent cause. At the same time, the topmost branches of the tree were bent in the form of a parasol, and remained thus as if an invisible weight had come to rest upon them. Those nearest the tree heard quite distinctly Lucy’s [Lucia’s] words, and also perceived in the form of an indistinct whispering, or the loud humming of a bee, the sound of the Lady’s answer, alternating regularly with the girl’s voice. At the end of the apparition, there was heard near the tree a loud report which the witnesses compared to the explosion of a rocket, and Lucy cried: ‘There! She is going away.’ At the same time the onlookers saw rise from the tree a beautiful white cloud which they could follow with their eyes for quite a while as it moved in the direction of the East. Further, at the Lady’s departure, the upper branches of the tree, without losing the curved shape of a parasol, leaned towards the East, as if in going away the Lady’s dress had trailed over them. And this double pressure which had bent the branches, first into a curve and then towards the East, was so great that the branches remained like this for long hours, and only slowly resumed their normal position” (Rogo 1982, pp. 224–225). After this second apparition, news of the strange happenings began to circulate all over Portugal.

On July 13, a much larger number of people, four or five thousand, gathered with the children to await the scheduled apparition. The lady appeared in the same way as before. Once again, onlookers, although they could not see the lady herself, saw the sun become dimmer, saw an orb of light over the tree where the lady was apparently standing, and heard a whispering voice reply indistinguishably to Lucia (Rogo 1982, p. 225). Lucia put a request to the lady: “I would like to ask you to tell us who you are, and to work a miracle so that everybody will believe that you are appearing to us.” The lady replied, “Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe.” The lady also asked the children to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the world’s sinners. Then the lady, light streaming from her hands, gave the children a terrible vision. Lucia said, “The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers.” Lucia added, “It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 170). The lady explained to the children that what they saw was the hell where sinners go and that if they followed her instructions they could prevent many souls from going there. This would also insure peace in the world. The lady told them, “The war [World War I] is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.” The lady said she would later come to ask for the conversion of Russia, saying that otherwise Russia “will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions” (Maria Lucia 1998, pp. 170, 174). The lady specifically said: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 110). The lady asked that this revelation be kept secret. This is the famous second secret of Fatima.

According to the revelation, a second great war was to start during the reign of Pope Pius XI. But he died on February 10, 1939, several months before World War II began with the German invasion of Poland in September of that year. Father Louis Kondor, editor of Lucia’s writings on Fatima, stated: “To the objection that the Second World War . . . actually started during the Pontificate of Pius XII, she [Lucia] replied that in fact the war began with the occupation of Austria in 1938.” Kondor also stated, “Lucia presumed that the ‘extraordinary’ aurora borealis during the night of 25th to 26th January, 1938, was the sign given by God to announce the imminence of war.” The lady’s promise to come back was fulfilled by an appearance to Lucia in 1925. Lucia took the fall of the communist regimes in East Europe and Russia to be a fulfillment of the lady’s revelations concerning Russia” (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 110).

After revealing the two secrets mentioned above, the lady revealed the famous third secret of Fatima. It was later written down by Lucia on January 3, 1944, and it was then kept secret until June 26, 2000, when it was released in English by the Vatican. Here is the text: “At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand; pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance’. And we saw in an immense light that is God (something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it) a Bishop dressed in White (we had the impression that it was the Holy Father). Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.” One might take it that the fall of Communism in Russia indicated that the Virgin was pleased, and that therefore her third prediction did not come to pass. Some have suggested that the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II was partial fulfillment of the prediction.

As the apparitions continued, the anticlerical government of Portugal saw the Fatima events as the focal point for a dangerous resurgence of Catholic religious sentiment, with political implications. The government, having concluded that priests had encouraged the children to manufacture the apparitions, assigned a district official, Arthur d’Oliveira Santos, to expose the children as liars. Santos arrived in Fatima on August 11 and questioned them there. Despite his threats, the children refused to confess they were telling lies in collusion with local priests (Rogo 1982, p. 226).

On August 13, as huge crowds gathered for the apparition, Lucia and her cousins were taken away by government officials. Although the children were not present at the appointed time, some unusual things did happen. Rogo (1982, p. 226) said, “The crowd heard a loud detonation and a flash of lightning illuminated the sky at the very time the woman should have appeared. The sun dimmed, and a kaleidoscope of colors bathed the Cova. A white cloud appeared by the oak tree, remained for an instant, and then rose and moved quickly away.”

Meanwhile the children were forcefully interrogated by Santos at Ourem, and then kept in a prison (Maria Lucia 1998, p. 77). The children were threatened with death. In fact, when Santos spoke with each one separately, he told them the others had already been killed and that the one being questioned would also be killed if he or she did not confess to having manufactured the Fatima apparitions. Lucia said (1998, p. 36) that even after this they were all together threatened with being “fried alive.” When the children were in their cell, other prisoners tried to convince them to admit to being liars and thus get out of prison. But desiring to preserve the secrecy the lady asked for, they said they would rather die. Unable to extract confessions from them, Santos soon released them.

Although the children were not able to keep their appointment with the apparition on August 13, the lady again appeared to the children on August 19 as they were herding sheep at a place called Valinhos. There was another appearance at the usual place on September 13. This time, thirty thousand people came. Around noon they saw the sun become dim and they could see stars in the sky. They also saw a globe of white light settle on the tree where the lady normally appeared. Monsignor John Quareman, the vice-general of the town of Leiria, said, “To my surprise, I saw clearly and distinctly a globe of light advancing from east to west, gliding slowly and majestically through the air. . . . My friend looked also, and he had the good fortune to see the same unexpected vision. Suddenly the globe with the wonderful light dropped from sight” (Rogo 1982, p.

227). On this occasion there was also a rain of white flower petals, which mysteriously disappeared before they reached the ground.

Finally, the time came for the October 13 apparition, the last and most important of the series. Government officials were certain that the promised miracle would not occur, and were preparing to take advantage of this to launch a large propaganda campaign to discredit the whole Fatima phenomenon (Rogo 1982, p. 228). Lucia said (1998, p. 177): “We left home quite early, expecting that we would be delayed along the way. Masses of people, about seventy thousand, thronged the roads. The rain fell in torrents.” Among the crowds were church officials, government and military officials, and reporters from Portugal’s leading papers. The government also had troops standing by.

Then Lucia and her cousins reached the tree where the lady usually appeared. Lucia told the crowds of people gathered there to close their umbrellas and start saying the rosary prayers. The rainfall turned to a drizzle. Then came a flash of light, and the lady appeared to the children.

She identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary and exchanged words with Lucia, on the same themes as previously. “Then,” said Lucia, “opening her hands, she made them reflect on the sun, and as she ascended, the reflection of her own light continued to be projected on the sun itself.” At this moment Lucia asked the people to look at the sun, which up to that moment had been hidden by thick clouds (Maria Lucia 1998, p.

177). People who looked in that direction saw a glowing silvery disk. Some researchers believe this was a UFO. Others believe the movements were those of the sun itself. The glowing disk revolved on its axis, sending rainbow-colored beams of light in all directions. This continued for twelve minutes. Then the disk, moving in zigzag fashion, plunged earthward. The fall was accompanied by a rapid increase in atmospheric temperature, causing panic among the crowds of witnesses. Suddenly the disk rose back into the sky. The astonished people present found that the blazing heat had dried the rain-soaked ground along with their own clothing. Reports of these events were carried in most major newspapers, including the anticlerical o Seculo. In the 1940s and 1950s researchers came to Portugal and interviewed many of the surviving witnesses and recorded their testimonies (Walsh 1947, Haffent 1961).

