ANOMALY Magazine Welcome’s Brian Worsham!

Read more »

Watching the ARGonauts Play

If you’ve followed the Elfis Network from the beginning then you know of my early interest in Alternate Reality Gaming and their potential for “mucking up the works” for paranormal and parapolitical researchers. You may also know that my interests were rekindled in 2007 by the provocative hypotheses of blogger DreamsEnd, who speculated that the mysterious suicides of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake were some kind of sophisticated art hoax or viral marketing / alternate reality game. After a very rough period of defending his theories online, blogger DreamsEnd temporarily pulled up shop, taking down his websites. My own re-investigations into ARGland dwindled and I too went back to my normal para activities…

That is until I became aware of a new blog that was following many of the threads explored by DreamsEnd; KadesKorner. Here was another blogger (with a writing style nearly identical to that found at DreamsEnd) writing about many of the themes and topics we’d been exploring during the Theremicity period: Andy Kaufman, Election Fraud, Andy Stephenson, false identities, the Franklin Coverup, the Octopus and PROMIS, Middle East parapolitics and … Theresa Duncan and ARGs! And through “Kade” I learned of a new ARG to watch out for; what has come to be called TGATT or The Great And The Terrible aka I’m Sorry. But before getting off into the I’m Sorry mindfu…, er um, ARG, let’s take a peek at some of the more interesting ARGs and Viral Marketing campaigns that have been bleeding through their alternate ARGiverse realities into our own.

Read more »

(Anomaly Editor’s note—This article, and all opinions and conjectures expressed therein, are those of the author of this work and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, opinions, or ideas of Anomaly Magazine, its various writers and contributors, or the editors. JDW)  

Gary McKinnon Is Right

Guest Article By Harv Howard

Does anyone with any knowledge about space hardware and our government’s denial of UFOs believe that we don’t have any war vehicles or weapons in space? Are we to believe that we have nothing better aloft than the shuttle that was on the drawing boards for 10 years before it made its first flight in 1981?

Gary McKinnon, to recap the on-going saga, is fighting extradition from the UK to the US to stand trial on charges that he intentionally hacked his way into 90 US military computers and destroyed files, causing thousands of dollars in damage. He has admitted to deleting some email files but hardly to the extent of the charges. 

What has attracted many observers to his case is that when he was initially charged he responded by saying he was only looking for data on UFOs. He claimed that what he found was the real reason he was being persecuted. His most amazing claim is that he found files containing the names of “spaceships.” With a bit of investigation, he claims to have determined that they were actually spaceships and not ships at sea. According to McKinnon, the files were not in themselves exciting, but contained routine information such as details of crew rotations for the ships, etc. 

Read more »

Respectability. Reputation. Legitimacy.

For those researching strange phenomenon, establishing and maintaining a good reputation, a measure of respect, and the legitimacy of their studies is always an uphill battle. Mainstream journalist and pundits usually scoff, when they bother to pay attention at all. Hoaxers and scam artists garner big notice in the press. But researchers who are respected in their particular cloistered field, and who have called a hoax a hoax from the outset, are relegated to a footnote in the mainstream news reports. That is, they are relegated to a footnote if they are lucky enough to be noticed at all.

In the world of conspiracy theory, ufology, cryptozoology, and fringe science, your damned when you speak out, and damned when you don’t.

So, given all of this, what does respectability even mean to these fields? Enthusiasm and interest ebbs and flows, as it does for anything, and people choose to construct a world-view that best suits them. If that means that all bigfoot reports are hoaxes so that they aren’t afraid to go into the woods at night, or that ghosts are real because nothing else explains the creepy feeling they get in the third floor guest room where Uncle Jim died, then that is what people choose to believe.

With incidents like the recent pseudocide of 9-11 Truther Ace Baker, blogged on here by SMiles Lewis, and the Georgia bigfoot body hoax pulled off by a police officer and former prison guard (professions comprised of individuals normally accepted as paramounts of honesty and respectability) in August of last year, it seems valid that we pause and ask ourselves some questions.

How important is reputation in these fields? Jacques Vallee is educated, well written and spoken, not prone to jumping to conclusions, and yet he would be lumped in with the “saucer nuts” by most mainstream journalists. The same could be said for hominid researchers such as Jeff Meldrum, who like Vallee has an academic reputation to maintain outside of his personal studies.  Yet while the Meldrums and Vallees of this world suffer under the derision and constant scrutiny of colleagues and the media, or keep their private pursuits to themselves; known hucksters and hoaxers like Tom Biscardi continue to benefit from the flippant attitude toward the subjects and lack of background research undertaken by various local media outlets. Biscardi is a known and proven hoaxer, yet he can pull into any small town and have the cameras on his crew in a matter of hours.

