Behind Closed Doors...

No, it's not the entrance point to Hangar 18! Not so much Fortean in nature, but a minor bit of secrecy and cover-up.

This photo shows my dad, Frank, pointing at one of a number of large, thick, tall doors at the Cannock Leisure Center in the town of Cannock, Staffordshire, England (which has since been dramatically refurbished - this photo was taken back in 2000).

You may wonder, why on earth would a center dedicated to simply providing the people of Cannock access to exercise machines, a swimming pool, etc need such vast and powerful doors made of solid, thick wood?

They look like they might be able to withstand an earth-shattering explosion, right?

Yes...exactly!

Before his retirement at 65, my dad worked for his entire life as a carpenter (aside from a three year period in the British Royal Air Force, which he served when National Service - the Draft in the U.S. - was still in place).

And, being based in Cannock, the company he worked for got the contract to build and install these very doors. In fact, my dad helped put this particular door into place.

But, why?

Well, I'll tell you!

Unknown to the vast majority of the good folk of Cannock, back in the 80s, and in the event of a national emergency (such as a confrontation with the Soviets that might have escalated into a full-blown nuclear exchange between the super-powers), the lower-level of the leisure center was secretly singled out by officialdom to act as a refuge area that could allow for some continuation of local/regional government (while the rest of us would be left to fry in the above-surface radioactive nightmare...).

Hence the curious-looking, super-tough doors.

Of course, in reality, in an all-out nuclear war, such a place would have offered very little - if, indeed, any - real protection from the mighty power of the atom. And the doors, designed to provide some degree of protection to those behind them, would likely have been vaporized in an instant.

But, what I find interesting is that this was a Cold War secret that for years, and for all intents and purposes, was right under people's noses. Very few, however, ever realized the center's big secret and the reason behind the construction of those huge doors!

Well, now you do!

The Redfern Critter Collection!

One of the reasons I enjoy living where I do, is the massive presence of a wide and varied body of strange and over-sized critters of a type that I just never found back in England.

From blue-eyed toads to fat cats, and from mean-looking spiders to winged whatsits, it's all good! Well, aside for my wife, Dana, who recoils in horror every time I bring to her attention that latest beast on which I have stumbled!

Strangest of all was the severed possum head...and the nature of whatever had severed it during the night...

And here's a few photos of them, taken by me over the last couple of years:

The Truth Behind Cattle Mutilations...

After years of searching, I have finally uncovered the terrible truth behind the cattle-mutilation puzzle: it's all part of a diabolical and nefarious government plot to create monstrous, hybrid entities that are part-cattle and part-machine.

After all, doesn't this photo of me and my dad, Frank, taken in 2009 at Fort Worth, Texas's famous Stockyards - about 20-minutes' drive from where me and Dana live - provide the undeniable, shocking evidence? Surely, it does!

Don't Be A Dummy

Back in the summer of 1997, when the Roswell, New Mexico incident was all the news (due to the fact that the case - involving who knows what - was then precisely 50 years old), the U.S. Air Force came out with a somewhat bizarre and still-controversial report suggesting that the alleged "alien bodies" found outside of Roswell were actually crash-test-dummies used in high-altitude experiments.

The theory provoked a wealth of debate within the domain of Ufology, and even the mainstream media addressed the scenario with some doubt when it was demonstrated by eagle-eyed sleuths that the dummy tests didn't even begin until 1952 - five years after Roswell occurred!

No wonder the debate continues to rage.

Anyway, for those who are interested, you can find one of the dummies in question on display at the UFO Museum at Roswell - and here it is (this photo was taken by me 6 or 7 years ago).

But, there is one interesting (to me anyway!) thing about the crash-test dummy story that very rarely - if ever - gets touched upon.

I have heard UFO researchers say time and again that it would be absurd to imagine that people could mistake dummies for aliens - chiefly because the dummies were all six-footers (or thereabouts), and the bodies at Roswell were only from three to five-feet in height.

And, I agree that the dummy scenario does not solve whatever it was that did or did not happen at Roswell.

But (yep, another but!), the dummy on display at the UFO Museum is not a six-footer. It's probably around five-foot-two or -three, or maybe an inch or two more. I'm six-foot-tall, and I tower over the one in the museum display!

So, even though I am not in the slightest bit persuaded by the theory that the Roswell bodies were dummies, contrary to what many UFO researchers have claimed, the dummies were not all big "guys."

That's one of the issues I have with many facets of Ufology (and Forteana in general): certain incorrect statements (such as this one about the dummies, the "95 per cent of all UFOs can be explained" statement, the "alien abductions began with Betty and Barney Hill" assertion, and the "Kenneth Arnold coined the term Flying Saucer" claim, etc, etc) are trotted out time and again, and without any independent attempt to confirm the statement.

Why? Easy! Because someone else said it, and someone else said it before them, and so on and so on. And it's easy and lazy not to do one's own research - for many.

So, no, in my view the dummies of Roswell are not the bodies of Roswell. And the dummies were certainly not dwarf-like in size. But, they were not all 6-footers either. In fact, nowhere near. If you don't believe me, go to Roswell, and have your photo taken next to the town's resident dummy.

If people want to say something about UFOs, and UFO events, they should investigate them. They should not be relying on what someone else said and simply assume its fully correct. Don't, in other words, be a dummy.

Flying the Flag of the Saucer People

Yep, this photo is somewhat grainy, but it's one I particularly like, since it was taken during one of my early excursions to the United States (in this case, in 1998), and, thus, provokes a lot of good memories of transatlantic adventures.

The location was the UFO Congress at Laughlin, Nevada, and from left to right are... (A) one of the early players in the Contactee scene, Aleuti Francesca; (B) Contactee Wayne Aho, looking somewhat puzzled and muddled; (C) conspiracy ace Kenn Thomas, who appears with an appropriately suspicious look in his eyes; (D) Reverend Bob Short, a true character from the early years of Space Brother lore; (E) Guy Kirkwood/Mel Noel next to him; and, finally, (F), who I think is Bob's wife, Shirley.

Together, they raised a flag and toasted to those eras of Ufology now long-gone, namely those dominated by isolated desert encounters with human-looking aliens sporting distinctly odd monikers and long blond manes.

And, I was pleased to capture the moment!

TNT Terror!

It's fair to say I have received some weird stuff through the mail in my time (such as the skull of an alleged Texas Chupacabra, and reams of material from a still-unidentified source claiming to have worked as a real Man in Black), but this is probably the weirdest of all. But welcome too!

No, it's not a bit of debris from the Roswell crash! Rather, it's a bit of chipped-off brickwork from the old TNT plant at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where the notorious, glowing-eyed Mothman hung out back in the 1960s.

Yep, it's probably a bit pathetic to get all excited about a piece of old stone but, hell, I don't care. It's about as close as I will ever personally get to the monstrous, winged fiend, so a bit of local stone instead is good enough for me!

Apocalypse!

Well, given that 2012 is the year that the shit hits the fan, tsunamis pummel the planet, earthquakes decimate whole countries, comets slam into the Earth, and anarchy and chaos erupt everywhere (or so some would have us believe...), I thought I would get in on the act by posting this photo, which has a distinct apocalyptic flavor to it.

I took the picture out in California about a year or so ago, and (for me, anyway) the aging, rotting carcass of this old crane, digger, or whatever it was - situated in a messy mass of mud, and with a long stretch of water behind it - provokes thoughts and images of precisely the sort of things we might expect to see after things fall apart, in 2012 or anytime!

For the record, no I don't think anything of any significance will occur in December 2012, but I do think that, in the long term, the odds are most definitely stacked against us. It's good to think positive!