The Gralien Report

Although there have been some fairly unsavory things being said of the recent alien abduction flick The Fourth Kind, another film released only last weekend, The Men Who Stare At Goats, seems to have received a little more positivity from audiences and, namely, anomalists abroad.

But what of “real” remote viewing and use of the mind in ways that may help law enforcement, national security, and a host of other wholesome patriotic endeavors? In the video below, Mike Webster, one of Britain’s leading professional remote viewers, describes his job as “perceiving people, places or events that are separated from the viewer by distance or time”, for investigations funded by agencies including police forces and private businesses in Britain and America:

The reality of Remote Viewing may be somewhat less glamorous than the movies depict, but nonetheless fascinating.

Ever wish you could read somebody’s mind? Better yet, ever think it would be nifty (or terrifying, on the other hand) to be able to both read and receive telepathic communication, directly via “brain to brain” interface? Now, science has helped bring us one step closer to doing so in a practical way that incorporates binary coding and existing EEG technology.

True, this isn’t exactly “new” technology (for instance, DARPA ihas planned to use this sort of technology to aid in developing prosthetic limbs that are movable in response to to neural commands). However, in this next step in utilizing mechanical benefits from the technology’s practical application, Dr. Christopher James at the University of Southampton has used BCI (brain-computer interface) to illustrate how people can communicate with what he dubs “true brain-to-brain interfacing.”

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Last night, my friend and associate Joshua P. Warren discussed two separate lists he and I recently concocted which describe our top five scariest cryptid monsters on the late-night radio program Coast to Coast AM. Surprisingly, only two creatures made both lists: the flying “Batsquatch” of Mount Rainer, Washington, and the vile demonic serial-rapist “Popobawa” of Zanzibar, the latter of the two ranking first-place on both of our round-ups.

Chalked up by psychologists to be a mass-hallucination stemming from social unrest in the affected regions of Zanzibar and Tanzania, locals who have encountered the horrific Popobawa—described as being a humanoid entity with wings and large male genitalia—would argue otherwise. Terrifying reports, often made buy male members of the community, detail sexual assaults where the creature warns them that it will return if they don’t share their the details of their encounter with others.

Having studied the Popobawa literature profusely, today I was shocked to read about recent reports stemming from Kuala Lumpur of what is being described as a “horny ghost”, which in local Malay culture is called an orang minyak (similar in spelling to the cryptid animal Orang Pendak, a Sumatran Bigfoot-like creature). The entity has spent the last week accosting close to 300 families in the Sungai Petani area, and unlike Popobawa’s preference for male victims, Orang Minyak is alleged to be picking homes where there are young women.

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According to Ben Goertzel, chair of the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute, “The internet behaves a fair bit like a mind (and) it might already have a degree of consciousness”.

Could the net become self-aware?

Consciousness and artificial intelligence have long been an area of fascination for Francis Heylighen, who studies at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. Heylighen speculates how the internet may be capable, in some way or another, of becoming “a self-aware network that constantly strives to become better at what it does, re-organizing itself and filling gaps in its own knowledge and abilities.” This, essentially, suggests a pattern of organization similar to our understanding of what consciousness is.

Especially in film, extensions of people’s fears of machines becoming self-aware has been showcased in such futuristic thrillers as the Terminator series. In these films, a computer system called Skynet activates legions of robotic militants hell-bent on exterminating the human race. Similarly, mechanical jellyfish captors are the fiends who have enslaved mankind in pink bubbles of slime in the popular Matrix trilogy. And let us not forget Arthur C. Clark’s visionary work; going back a little further we see HAL from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, getting his feelings hurt after exhibiting his lip-reading prowess, only to try and kill protagonist Dave and the other astronauts in a manned Jupiter mission.

In spite of their superhuman abilities, one thing that these apocalyptic robotic villains did seem to lack was precognition; and yet it seems hardly surprising that scientists and economists alike are already tapping the Internet’s apparent abilities to “see the future” in an effort to predict trends in the global economy.

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You’ve probably heard of “phantom limb” syndrome, or even the bizarre “idle hand” disorder, a neurological disorder where one’s hand may seem to act independently of it’s owner. However, what about “Supernatural Phantom Limb” disorder? According tothe Swiss news source Swissinfo.ch, a 64-year-old woman now reports to doctors at a hospital in Geneva that a “milky white” third arm exists, which she is able to “manifest” to perform tasks like scratch itches on various parts of her body.

