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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Just the Facts? Britain's Alien Big Cats, Hitler's Escape and Yowie Encounter


The ABC X-Files

Reports of Alien Big Cats in the British countryside are all in a day’s work for MERRILY HARPUR, but an apeman on Salisbury Plain and a Gollum-like creature in Lancashire suggest that far stranger things than mystery felids stalk the land…

If Britain’s Alien Big Cats (ABCs) live in the interstices between the real and the unbelievable, there seem to be other – even odder – creatures which share that intermediate, daimonic reality. People who see them often report them to the national ABC research group Big Cats In Britain for want of anyone else to tell. Their testimonies present a picture of legion existences, shading in and out of ‘species’, categories and dimensions in an agreeably fortean way. Continue reading at The ABC X-Files

Mystery Big Cats

Roaring Dorset!: Encounters with Big Cats

There's Something in the Woods

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Did Hitler Escape to Argentina?

A new book has claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler did not kill himself in Berlin in 1945 but ended his days in Argentina. British journalist Gerrard Williams said he and co-author Simon Dunstan found an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest Hitler died an old man in South America.

Many historians say that the Nazi leader died in his Berlin bunker in 1945 - but Williams claims their research, looking at newly de-classified documents and forensic tests, challenges this.

“We didn’t want to re-write history, but the evidence we’ve discovered about the escape of Adolf Hitler is just too overwhelming to ignore,” Williams told Sky News.

“There is no forensic evidence for his, or Eva Braun’s deaths, and the stories from the eyewitnesses to their continued survival in Argentina are compelling,” he claimed.

The book titled ‘Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler’ claims the Fuhrer and his mistress Eva Braun were secretly flown out of Germany in April 1945 and taken to fascist-controlled Argentina.

It is alleged Hitler lived in the country for 17 years, initially raising his two daughters, until his death in 1962.The book also accuses US intelligence of being complicit in the scam in return for access to Nazi war technology.

“Stalin, Eisenhower and Hoover of the FBI all knew there was no proof of him dying in the bunker,” Williams told the paper.

He added that the book’s new findings prove the ‘Hitler’ skull fragments held by the Russians are actually that of a young woman. - hindustantimes


Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler

Escape from the bunker: Hitler's Escape from Berlin


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Astronomer says alien life will be discovered in 20 years

In a Popular Science article published by Jennifer Abbasi today, Shostak is asked several questions about extraterrestrial life. When asked by Abbasi about his timetable prediction for finding extraterrestrial life, Shostak responded, “In the course of the next 20 years, it just might happen.” He explained, “There are other places in the solar system that might have liquid water. To find it requires mounting a big mission with rockets and robots and going to look. The timescale for that is 10, 20, 30 years, depending on the funding.”

Funding was recently an issue for SETI. The Institute, which uses radio telescopes to listen for alien signals, was forced to suspend operations at its Allen Telescope Array back in April 2011 due to funding issues. But after a successful fundraising campaign called SETIStars, the telescope array was brought back online in August 2011.

Abbasi also asked Shostak when he thinks extraterrestrials will find us on Earth. He replied:

Finding us is actually harder, because how could they find us? You could conceivably pick up our television, our radar, our FM radio, but you have to be close enough for the signals to have gotten to you within, say, 70 light-years. The number of stars within 70 light-years is maybe a few tens of thousands, but it’s not a very big number. I don’t know that they’re going to find us until we’ve been on the air for a lot longer. But for us to find them is maybe not such a problem because, after all, the universe has been around three times as long as the Earth has. There has been plenty of time for other intelligence to get way beyond us, so they might have been sending signals for a long, long time, literally millions or even billions of years.

Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Cosmic Company: The Search for Life in the Universe

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Close Encounter with a Yowie

It looked sort of like a monkey, but more human

The Megalong Valley is a picturesque valley of green rolling paddocks dotted with pockets of eucalypt forests framed on each side by rugged sandstone cliffs and thick bushland. It’s a popular spot with sightseers, bushwalkers and horse riders.

In 2006, Catherine, her husband Brendan and their friend Sarah were spending an enjoyable afternoon of horse riding in the valley when Catherine’s horse started lagging behind the others. “It was sniffing the air and turning around to bite me, and I knew something was wrong,” Catherine said. As the horse continued acting up, she suddenly smelt “a real foul stench like salty blood”. It was then that she saw it standing there, just left of the trail where the ground dropped off into the scrub. It was about 10 to 15 metres away. “It just stood and looked at me”.

She then went on to describe the creature standing before her.

