The Enfield Poltergeist

 

The Enfield poltergeist was a claim of supernatural activity at 284 Green Street, a council house in Brimsdown, Enfield, London, England, between 1977 and 1979. The alleged poltergeist activity was centered on sisters Janet, aged 11, and Margaret Hodgson, aged 13.

Some members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) such as inventor Maurice Grosse and writer Guy Lyon Playfair, believed the haunting to be genuine, while others like Anita Gregory and John Beloff were "unconvinced" and found evidence the girls had faked incidents for the benefit of journalists. Members of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), including stage magicians Milbourne Christopher and Joe Nickell, criticized paranormal investigators for being credulous whilst also identifying elements of the case as being indicative of a hoax.

The story attracted press coverage in British newspapers, has been mentioned in books, featured in television and radio documentaries, and dramatized in the 2016 horror film The Conjuring 2.

Claims

In August 1977, single mother Peggy Hodgson called the Metropolitan Police to her rented home at 284 Green Street in Enfield, London, saying she had witnessed furniture moving and that two of her four children had heard knocking sounds on the walls. The children included Janet, aged 11, and Margaret, aged 13. A police constable reported witnessing a chair "wobble and slide" but "could not determine the cause of the movement." Later claims included disembodied voices, loud noises, thrown toys, overturned chairs, and children levitating.

Over 18 months, more than 30 people, including the Hodgsons' neighbors, paranormal investigators, and journalists, said they variously saw heavy furniture moving of its own accord, objects being thrown across a room and the sisters seeming to levitate several feet off the ground. Many also heard and recorded knocking noises and a gruff voice. The story was regularly covered in the Daily Mirror newspaper until reports came to an end in 1979.

Investigations

Paranormal

Society for Psychical Research (SPR) members Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair reported: "curious whistling and barking noises coming from Janet's general direction." Although Playfair maintained the paranormal activity was genuine and wrote in his later book This House Is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist (1980) that an "entity" was to blame for the Enfield disturbances, he often doubted the children's veracity and wondered if they were playing tricks and exaggerating. Still, Grosse and Playfair believed that, even though some of the alleged poltergeist activity was faked by the girls, other incidents were genuine. Other paranormal investigators who visited the Enfield house included American demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were convinced that the events had a supernatural explanation. According to Brian Dunning, the Warrens' visit was short: "Ed Warren tried to persuade Playfair that money could be made from this case by writing books and selling movie rights, and then the Warrens left".

Janet was detected in trickery: a video camera in an adjoining room caught her bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar. Grosse had observed Janet banging a broom handle on the ceiling and hiding his tape recorder. According to Playfair, one of Janet's voices, whom she called Bill, displayed a "habit of suddenly changing the topic—it was a habit Janet also had". When Janet and Margaret admitted pranking journalists, Grosse and Playfair compelled the girls to retract their confessions. The two men were mocked by other researchers for being easily duped.

Psychical researcher Renée Haynes noted that doubts were raised about the alleged poltergeist voice at the SPR conference at Cambridge in 1978, where videocassettes from Enfield were examined. SPR investigator Anita Gregory stated the Enfield case had been "overrated", characterizing several episodes of the girls' behavior as "suspicious" and speculated that the girls had "staged" some incidents for the benefit of journalists seeking a sensational story. John Beloff, a former president of the SPR, investigated and suggested Janet was practicing ventriloquism. Both Beloff and Gregory concluded that Janet and Margaret were playing tricks on the investigators.

In the first edition of the BBC series Hauntings, broadcast on 13 October 2024, it was revealed that the unexplained voice of "Bill Wilkins" was later played on an LBC radio talk show, featuring Maurice Grosse. A listener to the show identified the voice as that of his father, William Charles Wilkins, who had lived at the house, had gone blind, had suffered a hemorrhage, and had died in a chair downstairs, on 20 June 1963.

Other

Milbourne Christopher, an American stage magician, briefly investigated the Enfield occurrences and failed to observe anything that could be called paranormal. He was dismayed by what he felt was suspicious activity on the part of Janet, later concluding that "the poltergeist was nothing more than the antics of a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very, very clever." Ventriloquist Ray Alan visited the house and concluded that Janet's male voices were simply vocal tricks.

Skeptical interpretations

Criticism of investigations

Sceptic Joe Nickell of the US-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) examined the findings of paranormal investigators and criticized them for being overly credulous; when a supposedly disembodied demonic voice was heard, Playfair noted that "as always Janet's lips hardly seemed to be moving." He states that a remote-controlled still camera—the photographer was not present in the room with the girls—timed to take a picture every fifteen seconds was shown by investigator Melvin Harris to reveal pranking by the girls. He argues that a photo allegedly depicting Janet levitating shows her bouncing off the bed as if it were a trampoline. Harris called the photos examples of common "gymnastics" and said, "It's worth remembering that Janet was a school sports champion!"

Nickell pointed out that a tape-recorder malfunction that Grosse attributed to supernatural activity and SPR president David Fontana described as an occurrence "which appeared to defy the laws of mechanics" was a peculiar threading jam occurring with older model reel to reel tape-recorders. He also said that Ed Warren was "notorious for exaggerating and even making up incidents in such cases, often transforming a 'haunting' case into one of 'demonic possession'."

In 2015 Deborah Hyde commented that there was no solid evidence for the Enfield poltergeist: "The first thing to note is that the occurrences didn't happen under controlled circumstances. People frequently see what they expect to see, their senses being organized and shaped by their prior experiences and beliefs."

