Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs: The World's Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved - Softcover

Jack, Albert

 
9780812980059: Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs: The World's Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812980050 ISBN 13: 9780812980059
Verlag: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

FOOLED BY FABLES? LED ON BY LEGENDS? MYTH-GUIDED?
WONDER NO MORE, MYSTERY-PHILES: THE TRUTH IS IN HERE!

What in the world (or out of it) made those giant crop circles? Did skydiving skyjacker D. B. Cooper really get away with it? Is Bigfoot a big fake? Are ETs just BS? If you’re tired of scratching your head over persistent puzzlers like these, mystery-buster Albert Jack has the cure for your quizzical itch. He’s gone hunting for the truth behind more than thirty of the most famous and baffling conundrums in history. Did a conspiracy or a calamity kill Marilyn Monroe? Is the Bermuda Triangle a tropical tall tale? Was a dead Paul McCartney replaced by a doppelgänger? How did Edgar Allan Poe meet his doom?

In quick-witted entries on each enigmatic topic, Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs offers answers certain to surprise, enlighten, amuse, and perhaps disappoint true believers. But Albert Jack never fails to fascinate and entertain as he spills the beans about the odd, the eerie, and the (no longer) unexplained.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Albert Jack lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs: The World's Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved. His first book, Red Herrings and White Elephants: The Origin Of Phrases We Use Every Day, was published by Harper in 2006.

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The Famous Aurora Spaceship Mystery

Did a UFO really crash in a small town in Texas over a century ago?

When it comes to spaceships and little green men from Mars, most people’s thoughts turn to the notorious events at Roswell, New Mexico, where in 1947 the U.S. government apparently captured an alien who had crashed his flying saucer. U.S. military personnel are then said to have quickly sealed off the area, removed all ?evidence, and engaged in a complete ?cover-?up.

After a thorough debriefing, presumably in sign language, the little green man sadly died. Much later, the film of the ?top-?secret autopsy supposedly carried out on him was sold on the black market, ending up nearly fifty years later, in 1995, on a ?prime-?time TV documentary broadcast around the world. This program, Alien Autopsy, caused a sensation and “Martian?gate” was back on the agenda with a vengeance. As is often the case, those who wanted to believe such a story inevitably did, while those of us really living on planet Earth could smell a rat. In fact, there were rats everywhere.

But it took eleven years before the program maker, Ray Santilli, admitted that the autopsy had been staged, for the most part, in a flat in Camden Town, London. Strangely enough, he owned up to this two days before a humorous parody of his subject was due to be aired on ?television. He confirmed that his props had in?cluded sheep brains set in jelly and knuckle joints and chicken entrails bought from Smith?field meat market.

That should have knocked the Roswell ?mystery on the head for good, and all those UFO enthusiasts who had been obsessing about the whole affair for years should now be quietly ?licking their wounds in their garden sheds, or wherever it is they go to study their favorite subject.

But Roswell ?wasn’t the first time: aliens had been captured before. In 1897, Aurora, a small, unremarkable town near Dallas, Texas, became the site of an astonishing event.

On April 19 that year, ?ten-?year-?old Charlie Stevens was sweeping his backyard when he looked up to see smoke trailing from a large ? silver airship flying overhead toward Aurora. Soon after it had flown out of sight, he heard an explosion and saw a thick plume of smoke rise into the air. He was about to rush off to see what had happened when he was stopped by his father, who told him he had to finish his chores first. Just imagine that something truly momentous has just happened right in your sleepy little town: a strange airborne vehicle— something you have never seen before, maybe even a craft from another planet—crashes just a few hundred yards away from your own back gate and you are told: “Nope. You finish sweeping that there yard first, boy, and then come inside and help your ma with the breakfast.”

In fact Charlie ?wasn’t allowed to go at all. According to him, it was his father who went into town and saw the wreckage scattered about the place. Mary Evans, aged fifteen at the time, also claimed to have witnessed the crash, but stated that her parents ?wouldn’t allow her to visit the scene either.

As H. E. Haydon reported in The Dallas Morning News:

About 6 o’clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles per hour and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went to pieces in a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

Curiously, this story did not make even the front page. Instead it was buried on page five along with several other reports of UFO sightings. It would appear the flying saucer crash at Aurora was not particularly shocking in 1897?—run-?of-?the-?mill, you might say (in more senses than one)—even if it did destroy Judge Proctor’s flower garden.

The story then told by the people of the town is that the Martian pilot, as he was termed, was given a decent Christian burial in the town ?cemetery and his grave marked with a single stone. The remains of the spaceship were taken away to an unknown location by the authorities and the smaller pieces were thrown into Judge Proctor’s well. No other newspaper covered the story and, amazingly, the alien’s resting place in the Aurora cemetery went unremarked for nearly eighty years, the small town settling back into obscurity.

That was until 1973, when the founder of the International UFO Bureau, Hayden Hewes, announced to the Press Association that a grave in a small north Texan cemetery contained the body of an 1897 “astronaut” whom the report at the time had identified as being “not . . . of this world.”

Newspapers all over America took up the story, and interest in the alien grave rapidly ?gathered pace. Curiously, as the press hounds sniffed around Aurora, they found very few ?residents willing to discuss the events of 1897, but despite their reticence the town soon became a hive of activity as alien hunters from around the world descended en masse.

The International UFO Bureau claimed to have found traces of radiation at both the crash site and the grave, on top of which, they said, the grass glowed red. But they were soon barred from the graveyard by local administrators, who adamantly refused to allow them to start digging around. When the investigators attempted to obtain a court order to exhume the body, the small headstone marking the grave was removed and state troopers were placed at the gates of the cemetery to prevent unauthorized access.

Hayden Hewes, interviewed for a television documentary on the subject, condemned these actions as irresponsible, stating that there was now no way of locating the grave—a site, he claimed, that was of national importance. Interest?ingly, Bureau representatives have never explained why they ?didn’t just walk around looking for the red patch they had found only weeks earlier. Abandoning the grave, they turned their attention instead to Judge Proctor’s farm, now under different ownership.

In 1945, Rollie Oats (yes, his real name) had bought the place. He had removed the pieces of spaceship and cleaned out the well so that his family could drink the water. Twelve years later he developed severe arthritis in his hands and, convinced the well water was responsible, had it sealed over with a ?six-?ton slab of concrete.

During the 1973 investigation, metal found on the farm was analyzed at a laboratory, its name never disclosed, and found to be of a unique composition that could only have been produced by a very sophisticated refining process far in advance of what was possible in the 1970s, let alone the 1890s. This was held up as hard ?evidence of spaceship material, and the UFO community howled for the government to reveal any information they had. In response the ?government ridiculed the amateur investigation, describing the Aurora spaceship story as a hoax. But of course they would say that, eh, UFO fans?

Today, amid renewed calls for a full inquiry and a thorough search of Aurora using the latest technology, some town elders now claim that the U.S. military returned many years ago, back in the 1940s, and removed all trace of the spacecraft and...

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Verlag
Random House Trade Paperbacks
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812980050
ISBN 13 
9780812980059
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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