Aftermath

This is one of the photographic images reported to be of 'The Phoenix Lights.'

Seven years after my trip to Arizona, I decided to see if there was any further information available on the Internet about the people I'd met in 1998.

I learned that Jeff Willes had produced his first DVD of his UFO video recordings entitled “UFOs Over Phoenix Volume 1.”  His website is ufosoverphoenix.com.

Frances Emma Barwood had been defeated in the primary election in her bid to become Arizona secretary of state.  A March 2002 article by Thomas Ropp in The Arizona Republic entitled “Mystery lingers over sighting of Phoenix Lights” offered a look back at the controversial night and quoted the official military explanation: “the ‘V’ formation was a squadron of military planes and the balls of light were high-intensity flares.”  There was also a mention of Barwood.

Former Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood said the local media ridiculed her when she asked for and was denied an investigation.  Now living with her husband, Mike, in a cabin in the Bradshaw Mountains near Dewey, Barwood still finds it incredulous how she was treated.

“All I wanted them to do was investigate this,” she said.  “I never said anything about extraterrestrials.”

Similarly, during her lecture that I attended in 1998, she had expressed bewilderment in reaction to the term having been used in public by her spokesman.

I discovered that John Warnhoff had become cofounder of the Southern Kentucky Metaphysical Society (apparently now defunct) with a website presenting an article detailing his family’s enigmatic UFOlogy experiences.  The following is an excerpt from the May 30, 2001 edition of the Bowling Green, Kentucky Daily News.  The article's headline was “The eyes in the sky” — “Group looks at theories and the realities of UFOs” by Alicia Carmichael.

John Warnhoff saw “men in black” long before actors Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith took to the silver screen to portray darkly clad extraterrestrial hunters.

That’s just one reason the retired insurance salesman from Kansas founded the Southern Kentucky Metaphysical Society, or Sky MAPS, with his friend J. R. Stucki earlier this year.

“The way all this came about was based on personal experience,” Warnhoff said.

Through Sky MAPS, Warnhoff and Stucki arrange for discussions of all things metaphysical, including quantum physics, the nature of being or reality, the study of the nature of knowledge and the possibility of unexplained phenomena — like sightings of extraterrestrial life.

For Warnhoff, Sky MAPS offers a chance to further explore something strange that occurred in his childhood.

On Nov. 11,1957, Warnhoff’s father and other Kansas interstate travelers reported seeing an unidentified flying object in the sky.

The lead front-page headline in an edition of the Wichita Beacon read: “Mysterious Object in Sky Startles Scores of Kansans.”

What the paper didn’t report was the backlash that the Warnhoff family would feel after Warnhoff’s father’s account was detailed.

“Once that happened and was published in the paper, the phone began to ring,” said Warnhoff, who was 15 at the time of the sighting. “ We had a lot of people try to intimidate us — tell us we shouldn’t talk about it.”

A few months later, Warnhoff came in contact with the people he describes as the “men in black.”

“In April of 1958, on a Saturday morning, the doorbell rang and I went to the door and there were two men in black,” he said.

“And in 1958, no one talked about men in black.”

The men had arrived at the home in a black car that they had parked halfway in the driveway and halfway in the road — with its doors left open, Warnhoff explained. The men wore sunglasses and black suits — “when it was not the time of year that you would wear that” — and flashed FBI badges, he said.

They asked to speak with Warnhoff’s dad.

“They went outside with my dad and walked around the house,” Warnhoff said.

The elder Warnhoff did not report what was said, according to Warnhoff.

Not too much later, John Warnhoff answered a phone call that was meant for his father.

“. . . The voice said, ‘I don’t want you to talk about it anymore. I’m warning you,’” Warnhoff said.  “I said, ‘Well, you want my dad.’

“I went and got my dad and he got on the phone and I saw the color leave his face,” he said. “He hung up the phone and said, ‘Go get your mother and brother.’”

Warnhoff’s father told the family that they would never speak of his sighting again.

For years, Warnhoff kept that promise, he said.

But it was not easy.

He said he once woke up in the middle of the night with concern about his father, who had had a heart attack.  When he got up to check on his dad, Warnhoff said he saw his father walking around, as if in a trance, while being led by a beam of light with which he appeared to be communicating through facial movements. Although Warnhoff was in his father’s line of vision, he said, his dad did not see him.

Warnhoff followed his father through the house and the beam of light exited the home through a fireplace.

Warnhoff knows that some people will be skeptical of his story.

But he isn’t daunted.

“I know that my dad had an experience and I had an experience,” he said.

Through the years, Warnhoff has heard similar stories of unexplained things — and not just from people with whom he is close.

He has attended many conferences and meetings with experts who study unexplained phenomena across the country.

I was interested to learn if more information could be discovered about the article that had appeared in a November 1957 issue of the Wichita Beacon with the headline “Forty-Four Missing Persons in a Vanished Pan American Stratocruiser.”  Conducting an Internet search on this subject, I found two articles among a longer narrative that appeared to involve “Spaceships.”  Here is the first article that I read: “. . . a report from the Des Moines Register, dated November 9, 1957." 