Response to claims

Sceptics have argued that the alleged poltergeist voice that originated from Janet was produced by false vocal cords above the larynx and had the phraseology and vocabulary of a child. In a television interview for BBC Scotland, Janet was observed to gain attention by waving her hand and then putting her hand in front of her mouth while a claimed "disembodied" voice was heard. During the interview, both girls were asked the question, "How does it feel to be haunted by a poltergeist?" Janet replied, "It's not haunted" and Margaret, in a hushed tone, interrupted, "Shut up". Skeptics have regarded these factors as evidence against the case.

As a "magician experienced in the dynamics of trickery" Nickell examined Playfair's account and contemporary press clippings. He noted that the supposed poltergeist "tended to act only when it was not being watched" and concluded that the incidents were best explained as children's pranks.

Although Grosse made tape recordings of Janet and believed no trickery was involved, the magician Bob Couttie said, "He made some of the recordings available to me and, having listened to them very carefully, I concluded that there was nothing in what I had heard that was beyond the capabilities of an imaginative teenager." All of the recordings have been catalogued and digitized by the SPR and a book of their content, The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes, was produced by Dr Melvyn Willin in 2019.

A 2016 article by psychology professor Chris French in Time Out magazine described five reasons why he believed the case to have been a hoax. His reasons are:

The two sisters involved admitted to hoaxing some of the activity

The photo of Janet levitating above her bed could just as easily be explained as Janet jumping

The "spirit" of an old man who supposedly possessed Janet took a great deal of interest in menstruation

Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable

Other schoolgirl pranks before and after have got out of hand

In popular culture

On 26 December 1978, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the documentary The Enfield Poltergeist by BBC reporter Rosalind Morris. Morris visited the Hodgson family on numerous occasions to make this documentary.

In 1992 the BBC aired a controversial mockumentary titled Ghostwatch, written by Stephen Volk and based on the Enfield poltergeist.

In March 2007 Channel 4 aired a documentary about the Enfield poltergeist titled Interview with a Poltergeist.

The Enfield poltergeist has been featured in episodes of the ITV series Strange but True? And Extreme Ghost Stories.

The Enfield poltergeist was the subject of the 2015 Sky Living television series The Enfield Haunting, which was broadcast from 4–17 May 2015.

The 2016 film The Conjuring 2 is based on Ed and Lorraine Warren's investigation of the case.

In 2018 the BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion, presented by Sue MacGregor, revisited the case, with interviews with witnesses Morris, Richard Grosse, and Graham Morris.

In 2023 a play titled The Enfield Haunting was announced, starring Catherine Tate, to be premiered at Theatre Royal, Brighton and Richmond Theatre before moving to the Ambassadors Theatre in London from 30 November 2023 to 2 March 2024.

On 27 October 2023, Apple TV debuted "The Enfield Poltergeist" miniseries, filming the documentary in a recreated set of the allegedly haunted house at 284 Green Street, utilizing actors lip-syncing to original tape recordings, archival video footage, and modern-day interviews with living witnesses of the events.

Enfield poltergeist. (2025, February 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_poltergeist

Bill Cooper

 

Milton William "Bill" Cooper (May 6, 1943 – November 5, 2001) was an American conspiracy theorist, radio broadcaster, and author known for his 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, in which he warned of multiple global conspiracies, some involving extraterrestrial life. Cooper also described HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease used to target blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals, and that a cure was made before it was implemented. He has been described as a "militia theoretician". Cooper was killed in 2001 by sheriff's deputies after he shot at them during an attempted arrest.

Early life and education

Little is known about Cooper's background and education, beyond the information supplied in his own accounts. He claimed to have served in the United States Navy, the United States Air Force, and Naval Intelligence until his discharge in 1975; however, public records only indicate a period of service in the Navy with a ratings code of E-5/Sergeant (Petty officer second class in the Navy), including a tour of duty in Vietnam with two service medals. At the end of the war, while working in naval intelligence, Cooper served on a briefing team for Admiral Bernard A. Clarey. He then attended a junior college in California, and worked for several technical and vocational schools before making his conspiracy theories known, beginning in 1988. Cooper expanded the speculations of earlier conspiracists by incorporating government involvement with extraterrestrials as a central theme.

Behold a Pale Horse

In 1991, Cooper wrote and published Behold a Pale Horse. The book has been influential among "UFO and militia circles". Just prior to the trial of Terry Nichols in 1997, The Guardian described it as "the manifesto of the militia movement".

According to sociologist Paul Gilroy, Cooper claimed "an elaborate conspiracy theory that encompasses the Kennedy assassination, the doings of the secret world government, the coming ice age, and a variety of other covert activities associated with the Illuminati's declaration of war upon the people of America". Political scientist Michael Barkun characterized it as "among the most complex superconspiracy theories", and also among the most influential due to its popularity in militia circles as well as mainstream bookstores. Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke described the book as a "chaotic farrago of conspiracy myths interspersed with reprints of executive laws, official papers, reports and other extraneous materials designed to show the looming prospect of a world government imposed on the American people against their wishes and in flagrant contempt of the Constitution."

UFOs, aliens, and the Illuminati

Cooper gained attention in Ufology circles in 1988 when he claimed to have seen secret documents while in the Navy describing governmental dealings with extraterrestrials, a topic on which he expounded in Behold a Pale Horse. By one account he served as a "low-level clerk" in the Navy, and as such would not have had the security clearance needed to access classified documents. In the Summer of 1988, Cooper made his first public comments on the ParaNet Bulletin Board System, an early UFO message board, claiming that in 1966 he was serving aboard the USS Tiru when he and fellow Navy personnel witnessed a metal craft "larger than a football field" repeatedly enter and exit the water. Cooper claimed he was instructed by superiors to never speak about the incident. Biographer Mark Jacobson argues "the Tiru incident itself would not have done much to make Cooper's name in ufology. That opportunity came only a few days later" when he was contacted by fellow ParaNet poster John Lear. Lear, the son of Learjet founder Bill Lear, was identified as a pilot who had flown missions for the CIA. Lear was the author of a post titled "The UFO Coverup" which incorporated elements of mythos from Paul Bennewitz, a ufologist who was later revealed to have been fed disinformation by American counter-intelligence agent Richard C. Doty. Cooper soon visited Lear, and the two spent much time together from 1988 to 1990.