Dr. Almeida Garrete, a professor at the University of Coimbra, described his experience at Fatima: “The radiant sun had pierced the thick curtain of clouds which held it veiled. All eyes were raised towards it as if drawn by a magnet. I myself tried to look straight at it, and saw it looking like a well-defined disc, bright but not blinding. . . . This chequered shining disc seemed to possess a giddy motion. It was not the twinkling of a star. It turned on itself with an astonishing rapidity. Suddenly a great cry, like a cry of anguish, arose from all this vast throng. The sun while keeping its swiftness of rotation, detached itself from the firmament and, blood-red in colour, rushed towards the earth, threatening to crush us under the immense weight of its mass of fire. There were moments of dreadful tension. All these phenomena, which I have described, I have witnessed personally, coldly and calmly, without the slightest agitation of mind” (Rogo 1982, p. 230).

The disk and its movements were seen by others, distant from the Fatima site. In 1931, Father Ignatius Lawrence Pereira told how he witnessed the event when he was nine years old, attending a school nine miles from Fatima. He said: “Our teacher rushed out, and the children all ran after her. In the public square people wept and shouted, pointing to the sun. . . . I looked fixedly at the sun, which appeared pale and did not dazzle. It looked like a ball of snow turning on itself. . . .Then suddenly it seemed to become detached from the sky, and rolled right and left, as if it were falling upon the earth. Terrified, absolutely terrified, I ran towards the crowd of people. All were weeping, expecting at any moment the end of the world. . . . During the long minutes of the solar phenomena, the objects around us reflected all the colours of the rainbow. Looking at each other, one appeared blue, another yellow, a third red, etc., and all these strange phenomena only increased the terror of the people. After about ten minutes the sun climbed back into its place, as it had descended, still quite pale and without brilliance” (Rogo 1982, p. 231). Just after the lady disappeared, Lucia saw apparitions of Mary, St. Joseph, and Jesus (Maria Lucia, pp. 177–178).

On June 24, 1981, two girls, Ivanka Ivankovic and Mirjana Dragicevic, were walking through a sheep pasture near the village of Medjugorje in Croatia, which was then part of Yugoslavia. Ivanka saw on the slopes of Mt. Podbrdo, at a distance of a few hundred yards, a glowing figure of a young woman floating in the air on a grey cloud. Ivanka called to her friend Mirjana, telling her that “Our Lady” was there. At first, Mirjana, not believing her, did not look, and they went off to meet some friends. Later the same day, Ivanka and Mirjana returned to the site of the apparition with a friend, Milka Pavlovic, and they all saw the apparition. Then three other young people (Vicka Ivankovic, Ivan Ivankovic, and Ivan Dragicevik) arrived and also saw it. This time all six identified the apparition as the Virgin Mary, holding the child Christ. The young people silently gazed at the apparition for forty-five minutes, until she disappeared (Hancock 1998, pp. 25–26).

When they returned to their village, they spoke about what they had seen, but no one believed them. Milka’s sister, Marija, told her she had been hallucinating, and Vicka’s sister sarcastically suggested she had seen a UFO. The next day, Ivanka, Mirjana, Vicka, and Ivan Dragicevic returned to the place where they had seen the apparition, accompanied by two other children (the skeptical Marija Pavlovic and a boy, Jakov Colo) as well as two adults (Hancock 1998, pp. 27–28).

Ivanka saw on Mt. Podbrdo the apparition, summoning them to come up to her. Vicka later recalled: “We ran quickly up the hill. It was not like walking on the ground. Nor did we look for the path. We simply ran toward Her. In five minutes we were up the hill, as if something had pulled us through the air. I was afraid. I was also barefoot, yet no thorns had scratched me” (Hancock 1998, p. 27). Normally, it should have taken twenty minutes, walking very quickly, to ascend the hill. When the children came near the apparition, they felt themselves forced to their knees. One of the children, Vicka, asked Mirjana what time it was. Mirjana said that when she looked at her watch, she saw that the number twelve had changed to the number nine. The children took this as a minor miracle, a sign from the apparition that her appearance was real. The next day, June 26, thousands of people came with the children to the base of the mountain. Anne Marie Hancock (1998, p. 28) wrote, “For the first time, the Madonna’s apparition was preceded by a brilliant light that was witnessed not only by the children, but the spectators as well. The light illuminated not only the area, but the entire village!” Three of the children, Ivanka, Mirjana, and Vicka, fainted. When they returned to consciousness they observed the apparition for thirty minutes.

On Saturday, June 27, 1981, the police examined the children, testing their mental and physical health. They found the children normal. Then, on the theory that perhaps one of the children was influencing the others to tell stories about an imaginary vision, they split the children into two groups. One group went to the top of the mountain, and the other group stayed at the bottom. The apparition appeared to both groups, and the group at the bottom of the hill outran their adult supervisors to the top of the hill. Then the apparition disappeared. All the children then fell to their knees, and the apparition appeared to them again, preceded by a brilliant light, which was seen by the crowds of people gathered for the event. As usually happened, the apparition itself was visible only to the children. For the first time, the apparition explicitly identified herself to the children as the Virgin Mary. On this same occasion, the apparition also appeared to another one of the children, Ivan, who had been kept home by his parents (Hancock 1998, p. 29).

On Sunday, June 28, 1981, fifteen thousand people gathered at Mt. Podbrdo. Concerned government officials brought the children to the town of Citluk for more examinations. The officials, hoping to find evidence of psychological unfitness, had the children examined by another doctor, who also found them physically and psychologically fit. That evening the children returned once more to Mt. Podbrdo, and when they saw the apparition, they begged her to give some sign that the onlookers could also see (Hancock 1998, p. 31).

The children specifically asked the apparition to cure a mute boy named Daniel. Daniel, who was two and a half years old, was also unable to walk. The apparition told the children to ask Daniel’s parents, who were present in the crowd along with Daniel, to have firm faith that he would be cured. When the family left Mt. Podbrdo to go home, they stopped at a restaurant along the way. At this restaurant, Daniel struck the table with his hands and said, “Give me something to drink.” Later, he began to walk and run (Hancock 1998, p. 59).

Hancock (1998, p. 58) says: “There have been numerous reported healings at Medjugorje. Fifty-six have been documented by Father Rupcic in his book. Physical healings relate to eye and ear diseases, arthritis, vascular problems, neurological disease, wounds, tumors, and a plethora of others. The strength to overcome addictions and smoking, after repeated attempts, has been documented. Psychological healings have also been reported. Various modes of healing have been identified.” The lady said to the children, “I cannot heal; only God can.”

On June 30, 1981, government officials tried to put an end to the crowds of people gathering to see the apparitions by removing the children. Two female social workers came from the town of Bijakovici to get the children. Their orders were to make sure that the children would not be at Mt. Podbrdo at the usual time of the apparition. As the children were being driven away in a car, they demanded that the driver stop the car. The children got out of the car and prayed. They saw a brilliant light moving towards them from the mountain. The two social workers could also see it. Then the Virgin appeared to the children at the usual time (Hancock 1998, pp. 31–32). Afterwards, the two social workers resigned their government positions.To put an end to the matter, the police decided themselves to keep the children away from the place of the apparitions.

On July 1, 1981, Father Jozo, the local Catholic priest, was praying in his church, when something unusual happened. Father Jozo later recalled, “Something happened that for me was important and decisive. . . . a turning point and a moment of revelation. While I was praying, I heard a voice say, ‘Come out and protect the children’” (Hancock 1998, p. 33). At this moment, the children were running toward the church, with the police chasing after them. Father Jozo hid the children in the church. When the police arrived and asked him about the children, he pointed in the direction of the town of Bijakovici. Father Jozo kept the children for some time in the church. Later, he informed the parents about a law forbidding police to question minor children without the consent of their parents. When the police approached the parents to question the children, the parents withheld consent. Up to this time, Father Jozo, although he wanted to shelter the children, did not himself believe in the apparitions. But later that summer, Father Jozo himself saw the apparition (Hancock 1998, p. 33).