A large Stratocruiser, enroute between San Francisco and Honolulu, is reported missing after having sighted mysterious blinking lights in the sky early this morning.  The last position given by the plane was about 900-1000 miles northeast of Honolulu.  A military transport flying near the area reported similar mystery lights, blinking off and on, 120 miles north of the last reported position of the Stratocruiser after it had been reported missing.  A full scale sea and air search is in operation with vain efforts to find the plane carrying a crew of four, and thirty-six passengers, in the event it might have plunged into the sea.

 
A note mentioned, “Later reports said 44 aboard.”  The same source presented another article identified as being "from the Associated Press, published January 16, 1958 in the Omaha World Herald" with the headline “Radio-Active Cargo Fell — Mystery of Plane’s Crash Unsolved." 

San Francisco, Cal.  (A.P.) — The Pan American Stratocruiser, Romance of the Skies, was carrying shipments of chemicals and “radio-active” materials when it crashed in the Pacific, killing all forty-four persons aboard, a Civil Aeronautics Board hearing was told Wednesday. 

The huge airliner, bound from San Francisco to Honolulu, mysteriously plunged into the ocean about midway between two points last Nov. 8th.

Only nineteen bodies were recovered.

The first witness before the seven-man hearing panel was David L. Thompson, of CAB investigators, who has spent the last two months seeking clues from the wreckage.

Mr. Thompson said one thing certain was that the plane had burned after it struck the water.

He said the plane carried a shipment of “Yellow label sodium sulfite restricted cargo packed in accordance with ICC regulations.”

“In addition,” he said, “there was White Label radio-active material aboard the plane.”

Mr. Thompson offered no solution to one of the prime mysteries of the tragedy — the riddle of why crewmen were unable to send a distress message in the twenty-three minutes from the time it last gave a position to the time it struck water.

In between these two articles on this Internet page, the following was written: 

I wondered if the blinking lights might have been Spaceships and, if so, whether they could have caused an accident?  Was that why my friends from the Spaceship wanted to know about the cargo? 

As I read further, I discovered that these articles and commentary were from a book published in 1963 as The Reinhold Schmidt Story . . . “My Contact with the Space People.”  This short book that proved disappointing for me had been published in a 1975 reprint with the title modified so that Edge of Tomorrow was prominent with a blurb attesting “Cosmic Secrets Exposed.”  I obtained an edition via an Internet bookstore and photographs in the book revealed that a low-budget Hollywood movie had been made based upon Schmidt’s account. 

I also found that original interview recordings of Schmidt were available as part of an MP3 compact disc compilation of ‘contactee’ audio tracks entitled “Saucerology: Tales of Giant Rock.”  Within a matter of days, I received this CD after ordering it via the Internet from the Faded Discs Archive of Wendy Connors.  Later, I obtained many other CDs that were then available from the Archive.  A CD with interviews of self-proclaimed alien contactees was entitled “Flying Saucers & Four Guys Named George: Adamski, VanTassel, Hunt Williamson & King.”  There was also “CE IV: Alien Abduction & Animal Mutilation 1957 — 1976.”  I also managed to obtain from another Internet seller a copy of a previous Faded Discs Archive release entitled “UFOlogy: A Primer in Audio 1939 - 1959.”  Together the four CDs offered more than sixty-three hours of interview and other audio recordings. 

In following years, I would obtain three more Wendy Connors MP3 CDs in the “Night Journeys in UFOlogy” series and Connors would be instrumental in my obtaining research materials I’d previously not been able to find.  Information about the “UFOlogy: A Primer in Audio 1939 - 1959” disc stated: “This research material was accomplished because of the generosity of many individuals and organizations that share the concept of preserving, for future generations, these rare recordings.”

Hearing the “Saucerology” interviews of Schmidt would make it evident that his story is evidently a bizarre example of disinformation.  Analysis of the book Edge of Tomorrow and the preserved Reinhold Schmidt interviews reveal contradictions.  The most astonishing fact was that Schmidt’s claims immediately (the same day) became a media event.   

In the book, Schmidt’s first contact with “people from another planet” is said to have taken place after 2:30 p.m. in Kearney, Nebraska on November 5, 1957.  After relating his story to the deputy sheriff, Schmidt accompanied him back to the site of his encounter where he’d described seeing four hydraulic rams supporting the craft he first mistook to be "a large, half-inflated balloon."  He said he’d been briefly paralyzed by a tiny stream of light before being taken on board and seeing a panel described with terminology of then-familiar American technology. 

During his first radio interview, Schmidt said: "On each end of the machine there was a tube running up and down."  Some of the words are hard to distinguish but he mentioned big fans and a propeller.  In a recording with an identifying date of 03.02.1958, Schmidt explained that there were no propellers but the compartments at both ends of the craft contained tubes twelve feet in diameter running straight up and down with fans at the base.  

Another contention is that peculiar sweet-smelling green oil was said to have been found at the initial landing site although Schmidt related that he was later told that the craft operated via "energy from the Earth and from the Sun."  Upon returning to Kearney with the deputy sheriff, the events were reported to the chief of police and another trip to the alleged landing site was made before Schmidt was dropped off at his hotel.  He then recalled in his book: 

I sat down in the lobby to watch television.  Shortly, the local program was cut off for a special news flash: “SPACESHIP LANDS AT KEARNEY, NEBRASKA!!”  I was very much surprised because nothing had been said to me about making an announcement over the air.  In fact, I had not even referred to the object as a spaceship, because I didn’t know what it was. 

