How Old Is China's “Area 51”?

“The ‘Chinese desert disc’ - some people are comparing it to
the Wilton Windmill 2010 crop picture, which shows a series of concentric rings,
each coded in-to-out radially in 8-bit ASCII.”

- Horace Drew, Retired Geneticist, Sydney, Australia

       
Left: Unusual feature in China's “Area 51” is a 12-spoke disc with large, white airplanes at the center
about 9 miles (14 km) east of the “air strips” (image below). China disc image by Google Earth,
see coordinates in report below.  Right: Compare to 12-spoke crop formation that had
8-bit ASCII binary code reported May 22, 2010, in yellow flowering oilseed rape
near the Wilton Windmill in Wiltshire, England. Aerial photograph © 2010 Lucy Pringle.

“I am a retired engineer doing research with Google Earth.
I analyzed image of the ‘Chinese Airport.’ The total outside perimeter
of the left (west) airport is 22,360.6 feet, somewhat precisely the square root of 5.
The outer perimeter of the dark section is 22,360.6 / 16 / A where
A= E -1 = 1.718281828, the fractal portion of natural log base E.
I seriously doubt anybody in modern times would design anything like that.”

- J. D. Branson, World-Mysteries.com

Two “airstrips” described by retired engineer, J. D. Branson,
as 22,360.6 feet long in the China “Area 51” large terraformed region that extends
for 20 miles southwest of the Great Gobi Desert A  near ancient Dunhuang
and about 200 miles west of China's Jiuquan Satellite
Launch Center. Image by Google Earth.

November 19, 2011   Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China - The first images called “China's Area 51” began circulating on the internet and in emails around November 7, 2011. Speculation was they might be geometric targets for satellite calibration. But others argue there are unusual mathematical relationships in the 20-mile wide terraformed complex. The location of the mysterious shapes are southwest of Great Gobi Desert A, Gansu Province, surrounded by a vast region of unpopulated land. Mongolia is to the north and the nearest town is Dunhuang, established in 111 B. C. as a frontier garrison outpost by the Han Dynasty Emperor Wudi. Today's population is 188,000.
China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) is part of the Dongfeng Aerospace City (Base 10) that is located in the Gobi desert about 200 miles (160 km) east of Dunhuang.

China's “Area 51” ground patterns are southwest of the Great Gobi Desert A in
Gansu Province south of Mongolia (center red circle). The nearest town is
Dunhuang (below) that is 1,515 miles (2,438 km) west of Beijing (far right red circle).

Dunhuang (far left red circle), population 188,000, in Gansu Province southwest of
the Great Gobi Desert A and Mongolia and about 200 miles west
of China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC), part of the
Dongfeng Aerospace City (Base 10), far right red circle.

Dunhuang, Gansu province, China, has ruins of an ancient Chinese watchtower
from the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 A.D.), located along what was the old line
of rammed-earth fortifications that once stretched from the Hexi Corridor (in Gansu)
to the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang). It was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road.
It was also known at times as Shazhou, or ‘City of Sands’, a name still used today.
It is best known for the nearby Dunhuang Caves containing some of the finest examples
of Buddhist art spanning 1,000 years. January 27, 2008, image by the Real Bear.

I forwarded the Google Earth images to Horace R. Drew, Ph.D., molecular biologist and expert in DNA structure, who lives in Sydney, Australia. He is also known as “Red Collie.” Collie has studied crop formations for astronomical and mathematical information that might relate to our sun and solar system. I included the URL, www.viewzone.com/china51.html, and asked him, “Could you do a reality check on the lat/long in this possibly important email? I would appreciate seeing whatever images you yourself can download that corroborate, further detail or contradict the information about this China site.” That same day, I received this reply from him.
From:   Red Collie
Subject:   Important Fwd: China
Date: November 7, 2011
To: Linda Moulton Howe <earthfiles@earthfiles.com>
1st Batch of 10 Google images, Nov. 7, 2011

Dear Linda, there are 8 highly anomalous surface objects in that mountainous area on Google Earth.
Here are a series of overview or close-up images. I do not claim to know what any of it means!

Google Earth satellite image with latitudes and longitudes superimposed for location
identification, one of many mysterious ground patterns in a remote area referred to as
“China's Area 51” stretching for some 20 miles southwest of the Great Gobi Desert A
in Gansu Province south of Mongolia and about 200 miles west of China's Jiuquan
Satellite Launch Center (JSLC), part of the Dongfeng Aerospace City (Base 10).

