Marfa Ghost Light

The Marfa Lights are named for their location near the town of Marfa, Texas. Marfa is a small ranching community on a Chihuahuan Desert plateau in the Trans-Pecos area of west Texas. Supported mostly by ranching, and more recently by tourism, it is surrounded by vast mountains and is Texas' highest incorporated city. Marfa is known primarily for its famous Marfa Mystery Lights and as the location for the shooting of the classic movie "Giant," with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Dennis Hopper and James Dean.

The Ghost lights of Marfa still shine as bright as ever, and are still as mysterious as they were when they were first seen by early settlers who drove their herds into the Marfa area in 1883.

Who can explain their source? Where are they actually located? How long have they been in existence? The mystery is no closer to being solved now than when they were first seen.

Robert Ellison came to Marfa in 1883 and off-loaded his cattle in Alpine. He then drove the herd west and on the second night out, while camped just outside Paisano Pass, he saw strange lights in the distance. At first, it was feared that they were Apache signal fires. Mr. Ellison searched the countryside by horseback. He finally realized that the lights were not man-made. Other early settlers assured him that they too had seen the lights and had never been able to identify them.

The Marfa Lights are reported to be from 1-10 feet in diameter. They are spherical and reddish-orange in color. They have been observed to vary their size and fly at high speeds. Numerous photographs and video footage have captured these lights in action. Marfa Lights are generally considered harmless. They are even rumored to have helped a lost man during a blizzard by providing warmth and guiding him home.

The ghost lights appear in many different ways to different people. Some swear they have seen them divide to form separate balls of light. Others claim that they have seen them move up and down. All agree that they glow as softly as a star at times, then brighten to the intensity of a stoplight. Sometimes they pop off and on. As they fade they seem to be receding. There are verifiable accounts of people being pursued by the lights.

Scientists have made numerous attempts to put the mystery to rest. In 1947, Fritz Kahl, a local war veteran and pilot, chased the Lights in an airplane, but came up empty. In 1975, Kahl made another attempt, this time with a team that included observers in Jeeps and planes. The "Marfa Ghost Light Hunt," as it was called, featured "more than a hundred carloads of observers gathered between the two observation points, one at Paisano Pass and the other at the entrance to the old Presidio County Airport," according to the Sul Ross "Skyline" newspaper. The searchers, "utilizing aircraft, survey instruments, multi-band radio equipment and about a half-dozen search teams," were no more successful than Kahl had been in his solo search of '47, and the legend grew.

Some believe that the lights are nothing more than high-powered lights from area ranches or the reflected headlights from nearby cars and trucks, but that doesn't explain why the Lights have been reported since before electricity or vehicles ever reached the Big Bend area. Nor does it explain why there have been reports of observers hearing a high-pitched, "tuning fork" noise in only one ear while watching the Lights.

A Marfa lights viewing site has been provided for the public on Highway 90, by the Texas Highway department. It is located nine miles east of Marfa. Ghost light watchers can park in the area and scan the south-western horizon, looking toward Chinati Peak. Using a distant red tower light as a marker, one can be certain that any light to the right of the marker, which appears and disappears, is a Marfa ghost light. You will know them when you see them. There is no mistaking them.

Area 51 Mystery

DEEP IN THE Nevada desert lies a military base that is surrounded by so much official secrecy that the US government has even refused to acknowledge it exists. The base was built by the CIA and all pilots, ground crews and the staff have to retire from their original military departments and join the agency before taking residency on site. As a CIA installation it operates independently of other government departments. To this day, signs at the entrance warn all visitors that they have no constitutional rights on site, and armed units guard the perimeter. It is the UFO world’s worst kept secret, and the area is now a pilgrimage point for alien watchers. This is Area 51. Built in the 1950s around the Groom Lake Air Force base, and next to the Nevada atomic test range, Area 51 was a perfect site to carry out classified aircraft tests. It had a large flat surface perfect for laying runways, few local residents, and a highly unattractive reputation to new settlers due to the nearby nuclear pollution. Initially it was built purely for testing the U2 spy plane, but the programme was such a success that all the United States secret aircraft were experimentally flown there. The base grew in size, creating its own small community and the landing strip was increased to three miles long. The Blackbird and Stealth planes were developed on site, and countless unknown technologies are housed in the base’s hanger. Many people believe these technologies are, quite literally, from a different planet, and the base is actually a test zone and hiding site for alien aircraft. At night, strange lights are seen in the sky above the base, and many watchers believe the site hides enormous underground installations.

