Chronicles of the Strange and Mysterious
Page 19
It is unlikely that man will stop until he has roamed over and colonized most of the sidereal universe, or that even this will be the end. Man will not ultimately be content to be parasitic on the stars but will invade them and organize them for his own purpose ... By intelligent organization the life of the universe could probably be prolonged many millions of millions of times ...
Later writers have talked about the 'Greening of the Galaxy', and asked why the stellar sky is so untidy and badly organized ... Where, indeed, are the cosmic engineers?
Perhaps - like ants crawling around the base of the Empire State Building - we simply haven't recognized what's going on all about us. During the last few decades, astronomers have been discovering some very strange phenomena in space, and have been straining scientific theories to the limit in attempts to find natural explanations.
Pulsars were the first example. In 1967, when Hewish and Bell discovered radio sources ticking away more accurately than any mechanical clock ever made by man, their first wild speculation was that they might be artificial. Indeed, no astronomer before 1920 could have explained how Mother Nature could have contrived such a prodigy unaided.
Well, we are now quite sure that pulsars are indeed natural (though amazing) objects - tiny dying stars acting like cosmic beacons as they spin madly on their axes. But there are other phenomena not so readily explained, and I should not be in the least surprised if the astronomers finally give up on them and admit: 'We're sure that nature can't be responsible. Somebody out there has forgotten to switch off the lights.' Or worse. The most chilling explanation I have heard of one titanic outpouring of cosmic energies is: an industrial accident.
Nowadays, anyone who considers that alien super-civilizations may exist has to contend not with scepticism but with something much worse - credulity. Although the subject now affects me with uncontrollable fits of yawning, I would be failing in my duty if I did not say something about UFOs. So here, as briefly as possible, are the conclusions I've come to after more than fifty years of study (fifty-seven, to be exact, since I first read Charles Fort's Lo! in 1930: that monument of eccentric scholarship, published long before anyone had ever heard of 'Flying Saucers', listed apparent celestial visitations right back to the Middle Ages):
1. There may be strange and surprising meteorological, electrical or astronomical phenomena still unknown to science, which may account for the very few UFOs that are both genuine and unexplained.
2. There is no hard evidence that earth has ever been visited from space.
3. If that does happen, there are at least three independent global radar networks that will know within a matter of minutes. And, in the unlikely event that the US, USSR and Chinese authorities instantly cooperate to suppress the news, they'll succeed for a maximum of forty-eight hours. How long do you imagine such a secret could be kept? Remember how quickly Watergate unravelled ...
I'd like to add one further item in support of the above. A friend of mine, who (before he was promoted to a much bigger job) was Deputy Director of the CIA, once told me a very interesting story. On his first day with the Company, he called together his top scientists - and the CIA has some of the best - and said to them: 'Come clean with me, boys. What's the truth about this UFO business?'
And they gave him the two answers which I've given everyone for years - and which virtually all scientists who have studied the problem now accept:
1. We all think that there's probably a lot of life - and intelligence - out there among the stars.
2. There's not the slightest firm evidence that it's ever come here ...
Having written thousands of words on the subject (and read millions), I refuse to go into further details. If anybody wants to argue, I'll merely quote one of my favourite book titles: Shut up, he explained.
Finally, if 'they' are out there, what do they look like? I suggest you go to the local zoo and take your choice. Nature tries everything at least once - and has lots of time and space for experimenting. But I will tell you what they will not look like. We now understand the principles, if not the details, of human evolution.
We specimens of H. sapiens are the product of thousands of successive throws of the genetic dice - any one of which might have turned out differently. If the terrestrial experiment started all over again at Time Zero, there might still be intelligence on this planet - but it wouldn't look like us. In the dance of the DNA spirals, the same partners would never meet again. As Loren Eisley wrote thirty years ago in The Immense Journey:
Nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness. There may be wisdom; there may be power; somewhere across space great instruments ... may stare vainly at our floating cloud wrack, their owners yearning as we yearn. Nevertheless, in the nature of life and in the principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and beyond, there will be none forever.
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Acknowledgements
Mysteries seem to stimulate letter writers. Like Arthur C. Clarke we have received letters from all over the world from viewers of the Mysterious World and Strange Powers television series and readers of the accompanying books. (Our postbag on the day that these acknowledgements are being written brought some fascinating observations from a locksmith in Picton, Canada, on some psychokinesis experiments featured in Strange Powers, and another correspondent sent us this gem of parapsychological philosophy from Mr Woody Allen: 'Of course there is an unseen world.
The only questions are: how far is it from midtown, and how late does it stay open?') Invariably, those who have written to us have cast light upon the mysteries we have examined, some offering first-hand experience, others well-argued theories. Many have suggested new lines of inquiry. We are grateful to all our correspondents, many of whom are mentioned in the text.
In following new developments in research and thinking we have found several publications both enjoyable and indispensable: Archaeology, Fortean Times, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the Skeptical Inquirer, and the Newsletter and Journal of the International Society of Cryptozoology. We also thank the librarians at Aberdeen University, the London Library, the Harry Price Library and Yorkshire Television who have tracked down the many rare volumes we have used in our researches.