Next batch of Google images from Red Collie, also on Nov. 7, 2011











From World-Mysteries.com:  “Mysterious Site in China”

“Compare “China's Area 51” to Nazca, Peru, geoglyphs that date back to around 400 A. D.

6-mile-long Nazca, Peru, “airstrip” embedded in the desert land between the Pacific Ocean
and the Andes Mountains, dating back to around 400 A. D. Image © by Manny Panta.

“Could these geoglyphs be effigies of ancient animal gods or patterns of constellations? Are they roads, star pointers, maybe even a gigantic map? If the people who lived here 2,000 years ago had only a simple technology, how did they manage to construct such precise figures? Did they have a plan? If so, who ordained it? It all seems so otherworldly. To comprehend the Nasca lines, created by the removal of desert rock to reveal the pale pink sand beneath, visitors have proposed every imaginable explanation - from runways for spaceships to tracks for Olympic athletes, from op art to pop art, to astronomical observatories.

It is believed that the geoglyphs were built by a people called the Nasca - but why? And they created these wonders of the world has defied explanation.

Near the eastern edge of Dunhuang, there are many "square outlines" that might be related to a military base?”

 
Writing for World-Mysteries.com in an article entitled, “Mysterious Marks Near Dunhuang, China,” retired engineering manager and pilot J. D. Branson asked about the unexplained China Google Earth images: “Perhaps it is a military installation; however, a few of the areas are difficult to interpret. One of the ‘landing strips’ looks ancient with erosion marks. Go to Google earth and enters the latitude and longitude coordinates:
China Area 51 desert “Drawings” Coordinates:

Latitude: 40°28'43.07"N      Longitude: 93°28'36.42"E

http://maps.google.com/
http://earth.google.com
“You can move the cursor around and see that the marks are not built up in elevation as an airport would be. Road graders and compactors are needed to pack a field sufficiently to safely take the extreme pressure that landing gears make at times. Any yielding of the dirt would cause the plane to spin out of control. Of course, there are no support buildings or taxiways to parking areas.”




How old is this Chinese landing strip in the photo labeled yellow 3, 4 and 5 above? J. D. Branson described his analysis of the above “Chinese Airport” features:  “ The total outside perimeter of the left (west) airport is 22,360.6 feet, somewhat precisely the square root of 5. The outer perimeter of the dark section is 22,360.6 / 16 / A where A= E -1 = 1.718281828, the fractal portion of natural log base E. I seriously doubt anybody in modern times would design anything like that.
“One may also see that common truck traffic has made tracks out across a number of the marks and therefore it cannot be paved or a prepared surface. If the marks were graded and compacted, they would be nearly perfectly level lengthwise and side to side. When tracing the contour with Google Earth, they still show the general contour of the area around them. Even the darker colored areas which one might be tempted to think are paved show signs of erosion.

“There are some simple considerations to prove the designs are inter-related. Both perimeters of the two ‘air strips’ are 22,360.6 feet in length, plus or minus a few feet, which is the square root of 5 = 2.236068. This is also the source number for the sacred number of phi (1.618033989) used repeatedly in natural events.
“I am not at all certain why the center and the right mark show up so brightly on Google earth, but I have seen this type of phenomena before and it could be something in the Google software that causes it to be so pronounced.




J. D. Branson:  “These marks could contain an encyclopedia of data if one breaks the coding. Above in my yellow text over photo, the square in bottom left is not only oriented true north at an azimuth of 360 degrees (also zero), but the length is 2777.77 feet, which is the reciprocal of 36 times 10,000. This seems likely some type of signal to provide methodologies for more complex solutions. Note the water erosion across some of the grid pattern, again indicating it could be really ancient.”

---

Email Nov. 9 from Mike Reed, retired Arizona State University astronomer:

White square on far left (west) “is actually a slag pile. Where is the material coming from?”

Mike Reed:  “I looked at the China site closely. The white square (to the West) is actually a slag pile. If you look at the southern edges they show a near vertical piling of material. It reminds me of some of the piles I've seen near large Arizona mines. Where is the material coming from? Tunnels, underground facilities, very interesting!

The white line formations look to be a very thin coating on the surface and the pattern looks pretty arbitrary. Targets for ID from space? If you follow the road going East it eventually passes by a fairly large complex of buildings with blue patches on the roof out in the middle of nowhere.???”

---

Is This A Binary-Coded Disc with Planes At Center?

Another unusual feature is located about 9 miles (14 km) east of the “air strips.” This terraformed disc has some large, white airplanes at its center.

