Beyond Area 51

by Mack Maloney

  Very Mysterious Midlands

  But when it comes to unusual things happening in the Gorebridge area, UFOs are just the beginning of the strangeness.

  LUCK OF THE… SCOTTISH?

  The area around Gorebridge is considered to be a “thin place.” This is described as a location where the unusual is the usual, where the line between the possible and the impossible is fuzzy. As one example, people who live in the Gorebridge area have been documented as having better luck at winning the lottery than people living in other parts of Scotland.

  CHASED BY LIGHTS

  There’s an abandoned coal mine in Gorebridge that’s known for attracting lights in the night sky and drawing them down to it. Just as strange, one Christmas, two Gorebridge residents were cutting down fir trees near the mine when they were chased by a luminous, floating green eye.

  JUMP JET… OR ILLUSION?

  There is the story of two hikers who were walking in the woods near Gorebridge when they were shocked to see a Harrier jump jet rise above a nearby tree line. But then, as they took a step back, they saw the jet go back down behind the trees. They stepped forward again and the jet rose up again. They stepped back, and the jet landed again. What was going on here?

  THE FLYING CITY

  There’s another story, this from the eighteenth century, that says residents of Gorebridge once saw “a city” descending from the sky and landing nearby. While most UFO sightings in the area seem to involve normal-sized objects, historically people have seen some enormous unidentified aerial vehicles over the UK as well as other parts of the world. Could this account for the tale of a flying city?

  THE MISSING LEGION

  There’s also a local legend concerning the fate of a large Roman army, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed in the general Gorebridge area during the Roman occupation. These soldiers simply disappeared one day, never to be seen again. Several motion pictures have been made over the years about this mystery.

  GHOSTS AND WEREWOLVES

  Near Crichton Castle there’s a place called Valley of the Bones, where locals say a werewolf is frequently seen and heard. There are also many ghosts reportedly haunting the castle itself.

  ENTER THE FAMOUS KNIGHTS

  So, Gorebridge seems to be a very unusual place indeed.

  But it gets even weirder….

  Not far from Gorebridge there’s an old church called Rosslyn Chapel.

  The chapel is both fascinating and puzzling. Its exterior features the standard Gothic gargoyles and flying buttresses, but inside there are some bizarre pillar carvings, a baffling ceiling design, many unexplainable “music boxes” found in the walls and more than one hundred so-called Green Men, creatures set into the masonry that are depicted with plant life coming out of their mouths.

  But the strangest thing about Rosslyn Chapel is not its odd interior architecture but rather who built it and why—and what might be buried beneath it.

  Though it’s a topic not without controversy, there are many researchers—of both medieval history and the paranormal studies—who are convinced that this chapel, built in this very odd place, has a direct connection to the infamous Knights Templar.

  * * *

  A quick history of the Knights Templar will help here.

  This order of warrior monks was created in France in 1118 to protect religious pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land of the Middle East. Though they started off as penniless bodyguards working for scraps, their fame and fortune grew steadily. In very little time, the Knights became immensely wealthy, politically powerful and much feared militarily throughout Europe and in the Middle East—and they stayed that way for more than 150 years.

  But the Knights eventually became too powerful, so on October 13, 1307 (a Friday, making “Friday the thirteenth” a universally unlucky day), King Philip IV of France had many of the Templars arrested. Falsely charged with crimes against the crown, hundreds were tortured and burned at the stake.

  However, it’s believed many of the Knights were able to escape to parts unknown, taking their tremendous wealth with them.

  The Big Secret

  The mystery surrounding the surviving Knights and the speed with which they disappeared has led to many Templar legends.

  Supposedly the Knights were in possession of some great secret that, if revealed, would have historically shocking implications. Did they know what the Holy Grail was? Did they possess the Ark of the Covenant? Did they have proof that Jesus Christ was married and had descendants?

  Or was this great secret something else entirely?

  Some believe that those Templars who survived King Philip’s wrath traveled through a network of safe houses called frère maisons (meaning “brother houses”). At some point, this morphed into “Freemasons,” leading to the theory that the Knights simply evolved into the Freemasons and continue to wield their power and influence today.

  But others insist the Knights just disappeared—literally.

  Was their great secret knowing about a place they could go where no one could ever find them? A place where they could just simply vanish?

  And if so, was that place in the Scottish Midlands?

  * * *

  Rosslyn Chapel was built in the fifteenth century, more than 150 years after the surviving Knights disappeared. Still, some enthusiasts insist its builder, William Sinclair, was somehow involved with the Knights, pointing to what they consider to be Templar clues that Sinclair put all over the interior of Rosslyn Chapel.

  For instance, only one Latin inscription can be found inside the entire church. When translated it reads, “Wine is strong, a king is stronger, females are stronger still, but truth conquers everything.” This phrase was first uttered by the man who built the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the same place where, years later, the Knights Templar supposedly discovered their big secret.

  Another carving inside the chapel shows two men riding the same horse. This image is so closely associated with the Templars that it appears on their coat of arms.

  Many claim that a grave on the chapel grounds marked “William Sinclair, Knight Templar” is that of the builder. This tomb also contains one of the Templars’ signature eight-point crosses carved into the gravestone.

