UFO ROUNDUP Volume 7 Number 51
Volume 7
Number 51
December 17, 2002
Editor: Joseph Trainor
E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.com
THIMBLE-SHAPED UFO SEEN BY POLICEMEN IN SPAIN
"There are more than clouds and stars in the skies over Xativa," in southeastern Spain. "Local police officer Paco Hellan is one of three policemen who in recent days claims having seen metallic unidentified flying objects giving off very bright light."
"The first sighting occurred in the early hours of (Wednesday) November 20 (2002). According to Hellan, 'an unexplained metallic object gave off a strong blue light and moved in a visibly notable manner.'"
"'I was at my station and some fellow officers on patrol told me that they had seen the object. Thinking it might be the planet Venus, I headed to the location and saw (that) the object did not look at all like any of the stars that were out at that time.'"
"After that, the three policemen saw 'how the object moved vertically.'" To assure themselves that the UFO was indeed moving, "the officers used the (power) cables of the RENFE and the mountains in the background as points of reference. 'We suddenly saw that the object, as soon as it was both above and in between the cables, approached and went away from the mountain tops.'"
Hellan and his fellow officers "witnessed the display from 6 a.m. to 6:50 a.m. Then they decided to contact the Manises Airport control tower to have the facility's radar detect the object."
"'There, after providing the coordinates of 150 to 170 degrees southeast, taking the airport as a reference (point), they told us that nothing appeared on their radar, because in order for an object to be detected, it needs to have a transponder that issues a (radio) signal."
"'Days later,' continued the officer, 'I went to the airport and remarked (on the event--S.C.) with one of the directors of the aviation school, who told me that he too had seen a luminous object from his balcony, and it was probably work being performed on a space station.'"
"Days went by and another (police) agent claimed having seen 'a metallic object over the Lluis Alcayins Hospital. This occurred on (Friday or Saturday) November 29 or 30 (2002), 'and on the following day, it was also around the same area,' added Hellan. According to his description, 'it was thimble-shaped and gave off a glowing white light at its core and an intense blue hue that changed to a lighter color.'"
Xativa is in southeastern Spain, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the city of Valencia. (See the Spanish newspaper Las Provincias for December 12, 2002, "A UFO flies over Xativa." Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Jordi Ardanuy para eso articulo de diario.)
SADDAM's AREA 51?
A UFO incident in Iraq four years ago has raised disturbing questions about possible collaboration between aliens and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
On Thursday, December 16, 1998, during Operation Desert Fox, the Allied air strike against Iraq, a video clip aired on CNN showed a UFO hovering over Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, and moving away to avoid a stream of tracer anti-aircraft fire. (For the full story on this incident, see UFO Roundup, Volume 3, Number 51 for December 22, 1998, "UFO intervenes in Operation Desert Fox," page 1.)
At the time, it was thought to be just another UFO sighting, although captured on videotape. But now, ufologists think there might have been more to this incident.
According to Jack Sarfatti, on Friday night, December 6, 2002, "a caller into the Art Bell (radio) show, who claims to have a connection to the military, said a UFO crashed in Iraq in recent years. The U.S. is searching for any public pretext to invade Iraq, but its greatest fear is that Saddam will reverse-engineer the crashed alien spacecraft."
"The craft allegedly crashed during the Gulf War (1990-1991) or more recently (possibly December 1998). This will be Iraq's Roswell. The U.S. is currently reverse-engineering the Roswell craft and fears Saddam's scientists will catch up with or even go beyond the U.S. in one or more areas. These areas of research include zero point, over-ratio or gravimetric tenchology, which would allow for a tremendous advance, allowing Iraq to become a leading power."
Another caller reportedly hinted at the presence of "Saucer Nazis" in Iraq, assisting Saddam Hussein with his plans. Sarfatti commented, "Of course, the Occult Nazi SS (proper name: SS-Ahnenerbe--J.T.) has probably been in Iraq since World War II, and, if Nick Cook is right, maybe. But I think this story is all really silly disinformation and misinformation. But what do I know? I'm just a warped macro-quantum mechanic."