Is this a binary-coded disc? Why are there large planes at the center?

Photos: Alleged 'Alien' Body / Mystery Surfaces In Russia

The image above was forwarded to me approx. 3 years ago - the images below were posted in a Russian blog this week

An old lady from Petrozavodsk city reported that she had been keeping a frozen alien body in a refrigerator for a couple of years. The alien was found next to the woman’s summer house. The body was said to be 'very hot' and that metal fragments were lying beside it. Before finding the body the lady heard a terrible noise. The creature was 40-50 cm long, had a big head, mouth and orbits. It was also wearing a one-piece garment. Two days ago the lady was visited by some people who confiscated the body for the purpose of its investigation and, according to their words, took it to the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, employees of the Research Center who were interviewed later said that they had never heard of the discovery. Where was the body taken?

NOTE: I saw one of these images (top photo) approximately 3 years ago...it was forwarded by email from a lady who lived near St.Petersburg who then stated to me that it was given to her by a friend. I attempted to gather further information but hit a dead end. Today, these photos were published in a Russian blog with the narrative posted. What do you think? Lon

BIG FOOT

Claim that Patterson-Gimlin film was a hoax

What you think, what you know, and what you can prove are often very different scenarios as I was recently reminded by a colleague. This is especially true when concerning the Patterson Gimlin film of an alleged sasquatch/bigfoot. On October 20th 1967 Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin claimed to have captured film of a sasquatch and documented part of its trackway along with making plaster casts of the imprints left by the film subject.

I'm claiming that during the footage of Patterson casting a track there should be an impression visible past the one he is casting. There is not. During the footage showing 4 impressions there is now a footprint present past the one Patterson was casting previously. The ground in the footage of Patterson making the cast shows flat mud and no impression. (no following track present!) I'm also identifying the two scenes as one in the same location and impression. Continue reading w/ photos at The Patterson Gimlin Film Hoax PROVEN

paranormal cases from Spain, South America and the Caribbean

paranormal cases from Spain, South America and the Caribbean

Monday, November 07, 2011

Argentina: The Rio Negro Blackouts (1998)

Source: El Dragón Invisible
Date: 11.06.11

Argentina: The Rio Negro Blackouts (1998)
By Carlos Iurchuk – La Plata, Argentina

Sunday, April 12, 1998

The lights went off at 19:45 hours. Repairs were undertaken by technicians from the Cooperativa Eléctrica Bariloche (CEB) who detected an interruption in the medium-voltage line from [the town of] Fernandez Beschtedt to La Paz after the Cipresales transformer was left out of commission, “leaving practically have the city without power.”

Engineer Claudio Campo of the electric utility confirmed that the CEB had ascertained “a consumption of electricity five to six times higher than usual” and this overvoltage – whose possible origin could have been “a three-phase short circuit” or a “power demand” – managed to blow the electric grid’s cables.

“We didn’t find a short circuit,” Campo noted, assuring that the second alternative was that “something had drawn power.”

Technicians state that the weather conditions could not have brought about the blackout. No one could explain the phenomenon that resulted in peak consumption of 1050 amperes on the electric lines.

“At 22:11, three minutes after service was restored, a new blackout occurred that prompted repair crews to conduct a detailed scan of the city’s power lines,” stated the CEB, stressing that the search was conducted from “post to post” without any evidence suggesting the reason for the blackouts being found. Neither the National Interconnected System nor short-circuits, much less acts of vandalism, could account for the blackouts. “Surveys by repair crews enabled us to determine that no acts of vandalism had occurred on conductors or isolators, and furthermore, the favorable weather conditions dismissed the possibility that the problem could have been brought about by powerful winds.”

No technical explanation justified the successive interruptions and brown-outs recorded throughout the city [of Bariloche].

At the same time that a sizeable part of the city was plunged into darkness, residents of the city’s eastern section saw very bright lights flying swiftly over the mountains in the sector near the airport.

One witness even said that a “mothership” – larger than the rest – led a formation over Cerro Leones and that smaller ships pulled into it, producing sparks s they did so. He pointed out that the maneuver occurred at least twice, coinciding with the successive brown-outs and blackouts all over the city.

This hypothesis appears to be confirmed, with some differences, by Gustavo and Beatriz Riveros, who saw two lights fly by – one from Cerro Carbón – and that “merged” over Cerro Leones.