According to the book, following the television announcement, "There was absolute bedlam for about sixteen hours!"  Schmidt wrote:

Photographers and newsmen came from surrounding cities and even from other states.  At 9:00 p.m. the Chief of Police and I were interviewed on a local radio station, and at 10:00 a.m. we appeared on a local TV station.  These programs were also released on national radio and TV networks.

In his memoir, Schmidt divulged that a lie-detector test was never administered to him.  Nonetheless, the March 2, 1958 recording of a Detroit Flying Saucer Research Group meeting featured commentary by Major Wayne S. Aho, who said that his investigation of Schmidt’s situation indicated “this man was telling of a true experience.”  Aho explained he had developed a group called Washington Foster Intelligence after sixteen years of active and reserve duty that had brought him a bronze star and purple heart.  He stated that he was now working in a civilian capacity "carrying on a type of an educational campaign that is not necessarily the desire or the attitude or belief of the armed services."  Major Aho was accompanying Schmidt on a lecture tour in 1958.

The 64-page narrative presented by Edge of Tomorrow describes a series of flights in the spacecraft of human beings from Saturn with Schmidt’s primary intermediary, Mr. X, described as speaking in English with a German accent.  Schmidt said that at other times he heard the beings speaking in high German.  His contacts by the space people resulted with incredible secrets being revealed to him.  Schmidt described a visit to the Great Pyramid with Mr. X, who led him to a secret room containing a spaceship.  Inside the spaceship, Schmidt viewed the evidence that Jesus following the crucifixion "was taken to His home planet in that very spaceship!" accompanied by Mr. X himself.

I would eventually become acquainted with far more compelling ‘space people’ contact cases as shown by my previous blog articles about Orfeo Angelucci, Daniel Fry and Truman Bethurum — their case study books all preceded Schmidt's.
 
Schmidt's concern about “the blinking lights” being spaceships that “could have caused an accident” for the stratocruiser seems related to "reports circulated that blinking lights were sighted near its last checkpoint," as I found mentioned in the newspaper article "Plane Down At Sea" in the Nov. 9, 1957 issue of The Miami News.  A lengthy investigatory article about the disaster “The Mystery of the Lost Clipper” in a 2004 issue of Air & Space considers a variety of more conventional possibilities.
 
After researching the alien contactees of the 1950s and ‘60s, I’ve concluded that there were some apparent charlatans who distracted attention away from more earnest and intellectually labyrinthine accounts. 

My Trip to Arizona

I traveled to Arizona on February 7, 1998 with the intention of doing some firsthand UFOlogy research.  The topic of UFOs had become familiar enough for widespread media reporting following 'The Phoenix Lights' incident from the previous March.  My trip became possible after I contacted Tom Taylor, the Arizona state MUFON director.  I planned to conduct several interviews and attend a chat club meeting that would feature a variety of speakers on this topic.

Looking back at this time in my life, my Phoenix sojourn of a few days occurred during an awkward period when I was utilizing recorded audio (microcassette) journals in order to maintain a record of my experiences and this usually entailed my spontaneously saying whatever it was that was the first thought that came into my mind.

My first scheduled interview in Phoenix was with Ruth McKinley-Hovar, a MUFON member and psychotherapist specializing in anomalous trauma.  Here is a link to the Interview Transcript: Tape #449, Side #1.

Following the interview with Ruth, I attended a meeting of the Phoenix Art Bell Chat Club, a group named in honor of the radio show host of the weeknight “Coast to Coast AM” and Sunday evening show “Dreamland,” the late night national talkshows ostensibly dedicated to exploring paranormal subjects.  The chat club meeting that I attended was held in a crowded room at the Jan Ross New Age Bookstore.  Among four scheduled speakers, the most prominent at that time was Frances Emma Barwood.  A Phoenix councilwoman who was at the time a candidate for secretary of state, Barwood had received a flurry of media attention by calling for an official investigation into the March 13, 1997 UFO sightings.  Her husband, Mike Siavelis, accompanied her to the event. 

I discovered that Siavelis was a proponent for the American Hydrogen Association, an organization dedicated to the advancement of renewable resources with the motto “Prosperity without pollution.”  He gave me a fact sheet about hydrogen and it seemed a sensible and essential alternative to gasoline in consideration of Earth’s ecosystem.  I learned that hydrogen could be produced from water, sewer, garbage and agricultural wastes without causing air pollution, global warming, acid rain or ozone depletion, while being stored and supplied through current natural gas systems.

Another speaker was Jeff Willes, a local resident whose videotape of a “double-domed UFO” on September 17, 1997 resulted with him being interviewed by Linda Moulton Howe on “Dreamland” and he was also interviewed on a local Phoenix TV news show that aired his UFO footage.  Willes continued watching the skies and he said that he’d videotaped twenty further UFOs in the interim, sharing footage of several of these in his afternoon presentation.

Some brief comments about recent events on the topic of UFOs were shared by John Warnhoff, who said he personally had an experience based on an event that happened in 1957 with his family.  He explained that these events were his introduction to the field of UFOs and extraterrestrials.  During a short break in the proceedings, I told Warnhoff that I was surprised by just how prominent was the front page headline of the newspaper he’d brought — a November 1957 issue of the Wichita Beacon proclaiming “Mysterious Object in Sky Startles Scores of Kansans.”