On August 12, 1981, the police banned the public from gathering at the apparition site at Mt. Podbrdo. Thereafter, the apparitions continued in the presence of the children in homes and other places. The gatherings were kept as secret as possible. The police kept up their pressure by arresting Father Jozo. They also seized his church records, which contained the best documentation of the apparitions (Hancock 1998, pp. 34–35).

During the days of Father Jozo’s trial (October 21–22, 1981), villagers saw a cross on Mt. Krizevak become a column of light. They also saw an apparition of the Virgin. Father Jozo was given a prison sentence of three and a half years, but when villagers protested, he was released after eighteen months (Hancock 1998, p. 35).

The apparitions continued in the presence of the children in the Church of St. James and in other places. The Madonna is then said to have revealed ten secrets to each of the children. The revelations took place over the course of many months. Mirjana was the first to receive all ten, the last secret coming on December 25, 1982. Thereafter, other children claimed they started to receive messages from the apparition through the heart.

Appearing to Ivan Dragicevic, the apparition asked that the villagers fast and pray for three days prior to the Madonna’s 2,000th birthday, which the apparition gave as August 5, 1984 (the official Church date for the Madonna’s appearance is September 8). On August 5, 35,000 people gathered at Medjugorje. Hancock (1998, p. 39) states: “It was on this day, early in the morning, for the first recorded time, that many would personally witness a vision of the Madonna on Mt. Krizevak. There were thousands who had camped outside the church, itself. They saw what has been described as the silhouette of a woman clothed in brilliant white, her hands raised towards the sky. Some reported seeing the figure in colored garments. . . . Many others reported other signs and wonders that day, including the sun spinning furiously in its orbit.” According to Hancock (1998, p. 62) the witnesses to the solar miracle saw the sun “spinning on its own axis” as it moved toward them and then receded.

Describing her own experience on another occasion, Hancock (1998, p. 62) wrote, “The finest artist could never adequately reproduce the sight that was so graphically sculpted and colored across the sky before my eyes. I was truly in awe. For myself, I experienced a spinning that was almost hypnotic, and I found myself staring at this vortex of gold, seemingly covered by a disc that protected my eyes. It was a pulsating brilliance that defies description. As it spun, it seemed to move towards us, yet still remain in its orbit. It seemed as if it could move in any direction at any given moment. The colors were vibrant fuschia, violet, lavender, silver, and emerald. As soon as one color could be identified, it immediately melted into another, gently blending into its next spectrum. It is known that staring into the sun for an extended period of time can, and has, damaged the retina in the eyes. Yet, after thirty minutes of staring directly at the sun, my eyes had absolutely no damage to them. Many observers have subsequently had their eyes tested by optometrists. The results have always been the same: no damage, no explanation!” Hancock noted (1998, p. 63), “Others say they have seen the Holy Mother, with the Sacred Heart, and a herald of angels, during their experiences.” Several of the original visionaries continue to see the apparition

and give reports about messages received, including secrets to be revealed at appropriate times by specially chosen priests.

The Bible gives records of appearances of God on earth in periods from perhaps 6,000 to 2,000 years ago. But the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition of India records such appearances as recently as the fifteenth century. According to Gaudiya Vaishnava historical records, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who appeared at Mayapur, West Bengal, in 1486, was an avatar, a descent of the Godhead to the earthly plane of existence. He disappeared from this world in 1534. Among the contemporaries of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Europe were Magellan (1480–1521), Copernicus (1473–

1543), da Vinci (1452–1519), Columbus (1451–1506), and other figures of the early modern period. India itself was at this time recognized as a prosperous land, with a reputation for learning in philosophy and the sciences. Biographical accounts recognizing the divinity of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu became classics of Bengali literature. For the sketch of his life that follows, my main source is the Chaitanya Charitamrita, by Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, who lived in the sixteenth century. He composed this work shortly after the departure of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu from this world. One thing that is quickly apparent from this biography is that Gaudiya Vaishnavas were cautious in accepting the divinity of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, basing their judgement upon a combination of scriptural evidence predicting his appearance, displays of superhuman powers, and experimental tests of his symptoms.

One of the predictions of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s appearance can be found in the Shrimad Bhagavatam, sometimes called the Bhagavata Purana. In the fifth chapter of the eleventh canto of Shrimad Bhagavatam, the great sage Narada Muni tells Vasudeva the identity of the principal avatar worshiped in each of the four ages (yugas) in the Vedic yuga cycle (Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga). Having described the avatars for the first three yugas, Narada Muni then described the avatar for the fourth. Because Narada Muni was speaking at the end of the third yuga, his statements about the fourth avatar, the one for the Kali Yuga, were therefore predictive. According to the Shrimad Bhagavatam itself, the text itself was composed five thousand years ago. And even modern scholars, who attribute a younger age to the work, say it is at least one thousand years old. Either way, the descriptions of the fourth avatar predate the appearance of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Narada Muni said: “In Kali-yuga also people worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead by following various regulations of the revealed scriptures. Now kindly hear of this from me. In the age of Kali, intelligent persons perform congregational chanting to worship the incarnation of Godhead who constantly sings the names of Krishna” (Shrimad Bhagavatam 11.5.31–32). When Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was present, he traveled widely all over India, chanting the names of Krishna in the form of the Hare Krishna mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Millions of people joined him in this congregational chanting.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu predicted that this chanting would spread to every town and village in the world, and within recent times, this prediction has come true. In 1965, my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a guru in the line of succession coming from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, came by sea from India to New York, and began to introduce the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra worldwide, in fulfillment of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s prediction. And now the chanting can be seen and heard in the streets of cities and villages everywhere.

The birth of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was preceded by announcing dreams. His father Jagannatha Mishra told his wife Sachi Devi, “In a dream I saw the effulgent abode of the Lord enter my heart. From my heart it entered your heart. I therefore understand that a great personality will soon take birth” (Chaitanya Charitamrita, adi-lila 13.84–85). The birth of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu coincided with a lunar eclipse. According to custom, during a lunar eclipse Vaishnava Hindus take baths in sacred rivers like the Ganges while loudly chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. Thus at the moment of Lord Chaitanya’s birth, in Navadvipa, West Bengal, on the banks of the Ganges, the atmosphere was filled with the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra, giving a prophetic glimpse of his future mission. The horoscope of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu confirmed that he was a great godlike personality who would deliver humankind from the miseries of existence in the material world. His feet, hands, and body also displayed an auspicious combination of features and marks indicating he was an incarnation of the Personality of Godhead.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spent his first twenty-four years in Navadvipa, performing many miracles. Then he became a sannyasi, a member of the renounced spiritual order of life. Sannyasis take a lifelong vow of celibacy, and travel widely to give their spiritual teachings. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu first went to the home of one of his chief associates, Advaita Prabhu. There he showed Advaita Prabhu his universal form, thus confirming his status as an incarnation of the Personality of Godhead (Chaitanya Charitamrita, madhya-lila 17.10). The universal form is an awe inspiring display whereby all of the planets and celestial bodies become present in the form of the incarnation, which becomes simultaneously present in all of them.

Afterwards, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu journeyed to the sacred city of Jagannatha Puri, in the state of Orissa. Upon arriving, he entered the famous temple of Jagannatha, a form of Vishnu, and, displaying signs of spiritual ecstasies, fainted when he saw the altar deity. The temple guards were used to seeing pilgrims imitate ecstatic symptoms, in hopes of passing themselves off as incarnations of God. Thinking that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was another such imposter, they came forward to expel him from the temple. But they were stopped by Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, one of the leading teachers of Jagannatha Puri. He sensed that sannyasi lying on the floor might not be the usual kind of fake.