Other witnesses noted that the sighting took place over several minutes and that they were able to see strange lights over Lake Nahuel Huapi and toward the south. They agreed that the size of the larger vessel was twice that of a streetlight, and that the objects emitted bright flashes of light with red, yellow and white tones.
Andrea, Natalia and Carolina Caparro, of the Nicolás Lavalle district, told the TELAM news agency that at 22:30 hours that evening they had seen “a sort of saucer with red, yellow, green and white flashes of light, and another object, slightly larger and elongated, with red and yellow lights.” The luminous objects “remained suspended in the air for several minutes before heading off toward the lake sector.”

Although their sightings began around 23:30 hours, relatives and neighbors “had seen it much earlier.”

“These were lights of various colors and at low altitude. They made no noise whatsoever, and whenever a bright white light appeared, the power went out,” said America Jara, a witness to the sighting.

Several residents of the city’s higher section got in touch with radio and TV stations to report seeing [objects resembling] stars that moved and gave off red, yellow, green and “glowing white” flashes of light between 22:30 and 23:45 hours.

The lights moved back and forth in a straight line until “another object, elongated and the size of a small soda bottle” appeared, and they docked with it, according to locals.

This docking maneuver took place “with a great flash, like a burst of electricity, and lights immediately went out all over the city,” said a woman who asked to remain anonymous, like other residents of Bariloche.

Residents of Dina Huapi, the downtown area, the IPPV districts and other parts of the city also contributed eyewitness accounts.

The CEB also received information from a well-known resident of the San Francisco district, who claimed seeing “something like a red ball” descending in a zigzag maneuver at full speed at the long pedestrian stairway at Tiscornia. In this case, of course, the structure is located under a medium voltage line and could have easily been an electric discharge or loss of power.

The local airport reported that but for the power interruption, an inconvenience remedied by the repair crews, “no strange events were reported” in that district.

“They were private planes arriving for the weekend and took off at the end of the day on Sunday. Furthermore, there were also nocturnal flights,” explained an official with the local weather office.

Problems continued – without repairs being made –“ until 1:34 a.m., without any evidence suggesting an explanation for the occurrence. Power was restored to the lines as from that moment without further inconvenience.”

Tuesday, April 14, 1998

A new electric blackout occurs with no official explanation being offered. A sizeable part of the city was left completely in the dark.

Julio Posse, a resident of Barrio Melipal, said: “...a very bright glow was seen to the east of Cerro Otto. My family witnessed it from inside the house. My children said: “Daddy, the UFOs!” and I replied: “Yes, the UFOS...”

The storm that punished the city that night may have accounted for not as many reports as on Sunday, when the sky was completely cloudless.

Luis Baigorria, a spokesman for the CEB, noted that Tuesday’s power loss went “...from Kilometer 1 of Bustillo Avenue to Puerto Moreno. A few minutes after the power was lost, the lines charged up again, but protections appeared again and the problem repeated itself in the same area...”

“...Yet again, no evidence was found to determine that the interruption was due to deliberate reasons that affected the lines, or any logical circumstances that could have affected the supply of electricity,” Baigorria concluded.

Engineer Claudio Campo explained: “What happened on Tuesday was identical to Sunday, but there were no records in this case, since the Puerto Moreno transformer station isn’t there, and no succession of events was recorded...”

Wednesday, April 15, 1998

Around 22:30 hours, Adrian Zuber, an employee with a transportation company, captured the maneuvers of a strange and bright light in the direction of Cerro León with his Sony camera. The recording showed a vast black background on which a light can be seen to glow “intensely and incessantly” with red, blue, yellow and green flashes. These flashes can be seen more clearly when the zoom function is applied, but the shape cannot be seen clearly, although a halo can be made out.




“It was very shocking”, said Zuber. All day he received calls from all national and foreign media, including from Germany and the United States.





The local resident traveled some 15 kilometers from his home, near the 255 School, to the intersection of Routes 23 and 237, where he made the recording. The last flight recorded from the local airport was a little after 20:00 hours, over two hours before the recording was made. Local Channel 6 broke the story and broadcast the images.

Direct Voice Seance Phenomena

Direct Voice Seance Phenomena

  

Photo from the Leslie Flint autobiography Voices in the Dark showing Flint being studied by Society for Psychical Research members using infrared telescopes and microphones.

Arthur Findlay (1883-1964) began the Foreword of Where Two Worlds Meet (1951) with the statement: "During the Second World War, Mr. John Campbell Sloan kindly gave his services from time to time, without charge, at the houses of different people, so that they and their friends might obtain the phenomenon known as the Direct Voice."  This form of mediumship might be simply described as unseen people who've made the transition to another realm of existence being able to make themselves heard on Earth in the presence of a human medium.