More in-depth knowledge of operations there have come through one man, Bob Lazar. Lazar is a scientist who was employed by a company called EG & G in 1989 who said they were working on a propulsion project at their testing centre near Area 51, on a base called S4. In later conversations Lazar revealed that he and other scientists were employed to pull an alien aircraft apart and see if they could manufacture it using manmade components. As part of their work, the scientists were informed about the role of aliens in the history of the Earth, and on one occasion Lazar even claims to have briefly seen at first-hand, a real, live alien at S4.

Over time, Lazar says he decided to rebel against his employers. In the evening of 22nd March 1989 he and a friend went out to the Groom Lake road and watched a flying disc test flight. The following week Lazar, his friend and three others visited the same area. They saw a disc flight, which Huff described as ‘the thrill of a lifetime’. The disc they witnessed glowed extremely brightly, and flew so close that they felt they had to move backwards. The following week, on the way back home from another UFO-spotting trip, the group were seen and stopped by base security patrolling the outlying area. The next day Lazar was sacked from EG & G’s employment. He has subsequently revealed that nine discs are said to be held at S4. Some of the unsettling things that go on at the base are more real than others. The road to its entrance is known as ‘The Widow’s Highway’ because of the high numbers of workers at the base who die through contact with fatally poisonous materials. Many experts suggest the area is a secret dumping ground for toxic substances, rather than a UFO base. In either case, the workers are sworn to secrecy, and cannot reveal details about what they have been handling to their doctors. This has led to their wives launching court proceedings against the US government, who have traditionally refuted the allegations on the grounds that Area 51 does not officially exist. However, a statement made in January 2001 by President George Bush did refer to the ‘operating location near Groom Lake’, which is the first official recognition of Area 51. But Bush also said that the site was exempt from environmental disclosure requirements, so the widows are still fighting their case. But at least we now know the place is not just a figment of our imaginations.

UFO coverup !!

There are no little green men on the moon. Edgar Mitchell knows this because in 1971 he became the sixth man to walk on it. He is positive, however, that aliens have landed on Earth.

Sharing the podium at a conference in Connecticut yesterday with "alien abductees" and others who claim to have had contact with unidentified flying objects (UFOs), the former Nasa astronaut intensified his campaign to persuade Washington to acknowledge life beyond our skies.

Mitchell argues that life is almost certain to exist on any other planet with a supportive environment. Some physicists, he points out, now believe it is possible to travel faster than light, even if humble earthlings have yet to achieve it.

He is 90% certain that many of the thousands of UFOs recorded since the 1940s belonged to visitors from another planet. Although some have been delusions and others natural phenonema, too many remain unexplained, he said. "This suggests there are humanoids manning craft which have characteristics not in the arsenal of any nation on earth that we know of. That is very alarming," he said.

It was a startling departure for a scientist who, up to now, has been wary of appearing with ufologists widely regarded as cranks.

"Until recently I was very cautious about such conferences," Mitchell, 68, admitted before the opening of an annual convention entitled the UFO Experience. "But now I believe there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to warrant a scientific understanding in this area."

Mitchell, who holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, does not fit easily into the ranks of the UFO fanatics. Although he acts as a consultant to The X Files, the cult television series, he is scornful of "disinformation" about aliens and flying saucers that emanates from the Internet and marginal UFO organisations in America.

"The notion that there are structures on Mars or the moon is bonkers," Mitchell said. "I can certainly attest to the latter - I've been there. We saw no structures at the landing site and none was reflected in my helmet, as has been alleged."

Mitchell bases his credo on established cosmology - in which he became closely involved after gazing at his tiny, distant planet from the command module of Apollo 14. He felt "an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness and perceived the universe as in some way conscious".