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments in his introduction to his Shrimad Bhagavatam translation and commentary: “Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who was the chief appointed pandit in the court of the King of Orissa, Maharaja Prataparudra . . . could understand that such a transcendental trance was only rarely exhibited. . . . The Lord was at once carried to the home of Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who at that time had sufficient power of authority due to his being the sabha-pandita, or the state dean of faculty in Sanskrit literatures. The learned pandita wanted to scrutinizingly test the transcendental feats of Lord Caitanya because often unscrupulous devotees imitate physical feats in order to flaunt transcendental achievements just to attract innocent people and take advantage of them. A learned scholar like the Bhattacarya can detect such imposters, and when he finds them out he at once rejects them. In the case of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the Bhattacarya tested all the symptoms in the light of the shastras [Sanskrit literatures]. He tested as a scientist, not as a foolish sentimentalist. He observed the movement of the stomach, the beating of the heart and the breathing of the nostrils. He also felt the pulse of the Lord and saw that all His bodily activities were in complete suspension. . . . Thus he came to know that the Lord’s unconscious trance was genuine, and he began to treat Him in the prescribed fashion.”

After staying briefly in Jagannatha Puri, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu embarked on a six-year journey throughout southern India. In one village he met a brahmana named Vasudeva, who suffered from a severe case of leprosy. He embraced Vasudeva, and immediately the leprosy disappeared (Chaitanya Charitamrita, madhya-lila 7.141).

Upon returning to Jagannatha Puri, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took part in the famous annual Rathayatra festival. In this festival, the temple deities are mounted on huge wooden chariots with towering colorful canopies, and are taken on a procession through the city. Millions of pilgrims attend the festival and thousands assist in pulling the giant chariots with long ropes. The imposing nature of the scene has come down to us in the term “juggernaut,” which has come to mean an unstoppable force. Juggernaut is a corruption of jagannatha (“lord of the universe”). During one festival, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu divided his followers into seven groups. Each group, equipped with hand cymbals and drums, loudly danced and chanted. Looking at the scene, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya and the King of Orissa could see that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had expanded himself into seven forms, and was chanting and dancing in each of the seven groups simultaneously (Chaitanya Charitamrita, madhya-lila 13.52).

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu then visited the sacred town of Vrindavan, the site of Krishna’s appearance in this world five thousand years ago. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is an incarnation of Krishna, who is recognized in the Shrimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the source of all incarnations. In Vrindavan, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu learned of some reports of a new appearance of Krishna, who was repeating some of his original pastimes. Crowds of people came to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu saying, “Krishna has again manifested Himself on the waters of Kaliya Lake. He dances on the hoods of the serpent Kaliya, and the jewels on those hoods are blazing. Everyone has seen Lord Krishna Himself. There is no doubt about it” (Chaitanya Charitamrita, madhya-lila 18.94–95). For three days, people repeated this to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. On the third day, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s personal assistant said that he wanted to go and see Krishna. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sharply replied: “You are a learned scholar, but you have become a fool, being influenced by the statements of other fools. . . . Foolish people who are mistaken are simply causing agitation and making a tumult. Do not become mad. Simply sit down here, and tomorrow night you will go see Krishna.” The next morning, some respectable, intelligent, experienced gentlemen came to see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and he asked them about the events at the Kaliya Lake. They replied, “At night in Kaliya Lake a fisherman lights a torch in his boat and catches many fish. From a distance, people mistakenly think that they are seeing Krishna dancing on the body of the Kaliya serpent. These fools think that the boat is the Kaliya serpent and the torchlight the jewels on his hoods. People also mistake the fisherman for Krishna.” The gentlemen then said, “Actually Lord Krishna has returned to Vrindavana. That is the truth, and it is also true that people have seen Him. But where they are seeing Krishna is their mistake.” The gentlemen were indirectly indicating that they knew Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was actually an avatar. The special feature of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was that he for the most part concealed his identity as an incarnation of Godhead, so that he could instead teach about how to understand and worship God. For this reason he is sometimes called the channa, or hidden, avatar.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spent the last eighteen years of his life in the sacred city of Jagannatha Puri. For the final twelve of these years, he was absorbed in spiritual trance and lived in seclusion in a room in one of the houses near the famous temple complex. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami stated in Chaitanya Charitamrita (madhya-lila 2.8) that although the doors to the house were locked, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would sometimes be found at night lying unconscious at the main gate to the Jagannatha Puri temple. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu disappeared in 1534, merging into the deity of Krishna on the altar of the Tota Gopinatha temple.

The Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti)

Although supported by credible observational reports, avatars and Marian apparitions are a religious manifestation of the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence, an idea central to my human devolution concept. The idea of extraterrestrial intelligence involved in the origin of the human species can also be approached from another angle—from the angle of modern science.The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a genuine part of modern materialistic science, which assumes that any extraterrestrial intelligence would be connected with a biological form made of ordinary chemical elements. But, as we shall see, if followed carefully to its natural conclusion, there is an eventual convergence between the kind of extraterrestrial intelligence posited by some modern scientists and the kind posited by various religious traditions, which are more extradimensional than simply extraterrestrial.

In the nineteenth century several scientists proposed making huge mirrors or landscaped signs on the earth that would be visible from great distances in outer space, as a means of signaling our presence to extraterrestrial intelligences. These intelligences would then initiate communication with us. Swift (1990, p. 6) noted:“Mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss suggested planting broad bands of forests in Siberia in the shape of a right-angled triangle. Inside the triangle wheat would be planted to provide a uniform color. An elaboration of this basic scheme would have in cluded squares on each side of the triangle, to form the classic illustration of the Pythagorean theorem. . . . Joseph von Littrow, a Viennese astronomer, is said to have suggested that canals be dug in the Sahara Desert to form geometric figures twenty miles on a side.” This is quite interesting, in connection with modern reports of crop circles. Perhaps alien intelligences have decided that placing landscaped signs on the earth is a good way to communicate with us.

The foundations for modern SETI programs began in 1959, when Cornell University physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Phillip Morrison advocated a systematic search for signals from outer space. They proposed that the signals would most likely be radio signals. Starting in 1960, Frank Drake, who had independently arrived at the same conclusion, began using radio telescopes at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, to actually search for such signals. His Project Ozma targeted two close stars resembling our sun. Then in

1961, Drake, Cocconi, Morrison, and other scientists, including Carl Sagan, attended a conference on SETI organized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at Green Bank (Swift 1990, p. 8). Sponsorship by America’s top national science organization removed extraterrestrial intelligence from the fringes of science and placed it within the mainstream. But for the first years of SETI, there was not much funding, and most radio telescope searches focused on only a few stars and a few radio frequencies. In the 1980s searches increased in scope, expanding to full sky surveys on millions of frequencies. These searches were endorsed by scientific committees and supported by modest U.S. government funding of 1.5 million dollars a year. The government of the Soviet Union was also funding SETI research, to an even greater extent than the American government. The Soviet effort was organized by the Section on the Search for Cosmic Signals of Artificial Origin within the Soviet Council on Radio Astronomy (Swift 1990, pp. 16–17).

In 1992, NASA began a SETI program, funded for 10 years with a budget of 100 million dollars. The program was conducted with two teams. One team, at the Ames Research Center, conducted a “targeted search” focused on 800 stars within 80 light years of the earth. This search was based on the assumption that it was quite likely that human civilizations like ours had arisen many times in our galaxy. A second team, based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, did a wider search called the All Sky Survey. It was based on the assumption that advanced intelligent life forms were not so common and that we should have to search widely for them in the universe. In 1993, the NASA SETI program lost its government funding. The All Sky Survey stopped, but the target search program survived by transforming itself into Project Phoenix, run by the SETI Institute, a nongovernmental organization, which raises private funds (Lamb 1997, p. 224). A recent article in nature (2001, p.

260) reveals that much of the funding for the SETI Institute and other such organizations comes “primarily from wealthy technology pioneers such as William Hewlett, David Packard, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen and Barney Oliver.”

