From: John Hayes <webmaster@ufoinfo.com>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 17:09:49 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 19:12:50 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 7 Number 5


Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan@aol.com>
==========================

    UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 7, Number 5
January 29, 2002
Editor: Joseph Trainor

http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/


UFO CRASH IN WALES?

Discovery of a mysterious trench in the side of Mount Snowden in
Wales has become complicated by a UFO sighting in the same
region during the same period.

Although Mount Snowden is in North Wales, the incident
apparently began in the Bridgend area of South Wales, where
Roger F. and his son had an unusual encounter.

"On the evening of Thursday, January 17, 2002, at 2125 hours GMT
(9:25 p.m.), while travelling by car through the village of
Sarn, near Bridgend, South Wales (UK), towards the railway
station, I noticed a red glowing stationary object quite high.
The object was spotted briefly by myself and my son as we passed
a row of houses," Roger F. reported.

"After descending a hill shortly after, we stopped near the
railway station to scan the sky but could not see the light
where we thought it should be. It was not a plane (navigational)
light as far as I could tell, just something unusual that we
believe needed explaining."

Roger described the object as "bright red, practically round in
shape. Height (altitude in the USA--J.T.) about 100 feet (30
metres) although difficult to tell, as it was dark and only
briefly seen between houses." (Email Form Report)

A few days later, in North Wales, "a 20-metre long trench has
mysteriously appeared on a remote North Wales
mountainside--arousing the interest of some of Britain's leading
astronomers."

"The gash, about 2,500 feet (764 meters) high, between Moel
Eilio and Snowdon, starts amid a cluster of smashed rocks,
ending in boggy ground close to a fence."

"Astronomers were last night investigating the possibility the
gouge could have been caused by a meteor smashing into the
earth."

"Another less likely theory is that it may have been caused by a
lightning strike."

"One expert told the Daily Post yesterday (January 23, 2002) 'It
is all fascinating stuff, and if it is eventually found to have
been caused by a meteor, it will be virtually unique in Wales.'"

"Land walkers and fell-runners (hikers in the USA-- J.T.) first
noticed some disturbance, but it was not until a Caernaron
builder, Mike Blake, a member of the Eryri Harriers Club,
examined it in more detail that the interest of leading
astronomers was aroused."

"Mike, a keen amateur photographer, visited the site and took
photographs. He has sent them to the Natural History Museum and
to the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire."

"'It's clear that some natural occurrence has taken place, but
what exactly it is, I just don't know,' he said."

"'It appears that a rocky outcrop was hit and shattered, as
there are fragments over a wide area. Leading away from it is a
large gouge about 20 metres (66 feet) long, which ends in boggy
ground.'" "Mike tried to clear a drainage ditch to see what lay
at the bottom of the trench, but it quickly filled up again."

"'I am desperately anxious to know what caused it, but one thing
is clear, and that is that it was not caused by
any vehicle,' he said."
  "This week Mike has been in touch with the Armagh Observatory
  in Northern Ireland, whose director, Professor Mark Bailey, who
  said he was intrigued by Mark's detailed description."

"'There does appear to have been a violent impact with the
mountainside,' he said."

"One puzzling feature, he said, was the long trench, as this
would indicate an object hitting the ground at a shallow angle,
while a meteorite would be expected to approach Earth much more
directly."

"'It would be wonderful if it were a meteorite because we don't
get very many of them in this part of the world, but something
about this does not ring true. If it were a meteorite, it would
have almost certainly have been visible,' said Professor
Bailey."

"His concerns about the angle of trajectory and the trench were
shared by Jay Tait, director of the Knighton Observatory in
Powys," Wales, UK.

"'It is well worth further investigation, and I shall be
following this with great interest. If it were a meteorite, it
would be virtually unique in Wales, the last one in England
having been in the 1960s,' he said." (See the Daily Post for
January 24, 2002, "Experts called to investigate Snowdonia's
space riddle." Many thanks to Gerry Lovell and Louise A. Lowry
for forwarding this newspaper article.)

(Editor's Note: Mount Snowden was the birthplace and boyhood
home of Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson, the
USA's third president.)

TRIANGULAR UFO FLIES OVER URUGUAY

South America's UFO flap continued last week with a new
sighting, this one in the small nation of Uruguay.

On Tuesday, January 22, 2002, at 10 p.m., in the coastal city of
Maldonado, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Montevideo,
Uruguay's capital, a teenaged girl spotted a dark triangular UFO
with a white light at each corner as it passed over the port
city.

