UFO ROUNDUP Volume 7 Number 45
Volume 7
Number 45
November 5, 2002
Editor: Joseph Trainor
E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.com
MILKY-WHITE UFO SIGHTED IN SOUTHERN POLAND
Last week four witnesses sghted "a milky-white UFO" hovering over the Beskidy Mountains, near Jordanow in southern Poland.
Jordanow is a small town about 60 kilometers (36 miles) south of Krakow. According to Robert K. Lesniakiewicz, an author and UFO Roundup's correspondent in Poland, Jordanow was the site of a secret mining operation carried out by the Nazi SS during World War II.
(Editor's Note: For more on "the Jordanow mystery," see the following story in this issue.)
"Four witnesses watched a milky-white UFO seemingly hovering over the peak of Mount Przykiec (elevation 741 meters or 2,445 feet), near the town of Jordanow. One of them made a series of photographs with a Canon EOS 3000 QD camera, using Kodak Gold 200 ASA film. The camera's parameters were as follows: t = 30 seconds; H = 5,6; f = 38 and 76 millimeters."
"The UFO was brighter and darker during the 30-second cycles. It disappeared at 8:16 p.m. local time. Bearings taken" by local ufologists "point to the fact that the UFO actually hovered above Mount Koskowa Gora, located 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Jordanow."
"UFOs have been seen previously in Jordanow and this region of the Beskidy Mountains," just north of the border between Poland and Slovakia. (Many thanks to Robert K. Lesniakiewicz for this report.)
THE JORDANOW MYSTERY
The area is known to its residents as Malopolska (Little Poland--J.T.), and it's the site of one of the stranger mysteries of World War II.
Jordanow, the Beskidy Mountains and the entire region between Krakow and the Alpine-resort community of Zakopane, on what is now the border between Poland and Slovakia, fell to the Nazis in the early days of the war. On September 6, 1939, the German Fourteenth Army, under Field Marshal Wilhelm von List, captured Zakopane and Jordanow. Within a week, for reasons never explained, the area was placed under the direct control of the SS.
The area remained under Nazi rule until the arrival of Soviet Russian forces in January 1945.
In 1994, Polish author Robert K. Lesniakiewicz "interviewed former soldiers of the Armia Krajowa (Polish for Homeland Army--J.T.) who had fought the Germans until January 1945. They saw the SS mining for uranium oxide" in the Beskidy Mountains near Jordanow.
"The Zarnowka and Grzechynia buildings and bunkers were built by local peasants and Russian, Ukrainian and Italian P.O.W.s. My mother-in-law was a prisoner in Grzechniya in 1943. They were guarded at first by SS men and at the end of the war by Wehrmacht (German Army) soldiers."
(Editor's Note: After Benito Mussolini was ousted in September 1943, Italy turned against her ally, the Third Reich. The Italian P.O.W.s at Jordanow were troops loyal to Marshal Pietro Badoglio.)
"All of the local people (civilians) were sent to the concentration camps at Oswiecim and Oswiecim-Brzezinka (better known by their German names, Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau--J.T.), west of Krakow."
The SS and, in particular their leader, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, took a keen interest in Jordanow and its environs. Numerous uranium oxide mines were opened and worked between April 1940 and November 1944. Himmler also tested several Nazi "wonder weapons" in the region.
"Grzechynia is a village 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Zawoja," Robert reported, "The Nazis had a base for developing the V-3, the Tausendfuessler (also known as Schnelle Elise and the Hochdrueckpumpe), a 152-millimeter super-cannon which could send 3-meter (10-feet) long projectiles a distance of 45 or 50 kilometers (27 or 30 miles). The Germans fired them at a test range at Przezeck Krowiarki (pass) towards the Tatra Mountains. Later they wanted to bombard London with these big cannons from the French village of Mimoyeques. The Allies destroyed the V-3 base there."
The SS secret projects around Jordanow soon drew the attention of their enemies. "During World War II, the Beskidy Mountains were controlled by the rightwing Armia Krajowa and the leftwing Armia Ludowa (Polish for People's Army--J.T.) Also operating there were Soviet parachute troops of the OSNAZ (Osobyennoye Naznachenye, Russian for Special Task Forces) of the NKVD, commanded by NKVD Captain Alexei Lotov."
According to the Polish resistance fighters, "They also observed Russian geologists and NKVD (later the KGB) officials, who penetrated these mountains in October 1956. They did not find any uranium ore."
