Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a U.S.-led, international team of scientists has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice. "Working cooperatively in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, all the while working in temperatures that averaged -30 degrees Celsius, our seven-nation team has produced detailed images of last unexplored mountain range on Earth," said Michael Studinger, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the co-leader of the U.S. portion of the Antarctica's Gamburstev Province (AGAP) project. "As our two survey aircraft flew over the flat white ice sheet, the instrumentation revealed a remarkably rugged terrain with deeply etched valleys and very steep mountain peaks." The National Science Foundation (NSF), in its role as manager of the U.S. Antarctic Program, provided much of the complex logistical support that made the discoveries possible. NSF also supported U.S. researchers from Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology (IRIS). The initial AGAP findings -- based on both the aerogeophysical surveys and on data from a network of seismic sensors deployed as part of the project -- while extremely exciting, also raise additional questions about the role of the Gamburtsevs in birthing the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which extends over more than 10 million square kilometers atop the bedrock of Antarctica, said geophysicist Fausto Ferraccioli, of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who led the U.K. science team. "We now know that not only are the mountains the size of the European Alps but they also have similar peaks and valleys," he said. "But this adds even more mystery about how the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet formed." He added that "if the ice sheet grew slowly then we would expect to see the mountains eroded into a plateau shape. But the presence of peaks and valleys could suggest that the ice sheet formed quickly -- we just don't know. Our big challenge now is to dive into the data to get a better understanding of what happened" millions of years ago.

The AGAP survey area covered roughly 2 million square kilometers of the ice sheet. The initial data also appear to confirm earlier findings that a vast aquatic system of lakes and rivers exists beneath the ice sheet of Antarctica, a continent that is the size of the U.S. and Mexico combined. "The temperatures at our camps hovered around -30 degrees Celsius, but three kilometers beneath us at the bottom of the ice sheet we saw liquid water in the valleys," said AGAP U.S. Co-leader Robin Bell, also of Lamont Doherty. "The radar mounted on the wings of the aircraft transmitted energy through the thick ice and let us know that it was much warmer at the base of the ice sheet." The AGAP data will help scientists to determine the origin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Gamburtsevs' role in it. It will also help them to understand the role the subglacial aquatic system plays in the dynamics of ice sheets, which will, in turn, help reduce scientific uncertainties in predictions of potential future sea level rise. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that it is difficult to predict how much the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to sea-level rise because so little is known about the behavior of the ice sheets.

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Myths, mysteries and urban legends are plentifull just about everywhere, and some pieces of the country are particularly odd - like Nevada housing Area 51. Few paranormal cases are three dimensional or physical by description, as opposed to the more common apparition sightings and EVP captures. West Virginia has its Mothman creature from 1966 to 1967, something looking like a man, but with moth-like wings and large reflective red eyes. Arkansas has the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot type creature seen in and around Fouke, Arkansas, since the 1950s - immortalized in the 1972 docudrama, Legend of Boggy Creek.

More paranormal cases involving seemingly physical things include what we commonly know as cattle mutilations - possibly traced back to the Snippy the Horse mutilation from Sept. 7, 1967, in Colorado. While cattle seem to be the current choice of mutilations, other animals have had their day in paranormal history. A most recent case, also from Colorado, was investigated by fellow Paranormal Science Examiner Alejandro Rojas in a series of stories.

While this list of physical cases is not exhaustive, my final example is the mysterious Thunderbird - gigantic birds with huge wing spans and enormous lifting power - including the ability to pick up and snatch a human off of the ground.

Paranormal Invasion

But Pennsylvania battled a mysterious two-fold paranormal invasion there from 1973 to 1974 that baffled many police agencies. The bizarre activity was so strong and so frightening, that at one point during its peak, local investigators actually feared further escalation.

In the early 70s, UFOs did not receive much mainstream attention - the ridicule factor hung tight and most news flowed from fringe magazines or stuffy research journals. The Bigfoot creature was extended an even more remote space in American media, popping up in occasional fiction and other places very clear of mainstream.