  Beneath the floor of Rosslyn Chapel, though, is said to be the biggest mystery of all: a massive underground vault, sealed in 1690, that has never been reopened. No one knows what’s down there, but at least one legend says a dozen Knights Templar are buried in full armor within, ready to rise again in times of need.

  But the real question is, why was this odd chapel built here in the first place? Was it just a coincidence that a place of worship with such a close connection to the mysterious Knights Templar was located in an area that’s now considered the world’s center for UFO sightings as well as so much paranormal activity?

  Inside the Chapel Walls

  Whether this connection with the famous Knights is true or not, there’s no denying that Rosslyn Chapel is a very curious place.

  One of the pillars inside the church, called the Prentice Pillar, is ornately carved with coiled spirals that look exactly like the double helix of DNA. Is it just a fluke that hundreds of years later, just down the road at the Roslin Institute, Dolly the sheep would become the world’s first DNA animal clone?

  Botanists have also confirmed that there are depictions of sweet corn and cactus in the chapel masonry. The trouble is, these plants were indigenous to South America and thus unknown in Europe at the time the chapel was built.

  Many of the chapel’s arches contain what people call “music boxes”—square protrusions that, by their numbers and placement, seem to present some kind of code, possibly one based on the musical scales. But if so, this code has yet to be broken.

  At the top of the chapel’s ceiling is the so-called Great Rose Window. At noon on the days of the summer and winter solstices, a ray of light strikes this piece of glass exactly and bathes the entire chapel in a blood-red light.

  This
seems like a lot of mystery and intrigue for what is basically a small country chapel.

  So again, the question is why.

  And why here?

  Maybe one of Scotland’s most famous people, Mary, Queen of Scots, said it best sometime in the mid-1500s, when she wrote in a letter to the Edinburgh city fathers, “I will always keep secret the secrets I saw at Rosslyn.”

  12

  The False Mystery of Wenceslas Mine

  Wrong from the Start

  Nazi Germany was the first military power to field a jet fighter.

  That airplane was the Me-262 Swallow. When it entered service in mid-1944, five years into World War II, it represented an impressive advance in both aeronautics and weaponry. Capable of flying more than one hundred miles per hour faster than any other airplane at that time, the Me-262, had it been built earlier and utilized better by the Nazis, might have had a greater impact on the outcome of the conflict.

  But, it will be interesting to note later that at least one element of the Me-262 was decidedly not high-tech.

  * * *

  Wenceslas Mine is located in southwest Poland near the border of what is now the Czech Republic. During World War II, a German facility known as Der Riese (“The Giant”) was built close to Wenceslas Mine. It’s rumored that during the latter part of the war, a fantastic top-secret Nazi weapons project was housed somewhere in either Der Riese or Wenceslas Mine, making it a 1940s secret base. This project was said to be based on a machine described as being fifteen feet high, nine feet wide and made out of some kind of mysterious heavy metal. Because this device was bell-shaped, it earned the code name Die Glocke (“the Bell”).

  As the story goes, the Bell consisted of two counter-rotating cylinders with a mysterious violet liquid floating within. It is said the Bell needed tremendous amounts of electrical power to operate, yet it could be turned on for only two minutes at a time. But when it was operating, the Bell was so powerful that plants and animals intentionally positioned close to it not only died but decomposed into a sticky black goo within minutes. What’s more, any human who worked around the Bell for any length of time developed sleep loss, dizziness, headaches and a metallic taste that stayed in their mouths permanently.

  In fact, the residue left over from the Bell’s operation was so dangerous that the Nazis refrained from cleaning it up themselves. Instead, they forced inmates from a nearby concentration camp to scour the device regularly. The aftereffects suffered by these unfortunate prisoners are unknown.

  Many Things… and Nothing

  At various times and in various media, the Bell has been reported to have been an antigravity machine, a device for creating “free energy,” a power plant for Nazi UFOs, a time machine, a perpetual motion machine, a reality shifting machine, a reanimation machine and something that could manipulate time-space.

  When it comes to Die Glocke, it’s a case of multiple choice.

  The story of the Bell started in 1997 when a Polish writer named Igor Witkowski claimed he’d been given access to interrogation transcripts of a former Nazi SS officer. This man was named Jakob Sporrenberg, and his only validated actions during World War II were to oversee the extermination of thousands of Jews in the Polish ghetto of Lublin. For this, he was hanged as a war criminal. Within Sporrenberg’s transcripts, Witkowski insists, were the first fantastic claims of the Bell and what it could do.

  According to Witkowski, when the Bell’s two cylinders began turning, with the mystery liquid (possibly mercury) within, it was said to give off high amounts of radiation. According to further writings by Witkowski and others, this counter-rotation created “vortex compression” or “magnetic field separation” or “spin polarization” or “spin resonance.” Again, take your pick.

  Witkowski speculates that all this was actually an experiment in antigravity propulsion. As proof, he claims that the ruins of a metal framework found in the vicinity of the Wenceslas Mine may have once served as test rig for this experiment. This structure has been fancifully dubbed the “Henge.”