However, in actuality, Nazi interest in Iraq goes back 80 years to the early 1920s, to a time when the Nazionalsocialische Deutsches Arbeiterspartei (NSDAP) was still brawling in the streets of Berlin.
In 1924, Detlef Schmude, one of the leading lights of the NSDAP's forerunner, the Thule Gesellschaft, left Germany on an extended pilgrimage in the Middle East. Schmude had been a Canon in a Thule-related mystic group, the Order of the New Templars, and the editor of the Thule group's magazine, Ostara. Schmude settled in Tabriz, in Iran, and spent the next few years hunting for what he called "the Hidden Masters."
Then, in early 1939, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Hitler's spymaster and head of the Abwehr intelligence agency, sent Dr. Paul Leverkuehn to the Middle East to cultivate Muslim allies for the Third Reich. Strangely enough, Dr. Leverkuehn's headquarters was Detlef Schmude's old stamping ground, Tabriz. And his most successful convert was Rashid Ali, the pro-Nazi prime minister of Iraq, who was overthrown during the British invasion of Iraq two years later, in 1941.
Admiral Canaris became involved in the Stauffenberg bomb plot against Hitler in July 1944. He was arrested and thrown into the Flossenburg concentration camp, where he was executed in April 1945. Abwehr agents and operations in the Middle East were taken over by the Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler and placed under the control of Rudolf von Sebottendorff (nee Adam Glauer). By some strange coincidence, Sebottendorff was a Thule lodge brother like Schmude and, from 1916 on, a member of the New Templars.
Even stranger, Sebottendorff's dead body was found floating in the Bosporus near the docks of Istanbul on May 9, 1945, the day after World War II in Europe ended.
What happened to the Thule/SS organization in Iraq after 1945, no one in the West knows.
One who took a keen interest in Iraq was SS-Brigadefuhrer Karl Maria Wiligut, alias Weisthor, who was called "Himmler's Rasputin." In 1940, he called Himmler's attention to important archaeological discoveries in Iraq's Irbil province. Scientists had dug up man-made artifacts dating back to 10,000 B.C.
Wiligut claimed to be the last of a line of sorcerers called the Ueiskuinigs, which had originated hundreds of thousands of years ago on the lost continent of Atlantis. With important Neolithic discoveries being made in Iraq, Wiligut thought it was vital to have the SS-Ahnenerbe on the scene, and it was probably he who advised Himmler to give control of the apparat to Sebottendorff. (For more on Wiligut, see the feature story in this issue.)
After the war, in 1947, the biggest cache of Neolithic items yet was unearthed by Dorothy Garrod of Cambridge University, all dating back to 10,000 B.C. The find was at Zarzi in the upper valley of the as-Zab as-Saghir (or Little Zab River, to give the Arabic a free translation--J.T.), about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Irbil. Another important discovery was made by Prof. Braidwood of the Chicago Oriental Institute in 1951, Neolithic artifacts dating back to 6,000 B.C.
(Editor's Note: The ruins of Shimurru, a Sumerian city dating back to 3,000 B.C., are also in that valley.)
UFO Roundup correspondents in the Middle East came up with a mixed bag of information about the valley.
Ayesha al-Khatabi wrote, "Zarzi? That's a remote region, Joe, even for Iraq. The upper valley has a mixed population, Kurds mostly, with some Arabs and Yezidis. There is a famous imam's tomb just south of Zarzi, in the village of Shornakh. It's called the Ishkut-i-Kuhr-i-Kish, and it's sacred to the Kurds. The interesting thing about Zarzi is that there is a giant limestone cliff on the edge of town. An intriguing cave painting was found there years ago, showing a Sumerian prince bowing before a deity. Behind the god's throne is an eleven-pointed star. A proof of ancient astronauts, perhaps? This cliff is called Ishkut-i-Qizapan."
