Brazil’s Operation Saucer is declassified

In a recent UFO ROUNDUP (Vol. 10, No. 7, 2005) it was reported that the February 7th, 2005 edition of the Brazilian newspaper, O Liberal, had described how top secret security files of the Brazilian Air Force’s former Operation Saucer had become declassified. Contained within these files are the incredible details of the Brazilian Air Force’s on-site investigations into the wave of UFO encounters in the northern Brazilian state of Para, from October 1977 until the first half of 1978. The military report was said to have contained some 2,000 pages, 500 photographs, and 16 hours of motion picture footage.

Finally, perhaps the vital official documents and photographic evidence of this unique and unprecedented UFO wave will become available to the civilian UFO community. Previous to this Prof. Jacques Vallee’s Confrontations (1990) and Bob Pratt’s UFO Danger Zone (1996) have largely been ufology’s singular and primary sources of information on this awesome UFO wave. My book Visitors From Hidden Realms (2004) contained excerpts from an interview with Bob Pratt, which initially appeared in Alternate Perceptions (and is still archived on this website).

Discovery of First Invisible Galaxy is made

According to an article by senior science writer Robert Roy Britt in the popular ezine SPACE.com (posted 02-23-2005), astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy, a galaxy composed mostly of “dark matter.” First discovered back in 2000 by scientists of the University of Manchester, England’s Lovell Telescope, other astronomers from the UK, France, Italy and Australia soon contributed to the investigation and confirmed the discovery. Called VIRGOHI21, it is in the Virgo galaxy cluster, and it is approximately 50 million light years distance. The astronomers had been looking for radio-wavelength radiation from hydrogen gas, and in this region of space they found a hundred million times the mass of our own sun.

“From the speed it is spinning, we realized that VIRGOHI21 was a thousand times more massive than could be accounted for by the observed hydrogen atoms alone,” said Robert Minchin of the UK’s Cardiff University. “If it were an ordinary galaxy, then it should be quite bright and would be visible with a good amateur telescope.”

“The ratio of dark matter to regular matter is at least 500-to-1, which is higher than I would expect in an ordinary galaxy. However, it is very hard to know what to expect with such a unique object. It may be that high ratios like this are necessary to keep the gas from collapsing to form stars.”

Faith Healers drawing hundreds to Cleveland, Ohio

Noted paranormal writer-investigator Brad Steiger sent me this fascinating story courtesy of a NewsChannel5 television report by one Ted Henry in Cleveland, Ohio. It seems a word-of-mouth healing Catholic ministry is attracting hundreds to its services being held at churches throughout the Greater Cleveland area. What makes this movement so unique and incredible, however, is that among the many who are claiming partial or complete healings are a number of medical doctors! In fact, it just so happened, that one was a Dr. Ted Castele, who for quarter of a century had been NewsChannel5's medical reporter. Last year, Dr. Castele was suffering from so much pain that his own doctor’s couldn’t give him relief. Then he visited the healers.

For more information and updates, visit their website at: www.NewsNet5.com/index.html.

Earth Hit by Brightest Galactic Flash ever detected!

On December 27th, 2004, a tremendous eruption that originated from some 50,000 light years away, struck our upper atmosphere with so much energy that it briefly altered it. According to astronomers, the source was a neutron star, a certain variety known as a magnetar. Though no larger than a big city, they obviously can pack quite an explosive punch. This blast, according to David Palmer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was 100 times more powerful than any similar eruption previously observed, and according to Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had it happened within a mere 10 light years of us, it would have caused severe damage to our atmosphere. In fact, it might have triggered a mass extinction on our planet!

(Source: SPACE.com, posted 02-18-2005)

Comedian Dan Aykroyd’s Serious UFO Views

UFO Magazine (Vol. 19, No. 6, December/January 2005) contains an interesting article entitled “Dan Aykroyd, Unplugged on UFOs” (based on a recently released video by the same title, where this former Saturday Night Live comedian and actor is interviewed indepth), and in this article we learn of Aykroyd’s very serious views on the UFO phenomenon. In addition, we read excerpts from the interview itself. For example, Aykroyd described how late one night, around 3 a.m., he woke up and told his wife, “They’re calling me! They’re calling me! ...They want me to come outside and see!” His wife insisted though that he “just go back to bed.” He did, but the next morning the papers and radio were telling how people all over upstate New York, in Ontario and Quebec, Canada, and in Vermont, saw something strange in the sky. “And twelve thousand people shared this urge. And they went out and there’s a big, big news story, and of course, the Air Force said that a Chinese rocket had exploded over New York state and what people saw was a massive, miles high pink spiral in the sky above the Great Lakes.”

Aykroyd added that a few years later, near Hull, Quebec, nearly a thousand people heeded a similar “urge” and stepped outside and saw something strange in the sky.

Then, in an incident reminiscent of the MIB (men in black), Aykroyd recalled how he had been working on a program called “Out There.” He had interviewed for the program major players in the UFO field. For the last show, he interviewed Steven Greer and Stephen Bassett as guests. The program was being sold to the Sci Fi Channel. That afternoon Aykroyd was outside the Sci Fi offices in downtown New York City, when a “black Ford sedan” pulled up with two men in it. One dark suited tall man got out and gave Aykroyd a “real dirty look.” Aykroyd was on his cell phone at the time talking with Britney Spears about doing a Saturday Night Live appearance with him. He looked away and then “like a half-second later” Aykroyd turned back and the car and its two occupants had impossibly “vanished.” He said with all of the traffic that existed there it should have taken at least 15 minutes for the black car to have gotten away. Aykroyd wondered if this somehow had been a “warning” for him, as the stranger had looked directly at him. Then two hours later Aykroyd was stunned when the Sci Fi network told him to stop taping. The entire show had suddenly been cancelled.

Researcher, Artist, Author, and Friend Shirley C. Fickett

Gone but not forgotten....

Sadly, I must report that an old and dear friend, Shirley Caroline Fickett of Portland, Maine, passed away at 10:30 a.m. on February 1st. Shirley had been in very ill health for quite sometime. During our early years with Alternate Perceptions, Shirley had been a frequent and enthusiastic contributor. We had worked together on a 1975 UFO “abduction” case in Oxford, Maine, and our articles on this incident appeared in England’s Flying Saucer Review and later as chapters in Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz’s book UFO Dynamics. For me personally the field just won’t seem quite the same without her quick wit and humor and observations that came from the heart. I’ll forever cherish the many fond memories of the many hours spent at her home livingroom engaged in relaxed and friendly debate and conversation about everything from Ufology to Bigfoot to the Virgin Mary at Fatima, occasionally sampling some of Shirley’s home made and delicious lasagna (when we weren’t ordering out Italian subs), interspersed with occasional comments from her husband Dick as he was leaving and entering the basement workshop (where he often busied himself) with such things as, “Have you two solved anything yet?”

I want to thank Shirley’s daughter Leanne Brainerd for keeping in touch with me and for sending me the obituary notices of Shirley’s passing. Besides Leanne, Shirley left behind three other children: Sharon Cleaves, Randall Fickett, and Richard Fickett, all still residents of Maine.

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