Findlay reported that Glasgow, Scotland resident Miss Jean Logan Dearie was the seance attendee who took verbatim shorthand records of all that took place.  Upon reading the documents she had sent him, he realized the manuscript afforded an opportunity for a valuable addition to the records of the seances he had published in his book On The Edge of the Etheric (1931).  Nineteen records of seances were selected for Where Two Worlds Meet and these transcripts used actual names of participants.

In the introduction for the later book, Findlay commented:

There is another world, about and around us, interpenetrating this physical world, into which we pass at death.  It has been described to me by those who have spoken to me from it, but only in language suited to our finite minds.

Findlay's explanatory notes about a May 1942 seance included the following passage.

There was no hallucination about what took place, what one heard all heard; in fact this has been proved at other séances, from time to time, by recording what was said on gramophone records or on the dictaphone.

On The Edge of the Etheric included Findlay's perspective of the recurring communicator or seance 'control' named 'Whitefeather': "Whitefeather is recognised at once by his voice, his personality and his speech . . . By the quaint way he has of putting things he can keep us laughing for minutes on end."  Other communicators mentioned by Findlay include 'Greentree' and 'Gallacher.'  'Huxley' was heard on one occasion and is quoted with a statement about evolution being "the key to the Universe."

Findlay affirmed, ". . . we find that we are surrounded by an unseen multitude who, under certain conditions, can hold converse [SIC] with us from time to time."

Details of the seances chronicled in Findlay's books were reiterated in his autobiography Looking Back (1955).  Similar to what is known about Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint, Mr. Sloan "sat like the others in the circle" as seance communicators conversed with those gathered.  Findlay reminded that other phenomena were continuous during the seances.  Two trumpets (voice transmission enhancing devices with a simple conical structure) would be noticed to "fly around the room in the dark without knocking into each other, but frequently touching the ceiling and beating on it, the movement being at a great speed, without wires, attachments or any visible contrivances."  At times the trumpets would "gently touch, stroke or caress the sitters, and at other times hit Sloan on the head without hurting him, or beat in time on the floor."  Fingers were felt "to be passed through the hair of the sitters and over their faces."  Lights were observed "to dance about the room" and "any part of the body" would be "touched on request."

Reading Where Two Worlds Meet, one will find consistency in the philosophy conveyed by the seance communicators.  This consistency is also reflected in many of the audio recordings that were made at the Leslie Flint sittings.  These recordings were the subject of two previous blog posts (1 and 2).  The  recordings at http://leslieflint.com corroborate Findlay's books and may be heard free of charge. 

Taking into consideration the sequence of events chronicled in my published nonfiction case study Testament, I noticed an obvious parallel between the nickname 'Mickey'—whom Flint referred to as "my Cockney boy control"—and the nickname 'Michael' that was used for the being perceived to be the predominant manifesting entity by the family of the Centrahoma 'talking poltergeist' case.  In my own life, 'Michael' found ways to demonstrate a guiding Intelligence not restricted by usual notions of 'time' and 'locality.'

Many of the recordings of 'Mickey' presented at the Leslie Flint Educational Trust archive reveal an astute and sympathetic commentator showing great knowledge of the human condition while speaking with a boyish modulation; however, in some recordings of 'Mickey' there may be heard a boisterous Cockney bloke who seems like a different person.  Describing a demonstration for a large audience in his autobiography Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium (1971), Flint offered an anecdote that suggests Mickey's identity may not have been fully comprehended.

As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium.  He said that in his life on earth he was called John Whitehead and he had sold newspapers outside Camden Town underground station until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old.  "I'm a lot happier over here than I ever was on your side," he assured the crowded hall, "you could say kicking the bucket was the best thing I ever did!"  This caused a general laugh and tension throughout the hall relaxed noticeably.

Similar to Direct Voice case studies, in some of those cases referred to categorically as that of the 'talking poltergeist,' a variety of unseen communicators were heard.  In The Bell Witch of Tennessee (1930) by Harriet Parks Miller, a quotation found in Miller's report of one incident showed an understanding in relation to the nature of the "invisible agency of tangible action" that wasn't so precisely articulated in other accounts.

"You know, as I've said before, I am anything and everything, here, there and everywhere.  Just now I'm the spirit of an early emigrant . . ."

Other books chronicling Direct Voice phenomena include The Voices: A Sequel to "Glimpses of the Next State" (1913) by W. Usborne Moore and The Dead Have Never Died (1917) by Edward C. Randall.