"I wonder if there might be an underground alien base at Qizapan, in truth similar to Mount Moncayo in Spain." (For more on this engimatic peak, see UFO Roundup, volume 5, number 1 for January 6, 2000, "1815: Spain's mysterious Mount Moncayo," page 8.)
"I have, however, heard nothing of a UFO crash in Iraq. I have never heard of Thule, either. But Tabriz is not far from Zarzi. It's only 250 kilometers (150 miles) away, with a good road from Tabriz to Mahabad, also in Iran. It is possible for people to cross the border west of Mahabad and enter Iraq and the valley that way."
Mohammed Daud al-Hayyat wrote, "There are rumors of aliens in Iraq but no talk of a crash. The souk (market) gossip in Sulaimaniya (south of Zarzi--J.T.) says the aliens are the guests of Saddam. Where are they staying? Well, there is the usual talk of an underground base. But Saddam does have a palace in the valley. The old fortress of Qalaat-e-Julundi used to belong to the (Iraqi) royal family. Here the king met with the Kurdish chieftains. After the revolution, the government took possession, and now, like every palace in Iraq, it is the 'summer mansion' of Saddam. The reason I mention the Qalaat-e-Julundi is that it is nearly impregnable. The citadel stands on a hill surrounded on three sides by precipices that plunge vertically down to the (Little Zab) river. I think Saddam is letting the aliens stay there."
Mohammed Hajj al-Amdar wrote, "There are some very strange stories coming out of that valley. They say Saddam has given the aliens sanctuary, so they won't be captured by the Americans. Nobody will go near the citadel of Qalaat-e-Julundi at night. They say the aliens have created 'watchdogs' for Saddam. The aliens take simple desert scorpions and use their bio-engineering to grow them to giant size. Scorpions as large as cows! They have implants to control them."
"The scorpions are the perfect guards. They blend in with the desert, move swiftly and silently and zero right in on their warm-blooded prey. The luckless intruder hears a strange skittering noise on the stones. Then a pincer crushes his neck, and another (pincer) his legs, and he is slammed to the ground, and the barbed tail strikes six or seven times. Death comes quickly..."
"I hear that Saddam says the mission of these creatures is 'to discourage guests who have not been invited.' He has a strange sense of humor, that fellow."
It appears that something is going on in the Little Zab valley, but it is unclear just what. Is Zarzi the site of Saddam's "Area 51?" Or the location of some Neolithic "Temple of Doom?" We'll have to sit back and wait and see what develops, if anything. (Many thanks to Jack Sarfatti, Art Wagner, Ayesha al-Khatabi, Mohammed Daud al-Hayyat and Mohammed Hajj al-Amdar for these reports. See also The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1983, pages 112 through 117; and Canaris by Heinz Hohne, Doubleday and Co., Garden City, N.Y., 1979, page 377.)
OUTBACK TERROR GOES ON A RAMPAGE IN AUSTRALIA
It's back! The Outback Terror, the strange, elusive, black-panther-like creature which has been spotted for decades in Australia but never captured, made headlines last week in the Gippsland region of Victoria state, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) west of Melbourne.
"Fresh reports of black panthers roaming Victoria's countryside killing cattle have emerged after a Gippsland dairy farmer claimed that up to 200 cows on his farm had been mauled."
"Ron Jones said the latest casualty--a Friesian cow--had its jaw torn away and its ear and brain eaten. 'They go in through the ear and eat the brain out; the back end of the cow has been eaten out; and the bag (udder) area was eaten out,' Mr. Jones told the Australian Broadcasting Company radio. 'I've seen about a dozen of them now, and when they're sitting on their backsides, they're about three feet six (106 centimeters) from the ground up to the top of the head.'"
"'When they take off, they sort of go in big loping bounds. They cover about 20 feet (6 meters) every bound--they're about 8 feet (2.4 meters) roughly from the tip of their nose to the end of their tail.'"
"Mr. Jones said they are too big to be feral cats. 'It's definitely a cat the way it moves. When they kill an animal, they just lay on it and chew away at it,' he said, 'Where a dog stands and tears at it and leaves a jagged wound. Their (the creature's inflicted) wounds are just as though you'd cut the meat with a carving knife.'"
