HAIR of the ALIEN published front cover
Bill Chalker

HAIR of the ALIEN published back cover
Bill Chalker

"HAIR of the ALIEN" - the published cover
Bill Chalker

"HAIR of the ALIEN" - the book at last!

Monday June 27th - Peter Khoury (left) and Bill Chalker view an advance copy of "HAIR of the ALIEN" hot off the press and couriered from New York courtesy of Simon & Schuster, in the wake of NY editorial feedback: "It looks absolutely fabulous! I think you will be very pleased." (I am) "Congratulations on a wonderful and important book." Special thanks to Patrick Huyghe of Paraview Pocket Books and Josh Martino of Simon & Schuster for a job well done. Full steam ahead for the July 19 release!
Bill Chalker

HAIR of the ALIEN - the "NORDIC" blonde

Image - copyright APEG/P.Khoury

HAIR of the ALIEN - the "NORDIC" lady and the strange hair root DNA sequence.

The full story is told in my book "HAIR of the ALIEN - DNA and other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abduction" scheduled for release in the US (July 19 2005) and Australia (September 2005). Available also through Amazon.com

Bill Chalker

FUGO Balloon bombs, Unit 731 & strange journeys

THE CLOUD ATLAS is a striking novel by Liam Callanan which weds the bizarre Fugo balloon bomb attacks on America and the shadow of Unit 731 in a potent journey through the nether world of the fear of "weapons of mass destruction". I read the novel last year and found to it to be a fine journey of the mind, which now remarkably resonates with aspects of the latest take on the Roswell saga:

"THEY" WERE LAID out on two long metal tables, side by side in a makeshift morgue. I didn't get a very good view; Gurley and the other officers had closed in a relatively tight cordon around the two bodies, one of which was covered, the other not.
- pg. 209, "The Cloud Atlas" by Liam Callanan (2004)

If you are looking for a great read check out "The Cloud Atlas".

Bill Chalker

Pheonix Mountain HARBIN

Zhang Jingping of CUFORO sent me one of their magazines which includes this photo of Pheonix Mountain, the locality of the Meng Zhao Guo abduction story - regarded as the most famous alien abduction in CHINA. This area is close to HARBIN in north eastern China.

This for me provided an unusual ufological cross roads. For the past few months I have been working with some translators to get a detailed understanding of the strange Meng story. (see my earlier posts)

Now with Nick Redfern's Body Snatchers in the Desert we have the convoluted Roswell saga beating a path back to a very shocking part of HARBIN's past - namely the terrible legacy of Unit 731 - where there was a Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental base which unleashed horrors on Chinese, Soviet, British and Korean prisoners of war during World War II. Along with the Fugo balloon attacks on North America another explanation has taken flight in the hot air that swirls around the Roswell legend. Time will tell if this scenario is a valid answer to the Roswell controversy.
Bill Chalker

The Tully "daylight disc" & "saucer nest" effect

The Tully "daylight disk" and what it did: I constructed this montage to show what farmer George Pedley saw at 9 a.m. January 19 1966. The UFO drawing is Pedley's original witness sketch. It is superimposed over a photo of the "nest" effect - a clockwise tight spiral of interwoven sword grass approximately about 32 feet by 25 feet . Initially Pedley only saw a darkened swirling lagoon surface. The "nest" surfaced after a short time and had the quality of a floating elliptical bed of reeds. George Pedley saw the UFO initially about 25 feet directly above the lagoon surface. It rose up vertically about another 25 feet then appeared to depart towards a south west direction, initially dipping slightly and taking off at roughly a 45 degree angle.

Many explanations have been put forward - mating birds such as brolgas, mating crocodiles, upside down helicopters, a "willy willy" (Australian term for a mini-tornado wind vortex - the official Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) explanation) lifting the reeds into a saucer shape, a hoax (with little evidence author John Van Tiggelin tilts at the idea it was a hoax by Pedley that got out of hand - see his book "Mango Country" (2003)) , and a "plasma vortex"(my friend Jenny Randles argued for this - the same model used to "explain" crop circles) . None of these explanations are tenable.