“It looked sort of like a monkey, but more human,” Catherine told researchers Tim Healy and Paul Cropper. It was “smaller than a human, about four feet tall”. She described the creature’s body as “solid” and having “square shoulders”. It was very hairy, “dark brown, all tangled, like a shaggy dog that hadn’t been washed for a while”.

The creature had a “pushed in nose” and “two canine teeth that protruded over its lip”. She couldn’t see ears, because of the creature’s hair; she could see eyes, however not distinctly. It had long legs with three claws on its feet. In its hands it held something, “like a dead kangaroo, but smaller, like flesh, like it was skinned, inside out.”

She watched it for maybe two or three minutes. She then kicked her horse and it bolted off down the track in pursuit of the others. “I held on for dear life. I kept smelling [the creature, and] felt like it was watching me.”

Thirty minutes later, all three riders heard rustling in the bushes. This time, Sarah saw something “… a monkey … an ape sort of thing … just glaring at me … real scary.”

Again, Catherine’s horse bolted and she hit a tree and was thrown to the ground. She suffered deep abrasions on her right forearm and hip, a fractured right collarbone, two fractured ribs, bruised legs and swollen ankles and was taken to Katoomba Hospital. When she spoke to the owners of the horses later, she learned she was not the first to have had such an encounter while riding in the Megalong Valley.

Perhaps surprisingly, this is not the first description of a diminutive four to five feet tall yowie in the Megalong Valley. While some suggest that these may be adolescent yowies, some researchers suspect that they may in fact be a separate species of hairy hominid. - weirdaustralia

The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot

Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature

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Peru Releases Dramatic Footage of Uncontacted Indians

Click for video

The Peruvian government has released dramatic new footage showing a near-encounter with a group of uncontacted Indians along a riverbank in the Amazon rain forest. The video was taken by travelers on the Manu River in southeastern Peru in recent months, according to officials from Peru’s Ministry of the Environment, who released the images on Monday.

In the video, travelers appear to be playing a game of cat and mouse with the naked tribesmen, drifting close to shore only to flee in panic in their motorboat as the natives approach. Some of the Indians brandish bows and arrows, and at one moment, one of them prepares to launch an arrow at the boat. The travelers are heard debating among themselves whether to approach, whether to back off, and if they should leave gifts of food or clothing on the shore for the Indians to take.

Officials said there have been multiple sightings in recent months of nomadic bands of Mashco-Piro Indians in the area of Manu National Park. Isolated Indians are known to travel extensively by foot during the dry season, now at its height, appearing along the riverbanks as they search for turtle eggs buried in nests along the sandy beaches of the western Amazon. But mounting pressure from logging crews, wildcat gold prospectors, and seismic teams exploring for oil and gas are flushing isolated indigenous out of the forests as well, according to Roger Rumrill, a special advisor to the Environment Ministry. “There is very strong pressure on their territories,” Rumrill said.

The video and other accounts of recent sightings and near-encounters prompted officials to issue a stern warning to those traveling along the rivers and backwoods of the Amazon to avoid forcing contact with isolated groups, for the safety of all involved. Travelers were also urged to refrain from leaving behind gifts of food or clothing, which could transmit devastating illnesses to immunologically defenseless isolated Indians.

In releasing the video on Monday, Peruvian officials noted a sharp turn in national policy toward the estimated 4,000-5,000 indigenous people living in near-complete isolation from the outside world, promising to adopt a series of measures aimed at bolstering protection for isolated indigenous tribes and those in the initial stages of contact. The previous government, led by ex-president Alan Garcia, had auctioned off vast tracts of the Amazon to oil and logging concessions. Elected with the broad support of Peru’s indigenous population earlier this year, the government of president Ollanta Humala is moving quickly to distance itself from the policies of its predecessor.

“The policy of this government is one of permanent inclusion of indigenous peoples, of commitment to their social demands, including territorial demands, education, and health care,” Rumrill said. ”It’s diametrically opposed to the previous government.” Those words mark a dramatic departure from the Garcia administration, whose officials denied the very existence of uncontacted nomads in the pristine rainforest regions opened up to development in the past few years. One state oil executive famously likened the elusive natives to the Loch Ness monster, claiming them to be a phantom concocted by environmentalists to hold back development.

Carlos Soria, the newly appointed head of the National Service for Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP), the agency with jurisdiction over Peru’s national parks, said the government was in the process of updating protocols and recommendations for how best to deal with unexpected contingencies arising from contact with isolated indigenous populations. All new policy decisions would be guided regarding the isolated tribes, said Soria, by a commitment to better environmental management, a respect for human rights, and a “fulfillment of our obligations to our indigenous populations.”