  Nazis on the Moon?

  The story of the Bell only got widespread attention in the West when retold by British author Nick Cook as well as other writers, many of whom were considered on the fringe of ufology and pseudo-scientific writing.

  From this, it seems, sprang up an entire cottage industry of books, DVDs, movies and websites with fringe writers devoting much time and effort not just to the Bell, but to many more fantastic if unheard-of accomplishments of the Nazis.

  Typical was the assertion that, sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s, Germany built an interplanetary rocket base in, of all places, Antarctica. Fringe writers insisted the Nazis, along with their Japanese and Italian allies, secretly created a space program in the wilds of the South Pole and somehow achieved space flight either during or, most incredibly, after being roundly defeated in World War II. Some authors go on to claim the Nazis actually landed on the moon in 1942 and that they built bases that still exist there today. Still others claim that Hitler survived the war, is still living in Antarctica and is planning another campaign of world domination, using UFOs as his new flying panzers.

  Specifically regarding the Bell, one author claimed knowledge of a meeting by the members of various secret groups—including an SS-linked group called the Elite of the Black Sun and two psychics—during which, he said, technical data for constructing a flying machine, based on propulsion technology from the Bell, came via the psychics from a planet revolving around the star Aldebaran, which is located about sixty-eight light-years from Earth.

  All this makes for great science fiction—but taken as fact, these stories have become touchstones for some who’d apparently like nothing better than to keep the idea of the Nazis and their heinous policies alive.

  And that’s a problem.

  Pure Schwachsinn

  The simple fact is that none of these fantastic claims about the Bell are true. For many reasons.

  Witkowski’s original assertions were never verified. Rather, he maintained that he was allowed only to transcribe the Sporrenberg documents, as opposed to making copies and studying them deeply. Thus, these documents have never been made public. As no other facts have come to light, all the “evidence” for the story of the Bell comes only from Witkowski’s claim that he saw the secret transcripts of Sporrenberg’s interrogation. Not exactly scientific proof.

  As for Nick Cook’s book, reportedly one scientist he cites liberally is not identified by name within its pages, even though Cook claims his source is an eminent physicist at one of Britain’s best-known universities. It was this blurred academic who supposedly told Cook that the Bell was actually a “torsion field generator,” (whatever that is) and that the Nazis were hoping to construct a time machine with it.

  Furthermore, the Henge, on which so much of the Bell’s legend depends, has been dismissed as being nothing more than the remains of a conventional industrial cooling tower.

  Back to the Swallow

  Then there are more practical reasons that this is all just so much Nazi-centric nonsense, and these reasons bring us back to Germany’s first high-tech jet fighter, the Me-262 Swallow.

  At the time the Me-262 was entering the field—July 1944—the German war machine was desperate not only for oil and aviation fuel but for basics like steel, aluminum and rubber. That fact is, Germany was so strapped for metallic resources in 1944 that it was forced to use plywood inside the cockpit of the Me-262 jet fighter. In addition, several other “wonder” aircraft, all with more potential than the Me-262, were basically left on the drawing boards because of Germany’s lack of raw materials.

  Where, then, would the Nazis get the resources to study, design and build an antigravity machine or a time machine or a fleet of UFOs—or for that matter, a space base in Antarctica from which they could reach the moon?

  Where was the huge infrastructure that would be needed to produce the technology to do these fantastic things? Even if the Nazis had theoretica
lly solved the myriad technological challenges of space travel, to reach the moon in 1942 would have required, at the very least, an effort along the lines of the Manhattan Project, America’s massive development program to produce the atomic bomb. That program, which cost in today’s dollars more than $25 billion, utilized more than 130,000 people in nineteen different locations scattered across the United States, and it took six years to complete.

  Why was no evidence of a similar concentrated effort found once the Allies entered Germany at the end of the war?

  Numbers Confirm the Lie

  Further proof that this is all hokum comes from the stories about what happened to the Bell after the war.

  Witkowski speculated it ended up in a country friendly to the Nazis. Others claimed it was moved to the United States along with the dozens of German scientists who were allowed to come to America after the war. More claims say when the war was drawing to its conclusion and the Nazis were being steamrolled from all sides, the Bell was put on a long-range aircraft, already in short supply in the Nazi Reich, and flown to… Argentina. Still others believe the Bell was transported by U-boat to the secret ethereal Nazi base in Antarctica.

  But again, none of this could be true. If the Bell was an antigravity device, and was transported to the United States, this would mean American scientists would have had it in their possession now for nearly seventy years. Where is it then? Why haven’t we seen any fruits from these seven decades of research? And why would the United States go through with a charade like NASA and spend billions of dollars on massive and highly dangerous liquid-fuel-propelled rockets at the cost of eighteen astronauts’ lives if they had in their hands a working antigravity machine?

  As for the Bell being flown to Argentina in a multiengine German aircraft in May of 1945—simply put, such a trip would have been impossible without refueling. At the time, Germany’s largest and heaviest airplane was the Ju-390. Its range was about six thousand miles. From Poland to Argentina, under the best of conditions, is an eight-thousand-mile, twenty-five-hour flight.