My conclusion: "The 1966 Tully UFO physical trace case still stands as a classic example of the impressive physical dimensions of the UFO phenomenon."
Bill Chalker

HORSESHOE LAGOON TODAY - the Tully "flying saucer nest" locality

HORSESHOE LAGOON - the site of the famous 1966 Tully UFO event - as it is today - photo from the video interview conducted by Mike Williams in May 2005 (used with permission).
Bill Chalker

THE TULLY "FLYING SAUCER" NEST

GENESIS OF A CONTROVERSY - The January 1966 Tully Times account of farmer George Pedley's daylight close encounter with a "flying saucer" he saw rising out of Horseshoe Lagoon near Euramo Tully in North Queensland. In the lagoon the famous Tully "saucer nest" was found which apparently inspired English crop circle hoaxers Doug & Dave to start on their merry way back in 1980. However the Tully nest was far more impressive than the English "crop circles". In the case of the Tully landing there was credible evidence for a UFO connection.

For further details of this episode go to the "physical evidence" section of my web site at:
www.theozfiles.com
and read my article "The 1966 Tully Saucer "Nest" - a classic UFO physical trace case" published also in the International UFO Reporter (2 parts - Winter 1997-98 & Spring 1998) and the Australasian Ufologist (Vol.4 No.4 2000).
Bill Chalker

Ground zero for a UFO legend

Albert Pennisi - the Horseshoe Lagoon Euramo Tully property owner - at ground zero of the UFO landing site - this photo (used with permission) is from an excellent field video interview conducted in May 2005 by Australian Fortean research Michael Williams.
Bill Chalker

THE GERM GROWERS - 1892 - ALIEN INVADERS BEFORE WELLS' "THE WAR OF THE WORLDS"

BEFORE "THE WAR OF THE WORLDS" THERE WAS "THE GERM GROWERS" - 1892

A few years ago I sat down in the NSW State Library in Sydney Australia and read an obscure novel - "The Germ Growers - An Australian Story of Adventure and Mystery" - published way back in 1892. While it's authorship was attributed in one edition to Robert Easterley & John Wilbraham, they were in fact the central fictional characters - two young English chaps who eventually come into contact with an alien "heart of darkness" in the Kimberley area of Western Australia - coincidentally home of the Wanjina (or Wanjina - see my earlier post). The real author was an Australian priest - Robert Potter - a canon of St. Paul's Anglican Church in North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Reading the novel one can perhaps readily understand why it didn't capture the public imagination in England or Australia and languishing instead as a hidden oddity - perhaps the world's first science fiction novel focusing on an alien invasion - fully 5 years before H.G. Well's classic of the genre - "The War of the Worlds" (1897) - entered our imagination and took a permanent hold, particularly with Orson Welles famous 1938 Martian Invasion radio broadcast, George Pals' 1953 filmic Americanisation, Jeff Wayne's 1978 musical (with Richard Burton), and now in June 2005 with a majoring rebirthing via Steven Spielberg's blockbuster treatment.

Potter (1831-1908) gave us a florid tale of aliens from the ethereal dimensions of outer space who have set up "beach heads" in remote locales, intent on laying waste to humankind via germ warfare. Our young English adventurers discover the Kimberley outpost, bearing witness to the activities of the alien's flying craft - "invisible aerial cars" - and the sinister alien leader Signor Niccolo Davelli. Salvation from this cosmic invasion comes in the form of alien invervention - Leafar, ye of the good alien types. Leafar, read Rafael the "angel", and Davelli (the Devil) and you get the drift of Canon Potter's religious SF tract. Yes Potter plays out a cosmic war between good and evil - a theme revisited in the occult baggage served up in much of the contactee credo of the 1950s - but his tale replete with "alien abduction", "UFOs", and contact, was probably offered up as a clever reselling of godly redemption (if of course one chooses the right side in the cosmic war) something he may have thought might have had more popular appeal than his Tractarian publications - "A Voice from the Church in Australia" (1864), "An examination of Secularism" (1883), and "Replies to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne" (1895).