The article mentioned that the weird craft made no sound.  I noticed another headline in the paper: “Forty-Four Missing Persons in a Vanished Pan American Stratocruiser.”

The following day, I spent a couple hours in Tempe conversing about UFOs and extraterrestrials with Dimitri ‘Jim’ Ossipov, a MUFON official originally from Bosnia.  Then I headed north toward Prescott to interview Selman Graves, whose mysterious experience almost fifty years ago had inspired a recent newspaper article with the headline “Did UFO crash in Valley in ‘47?”

The year 1947 was a pivotal year for UFOlogy as that was the year the expression ‘flying saucer’ was inspired following a comparison to a saucer in U.S. forest service pilot Kenneth Arnold’s description of nine objects seen flying at an incredible speed at 10,000 feet altitude in the vicinity of Mt. Rainier.  Other accounts appearing in newspapers that year included a report of three discs sighted over Mallardville, B.C.; five flying discs seen over Emmett, Idaho by the crew of United Airlines Flight 105; and eight flying saucers were reported to have made a landing on a mountainside near St. Maries, Idaho in full view of 10 people.  Perhaps the most sensational headline of 1947 was the one that appeared in the Roswell Daily Record on July 8: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.”

Here are portions of the June 26, 1997 article about Selman Graves from The Arizona Republic.  The article was written by Thomas Ropp.

Fat clouds drag saucer-shaped shadows over the desert and an old ranch house in Cave Creek obscured by mesquite and paloverde trees.

Inside, 73-year-old Selman Graves looks around a small, dank basement filled with hose tack hanging from rafters like strips of meat.  As his eyes adjust, he finds what he’s looking for, the bare spot near the door where Walt Salyer used to keep his freezer.

Even though fifty years have passed, Graves cannot forget the freezer or the two humanoids that may have been inside.

It’s been a half century since the “Incident” at Roswell, N.M., as well, what UFO believers point to as the most infamous crash of an unidentified flying object and government cover-up.  But Arizona, the center of national attention recently over a UFO flap in March, may have had its own Roswell, three months after the New Mexico incident.

The way Graves recalls it, he and his brother-in-law Bob Malody drove to Salyer’s house on a clear, crisp Saturday morning in early October 1947, to go rabbit hunting.  Salyer was not there so Graves and Malody made themselves at home in the basement.

When Salyer showed about 20 minutes later, he was agitated that 22-year-old Graves and 16-year-old Malody were there unsupervised.  Graves said he was especially nervous when anyone got near the freezer.

“This was out of character for him,” Graves said.  “Then he told us we would not be able to go hunting due west because the Air Force had restricted the area, and that if we fired our guns in that direction we could hit someone.”

Graves and Malody set off on horseback with the idea of meeting up with Salyer and his hunting party later.  They never did.

Instead, Graves and Malody ended up in a location that today is known as the Cave Creek Recreation Area.  They did a little hunting and explored the Go John Mine, part-owned by Malody’s parents.

At one point, Graves and Malody climbed to the top of the most prominent hill and looked south, back at Salyer’s ranch.  The air was clearer than it is now.  They could see Salyer’s house, his corral and even his water tank.

But when Graves looked west of the property, in the area he was told to stay away from, he witnessed a scene that made no sense then, and still haunts him five decades later.

“What we saw can best be described as a large aluminum dome-shaped thing sitting upright in the desert,” Graves said.  “I thought it might be some kind of observatory dome, except why would a dome be down at that elevation?”

Graves also remembered seeing five men and two trucks near the dome.  One looked like a military transport truck, capable of carrying personnel or equipment.

“But I didn’t see any equipment like cranes or anything like that,” Graves said.  “And the men didn’t seem to be doing any work.  I could not identify a uniform.”

Using Salyer’s ranch for size and distance perspective, Graves estimated that the dome was 36 feet in diameter and maybe a mile away.

Eventually Graves and Malody ended up back at Salyer’s ranch that day.  But Graves’ memory of what happened in the hours immediately after the sighting is sketchy.  He now feels both he and Malody may have been subjected to some kind of mind-bending hypnosis back at the ranch.

“There were men running around in the basement asking us questions about what we saw,” Graves said.  “I’m not sure what I told them but I do remember telling myself not to forget.  Not to forget.”

Graves never considered that he might have witnessed the crash site of an extraterrestrial craft until 1952, after he read Behind the Flying Saucers, a book by pioneer ufologist Frank Scully (yes, Dana Scully, the character in the X-Files, was named after him).

In the book, Scully wrote about the Cave Creek incident, saying that an informant told him that two humanoid bodies about 4½-feet tall were retrieved, one sitting inside the craft and the other halfway out the hatch.

Finally, Graves had a possible answer.  He also came to realize that he may have been standing next to the dead humanoids in Salyer’s basement.  Graves reasoned that Salyer, an ex-military man, was probably the one who called the military after the crash near his property.  He may have been the first one on the scene and even assisted in the recovery, including preserving the humanoids in his large freezer.

Graves moved from Arizona a few years after the incident.  He didn’t talk to Salyer about it until 15 years later, in 1962, when he drove out to Salyer’s ranch on a whim.  It was not a pleasant conversation.

“He immediately got angry,” Graves said.  “He said, ‘Nothing like that happened, and furthermore, you have never been here at my ranch before.’”

Salyer died of a heart attack in his home a few years later.