All of these programs assumed the standard materialistic cosmologies of modern science, which involve a universe and life forms composed only of the standard material elements and energies acting according to the known laws of physics. Following these assumptions, scientists calculated in various ways the likelihood of intelligent life forms coming into existence, their likely levels of technological advancement, and the likely times necessary for them to conduct interstellar or intergalactic communication or colonization efforts. Some scientists find a high probability for many extraterrestrial civilizations, some find a low probability that there is even one. I am not going to explore the details of the various calculations different researchers have made, because the fundamental assumptions upon which these calculations are made are flawed. There is more to the universe than ordinary matter and energy (in all their exotic varieties, including dark matter and dark energy). There is more to life than chemicals. And there are more ways to communicate than radio signals.

Alien visitors

A good many SETI researchers assert that as of now we have no evidence whatsoever that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth or tried to communicate with us. Some take this as evidence no such beings exist. They say that if humanlike civilizations did exist elsewhere in the universe, they would have already explored or colonized every habitable planet in the universe. Other researchers counter that perhaps they are here, or have been here, but we have not noticed them yet. But perhaps some researchers have noticed them. This brings us to the topic of UFOs and alien abductions, as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences.

Since time immemorial religious traditions, including the JudeoChristian tradition, have reported not only visitations by angels and superhuman beings, coming and going without the use of machines, but also visitations that involve some kind of machines. The Vedic literatures of India are full of descriptions of various kinds of vimanas, or spacecraft, a topic explored in depth by Richard L. Thompson in his book alien identities. Modern UFO reports are therefore not new, but represent a continuing set of observations of extraterrestrial or extradimensional craft.

The modern UFO phenomenon began in 1947 and has continued to the present. The UFO phenomenon has several components. The first is observations of machinelike flying objects that cannot be explained in terms of existing human technologies. The second is humanoid beings associated with such machines. And the third is paranormal phenomena connected with such machines and humanoids and their interactions with humans.

Observations of UFOs have been reported by professional scientists. In a letter to Science, J. Allen Hynek, chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University, said, “some of the very best, most coherent reports have come from scientifically trained people” (Markowitz 1980, p. 255). Hynek served as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on UFOs from 1948 to 1968, and he was later director of the civilian Center for UFO Studies.

In 1952, a survey of 40 professional astronomers revealed that five of these astronomers had seen UFOs. The survey was included in a section of a government-sponsored report on the UFO phenomenon. The author of this section said about the sightings: “Perhaps this is to be expected, since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies.” He further noted that astronomers “will not likely be fooled by balloons, aircraft, and similar objects, as may be the general populace” (Condon 1969, p. 516).

UFO researcher Jacques Vallee was previously employed as a professional astronomer. He recalled: “l became seriously interested in 1961, when I saw French astronomers erase a magnetic tape on which our satellite tracking team had recorded eleven data points on an unknown flying object which was not an airplane, a balloon, or a known orbiting craft.

‘People would laugh at us if we reported this!’ was the answer I was given at the time. Better forget the whole thing. Let’s not bring ridicule to the observatory” (Vallee 1979, p. 7).

In 1967, James McDonald, a physicist and meteorologist at the University of Arizona, stated: “An intensive analysis of hundreds of outstanding UFO reports and personal interviews with dozens of key witnesses in important cases, have led me to the conclusion that the UFO problem is one of exceedingly great scientific importance.” McDonald favored “the hypothesis that the UFOs might be extraterrestrial probes” as being “the least unsatisfactory hypothesis for explaining the now-available UFO evidence” (McDonald 1967, p. 1).

In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter Sturrock sent a questionnaire on UFOs to 2,611 members of the American Astronomical Association. The results, published in 1977, revealed that 1,300 members replied, and their reports contained 60 UFO sightings (Sturrock 1977). In July 1979, the journal industrial Research/Development polled 1,200 scientists and engineers about UFOs. They were asked, “Do you believe that UFOs exist?” Among these scientists and engineers, 61 percent said yes, they did believe in UFOs. In fact, 8 percent said they had seen UFOs, and an additional 10 percent thought they might have seen them. Fully 40 per cent said they believed UFOs originated in outer space (Fowler 1981, pp.

221–222).

Probably the most famous scientist to comment favorably on the existence of UFOs was psychiatrist Carl Jung, who said: “So far as I know it remains an established fact, supported by numerous observations, that Ufos have not only been seen visually but have also been picked up on the radar screen and have left traces on the photographic plate . . . It boils down to nothing less than this: that either psychic projections throw back a radar echo, or else the appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological projections” (Jung 1959, pp. 146–147).

After initial reports of UFO sightings in 1947, some high officers in the American Air Force became concerned with the phenomenon. Edward Condon said in his official report on the American military’s research on UFOs: “Within the Air Force there were those who emphatically believed that the subject was absurd. . . . Other Air Force officials regarded UFOs with utmost seriousness and believed that it was quite likely that American airspace was being invaded by secret weapons of foreign powers or possibly by visitors from outer space” (Condon 1969, p. 503).

General Nathan Twining, chief of staff of the U. S. Army and commanding general of the Army Air Force, wrote on September 23, 1947 about the flying disks reported in various parts of the country: “1. The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.

2. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. 3. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena such as meteors. 4. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely” (Condon 1969, p. 894).

To carry out Twining’s directives for a study group, the Air Force organized Project Sign, which continued until February 1949. The research work, which took the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs as a serious possibility, was carried out by the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Thereafter, work by the ATIC continued under the name Project Grudge. But there was a change in attitude toward the phenomenon. J. Allen Hynek, who worked on the project said, “The change to Project Grudge signaled the adoption of the strict brush-off attitude to the UFO problem. Now the public relations statements on specific UFO cases bore little resemblance to the facts of the case. If a case contained some of the elements possibly attributable to aircraft, a balloon, etc., it automatically became that object in the press release” (Hynek 1972a, p. 174). Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, a project officer, said, “This drastic change in official attitude is as difficult to explain as it was difficult for many people who knew what was going on inside Project Sign to believe” (Hynek 1972a, p. 175). The final report of Project Grudge, released in August 1949, said there was no evidence of any high tech devices, and explained away UFO reports as mistakes, illusions, or fabrications. Project Grudge was formally dissolved in December 1949.

General C. B. Cabell, director of Air Force intelligence, reactivated Project Grudge in 1951, putting Captain Ruppelt in charge. Ruppelt was fairly open minded, but even he had his limits. Although he was ready to take unidentified flying objects a little seriously, he had problems with reports of UFOs that landed. And there were quite a number of such accounts. Ruppelt later wrote that he and his team systematically eliminated such accounts from their reporting system (Vallee 1969b, p. 28).

The CIA was also interested in UFOs. On September 24, 1952, H. Marshall Chadwell, the CIA’s assistant director for scientific intelligence, wrote a memo to CIA director Walter Smith about UFO publicity and the high rate of reports of UFO activity coming into the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. His main concern was public opinion: “The public concern with the phenomenon, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic” (Thompson 1993, p. 81). Chadwell feared that false reports of UFOs could distract the military from real observations of attacking Soviet bombers. He also feared that the mentality of the American public could be used by the enemies attempting to engage in psychological warfare against the United States.

In 1953, the CIA formed a panel to study the UFO phenomenon.

It came to be known as the Robertson panel, after Dr. H. P. Robertson, director of the weapons systems evaluation group for the Secretary of Defense. The Robertson panel included several prominent physicists. They decided that UFOs were not any real threat to national security, i.e. they were not machines from foreign powers or outer space. But they did say “that the continuous emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does . . . result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic” (Condon 1969, p. 519). The panel recommended that “the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired” (Condon

1969, pp. 519–520). The panel recommended a systematic program of debunking. “The ‘debunking’ aim would result in reduction in public interest in ‘flying saucers’ which today evokes a strong psychological reaction” (Condon 1969, pp. 915–916).

