In Search of Aliens: The Mystery of Loch Ness

Giorgio interviews Nessie to get her opinion on the ancient astronaut question!

Giorgio Tsoukalos' latest adventure is another old tale, like his Atlantis expedition.  However, this time, I really liked it.  Just like Atlantis, I have been reading about Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster, for well near forty years.  I've also seen numerous television shows about it.  Unlike Atlantis though, Nessie has been and remains one of my favorite topics!

Giorgio arrives at the shore of Loch Ness and meets Steve Feltham, one of the monster hunters who used to infest the shores of Loch Ness back in the 1960s and 1970s.  Feltham's own vigil began in 1991, long after Rhines, Holliday, and the other monster hunters had all gone.  In a way, Feltham, living out of a tiny trailer on the shore, made Giorgio seem quite normal and totally sensible while he sat on the edge of the loch and made replicas of Nessie to pay for his expedition. 

Sonar evidence is considered although nothing is mentioned of Operation Deepscan back in the 1980s.  

Adrian Shine is still around and Giorgio actually met him.  Shine was once a monster hunter but long ago turned disbeliever and has been a Nessie debunker ever since.   Shine didn't get a chance to debate with Giorgio or anyone else about the veracity of the monster but I know that Shine has argued that there isn't enough fish to support a breeding population of aquatic monster the size of what Nessie is supposed to be.

The surgeon's photograph came up and Giorgio was forced to admit that it was a hoax.  This was a terrible blow to me as well.  Not only because it was a hoax but this one incident was enough to make the whole subject a laughing stalk, not to be taken seriously again.

In fact, very little of the show occurs at Loch Ness, as Giorgio soon returns to the United States and spends the rest of the show talking about Champ, the creature of Lake Champlain.  He views a picture that supposedly has not been debunked or revealed as a fake and interviews a few people.

Trying to tie it all back to hunting aliens, Giorgio supposes that people in olden times might have been mistaking UFOs (or USOs) hiding under lakes as water creatures or monsters.  Also, he interviews a scientist who speculates that the quartz in the earth, present at Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, may in some way make a time tunnel or distortion, allowing visions or actual creatures of the distant past through for a moment, to be seen and vanish.   This is actually not a new idea and is what Rev. Donald Omand thought was going on at Loch Ness; that people were seeing psychical "recordings" of ancient things and that seeing these things was spiritually dangerous.  He tried to exorcise the Loch back in 1973.

Tsoukalos keeps mentioning cryptids and cryptozoology during this episode and I think that's what this is really about.  He does not say anything about the monsters being brought here by aliens or anything like that.  Seems that if something is going on in Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, Giorgio thinks it is time distortions.

All in all, a very good episode which I enjoyed, mainly because it was about one of my all time favorite topics from when I was a kid: The Loch Ness Monster.  Hopefully, Giorgio finds more original and current things to go after though.  As much as Atlantis and Loch Ness are part of our folklore and mythology, they've really been covered hundreds of times in books and television shows.  Getting Tsoukalos' take on these things is interesting, but he needs to branch off on his own, to really go... In Search of Aliens!

Atlantis calling! Atlantis calling!

Just sit right back and hear a tale...

I totally forgot to say something about Giorgio Tsoukalos's first episode of "In Search of Aliens."  It was called "The Hunt for Atlantis."  There's probably a good reason for this.  As much as I love to watch Giorgio, I was probably trying hard to stay awake.

I've been reading about Atlantis for very nearly forty years, either in books or articles in books.  I've also watched countless documentaries and television programs about it.   For me, Atlantis is a very old, very dead, and very well beaten horse.  I guess that's my problem for being an ancient! :-)

Still, when I saw the title of the first ever program starring Giorgio, I rolled my eyes.  Atlantis?!?  Really?!?  But that's just because, for me, its a topic more overplayed than a Phil Collins song. 

Still, the episode itself is very good.  Giorgio has a lot of energy and seems to really believe in what he's doing.  Hey, if I could be paid to travel the world and babble about aliens and 'ancient mysteries', I'd probably be pretty happy too!  Giorgio's take on Atlantis is that it was in the southwestern Iberian peninsula.  A variant on the 'Tartessos' theory that Atlantis was one of the ancient kingdoms in the region that would later be Spain and Portugal.   

Well, Giorgio ends up thinking that Atlantis itself may have been some sort of alien base on Earth.   It wasn't destroyed so much as left (cue MIB scene "No, Elvis is not dead, he just went home!)  