Cooper's views were heavily influenced by Lear and his story of alien collusion with secret governmental forces. In 1989, the two released an "indictment" against the US Government for "aiding and abetting and concealing this Alien Nation which exists in our borders". In 2018, columnist Colin Dickey noted the pair's influence, writing "in the early years [UFO writers] did not, by and large, embrace strong political positions. They were the tip of a spear asserting that the number one thing we had to fear were not little green men, but the government that colluded with them, appropriating their technology against us." Cooper and Lear's collaboration lasted for a few years, after which Cooper accused Lear of being a CIA plant.

Ufologists later asserted that some of the material Cooper claimed to have seen in Naval Intelligence documents was actually plagiarized by Cooper from their own research, including several items that the ufologists had fabricated as pranks. Don Ecker of UFO Magazine ran a series of exposés on Cooper in 1990.

Cooper linked the Illuminati with his beliefs that extraterrestrials were secretly involved with the United States government but later retracted these claims. He accused President Dwight D. Eisenhower of negotiating a treaty with extraterrestrials in 1954, which supposedly allowed the aliens to abduct humans in exchange for technological assistance. Cooper then claimed that Eisenhower had established an inner circle of the Illuminati to manage relations with the aliens and keep their presence a secret from the general public. Cooper believed that aliens "manipulated and/or ruled the human race through various secret societies, religions, magic, witchcraft, and the occult", and that even the Illuminati were unknowingly being manipulated by them.

Cooper described the Illuminati as a secret international organization, controlled by the Bilderberg Group that conspired with the Knights of Columbus, Masons, Skull and Bones, and other organizations. Its ultimate goal, he said, was the establishment of a New World Order. According to Cooper, the Illuminati conspirators not only invented alien threats for their own gain, but actively conspired with extraterrestrials to take over the world. Cooper believed that James Forrestal's fatal fall from a window on the sixteenth floor of Bethesda Hospital was connected to the alleged secret committee Majestic 12 and that JASON advisory group scientists reported to an elite group of Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations executive committee members who were high-ranking members of the Illuminati.

Cooper also claimed that the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an Illuminati work, and instructed readers to substitute "Sion" for "Zion", "Illuminati" for "Jews", and "cattle" for "Goyim". The publisher removed the chapter that was a reproduction of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion document from later printings of Behold a Pale Horse.

Kennedy assassination

In Behold a Pale Horse, Cooper asserts that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were in the process of taking over the Earth. According to a "top secret" video of the assassination that Cooper claimed to have discovered, the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer, used "a gas pressure device developed by aliens from the Trilateral Commission" to shoot the president from the driver's seat. The Zapruder film shows Greer twice turning to look into the back seat of the car; Cooper theorized that Greer first turned to assess Kennedy's status after the external attack, and then to fire the fatal shot. Conspiracy theories implicating Greer reportedly "snowballed" after the publication of Behold a Pale Horse. Cooper's video purporting to prove his theory was analyzed by several television stations, according to one source, and was found to be "... a poor-quality fake using chunks of the... Zapruder film."

HIV/AIDS

In Behold a Pale Horse Cooper proposed that AIDS was the result of a conspiracy to decrease the populations of blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals. In 2000 South Africa's Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang received criticism for distributing the chapter discussing this theory to senior South African government officials.

Radio show

From 1992 until his death in November 2001, Cooper originated his radio show, The Hour of the Time from a studio in his house at the top of a hill in the small White Mountains town of Eagar, Arizona, 15 miles from the New Mexico border. Cooper sent his show via audio cassette, satellite patch, or direct telephone link to WWCR in Nashville where it was broadcast by the station's 100,000-watt shortwave transmitter. Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Cooper was well known within the militia movement for his anti-government shortwave radio program. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan. McVeigh was reported by The Daily Beast to have ordered from Cooper a cassette, Waco, The Big Lie, which the radio host marketed. Cooper broadcast conspiracy theories on the Waco siege in early 1993, which he believed had been the opening battle in a new Civil War. He later participated in the early radio shows of Alex Jones, who was an admirer of his broadcasts.

On June 28, 2001, commenting on a televised interview of Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Afghanistan, Cooper claimed that bin Laden would soon be "blamed" for a 'major attack' on a large U.S. city, "but don't you believe it". Immediately after the attacks on September 11, 2001, he predicted the U.S. would soon be at war in 'two or maybe three countries'. He began broadcasting the "controlled demolition" conspiracy theory on the day of the attacks, which eventually became a center of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Death

As Cooper moved away from the Ufology community and toward the militia and anti-government subculture in the late 1990s, he became convinced that he was being personally targeted by President Bill Clinton and the Internal Revenue Service. In July 1998, he was charged with tax evasion; an arrest warrant was issued, but Cooper eluded repeated attempts to serve it. In 2000, he was named a "major fugitive" by the United States Marshals Service.

On November 5, 2001, Apache County sheriff's deputies attempted to arrest Cooper at his Eagar, Arizona home on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from disputes with local residents. After an exchange of gunfire during which Cooper shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot. Federal authorities reported that Cooper had spent years evading execution of the 1998 arrest warrant, and according to a spokesman for the Marshals Service, he vowed that "he would not be taken alive".