Rosario de Arca reported, "One of my daughters observed three
luminous points that moved in the sky from south to north. They
caught her attention because they didn't maintain a straight
orbit but rather zigzagged through the sky."

"She called us, and when we came out, I saw that the luminous
points were approximately the size of a sixth- magnitude star.
They moved in tandem about 50 degrees in altitude from the point
at which I originally saw them, still going from south to
north."

"We could see them for about 30 seconds. Then they disappeared
quickly. The night was very clear, without clouds. The moon was
already hiding. We were in front of our home when we saw the
phenomenon." (Email Interview)

SPHERICAL UFO SIGHTED NEAR AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

On Thursday, January 24, 2002, at 11:30 p.m., Jody L. was at her
friend's apartment in Grafton, Auckland, New Zealand. "I went
out onto the balcony, and I saw it in the sky. It was low cloud,
and it (the UFO) flew about in the cloud. I called my friend out
to see it."

"He didn't know what it was. It sort of curved a few times, like
a bird would when turning, then it flew off out of sight in a
straight direction southward."

Jody described the UFO as "roughly spherical. It seemed as
though it didn't give off much light. It was lighted by the city
lights. It was flying within the low clouds, so I'm estimating
that it was something like a metre (3.3 feet) wide (at that
altitude--J.T.) It was silent and moved smoothly. It was
travelling much faster than a bird would at about 60 to 80
kilometers per hour (36 to 50 miles per hour)." (Email Form
Report)

DAYLIGHT DISC SPOTTED IN MEXICO'S YUCATAN REGION

On Tuesday, January 22, 2002, at 3:05 p.m., a silvery- white
flying disc was spotted over the city of Merida, in the Yucatan
jungles of Mexico.

David Antonio Triay Lucatero was standing outside of his home in
the Francisco de Montero housing development in Merida when he
spied "an elongated discoidal shape, silvery- white in color."

"I was standing outside, looking at the sky to the north when I
saw a discoidal object emerge from a small cloud at an altitude
of some 30 degrees above the horizon," David reported, "It moved
from west to east at high speed, (first) making a small curve
toward the southwest and then returning to a northeasterly
heading. Its movements appeared to be intelligently guided."

"When I calculated that the heading was leading it toward a
cloudless area, I ran into my house and fetched my 16x50
binoculars and an Olympus F50 millimeter camera with Fuji
Superia ISO 800 film. The one-minute delay in returning to the
place where the sighting occurred meant that the object had
already vanished from sight. No trace of it was found after
scanning the sky with binoculars."

"The sky had scattered clouds at 764 meters (2,500 feet), wind
was blowing from the east-southeast at 29 kilometers per hour
(18 miles per hour). The object left no wake in its path."
(Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales, autor ce los libros,
Chupacabras and Other Mysteries y Forbidden Mexico para esas
noticias.)

MORE UFOs REPORTED FLYING NEAR MEXICAN VOLCANOES

Mount Popocatepetl, east of Mexico City, drew more UFOs last
week for some unknown reason. The majestic stratovolcano, which
has long been a Mexican UFO hotspot, remains in the middle of a
major flap.

On Wednesday, January 23, 2002, "a spherical luminous UFO was
seen moving at high velocity around the summit of Mount
Popocatepetl. The object was seen by airline ground crews at the
Mariano Matamoros airport in Cuernavaca," 100 kilometers (60
miles) south of Mexico City. The UFO "contrasted sharply with
the plume of black smoke from the volcano, which was in the
background."

On Thursday, January 24, 2002, at 6 a.m., Mexican ufologist
"Pedro Hernandez captured on video a strange luminous object
moving around in the sky above Amecameca, near the volcano Mount
Ixtaccihuatl and Mount Popocatepetl. The object moved slowly and
at low altitude, Hernandez said. He caught the object on
videotape for two minutes before it lost itself in the eastern
horizon."

Later the same day, Thursday, January 24, 2002, at 8:55 p.m.,
"Jonathan Esparza saw a luminous UFO with multicolored lights
flying just east of Villa de Las Flores, to the north of Mexico
City. Esparza observed the strange object with his binoculars
and perceived two large white lights and three small lights
colored green, blue and yellow. Finally, the object became a
luminous sphere in his field of view before it vanished
completely." (See NotiOVNI for January 27, 2002. Muchas gracias
a Daniel Munoz para esas noticias.)