(Editor's Note: Paranormal investigator Rex Gilroy and other researchers believe that the creature is not a member of the cat family. They think it is an unknown species of marsupial, a distant relative of the kangaroo and the opossum, which evolved as a top-of-the-food-chain predator in Australia's marsupial-dominated ecosystem. Australia's Aboriginal people call these creatures Devil Dogs of the Dreamtime.)
"Debate about the possible existence of panthers or pumas has raged for decades, with sightings reported in several parts of rural Victoria."
(Editor's Note: The Outback Terror has also been reported in South Australia and Western Australia.)
"Explanations include that U.S. servicemen released big cats they kept as mascots" during World War II "or that the creatures escaped from travelling circuses more than 100 years ago."
"Mr. Jones said he had taken a few pot shots at the animals but with no success."
"Stephan Kaiser, from the Gippsland Department of Primary Industries, said a local wild dog (dingo in Australia--J.T.) catcher had been out to Mr. Jones's farm."
"'The dogger supported Mr. Jones's view that the injuries (to the cow) seemed inconsistent with a dog attack,' he said."
"DNA testing has been conducted on carcasses in the quest to determine whether the killers were feline or canine, but Mr. Kaiser said it was difficult to get a conclusive reading."
"He said serious attacks on cattle had increased recently in the Yarram district, and he was considering setting up infra-red cameras to determine the culprit."
"With 25 years' experience in dealing with feral animals, did he believe the big cat was out there?"
"'I'm a scientist. I'll wait for the evidence,' Mr. Kaiser said." (See The Australian News for December 12, 2002, "'Killer cats' on the loose." Many thanks to Diane Harrison and AUFORN for forwarding this newspaper story.)
(Editor's Note: For more on the elusive Outback Terror, see UFO Roundup, volume 6, number 21 for May 24, 2001, "Australia's 'Outback Terror' goes on the prowl," page 4.)
CIGAR-SHAPED UFO SEEN IN SOUTHERN FLORIDA
On Tuesday, December 10, 2002, at 10:45 p.m., Larry Snow "was driving in my car up the onramp from Okeechobee Boulevard" in West Palm Beach, Florida (population 82,103). "As I was approaching the top of the ramp, I saw these bright lights off to the left in the sky. At that time, I wasn't thinking anything of it. But then the lights were in a row, all connected, like this: 000000000000."
The lights "started tilting, moving away, and then the lights just went out. That's when I turned to look. And then I saw some dark object. (At this point, I had slowed my car to a stop on the left side of the onramp--L.S.) I saw this dark object continue on its way. I got out of the car and couldn't see it anymore."
"I saw other airplanes with lights blinking in the distance but no sight of the object. It happened pretty quickly. I wasn't able to make out the size and shape, except for when the lights were on. Weirdest thing I've ever seen."
Larry "was wondering if anyone else saw anything similar that night."
The UFO was "hard to make out. I saw lights, and then it was completely dark. Darker than the sky at that time. At first it wasn't moving fast at all. But when the lights shut off, it was like it vanished." (Email Form Report)
CIRCULAR UFO SIGHTED IN CASSATT, SOUTH CAROLINA
On Saturday, November 30, 2002, at 5 p.m., Shelly Gaines "was facing northeast when I saw a bright circular light that slowly descended and winked out after thirty seconds."
Shelley's sighting took place in Cassatt, South Carolina.
"Less than ten minutes afterward, two helicopters began circling the area and two more five minutes after that."
Two hours later, at 7 p.m., Shelly "saw a streak of light that lasted only a few seconds. One of the helicopters cut straight towards the streak."
"I saw a second streak at around 9 p.m. Another helicopter went in that direction. By that time, there were about six helicopters flying around the area."