In popular culture

Cooper's writing holds enduring popularity in hip hop, being referenced by artists including Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and Jay-Z.

The rapper William Cooper took his stage name from Milton William Cooper.

The X-Files incorporated numerous elements of Cooper's mythos of a secret government in collusion with alien beings. In one of the most famous episodes, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", John F. Kennedy is assassinated to prevent him from revealing the existence of aliens. The 1998 X-Files film uses phrasing from Cooper (e.g. "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars") and features the name Cooper in apparent homage.

In 1997, hip-hop group Killarmy released their debut album, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, a title drawn from Cooper's work.

Books

Cooper, Milton William (1991). Behold a Pale Horse. Light Technology Publications. ISBN 0-929385-22-5.

Lectures

Truth vs Deception (Undated, audio only), 1h 14m

Sedona Speech (September 24, 1989), 3h 26m

The Secret Government: Origin, Identity and Purpose of the Real MJ-12 (1989), 1h 28m

UFOs, Aliens and the Black Government (1990), 2h 2m

Behold a Pale Horse (1991), 4h 40m

UFO Alien Agenda Conference (September 9, 1991), 3h 37m

The Little Ale'Inn (July 9, 1993), 1h

Wembley Speech (January 9, 1993), 2h 45m

Lansing, Michigan (1996), 1h

The Porterville Presentation (1997), 11h

Self-produced videos

Produced as "Shining Star Productions":

Project Redlight (1991), 2h 2m

Project Redlight II (1992), 1h 38m

JFK: Assassin Unmasked (1993), 45m

Kennedy, The Sacrificed King (1993), 1h 14m

Luxor (1994), 54m

Media appearances

Interview with Ellie Crystal (Undated)

UFO Investigations-The Cover Up (1989)

On the Kennedy Assassination, KUTV (May 15, 1991)

Dimensions in Parapsychology (1991)

Shane Eden's The UFO Connection (1991)

NYC Public Access Interview (April 24, 1992)

The CNN Interview (May 3, 1992)

Reichstag '95 (1995)

The Land of the Lost Story (1999), dir. Anna Zetchus Smith

The Hour of Our Time: The Legacy of William Cooper (2006), dir. Jim Jankiewicz

Milton William Cooper. (2024, November 30). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_William_Cooper

The Lost Continent of Lemuria

 

Lemuria (/lɪˈmjʊəriə/), or Limuria, was a continent proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater, theorized to have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean, later appropriated by occultists in supposed accounts of human origins. The theory was discredited with the discovery of plate tectonics and continental drift in the 20th century.

The hypothesis was proposed as an explanation for the presence of lemur fossils in Madagascar and the Indian subcontinent but not in continental Africa or the Middle East. Biologist Ernst Haeckel's suggestion in 1870 that Lemuria could be the ancestral home of humans caused the hypothesis to move beyond the scope of geology and zoogeography, ensuring its popularity outside of the framework of the scientific community.

Occultist and founder of theosophy Helena Blavatsky, during the latter part of the 19th century, placed Lemuria in the system of her mystical-religious doctrine, claiming that this continent was the homeland of the human ancestors, whom she called Lemurians. The writings of Blavatsky had a significant impact on Western esotericism, popularizing the myth of Lemuria and its mystical inhabitants.

Theories about Lemuria became untenable when, in the 1960s, the scientific community accepted Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, presented in 1912, but the idea lived on in the popular imagination, especially in relation to the Theosophist tradition.

Evolution of the idea

Lemuria was hypothesized as a land bridge, now sunken, which would account for certain discontinuities in biogeography. This idea has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics. Sunken continents such as Zealandia in the Pacific, and Mauritia and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean do exist, but no geological formation under the Indian or Pacific oceans is known that could have served as a land bridge between these continents.

The idea of Lemuria was later incorporated into the philosophy of Theosophy and has persisted as a theme in pseudoarchaeology and discussions of lost lands. There is a vast fringe of literature about Lemuria and to related concepts such as the Lemurian Fellowship and other things "Lemurian". All share a common belief that a continent existed in what is now either the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean in ancient times and claim that it became submerged as a result of a geological cataclysm. An important element of the mythology of Lemuria is that it was the location of the emergence of complex knowledge systems that formed the basis for later beliefs.

The concept of Lemuria was developed in detail by James Churchward, who referred to it as Mu and identified it as a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean. Churchward appropriated this name from Augustus Le Plongeon, who had used the concept of the "Land of Mu" to refer to the legendary lost continent of Atlantis. Churchward's books included The Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Men (1926), The Children of Mu (1931), The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933), Cosmic Forces of Mu (1934), and Second Book of Cosmic Forces of Mu (1935). The relationships between Lemuria/Mu and Atlantis are discussed in detail in the book Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature (1954) by L. Sprague de Camp.

Scientific origins

Postulation

In 1864, "The Mammals of Madagascar" by zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Using a classification he referred to as lemurs, but which included related primate groups, and puzzled by the presence of their fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent (he was correct in this; though in reality, this was Mauritia and the supercontinent Gondwana).

The anomalies of the mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans... that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with... Africa, some... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands, we have existing relics of this great continent, for which... I should propose the name Lemuria!

Parallels

Sclater's theory was hardly unusual for his time; "land bridges", real and imagined, fascinated several of Sclater's contemporaries. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, also looking at the relationship between animals in India and Madagascar, had suggested a southern continent about two decades before Sclater but did not give it a name. The acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin. Before the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently postulated the existence of submerged land masses to account for populations of land-based species now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents. The first systematic attempt was made by Melchior Neumayr in his book Erdgeschichte in 1887. Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th century to account for the present distribution of species.

