In The News...

September 1974: In a case of synchroncity or life imitating art; folks in the United Kingdom woke up on the morning of 4 September to learn that Prime Minister Edward Heath's yacht had been hit by a freak wave in the English Channel and sunk. Two of the crewmen were swept overboard and drowned. In a photo taken at a book launch five days before the yacht sank, P.M. Heath is shown holding a book with a timely theme. The photo was a publicity shot for a thriller by John Dyson called The Prime Minister's Boat is Missing set in the English Channel.FT7:17

October 1978: One of the most important cases in UFOlogy took place on the 21st of this month. 20 year old Frederick Valentich flew his Cessna aircraft from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne towards King Island. At 7:06 pm he radioed: "DSJ Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet, is there any known traffic below five-thousand?" Valentich was told there was no air traffic in that area. Valentich then commented that he could see what looked like four bright landing lights. A few minutes later Valentich reported that the unknown 'object'..."seems to me that he's playing some sort of game." When asked to describe the object the young pilot said: "It's got a green light and sort of metallic like. It's all shiny on the outside." Then Valentich said the object was getting closer and reported: "The engine [of the Cessna] is rough idling..the thing is coughing." Continuing to describe the object Valentich stated: "It is hovering and it's not an aircraft." Shortly after this, with Valentich's microphone still open the word "metallic" was heard. Then Melbourne lost contact. A massive search and rescue operation was begun, but neither Valentich nor his aircraft was ever seen again.

We, of course, don't know exactly what happened to Frederick Valentich, the young man was declared legally dead several years after the incident. Just the fact that he is presumed dead and his aircraft missing underscores how serious the study of the UFO phenomenon is. Society needs to pressure governments and science to take the phenomenon seriously. The Valentich case is not the only UFO case by any means where death or serious injury occurred as a result of contact with the phenomena. This fact alone is reason enough to keep asking questions whether we are dealing with some unknown natural phenomena, secret government testing, actual extraterrestrials, interdimensional beings or maybe a combination of these or some phenomena we can't even conceive of as yet.

September 1984: Some odd encounters took place in the tiny French town of Montpinchon in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France in the middle of the month. Some said it was the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) paying a visit. The first encounter happened to two youths and a young girl on a dark lane. They saw streaks of white light coalesce into a female figure. They said the hands moved as though pointing but the light was too bright to see many details. The girl threw a stone at it that seemed to be deflected by the light, almost as if it were a force-field. News of the strange occurrences spread and people flocked to the town, roaming the thicket-lined lanes in hopes of having their own sightings. Four days after the original sighting, a group of six women found their way blocked by a "shining white lady." The "lady" appeared to be dressed in a long robe and "flapped her arms about." The apparition disappeared as one of the women fainted and the others cried out in terror. If these episodes were indeed BVM sightings, the Queen of Heaven wasn't sending out her usual soothing vibes! Perhaps she was still upset at having a stone thrown at her!FT44:16-17

December 1995: 10 year-old Vicky Wilmore, of Manchester, England bumped her head on a coffee table. The surprise effect of this was that the young lady's reading and writing returned to normal after the accident. Before the accident, for more than a year she had been fluently reading and writing backwards and upside down, following a period of intense headaches. Vicky had been examined by a number of specialists because of the difficulties this caused her at school, but none could make a diagnosis. Directly in the few months before she bumped her head, her reversed writing had degenerated into illegible lines and squiggles. Dr. Isabella Tweedie of the Community Health Trust said: "I've never come across anything like it before." FT86:6

September 2002: Dashi Dorzho Itigilov was born in 1852 in Buryatia, a Mongolian region of Siberia next to Lake Baikal. At 16, he studied to become a lama and served in several monasteries. In 1911 he became the 12th Pandito Hambo Lama, the spiritual leader of Russia's Buddhists. He was influential and united many of the religion's factions. Unlike Tibetan lamas, who are thought to be reincarnations of previous lamas and made the supreme religious leader for life, Pandito Hambo Lamas are elected by other lamas, serve comparitively short terms and are free to step down if they wish. At the age of 75 in 1927, Itigilov announced his plans to die, he was retired by now. He instructed those gathered around him to "visit and look at my body in 30 years. He then got into the lotus position, began meditating, and chanting a prayer for the dead-and then he died. By the 1930s, Stalin had hundreds of lamas put to death and destroyed 46 Buddhist temples and monasteries. However, after World War II, Stalin allowed the Buddhists to rebuild their supreme monastery outside Ivolginsk. Religious practice was still tightly restricted and discouraged.

Between 28 and 30 years passed, and Itigilov's followers exhumed his corpse from a cemetery in Khukhe-Zurkhen. He was still in the lotus position and his remains were absolutely incorrupt. Stalin was dead by this time, but Soviet power was still absolute and religion frowned upon, so the Buddhists reburied their former lama in an unmarked grave and packed his wooden coffin with salt. Once again on 11 September 2002, Itigilov's body was exhumed and found to be in a state of perfect preservation. The current Pandito Hambo Lama, the 25th, Damba Ayusheyev, had the body brought back to Ivolginsk, where it was greeted by Buddhist worshipers with ringing bells and chants. He ordered the body placed on the second floor of one of the monastery's four temples, where it remains today, behind heavy curtains and locked doors. The former lama has been dressed in a golden robe with a blue sash laid across his lap. His features are blurred, but the shape of his face and nose definitely resemble a 1913 photograph taken of him. His hands are flexible, and his nails perfectly manicured. His skin is leathery but soft. His head is still covered in short-trimmed hair. The monastery's 150 students keep a vigil on the first floor, praying around the clock, though only the lamas may see the body.

In Moscow, Vladislav I. Kozeltsev, an expert at the Center for Biomedical Technologies, the institute that maintains Lenin's body in his Red Square mausoleum, has suggested that the lama's incorruption is due to peculiar soil conditions or " a defect in the gene that hastens the decomposition of the body's cellular structure after death," adding that: "You cannot rule out some secret process of embalming." Hambo Lama Ayusheyev, takes the view that Itigilov's body was preserved because he achieved a higher state of existence through meditation known as shunyata, or emptiness.FT 184:26-27, New York Times, 1 October 2002. The first image is of the Buddhist monastery at Ivolginsk. The second image is of Frederick Valentich. The third image is of the village church at Montpinchon, France. I decided to do another one of these Fortean news articles because I think they are fun, and I am completely stuck on the newest series I am working on. Peace and best to anyone stopping by! More on Valentich case HERE