Doctors who have examined the patient call this “the first case known to doctors of a person being able to feel, see and deliberately move a limb that doesn’t exist.” But how are they sure that, at least to the patient, the limb does indeed exist?  Apparently so… and the results of this experiment thus-far are astounding.

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Seldom have writers of Americana had a greater influence on history, culture, politics, and literature than in the case of one Samuel Clemens, better known by his tounge-in-cheek pen name; Mark Twain. Clemens had a fiery wit and and uncompromising since of truth and realism, and at times he was even looked upon with scorn for his “tooth and claw” style of literary criticism. Nonetheless, his place as one of the best loved of all American writers can’t be questioned, and his slightly aloof, even eccentric ways helped create the model American that many revered him to be.

What is collectively less well-known about Twain is his involvement with the mystical things that sometimes reach from beyond, touching those of us who, perhaps by way of magic… or more likely mere circumstance, tend to play against the fates and influence our lives.

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Yesterday, every major news outlet had something to say about Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Whether it was those advocating Mr. Jindal being groomed for running on the Republican ticket for Presidency in 2012, or more likely, the number of articles and commentary which compared him to a robot due to his stiff, emotionless banter after President Obama’s address to Congress, Jindal is arguably one of the most popular men in America today. What is far less popular about Jindal, however, is a true encounter he claims to have had with a “demon”, which he believes had possessed a female friend of his while they attended college together decades ago.

Raised in the Hindu tradition, Jindal later read the Bible, saying “I saw myself in many of the parables and felt as if the Bible had been written especially for me. After reading every book I could find on the historical accuracy of the Bible and Christianity, I was convinced that the Bible had remained unaltered throughout the centuries and that circumstances surrounding Christ’s death led to the conversions of thousands.” Slowly but surely, Jindal began to renounce the faith of his family, heading instead down a long, emotionally-trying conversion to Catholicism.

It was during his years in College at Brown University that Jindal stumbled into an encounter which ultimately led to his full conversion to Christianity, though under the most bizarre circumstances imaginable. The story involves a close friend of the future Louisiana governor, whom he refers to using the name “Susan.” Susan had begun to act strangely, and Jindal invited her to a Christian concert, from which he noticed her leaving early. After following her outside, he found her crying, a circumstance about which the governor shares the following:

“Since we had been very careful to avoid any form of physical contact in our friendship, I was not sure how to respond. My inaction and her sobs produced a very awkward situation.”

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The notion that something from within our bodies could be considered an illegal substance seems rather odd to me. However, this is very much the case with the powerful drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), active ingredient in the mysterious shamanic ayahuasca tea used by native cultures around the world for vision quests, which also happens to be found in the human body.

The catch is that we don’t know exactly where the DMT is created, though pioneering psychedelics researcher Dr. Rick Strassman has suggested that, in theory, the stuff could be produced within the human pineal gland, which Renee Descartes famously proposed “was the point of mediation between the material body and the immaterial soul.” In the realms of both fact and fiction, the pineal gland has occasionally played an important role with regard to man’s supposed innate abilities to “unlock” psychic powers from within, allowing us to perceive distant worlds which, to the naked senses in our typical day-to-day state of mind, remain hidden. H.P. Lovecraft’s maniacal character Crawford Tillinghast from the short story From Beyond described it as such:

You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian. That gland is the great sense organ of organs – I have found out. It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it… I mean get most of the evidence from beyond.

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The UK-based Sun reported today that an odd-looking “grid-like” structure has been discovered on the ocean floor nearly 620 miles West of the Canary islands at a depth of 3.5 miles. The images, obtained by Google Ocean (see above), have led to speculation that this could be the location of the long-sunken city of Atlantis. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking back on 2008, it could be argued that we had an exceptionally strange year.

Of course, this notion might have an awful lot to do with who you’re asking, but historically, economically, and scientifically there were many events which certainly could be considered landmarks by just about anyone.

Of course, the election of our first African-American president Barack Obama will be near the top of the list. But is there anything strange or anomalous about this per say? Not surprisingly, there could be indeed. Many of the popular conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh have had a great time this year referencing Obama as “The Messiah” due to his “messianic stature and devoted followers”. For the most part, this has all been mere sarcasm, although there have been reports of “orbs”, the popular photographic anomalies most often associated with ghostly activity, photographed over various rallies prior to the election.

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