In the early 1970s, after leaving Nasa, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. Dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritual phenomena, it subjected luminaries such as Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon bender, to scientific scrutiny.

Mitchell says his research - including conversations with people who have worked in intelligence agencies and military groups - has convinced him that the American government has covered up the truth about UFOs for 50 years. He is trying to persuade Congress to grant his sources immunity to tell "the real story" of events such as the so-called Roswell incident - the alleged crash of a flying saucer in New Mexico in 1947.

"Many of these folks were under high-security clearances, they took oaths and they feel they cannot talk without some form of immunity," Mitchell said. "It takes a brave person to come out on something like this."

A poll by Time magazine last year suggested that 22% of the population share Mitchell's conviction that other planets have been in contact with humans; 17% said intelligent life had abducted humans to experiment on them.

The high level of interest has encouraged other speakers at this weekend's conference. They include Robert Wood, a retired aerospace engineer from California, who claims to have new evidence of the existence of MJ12, a clandestine military unit trained in recovery and disposal of aliens and their craft.

The true believers could hardly conceal their delight at the former astronaut's endorsement. Walter Andrus, international director of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest organisation of its kind in America, said: "There's no doubt in my mind that Ed Mitchell gives us all credibility."

JacK the Ripper's ID finally revealed

An eminent South African historian believes he has stumbled on the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Charles van Onselen said at first he wasn't sure he wanted to publicize the conclusions he drew when he noticed parallels in the century-old, unsolved Ripper case and the background of Joseph Silver, who terrorized women as "King of the Pimps" in Johannesburg.

"I was left with a choice: I have got intelligent speculation, which I think is pretty long way down the track to proving that this guy was the Ripper. Do I include or exclude it?

"If I include it, it buggers up the book and people get excited for the wrong reasons. If I exclude it and a really sharp professional spots it ... I had to explore this possibility," he said, sitting in his tree-filled garden, about 3 miles from where Silver reigned, in a city still regarded as one of the most crime-ridden in the world.

The publicity around van Onselen's "The Fox and The Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath", published in April, has made much of Silver being Jack the Ripper, the notorious Victorian serial killer who murdered at least five East London prostitutes in 1888.

But van Onselen, an acclaimed biographer who specializes in South Africa's criminal history and who took nearly three decades to research the book, only makes his Ripper case in the final 25th chapter, written in the last 36 months.

While the book has been well-received, reaction from "Ripperologists" has been skeptical as van Onselen makes his case on circumstantial evidence.

To his doubters the author said: "How many coincidences do you want to mount up in your mind simultaneously until you start saying this is a real possibility?"

Scores of people have been accused of the Ripper murders, but no one has ever been proven guilty and London police put the number of most likely suspects at just four, among them a poor Whitechapel resident named Kosminski who, like Silver, was a Polish Jew. At the time, Londoners speculated the killer was Jewish, leading to fears of an anti-Jewish backlash.

Van Onselen believes Silver fits the psychological profile of the Whitechapel murderer and he places his subject at the center of the scene of the Ripper murders. The evidence that Silver was in Whitechapel at the time of the Ripper murders includes the birth of his daughter there, van Onselen said.

As pimp and brothel keeper, Silver would have been familiar with the prostitutes working in the area, van Onselen said.

Silver, who was born in Poland, arrived in Johannesburg in 1898 fresh from a stint in Sing Sing for burglary and a stay in London a decade earlier. Shortly after arriving in Johannesburg, Silver set up a string of cafes, cigar shops and police-protected brothels.

Silver was litigious, wrote bold letters to newspapers and had an array of mocking aliases, van Onselen said. Jack the Ripper is believed to have taunted police with brazen letters to the papers.

Van Onselen, the son of a detective, tracked Silver across Africa, the Americas and Europe, "staggered by how mobile this guy was." In the end, Silver was executed as a spy in Poland in 1918.

Van Onselen points to similarities between the subject of his book and the Whitechapel murderer, both psychopaths with a deep hatred of women. Silver had bitter, violent relationships with women all his life.

"In terms of a template for this person, in terms of age, personality, mental illness, pattern for rest of life, this is the best fit there has ever been," he said.