The Gralien Report

Indeed, as the classic rhyme suggests, girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice.” Well, as it turns out, at least one of these may also be connected with the existence alien life in the distant cosmos. How, you might ask? The answer may lie in a specific sugar molecule, known for its association with life’s beginnings here on Earth, which was recently spotted “in a potentially habitable region of our galaxy.”

Wired News reported today that “The molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the less-chaotic outer regions of the Milky Way. This suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.” To read the complete Wired News article, click here.

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First it was “Bigfoot” seen in mid-stride dodging from behind a rock outcropping earlier this year… followed by speculation surrounding “Danish Mermaids” and finally giant “crudely drawn smiley faces” on the surface of Mars. Now, appearing in a NASA photograph dating back to late May of 2004, we see what looks almost like a “railroad plank” embedded in the red soil of the Martian landscape:

Also, here is a link to the entire panoramic view taken by the Mars rover Opportunity:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_navcam_180_cyp_L-B118R1_br.jpg

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Every now and then there are paranormal and phenomenological digests and compilations released that draw a bit more interest (and excitement) than your everyday ghost stories and strange tales. Such is the case with the extraordinary new Darklore Vol II, released courtesy of Greg Taylor, brains behind one of my favorite websites, the Daily Grail. Below is a direct link to the free PDF download:

http://www.dailygrail.com/PDF/DarkloreSampler.pdf

By making this free online version available, Greg hopes to sell more of the actual hard copies, and asserts that “the Darklore project aims to support good research and writing by passing profits back to the contributors on a royalty basis. So if you dig the sampler PDF, make sure you pick up a copy of our latest release from Amazon.” Via the link to Greg’s site below, you can access limited edition hardback and paperback editions at Amazon.com:

http://www.dailygrail.com/news/free-darklore-goodness

In addition to enjoying Greg’s writing, my pal Nick Redfern also contributed to this project. I encourage everyone to help support these fine authors!

From Houston, if one heads 200 miles or so eastbound into the Gulf of Mexico, eventually you’ll find yourself over one of the world’s deepest oil and gas developments. For weeks now among employees of the Shell oil company’s Perdido site, a rather odd video has been in circulation, filmed by one of their remote submersible’s cameras; a green, alien-like squid with arms more than four times the length of its body, each fitted with a joint similar to an elbow.

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While elsewhere in the world Pope Benedict XVI has recently decided to forgive John Lennon for famously saying the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” a new poll in England suggests that fewer people today believe in God than the number who express belief in the supernatural.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088824/Believe-God-Oh-But-I-swear-little-green-men-ghosts-mediums.html

“Believing in ghosts and little green men from outer space appears a touch easier than having faith in God,” the article says. “Researchers found that while 54 per cent of us are convinced the Almighty exists, 58 per cent believe in the supernatural.” The study, meant to coincide with the DVD release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, also seemed to reflect stronger tendencies among women to believe in the supernatural and visit mediums or psychics.

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Some interesting images are appearing online of what may be a UFO, photographed by a television news helicopter with ABC affiliate News 10 out of Sacramento, CA. You can read the complete story, as well as view the images, by clicking the link below:

http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=50924&catid=2

Thanks to Mobius for submitting this link.

Over at the website News Blaze, a recent letter to the editor was published which discussed a Technical Theory That Fits UFO Claims, Flight Behaviour and Rural Preference.

Essentially, the author of the letter suggests to News Blaze that extraterrestrial spacecraft use a propulsion system (more appropriately referred to as a “drive” system in this case) based on the Casimir Effect. This entails physical forces arising from a quantized field, typically in the presence of two metal plates spaced very closely together. A good setup for this would include the two uncharged metallic plates together in a vacuum, placed only micrometers apart (as the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance), without any external electromagnetic field. The effect was first discovered by Casimir Polder in 1948, though it was later measured more accurately in 1997 by Steve K. Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory and by Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy of the University of California at Riverside.