In addition to the various modes of seance phenomena, so-called 'platform work' of clairaudient/clairvoyant mediums has also been a successful form of presentation to prove the continuity of human life.  Two previous blog posts offer links to videotaped demonstrations of medium Doris Stokes in 1986 and Gordon Higginson in 1990.

Previous post in my Spiritualism series of articles: "Willy Reichel's First Seance with 'Materialization Medium' Mr. C. V. Miller in 1903":

Earth Vs. Flying Saucers With Cloudbusters

Earth Vs. Flying Saucers With Cloudbusters

Critics skeptical of the Roswell flying saucer crash story often claim that interest in the event dropped off immediately after its initial media flash in 1947, only to be revived in the 1980s by unreliable UFO researchers seeking to profiteer from a myth of their own making. I have often contradicted this assertion by pointing out that the scientist Wilhelm Reich paid a visit to Roswell in 1955 and made clear references to aliens in relation to the town in his final book, Contact With Space. It is an unusual book primarily documenting Reich and his assistants using beam cannons to clash with flying saucers--in real life, not on the silver screen.

Researchers have slowly been accumulating Roswell references in movies and other pop culture forms to support the idea that the incident had more of a cultural impact on pre-1980s pop culture than previously has been presupposed. The little Roswell grey aliens appear in a mid-1960s episode of the anime cartoon Prince Planet, for instance. Recently, a 1951 wristwatch ad from the Hamilton Corporation was discovered that referred to the weather balloon explanation for flying saucers, an explanation offered only for Roswell in 1947 until adopted by the Robertson UFO investigation panel of 1952. Another obvious example often escapes notice; however, that again ties the tale back to Wilhelm Reich. It involves the famous 1956 Ray Harryhausen movie Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers.

Roswell-like alien in Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers.

In that movie, aliens attack the earth in flying saucers and in a few instances the aliens hobble out onto the surface. The creatures look a bit like roll-on deodorant cans with stiff arms and legs. The costumes were used briefly in one other movie, 1961’s The Creation of Humanoids, most recently broadcast following an episode of cable TV’s The Walking Dead series. In Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, the costumes’ rounded helmets with no features conceal the aliens’ real form until one is killed and his roll-cap removed. The alien looks like a Roswell grey.

Wilhelm Reich had Ruidoso, New Mexico as his destination in 1955 for an overnight stay on his way to Tuscon, Arizona. Passing through Roswell—and Stanton Friedman often makes the point at lectures that few just “pass through” Roswell’s out of the way location—Reich clearly was looking for signs of aliens. In Contact With Space, he writes: “Although it was very hot as we neared Roswell, New Mexico, no OR flow [OR was Reich’s abbreviation for orgone, or natural earth energy] was visible on the road, which should have been shimmering with ‘heatwaves’. Instead, DOR [Reich’s abbreviation for “deadly orgone radiation”, which he believed came from the exhaust of UFOs].”

Some of Reich's assistants, including his daughter, Eva, with a cloudbuster gun mounted on a truck, circa 1955.

Reich’s concern about the environmental impact of UFOs stemmed from experiences he had in his lab in Rangeley, Maine called Orgonon. In 1951 he first discovered the DOR business by putting a milligram of radium into one of his orgone boxes, an invention of his designed to harness the natural earth energy. It resulted in highly polluted air around the lab, causing fauna to wilt and animals to become ill. Strange red UFOs appeared in the sky over Rangeley. In response to all this, Reich came up with another invention, the “cloudbuster,” a cannon mounted on the back of a truck that concentrated and redirected orgone, which was aimed and fired at the UFOs, causing them to disappear. In the following years, he brought these devices with him to Tucson, Arizona, passing through Roswell, and did battle with UFOs there.

That happened in real life. It’s an obscure story to many now but apparently a paradigm for the major Hollywood science fiction of the time. Reich’s cloudbuster battles with UFOs are virtually reproduced in Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. Instead of orgone, earth's scientists develop a sonar canon, but they are mounted onto trucks and directed at the space ships in the same way Reich did it. And the movie was released just shortly after the end of Reich’s desert UFO adventure, so it can’t be said that Reich took his ideas from a fanciful movie. In fact, it seems quite the reverse.

Scenes from Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, including cloudbuster-like cannon (upper right).

The controversies about Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers in the UFO community relate to Donald Keyhoe's request that his name be removed from the credits following his discovery that it would be a “fictional” movie (see here for details). But was it fictional? The movie may have had little relation to Keyhoe’s book at the time, but did it have another uncredited real life analog?