UFO HOVERS NEAR A BARN IN RICEVILLE, IOWA

On Tuesday, January 22, 2002, at about 5 a.m., teenaged M.J.
"was in my bedroom talking on the phone with the lights out and
my glasses off. I happened to glance at the window and saw a
large object with white, red and maybe green lights sort of
hovering over our hog barn. I couldn't see it well since I
wasn't wearing my glasses."

"I grabbed my glasses and put them on and ran to the window. But
by this time it (the UFO) was pretty far away and I couldn't
make out any details, but I'm fairly sure it was round. It
seemed (to come) pretty close to the house. But there was no
sound at all. Possibly it was saucer- shaped."

"I didn't see it approach. I only saw it hovering. It must have
been pretty low and very close considering I even saw it. I'm
pretty much blind without my glasses. It also must have moved
very fast. I had turned away from my window for just a second or
two to grab my glasses, and when I looked out the window. It
looked to be several miles away."

Riceville (population 800) is in northern Iowa just south of the
Minnesota state line about 200 miles (320 kilometers)
north-northeast of Des Moines, the state capital. (Email
Interview)

MAN FINDS A SAUCER IN HIS NYC TOURIST PHOTO

On Friday, January 11, 2002, Derek T. and his wife decided to
visit New York City on a weekend vacation. At 6:30 p.m., they
arrived at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East Thirty-Third
Street, and Derek got out his camera.

"My wife and I were visiting New York," Derek reported, "And my
wife decided it would be great to take a picture of the Empire
State Building, as the building was all lit up in red, white and
blue. We were on the right-hand side (towards the corner--J.T.)
looking directly at the building."

(Editor's Note: Since the destruction of the World Trade Center
on September 11, 2001, the Empire State Building, completed in
the 1930s, has again become the tallest building in New York
City.)

"I took one photo with my Olympus 2040 digital camera and then
we continued shopping," he added, "I did not see the object at
this time."

The couple left New York City on Sunday, January 13, 2002. Derek
had the film developed later that week. And, when he looked at
the photo, "I saw a silver-gray saucer with a protrusion on the
top," seemingly hovering high above East Thirty-Second Street.

"I still do not know what it was," Derek added. (Email Form
Report)



  From the UFO Files...

1932: SLOUCHING TOWARDS VALHALLA

Rio Grande City, Texas is a small town on the USA- Mexico
border, about 180 miles (300 kilometers) south of San Antonio
and 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Brownsville. Nowadays it's
famous for citrus fruits, duty-free shops and maquiladoras. Yet
Rio Grande City is famous for something else, as well.

It's the birthplace of Conan of Cimmeria, the fictional hero of
author Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). As to how the brawling,
black-haired, blue-eyed Cimmerian came into existence...well,
that in itself is an interesting paranormal tale.

In 1931, following a sickly childhood and a succession of
briefly-held, low-paying jobs, Robert Ervin Howard was finally
starting to come into his own as a writer. He was regularly
selling his short fiction to the pulp magazines in New York City
and, at age twenty-five, was making almost as much money
annually as the banker in his hometown of Cross Plains, Texas.

"The year 1932 proved eventful for Robert Howard, both as a
writer and a man. It was in 1932 that he wrote and sold his
first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," which is rated as
one of the better stories in the series."

"The new year began inauspiciously. After months of high-speed
production, Robert found himself unable to write anything of
value. This unsettling drainage of creativity often befalls
writers of fiction and results in depression or sheer panic.
Looking back on this experience a year later (in 1933--J.T.), he
wrote, '...for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas,
completely unable to work up anything sellable.'"

"He decided to take a vacation, and in February 1932 he set
forth by bus for San Antonio."

"In San Antonio, he shopped for knives and swords for his
collection. He fell in with an East Indian (a Hindu-- J.T.) who
had spent most of his life in China. From him Howard learned of
the 'ghastly tortures of the Orient.' The man also mentioned
that he had seen scores of Chinese Communists beheaded in the
open streets."

(Editor's Comment: Apparently Bob's Hindu friend was in Shanghai
in April 1927 when Chiang Kaishek's Kuomintang Party broke with
their one-time allies, the Chinese Communist Party, and, with
the aid of the Triad societies, massacred the Chinese Reds. The
big question, of course, is...what brought this fellow to
Texas?)

"This Howard reported to (his friend and fellow author Howard
Phillips) Lovecraft, adding, 'The mere thought of such a
spectacle slightly nauseated me.'"

"From San Antonio, (Robert E.) Howard traveled southward to the
Rio Grande Valley, where he experimented with Mexican food and
wandered up the valley as far as Rio Grande City...While Howard
was enjoying 'tortillas...and Spanish wine' along the Border,
the most memorable fictional idea of his life began to form."