In 1953, in a development perhaps related to the Robertson panel’s conclusions, the U.S. Air Force enacted Air Force Regulation 200-2, restricting public reporting of military UFO sightings. “In response to local inquiries resulting from any UFO reported in the vicinity of an Air Force base, information may be released to the press or the general public by the commander of the Air Force base concerned only if it has been positively identified as a familiar or known object” (Thompson 1993, pp.

83–84). In other words, anything that could not be identified as a weather balloon, ordinary airplane, planet, or meteor would not be announced. The effect of this policy is that if there are observations of extraterrestrial UFOs, there will be no public reports about them coming from official military and governmental sources.

Air Force UFO reports did, however, continue to be collected by Project Grudge. In 1959, the name of the Air Force UFO research program was changed to Project Blue Book. In 1964, the nongovernmental National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena published a report called the uFo evidence, which contained 92 UFO sightings by aircraft crews of the United States military. The sightings took place in the period 1944–1961. Of these cases, 44 involved U.S. planes being chased or buzzed by UFOs, U.S. aircraft chasing UFOs, or UFOs flying low over U.S. military bases (Hall 1964, pp. 19–22). In 1969, the Air Force stopped its official Project Blue Book UFO investigations. A summary and evaluation of the entire effort appeared in the Condon Report, which was released in that same year.

Although the Condon Report contained many detailed accounts of unexplained sightings, the report’s conclusion said “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge” and “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby” (Condon 1969, p. 1). In answer to the question what should be done with UFO reports that come to the government and military from the public, the report advised “nothing should be done with them in the expectation that they are going to contribute to the advance of science” (Condon 1969, p.

4). And finally, the authors said: “We strongly recommend that teachers refrain from giving students credit for school work based on their reading of the presently available UFO books and magazine articles. Teachers who find their students strongly motivated in this direction should attempt to channel their interests in the direction of serious study of astronomy and meteorology, and in the direction of critical analysis of fantastic propositions that are being supported by appeals to fallacious reasoning or false data” (Condon 1969, pp. 5–6).

Since this time, the official policy of the U.S. government and military has been to keep silent about the UFO phenomenon. Nevertheless, high government officials have reported UFO experiences and have sought to get government agencies to release information on UFOs. President Ronald Reagan, while governor of California, reported sighting a UFO while flying in a plane over southern California. In 1972, shortly after the incident, Reagan told Norman Miller, Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal: “We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement, it went straight up into the heavens” (Burt 2000, p.

308). The pilot also recalled the incident, saying, “The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly. . . . the object definitely wasn’t another airplane. But we didn’t file a report on the object for a long time because they considered you a nut if you saw a UFO.” U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor wanted NASA to form a committee to conduct an inquiry on UFOs. NASA rejected the request because it feared ridicule (Henry 1988, p. 122).

Major foundations have shown interest in UFO research. Marie Galbraith, wife of Evan Griffin Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to France from 1981 to 1985, traveled around the world to get information about UFOs from scientists involved in UFO research. She and others then put together a report called unidentified Flying objects Briefing Document, the Best available evidence, which was distributed to high government officials in the United States. Galbraith’s work was supported by Laurence Rockefeller. She also helped organize a colloquium on the scientific evidence for UFOs, which took place in September 1997 at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund property at Pocantico, New York, again with the assistance of Laurence Rockefeller. The moderator of the meeting was Peter Sturrock, an astrophysicist (COMETA 1999, p. 51).

Governments and military organizations around the world have shown strong interest in UFOs. On November 2, 1954, Brigadier General João Adil Oliveira, chief of Brazil’s air force general staff information service, said to members of the Army war college, “The problem of flying discs has polarized the attention of the whole world. But it’s serious and it deserves to be treated seriously. Almost all the governments of the great powers are interested in it, dealing with it in a serious and confidential manner, due to its military interest” (Burt 2000, p. 311). In a letter dated May 5, 1967, Air Marshall Rosenun Nurjadin, commander-in-chief of the Indonesian air force, wrote, “UFOs sighted in Indonesia are identical with those sighted in other countries. Sometimes they pose a problem for our air defence and once we were obliged to open fire on them” (Burt 2000, pp. 313–314). In 1974, in an interview with uFo news, General Kanshi Ishikawa, chief of staff of Japan’s air self-defense force, said, “Much evidence tells us that UFOs have been tracked by radar, so, UFOs are real and they may come from outer space. . . . UFO photographs and various materials show scientifically that there are more advanced people piloting the saucers” (Burt 2000, p. 314). China’s Academy of Social Sciences has had a branch called the China UFO Research Organization. In the August 27, 1985 edition of the newspaper China Daily, Professor Liang Renglin of Guangzhou Jinan University said, “More than six hundred UFO reports have been made in China during the past five years” (Burt 2000, p. 322).

In 1984, the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences established a commission on anomalous atmospheric phenomena. The chairman was Vsesvolod Troitsky, of the Academy, and the vice chairman was General Pavel Popovich, a famous cosmonaut. In 1988, the Academy of Sciences held a conference on UFOs, attended by 300 scientists (Clark 1998, p.

978). In June 1989, General Igor Maltsev, Soviet chief of air defense forces, discussed military encounters with UFOs in an article in Soviet military Review: “For skeptics and non-skeptics, this information can serve as officially documented proof of UFO validity. We hope that this open acknowledgment of the phenomenon will put an end to ambiguous speculations and will make the fact of its existence beyond doubt. Now we have grounds to tell that UFOs are not optical or hallucinated objects, which were allegedly caused by global psychosis. The objects have been spotted by technological means. Pictures are available for specialists” (Burt 2000, p. 315).

The French government has an active UFO research program. The first organized studies began in 1976, when the Institute des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale (IHEDN), formed a committee to study UFOs. It was chaired by General Blanchard of the Gendarmerie National. This led to the formation of the Groupe d’Etude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non Indentifiés (GEPAN). In 1977, GEPAN published a five volume report. The report focused on eleven cases, studied in great detail. Sociologist Ronald Westrum said in 1978, “In nine of the eleven cases, the conclusion was that the witnesses had witnessed a material phenomenon that could not be explained as a natural phenomenon or a human device. One of the conclusions of the total report is that behind the overall phenomenon there is a ‘flying machine whose modes of sustenance and propulsion are beyond our knowledge’” (Fowler 1981, pp.

224–225). GEPAN later became the Service d’Expertise des Phénomènes de Rentrée Atmosphérique (SEPRA), which is part of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French equivalent of NASA (COMETA 1999, p. 7).

In 1999, a group of high ranking scientists, military officers, and government officials presented a report on UFOs to the French government. The report, titled uFos and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?, was produced by the Committee for In-Depth Studies (COMETA). The guiding force behind COMETA was French air force general Denis Letty. COMETA included in addition to General Letty: air force general Bruno Le Moine; Admiral Marc Merlo; Denis Blancher, chief of the ministry of the interior’s national police force; Françoise Lépine of the Foundation for Defense Studies; Christian Marchal, research director of ONERA, the National Aerospace Study and Research Office; Michael Algrin, state doctor of political science; Alain Orszag, a doctor of physical sciences and weapons engineer; Pierre Boscond, also a weapons engineer; and Jean Dunglas, an engineer. Several other high ranking military and government officers also contributed to the report (COMETA 1999, p. 6).

General Norlain, director of the IHEDN, said about COMETA: “Almost all of its members have, or had during the course of their careers, important responsibilities in defense, industry, teaching, research, or various central administrations.” General Norlain also said, “I express the wish that the recommendations of COMETA, which are inspired by good sense, will be examined and implemented by the authorities of our country” (COMETA 1999, p. 5). Professor André Lebeau, former chairman of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), wrote a foreword to the COMETA report. He said, “The report is useful in that it contributes toward stripping the phenomenon of UFOs of its irrational layer” (COMETA 1999, p. 2).