However, Phoenix resident Don Devereux said he recently came across information that indicates Salyer may very well have participated in the recovery operation.  Devereux is a former reporter for the Scottsdale Progress and consulting journalist for the TV show Unsolved Mysteries.  While researching the Cave Creek crash for an episode on Unsolved Mysteries, he met a New River man who claims to have drank with Salyer at the Cave Creek Corral many years ago.

“He was supposedly talking all about the incident, including the bodies in the freezer,” Devereux said.  “The people in the bar thought it was funny and were razzing him about it.”

Curiously, Malody, a Tucson resident for years, said he doesn’t remember the incident even though Graves said he was with him that day.

“Sel would like me to get hypnotized,” Malody said.  “But my feeling is, why bother?  Sel honestly believes in this stuff and as far as what he saw I don’t doubt it.”

Tom Taylor, state director of the International MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), has interviewed Graves and videotaped the session.

“I found him credible and interesting,” Taylor said.

Today, Graves is a quiet, thoughtful man who looks on every day “as a fabulous adventure.”  He has lived much of his life in Marble Head, Mass., a businessman working for his family’s boat-building company.  Since 1986 he’s lived in Prescott with his wife, Ann.

He has never sought publicity over the Cave Creek incident and has not been secretive either.  He said it doesn’t bother him if people find his story hard to swallow.

When I scheduled the interview time with Selman Graves, he offered to drive some of the way and suggested for me to meet him outside the city of Prescott at a market that turned out to be called The Blue Hills Market and Bell Gas.  Selman arrived punctually and he seemed spry and robust considering he was in his seventies.  I was interested in visiting Sedona so Selman agreed to accompany me there and back in my rental car.

I told Selman that Ruth had shown me a newspaper article involving him: “I didn’t have time to read it.  She’s going to mail me a copy.  It talked about aliens in the refrigerator or something.”  He laughed but soon became somber as he began sharing some of his impressions, wanting to provide an overview of his perspectives about life before addressing the sensational interlude that he thinks could have taken place a half century ago.  One of the things he mentioned was having recently seen a video tape narrated by Zecharia Sitchin whom he understood to have hypothesized that the Tower of Babel had been a landing platform for interplanetary travel.  I’d read about this in Sitchin’s The Stairway To Heaven (1980) with the description of a platform in the mountains of Lebanon with a foundation consisting of three immense slabs of granite that each weighed more than 10,000 tons.  These pre-Roman ruins of a temple complex are known as Baalbek and Sitchin noted that it once was also called Heliopolis.  Sitchin wrote:

All these local legends, which as all legends contain a kernel of age-old recollections of actual events, agree that the place is of extreme antiquity.  They ascribe its building to “giants” and connect its construction with the events of the Deluge.  They connect it with Ba’al, its functions being that of a “Tower of Babel”—a place from which to “scale the heavens.”

I commented to Selman that I, myself, found it interested to find contemporary parallels with the ancient mysteries.  “Now the Tower of Babel is television and radio and satellites,” I mused and offered the Fellini movie “Ginger and Fred” as one metaphorical representation of a modern ‘tower of babel.’

In commenting about his life, Selman would show a diverse range of interests while mentioning such famous names as Sir Edmund Hillary, Paramahansa Yogananda, Robert Monroe, George Adamski and Leonardo da Vinci.  Selman shared many profound thoughts, including some simple ones:  " . . . a person's attitude is very important.  As one ages, an attitude changes.  Now attitude is where you're at in existence . . . the great learning is love.”  He acknowledged this understanding could only instill empathy in one for any person or creature suffering in some way.  At one point he said: " . . . anything that's very complex becomes very simple as learning takes place."  His perspective of "the intelligent approach to life" was to have patience and try to avoid being angry.

He explained, “Everything is made from a substance that is so tiny that it isn’t something that you’re just going to be able to put under an ordinary microscope to see.  The electron microscope helped.  Philo Taylor Farnsworth knew when he was fourteen that he was going to create electronic television.  At fifteen he actually drew a working schematic of the movement of the electrons.  When he did do that, he created the module for the electron microscope and he did a lot of other things . . . These material things are all held in place by great — let’s call it energy — power.”

“The Oneness,” I concurred.

I learned that Selman had glimpsed UFOs numerous times and viewed these experiences as fortunate ones.  He began explaining his perspective of a very real extraterrestrial presence that the Intelligence guiding the functions of Earth was making known in "a slow and a moderate and ponderous way.”  A few minutes later, my passenger pointed out one of Sedona’s ‘sacred sites’ — Bell Rock.

I asked him about his career and he mentioned, "Primarily it was boats — yachts.  Small and large — built two of the cup contenders for the Americas Cup."  Then we passed San Miguel Drive.

Discussing vibrational healing with me, Selman mentioned, "Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first one to broadcast voice across the ocean . . . the frequency was crystal-controlled.  Quartz crystals cut so (that) the sending and receiving had a channel and that was the crystal control."

We had dinner at The Coffee Pot, a noisy Sedona restaurant that Selman said had originated as an enterprise of actress Jane Russell and where he’d taken his grandparents in 1947, the same year that he saw the seemingly grounded mystery object.  Upon noticing celebrity headshots on the wall of the restaurant, I felt like I was back in L.A.  This was the setting where Selman spoke about his headline-making experience and clarified some of the details.