One day in February 1932, while taking an after-lunch siesta in
Rio Grande City, "Howard dreamed he was sitting by a campfire
out on the prairie when out of the darkness stepped a barbarian
wearing (black) chain-mail armor and a horned helmet."

By Robert's own account, the entity said, "I am Conan, a
Cimmerian. I wish to tell you of my adventures."

Upon awakening, "Howard decided to write a series of prehistoric
adventure fantasies, not unlike (his 1929) Kull stories, for
such a setting would eliminate the need for accurate historical
research."

Unknown to Robert, however, a similar "contact" had already
taken place three years earlier, in 1929, in Bucuresti
(Bucharest), Romania.

"Awakened from a sound sleep in his apartment," journalist
Corneliu "Codreanu was confronted by a glowing entity in
knightly armor that identified itself as 'St. Michael the
Archangel.'"

The self-styled "archangel" ordered Codreanu to go to Jassy, the
site of the Romanian Army's last stand in World War One, and
raise a new military force to save the nation. Thus was born the
Legion of St. Michael the Archangel, also known as the Iron
Guard, which played a key role in the Holocaust during World War
Two.

(Editor's Comment: The experiences of REH and Codreanu, along
with Antonio Rivera's nighttime visit from a quadruped alien in
Barcelona in 1930, certainly qualify this period as "the Era of
Strange Contacts.")

"Since Howard was not good at inventing names, he often based
personal and place names on historical figures and localities.
He liked to assume that ancient and medieval names were derived
from those of his imagined prehistoric realms, postulating that
the records of the prehistoric civilization had been destroyed
by invasion or natural catastrophe, surviving only in myths and
legends. He wrote, 'If some cataclysm of nature were to destroy
that civilization, remnants of what knowledge and stories of its
greatness might well evolve into the fantastic fables that have
descended to us.'"

Howard repeatedly hinted at just such a natural catastrophe in
prehistory in many of his stories. Consider this passage from
the Conan tale A Witch Shall Be Born:

"So thought many," answered the woman who called herself Sakome.
"They carried me into the desert to die, damn them. I, a
mewling, puling babe whose life was so young it was scarecely
the flicker of a candle. And do you know why they bore me forth
to die?"

"I--I have heard the story--" faltered Taramis.

  Salome laughed fiercely and slapped her bosom. The low-necked
  tunic left the upper parts of her firm breasts, and between
  them there shone a curious mark--a crescent, red as blood."

"The mark of the witch!" cried Taramis, recoiling.

"Aye!" Salome's laughter was dagger-edged with hate.

"The curse of the kings of Khauran! Aye, they tell the tale in
the market places, with wagging beards and rolling eyes, the
pious fools! They tell how the first queen of our line had
traffic with a foul fiend of darkness and bore him a daughter
who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter, in each
century, a girl baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with
a scarlet half-moon between her breasts, that signified her
destiny."

"'Every century a witch shall be born.' So ran the ancient
curse. Some were slain at birth, as they sought to slay me. Some
walked the earth as witches, proud daughters of Khauran, with
the moon of hell burning upon their ivory bosoms. Each was named
Salome. I, too, am Salome. It was always Salome, the witch. It
will always be Salome, the witch, even when the mountains of ice
have roared down from the pole and ground the civilizations to
ruin, and a new world has risen from the ashes and dust--even
then there shall be Salomes to walk the earth, to trap men's
hearts by their sorcery, to dance before the kings of the world,
and see the heads of the wise men fall at their pleasure."

Howard wrote an essay entitled "The Hyborian Age" and sent it
off to H.P. Lovecraft in Providence, R.I. Lovecraft, "who did
not approve of Howard's system of nomenclature, passed the
article on to a fan-magazine publishers with a letter:"

"Dear Wollheim,

"Here is something which Two-Gun Bob (HPL's nickname for
Howard--J.T.) says he wants forwarded to you for The
Phantagraph, and which I hope you'll be able to use. This is
really great stuff--Howard has the most magnificent sense of the
drama of 'History' of anyone I know...The only flaw in this
stuff is R.E.H.'s incurable tendency to devise names too closely
resembling actual names of ancient history-- names which, for
us, have a very different set of associations." (Editor's
Comment: "For us"...right! You and six Oxford dons, HPL!)