Governing and military officials in the United Kingdom have long been interested in UFOs. In the July 11, 1954 edition of London’s Sunday Dispatch, Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command, said about UFOs: “More than 10,000 sightings have been reported, the majority of which cannot be accounted for by any scientific explanation. . . . I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nation on earth. I can therefore see no alternative to accepting the theory that they come from some extraterrestrial source” (Burt 2001, p. 312).

Since 1964, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) has studied UFOs through Department 2a of the Secretariate (Air Staff) division, abbreviated Sec(AS)2a. Nick Pope, who headed the division from 1991 to 1994, has described its activities in his book open Skies, Closed minds. Pope afterwards remained an official of the Ministry of Defence. About Pope, the COMETA report says, “He has given interviews to the press and participated in television programs. He has cooperated with ufological organizations, giving their address and phone number to witnesses who have written to him. In his letters of response he admitted that a small proportion of UFO sightings defied explanation and that the MOD was keeping its mind open regarding these. . . . In his book, Nick Pope evokes various hypotheses to explain certain unidentified cases that were the subject of credible and detailed reports. He strongly favors the extraterrestrial hypothesis” (COMETA 1999, pp. 52–53).

In 1987, in his foreword to Timothy Goode’s book above top Secret, Lord Hill-Norton, Chief of Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, wrote about UFOs: “A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable. It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots. Their observations have in many instances been supported either by technical means such as radar or even more convincingly by . . . interference with electrical apparatus of one sort or another” (Burt 2001, pp. 312–313).

Let us now consider some representative UFO cases. We will consider cases in four categories: 1. sightings of flying objects that display intelligently guided flight characteristics beyond those of known aircraft; 2. sightings such of UFOs involving landings that leave physical traces; 3. sightings of UFOs that involve not only landings but also humanoid occupants; 4. abductions.

Sightings of unidentified Flying objects

On March 8, 1950, pilots on a Trans World Airways flight saw a UFO near Dayton, Ohio. About twenty other reports from the same area came in to the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Military personnel at the Air Technical Intelligence Center there also saw the UFO. Four military aircraft were sent up to intercept the UFO. Two military pilots established visual contact with the UFO, describing it as large, round, and metallic. The object also showed up on radar. After the sightings by the military aircraft, the object flew straight up into the sky at great speed and disappeared (Hall 1964, p. 84).

There are many military reports that involve UFO contacts on radar. Sometimes these radar contacts are explained as “anomalous propagation effects.” In the Condon Report, an atmospheric scientist writing on UFO radar contacts said: “There are apparently some very unusual propagation effects, rarely encountered or reported, that occur under atmospheric conditions so rare that they may constitute unknown phenomena. . . . This seems to be the only conclusion one can reasonably reachfrom examination of some of the strangest cases.” In other words, the only way to explain some UFO radar sightings is to postulate unknown radar signal propagation effects (Condon 1969, p. 175). Of course, the other way to explain them is by postulating extraterrestrial flying machines with unknown capabilities.

During the nights of August 13–14, 1956, military air traffic controllers, military radar operators, and military pilots reported sightings of UFOs moving at high rates of speed and engaging in inexplicable stop and start flying patterns above and around the joint American and British air force bases at Lakenheath and Bentwaters. At 22:00 on August 13, radar operators at Bentwaters detected an object moving from east to west at 2,000-4,000 miles an hour. At the same time, personnel in the Bentwaters air traffic control tower saw a bright light moving over the ground in the same direction at “an incredible speed,” at a height of 1,200 meters. A pilot of a military transport plane flying at about the same altitude reported seeing a bright light pass from east to west just under his plane, moving “at an incredible speed.”

The radar operator at Bentwaters reported the radar sighting to the radar control center at Lakenheath. One of the operators detected an object motionless in the air about 40 kilometers southwest of Lakenheath. The object was on the line of flight of the object observed visually and by radar from Bentwaters. Then the Lakenheath radar operators saw the object instantly start moving at 600–950 kilometers per hour.

The object started and then stopped several times. Each time it started moving, it would travel between 13 and 30 kilometers in a different direction. The stops and starts (all involving instant acceleration to 950 kilometers per hour) were observed not only on radar but by visual sightings from the ground.

The RAF sent a fighter to pursue the object. Guided by radar operators from the ground, the fighter pilot saw the object and also had it on his radar. Then he lost it. Radar operators then guided him to a second encounter with the object. The pilot then again lost sight of the object, which had moved rapidly behind him and was now trailing him. The pilot then began a series of climbs, dives, and turns to get the object off of his tail, but the object, as confirmed by radar observation, followed him, maintaining a constant distance. The pilot, low on fuel, started to return to his base. The object followed him for a short distance, and then came to a stop in midair. It then began moving again to the north, at 950 kilometers per hour and disappeared from radar. A second fighter sent in pursuit did not find the object.

The Lakenheath report to Project Blue Book said, “The fact that rapid accelerations and abrupt stops of the object were detected by radar and by sight from the ground give the report definite credibility.” The Condon Commission, which gave a report on the U. S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book records of UFO sightings, classified the Lakenheath sightings as “unidentified.” The COMETA report dismissed attempts by Phillip Klass to explain the case as a combination of meteor sightings and radar anomalies (COMETA, 1999, pp. 12–13; Condon 1969, pp. 250–256; Thompson 1993, p. 89).

On March 21, 1990, UFOs were sighted by the Russian air force in the Pereslavl-Zalesski region, to the east of Moscow. General Igor Maltsev, Soviet Air Defense Forces commander, reported on the incident in the newspaper Rabochaya tribuna (Worker’s tribune). He said combat aircraft were sent to intercept the first UFO, which was tracked by radar and sighted visually by one hundred observers. General Maltsev stated: “I am not a specialist in UFOs, and therefore I can only link the data together and express my own hypothesis. Based on the data collected by these witnesses, the UFO was a disk 100 to 200 meters in diameter. Two lights were flashing on its sides. In addition, the object turned around its axis and performed an S-shaped maneuver in both the vertical and horizontal planes. Next the UFO continued to hover above the ground, then flew at a speed two to three times greater than that of modern combat aircraft.” Other UFOs were also sighted. General Maltsev stated, “The objects flew at altitudes ranging from 100 to 7000 meters. The movement of the UFOs was not accompanied by any type of noise and was characterized by an astounding maneuverability. The UFOs appeared to completely lack inertia. ln other words, in one fashion or another they had overcome gravity. At present, terrestrial machines can scarcely exhibit such characteristics” (COMETA 1999, p. 16; Rabochaya tribuna 1990).

On the night of March 30, 1990, a captain of the Belgian national police reported a UFO sighting to the Belgian Air Force Headquarters. The headquarters officers immediately acted to confirm the sighting. The officers received additional reports of visual sightings of the object, and radar contact was established by the NATO radar center at Glons and the Belgian national radar control center at Semmerzake. Analysts at Belgian Air Force Headquarters ruled out the usual explanations for false radar contacts, especially temperature inversions. F-16s were sent to intercept the object. They established radar contact. An article in Paris match stated: “The object had speeded up from an initial velocity of 280 kph to 1,800 kph, while descending from 3,000 to 1,700 meters . . . in one second! This fantastic acceleration corresponds to 40Gs. It would cause immediate death to a human on board. The limit of what a pilot can take is about 8Gs. . . . It arrived at 1,700 meters altitude, then it dove rapidly toward the ground at an altitude under 200 meters, and in so doing escaped from the radars of the fighters and the ground units at Glons and Semmerzake. This maneuver took place over the suburbs of Brussels, which are so full of man-made lights that the pilots lost sight of the object beneath them. During the next hours the scenario repeated twice. This fantastic game of hide and seek was observed from the ground by a great number of witnesses, among them 20 national policemen who saw both the object and the F-16s. The encounter lasted 75 minutes.” One strange feature: there was no sonic boom even though the object exceeded the speed of sound. This was just one of several hundred sightings around this time in Belgium. The Belgian Air Force cooperated with civilian UFO organizations in reporting and investigating the sightings (Thompson 1993, pp. 100–101).

On January 28, 1994, Air France flight 3532 was on its way from Nice to London. The captain was Jean-Charles Duboc, and the copilot was Valérie Chauffour. At 1:14 in the afternoon, the plane was at an altitude of 11,900 meters about 50 kilometers west of Paris. The chief steward, pilot, and copilot observed a roundish object at a distance of about

50 kilometers and judged it to be flying at an altitude of 10,500 meters. They deduced the object was quite large. It appeared to change shape, from a bell-like shape to a disklike shape. Then the object suddenly disappeared from their view. The captain reported the incident to the Reims air navigation control center. The center had no record of any other flights in the region. But the Taverny air defense operations center found that the Cinq-Mars-la-Pile control center reported a radar track near flight 3532. The track persisted for 50 seconds and then disappeared at the same moment that the air crew members reported that the object disappeared. Investigations by the air defense operations center showed no flight plans for any other aircraft in the vicinity, and ruled out the hypothesis of a weather balloon. The case was also investigated by the French northern regional air navigation center (COMETA 1999, p. 11).

Landings and Physical traces

Dr. William T. Powers, an engineer, wrote in a letter published in the April 7, 1967 issue of Science: “In 1954, over 200 reports over the whole world concerned landings of objects. . . . Of these, about 51 percent were observed by more than one person. . . . In 18 multiple-witness cases, some witnesses were not aware that anyone else had seen the same thing at the same time and place. In 13 cases, there were more than 10 witnesses. How do we deal with reports like these? One fact is clear: we cannot shrug them off” (Powers 1967). Many of these landings left physical traces.

In 1981, Ted R. Phillips, a UFO investigator, issued a report on 2,108

UFO landing cases from 64 countries. In 705 of these cases, the UFOs were seen by more than one witness. Phillips stated, “The UFOs observed by multiple witnesses appear to have been solid constructed bodies under intelligent control. . . . They produced physical traces that, in many cases, have no natural or conventional explanation.” Physical traces included vegetation altered by heat, pressure, and dehydration, as well as marks made by landing gear (Thompson 1993, pp. 67–68).

Let us now consider a few cases of this type. In May 1957, American astronaut L. Gordon Cooper was at Edwards Air Force Base commanding a camera crew that was filming the installation of a precision landing guidance system. Cooper recalled: “I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed! These guys were all pro cameramen, so the picture quality was very good. The camera crew managed to get within 20 to 30 yards of it, filming all the time. It was a classic saucer, shiny silver and smooth, about 30 feet across. It was pretty clear it was an alien craft. As they approached closer, it took off. After a while, a high-ranking officer said that when the film was developed I was to put it in a pouch and send it to Washington. That’s what I did when it came back from the lab and it was all there just like the camera crew reported” (Burt 2000, p. 317; Clark 1998, p. 666).

Jean-Jacques Velasco, head of GEPAN, the French governmental agency that investigated UFOs in the 1970s, reported on the Collini case. On February 8, 1981, at five in the afternoon, Mr. Collini saw an ovalshaped UFO sitting near a garden where he was working. The object remained on the ground for less then a minute. It rose into the air and moved away. Collini went to the spot and observed round marks on the ground, along with a crown-shaped imprint. On the orders of GEPAN, local police came and collected samples of the soil and nearby vegetation. Later, a GEPAN team came to investigate the site. They found the witness had no psychological problems. They found signs that the ground at the spot of the landing had been heated to between 300 and 500 degrees Centigrade and also detected traces of zinc and phosphate. Study of plants at the site showed a 30–50 percent reduction in chlorophyll pigments in alfalfa (Velasco 1987, pp. 56–57).

Humanoids

At a symposium on UFOs sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969, J. Allen Hynek said: “There are now on record some 1,500 reports of close encounters, about half of which involve reported craft occupants. Reports of occupants have been with us for years, but there are only a few in the Air Force files; generally Project Bluebook personnel summarily, and without investigation, consigned such reports to the ‘psychological’ or crackpot category” (Hynek

1972b, pp. 47–48). Of the 2,108 cases reported by Ted R. Phillips in his 1981 study on UFO landing cases, 460 involved observations of humanoids. Of these humanoids, 310 were smaller than average humans, 87 were of normal human size, and 63 were larger than average humans (Thompson 1993, pp. 67–68).

The case of the UFO crash at Roswell involved humanoids. In July of 1947, people in Corona, New Mexico, about 75 miles northwest of Roswell, reported seeing a flying silvery disk pass by overhead. The next day, William “Mac” Brazel found debris on a ranch near Corona. Military officers from Roswell Air Force Base, including Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer, came to investigate. Marcel said he found extremely light metal beams with strange inscriptions carved on them, as well as paper-thin sheets of metal that could not be dented even by heavy hammering. The Roswell air base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, issued a press release stating that a crashed flying disc had been recovered and was being shipped on board a B-29 to Wright Field in Ohio. Afterwards, General Roger Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force, authorized a press release saying that the wreckage was actually that of a weather balloon. But Major Jesse Marcel testified on videotape: “One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all our activities, is that it was not a weather balloon, nor an aircraft, nor a missile.” Marcel also said that his commanding officer told him to conceal the actual wreckage from the site. Robert Shirkley, the assistant base operations officer at Roswell, was present when a B-29 arrived at Roswell to take the wreckage. He saw parts of what he understood to be a flying saucer, including a metal beam with strange letters on it, being loaded onto the plane. General Arthur E. Exon was a lieutenant colonel at Wright Field in Ohio when the wreckage arrived from Roswell. About the wreckage, he said, “The metal and material was unknown to anyone I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from outer space” (Randle and Schmitt 1991, p. 110). Exon also said: “There was another location where . . . apparently the main body of the spacecraft was

. . . where they did say there were bodies. . . .They were all found, apparently outside the craft itself but were in fairly good condition” (Randle and Schmitt 1991, p. 110). The wife of an Air Force pilot testified that her husband told her he had ferried wreckage and bodies from the Roswell site to Dayton, Ohio, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Thompson 1993, pp. 103–107).

In 1997, Colonel Philip Corso published a remarkable book, the Day after Roswell. From 1953 to 1957, Colonel Corso was on the National Security Council Staff. In his book, he stated that the Roswell crash was that of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, and he also testified that he saw the body of one of the aliens. From 1961 to 1962, Corso served in the U.S. Army’s department for research and development as chief of foreign technology. He said that during this time he helped introduce technological breakthroughs derived from extraterrestrial equipment from the Roswell debris into the U.S. military and private industry. Senator Strom Thurmond, chairman of the U.S. Senate’s armed services committee, contributed a foreword to the first printing of the book, but this foreword was withdrawn from later printings (COMETA 1999, p. 52; Corso 1997).

On July 1, 1965, at Valensole, in the department of Alpes-de-Haute Provence in France, Maurice Masse, a farmer, was going to look at his lavender field when he saw in the field a round metallic object, the size of a small car, standing on six legs. There was a metal shaft protruding from the center of the object to the ground. As Masse approached the object, two small humanoids turned a tubelike instrument towards him, and he felt himself paralyzed. The two humanoids entered the craft, which then lifted off, retracting its six legs and central shaft. The object flew upwards with extreme rapidity and disappeared. The case was investigated in-depth by the Gendarmerie Nationale. They found a depression at the spot where the vehicle had been sighted, and in the middle of the depression was a round hole 19 centimeters in diameter and 40 centimeters deep. The investigators found that the lavender plants for a hundred yards along the direction of the object’s departure were dried up. For years after the incident, no plants would grow there. The investigators turned up no evidence of psychopathology or hoaxing (COMETA 1999, p. 20).