"The ball (UFO) descended slowly, but the streaks were very fast." (Email Form Report)
ORANGE UFOs SIGHTED IN CLOVIS, NEW MEXICO
On Tuesday, December 10, 2002, at 10 p.m., eyewitness D.N. saw a UFO approach from the west at his home in Clovis, New Mexico (population 32,667).
"Orange lights appeared," he reported, "Round, only a couple at a time, and then they vanished."
"Then, shortly after, appeared some others, four to seven of them, in a circular hovering path. Then they vanished and were seen no more."
D.N. described the UFOs as "baseball-sized, orange, round lights that mostly just hovered."
Clovis, N.M. is on Highway 60, 84 and 70 just 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of the Texas state line. (Email Form Report)
(Editor's Note: Once again, the UFOs are visiting an ancient site. Archaeologists digging at Clovis have unearthed some of the oldest artifacts in North America--Paleolithic stone tools dating back to 50,000 B.C.)
AVIATRIX DEATH UNVEILS SECRET FDR DIPLOMACY
The death of a 1930s aviatrix in Fairfax, Virginia last week revealed some new facts about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's secret diplomacy during World War II.
"Fay Gillis Wells, a pioneer aviator, White House correspondent and writer who covered Hollywood, accompanied by her pet leopard, Snooks, died December 2 (2002) in Fairfax, Va. She was 94."
"Ms. Wells was born in Minneapolis (Minnesota) and her family moved often. When her father, a mining engineer, went to Moscow in 1930, she was an aviation correspondent. She became the first American woman to fly a Soviet airplane and the first foreigner to own a Soviet glider."
"She married for the first time on a lark to experience the Palace of Weddings in Moscow, only to discover that the immediate divorce she and her husband had planned was a bit trickier. Her brief first marriage was to Ellery Walter, a writer."
"Four days after earning her federal pilot's license on October 5, 1929, Ms. Wells wrote letters to 117 other American women who were licensed to fly, asking them to meet on Long Island. In part because of enthusiasm about Amelia Earhart's flight across the Atlantic the year before, 26 showed up."
"Earhart, the first president, proposed calling the group the Ninety-Nines, in honor of the 99 charter members. Wells, who was one of the last four of the 99, devoted much of the latter part of her life to maintaining the International Forest of Friendship in Earhart's hometown in Atchison, Kansas."
(Editor's Note: Amelia Earhart, the foremost American aviatrix of the 1930s, vanished over the Pacific Ocean with her navigator Fred Noonan in 1937. Her fate is still a mystery.)
"When Wiley Post made a solo flight around the world in 1933," Fay Gillis Wells "arranged logistics and interpreted in Siberia. He invited her to fly with him for a 2,250-mile leg, but then decided against it because it might endanger the record as a solo flight."
"Post tried to make it up to her by taking her on a flight in 1935 to Siberia by way of Alaska. She regretfully turned down the trip, which turned out to be the one on which Post and (actor) Will Rogers, her replacement, died in a crash near Point Barrow, Alaska."
"Instead, she went on a honeymoon to Ethiopia with Linton Wells, a swashbuckling foreign correspondent. Their marriage grew out of a movie date in New York City. Instead of seeing The Wedding Night starring Gary Cooper, they eloped and saw the movie the next night."
"In 1936, the couple went to Hollywood, where Ms. Wells reported for the Herald Tribune. They had taken a leopard, a lioness and a cheetah home from Africa, and she took the leopard along on interviews."
"In 1938, the two did radio shows from South America."
Three years later, in 1941, "Ms. Wells and her second husband were sent by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on a secret mission to Africa to look for possible postwar homelands for Jews. They were asked by Roosevelt to investigate possible African locations for a Jewish homeland, and they recommended Angola."
(Editor's Comment: Now, that's a new one. Apparently, FDR left no stone unturned in his efforts to rescue the European Jews. Using backchannel diplomacy, he was trying to open an escape route for the Jews. Interesting, too, that his efforts intensified in 1941, at the same time the Nazis had decided to abandon their "forced emigration" schemes in favor of "the Final Solution." Apparently, FDR had a spy in Hitler's inner circle.)