I enjoyed the program although I probably know as much, if not more, of the various how/who/where/when/what theories of Atlantis than even Tsoukalos himself.   I think that, if Atlantis did exist, it was an ice-age or post-ice age civilization contemporaneous with the builders of Gobeckli Tepe.  If it was anything more than a pure invention of Plato, it could be a distant memory of a prior civilization, probably totally built up by Plato in the telling.  

Ancient Aliens: The Tesla Experiment

Last week's Ancient Aliens program focused totally on the life and character of Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor of the late 19th and early 20th century.  

It was rather a good show.  They did not stray too far into the realms of fantasy and really did not even say that Tesla was given his information by aliens; although he could have been influenced by them in some way.  They didn't even mention the usual theory that Tesla could have been an 'avatar' or 'plant' put upon the world by the aliens to advance human knowledge.  Well, maybe one guy mentioned that, but this week, Ancient Aliens pretty much stuck to the book.

I suppose too much is known about Nikola Tesla and too much of what did happen is wild enough (truth stranger than fiction) without the necessity for grey aliens doing morally shaky and ethically unsound things with Tesla or his mother (before his birth). 

The Tesla Experiment didn't even mention the theory that Tesla could have inadvertently caused the Tunguska Explosion (something he's been accused of).  Supposedly he did get his transmission of power through the air working though, although the way that AA made it sound, it was more transmission through the ground to light bulbs put into the earth along a path.  Other bizarre and strange Tesla stories that I have heard were absent; AA kept to the books and mainly just talked about his actual achievements. 

Tesla's later years were only lightly touched on when, like Howard Hughes, Tesla spend his final years a virtual recluse and seemingly mad as a hatter.

All in all, a very interesting outing for Ancient Aliens.  A good episode to watch if you are new to Nikola Tesla.  Its practically a documentary of his life with only a few 'out there' frills thrown in at the edges.

Book Review: The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin

Is he playing pool with planets?

 Sitchin's theory reminds me of an episode of the British comedy "Red Dwarf" where Dave Lister (the main character) causes one planet to hit another to fill in a white hole (using the interface of a pool table shot to do it). Only, Marduk/Nibiru's shot was a glancing shot that shot Earth into orbit, caused the asteroid belt and (to borrow again from Red Dwarf) "shot Marduk off the table and into someone's pint of beer."

I love reading about phenomenology, the occult, the paranormal, ancient astronauts, etc. However Sitchin is just a little bit too far for my tastes. And I think I know why. Born in the early part of the 20th century, Sitchin's "scientific" terminology and knowledge is just too dated for modern readers. Anyone with even a nodding education in physics or astronomy knows that his theories are ludicrous. But its not so much that Sitchin is an idiot but that he is a product of his times. Its like the 19th century physicists or modern occults use of the term "magnetism." It doesn't mean what the modern scientific definition of magnetism is. This is how Sitchin is with terminology like "radiation." I do not think Sitchin means the same thing that we, in the post-atomic age, know as radiation (visible light, gamma radiation, microwaves, the spectrum, etc etc).

Indeed, Sitchin has that quaint early 20th century idea that all radiation is good radiation. Nibiru didn't need the sun in the depths of space because it had its own "radiation" to keep it warm (kind of like a microwave!). I guess Sitchin never heard that, except for a very narrow band, most radiation is very very bad for organic life.

Wrapping your head around Sitchin's cosmology isn't just a stretch, its a rip. But if I was going to try, I'd say the closest anyone else has ever got to Sitchin's idea for Nibiru was Brian Aldiss' "Helliconia" series which postulates a planet with extreme climactic eras because of being in a double sun system. Could Nibiru's radiation keep something warm for 2,000 years of deep space? Oh sure, I can imagine silicon based lifeforms that could be bathed in microwave radiation like we sunbathe... make a good episode of Doctor Who, I bet!

Book Review: The Ancient Alien Question by Philip Coppens

The Ancient Goblin Universe

Unfortunately, Philip Coppens passed away last year. I always enjoyed seeing him on "Ancient Aliens" as he seemed to be well spoken and rather level-headed. His book really bares that out as well. While writing about the "Ancient Alien Question" which many might find nonsensical, the realms of fantasy, Coppens approaches his subject very calmly. He does not rant and rave but builds up his case, talking about Carl Sagan's book "Contact" proves to be a 'Chekhov's gun' for his conclusions in the end.