(Editor's Note: Conventional World War II history teaches that Hitler's nuclear research program was based in Norway. The plant was destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1943. Yet here's the SS mining uranium oxide by the ton in southern Poland throughout the war. The ore is vital for the processing of enriched or "weapons-grade" uranium. Where did all that uranium "disappear" to?)
"Himmler visited Zakopane twice, once in the winter of 1939-1940, when he met there with high-ranking NKVD officials" and again in 1943. During his second visit to the mountain resort city, Himmler "himself led the extermination of all the Polish and Jewish inhabitants of the Beskidy Maly area. All of the local people were sent to the concentration camps."
Apparently, Himmler had sent the SS to Jordanow on a "magickal mission."
"According to local legend, there is an entrance to Agharta, or Interterra (also known as the Underground World--J.T.), placed on the southwestern slope of Mount Babia Gora (elevation 1,725 meters or 5,692 feet)," just across the border in Slovakia.
"Himmler sent several dozen speleological expeditions to the Tatra Mountains and the Beskidy Mountains, as well as to the Slovakian, Czech and Hungarian mountains. He was especially interested in the Domica-Baradla Cave in the Slovakian-Hungarian borderland. He hoped to find the entrance to Shamballah, but he did not do it."
"The SS searched for the entrance to Agharta on Mount Babia Gora and at the Half Moon Cave in Byelanskye Tatra."
However, long before he became the Reichsfuhrer-SS and the self-styled "Lord of Atlantis," Himmler was interested in the Jordanow region and those folk tales of "the Underground World."
In 1892, the Polish architect Stanislaw Witkiewicz purchased a summer home in Zakopane, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Jordanow, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With his friend, the composer Karol Szymanowski, Witkiewicz founded a writers' and artists' colony. The group, which dabbled in Theosophy, soon attracted a writer from Vienna, Dr. Friedrich Wichtl.
Dr. Wichtl was an occultist who specialized in Masonic lore and "world conspiracy" theories. He was a frequent visitor to Villa Koliba, the colony's meeting place in Zakopane, and to Lake Morskie Oko. Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, at the end of World War I, Dr. Wichtl wrote a best-selling book entitled Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik (German for World Freemasonry, World Revolution, World Republic --J.T.)
Himmler, then a military cadet convalescing after a serious stomach illness, read Dr. Wichtl's book in 1919, and it got him interested in the occult.
It is possible that Himmler may have met his mentor, Dr. Wichtl, six years earlier, when he was a young teenager. In the summer of 1913, the Reichsfuhrer's father, Dr. Gebhard Himmler, was appointed vice principal of the Gymnasium (high school) in Landshut. The elder Himmler celebrated this prestigious appointment by taking his wife and three sons, including 13-year-old Heinrich, on a tour of Austria-Hungary. The family spent some time in Zakopane and, as was their custom, went swimming on hot August days in Lake Morskie Oko. Dr. Wichtl was also in Zakopane at the time.
Although they both shared a vivid interest in "the Underground World," Himmler's diary makes no mention of any meeting with Dr. Wichtl. (See the following books: Wonderland: Alien Technologies in the Third Reich by Dr. Milos Jesensky and Robert K. Lesniakiewicz, Usti nad Larem, Warsaw, 2001; Project Tatra by Robert K. Lesniakiewicz, Krakow, 2002; Himmler by Peter Padfield, MJF Books, New York, N.Y. 1990, pages 36 through 51; and The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, New York, N.Y., 1992, page 156.)
TWO UFOs SPOTTED IN CARACAS, VENEZUELA
On Sunday, October 13, 2002, at 3 a.m., a male witness "spotted two UFOs over the city of Caracas," the capital of Venezuela, "performing intricate maneuvers over Cerro de Avila (hill)."
"The witness explained that he observed the UFOs when both objects moved very slowly toward the mountainous ridge overlooking the city, making pirouette motions around each other and finally losing themselves in the eastern horizon." (See the newsletter NotiOVNI for October 28, 2002. Muchas gracias a Daniel Munoz y Jose Iglesias del Proyecto Orion para eso informe.)
SEIP TEAM HUNTS FOR A USO NORTH OF MALLORCA
"The presence of underwater flying saucer bases is one of the hypotheses to be confirmed or dispelled by a team from the Sociedad Espanola de Investigaciones Parapsicologicas (SEIP, or Spanish Society for Parapsychological Research--S.C.) on its way to Mallorca."
Mallorca is the largest of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Barcelona, Spain.
"For months, strange noises have troubled the tranquility of the waters north of the island."