After her son, Linton II, was born in 1946, Ms. Wells became a full-time wife and mother for 18 years. She resumed her journalism career in 1963 and "was one of three women who traveled as reporters with President Richard M. Nixon on his trip to China in 1972."
"She deeply regretted missing out on being an astronaut."
"Linton Wells died in 1977. In addition to her son, who lives in Springfield, Va., Ms. Wells is survived by her brother and two grandsons." (See the Chicago Tribune for December 10, 2002, "Fay Gillis Wells, 94: Aviator, journalist was global adventurer," page 13.)
(Editor's Comment: Like President Harry S. Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.")
From the UFO Files...
1866: HITLER'S WARLOCK
He was called "Himmler's Rasputin." He sent scores of Nazi agents around the world on a quest for magickal artifacts. He literally wrote the book on Esoteric Nazism. And he claimed to be the last warlock or magician of an order dating back to the lost continent of Atlantis.
Of all the strange personalities in Adolf Hitler's entourage, Karl Maria Wiligut was certainly the oddest.
Wiligut was born on December 10, 1866 in Vienna, then the capital of the large eastern European empire of Austria-Hungary. "Both his father and his grandfather had served as officers in the Austrian army" and Karl, "the eldest son followed this family tradition."
In 1880, "at the age of fourteen, he began attending the Imperial Cadet School at Vienna-Breitensee and in December 1884 he joined the 99th Infantry Regiment at Mostar," in what is now Bosnia-Hercegovina. "He was promoted second lieutenant in November 1888, (first) lieutenant in 1892 and captain in 1903. During this early period of his military career, he served with the 99th, 88th and 47th Infantry Regiments" of the Austro-Hungarian Army.
In 1900, while stationed at Znaim in Moravia, Wiligut became intrigued by a curious prehistoric menhir called the Rabenstein, the subject of much local folklore. As a result, he began reading the books of Guido von List, a fellow Austrian and founder of the Ariosophy movement, and tried his own hand at volkisch poetry.
(Editor's Comment: You know your editor. Can't pass an ancient monument or ruin without checking it out. If any of our eastern European readers has more information about these ruins at Znaim, please send an email to UFO Roundup.)
In 1907, Wiligut married Malwine Leuts von Treuenringen. His daughter Gertrud was born in Vienna in 1908 and, while there, Wiligut made the acquaintance of Theodore Czepl, a member of the Order of the New Templars (ONT). Czepl invited Wiligut to join "an occult circle in Vienna, whose members included Willy Thaler, a cousin of Wiligut's, his wife, Marie Thaler, the well-known (stage) actress, and several ONT brothers."
During the course of these meetings, Wiligut revealed "the he had received instruction on the runes from his grandfather Karl Wiligut (1794-1883) and dated his formal initiation into the family secrets by his father" in 1890.
And what secrets! The elder Wiligut told 24-year-old Karl that he was "the last descendant of a long-line of Germanic sages, the Uiligotis of the Asa-Uana-Sippe, which dated back to a remote prehistoric era. Wiligut claimed to possess ancestral-clairvoyant memory, which enabled him to recall the history and experiences of his tribe over thousands of years."
Wiligut believed that Germany was originally settled in 228,000 B.C. by people from the lost continent of Atlantis and that his family began in the magickal city of Arual-Joruvallas (now Goslar--J.T.). He insisted that the Bible was much older than anyone thought, that the events of the New Testament had taken place in Germany and not Palestine, and that Jesus Christ was really Krist, an avatar who had founded the Irminist religion in 12,500 B.C. The Wiligut family were supposed to be sages of Irminism who were driven into the northern European wilderness by rival sorcerers in 1,200 B.C.
Wiligut's budding career in Ariosophy was cut short in 1914 by another catastrophe--World War I. "In October 1914, he became a staff officer in the 30th Infantry Regiment, witnessing action against the Russian army in the Carpathians along the northeastern flank of the (Austro-Hungarian) empire. Following an exhausting campaign during which he was either in battle or on long night marches, Wiligut was promoted to lieutenant colonel and and transferred back to Graz to organize reinforcements for the 14th and 49th Infantry Regiments."