One fact that the newspaper story hadn’t mentioned concerning the freezer in the basement was that the reason for Walt Salyer’s concern about his friends going near it was because, as Selman recalled, “He said that this had been contaminated and it might cause serious illness.  What he didn’t know is we’d already looked into it.”  Selman told me that he’d inspected the freezer when earlier considering what they would do with any rabbit they shot.  “But it was empty.  Why would he not want us going near it if it was empty?”  Salyer was described as "a retired military man who homesteaded the land."

Selman described the mysterious object he saw back in 1947: “It was dome-shaped with at the bottom what looked like a spur.  And if you ever saw domes made to go on a silo . . . that’s what it looked like . . . It was as big as the house . . . Nothing we could think of made sense.”

Upon returning to the ranch house later that day, Selman said that he was not released until 10:30 p.m.  The men who detained Selman and his companions seemed like government people and their endeavor was to instruct them that they hadn’t seen anything — a scenario that since that time has become familiar in the annals of UFOlogy.  A couple of the men wore suits and appeared to Selman as “behind-desk men."

Selman said that over the years he’d seen UFOs in the air.  Looking back at his life, he considered himself extraordinarily fortunate to have had his experiences.  Selman reflected, “We’re shown things that we at one point didn’t imagine were there.”  He also said that he couldn’t think of a time in his life when he actually felt any older.  One of Selman’s frustrations at observing human progress was an environmental grievance: “We could’ve been driving automobiles on hydrogen right after World War II.”  Selman told me his experiences included spending 1943 in the Philadelphia navy yard prior to the conclusion of his military service.

On the way back from Sedona, we continued to talk and he mentioned that he hadn't read many UFOlogy books.  He thought Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was one movie that showed some understanding of the subject.  I told him that one distinction was that the movie had shown an intuitive factor among characters as an essential part of the phenomena.  Selman recalled, “The statements that they made — they said, ‘Well this man and these people were invited.’  And indeed they were . . . They were invited without (aliens) coming down and saying, ‘I’m from . . .’  They were attracted to be there . . .”

When we arrived back at where we originally met, he asked me about how my own book Testament had come about as he looked forward to reading it.  I gave a brief summary and left him with a copy.  He then revealed that recently his financial means had been wiped out by a criminal act — a fraudulent lawsuit and a judge whom he said hadn't bothered to read the documentation.  ". . . I owed no money, I had an income and over a million dollars of real equity, which I no longer have.”  He told me that he now looked at his situation as a challenging one and was optimistic because, he said, “I’ve always been able to take the existing pieces and make it work.”

I said to him somewhat jovially, "Well look at it this way.  Every wisdom tradition says to share your wealth."  I told him my spiritual awakening had left me ashamed that I hadn't been more generous in sharing my money with those less fortunate.

After we thanked one another for the shared occasion, I returned to my hotel.

There have been many people whom I've interviewed who have described unique accounts with me.  Although Selman was knowledgeable about a diverse range of metaphysical subjects, I decided that he did not have clear memories of some of the incidents he had attempted to describe so his account is most likely an example of how fading memories over the course of many years could be misinterpreted or reimagined based upon suggestions or some other form of irrelevant data.  Nonetheless, I thought much of his commentary was intriguing and it was obvious that he for many years had been sincerely interested in expanding his spiritual and metaphysical understanding of life.

Selman Graves (1925-2010 / photo by Mark Russell Bell)

Me in 1998 (photo by Selman Graves)

Adventures in UFOlogy

This is an Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) image from Bridge Between the Terrestrial and the Beyond (1989) by Hidegard Schaefer: "Video image of recorded voice researcher Dr. Konstantine Raudive (1909-1974)."   Below is another photo of Raudive as seen in an ITC video image showing an ascended realm of human existence.

"This is Konstantin Raudive.  Soon it will work everywhere!" — English translation of  ITC message received in 1986 by ITC researchers as documented in Breakthroughs in Technical Spirit Communication (1997) by Dr. Theo Locher and Maggy Harsch-Fischbach.  This book as well as Schaefer's book may be read at worlditc.org.

At present, I have decided to continue blogging about the fascinating subject of UFOlogy as I review my research conducted during the years following the publication of my autobiographical book Testament in 1997.

On the night of March 13, 1997, widespread UFO sightings in the Arizona sky were reported and photographed.  This incident came to be known as ‘The Phoenix Lights’ although the city was only one among many throughout the area where sightings occurred.  It was an evening when people were watching the sky in search of Comet Hale-Bopp.

Also during 1997, the publication in July of Philip J. Corso’s book written with William J. Birnes The Day After Roswell offered an insider’s testimonial of government seeding of ‘alien technology’ for reverse-engineering at such companies as Bell Labs, IBM, Monsanto, Dow, General Electric, and Hughes.  According to the book, Colonel Phillip J. Corso (Ret.) was “a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army’s Research & Development department.”

Corso attested in his introduction of the book: “My boss, General Trudeau, asked me to use the army’s ongoing weapons development and research program as a way to filter the Roswell technology into the mainstream of industrial development through the military defense contracting program.”

Corso noted that he hadn’t assessed the weight of the accomplishments at Army R&D until thirty-five years after he left the army.  Remembering his arrival at the Foreign Technology desk in 1961, Corso chronicled finding “the puzzle pieces for a whole new age of technology.”  Corso specified that these Foreign Technology desk files included research of Serbian-born visionary inventor Nikola Tesla.  A military focus was revealed to be considered of utmost importance in the utilization for any manner of technological innovation.