Promulgation

After gaining some acceptance within the scientific community, the concept of Lemuria began to appear in the works of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel, a Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of proto-human "missing links" in the fossil record. According to another source, Haeckel put forward this thesis before Sclater, without using the name "Lemuria".

Supersession

The Lemuria theory disappeared completely from conventional scientific consideration after the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift were accepted by the larger scientific community. According to the theory of plate tectonics, Madagascar and India were indeed once part of the same landmass (thus accounting for geological resemblances), but plate movement caused India to break away millions of years ago, and move to its present location. The original landmass, Mauritia, and the supercontinent Gondwana before that broke apart; it predominantly did not sink beneath sea level.

Kumari Kandam

Some Tamil writers such as Devaneya Pavanar have associated Lemuria with Kumari Kandam, a legendary sunken landmass mentioned in the Tamil literature, claiming that it was the cradle of civilization. A Tamil commentator, Adiyarkunallar, described the dimensions that extended between the Pahrali River and the Kumari River in the Pandyan country that was taken over by the ocean later on.

In popular culture

Since the 1880s, the concept of Lemuria has had a prominent place in the mythology of Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and other occult beliefs, inspiring many novels, television shows, films, and music. These are not scientific ideas but fall within the realm of pseudoarchaeology and popular culture.

Australia

Blavatsky claimed that Australia was a remnant inland region of Lemuria and that Aboriginal Australians and Aboriginal Tasmanians (which she identified as separate groups) were of Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin, after cross-breeding with animals. Her idea was subsequently developed in pseudo-histories and fiction of the white Australian popular culture of the 1890s and early 1900s, including the writings of nationalist Australian poet Bernard O'Dowd, author Rosa Campbell Praed in My Australian Girlhood, and author John David Hennessey in An Australian Bush Track and George Firth Scott's novel The Last Lemurian: A Westralian Romance.

Robert Dixon suggests that the popularity of the idea of "lost races" like Lemurians and Atlanteans reflected the anxieties of colonial Australians, that "when Englishness is lost there is nothing to replace it". A. L. McCann attributes Praed's use of the Lemuria trope to an "attempt to create a lineage for white settlers without having to confront the annihilation of Indigenous people".

Telos Mount Shasta

In 1894, Frederick Spencer Oliver published A Dweller on Two Planets, an occult book that claimed that survivors from Lemuria were living in a complex of tunnels beneath the mountain of Mount Shasta in northern California. This city, known as Telos: City of Light boasted fur-lined carpeted floors and jeweled walls, all signs of opulence. Spencer also claimed that Lemurians could be seen walking the surface in white robes. In 1931, Harvey Spencer Lewis, who went by the pseudonym Wishar Spenle Cerve, wrote Lemuria: the Lost Continent of the Pacific, which popularized the idea that Shasta was a repository for Lemurians.

In the 1930s, Guy Warren Ballard claimed to have been approached by Saint Germain who told him he could endow him with knowledge and wisdom. Ballard wrote and published the book Unveiled Mysteries under the alias Godfré Ray King, where Ballard claimed to be the person that Saint Germain was speaking through to get to the world. The belief in Telos has been proliferated by Ballard and his followers, as well as other religious groups like the Ascended Masters, the Great White Brotherhood, The Bridge to Freedom, The Summit Lighthouse, Church Universal and Triumphant, and Kryon. Every year, members of these religious groups make the pilgrimage to Mount Shasta, a journey that is marked by various yearly festivals and events. The Saint Germain Foundation hosts the annual "I AM COME!" Pageant, on the Life of Jesus the Christ in Mt. Shasta. The Rainbow Family hosts a Rainbow Gathering every August to commemorate the pilgrimage. These religions are often a mix of spiritual practices, based largely on native, Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions, synthesizing their beliefs, and excluding "negative" aspects of such religions. For example, the Saint Germain Foundation. does not include Jesus' crucifixion in their teachings.

Lemuria. (2025, January 20). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria

1984 Hudson Valley UFO Sightings

 

The 1984 Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, also called "The Westchester Boomerang", were UFO sightings that stretched throughout 1983–1984 in New York and Western Connecticut. Pilots flew Cessna 152s in tight formation with bright lights that could change colors. State police reported that the pilots expressed amusement at the confusion caused by their hoax. Subsequent news stories, books, and other publicity helped make the sightings significant in local history and ufology lore.

Event

Reports primarily occurred from March 1983 through the summer of 1984, in the Hudson Valley region of the Northeastern United States, including Westchester County, Dutchess County, and Putnam County in New York and Fairfield County in Connecticut. Residents reported seeing objects about the size of an American football field, "usually in a V-shape or a circle", according to the New York Times, "absolutely noiseless and outlined in brilliant lights of white, red or green". The objects were also described as being able to shoot straight up in the sky and hover in the air for extended periods.

Indian Point power plant sightings

Center for UFO Studies UFOlogist Philip Imbrogno stated he was approached by several guards from the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. According to Imbrogno, on June 14 and July 24, 1984, the guards saw a 900-foot UFO hovering over the plant for 15 minutes. One security guard said it was 100 feet long and 300 yards above the plant and looked like helicopters in a V-formation. The security guard said, "that the guards broke out the shotguns". Imbrogno told The Journal News that "the commander gave the order to pull out the shotguns, and they summoned Camp Smith, but we have no documentation".