Perhaps, as guest blogger Oliver Hallen muses in the post below concerning UFO reports by police officers in the UK, respect and reputation are concepts as culturally and contextually loaded, and therefore as ephemeral, as the UFOs and beasties we endeavor to understand.

(The views expressed by Oliver Hallen are his own and do not reflect the opinions or views of AnomalyMagazine.com, its editorial staff, or myself. — Jeremy D. Wells)

Read more »

911 Truther Shoots Movement in Foot - Commits Pseudocide

by SMiles Lewis

As if the 911 Truth Movement weren’t weird and ridiculed enough already - now it goes and shoots itself in the foot … again.

How often do people come across a severed human head lying in the middle of the road? Apparently as often as someone might happen to tune-in and hear a radio-show co-host commit suicide live on the air. Or is it simply a matter of weirdness acting as a strange attractor for ever more weirdness? Whatever the explanation, I witnessed both within forty-eight hours of each other.

On Tuesday, January 6th at about 2:35 pm (Central Standard Time) I was tuning in to the webradio stream of upstart Austin alternative media outlet, Freedom Underground Radio. This is the new radio station “rising from the ashes of We The People Radio Network.” WFU Radio has been founded by a co-founder of WTPRN. (Full disclosure: WFURadio has recently started carrying the PsiOp Radio show which I co-host with Mack White.)

I was tuning in to James Fetzer’s show, The Real Deal. Now, I’m not a huge fan of his research nor a regular listener to his show. He had on someone whose name I recognized as having been on the show before as a co-host who has been active within the 911-TV-Fakery branch of the conspiracy community, Ace Baker. Apparently they had switched roles for this particular show with Ace interviewing Jim instead of the other way around.

Within moments of tuning in I had the thought, “Is this guy (Ace Baker) about to commit suicide?” And moments later he did. He was speaking of regret, longing and despair regarding his daughter and deceased parents, about the disrespect and outright attacks that others in the movement had heaped upon him. “I’m coming home,” he said before I heard the sound of a gunshot. The moments leading up to and those that followed that bang were some of the most awkward live radio I’ve ever experienced.

Fetzer was understandably more or less speechless and to his credit seemed to keep his head. He managed to call Baker’s wife and leave a voicemail begging her to check on Ace saying he was worried about him. This is especially amazing for Fetzer as we were later to learn that his own Mother had killed herself when he was only 11 years old and he says had told Ace about this previously.

Of course immediately, the possibility of a hoax was apparent, at least doubly so because of the involvement of someone involved in the “fakery” branch of 911 conspiracy theories who is also a sound engineer. But even contemplating the hoax possibility I was still feeling shocked and shaky - calling my friend Mack and posting online and within Jack Blood’s Deadline Live website chatroom.

Read more »

In a recent forum discussion (Triangle ufo at Rigorous Intuition forums) someone brought to my attention video of an alleged triangular UFO that shoots a red beam of light. The video is posted online at several websites: Zwamneus Report, YouTube, LiveLeaks and others.

(”weird black triangle UFO with red lights” - YouTube)

The information posted at these video links alleges that the footage is connected to the recent article posted at the Irish Independent News website headlined We’re not alone . . . politician and pilot spot UFO that states:

“Footage, filmed on a camera phone at 10.35pm on August 3 near Dunboyne was also played and replayed to over 70 delegates who attended the fifth Irish International UFO conference in Carrick-on-Shannon.

The triangular shaped image, with lights at each point, which appeared to send a red laser-type light towards earth, drew gasps of amazement from the 70 or so delegates who attended the world premiere of the footage.”

The above quote does sound a lot like the footage in the video at the cited video sites. But the text at the YouTube link (recently updated) makes the claim that the footage was “found along a trail near the North Carolina / Tennessee border. It was found before the Irish video was announced. I only put it up when I heard about that one because it sounded like the same thing.” The poster goes on to say that he has given the camera and footage to a “UFO / Paranormal” researcher and that they will be posting the full, higher quality video online this weekend. [As of this weekend, it has indeed been updated to confirm our suspicions.]