"In many cases he does this designedly--on the theory that the
familiar names descend from the fabulous realms he
describes--but such a design is invalidated by the fact that we
clearly know the etymology of many of the historic terms, hence
cannot accept the pedigree he suggests. E. Hoffman Price and I
have both argued with Two-Gun on this point, but we make no
headway whatsoever. The only thing to do is to accept the
nomenclature as he gives it, wink at the weak spots, and be
damned thankful that we can get such vivid artificial legendry."

But was it "artificial?" The incredible wealth of detail about
Hyborian nations, kingdoms, cultures and customs in the Conan
stories written exclusively by REH is in a class by itself. Such
detail is missing from Howard's earlier Kull stories. There are
the usual palace intrigues, plenty of violence, sporadic
references to "barbarian" Atlantis and the "elder" mainland
kingdoms like Valusia and Commoria, but the depth of detail is
not there. It's as if the Kull and Conan stories were written by
two different people.

And what are we to make of Howard's stubborn refusal to alter
the characters' names, as Lovecraft suggested?

"Howard plunged into the new series. A steady stream of Conan
stories began to pour out of his typewriter. In all, Howard
completed twenty-one Conan stories, of which seventeen were
published in Weird Tales during the remaining four years of his
literary career," which ended with his apparent suicide in June
1936.

"Howard made no attempt to tell Conan's history in chronological
order. In some stories, he appears as a youth; in others, as a
middle-aged man."

In their biography of REH, L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook
de Camp and Jane Whittington Griffin, listed the published Conan
stories in the sequence of their appearance, showing the white
heat in which the Texan author was churning out the saga. Here
they are, in order of their appearance:

       The Phoenix on the Sword             December 1932
       The Scarlet Citadel                  January 1933
       The Tower of the Elephant            March 1933
       Black Colossus                       June 1933
       The Slithering Shadow                September 1933
       The Pool of the Black One            October 1933
       Rogues in the House                  January 1934
       Shadows in the Moonlight             April 1934
       Queen of the Black Coast             May 1934
       The Devil in Iron                    August 1934
       The People of the Black Circle       September 1934
       Jewels of Gwahlur                    March 1935
       Beyond the Black River               May 1935
       Shadows in Zamboula                  November 1935
       The Hour of the Dragon               January 1936
       Red Nails                            July 1936

When you consider that The People of the Black Circle, The Hour
of the Dragon and Red Nails were full-sized novels serialized
over three and four-month periods in Weird Tales, REH completed
a staggering amount of fiction during his brief "Conan" period.

"For many months he was so involved with Conan that he sometimes
worked the night through. He wrote, 'For weeks I did nothing but
write the adventures of Conan. The character took complete
possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way
of story-writing. When I deliberately tried to write something
else, I couldn't do it." (Editor's Comment: It all sounds a bit
like automatic writing, doesn't it?)

Three other Conan stories were completed but did not sell. These
included The God in the Bowl, The Vale of Lost Women and The
Black Stranger. Howard had just begun writing for the Western
pulp magazines when his life came to a sudden and tragic end.

Howard had some familiarity with Theosophy. In 1919, his father,
Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, brought home a copy of Madame
Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, and both his son and wife devoured
it. Having some familiarity with the concept of "world-ages,"
Howard might have discussed it with his mysterious Hindu friend
during that February 1932 trip to Rio Grande City. "Racial
memory," another pet idea of REH, might have come up in the
conversation, as well.

Some of us would like to know more about the mysterious Hindu
who befriended Robert E. Howard during his vacation trip to
southern Texas. But that is a mystery that remains buried in Rio
Grande City.

While researching this article, your editor wondered if there
was any sort of paranormal link to Rio Grande City. I did some
extra reading and came up with a "possible."

Further up the Rio Grande Valley is an ancient stone ruin in
Boquilla Pass, not far from Panther Junction and Hot Springs,
Texas. It sits overlooking a millenia-old Native American trail
leading north from Mexico. When I saw an old photo of the "stone
fort," I had to blink twice. I had seen a structure like this
before--in the Andes. The Incas called it a tampu.

What it's doing in the Rio Grande Valley is anybody's guess.
(See Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard by L.
Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp and Jane Whittington
Griffin, Bluesky Books Inc., New York, N.Y., 1983, pages 262 to
267; The Mighty Barbarians, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson,
Lancer Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1969, pages 171 and 172;
Fortean Times No. 132 for March 2000, page 50; and Texas: A
Guide to the Lone Star State, Hastings House, New York, N.Y.,
revised edition 1969, page 606.)

We'll be back next week 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 and in newsgroups provided that they credit the
newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in
which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan@aol.com>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

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