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Recently on the Gralien Report I discussed briefly my interest in unconventional cryptozoology, that is, the study of strange beasties that fall outside the typical ranks of our Bigfoot, Yetis, and Loch Ness Monsters. Many may consider creatures like Chupacabras to be less conventional cousins to the classic cryptids, seeing as how they, along with Keel’s Mothman, border more on the realm of interdimensional “alien oddities” than biological organisms as we know them. However, setting aside all these well-known creatures for a moment, I’d like to shift my focus to an all time favorite of mine in the annals of Fortean mysteries which, if what existing evidence suggests is accurate, points to a monstrosity somewhere beneath our oceans that might rival J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield monster. Sadly, whatever this thing may be, it couldn’t be afforded an awesome name like Project Cloverfield, Kraken, Godzilla, or even Cthulhu (which, for reasons we’ll soon explore, this creature may resemble most). Instead, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers that first recorded its haunting cries affectionately dubbed it “Bloop”.

The story is a strange one, which involves left over deep-sea Cold War technology from the 1960s, later used by NOAA again during the late 1990s. On several occasions during the summer of 1997, an array of hydrophones moored at a depth referred to as the “deep-sound channel” below the Pacific Ocean were able to record a variety of ultra-low frequency noises which, to this day, have yet to be identified. One particular audio sample became an article of interest among researchers who heard it due to its whale-like characteristics, though in order to be made audible, the recording was sped up 16 times, causing it to take on a short, rounded bubbling sound. Hence the name “Bloop” was given to the strange sample, which you can listen to by clicking here.

ABOVE: A Spectrographic image of the “Bloop” audio, courtesy of NOAA.

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With all the UFO activity taking place in 2008 (as well as a few harrowing incidents involving Bigfoot and the like… need  I say more), I’ve not featured many articles that deal with conventional cryptozoology on The Gralien Report the majority of this year. If anything, one might scoff at the notion of cryptozoology being anything close to “conventional”, but what I refer to with this statement specifically has to do with creatures like Bigfoot, Yeti, Africa’s Mokele M’bembe and, other mystery animals around the world. Unconventional cryptozoological topics might refer to a couple of favorites of mine; namely “humanzees”, which, though more of a genetic alteration that could just as easily have to do with conspiracy theories, are nonetheless animal-like, and are mysterious without question. Another favorite is ”Bloop”, a strange noise recorded by NOAA using Cold-War era deep-sea hydrophones in the mid 1990’s. The acoustic hallmark of the sound indicated what could be an animal beneath the Pacific ocean “larger than a Blue Whale” (I plan to do an updated Gralien Report piece on this subject very soon; for more, check out my article in FATE Magazine from March ‘07, called Apocalypse at Sea).

But in keeping with this theme of unconventional Cryptozoology, today I’ve got to tip my hat to my pal Nick Redfern and one of his latest projects, as described over at his blog There’s Something in the Woods… :

http://monsterusa.blogspot.com/2008/11/mysteries-of-loch.html

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A while back, I had begun working on an article that dealt with some of the more extraordinary (and in some cases, even paranormal) aspects of James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s career with British Intelligence Services during World War II. As most who have read the novels or studied James Bond’s history otherwise may know, many of Fleming’s experiences in real life later inspired the adventures of the world’s most famous secret agent. The article, however, was never published; therefore, I felt it was perhaps a good time, along with the release of Quantum of Solace in theaters, to present for the first time my original tribute to the 007’s classy creator. As the name implies, the following article, 007 and 666: A True Tale of Spies and Sorcery, is indeed based on real events that lead to the capture of the infamous Nazi Rudolph Hess. With a cast of characters that includes Maxwell Knight (then Fleming’s superior officer in MI5), the notorious Aleister Crowley, and Fleming himself, it is by far one of the oddest tales ever to stem from the annals of history.

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“All is fair in love and war,” the saying goes. We measure this statement by the amount of dirt that finally comes to light several years, if not decades, after any given plot in military or political history, especially those that leave behind the most unanswered questions. Yet between the extremities of love and war lie stranger truths, some so odd, so alien that they bring new meaning to the expression. Surely, during no greater a moment than the blind urgency of wartime could those in authority ultimately resort to the truly strange, hoping to wring resolution out of desperate chaos.

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