"'All possibilities are open, rangng from the presence of UFO bases to the existence of an underwater volcanic area or tectonic-plate displacement,' said Jose Castro, SEIP coordinator and a member, along with Javier Rodriguez, of the expedition that will study the noises."
"These sounds, which have been heard by the reknowned scuba diver Pepe Amengual 'have no similarity with any other sounds detected so far.'"
"The expedition's challenge is to record these on the sea bottom and contrast them with other recordings made on the surface a few weeks ago by Pedro Amoros, SEIP's president."
SEIP has its headquarters in Alicante, Spain, has operated for 15 years and has investigated some of Spain's most notorious paranormal cases, such as "the faces of Belmez," the Zaragoza Goblin (no relation to Norman Osborn--J.T.) and the alleged ghosts haunting the Linares Palace.
"Made up of four scuba divers and headed by technician-diver Javier Rodrguez and SEIP coordinator Jose Castro, the researchers began their dives Saturday," October 26, 2002, "at Cala Tuent."
"'We chose this area because it was here, from his boat, that Amoros was able to hear a sort of explosion of bubbles twenty days ago (Tuesday, October 8, 2002)--a sound that appeared to have a metallic origin, with a fixed frequency.'"
"In order to determine the causes, and having dismissed the hypothesis that the sound was (caused by) 'oil prospecting on the coasts of Tarragona or the presence of an underwater volcanic area,' the submariners made a three-hour dive at a depth of 21 meters (69 feet), some 300 meters (1,000 feet) from the northern shore" of Mallorca.
"'We placed a conventional microphone in the water to search for any interesting sounds, but we found nothing strange. At first we thought we'd come across something, but we finally realized it was just a ship passing over. Sounds are very confusing underwater,'" Castro said.
"The team regrets the high cost of this type of research. 'We would like to have a hydrophone, but they are very expensive and are only manufactured for the military. The truth is that we have had other problems with conventional microphones, since water has gotten into them, and they're worth a lot of money.'"
"Without allowing disillusion to grip the expedition, Castro and his team headed to Soller," a port town on Mallorca's north shore, "looking for persons who could provide them with clues. 'National Geographic (teams) take a month to find a fish, so we know that we aren't going to solve this mystery in two days.'"
"'This is like a legend. Many people tell you that they've heard talk about these sounds, but you can never find anyone who can talk (from first-hand experience) about them,' complained Javier Rodriguez."
"'In Soller, we spoke to a girl who dives there three times a day, six months a year. She has never heard anything unusual,' added Fernando Ponce, a scuba diver."
The SEIP vessel is now headed for Cova del Moro, near Soller, to gather evidence, "perform interviews, listen to recordings, analyze the sounds, and clean it up, 'which will take us twenty days.'" (See the Spanish newspaper Diario de Mallorca for October 27, 2002, "Parapsychologists head to Mallorca to study noises from the sea bottom," and for October 28, 2002, "An X-File in the waters of Mallorca." Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Jordi Ardanuy para esos articulos de diario.)
MYSTERY AIRCRAFT SEEN OVER VICTORIA, B.C.
On Friday, November 1, 2002, at 3:35 p.m., the female witness "was outside when I heard the brrrrrring of a small plane" over Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (population 73,504). "I turned my head to see it travelling in a north to south direction at around 4,000 to 5,000 feet (1,200 to 1,500 meters). It was a small Cessna-type aircraft with light yellow sides and a red tail section. Today was a brilliantly clear day so the colours of the plane were plainly visible."
"Suddenly, my eyes caught a glimpse of another aircraft flying in the same direction, except (it was) west of the other and much closer to me. This second object was a much longer craft than the Cessna. In fact, the nose of it extended much farther forward of the small, swept-back wings than the Cessna. It resembled a DC-9 in basic shape, but the wings were very short. The craft was pure white and did not appear to have windows or markings of any kind on the body of the craft."
"It may have been the time of day, but its wings were kind of indistinct and shadowy. But the whole strange part of this is that the farther-away Cessna was travelling at a much higher rate of speed than this object. This object continued very slowly on its southerly course. I have never seen such a large aircraft fly so slowly. In fact, it seemed impossible for a fixed-wing aircraft to do this at all. There was no contrail or noise from the object."
Victoria, B.C. is on the large offshore Vancouver Island, approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of the city of Vancouver. (Many thanks to Canadian ufologist Brian Vike for this report.)
HOVERING UFO SIGHTED IN NORTHEASTERN BORNEO
On Tuesday, October 8, 2002, at 7 p.m., a male witness in Kota Kinbalu, a port city on the northeastern tip of the island of Borneo, part of Malaysia's Sabah province, spotted a UFO hovering over the area.
