5/3/21: Keep Calm – Royal Saucerwash W/ Richard Lawrence

MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

There are times when you wake up to headlines that baffle you or surprise you. Today I was going speedily through the headlines and saw that today is national paranormal day. Ghost hunters, UFO enthusiasts, and fans of high strangeness have reason to celebrate as it is National Paranormal Day.

I guess May 3rd has been set aside as the day we recognize anything and everything paranormal and it has been National Paranormal Day since 2013.

I thought who comes up with these things — I mean the weekend came and went and so we did not mention Walpurgisnacht on Friday and Beltane on Saturday. Tomorrow is Star Wars Day — May the Fourth be with you — and for those who like Star Wars bad guys, the day after is Revenge of the 5th. May 5th is also Cinco de Mayo where we experience revenge of the spice taco and the overindulgence of tequila.

In keeping with the curious subject matter recognized on May 3rd, National Paranormal Day is recognized by the website, Days of the Year, but there seems to be no record of who created National Paranormal Day nor why they chose this specific date.

I guess the date could have been a reverent observation to the death of Charles Fort. Every good Fortean knows that the Godfather of all paranormal studies, dies on this day in 1932.

The purpose of the holiday is also up for debate as, aside from simply celebrating the paranormal, some websites say that it is day meant for people to reflect about the mysteries of our world, while others suggest that people use the holiday as a reason to freely share their odd experiences.

But it is also the National Day of Prayer and the National Day of Reason.

I believe that perhaps everyday should be a day of prayer and reason especially when one investigates paranormal happenings.

Time has flown by and soon we will be hearing from our government as they have been urged to report what they know about UFO’s to congress.Due to the fact finding reporting that had been done at the New York Times we are now aware that there has been a decades long program that has been going on by the department of defense to investigate what are now being called U.A.P. which is unidentified aerial phenomena.

The Pentagon program has been conducting classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials, according to interviews with program participants and unclassified briefing documents.

In some cases, earthly explanations have been found for previously unexplained incidents. Even lacking a plausible terrestrial explanation does not make an extraterrestrial one the most likely, astrophysicists say.

Harry Reid, the former Democratic senator from Nevada who pushed for funding the earlier U.F.O. program when he was the majority leader, said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied.

No crash artifacts have been publicly produced for independent verification. Some retrieved objects, such as unusual metallic fragments, were later identified from laboratory studies as man-made.

Now we see a convenient about face with reports of machines that are not of this earth that are in possession of the United States Military.

There is no indication of how long the military has been in possession of such machines and why there has been a sustained cover-up when many governments have fully disclosed their positions on unidentified craft being of extraterrestrial origin.

However, everyday a new piece of the puzzle is being revealed.

Two weeks ago, investigative journalist George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell published multiple “leaked” photographs of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), along with a night-vision video which showed triangle-shaped (reported as “pyramid” shaped) objects in the sky. The story was that these visuals were collected by the “UAP Task Force,” which investigates encounters with unknown objects.

The Pentagon authenticated all the photographs and visuals from those two stories, and confirmed they were taken by Navy personnel. However, part of that confirmation seems to have been either walked back by the Pentagon, or at the very least, is the capstone of much unneeded confusion on the part of the Department of Defense (DOD). This confusion stems from unclear statements that were never clarified or corrected, despite numerous opportunities to do so.

Now we wait in anticipation as a highly-anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena is due to be released by the Director of the National Intelligence and the Department for Defense by June 1.

Lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee ordered Defense officials to explain the frequent sightings of strange flying objects spotted by military in the hope it will dispel some of the rumor and fear surrounding them.

In response, the CIA and the MOD in the United Kingdom began dumping documents which featured many UFO encounters and redacted papers about a myriad of unexplained phenomenon

There is also some other information about how disclosure was supposed to happen long ago but other events had gotten in the way of the announcement.

Ufologists have perpetual faith in the imminence of disclosure, a term where the government confesses that they have a profound knowledge that UFOs exist and that they are piloted by extraterrestrials.

The expected announcement was apparently postponed by the events of September 11th, the War on Terror, and the financial crisis.

President Obama was also pressured to announce the truth about UFO’s in 2011 under pressure form his constituents and Hillary Clinton stated that she would also disclose if she were elected president.

In that time it was announced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy that it could find no evidence to suggest that any “extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race.”

Since then, high-level officials have publicly conceded their bewilderment about U.A.P. without shame or apology. Last July, Senator Marco Rubio, the former acting chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke on CBS News about mysterious flying objects in restricted airspace. “We don’t know what it is,” he said, “and it isn’t ours.” In December, in a video interview with the economist Tyler Cowen, the former C.I.A. director John Brennan admitted, somewhat tortuously, that he didn’t quite know what to think: “Some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”

What is most interesting is that there was information released after the death of Prince Phillip that, believe it or not, has a connection to UFO’s and Disclosure.