A power authority security coordinator, John Branciforte said, "I think people are going to publish stories on hysteria (and) misinformation. As far as I'm concerned, it's pure speculation." Branciforte stated that officers did not arm themselves with shotguns and that Imbrogno "could possibly be making it up or he took what they (witnesses) gave him and stretched it out." A spokesman for the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Sergeant Spiro for Troop K of the New York State Police said "they believed the sightings were Cessna 152s flown by pranksters out of Stormville Airport." Patrick stated that "pilots of private and commercial planes use the plant as a 'handy landmark' when flying nearby. ’From the air, it is easy to pick out... I don't know of any regulations that restrict the airspace around Indian Point".

Spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Brian Norris said they received the FOIA request from Imbrogno for the Indian Point incident but had "no documentation of the sighting".

Other reports

On July 24, Brewster resident Bob Pozzuoli videotaped lights that, to Pozzuoli, appeared to be an object flying as its lights rotated counter-clockwise. No sound from the lights was audible on the audio portion of the recording.

William A. Pollard, driving on Interstate 84, recounted to the New York Times that he saw an object hovering about 30 feet from the ground in a field, "a gigantic triangle with lights". It shot straight up after turning off its lights. Pollard said he had seen the lights many times, but the first time was very different from everything he saw later; it was "rigid".

Mahopac resident Irene Lunn reported a sighting on Monday, August 20, 1984, at about 9pm. She said it was heading South over a pond, "just clearing the trees....There was no sound at all, you could hear the crickets... about three-quarters the size of my house, with an L-shaped structure suspended underneath it... At one point, all the lights went green, then red, and then they went back to a pattern of green red, and white. I felt like it was letting us know it knew we were watching it. That was scary. It went on for about 10 minutes."

Identification

A state police officer of Troop K followed the lights to the small Stormville Airport in Dutchess County and reported back to Sgt. Kenneth V. Spiro: "It was a group of light planes. They fly in formation. The undersides and under the wings are painted black, so they can't be seen from the ground. The planes are rigged with bright lights that they can turn from one color to another. It's the lights that give the shape to the U.F.O." According to the police officer who spoke to a couple of the pilots, "they're getting a big kick out of it. There's no violation of the law here."

According to Timothy L. Hartnett, the deputy director of the Eastern region of the FAA, planes "can fly as close together as they feel safe... in areas of sparse population, planes could fly as low as 500 feet." In February 1984, a pilot interviewed by the Poughkeepsie Journal said he and other pilots "test their skills flying in a V shape using a rotating beacon and navigation lights. The formation might appear motionless because it is so wide and can be seen from long distances."

Discover Magazine in 1984 reported that a group of pilots practicing their formation skills, first in the day time, then when they became more confident, at night, "became tight formations of aircraft with as little as 6 inches between wingtips." According to skeptical writer Brian Dunning, "there's no evidence that these pilots ever intended a UFO hoax" but "when local newspapers began printing stories about strange sightings and experiences, and television stations ran tapes of the mysterious lights in the sky, the pilots were incredulous, then amused. The group began calling themselves the Martians." The pilots would turn off their exterior lights at the same time which would make the aircraft appear to disappear from the sky. "They vary their formations, from crescents and circles to crosses that looked from the ground like diamonds or V's, giving rise to reports about different and sometimes startling UFO shapes."

UFOlogists

According to UFOlogist Peter Gersten, in the summer of 1984, his organization Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) received hundreds of reports of a large boomerang object hovering over trees with lights with a "slight buzz". Gersten had at that time not interviewed the pilots who had claimed they were responsible. He intended to hire a private investigator to look into the timing of reported sightings possibly corresponding to the flights by the pilots. Gersten believes that some of the eye-witness reports were explained by the flight of the pilots flying in a V formation, but not all of the eye-witness reports.

Gersten stated "It could be explained as extraterrestrial. We had someone try to photograph (the object). But it has avoided being filmed" According to the manager of CPI Photo Finish in Yorktown, "We're seeing quite a few U.F.O. pictures. People come in and hand you the film and say: 'Be careful with these. We ran outside with our camera because something was flying over our house."

As of September 1984, Gersten's group was offering a $1,000 reward for information of the pilots flying the light aircraft out of the Stormville airport. Hynek, the former scientific advisor to the Air Force's Project Blue Book, who later in life favored the interdimensional hypothesis explanation of UFOs, described the incident as "absolutely weird. There's no logical explanation for it." Some witnesses reportedly refused to believe that planes flying in formation were responsible for their sightings, and on August 28, 1984, UFOlogists convened a conference in Brewster, New York to discuss the recent rash of UFO sightings.

In 1987, Ballantine Books published Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO sightings, by the late J. Allen Hynek, Phillip J. Imbrogo, and Bob Pratt. Imbrogno reported having witnessed the Hudson Valley UFO for five minutes. Imbrogno noted similarities between the Hudson Valley object and the recently declassified stealth bomber. In their book and interviews, UFOlogists Hynek, Imbrogno, and Pratt publicized photographic stills of videotape evidence they believed depicted the UFO.

In 1992, the sightings were the subject of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

In 2017, Brian Dunning interviewed Revolt film director Joe Miale about how his childhood memory of "triangular craft with colored lights moving slowly over our houses" in the Hudson Valley cemented his lifelong fascination with science fiction. Dunning speculated why despite these explanations, the "Hudson Valley UFO phenomenon" was popularized and books like Night Siege were written. According to Dunning, "These were not journalists or objective reporters. They were all UFO authors who made their careers out of sensationalizing these little stories they found by keeping an eye on the newspapers. None had any serious academic credibility." And though the UFO investigators have acknowledged that some of the sightings were pilots flying light aircraft, practicing formations with lights that match the lighting on the aircraft, they continue to state that besides this known explanation, a UFO was also likely in the area. "The UFO looked the same, behaved the same, it flew in the same way and in the same place. Would that not be a staggering coincidence? Isn't it more likely that our human perceptual errors confirmation bias selective memory and all the other cognitive phenomena that shape our perceptions played some role here? Personally, I think it is."