Somehow I serendipitously came across the website for the Hoax Research Center and when I clicked through the headline UFOs: Phoenix Lights Effect Reproduced I (re)discovered the Annual Speaking of Strange UFO Experience and Fake UFO Contest organized by paranormal author, researcher and radio personality, Joshua P. Warren. And what should I see on that page but a picture of Jeff Wilson’s First-Place Winning UFO from last year’s 3rd Annual Speaking of Strange UFO Experience, which looks strikingly similar to the video in question:

(Photo by Sarah Harrison of the AshevilleParanormalSociety.com)

Read more »

That last post about Sarah Palin’s involvement with Pastor Thomas Muthee got a lot of us talking about witchcraft, the ongoing belief in, and fear of, witches in various parts of the world, and the consequences of mob rule and even legislating faith and morality. I’ve recently been reading “Passport to Magonia” and I’m sure the various writings of Jacques Vallee, no doubt, could place this in a greater historical context than I could hope to do in a simple blog post. The fact remains though, that occurrences that most of us would attribute to happenstance, coincidence, or, if it were something truly spectacular, maybe even to UFOnauts or extra-dimensionals, are still interpreted as witchcraft by others (and not just in far off, exotic locales like Kenya, although reports from Africa are more common, either because the media ignores such claims in the US press, relegates them to the “strange news” queue, or because social pressures keep more people from discussing their beliefs openly).

At some point in the future, I may even tell you about some of my own family’s stories regarding contact with malignant spirits they attributed to witchcraft (for instance my late grandmother Bailey always attributed misplaced objects in the home to “those little imps”, a clear ideological descendant of the brownies, boggarts, and house sprites her Scots and Irish ancestors would have believed in), but for now, we’ve got witchcraft links.  Below you will find several links to news stories discussing witchcraft in these various forms.

On the political front we have Palin blessed to be free from witchcraft.

In the cultural differences department, we’ve got African albinos persecuted as witches and witchcraft rumors sparking a soccer riot.

We’ve got a little of both, a smattering of xenophobia, and that legislation of faith and morality we discussed, with a witch trial in Saudi Arabia.

Finally we come full circle, and back to our concerns about separation of church and state, and legislating faith (an issue that concerns me, too, as that rare beast, a progressive, liberal Christian) with this commentary on, and video of, Pastor Thomas Muthee praying for Sarah Palin to help tear down the barriers that separate church and state. (Also embedded below.)

I’ve been labeled a politico in the past. I’ve been villified by readers who labeled me a “Godless liberal” and a “conservative fundamentalist mouthpiece”, for the same article on the seperation of church and state. I was even fired from my first newspaper job for writing anti-pollution editorials. With Anomaly Magazine though I’ve tried to stay away from politics, leaving that territory on this site to my more political and conspiracy minded compatriots. (A notable exception being my last post, on the arrests of protesters at the RNC in Minneapolis, because there are some impositions on our liberties that just can not go ignored.)

I don’t expect to be making any partisan pleas anytime soon. But a recent article from the TimesOnline , tying Palin’s success in her bid for the governorship of Alaska with the prayers of an African Witch Hunter, seems to dovetail too nicely with our format here at Anomaly Magazine to ignore. According to that article, Palin was impressed not with Pastor Muthee’s humility and deference to the Holy Spirit, but his ”powerful” demand that God “make a way” for Palin to succeed in her bid for the Governor’s seat. And it isn’t just God that Pastor Muthee is forceful with, but anyone he deems an enemy of his faith.  This includes people he labels as witches. As noted in the TimeOnline article: 

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

And here you thought that only “radical anarchist organizers” (btw, isn’t “anarchist organizer” a bit of an oxymoron?) needed to fear having their doors kicked in under a McCain/Palin administration. 

On his July 20 broadcast of Larry King Live, the CNN personality featured Robert Hastings, author of “UFOs and Nukes“, along with three retired Air Force personnel claiming that Unidentified Flying Objects had a keen interest in our burgeoning nuclear capacity. Among their claims are that UFOs caused missile malfunctions at Malmstrom Air Force base in 1967, and were even caught on film by Bob Jacobs during the filming of missile tests at Vandenberg Air Force base, but the films were confiscated by the CIA. You can watch a full YouTube version of the video by clicking on our “Video of the Week” link, or see the shorter version on the official CNN site by clicking here.

This isn’t the first time Larry King has used his show as a forum for discussing the UFO phenomenon. In November of 2007, for example, his program focused on the topic with a show entitled “UFOs: Are They for Real?” (Part 1 of this episode linked here via YouTube)

However, while a part of me wants to applaud King for the courage to discuss UFOs in a public forum, my problem with King’s program, and most other treatments of the UFO phenomenon available on US television and across the width and breadth of the internet, is an extremely narrow focus on the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). Proponents of the ETH generally support the idea that UFOs are physical vehicles piloted, or remotely controlled, by intelligent beings assumed to be from another planet. Read more »

The British government has released their “first batch” of UFO files at ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk, as part of a four year program to make the files available to the public.

Also available at the national archives UFO site are videocasts and podcasts from Nick Pope and Dr. David Clarke, respectively, as well as older, already released UFO files, in PDF format (available for download at “a small fee”, according to the site, although all but those available under the UFO Files from the 1970s link are listed at £0.00, and the various PDFs available under UFO Files from the 1970s are either free or £3.50 per document).