Prince Philip was certainly a controversial and shadowy figure full . But amidst all these reminisces and eulogies that sometimes mention his love for polo, his inconvenient racist or sexist remarks, his alleged extra-marital affairs, or even the occasional trophy killing of a tiger in India, Prince Phillip had a fascination of UFOs and aliens.

According to Fortean Times Prince Philip spent decades amassing an impressive library of books related solely to the topic of flying saucers, and he event spent his last summer vacation reading a book about the famous Rendlesham incident. Also, according to his former personal assistant’s autobiography, the Duke regularly requested UFO witnesses to have private audiences with him at Buckingham palace.

Philip shared this enthusiasm with his equerry (an officer of the royal household), Sir Peter Horsley, who later became the deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force Strike Command. Shortly after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in the summer of 1953, Prince Philip reportedly gave Horsley the go-ahead to look into any credible accounts of alien encounters or UFO sightings.

“Prince Philip was open to the immense possibilities leading to space exploration, while at the same time not discounting that, just as we were on the fringe of breaking into space, so older civilizations in the universe might already have done so,” Horsley said, . He also admitted that the prince allowed him to invite several people to Buckingham Palace to talk about their extraterrestrial encounters. Apparently, Philip and Horsley thought this was “a method as effective as any truth serum,” and that nobody would talk BS in front of a member of the Royal Family.

It seems like Philip’s interest in unidentified flying… everything was encouraged by his uncle, Lord Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten . Mountbatten was also a Flying Saucer Review subscriber, and in 1950, he wrote a letter stating that whoever was piloting alien craft had to have come here from another planet. “Martians, Venusians, Jupeterians, or what have you,” he explained.

Why should life in another planet with entirely different conditions in any way resemble life on our planet? Their inhabitants might be ‘gaseous’ or circular or very large. They certainly don’t breathe, they may not have to eat and I doubt if they have babies — bits of their great discs may break away and grow into a new creature If the human race wishes to survive they may have to band together.”

In February 1955, Mountbatten typed up an official report about an alien encounter that a bricklayer named Fred Briggs reported experiencing on the grounds of Mountbatten’s country estate, Broadlands. In a statement that he gave to Mountbatten, Briggs said that he’d seen a large metallic grey object “hovering stationary” over the snow-covered ground.

While I was watching, a column, about the thickness of a man, descended from the center of the saucer and I suddenly noticed on it, what appeared to be a man, presumably standing on a small platform on the end,” he wrote. “He did not appear to be holding on to anything. He seemed to be dressed in a dark suit of overalls and was wearing a close-fitting hat or helmet.”

Briggs said that he and his bicycle were then knocked over and held to the ground by an “unseen force” as the craft flew off. In his report, Mountbatten wrote that he’d gone to the place where Briggs “saw the Flying Saucer” and was immediately convinced that it had really happened. “Mr. Briggs was still dazed when I first saw him and was worried that no one would believe his story,” Mountbatten wrote. “He has offered to swear to the truth of this statement on oath of the Bible, if needed, but I saw no point in asking him to do this.

In 1962, Mountbatten wrote to Lord Solly Zuckerman, the Ministry of Defense’s chief scientific adviser, asking for his opinion on alien spacecraft. The scientist responded that he put UFOs in the same category as ghosts and the Loch Ness Monster, because there was no evidence to prove that any of them actually exist. Shortly after that, Mountbatten said, he’d “gradually lost interest” in UFOs.

Prince Philip, though, never got over his alien obsession. According to Vanity Fair, last summer, he read a book about the Rendlesham Forest Incident, one of England’s most well-known UFO sightings. Philip’s private secretary reportedly wrote a letter to one of the book’s co-authors, telling him that “it will be read with close interest.” On another occasion, when Philip received a book called Haunted Skies: The Encyclopedia of British UFOs, his secretary responded that the Prince would “add this copy to his collection” and that the book “will make a most welcome addition to his library.”

If anything, Philip’s lifelong fascination with aliens just reinforces the fact that when the upper classes have unconventional beliefs, they are praised as “inquisitive” and “open-minded.” When people without country estates and household staff do it, they are “weird.”

Until relatively recently British government records on UFOs and related topics were not regarded as being worthy of permanent preservation. In 1967 MoD policy was to destroy UFO files at first review due to a perceived lack of public interest in the subject.

This policy was rescinded following a series of Parliamentary questions from Sir John Langford-Holt MP in 1968-1970. In response to further questions in the House of Lords during in April 1982 Viscount Lord said: ‘The earliest UFO reports retained by the MoD date back to 1962. Prior to 1967 such reports, like other routine papers, were destroyed after five years. The decision to retain the reports instead of destroying them was taken in response to increasing public interest in the subject.