(Editor's Note: Graz is the boyhood home of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
"He was then posted to the Italian front where he held a succession of commands between June 1915 and" was "promoted to the rank of colonel in August 1917...In May 1918, Wiligut was recalled from the front in the South Tyrol and placed in command of camps for returned soldiers at Zolkiew, north of Lemberg (now Lvov--J.T.) in the Ukraine."
Discharged in January 1919, Wiligut brought his family to Salzburg. But like many Austro-Hungarian staff officers, he felt that his country had been cheated of victory in the war. The empire, he felt, had been brought down by the political intrigues of (pick one) (A) the Vatican; (B) Freemasonry; and (C) the Jews. What was needed, he thought, was a new German-speaking empire.
In 1922, the retired colonel founded his own volkisch newspaper, Der Eiserne Besen (German for The Iron Broom--J.T.) and began calling for a rightwing revolt to overthrow the socialist Austrian republic. "Matters abruptly climaxed in November 1924 when Wiligut was involuntarily committed to the Salzburg mental asylum, where he was certified insane and remained an inmate until his release in early 1927."
Wiligut's disciples--Ernst Rudiger, Friedrich Teltscher, Friedrich Schiller and Werner von Bulow--assisted his daughters, Gertrud and Lotte, in persuading the Austrian courts to let him out. Five years later, in 1932, heeding the call of "the Higher Powers," Wiligut emigrated to Germany and settled in Bogenhausen, a suburb of Munich.
Shortly thereafter, another disciple, Richard Anders, introduced the elderly sorcerer to his good friend, Heinrich Himmler, a rising star in the NSDAP or Nazi Party. Himmler, who was deeply interested in German prehistory, "was evidently impressed by Wiligut's ancestral-clairvoyant memory and decided to exploit as fully as possible this unique source of information on ancient Germanic religion and traditions."
"In September 1933, Wiligut joined the SS under the pseudonym 'Karl Maria Weisthor.'" Wiligut and Himmler became fast friends. Himmler never tired of hearing the old man talk about "the hidden history of Atlantis," as revealed in his visions, or reading Wiligut's endless magazine articles on European prehistory.
Wiligut designed the dreaded SS Totenkopf ring and hat badge, plus the runic symbols used on black SS uniforms and flags. With his newest disciple, Gunther Kirchhoff, he sent archaeological teams to investigate prehistoric sites at Gaggenau in 1934, Germany's Murg valley in 1936 and Glozel, France in 1940.
Money was no obstacle. Himmler created the SS-Ahnenerbe in 1936, promoted his elderly mentor-in-magick to SS-Brigadefuhrer (General), and turned him loose on several dozen crackpot projects. First prize undoubtedly goes to "Wiligut's Tunnel." This was a vertical tunnel 16 kilometers (10 miles) deep begun in Hungary in 1941, designed to carry an elevator car that would lower Himmler and Wiligut into "the Inner World of Agharti" (Better known to readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs as Pellucidar--J.T.) Millions were spent on the tunnel, and work continued until November 1944, when the lack of supplies forced the SS project to close.
But age had finally caught up with the old warlock. He resigned from active duty in the SS in August 1939 and moved to his "beloved Goslar" the following year. Himmler sent Elsa Baltrusch, a member of his household staff, to look after Wiligut, who spent his declining years with his runes and spells and ancient artifacts.
Evacuated to Austria in 1943, Wiligut was there when the war ended. He was briefly detained and questioned by the British Army at Velden, but then was allowed to return to Germany. He fell ill during the trip in December 1945. "The journey proved too much for the old man and he was hospitalized on arrival. Karl Maria Wiligut died on 3 January 1946, the last of his secret line." (See the book The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1992, pages 177 to 191.)
Well, that's it for this week. Join us next time for more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you in seven days.
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2002 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news stories from UFO Roundup on their websites or in news groups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.