His conclusions are equally as surprising and interesting. There have been many writers I have read that feel that any phenomenology around us is caused by invisible intelligences that have always been around. John Michael Greer writes of magickal or occult intelligences from different levels of being (that we mistake as UFO aliens). For John Keel and Ted Holliday, monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster are either spiritual remnants or evil demonic beings who wish us harm.

Coppens comes down in a similar belief in his conclusion. While it is possible that aliens have physically been here on planet earth, he is skeptical of it. Of all the thousands of reports, he feels it could have happened only about four times and only then accidentally. Coopens does not think any aliens came here to mine our planet or genetically engineer us. However, Coppens theory is that there have been frequent non-physical contacts with "alien" intelligences throughout time. Either through shamans or ceremonies or accidentally through the use of various ceremonies and drugs, people have contacted extra-dimensional beings, or perhaps just aliens on their own worlds. This is where any "ancient alien" influences on ancient civilizations occurred. Its a theory I have seen in UFO and Cryptological literature frequently but this is the first time I have encountered it in regards to the Ancient Alien Theory.

Raiders of the Lost Nazis

Giorgio Tsoukalos' second venture "In Search of Aliens" takes an unfortunate turn into Nazi-UFO mythology in his second episode "Nazi Time Travelers."  The stories and theories presented are old hat and regurgitated old stories which interested parties such as myself have heard before.   Presented as truth now is Jan Van Helsing's story of the Bavaria UFO crash in the mid 1930s, a Nazi Roswell.  Van Helsing, either a neo-nazi anti-Semite, or just a crazy but harmless conspiracy theorist, depending on who you listen to, is hardly a trusted granite source of information.

I say again that this venture into Nazism is unfortunate.  Now, I seriously doubt Tsoukalos is a crypto-nazi or that the people he interviews are neo-nazis of some stripe.  I very much doubt that the History Channel would broadcast neo-nazi revisionism.  And I do not want to believe Giorgio has any sympathy with them.

It has now been many decades since the Nazi era.  Over seventy years!  Most of the people alive to witness the events are dead now.  So it is only understandable, I guess, to begin to drift into story, fable, and the recreation of history, mythologizing many of the events.  This is a standard historical effect.  For many people, including some very deluded people, the Nazi era is a time of cool uniforms, awesome panzers, big armies conquering certain hated enemies, awesome technological wizz-bangs, and a time when one man 'stood up bravely' against the people he hated and despised (Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill depending on your side).   World War II was as historically complex as any other time but for many, pro-Nazi and pro-Allies, it was seemingly a very cut and dried, black and white time.  A time when it was easy to take sides, a battle of good versus evil (and that is relative to which side you were on of course).

As Jacques Peretti said in Hitler: The Comedy Years, all the movies about world war II in the post-war period wanted to record all the nostalgia that people had about the war sans the "horrible bit we found out about at the end" (the death camps and the holocaust). 

However, I have read widely on Nazism and their connection to the occult, and on the current Neo-Nazi movements.  One particular author that directly addresses the problems arising from something like this show's enshrining of Nazi science is the late Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.  Other authors I have read on Nazi fringe matters include Dusty Skylar and Peter Levenda, among others.

The danger of shows like this, is that it mystifies and romanticizes the Nazis.  These tales of vimanas and Die Glockes and secret Nazi achievements.  Talking so much about Nazis like this, divorced of the fact of their terror and oppression, their genocide, dehistoricizes them.  It makes them into a caricature that, while scary or even desired, is not really all that bad.  Just some tough guys in cool black uniforms that tried to invent anti-gravity drive, after all.   The effect of a show like this is to attempt to erase the evil legacy and bad memory of the Third Reich and all they stood for.

For instance, during Giorgio's interviews, even he mentions that prisoners of war would have been used to create "The Henge" and the supposed secret bases, but no mention of how many thousands died doing projects like this around Germany.  He mentions that hundreds of tons of coal had been brought into a certain area of Poland without mentioning who would have been doing the transporting and at what horrible human cost. 


Another danger of making shows mystifying the Nazis is that it does indeed recreate Nazism for a new generation of Neo-Nazis.  Neo-Nazi intellectual sources such as Savatri Devi and Julis Evola did quite a bit of work in this area after the war, rewriting the Nazi 'narrative' to try and make them more heroic, more honorable, and more of what all white people should have joined with.   Such people do not need the help of UFO mythology to further remake Nazism into something that it was not, and make it into a springboard for further murder, destruction, and terror. 