Religious agendas intermixed with alien themes is certainly a popular theme - check out "The Gods have landed - New Religions from Other Worlds" edited by James Lewis (1995) and "UFO Religions" edited by Christopher Partridge (2003). Susan Palmer offers an interesting study with "Aliens Adored - Rael's UFO Religion" (Rutgers University Press, 2004). Further anchor points and alternative perspectives may be found in such studies as "The Lure of the Edge - Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs" by Brenda Denzler (University of California Press, 2001), and "Heavenly Lights - the Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon" by Portuguese historians Joaquim Fernandes and Fina D'Armada (2005) (a theme visited by Jacques Vallee in his book "The Invisible College" (1975) and in potent fictional form in John Fowles' striking novel "A Maggot" (1985).
Bill Chalker

HAIR of the ALIEN - the DNA paradigm

THE ALIEN DNA PARADIGM

In my forthcoming book "HAIR of the ALIEN - DNA and other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abduction" I focus on a DNA forensic approach to alien abduction evidence. While prominence is given to the Peter Khoury "alien hair" case from Sydney Australia, other cases and experiences from around the world are also examined. While the validity of this evidence will be debated, my primary focus is to promote a forensic scientific approach to examing the alien abduction controversy, concentrating on the DNA approach where compelling biological evidence is available.

Part of this approach involves examining DNA for evidence of "non-Darwinian patterns", which might reflect extraterrestrial or intelligent influence - a sign of artificial evolution or intervention. The Anomaly Physical Evidence Group (APEG) have been examining this intriguing area focusing in part on unusual mutations, polymorphisms, our "junk" DNA (or perhaps more appropriately "regulatory" DNA) and other aspects. Some intriguing areas are being looked at.

Professor Paul Davies of the Macquarie University based Australian Centre for Astrobiology has speculated that some sort of pattern (along the mathematical type of code described in Carl Sagan's novel (and the film) "Contact" might be encoded in our "junk DNA". While this sounds like science fiction, particularly if mathematical or symbolic codes are being sort, the idea is not as wild as it sounds. I briefly discussed this speculation with Paul Davies during a Macquarie University post graduate open day on campus on April 12 2005. He indicated his "junk DNA - ET evidence" speculations were meant to be serious. He felt the idea was no less serious than the idea of seeking out ET "radio signals" (i.e. SETI which he agreed had not delivered any credible evidence so far) so why not try something that is far easier to do and is potentially well within our current technological reach - searching for coded clues within our own DNA. I mentioned to him that this intersected with some work I had been focusing on and he expressed interest in seeing my book. Whether this develops beyond mere tokenism remains to be seen.

I reflected on Paul Davies well known skepticism re UFOs in recent times, bringing up with him his friendship with the late Dr. Allen Hynek, author of the classic study "The UFO Experience - A scientific Enquiry" (1972) and originator of the term "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Davies acknowledged that Hynek was a nice guy and that he had once stayed at his Chicago home. He felt that there was no one of Hynek's stature in the field of UFO research today. I said there were some interested researchers of note. Knowing he had endorsed Michio Kaku's new book "Parallel Worlds", I mentioned Kaku's interest in the UFO subject. He seemed unaware of this or skeptical of my statement, so I suggested he inform himself by watching the Peter Jennings' documentary "UFOs - Seeing is believing" which was airing on Australian television the following weekend end. I alerted Davies to Kaku's open endorsement and advocacy of serious investigation of UFOs, and said this was not the first time that Michio Kaku, "one of the world's finest science writers" (Davies own endorsement) and a world-renowned physicist, had made positive comments about the subject. I also indicated that Jennings' documentary also would show a positive presentation of part of the contribution his old friend Allen Hynek had made to the UFO subject.

Bill Chalker