For me the irony has always been the confluence between the historic work and discoveries of Nikola Tesla and the technology we ascertained the extraterrestrials had developed from our evaluation of the Roswell wreckage.  Tesla had experimented with wireless transmission of energy, and the extraterrestrials seemed to have employed a type of wireless transmission of energy for navigational and defensive purposes.  Tesla wrote about the theories behind the distortion or manipulation of a gravitational field through the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and the extraterrestrials seemed to have employed just that kind of technology for a propulsion system.  And Tesla’s descriptions of the theories behind the death ray he claimed to have perfected ultimately became the basis for the defensive weapons we deployed to challenge the hostile intrusions of our airspace by the extraterrestrials.  What posed a threat to us at Roswell and what we eventually learned from Tesla’s writings became two confluent streams of scientific theory that eventually became the basis of the Strategic Defense Initiative, an antiballistic missile and space vehicle weapon.

Corso’s narrative encompassed speculations that may have been influenced by UFOlogy books that he, himself, had read as he expounded on his own recollections and conclusions.  In one anecdote, Corso described having glimpsed the corpse of a six-fingered, four-foot-tall extraterrestrial being while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas in 1947.  Perhaps the oddest facet of the book is the opening quote attributed to Davy Crockett: “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”  These are ironic words when equated with the frontiersman who died at the Battle of the Alamo.

In The Day After Roswellwords such as ‘hostile’ and ‘threat’ are equated with extraterrestrials, demonstrating that Corso’s book offers examples of the military mindset.  The same month Corso’s book was published, the movies “Contact” and “Men In Black” opened although at this time in my life I no longer was interested in seeing movies conceived as entertainment nor devoting any of my time to reading fiction, although I had previously read Contact (1985) by Carlos Sagan.  The following February after having heard some intriguing anecdotes in Los Angeles, I traveled to Phoenix to research experiences of people involved in different aspects of UFOlogy.

I’d been interested in the subject of possible 'extraterrestrial' contact since I was a teenager yet in recent years nothing I could find on the topic seemed intended to merely present data.  A plethora of unsubstantiated theories indicated that the subject was prone to being promulgated on the basis of reflecting the intentions, perspectives and biases of authors, intentionally or otherwise.

In some cases, writers of UFOlogy have shown an evolution of their own in their publications.  Author Jacques Vallee’s book Forbidden Science (1992) was a collection of journals written between 1957 and 1969.  Vallee’s commentary in the book’s foreword about these journals included the following.

Although they contain many passages that are very personal and some that are painful, they also provide a primary source about a crucial fact in the recent historical record: the appearance of new classes of phenomena that highlighted the reality of the paranormal.  These phenomena were deliberately denied or distorted by those in authority within the government and the military.  Science never had fair and complete access to the most important files.  This fact has been alleged before, but never proven.  The present book proves it.


. . . the major revelation of these Diaries may be the demonstration of how the scientific community was misled by the government, how the best data were kept hidden, and how the public record was shamelessly manipulated.


. . . Other facts are still hidden.  When they eventually come to the surface, as they must, it is my hope that this statement of the early years of our research into Forbidden Science may serve to highlight their true significance.

In an interview in the March 2006 issue of Sub Rosa, a free Internet magazine at dailygrail.com, Vallee mentioned having proposed in his book Messengers of Deception “an information multiverse with fully physical manifestations.  After all, when I was researching mystical groups in the Melchizedek tradition, and was picked up by the only cab driver in Los Angeles called Melchizedek, it was a real car and a real driver!  To start understanding consciousness we need to develop a physics of information that does not rely on the formulations of the physics of energy, which is limited by its use of dimensions.”

In the interview, Vallee also stated that he believed the human collective psyche has access to cosmic consciousness: “The concept of other dimensions and parallel universes is part of mainstream cosmology now.  I just received in the mail the latest copy of New Scientist.  The cover shows two figures climbing into a flying saucer with the caption: ‘Life inside a black hole — how is it for you?’”

The unidentified Sub Rosainterviewer disclosed that government deception was one of the dangers Vallee warned about in his 1979 book Messengers of Deception.  My personal response to this book was that many of the author’s perceptions about the phenomena seemed incorrect yet I was reminded that readers in the field of UFOlogy are often confronted with claims having little substantiation.

I’ve often contemplated what to say to someone who knowingly serves as a purveyor of disinformation.  Perhaps, I would remind how ignominious and ultimately self-defeating it is for an individual to benefit in many ways throughout one’s life from the wisdom shared by so many other members of the human family throughout the ages and then in return contribute to society in a disingenuous, selfish and cowardly fashion.

What would be the reason to cover up something?  The answer is that one recognizes that the actions in question were wrong in the first place.  There is significance in the expressions ‘an honest mistake’ and ‘honesty is the best policy.’  It is always best to acknowledge a mistake and concentrate upon the solution.  If this is not done, the problem only escalates.  A spiritually aware person knows the importance of heeding one’s conscience.  Last week, when I listened to the interview with criminologist Adrian Raine mentioned in the previous blog article, information was presented about contemporary convicted murderers living and functioning apparently without having any spiritual or moral understanding whatsoever.