I would heartily recommend that UFO researchers read Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as a beginning point to learn how dangerous it is to make heroes of the Nazis based on mythology and false history.  Unless of course, that's the effect the creators of this program were looking for, then I have a quite different suggestion for them...

Ancient Aliens: The Reptoids!

The latest Ancient Aliens show was about the reptoids.  Ah the reptoids.  You have to be careful with this topic because it easily slips off into Looneyland Central.  Indeed, they dared to have David Icke on the program!  I'm sure they had one finger on the panic button to cut off the video with him!  

For those that don't know about David Icke... well, hang on a minute.  Talking about the Reptilians can get dicey as this is one area that has really been hijacked by very occult and para-religious beliefs from the standard UFO community.  

The aforementioned David Icke believes that the world's leaders are shape-shifting lizard people like in the old TV miniseries "V."  If you could run up to the Queen of England and tear at her face, she'd be a lizard underneath, so says David Icke.  I really wouldn't recommend trying that trick though. 

Other even more strange viewpoints have the reptilians as demonic creatures either from space, other planes of existence, or hell itself, here to eat our bodies and souls.  

But Ancient Aliens walked the 'mainstream' of the UFO/Ancient Aliens community and simply postulated that the reptilians may have evolved here from something like the Dinosauroid of Dale Russel (1982), or that they were the Annunaki of Zecharia Sitchin.

What's interesting is that Ancient Aliens traced the cultural beginning of tales of reptoids and reptilians to the early 1980s.  The reptoid 'expert' interviewed mentioned that before the early 1980s, abduction and encounter stories mainly mentioned the Greys and the Nordics of the 1950s.  Cultural references to reptilian humanoids were practically nil, says this expert.

This isn't quite so.  The idea of lizard-like aliens was in the mainstream of culture and television long before this!  There was the Gorn of Star Trek (TOS) sometime in 1968 to 1969.  At about the same time, the Silurians were introduced on Doctor Who, portrayed as intelligent dinosaurs who had gone dormant after the asteroid strike or whatever.  Unfortunately their alarm clocks did not go off and they woke up millions of years too late to find their planet overrun by screaming nubile blonde companions, gun toting brigadiers, and time lords wearing velvet and frilly shirts.  O the Lizardanity!

The current status of the reptoids is too occult and strays far too far into demonology for any casual or noobie UFO/Aliens fan to really feel comfortable with.  At least that's how I see it.  I can't say that I "believe" in the reptoids because it seems that you have to buy into the part they don't mention in Ancient Aliens, the demonic here-to-devour-our-souls type of beliefs, as well as the para-religious occult-like viewpoints of people that goes along with that. 

Oh, and the hints in some of Icke's writings, and others, that not only some world leaders are lizards under the skin, but that a certain group of people that have been targeted before with strange tales of how evil they really are, are really the lizard people.   That's really getting into naughty and keep-out territory for me.  Seinfield an evil lizard alien?  Well, I bet he'd get some good ideas for jokes from that accusation!

Aliens!

Giorgio Tsoukalos, famous from the show "Ancient Aliens" is getting his own show "In Search of Aliens."  I wonder if they got the OK from that old "In Search of" show that starred Leonard Nimoy?

Anyway, I enjoy watching Ancient Aliens as I am into all sorts of paranormal topics.  However, when it comes right down to it, I really don't think there were ancient aliens.

Now, previous Ice Age civilizations that rose and fell before our recorded history, I think that could be a possibility.  In fact, after certain anomalous finds such as the antikythera device and Gobeckli Tepe, I think there was a prior high level of civilization in the world that was probably wiped out at the end of the last ice age when ocean levels rose over 300 feet.  

I don't think that these prior civilizations were all that advanced either.  One argument against is that if they were at our technological era, we'd find remains of metals and materials that could only be made by a technologically advanced society such as plastic and Styrofoam and their equivalent of Twinkies.

So, even if there had been ice age civilizations, I think they probably didn't get too far.  Probably on level with our "dark ages" when there was little material sophistication but surprisingly advanced trade and travel going on.  Ivory from elephants has been found in Anglo-Saxon burials from the 4th century, so things from all over the world could get swapped around even by the earliest civilizations.   And the early Anglo-Saxons were doing this (even getting amber from the Baltic) without a written language either.  The argument that no written inscriptions at Gobeckli Tepe mean it was an isolated and primitive civilization is no proof.  

Well, that's what I think anyway.  As neither dogmatic science or I, an armchair theorist of weird theories, can ever be proved right or wrong, its all just so much speculation.