External links

• December 23, 1985 - Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filed by Robert Todd to the General Counsel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
• Skeptoid - The Hudson Valley UFO Mystery

 

1984 Hudson Valley UFO sightings. (2025, January 3). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Hudson_Valley_UFO_sightings

Neuralink

 

Neuralink Corp. is an American neurotechnology company that has developed, as of 2024, implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). It was founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers (Max Hodak, Benjamin Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Paul Merolla, Philip Sabes, Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson, and Vanessa Tolosa). Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017. The company is based in Fremont, California with plans to build a three-story building with office and manufacturing space near Austin, Texas in Del Valle, located about 10 miles east of Tesla's headquarters and manufacturing plant that opened in 2022.

Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees. At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that reads information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes. They had anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020, but have since moved that projection to 2023. As of May 2023, they have been approved for human trials in the United States.

The company has faced criticism for a large amount of euthanization of primates that underwent medical trials. Veterinary records of the monkeys showed a number of complications with electrodes being surgically implanted. On January 29, 2024, Musk announced that Neuralink had successfully implanted a Neuralink device in a human and that the patient was recovering.

Company

History

Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and a founding team of seven scientists and engineers (Max Hodak, Benjamin Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Paul Merolla, Philip Sabes, Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson, and Vanessa Tolosa). The group of initial hires consisted of experts in areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry and robotics. The trademark "Neuralink" was purchased from its previous owners in January 2017.

In April 2017, Neuralink announced that it was aiming to make devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short-term, with the eventual goal of human enhancement, sometimes called transhumanism. Musk had said his interest in the idea partly stemmed from the science fiction concept of "neural lace" in the fictional universe in The Culture, a series of 10 novels by Iain M. Banks.

Musk defined the neural lace as a "digital layer above the cortex" that would not necessarily imply extensive surgical insertion but ideally an implant through a vein or artery. He said the long-term goal is to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence", which he perceives as an existential threat to humanity if it goes unchecked. He believes the device will be "something analogous to a video game, like a saved game situation, where you are able to resume and upload your last state" and "address brain injuries or spinal injuries and make up for whatever lost capacity somebody has with a chip."

As of 2020, Neuralink was headquartered in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing the Pioneer building with OpenAI, another company co-founded by Musk. As of 2022, Neuralink's headquarters were in Fremont, California. Jared Birchall, the head of Musk's family office, was listed as CEO, CFO and president of Neuralink in 2018. As of September 2018, Musk was the majority owner of Neuralink but did not hold an executive position. By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article by Stat News which reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science."

In April 2021, Neuralink demonstrated a monkey playing the game "Pong" using the Neuralink implant. While similar technology has existed since 2002, when a research group first demonstrated a monkey moving a computer cursor with neural signals, scientists acknowledged the engineering progress in making the implant wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes. In May 2021, co-founder and President Max Hodak announced that he no longer works with the company. Only two of the eight co-founders remained at the company by January 2022.

Technology

In 2018, Gizmodo reported that Neuralink "remained highly secretive about its work", although public records showed that it had sought to open an animal testing facility in San Francisco; it subsequently started to carry out research at the University of California, Davis. In 2019, during a live presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, the Neuralink team revealed to the public the technology of the first prototype they had been working on. It is a system that involves ultra-thin probes being inserted into the brain, a neurosurgical robot to perform the operations and a high-density electronic system capable of processing information from neurons. It is based on technology developed at UCSF and UC Berkeley.

Probes

The probes, composed mostly of polyimide, a biocompatible material, with a thin gold or platinum conductor, are inserted into the brain through an automated process performed by a surgical robot. Each probe consists of an area of wires that contains electrodes capable of locating electrical signals in the brain, and a sensory area where the wire interacts with an electronic system that allows amplification and acquisition of the brain signal. Each probe contains 48 or 96 wires, each of which contains 32 independent electrodes, making a system of up to 3072 electrodes per formation.

Robot

Neuralink says they have engineered a surgical robot capable of rapidly inserting many flexible probes into the brain, which may avoid the problems of tissue damage and longevity issues associated with larger and more rigid probes. This surgical robot has an insertion head with a 25 μm diameter needle made of tungsten-rhenium designed to attach to the insertion loops, inject individual probes, and penetrate the meninges and cerebral tissue; it is capable of inserting up to six wires (192 electrodes) per minute. A linear motor powers the needle, enabling fast retraction acceleration and varying insertion speeds. A 50-μm tungsten wire that has been bent at the tip and is driven both axially and rotationally makes up the pincher. An imaging stack is also included in the inserter head for needle guidance, real-time insertion viewing, and verification.

Electronics

Neuralink has developed an application-specific integrated circuit to create a 1,536-channel recording system. This system consists of 256 amplifiers capable of being individually programmed, analog-to-digital converters within the chip and peripheral circuit control to serialize the digitized information obtained. It aims to convert information obtained from neurons into an understandable binary code in order to achieve a greater understanding of brain function and the ability to stimulate these neurons back. With the present technology, Neuralink's electrodes are still too big to record the firing of individual neurons, so they can record only the firing of a group of neurons; Neuralink representatives believe this issue might get mitigated algorithmically, but it is computationally expensive and does not produce exact results.

In July 2020, according to Musk, Neuralink obtained a FDA breakthrough device designation which allows limited human testing under the FDA guidelines for medical devices.