The witness reported, "While I was at the factory, coming out for a smoke, I saw the craft hovering with lights in the sky. At first I didn't pay much notice to it because I thought it would be a helicopter flying around the area. Then I realized that the object wasn't making any sound."
"It was hovering slowly like a normal helicopter would do. But after two minutes looking at the object, it suddenly disappeared with trails of light following it. That is the very last I saw of this object, and that was when my spine started to shiver."
"Two days later, the Sabah Express had a front-page picture of the object." (See the Sabah Express for October 10, 2002, "UFO over Kota Kinbalu." See also Filer's Files #44 for October 30, 2002. Many thanks to George A. Filer for allowing UFO Roundup to reprint this story.)
ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS WALL BULGE IN JERUSALEM
People are calling it "the Armageddon Wall." That's because the ancient stone wall that marked the rim of the Old City of Jerusalem has developed a mysterious bulge...just like the Wailing Wall a short distance away.
The Old City wall, located at the foot of the Temple Mount, had developed "a growing bulge in its structure" and now "a new bulge has appeared a few dozen meters away," sparking fears that the wall might collapse and trigger a landslide on the Temple Mount.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aratz quoted archaeologist Gabriel Barque as saying, "It's only a matter of time. All you need is a big group up there, and it will cause a change in the equilibrium" of the Temple Mount.
"Stones are popping out of the (Old City) wall." Some Israeli engineers commented that the ancient wall can no longer support the weight of all the new construction, plus the stone plaza and the two mosques, on the Temple Mount.
Last week, a team of Royal Jordanian engineers visited the Old City wall to examine both of the bulges.
This week marks the beginning of the month of Ramadan, and an estimated 100,000 Muslims are expected to visit the two mosques located at the top of the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Barque reportedly told Ha'aratz that a landslide could damage the mosques "and could be the spark that causes World War III."
Occultists have long talked about secret tunnels inside the Temple Mount itself. There may be something to that bit of folklore.
Long before Joshua and his Hebrews swept out of the desert and destroyed the ancient indigenous civilization of Kinanhi (called Canaan in the Bible), Jerusalem was known as Ursa-limmu. As opposed to cities like Ai and Shechem, which were political capitals, Ursa-limmu was the seat of the Canaanite religion.
Most of what we know about the traditional religion of Kinanhi comes from fragmentary clay tablets and cylinder seals. We know about the major gods like Baal and Anath, and minor gods like Gapan, Ugar and Asherah, and that the sect was ruled by an order of hierophants who passed on their arcane lore via an oral tradition.
Between 1930 and 1933, French archaeologists digging at Ras Shamra-Ugarit in Syria discovered a lengthy epic written by Elimelech the Shabnite. He was writing down verbatim the epic of Baal and Anath, as related by Attani-puruleni, identified as "Chief of Priests, Lord of the Temple" in Ursa-limmu.
(Editor's Comment: Although it is not known why Attani-puruleni chose to share these magickal verses with the uninitiated.)
Part of the epic refers to the Temple of the Two Serpents, which appears to be located inside Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The incantation spoken by Attani-puruleni to the Shabnite scribe sounds a bit like the work of the Black Circle.
"If thou smite Lotan, the serpent sinuous,
Destroy the serpent tortuous,
Shalyat of the seven heads."
Later stanzas in the Canaanite epic give directions to the hidden temple, which appears to be located underground.
"With thee Padriya, daughter of Ar;
With thee, Tatalliya, daughter of Rabb;
There now, be off on thy way
Unto the Mount of Kankaniya
Lift the mount upon thy hands,
The elevation upon thy palms,
And descend to the depth of the earth,
Be of those who descend into earth."
Somewhere on the Temple Mount is a hidden doorway that leads to the subterranean Temple of the Two Serpents built by the Canaanites. As to the precise location of the underground temple, no one knows.
If one or two chambers of the underground Canaanite temple have collapsed recently, this might explain the earth shift and resulting bulges in Jerusalem's Old City wall. (See the newspaper Ha'aratz for October 30, 2002. Also the book The goddess Anath by Charles Virolleaud, Paris, 1938, pages 91 to 102. Many thanks to Rick Wiles and Ayesha al-Khatabi for this news story.)
(Editor's Comment: Interestingly, in Hinduism, the seven-headed serpent stands for Naga, a symbol of the Creator. It's kind of a surprise to see the same image venerated by the ancient Canaanites.)