Ufologist Stan Gordon, of Greensburg, PA, studied and tracked the UFO phenomena since the late 60s, not long after the UFO crash at Kecksburg on Dec. 9, 1965, a short drive from his hometown. Now a young man in his 20s by 1973, Gordon was known to police agencies as the go-to guy for UFO reports, and he had set up his radio room and research center at his home.

The first calls into his UFO Hotline were just that - UFO reports. But soon the UFO reports began to increase - and increase rapidly. He had to expand his team. And then the second wave hit.

Calls began to come in describing a large, hairy beast with glowing red eyes - a typical description of the Bigfoot creature. Even the police agencies sent the Bigfoot calls his way. If they did know what to do with a UFO report, it was clear they were unsure how to investigate a Bigfoot sighting.

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Sloping slightly sideways on the grassy hills beneath the Ranu Raraku volcano, a giant stone head known as a moai shows the wear and tear of time on this triangular 64-square-mile island.On the right side of the oblong rectangular face with male features, the rock is lighter in color and its long, carefully sculpted ear and nostril are clearly visible. But on the statue's left side, the sun and wind have eroded the nose, lip and ear."The moai are dying by natural causes," said archaeologist Sergio Rapu, a lifelong researcher of this isolated South Pacific island of hills and extinct volcanoes also known as Rapa Nui. "The prehistoric Rapa Nui people noted it would take 300 to 400 years for the statues to become completely eroded."Such predictions loom bleak for the island's nearly 1,000 signature moai statues, as the constant battering of erosion and rain is slowly eating away at the island's porous volcanic stone.Easter Island is among the world's most isolated inhabited islands with about 4,000 inhabitants. It lies 2,237 miles west of Chile, which annexed the island in 1888. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Rapu said erosion can be stopped by using chemical resins that seal the stone, as well as stabilizing the ahu, or altar platforms that support some of the moai, many of which are slowly falling into the ocean. But that would be costly, he said. Archaeologists had hoped this summer's New Seven Wonders of the World contest - organized by Swiss film producer and philanthropist Bernard Weber - would spark the release of funds to restore the moai. The statues were carved between 1200 and 1550 to honor the gods. After placing in the top 10 favorite sites during preliminary results, the island failed to make the final seven, chosen by 100 million people in a popular vote by Internet, phone and mail. When the moais finished eighth, Weber sent Chile a letter saying the statues were "morally" one of the New Seven Wonders, according to the local press.

In the meantime, Jose Antonio Viera, minister of the presidency, said it is urgent for the Chilean government and the international community to come to the rescue. Despite reconstruction efforts by U.S. archaeologists in the 1970s, Japan has been the only country in the past decade to offer significant financial assistance - $671,000 - to restore the sculptures.

"Obviously, Easter Island is Chile's No. 1 cultural heritage site," Viera said. "It has been overseen by the state. ... But we could do a thousand times better."

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet has pledged to help preserve Easter Island by passing legislation to create a national heritage institute on Easter. In August, the Chilean Congress passed a bill, granting islanders greater authority over governance, fishing, tourism and bilingual education in Rapa Nui and Spanish.

"When Rapa Nui became a candidate for the wonders of the world, it was an alarm bell for authorities to wake up and look at what's going on," Rapu said.

Local activists also say the moai face threats from tourism, which has more than doubled in the past three years from 22,000 visitors in 2003 to more than 50,000 in 2007, according to the ministry of tourism. Although much of the island is protected by the Rapa Nui National Park, there are only 12 park rangers, Rapu said.

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Researcher and author Jim Marrs and Douglas Horne, former staff member of the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) were guests on the Jeff Rense radio program December 29th for two hours of discussion on Horne's new book Inside the Assassination Records and Review Board: The U.S.Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Death of JFK.

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice (see second image here).

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

However, Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas says he has found similar skeletons in Poland and that while Borrini's finding is exciting, "claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous".

Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological "exorcism evidence against vampires".