As a result, the earliest UFO records held by The National Archives, from the first 20 years after WW2, are fragmentary but the papers that have survived provide a fascinating, if incomplete, record of British government interest in this issue. Since 1962.

Most but not all MoD UFO files have been preserved and reviewed for eventual transfer to The National Archives. This recommendation was formalized by the MoD in guidance issued to its record reviewers in 2011.

UFO records transferred for opening at The National Archives under the 30-year rule, established by the Public Records Act of 1967, include approximately 220 files covering the period 1950-1984. These include UFO related records created by the Ministry of Defense, the Foreign Office, the Meteorological Office and Cabinet Office. The most recent records from this series date from 1984 and were opened at The National Archives in 2006-7.

Later in 2007, the MoD announced their intention to transfer 160 of their remaining. records on UFOs to The National Archives. In 2005, in the first year following the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act the MoD received 199 requests for Information on UFOs. 140 requests were received in 2006 and 158 in the release of the files was in response to growing public interest in the topic and to ‘counter the maze of rumor and frequently ill-informed speculation that surrounds the role of the MoD in the UFO phenomena.

One of the first UFO files to be released by the Ministry of Defense under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information, the precursor of the FOIA, in 2001 was that containing papers on the famous Rendlesham Forest incident. This is often described by the media as “Britain’s Roswell.”

The sightings took place over two nights late in December 1980 at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, an airbase loaned to the USAF. Mysterious lights were seen to land in the forest beyond the perimeter of the base and a group of airmen went to investigate.

They reported seeing lights they were unable to identify moving through the trees. The next day marks were allegedly found on the ground and on trees in the forest where the men claimed the UFO had landed. Two nights later UFOs were again sighted from the base and the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt, took a team of handpicked men into the woods to investigate. During the expedition Halt saw several unidentified lights and made a live tape recording of the incident.

Early in January 1981, Halt produced an official report on the incidents, titled ‘Unexplained Lights’ that was sent to Defense Secretariat 8 at Whitehall.

British and American authorities had apparently audio taped and videotaped the whole event.

British tabloids were the first papers to report this remarkable story. The papers were spinning tales of alien encounters based upon an alleged account by Larry Warren. Larry Warren allegedly claimed that the next thing he remembered was that he awoke in his bunk with a headache with mud caked all the way up to his knees. Warren allegedly claimed that he was tested for exposure to radiation and was forced to sign a security oath.

Warren later supposedly broke his oath and claimed that he and others were shown high quality gun camera films of UFO’s shooting down MIG fighter jets. Warren said that the footage was very clear and showed a classic flying disc. Warren said that there is a point of missing time where during the investigation in the forest they were ordered to form a circle around the perimeter of the object.

Base Commander Colonel Gordon Williams then approached the object and a beam of light came down from the ship. Three silver suited beings came down out of the light. They were human looking with large heads and almond shaped eyes, the classic grey.

Colonel Williams denies that he was there. Others swear to it. They also say that the USAF personally assisted the beings in making repairs to their craft.

The whole incident was reported in tabloids as only lasting 30 minutes to an hour. When numerous accounts say that the whole event continued for a nightmarishly long 3-day period.

The only thing that remained was the shadows, the flash of red light and the separating craft. Not to mention the nightmare of meeting strange beings that conveniently didn’t end up on the tape. The tape that Colonel Halt made and the film footage covered several hours of the incident and only 18 minutes of the audiotape exists and the video footage was cloudy at best. The video footage allegedly was flown to West Germany’s Ramstein Air Force Base.

Col. Halt later went on to write a memo detailing what happened which he sent to the MOD but defense chiefs said the incident was of “no defense significance.”

The MoD stated it no longer investigated UFO reports adding: “All historic MOD files relating to UFO sightings, including Rendlesham Forest, have either been released, or are in the process of being released to The National Archives.”

Critics called it a “saucer wash” and secretly Prince Philip had an interest in this case – how odd that we learn all about this after his death.

Rendlesham Forest case is undoubtedly one of the best documented and most significant military encounters with a UFO. It is also very credible incident.

Prince Philip’s life was marked with privilege. Perhaps it is time to accept an uncomfortable truth, and acknowledge the fact that UFOs in the 21st century seem to be a privilege few people can afford to invest in. A privilege, because UFOs don’t directly affect the lives of most human beings, and the majority of people living on this planet are forced to be preoccupied with other worries.

This would explain why the ongoing trickle down disclosure about this subject really has not caught the imaginations of the average person.

I guess this is why we need an invasion – or a landing on the White House lawn before anyone takes notice that we are not alone.