  
The strange case study of my own ‘spiritual awakening’ and unexpected journey to expanded spiritual and metaphysical awareness, Testament, chronicled the period in my life when I ended my career in the Southern California entertainment industry and stopped ‘going to the movies’ and watching TV programs.  Remembering the time in my life when I was employed as a publicist for Paramount Pictures and learned about 'corporate thinking,' I had no idea that my life was leading me toward experiences that would completely change my understanding of reality. 

In 2005 I listened to the late night radio show "Coast to Coast AM" when Travis Walton was the guest.  On June 3, I sent the following Email to Travis Walton and Mike Rogers after visiting the website travis-walton.com.  The subject was "Interview comments from a past acquaintance."  Occasionally in the past I've sent Email like this to individuals to encourage them to carefully listen to their own interviews in relation to Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP).  Some people who are aware of this phenomena apparently don't attempt to inform others about it because they have no understanding about EVP or perhaps think that people aren't open-minded enough to consider that something like this could be happening and receive so little attention.  These circumstances are thought-provoking in relation to the question of how conscious are people in their daily lives. 

Dear Travis and Mike,

You may remember me as the publicity writer who was working on the press kit production information for FIRE IN THE SKY.  Little did I know back then (at the time of our brief phone conversation) about what was in store for me in 1995.  After having worked on a number of paranormal-themed films -- including GHOST, DEAD AGAIN, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE and many more, I went to Oklahoma to interview a family experiencing 'talking poltergeist'/alien manifestations for a potential book or movie.  The resulting case study encompasses events that encourage consideration of 'Superconscious' aspects of so-called supernatural phenomena -- a loving, shared subconscious and also 'exo-conscious' organizing Force for all living things; and made comprehensible by such metaphysical concepts as karma and synchronicity (as well as movies like STAR WARS). 

One of the areas of study that resulted from my experiences is what is now known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP).  It may come as a surprise to you that EVP and unattributed sounds are commonly audible not only on all recorded audio material but also on radio broadcasts.  Therefore, if you listen closely to your interview from earlier this week you'll hear some examples.  I recorded the last hour of a radio station Internet broadcast and have noted some of the prominent examples from this hour of the show in transcript excerpts below so you'll know precisely where to find some of them.  I hope you have a copy of the interview; if not, you can listen to the archive edition of the show at the coasttocoastam.com website or ask the show producer Lisa Lyon to send you a copy. 

Yours truly, 

MRB

The transcript excerpts that followed were formatted similar to those featured in the preceding blog article with EVP words/Spirit messages capitalized and in parentheses.

I received the following response from Travis Walton on July 17, 2005.

Subject: RE: Interview comments from a past acquaintance

Wow Mark, that's some heavy stuff.  This stuf can be heard without special equipment? 

Travis

I replied the same day:

Travis, 

A regular tape recorder or microcassette recorder will suffice; however, the best way to listen to a tape is via Dictaphone transcribing machine with foot pedal to replay the tape when EVP can be heard.  Also, earphone padding should be removed as it reduces clarity to a small degree.  Some EVP researchers use microphones with their recorders. 

The first people to record and demonstrate this phenomena were Friedrich Jurgenson and Konstantin Raudive.  Jurgenson was attempting to record birdsongs in 1959 when he first discovered what he described as "transmissions."  He later admitted his initial idea was wrong that connected the mysterious voices on the tapes with 'planetarians' or space aliens and unidentified flying objects.  

Jurgenson's case study VOICE TRANSMISSIONS WITH THE DECEASED may be read in the 'Books' section of the http://www.worlditc.org homepage.  Jurgenson concluded about the voice transmissions, "I was selected by some unknown force to be a pioneer and at the same time to be a humble guinea pig also forced to endure with body and soul a considerable measure of stress and challenge."  

Raudive became a colleague of Jurgenson and published his own book, BREAKTHROUGH: AN AMAZING EXPERIMENT IN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD (the main portion is also available at the worlditc website).  The book included an 'appendices' section with a large and diverse group of experts and other witnesses corroborating the voice phenomena.  One of Raudive's publishers, Peter Bander, also wrote a book about these early days of the discovery of Electronic Voice Phenomena.  The title of this book is CARRY ON TALKING.  

Anyone who reads these three books wouldn't be surprised by the claim that EVP may be heard on all recorded material as well as radio broadcasts. 

I hope you'll let me know your thoughts after closely listening to a recording of your COAST TO COAST AM interview.  I only was able to record the last hour of the show from a radio station Internet rebroadcast.  I would be willing to carefully study the whole interview with my Dictaphone equipment if someone would be willing to mail me a cassette (preferable to CD but a CD would also be acceptable) of the show.  The EVP should also be audible (with somewhat less clarity perhaps) on the archive edition of your interview at http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/05/ 

Regards, 

Mark

Walton also was among those whom I emailed the following message on July 30, 2007. 

A link to my 26-minute webcam lecture "Superconsciousness" is now available at http://testament.org. 

The lecture includes commentary about occurrences in the lives of Madame Blavatsky, Dr. John Dee, Edgar Cayce, Harry Edwards, Eileen Garrett and Leslie Flint. I've also made the lecture available at http://www.youtube.com but there it is presented in three parts and may be found by searching for "Superconsciousness." 

MRB