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Mediums and psychics have been around for a long time. Yes, even longer than Sylvia Browne's fossilized nails, which I know is hard to believe. As I sat in my office, I found myself reflecting on some of the psychic greats throughout history: Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, and most likely a few old hags who lived in caves. As a side note, I am pretty sure the universe knew what it was doing when it sent me to a 21st century middle class neighborhood instead of to some dingy cave decorated by crude rust colored paintings of wolves and other beasts I hope to never encounter. It's not that I couldn't survive in the wild, it's that I don't want to. Alright, that was a lie, I couldn't survive in the wild. As I thought about the different psychics and mediums throughout history I couldn't help but wonder, "What is the difference between the psychics of old and the mediums of lately?"

Wardrobe differences aside, it must have been a tough being a psychic or a medium throughout much of history. It's not like Medium or Ghost Whisperer were available on demand during the crusades. Professing to foresee the future, or mentioning that you'd seen a ghost, wasn't just something to be avoided in polite company, it was a choice that could cost you your life. It makes me wonder how many great psychics and mediums existed, but were unable to share their gifts with others because of societal persecution. It saddens me, because I get so much joy from being able to share my gift with others. When I am depressed or feeling isolated because of my intuitive rarity, the knowledge that I am able to make people's lives better provides me with much needed comfort. How many children were shushed into silence by fearful parents or condemned to penance by hateful preachers?

It wasn't all that long ago in America that people were institutionalized for being psychic. It's amazing how far we've come even in a few short years. We've gone from throwing people into mental wards to watching psychics and mediums engage in hotly contested debates on split screen on Larry King. Can you imagine Nostradamus debating James Randi on Larry King? I doubt Randi would even be surprised that Nostradamus was still alive, he'd probably just get all red faced and complain that he hadn't taken his million dollar challenge.

Psychics of today have come a long way toward enhancing the integrity of the profession. Sure we have our bad apples, but who doesn't? I doubt Meryl Streep is doing cartwheels about the fact that Lindsay Lohan also claims to be an actress. Psychics of today face a continual barrage of criticism from skeptics, and many new generation psychics are not afraid of this barrage. New generation mediums understand the importance of proving our abilities. Don't believe us because we say we're psychics, believe us because we can do what we say we can do! Globalization has made it possible for people to see the abilities of some of the world's best intuitives showcased live in their living room. Before television, the internet, and Blackberries, it was much easier to take advantage of people. Today, people can research things like cold or hot reading, and read up on how to get the best reading possible.

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Over the last few years there have been a growing number of individuals and groups who believe there are ways one can break contact from extraterrestrial or inter dimensional beings both on a mental and physical scale. Some report reciting Biblical verses while others claim to use their own mental and psychic ability to fight their way out of an episode. The success rate seems to be quite high as the number of people using these and other methods increases daily.

I was recently reviewing some of my old files and came upon some research I had done back in 1999, in reference to the then Foster ranch, where Mack Brazel had claimed to have found debris from an unknown craft in July 1947. Historical UFO researcher Wendy Connors and I had conducted several interviews with the local BLM office here in Roswell back in 1999, obtaining information and documents pertaining to the BLM's more recent involvement at the ranch.

The story of the White Pyramid came about in the 1940s, when eyewitness reports, specifically from pilot James Gaussman, related the presence of an enormous “White Pyramid” near the Chinese city of Xi’an. If true, it was bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. The region was off-limits to Western tourists for many decades afterwards and once this restriction was lifted, many pyramids were found, but the gigantic “White Pyramid” was not amongst them. A photograph of what was believed to be the White Pyramid, turned out to be one of a much smaller pyramid near Xi’an.

So what was the White Pyramid? Had someone overestimated the dimensions of a smaller pyramid? The answer is a simple no. The photograph had nothing to do with the original account of the White Pyramid, and this is where the main problem has lain in recent years. The actual White Pyramid is Liangshan Mountain and it is as big as Gaussman and others had claimed it was.

Liangshan Mountain is located in the vicinity of Qiang Xian, a small Chinese town located 80 km to the northwest from Xi’an. In 684 AD, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty Gaozong was buried at the bottom of the mountain with his wife the Empress Wu. She reigned after Gaozong’s death. When she died in 705 AD, her body was buried near Gaozong’s on Liangshan Mountain. It is the only mausoleum where two Tang monarchs were buried.

The Qianling mausoleum incorporates 17 attendant tombs, including the tombs of Princess Yongtai, Prince Zhanghuai and Prince Yide. Twenty stone sculptures guard the emperor and his wife from evil spirits and enemies. They line the way to the burial place, guarding it with unusual long swords. Behind the guards there is a reconstructed gate, built from clay, but finished with bricks. Next are two large statues of mythical monsters. Building the mausoleum and the inner chambers was an enormous accomplishment, but my research is primarily focused on the mountain where the emperor was buried, as this is the legendary White Pyramid.

Liangshan is listed as a natural mountain that consists of three peaks. The two southern peaks are approximately the same size, but the northern peak is much taller and bigger. The two southern peaks consist of soil (so-called “central Chinese clay soil”, which is 30% clay, 35% clay elements and almost 40% limestone), but it is the northern peak that is the highest and consists of huge, almost straight stone plates which lie on the clay.

A key account about the “White Pyramid” – though it had not yet received its name at the time – in the vicinity of Xi’an was given by Alfred Schroeder in 1912: “The pyramid is about 1,000 feet high (other descriptions estimate 1,000 to 1,200 feet high) and roughly 1,500 feet at the base, which makes it twice as large as any pyramid in Egypt. The four faces of the structure are oriented with the compass points.” This observation conforms to what we have seen on the ground about Liangshan Mountain: it is a colossal pyramid, with four visible sides, holding the tomb of emperor Gaozong. It is difficult to determine the height of the pyramid. If measured from the platform with the twenty guards, the height is 160 meters; if measured from the base of the pyramid, the height is about 300 meters, or ca. 1,000 feet!

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Dr. David Luke lectures in psychology at several London universities and is a writer and researcher with a special interest in altered states of consciousness, parapsychology and extraordinary human experiences. He has studied ostensibly paranormal phenomena and techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Hackney in London. We are pleased to welcome David as our May 2009 Author of the Month.

I woke up this morning with a psychic advert left lingering in my dreaming mind. It was some kind of oneiric flyer for a new type of yoga, it even had a telephone number on it to call. This fanciful hypnopompic intrusion brought me back to the idea that if science can identify techniques for reliably producing psychic abilities (termed 'psi') then PR executives will soon be pumping millions into pumping adverts directly into our minds. Forget the television, tube trains and pub toilets, we'll have adverts (or perhaps 'psiverts') sneaking rudely into our subconscious and marauding around our dreamscapes at all times of night and day. We won't even have to open our ears or eyes to be lured in by the latest product we probably don't need. As a parapsychologist this is one of the annoying possibilities I'll have to take responsibility for, if and when my research field starts producing practical commercial applications, but what's the real likelihood of this? I'll come back to this issue at the end, and instead begin by asking what is the current state of the art in psychical research?

The scientific study of psychic abilities, currently termed 'parapsychology', has been represented by an official organ since the 1882 formation of the Society for Psychical Research1 (SPR) in the UK. The SPR came into being only three years after the establishment in Germany of the first psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt, which gave birth to psychology as a modern science. In the last 125 years or so there's been a very small, but steady, chipping away at the block of our empirical understanding of telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance. Regrettably, this sculpted work in progress has been mostly either ridiculously ignored or ignorantly ridiculed by the vast majority of more mainstream scientists, despite parapsychology being one of the most rigorously executed branches of social science. All the same, this dismissal of paranormal research by the mainstream might be doing us all a favour, because it might by saving us from the painful military and commercial applications of psi that might ensue if parapsychology were widely accepted as a valid research field and funded with more than a handful of loose change.

Looking now at this legacy of research, fastidiously investigated for many years, there appears to be compelling evidence for the existence of psychic abilities[2], yet this would hardly surprise most people on the street. Surveys typically reveal that the majority of people believe in the authenticity of one or more paranormal process[3]. This widespread belief and evidence for psychic abilities is all well and good but the question remains of whether or not these abilities are readily accessible and can be learnt, and whether we can develop these skills for our purposes and our growth as a species.

You might disagree that the development of psychic techniques is something we all aspire to - there's certainly an element of ingrained fear in potentially accessing our 'latent omniscience', as Emerson[4] called it - but our current technology argues for itself. If we had no desire for telepathy (the ability to communicate remotely with anyone anywhere) we would never have become so obsessed with mobile phones or even bothered inventing them. The Internet too, in part at least, attempts to satisfy our need for clairvoyance, to readily know anything there is to know, and so cyberspace can be seen as modern man's grasping to clutch the Akashic Records, the supposed cosmic catalogue of all events and things in time. It may be no surprise then to find, although it's a little-known fact, that the television, the radio and the telephone were all born of the desire to augment psychic abilities. The three Victorian fathers of these inventions, Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird, had all shared a serious interest in the spirit mediumship movement, Spiritualism, and had expected to develop technologies for improved psychic communication with the deceased[5].

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Researcher and author Jim Marrs and Douglas Horne, former staff member of the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) were guests on the Jeff Rense radio program December 29th for two hours of discussion on Horne's new book Inside the Assassination Records and Review Board: The U.S.Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Death of JFK.

Patricia Putts, a woman who thinks that she can find out personal details about people by simply being near them and listening to their voices will do a preliminary test which may lead to her winning the coveted 1 million dollar JREF prize. The idea for the JREF prize comes from the brain of world-renowned magician and paranormal investigator James Randi, a Toronto native who lives in Florida. This prize is awarded:

to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.

The idea behind the prize is a simple one. A large number of people believe in paranormal powers. Scientists have tried to find these powers for decades now and they have all been disillusioned. Yet, many people continue to believe in them. By making the amount so high, these tests -which do usually not interest the general public- becoming more exciting, leading to more publicity and a larger audience. This ensures that more people will learn of the success or failure of these tests, leading to a better educated, wider public.

Patricia Putt, a well-known psychic, had contacted the James Randi Educational Foundation a while ago in order to be tested for the million dollar prize.

In order to be tested, the applicant must –of course- apply. A test protocol for a preliminary test will then be developed in mutual agreement between the JREF and the applicant. The reason for this is that, by their very nature, no one knows what paranormal powers are, and while the JREF must be as sure as reasonably achievable that genuine powers are being tested, the applicant must feel comfortable with the testing protocol in order to maximize her/his chances to demonstrate her/his powers. The protocol must also make sure to test the powers that the applicant thinks he or she has.

Today, 6 May 2009, Patricia Putt will take the preliminary test. As always, the JREF is not involved with the test itself. She will be tested at Goldsmiths University by Professor Christopher French, Professor Richard Wiseman, and psychology students Panka Juhasz, James Munroe, Suzanne Barbieri, and Fabio Tartarini.

"It's great that Patricia has agreed to be tested and accepted the protocol," said Professor Wiseman, "In my experience, the vast majority of psychics and mediums back down before this point, so this is going to be a relatively rare and exciting experiment. My hope is that all will go well with the procedure on the day and thus we will get a clear result one way or the other."

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Researcher and author Jim Marrs and Douglas Horne, former staff member of the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) were guests on the Jeff Rense radio program December 29th for two hours of discussion on Horne's new book Inside the Assassination Records and Review Board: The U.S.Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Death of JFK.

Researcher and author Jim Marrs and Douglas Horne, former staff member of the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) were guests on the Jeff Rense radio program December 29th for two hours of discussion on Horne's new book Inside the Assassination Records and Review Board: The U.S.Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Death of JFK.

What is Planet X. And what does it have to do with 2012? And UFOs? The mainstream (owned and controlled) media seldom mentions these subjects in any meaningful way. In fact, they are often treated in a very derogatory manner by debunkers and skeptics.