THE METHUSELAH STAR
"Astronomers have discovered an ancient star near the center of our galaxy that may shed light on the universe's composition shortly after it was blasted into existence by the Big Bang."
"This cosmic relic is more than 12 billion years old--about a billion years younger than the universe itself. It also has an extremely low metal content, some 1/200,000th of that found in (our) sun. That is, twenty times less metal than the previous low-metal star, found in 1977."
"The star's age and composition place it among the second wave of stars that formed after the universe's violent creation, its discoverers said. Researchers had predicted this type of ultra-low-metal star 25 years ago, but an example eluded them until now."
"Michael Bessell, an astronomer at Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory, said the newly-discovered star arose from the debris of a first-generation star, so it contains only a very small amount of heavy elements."
"'This really traces things back to the very early stages of the universe because stars are records of that time. This is an indicator of those times,' said Bessell, the star's co-discoverer."
"The star is described in the current issue of the journal Nature."
"Dubbed HE0107-5240, it is 36,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and is about four-fifths (80 percent) the size of (our) sun. It is in the constellation Pisces but is too dim to be seen with the naked eye."
(Editor's Note: Remember, kids, one light-year equals 5.89 trillion miles. So how far away is HE0107-5240? Let's see now...36,000 light-years works out to about 212,040,000,000,000,000,000 miles or 339,264,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers. In other words, it ain't exactly around the block!)
"Scientists believe that after the Big Bang, the universe was composed only of hydrogen, helium and a trace of lithium--the lightest elements--and that the other naturally-occurring elements were forged inside stars, which are essentially gigantic nuclear furnaces."
"The first generation of stars that formed from the gas and dust cast outward by the explosion were massive, fast-burning and short-lived. When they exploded as supernovae, they began tainting the universe with the first doses of the heavier elements. This debris formed the (second-generation) stars like HE0107-5240."
(Editor's Comment: Can't they come up with a catchier name than HE0107-5240? Since this star is so old, why don't we call it Methuselah?)
"'It's clear that these very first stars were very different from present-day stars,' said Volker Bromm of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass." (See the Duluth, Minn. News-Tribune for November 3, 2002, "Ancient star's discovery might offer clues to the young universe," page 21A.)
OBERG TAKES ON "NASA MOON HOAX" THEORISTS
"More than 33 years after the United States landed men on the moon, NASA is spending more than $15,000 to convince people that it really did happen and that the space agency didn't make it all up."
"Stubborn conspiracy theorists claim that NASA's six Apollo-program moon landings were faked. After decades of belittling and ignoring them, NASA has decided to fight back."
The space agency "hired James E. Oberg, a Houston-based aerospace engineer and award-winning author of 10 books on space, to confront skeptics point by point. Many scientists have already done that on the Internet, but skeptics remain unconvinced."
"'Ignoring it only fans the flames of people who are naturally suspicious,' Oberg said."
"Last year, FOX Television twice broadcast a show entitled: Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon? and NBC's Today Show staged a debate on the topic."
"Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, recently punched a conspiracy theorist who had been pestering him to swear on a stack of Bibles that the landing was real."
"After the FOX show first aired, NASA put out a one-paragraph press release titled, 'Apollo: Yes, We Did.'"
"Yet a 1999 poll found that 11 percent of the American public doubted the moon landings happened, and FOX officials said such skepticism increased to about 20 percent after their show, which was seen by about 15 million viewers."
"Oberg 'has got one hell of a job ahead of him,' said skeptic Ralph Rene, a New Jersey carpenter who said he's self-taught in physics and has self-published two books. One book claims that the moon landing didn't happen; the other criticizes Isaac Newton's grasp of physics. 'I couldn't care less what they do.'"
"'It's a real shame that it has to be done,' said Sonoma State University astronomy professor Phil Plait. 'The problem is, if you ignore a problem, it doesn't go away.'"
"But confronting conspiracy theorists usually doesn't convince them, either, said historian Gregory Camp, author of Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia."
"'The true believers in that kind of thing already have the answers--at least in their eyes,' Camp said, 'It's incredible that a book like that has to be written.'" (See the Duluth, Minn. News-Tribune for November 3, 2002, "NASA battles moon-landing skeptics," page 21A.)
LAST CASUALTIES OF WORLD WAR ONE...WE HOPE!
"A French teenager was killed and two children were injured Wednesday," October 30, 2002, "by a World War I mortar shell."