Public Compression Challenge

On May 29, 2024, Elon Musk issued a request for public input on a challenge facing Neuralink. Musk suggested that due to the size of the data in need of transmission, a compression rate of more than 200x was needed for its proper function. The challenge also specified that compression needed to be lossless, work under low power, and be able to compress data in real time. Software consultant Roy van Rijn was quoted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as saying the prospect of 200 x lossless compressions was "just outlandish."

Animal testing and alleged harm

Neuralink tests their devices by surgically implanting them in the brains of live monkeys, pigs and other animals. Neuralink's animal testing has been criticized by groups such as PETA. From 2017 to 2020, Neuralink's experiments on monkeys were conducted in partnership with UC Davis. At the end of their partnership, UC Davis transferred seven monkeys to Neuralink. In 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare advocacy group, alleged that Neuralink and UC Davis had mistreated several monkeys, subjecting them to psychological distress, extreme suffering, and chronic infections due to surgeries. Experiments conducted by Neuralink and UC Davis have involved at least 23 monkeys, and the PCRM believes that 15 of those monkeys died or were euthanized as a result of the experiments. Furthermore, the PCRM alleged that UC Davis withheld photographic and video evidence of the mistreatment.

In February 2022, Neuralink said that macaque monkeys died and were euthanized after experimentation, denying that any animal abuse had occurred. In December 2022, it was reported that Neuralink was under federal investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding animal welfare violations. Additionally, a report by Reuters cited claims from several Neuralink employees that testing was being rushed due to Musk's demands for fast results, which was leading to needless suffering and deaths among the animals. A September 2023 exposé by Wired provided additional details on the primate deaths based on public records and confidential interviews with a former Neuralink employee and a current researcher at the California National Primate Research Center. Those records showed complications with the installation of electrodes, including partial paralysis, bloody diarrhea, lost fingers and brain swelling.

In July 2023, an investigation by the USDA found no evidence of animal welfare breaches in the trials other than a previous, self-reported incident from 2019. The PCRM disputed the results of the investigation.

In October 2023, Wired reported that Neuralink worked to keep details of animal suffering and death hidden from the public. In November 2023, U.S. lawmakers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Neuralink deceived investors in by omitting details about possible animal deaths.

On March 21, 2024, Musk stated that the company's second product would be called Blindsight and was already working in animal trials with monkeys. He noted it operates at low resolution that is expected to improve and also stated that no monkey has died due to or been seriously injured by a Neuralink device, in contradiction with earlier reports.

Human testing

Neuralink received FDA approval for human clinical trials in May 2023. The FDA had previously rejected a 2022 application to pursue human clinical trials citing "major safety concerns involving the device’s lithium battery; the potential for the implant’s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue."

In September 2023, Neuralink opened up its first human trials. It recruited people with quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis under an investigational device exemption by the FDA.

On January 29, 2024, Musk said that Neuralink had successfully implanted a brain computer interface (BCI) device the company named Telepathy in a human on the day prior, and that the patient was recovering from the surgery. As it was a "first in human" and "early feasibility" trial to develop a concept, the company was not obligated to disclose details about the procedure or to prove safety or efficacy. Neuralink provided a few details in February on the implant in a recruitment brochure for the Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME) study. On February 20, Musk stated that Neuralink's first human trial participant had been able to control a computer mouse through thought.

On March 20, 2024, Neuralink introduced the person who had received the first Neuralink implant in the clinical trial as 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh through a livestream on X. Arbaugh had become a quadriplegic after experiencing a diving accident; dislocating his C4 and C5 spinal vertebrae. Later in the livestream, Noland demonstrated his ability to move a cursor on a computer screen to allow him to control music and play games such as chess. Noland expressed support for the implant in dramatically improving his quality of life. He acknowledged that the device is not perfect yet but he is excited about the future and believes it has changed his life significantly already. Arbaugh later stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that 85% of the implant threads from the device had completely detached while his brain has shifted approximately three times the amount of what the company expected.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Neuralink would proceed with a second trial participant with the FDA signing off on the company’s proposed fixes for a problem that occurred in the first test participant. In August 2024, the second trial participant was reportedly successfully implanted.

In August 2024, an announcement was made by Neuralink regarding their second implanted participant. The participant stated in the article “The Link is a big step on the path of regaining freedom and independence for myself.”

Reception

Scientists have cited technical challenges for Neuralink. In 2017, a journalist at the IEEE Spectrum magazine had asked for comments from five researchers that had been working on BCI implants, including Thomas Oxley who invented the Stentrode. At a live demonstration in August 2020, Musk described their device as "a Fitbit in your skull". Several neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims. MIT Technology Review accused the demonstration of having the main objective to "stir excitement", adding that "Neuralink has provided no evidence that it can (or has even tried to) treat depression, insomnia, or a dozen other diseases that Musk mentioned in a slide". Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University, also commented on the presentation to the BBC. To Musk's statement that he found Neuralink's advancements to be "profound", Jackson responded, "I don't think there was anything revolutionary in the presentation."

Thiago Arzua of the Medical College of Wisconsin argued that Neuralink's functions are not novel and that ideas for a brain–machine interface (BMI) are at least 50 years old. He cited successful control of a robotic prosthetic arm by a man that gave him haptic feedback, which he used in 2016 to give President Obama a fist bump. Arzua said that the 2020 Neuralink presentation "showed little more than a flashy new design for a BMI with more electrodes". Similar criticism is made by the Duke University researcher Miguel Nicolelis, stating that most of what Neuralink claims as "novelty" was already performed by his lab in the early 2000s; that there are ethical concerns on how the company markets and utilizes this technology; and that most patients don't want to perform any surgery to recover their movements, and so his team developed non-invasive techniques for BMI, as demonstrated in the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, in the context of the Walk Again Project.

Neuralink. (2025, February 18). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink