Sunday, August 19, 2012

Steven Greer's 18 Inch Extraterrestrial, and Ghost Rockets

Earlier I reported on the claim of Dr. Steven Greer, of CSETI and The Disclosure Project, to have seen and examined the body of a presumably genuine extraterrestrial, in the possession of an unspecified organization (that he now says is in an unspecified foreign country). He was seeking funds for proper DNA analysis of the creature (although if a being evolved on another planet, it is not at all clear that the creature will even have DNA).

Now Greer has released a photo of it. Or, more exactly, a photo of Greer (or someone) holding a photo of it. Why don't we see a good close-up of the photo itself? Probably it was done that way to prevent us from seeing how phony it is. The photo is now on YouTube, with a soundtrack of Greer describing the creature, and explaining how you need to send him even more money to get it analyzed.



Meanwhile, over in Sweden a team of real-life UFO Chasers is assembling to try to answer once and for all the question of "Ghost rockets" in Sweden. The history of "Ghost Rockets" in Sweden began in 1946, the year before Kenneth Arnold's pioneering saucer sighting. (I wrote about this in the context of "Mystery Missiles" being seen here in the U.S.) In the midst of very real concerns about possible Soviet rocket test launches, people throughout Sweden reported sightings of unknown objects usually described as "Rockets," some of which were reported to have plunged into lakes. But no evidence of a corresponding rocket launch was ever found, and searches by divers failed to turn up Soviet rockets (or anything else) at the bottom of lakes. Hence the name "ghost rockets": they are allegedly seen, but then vanish like a ghost. Many of these sightings were very likely contrails, left by high-altitude military surveillance aircraft that were relatively new sights in post-war Europe. Others were probably meteors, especially if seen at night.
The one "classic" photo of a Swedish "Ghost Rocket"

Frankly, I was not even aware that the "Ghost Rocket" sightings had continued to the present day. It just goes to illustrate the role that cultural expectations play in generating UFO reports; in no other country do people regularly report seeing unidentified objects plunging into lakes.

A group called UFO-Sweden, that appears to be quite well-organized and funded (as UFO groups go), is now preparing a documentary film to hopefully solve this mystery:
 In 2012 the head of UFO-Sweden Clas Svahn will lead an expedition to investigate one of the latest ghost rockets sightings. The case, based on a previous classified report, will be their biggest expedition yet and will take them to a lake located deep in the forests of northern Sweden.
Coming along with Clas is a professional diving team, the two original witnesses, a support team and a chef. And of course a whole lot of equipment including inflatable boats, diving tanks, underwater cameras, a sonar scanner and metal detectors, adding up to over a ton of equipment. Set within a beautiful landscape, this team of people have come together for the first time with a common goal. To find an object that may very well hold the key to unlocking one of the worlds biggest UFO-mysteries.
So possibly they will haul up the remains of some "ghost rocket" at the bottom of a Swedish lake, although I seriously doubt they'll find anything mysterious down there. On the other hand, maybe they'll find a Lake Monster hiding out? Wouldn't that be a nice surprise! But that's not how it works: the bottom of Swedish lakes are supposed to contain rocket parts, and the bottom of lakes in Scotland are supposed to contain Nessie. Different countries, different mythologies.

15 comments:

  1. Robert: I think you have nailed it. Cultural Paradigm is the reason for the many variations on this sort of sighting. Either that, or Nazi satellites re-entering!! I am sure there is someone who can expound that!

    Dale in AL

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  2. In the book "UFOs and Alien Contact" by Bartholomew & Howard (1998) is a chapter entitled "Sweden's Ghost Rocket Delusion of 1946" written in collaboration with Anders Liljegren & Clas Svahn. Early in this chapter the authors say that: "This phantom rocket hysteria was one in a long history of Soviet invasion fears that have preoccupied the Swedes for centuries".

    I believe the official Swedish investigation and report was kept under wraps for at least 30 years. Needless to say, no physical evidence was ever found.

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  3. I think they meant "Russian Invasion Fears" The Soviet Union did not last even a century..Good point nonetheless, after all, Sweden used to invade Russia regularly centuries ago...

    Dale in AL

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  4. So the investigators are bringing over a ton of equipment? Call me a cynic, but who wants to bet it includes pieces of a "ghost rocket" fresh from the forge, or the forger?
    Well, I hope the fishing is good anyway, so the chef has something to do besides wrestling a turkey and hollering "Bork! Bork! Bork!"

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  5. Just to add, people did not only see contrails but actual 60 cm long rocket shaped objects, with small wings attached at the center of the object, along with hearing the sounds of them, which the military investigated.

    The military also found craters and a torn up seabed in the lakes the objects had fallen into.

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  6. Old Rockin Dave:

    I will call you a cynic. This expedition is a serious attempt to finding out the truth by an organisation funded partly by the EU.

    To quote their website about the weight "And of course a whole lot of equipment including inflatable boats, diving tanks, underwater cameras, a sonar scanner and metal detectors, adding up to over a ton of equipment."

    The expedition leader is Clas Svahn, who works for the biggest newspaper in Sweden "Dagens Nyheter" and is known for his scientific approach to everything he writes about. He's a skeptic just as Mr Scheaffer.

    I hardly think this will be a Chasing UfOs kind of expedition.

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    1. If this is a serious expedition, then I am glad to hear it. But remember, when so much money and effort has been invested, there is pressure to come up with something, anything, other than a completely negative result, especially when a news organization is involved. Don't expect any banner headlines reading "Nothing Found in Lakes".
      Don't get me started on EU funding; I wish I had a nickel for every hundred euros they have thrown away on stupidity. I'm not saying this is necessarily stupid, but EU involvement is not very relevant to the utility of this expedition.
      As for the original sightings, how did the witnesses determine that the objects were 60cm long, especially if they were high enough to leave contrails, and were presumably moving at rocket speeds? If they were 60cm long, how did they carry enough fuel, and of what kind, to enable them to fly at such altitudes long enough to do what was said of them? I would also be interested in their descriptions of what they heard.

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  7. It should be noted that in addition to his journalism, Clas Svahn heads up an organization called "UFO-Sweden", and this at least raises questions about his objectivity. There is very little English-language material about him online, so I have only your word that he is scientific in his approach and that this carries over into his UFO work.
    References would be appreciated.

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    1. Thanks for a well mannered and good reply Old Rockin Dave.

      Here are some references to the Ghost Rockets and Clas Svahn.

      Ghost Rockets on Wikipedia:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_rockets

      Here is Clas' blog on Dagens Nyheter (The daily news) but it is in Swedish, google translate could maybe give a decent translation of the text. Here he blogs about space news, science and strangeness and oddities.

      http://www.dn.se/blogg/markligheter/

      Yes you are right about the pressure and EU funding bit.

      The sightings was many and there seems to have been at least 1000 sightings reported, where at least 225 was sightings of physical objects (see wikipedia). So it was not only contrails being seen. Far from it.

      I think Clas Svahn at least takes his research very serious. Recently he went to England to collect approx. 300 boxes of UFO-research/information to gather it all in what he calls the worlds biggest UFO (and other mysteries) archive located in Norrköping, Sweden.

      His reason for doing this is to save the global UFO research being done and make it available for anyone who wants to make their own research by scanning everything and digitizing it all.

      http://www.dn.se/blogg/markligheter/2012/06/08/att-spara-i-ladorna/

      The Archive for UFO research:

      http://www.afu.se/

      Take the photo tour :). "The microfilm collection holds unique US and Scandinavian UFO-related archives on microfilms. The micro reels from the Project Blue Book archives includes the more than 12.000 cases investigated by the U.S. Air Force. between 1949 and 1969. We also have indexes to help you navigate in this wealth of US and world-wide data."

      Best regards

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  8. You can watch a teaser trailer to the Ghost Rockets Trailer here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0slQwdHE5w4

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    1. Interesting. It says that the investigation begins August 29 - tomorrow! And you can follow it on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/ghostrockets . Apparently the mainstream media in Sweden have been reporting on this.

      Any predictions on what they will find? I'm expecting flat-out nothing, since all they have are "reliable witness reports," and by now we know that means nothing ("Nullius in Verba"). Of course, they may find a few pieces of unidentified scrap metal and claim it's from a rocket, but let's face it, it will only be a "success" if they find pieces that are obviously parts of rockets.

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  9. The expedition have now landed in Skellefteå, northern Sweden. So yes the expedition is underway.

    I'm not expecting much either but I must admit that I'm pretty excited to see such a big expedition take place in Sweden and if they discover something and what that could be.

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  10. I attended greer's talk on September 16th in Santa Monica, CA. He showed very close up high definition pictures of the little being. No way it could have been photoshopped, it looked too real and it was shown from many angles. If it's a dummy, its a really really good one. If it's not ET, i estimate its a small monkey with or without a birth defect. Looked pretty alien though, big brain too. We'll see.

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  11. Greer is revealing more amazing things about that supposed alien body: http://ufoupdateslist.com/2012/oct/m19-002.shtml

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  12. There are two interesting circumstances here. As one person already pointed out, the public paranoia at the time was unprecedented and to make matters worse - several German missiles -had- crashed in Sweden during the late war years (immediately preceding the "Ghost Rocket"-craze, or constituting the beginning of it - depends on how you look at it).

    During the 1980's a near-identical craze took over, this time regarding ghost submarines. The very real case of the Soviet S-363 that ran aground in 1981 and a few unconfirmed contacts by the Swedish Navy that ended up in the news kickstarted a huge wave of paranoia, where people would report otters, minks and beavers as submarines, Soviet "frogmen" tip toeing through their backyards, submarine periscopes appearing all over the place and so on and so forth. The Navy, obliged to look into things, rarely found anything of value (except driftwood, dislodged docks etc) but there were some die hard proponents of the imminent Soviet submarine invasion among the top brass - for obvious reasons. This coincidentally echoes the earlier surge in Air Force expenditures post '46.

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