TWO SILVER UFOs SIGHTED FLYING HIGH OVER BERLINOn Sunday, September 15, 2002, in the early evening, Mark Mainwaring was outdoors at his home in Berlin, Germany's largest city, when he spotted an unusual light high in the clear, cloudless sky. "I first noticed what appeared to be an early evening star," Mark reported, "I watched as it appeared to be moving, coming from the northwest. I observed it for about one minute when I noticed an identical object/light following in its path. I observed these objects through a 10X telescopic sight. I would estimate an altitude in excess of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters)." "The first object stopped as the second object maintained its course until it was approximately alongside (I estimate 3 miles or 5 kilometers--M.M.) the other object." "Both objects then proceeded at the same speed, altitude and direction as previously." "I am an aerospace engineer consultant and the former chief pilot of an African cargo airline, with many hours and over 17 years in the business. Therefore, I am not easily fooled when it comes to aircraft. I have never observed a satellite or weather balloon stop in mid-flight and then proceed onward again." Mark described the UFOs as "silver, conical shaped, with three protrusions or legs. The objects seemed to pass over at about one-third the speed of any satellites that I have previously observed." (Email Form Report) ANOTHER UFO SPOTTED NEAR SAMPACHO, ARGENTINA"Less than 48 hours after the UFO event of September 7," 2002, another UFO was spotted near the town of Sampacho, in Argentina's southern Cordoba province. On Monday, September 9, 2002, "a family traveling in a pickup truck between the municipalities of Achiras and Sampacho were in the vicinity of Cerro Aspero (hill) when they began noticing 'a very intense red light in the sky,' which originated from the southwest, as their vehicle headed northward along Provincial Highway 24. The time was approximately 10:30 p.m." "The head of the family preferred not to disclose his identity, but he told the (Argentinian) news media that 'this is the first time it's happened to us,' going on to relate that at no time did his family feel fear, nor was there any nervousness on his part. 'If that wanted to hurt us, it could have clearly done so,'" he said. "When asked by researchers about the characteristics of the object, he explained, 'It was like an intense red beam...there were other flashes of great brightness behind it, and what drew our attention the most is that the front section of the luminous object had something resembling an arch of light, as though it were a circle of energy.'" "The younger members of the family" stated that "they were very impressed." "The sighting lasted for several minutes, and the head of the family adds, 'At a given moment, the object gave the impression that it was about to fall on top of us, but it changed course at the last moment and headed toward the hills of Sampacho and Suco,' further relating that 'we passed by the Chanaritos region, always looking at it towards the southwest. Then we crossed the Ancias area and, by the time we reached the crossroads of the highway leading toward Laguna de Suco (lake), it was as though the light had become lost in the sky." "Southern Cordoba province," particularly around the city of Rio Cuarto, "has witnessed an intensification of alleged UFO manifestations in an area that includes communities such as Adelia Maria, Carolina, Punta del Agua, San Basilio, Suco, Sampacho, Chajan, Achiras, Cuatro Vientos, Las Albahacas, Villa El Chacay, Alpa Corral, Las Vertientes, Pavin, Huica Renance, General Cabrera and Elena." (Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales, Mario Luis Bracamonte y Circulo Ovnilogico Riocuartense para eso caso.) MORE UFOs SIGHTED IN BRITISH COLUMBIAOn Saturday, September 14, 2002, at 9:03 p.m., "a witness from Terrace," a small town in Canada's northern British Columbia province, telephoned ufologist Brian Vike, "reporting that he and his girlfriend had just watched a large object pass close to their home heading south towards Kitimat, B.C." "He went on to tell me that the object was extremely large, and the colour of it was as bright as an arc from an arc welder but white in colour," Brian reported, "The witness said the object was at least three to four times as big as the moon. When he first noticed the object, it was still at a distance. But as it grew closer to his location, the object grew larger and brighter. At one point, before the object reached their house, it stopped for a couple of seconds, then continued towards them, passing close by the property. They stated that the large object got smaller and smaller as it flew towards the south" and Kitimat. On Saturday, September 21, 2002, a couple got the shock of their lives when they looked at photos they had taken at their vacation home a month earlier. "On August 23, 2002, about 9 p.m., just before dark, my husband and I decided to take a picture of the sunset at the west end of Francois Lake, looking west up the valley to Medina Mountain," the witness told Brian Vike. "We drove down to the bridge over the river, and he got out and spent several minutes taking three or four shots of the sky to the west." "While he was doing this, I stayed in the car and watched the sky, thinking that I could see just the smallest sliver of a moon peeking from behind the trees. When he got back into the car, I said something to my husband about getting the moon in a sunset shot." "And he said, 'What!? That's impossible! The moon can't be in that part of the sky. What are you thinking?'" "So I said, 'Look at that sliver of light next to the trees. It has been there the whole time you were taking pictures. If it isn't the moon, then what is it?'" "He asked if it had moved. I said no, not at all. While we were looking at it, the light did start to move westward. We both watched and puzzled over this for several minutes. Then I said that he should try and get a picture of whatever it was. He grabbed his binoculars first, and we spent a couple of minutes trying to see what it was. Finally, as it was moving farther off, he snapped a photo of the light, and we left." "Today (Saturday, September 21, 2002) we got our photos developed," she added, "and there is the light far off but still obviously incandescent. And to our surprise, we found two other similar but more distant lights in this photo!" Brian Vike also received a belated report of a sighting at British Columbia's Whiteswan Lake. "On July 9, 2002, at 1 a.m.," the witness reported, "We were lying in our dinghy" on Whiteswan Lake "looking at different masses of stars in the night sky. The Big Dipper was to our left as we were looking at what appeared to be six fairly lined-up-even stars. Like the six on dice, except that the bottom two were out of line a bit." "Seconds later my husband pointed out the cluster," and the "stars" began to move. "Then, for the next couple of minutes, they performed. We watched them jog position, speed up, go ahead, slow down, the other speed up, catch up, repeating this until they were out of sight. The other two swooped down, out to the side. One would swoop out and around them, back into position. The others would do the same. Each time they returned to the position where we first saw them." Finally, "two of them left, up and far above us, so far up they turned into pinpoints in the clear sky and disappeared. It was over, and we sat in the dinghy and talked about what we had just experienced...and still do today." (Many thanks to Brian Vike for these reports.) TRIANGULAR UFOs SEEN BY A FAMILY IN QUEBECOn Sunday, September 15, 2002, Megan and Kevin Mcneilly and their two children were driving from Huntington, Quebec, Canada (population 2,746) to their home in Montreal when they saw something very unusual in the sky. "My husband, myself and our two children were on our way home from our country home near Huntington, Que. to our home in Montreal," Megan reported, "As we were driving along the road just outside of Mercier, we saw what appeared to be really bright stars in the distance. After a few minutes, I asked my husband, 'Are those airplanes up ahead, or really bright stars?'" "Considering that the sky was overcast and no other stars were visible in the sky, he suggested that they were probably helicopters looking for pot (marijuana) fields." "After about five minutes, the two lights ahead in the sky changed position. The one that was higher up, and on the right, remained in the same place. But the lower one to the left began to move westward at a fast pace. Now we were very curious as it was moving far too quickly to be a helicopter." "Our eight-year-old son, who was in the back seat, pointed out another one to the right of our vehicle visible from the passenger side. While we were stopped at a (traffic) light, at around 8 p.m., the one on the passenger side slowly flew overhead. I unrolled my window and stuck my head out for a better view. What I saw gave me the shivers. This was no plane or helicopter. The object was triangular with lights on all three corners." "I have seen thousands of airplanes and helicopters at night, and never have I seen a light formation such as these, nor have I ever seen an aircraft first be stationary in the sky (and) then move quickly such as these. We saw them for about ten to fifteen minutes, and there were about five different craft in the sky at this time. All of them the same (triangular) type, though we saw only two of them fly directly overhead. The object appeared to be larger than a (Boeing) 747 and flying quite low for us to see its shape so clearly." "After we crossed the Mercier Bridge and passed the Dorval Airport, we saw many other airplanes...some flying directly overhead...and I did not see anything that looked like the triangular objects." (Email Form Report) CROP CIRCLE FORMATIONS FOUND IN SASKATCHEWANFour new crop circle formations were found last week near Punnichy, Saskatchewan, bringing the total number of crop circles discovered in Canada this year to 17. The first formation consisted of "three circles in a triangular pattern joined together by pathways in wheat, approximately 20 metres (66 feet) across. Counterclockwise lay in all three circles. Two pathways led from the centre point to two of the circles. The other from the third circle towards the centre point. Sporadic 'burn marks' were found in the formation." The second formation was "a single circle in wheat approximately 5.8 metres (19 feet) in diameter, with a counterclockwise lay. It was found 1.6 kilometers (one mile) east of the first formation." "Third was a circle with an attached pathway in wheat approximately 18 metres (60 feet) long. Counterclockwise lay in circle. Pathway was at the edge of the crop field, next to a power pole. About 5.6 kilometers (3 miles) southeast of the first formation." "Fourth was five circles in wheat, located about 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) southeast of the first formation." (See the newspaper The Western Producer of Saskatchewan for September 12, 2002. Many thanks to Paul Anderson of Canadian Crop Circles Research Network for this report.) WEIRD DINOSAUR FOSSIL DISCOVERED IN CHINA"A buck-toothed, rabbit-like dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus Rex and other predators lived in China 128 million years ago, researchers report." "The fossil of the unusual Incisivosaurus was found in the Yixian formation near Beipiao City in northeast China, an area that has already produced many unusual fossils, including dinosaurs with feathers." "Incisivosaurus is part of a group of dinosaurs known as oviraptors, small two-legged dinosaurs that had parrot-like beaks. Incisivosaurus, however, is the oldest oviraptor found to date and lacks the bird-like features found in others of its group, the researchers report in the current issue of the journal Nature." "Instead of having a beak, Incisivosaurus has a long skull and jaws filled with teeth for grinding. However, in its most unusual characteristic, it sports two large buck teeth at the front of its jaw similar to those used by rodents for gnawing." "The buck teeth suggest that the dinosaur was an herbivore rather than a meat-eater like its relatives, reported Xing Xu and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences." "Paleontologists said the discovery shakes up the traditional view of theropod dinosaurs, which are widely assumed to have long, sharp teeth." (See the Duluth News-Tribune for September 22, 2002, "Fossils show China once had rabbit-like dinosaurs," page 19A.) GIANT RIVER SNAKE REPORTED IN NORTHERN MYANMAR"Zoologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz's latest book, Beyond the Last Village, featuring his explorations of Burma (now Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia--J.T.) contains some tantalising details of a hitherto-unpublicised mystery beast." "'In Putao, there were stories about a giant water snake, the Bu-Rin, 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 meters) long, that attacked swimmers or even small boats. Sounding somewhat like a larger, aquatic version of the Burmese python, this snake was incredibly hostile and dangerous. No one had firsthand knowledge of the creature, yet because of it, children were often discouraged from spending long periods of time in the water.'" Putao is about 600 kilometers (360 miles) north of Mandalay. (See Fortean Times No. 161 for September 2002, "Giant Water Snake," page 26. Many thanks to Matt Bille, Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking for this report.) (Editor's Comment: The Bu-Rin sounds like a Southeast Asian relative of the sucuriju gigante, the much-feared giant river snake, often seen but never captured, that haunts the jungles around Tarauaca and Cruzeiro do Sul in Brazil's western state of Rondonia.) READER FEEDBACK:METRIC CONVERSIONS RUIN THE NEWS ARTICLESBob Reid writes, "Thanks to the diligence of Lou Farish, I have received this periodical for several months now." "While I find the info quite interesting, I seriously doubt any reader these days cannot mentally convert to/from metric, and your insistence on providing such is really distracting. Same goes for the linguistic translations, as well as geographic and ethnic details that have little to do with the facts at hand. (One gets the feeling that someone is trying to show off his superior knowledge--B.R.)" "Hope you can accept my comments in the positive way I intend them. I look forward to reading future issues without feeling I'm being talked down to." (Editor's Comment: I'm going to leave this issue up to the readers. The reason I began writing in this "switchover mode" was to assist American readers unfamiliar with metric and overseas readers unfamiliar with Old English measurements. Same with the other snippets in parentheses. I wanted to teach American readers a bit more about the world beyond our shores and also to help overseas readers learn more about the USA. But the decision is yours, readers. Do you want me to continue with "switchover mode" or not? Send me an email.) From the UFO Files... 1949: PROPHETESS OF THE SAUCERSSeptember 30 marks the birthday of this strange but remarkable woman, who probably did the most to spread the "Hitler escaped in a UFO" legend. Her name was Maximiani Portas, but she's better known to history by her nom de voyage, the name she traveled under...Savitri Devi. Maximiani was born in Lyons, France's second largest city, on September 30, 1905. "Her mother, Julia Nash, came from Cornwall, and her father was of mixed Mediterranean heritage, having an Italian mother from London and a Greek father who had acquired French citizenship due to his residence in France." As a schoolgirl, Maximiani was greatly influenced by the work of the French poet Leconte de Lisle, whose Poemes barbares glorified the gods and religions of antiquity. And when she dicovered Bullfinch's Mythology, the result was the same as with H.P. Lovecraft a decade earlier. She became an ardent believer in the gods of Olympus. But where Lovecraft soon ended his infatuation with Graeco-Roman religion, the topic became a lifelong obsession with Maximiani. In 1929, now interested in tracing the roots of occult traditions, Maximiani traveled to Jerusalem. She arrived just in time for the riots between the Arabs and the growing numbers of Jewish immigrants. She sided with the Arabs, and the entire episode left her with a lifelong hatred of Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the Talmud. (Editor's Note: Some occultists believe that there is a network of ancient tunnels under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, similar to the tunnels in the Andes. These tunnels are alleged to be left over from the lost continent of Atlantis. See the book Timeless Earth by Peter Kolosimo, University Books, 1974, page 238.) By 1932, Maximiani's quest had brought her to India. Here she came under the influence of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), also known as Sri Baba Lokmanya, "who was widely acclaimed as the 'father of Indian unrest'...Besides his radical political activities, Tilak was an accomplished scholar of ancient Hindu sacred literature." Imprisoned by the British Raj in 1897 for sedition, Tilak had "immersed himself in Vedic study" and in 1903 published his book about the origins of the "Aryan race," The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Maximiani wandered through India for three years. Then, in July 1935, she enrolled in Rabindranath Tagore's ashram in Shantiniketan in the Bolpur district.
At the ashram, she "learned Hindi and perfected her command of Bengali. She then taught English and Indian history at Jerandan College, not far from Delhi, and worked in a similar capacity in Mathura, the holy city of Krishna, during 1936. Ever more involved in the life and customs of Hinduism, she adopted a Hindu name--Savitri Devi." Settling in Calcutta in 1936, Savitri came under the influence of Srimat Swami Satyananda, who was director of the city's Hindu Mission and active in the nationalist Hindu Mahasabha movement. Tilak had gotten it wrong, Satyananda told Savitri, the Aryans didn't originate in the Arctic--they came from the Antarctic. During previous interglacial periods, Antarctica had enjoyed a temperate climate, and there were still ancient cities buried under the ice and snow. (Editor's Note: Curiously, Lovecraft wrote a short novel about this topic in 1932 entitled At the Mountains of Madness, repeatedly referring to a city called "Kadath in the Cold Waste.") More ominously, Satyananda told Savitri that the presence of the swastika, the traditional Hindu sign of good fortune, in the flag of Nazi Germany showed that this European nation was returning to its Aryan roots. In addition, "he told her that he considered Hitler an incarnation of Vishnu, an expression of the force preserving cosmic order." Satyananda and his new guest lecturer, Savitri Devi, were very much excited when Hitler dispatched an expedition to Antarctica in 1938 under Captain Alfred Rischer. Here was proof that the Nazis were seeking the ancient Aryan homeland. (Editor's Note: In 1916, Charles Fort wrote a book called Y in which he talked about buried cities at the South Pole. He inexplicably destroyed this manuscript in 1917, claiming that "it was not what I wanted." Whatever Antarctic oddities the old boy dug up are delightful to conjecture but are unfortunately lost to history.) Friends in the Mahasabha introduced Savitri to Asit Krishna Mukherji, the editor of The New Mercury, India's one-and-only National Socialist magazine until its suppression by the British authorities in 1937. "Mukherji admired the growing might and influence of the Third Reich. He was deeply impressed by the Aryan ideology of Nazi Germany, with its cult of Nordic racial superiority, anti-Semitism and race laws," which he compared favorably with the Vedic law of varna or caste. When World War II broke out in September 1939, Savitri and Mukherji became the biggest pro-Axis cheerleaders around. Which immediately got Savitri into trouble with the Raj. For one thing, she was a citizen of France and needed a permit to stay in India. Her pro-Nazi views put her on a list for deportation. And when the Germans overran France in May 1940, she was in imminent danger of arrest as "an enemy alien." So, on June 9, 1940, at the age of 34, Savitri married Mukherji in Calcutta. It was a traditional Hindu wedding. (Editor's Comment: It wouldn't surprise me if Savitri had been holding a shotgun.) While her husband worked for Indian independence under the pro-Axis leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, Savitri "spent the rest of the war in joyful anticipation of an Axis victory...By the end of the war, Savitri Devi had assimilated many notions from Hinduism into a heterodox form of National Socialism that glorified the Aryan race and Adolf Hitler." Undeterred by the Allied victory in May 1945, Savitri resolved to return to Europe and preach her new Hitlerian faith. What spurred her to action was a curious article that appeared in The Times and Le Monde on July 18, 1945 claiming that Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, had been taken by a U-boat to Argentina. Convinced that der Fuhrer would soon be making his comeback, "Savitri Devi returned to Europe in October 1945...In London she took casual employment as a wardrobe manager with a traveling Indian dance company." During her brief showbiz career, Savitri read another article that appeared in the Argentinian newspaper Critica on July 17, 1945 which "stated that the Fuhrer and Eva Braun had landed from the U-530 in Antarctica, noting the possible place of embarkation was Queen Maud Land, the destination of a German Antarctic expedition in 1938-1939." She also read a book by Ladislao Szabo, a Hungarian living in Buenos Aires, entitled Hitler esta vivo (Spanish for Hitler is alive--J.T.) Szabo expanded on the Critica article and discussed the top-secret but abortive Operation High Jump. (Editor's Note: On December 2, 1946, a U.S. Navy task force consisting of 13 ships, led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the USA's foremost Antarctic explorer, conducted joint maneuvers in Antarctic waters with British, Norwegian and Soviet Russian naval units. Byrd ended Operation High Jump in early 1947 after four Navy planes were mysteriously lost.) But what really kindled Savitri's excitement was the sudden appearance of the "flying saucers" in July 1947. UFOs dominated front pages everywhere. Ready to undertake her missionary work, Savitri "hit upon the idea of distributing pro-Nazi leaflets while passing through Germany by train in June 1948." "Returning through France and entering Germany at Saarholzbach, she spent some three months between 7 September and 6 December 1948 distributing a further six thousand leaflets in the three Western (Allied) occupation zones and the Saarland." While in Germany, Savitri made contact with former SS men, who told her an amazing story: in 1942, a German engineer named Miethe began work on a "flying disk," also known as the V-7. Encouraged by the progress in the development of this new "vengeance weapon," Hitler placed the project under the command of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Kammler. A limited number of these vehicles were produced at underground factories in the Harz Mountains. The V-7 was a futuristic aircraft, Savitri was told, "'a fantastic creation nearly 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, in its center the plexiglass cupola of the control room glistening in the sunlight.'...it had no rotating parts and was driven by twelve adjustable jets, five rearward for forward flight and the other seven for directional steering. With a range of 13,000 miles (20,000 kilometers) the V-7 was able to reach 1,500 to 2,000 miles per hour (2,400 to 3,200 kilometers per hour.)" Soon it was all coming together in her mind--Hitler's controversial demise, the Antarctic expedition of 1938, the Miethe V-7 flying disk, the SS rumors of a diehard "Last Battalion" preparing to resume the war. She truly believed that a flying saucer had spirited the Fuhrer out of an embattled Berlin and dropped him off in Cuxhaven. From there, the U-boat convoy ferried him to the Nazi colony of Neuschwabenland (German for New Swabia --J.T.) in Antarctica. Thus convinced, Savitri undertook her most dangerous gamble yet. "In preparation for her third propaganda sortie to enemy-occupied Germany, she had printed in London a small German-language handbill with a swastika. Here she exhorted the Germans to remain true to their Fuhrer, who was alleged still to be alive, and to rise up against the Allied forces that now were stationed throughout the country." In part, the handbill read, "However, 'Slavery is to last but a short time more.'" "She began distributing the handbill on the night of 13-14 February 1949 in Cologne and soon found a young ex-SS man to help her." The Allied occupation officials were at first alarmed by the appearance of these handbills. Was there a clandestine neo-Nazi group out there actually agitating for revolution? But then a German informer told them that a certain Mrs. Mukherji was distributing the subversive leaflets. And on February 22, 1949, Savitri was arrested by the British Army. "She was detained at the British military prison for women at Werl until her formal trial, which was fixed for 5 April 1949." No doubt about it, Savitri was in a heap of trouble. As part of the postwar "denazification" program, the Allies had proclaimed the Laws of Occupation Status n Germany. Article 7 of Law Number 8 "forbade the promotion of militarist and National Socialist ideas on German territory subject to the Allied Control Commission." The maximum penalty was death. Instead, the Allied court-martial sentenced Savitri to three years at the prison in Werl. She struck up close friendships with former SS concentration camp guards from Belsen and began writing her book Defiance. Here "she enjoyed a high regard among her fellow Nazi and SS prisoners for her high-flown rhetoric, her insistence on the idealistic philosophy of Aryan rebirth, and her pious Nazi spirituality." Her presence proved so disruptive that Savitri was soon placed in solitary. Just as Savitri was looking at an extended stay at Werl, the husband she had abandoned four years earlier came to her rescue. Asit Krishna Mukherji, now a citizen of newly-independent India, arrived in Germany and lobbied the Allied occupation authorities for his wife's release. In the end, Mukherji was successful, and Savitri was released from prison in August 1949. For the rest of her life, Savitri continued her mission as a Nazi evangelist, writing several books and helping to found the World Union of National Socialists. She also insisted that some UFOs were indeed craft from the Nazi sanctuary in Antarctica, a theme that her colleage and disciple Ernst R. Zundel expanded upon in his 1974 book, UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? Savitri Devi died on October 22, 1982. Although her main contribution to ufology was the promotion of the "saucer Nazis" legend, there is one curious postscript concerning Savitri Devi. On April 5, 1949, at the same moment Savitri was facing the Allied court-martial in Germany, a spectacular UFO event occurred thousands of miles to the west, over that part of the USA's New England region Loren Coleman calls "the Bridgewater Triangle." A "very large, luminous, blue-green object" first appeared over Middleboro, Massachusetts, then flew a wobbly corkscrew course westward over Taunton, Rehoboth and Seekonk, Mass. and finally over H.P. Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where it suddenly and inexplicably vanished. The sighting was reported in Doubt--The Fortean Society Magazine for October 1949. (See the books Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1998; Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 2002; Fliegende Untertassen uber Sudafrika by Edgar Sievers, Sagittarius Press, Pretoria, South Africa, 1955; and UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? by Ernst R. Zundel, Samisdat Publications, Toronto, Canada, 1974.) Well, that's it for this week. Join us next time for more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you in seven days. UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2002 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup on their websites or in news groups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.
Site Map | Home | UFO Roundup Vol. 7 | UFO Roundup | Report a Sighting URL: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/v07/rnd0739.shtml
|