"The children were playing with the shell in a courtyard in Wettolsheim," near Colmar in France's department of Haut-Rhin 90 kilometers (54 miles) south of Strasbourg, "when it exploded."
"A 14-year-old boy was killed. His younger brother was wounded in the leg, and another child was injured."
"Residents in the region occasionally find buried shells from the war, which ended" November 11, 1918, "eighty-four years ago." (See the Duluth, Minn. News-Tribune for October 31, 2002, page 2A.)
(Editor's Note: Last year, leftover World War I gas shells threatened to wipe out the town of Vimy in northern France. For the whole story, see UFO Roundup, volume 6, number 16, "Blast from the past: World War One ammo dump threatens French town," page 5.)
From the UFO Files...
1755: STRANGE EARTHQUAKE
Saturday, November 1, 1755, was market day in Lisboa, the capital of Portugal, as it was throughout that country. By 9:30 a.m., the pracas of the Cidade Baixa (Portuguese for Lower City, i.e. the neighborhoods along the Rio Tagus and the waterfront--J.T.) were full of vendors hawking wares, children playing and housewives buying groceries for the coming week.
Just then, a terremoto (earthquake) shook the cobblestoned streets. Bells rang throughout the city's Roman Catholic churches, and the church spires and palace towers vibrated as if struck by an invisible hammer.
One minute passed. Then a second devastating tremor struck. This time, the streets heaved and bucked, and buildings weakened by the first shock crumbled in showers of adobe dust and orange clay tiles. Screams echoed throughout Lisboa as the vibration continued for a full two minutes.
Another two minutes passed. And, as people began digging away in the rubble of shattered house facades for trapped relatives, a third violent shock set the city trembling from the hilltop heights of Graca to the church of Sao Nicolau in the Cidade Baixa. "And a red cloud of suffocating dust settled fog-like over the ruins" of the city.
"One very important and consoling discovery was that the catastrophe of 1 November (1755) was not a cruelly sudden stroke that fell without warning; however wicked they might have been, the (Portuguese) people thought God should have given them some advance notice of the punishment to come in order that there might be an opportunity for repenting; and, in fact, it was found that Lisbon had been told of the coming disaster by prophecies to which insufficient attention had been paid."
Indeed, the earthquake had been predicted five years earlier by Sister Maria Joanna, an elderly nun who lived at the convent in Lourical. On a summer day in 1750, at vespers in the early evening, Sister Maria Joanna was praying in the olive garden when a man in Middle Eastern robes approached her. Looking more closely, the nun gasped out loud. How many times had she seen that bearded face on the crucifix in the chapel? Her visitor was none other than Jesus Christ.
Breathless, her heart pounding in excitement, she blurted, "My Lord!"
"Carry my message to the people of Portugal, Maria Joanna," Jesus said, placing his hands on her shoulders. "I am deeply offended by their wickedness. Those who live in Lisboa are the worst of all. Your countrymen have feasted well on the fruits of empire. The wealth of Africa, South America and the Indies spills onto the docks of Lisboa. But an empire built on greed and murder and injustice is an abomination in My Father's sight. Urge them to repent, Maria Joanna, for if they do not, Lisboa will be destroyed in the near future."
Jesus made other predictions, as well, including one which was not fulfilled until the early Twentieth Century. "Many miracles will be seen in the mountains. Out of Aljustrel, smallest of the villages around Ourem, I will summon my disciples."
(Editor's Comment: The three Fatima seers, Lucia Abobora dos Santos, Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto, were all born in Aljustrel. The envelope, please. And the winner of the 1755 Nostradamus Award is...Sister Maria Joanna do Lourical.)
During the earthquake itself, people reported an apparition of the Blessed Virgin.. "It was said that in the Hieronymite Church in Belem, the figure of Our Lady was collapsed on the floor at the foot of the Cross, overcome with grief at the terrible punishment of the Lisbon people. She cried aloud, 'It is enough, My Son. It is enough!'"
"In the Igreja da Sa (now Lisboa's Cathedral--J.T.) a raging fire stopped before the 'holy image of Nossa Senhora a Grande,' leaving her safe in the background vestibule." Neither the statue's robes nor the flower blossoms in her hands were scorched by the flames, which suddenly and mysteriously extinguished.
Such were the strange incidents reported in the Lisboa earthquake of 1755. (See the book The Lisbon Earthquake by T.D. Kendrick, J.P. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, Pa., 1955, pages 114 to 121.)
That's it for this week. We'll be back in seven days with more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you then.
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2002 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup on their Websites or in news groups provided that they credt the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.