Melvin Harris not only undertook the picture research for this book but has also enthusiastically allowed us to draw upon his vast knowledge of all things apparently mysterious. We are grateful, too, to our colleagues who worked with us on the Mysterious World and Strange Powers television series, and to Arthur C. Clarke's associates in Sri Lanka and Somerset for their help.
Above all, we thank our friend Arthur C. Clarke, whose tale of a sea monster narrated on a rock on the beach at Unawatuna brought the Mysterious World into being.
JOHN FAIRLEY
SIMON WELFARE
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Plates for the Paper-Back Version
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A drawing of mokele-mbembe by artist David Miller based on a description given by Congolese eye-witnesses.
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Scottish farmer Ted Noble finally managed to trap the puma which had been savaging his sheep for several months.
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'Bear' paw print in the snow on Hackney marshes.
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Photographs of the Surrey puma are few and fuzzy.
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The hands and feet of the wildman.
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The Nanjing belt. The discovery of aluminium amongst the fragments suggested that the Chinese isolated the metal at least 1,500 years before western scientists.
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Professor Frank J. Frost (centre) examines the Chinese anchor with two of his students.<
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The Great Glass Slab of Galilee. For years this astonishing example of ancient technology went unnoticed. Serving as a stand for a museum display case.
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The 'giant scratchpad' of Nazca: lines, geometrical figures and drawings meticulously inscribed on the desert.
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One of the frogs said to have fallen on to Mrs Vida McWilliam's garden in Bedford during a shower of rain in June 1979.
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The hailstones that fell on Girard, Illinois, in 1929 were bigger than hens' eggs, but even larger 'aerial icebergs' have been recorded, including one 20ft (6m) in diameter.
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'Surgeon's Photograph' as it is usually published. The close-up provides no clues for estimating the size of the 'monster'.
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Part of the carcass of a giant octopus which came ashore at Santa Cruz in 1925.
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In the nineteenth century the hypothesis was advanced that manatee was a possible source of the mermaid stories.
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Frances and the dancing fairies. (Photograph A).
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Elsie and the gnome. (Photograph B).
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Frances and the leaping fairy. (Photograph C).
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Elsie and the flower fairy. (Photograph D).
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The 'fairy bower' (Photograph E).
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The original version of the first Cottingley picture, before it was retouched and rephotographed.
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The Raynham Hall 'ghost'.
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Mrs Mabel Chinery's snapshot of her husband Jim. Is the old lady in the back seat her mother, who died before the picture was taken?
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A Sri Lankan Kattadiya, or witch doctor, prepares to consign an evil demon trapped in a bottle to the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
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All that remained of Dr John Irving Bentley, Pennsylvania, December 1966.
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The remains of Mrs M.H. Reeser are sifted in St Petersburg, Florida July 1951.
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Plates for the Paper-Back Version
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Above One of the 'Giant Balls' of Costa Rica Was it sculpted by nature or the ancients7
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Left Carcasses of cattle lie where the gas overtook them around Lake Nios
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Lake Nios, Cameroon, where 1,700 people and countless animals died as a result of breathing poisoned gas.
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Sandra Mansi's photograph taken from the shores of Lake Champlain in 1977. Does it show the monster?
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The leathery turtle: as big as a small car.
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Mirages can magically transform workaday objects - here, ferryboats on Puget Sound in the United States. Effects vary according to atmospherie conditions. In the first picture the ships portholes are elongated and its hull obliterated. In the second, it has disintegrated into a row of floating towers and everything below the bridge has disappeared.
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No picture in this book has a more compelling fascination than the photograph of the dead sailor buried beneath the Artic ice for 140 years. The hands, manicured, immaculate as though they had just recently scrubbed the planked and caulked deck; the eyes open as if in life; the teeth shining. Only the forehead and nose show the blackening of frost. Lost in mysterious circumstances: Petty Officer John Torrington of the Franklin expedition.
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Arthur C. Clarke watches a volunteer cross burning coals during an experimental firewalk at the University of Colombo Medical Faculty, Sri Lanka.
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The happy hook-hanger. The secret lies in a positive mental attitude and the careful distribution of his weight over several hooks.
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The peaceful farmlands of southern England are the setting for the latest mystery to intrigue UFO investigators: more a case of 'What are they?' than 'Where are they?'. Every summer since 1980, huge and apparently perfect circles of flattened corn have been found in the midst of otherwise undisturbed crops. A cluster at Cheesefoot Head, Hampshire, in 1986 included bizarre double rings.
Many UFO buffs believe they are the tracks or overnight 'nests' of alien spacecraft, but one leading meteorologist argues that the circles are made by a rare phenomenon known as a 'fair weather stationary whirlwind'. This occurs when a whirlwind becomes trapped in one particular spot by a hill or escarpment. Some whirlwinds have several vortices, hence the 'clusters'.
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