Mary Midgley on owls

I am occasionally posting excerpts from my ongoing book project on owls and UFO abduction. 

Mary Beatrice Midgley, moral philosopher

In her memoir, Owl of Minerva, British author and philosopher Mary Midgley wrote:

I have borrowed the owl for my title from Hegel, who is well known to have remarked that, ‘the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.’ This is a potent and mysterious symbol that might have various meanings. But the thought for which I want to use it as that of wisdom, and therefore philosophy, comes into its own when things become dark and difficult rather than clear and straightforward. That—it seems to me—is why it is so important… 

Midgley goes on to lament that too many thinkers only want to attend to what is clear, and they turn their backs on things that are dark and doubtful. She is eager to look beyond the brightly lit successes of science, and instead explore the dark  landscapes of meaning and thought. 

It seems to me that we have here the old story of the man who keeps looking for his car keys under the same lamp-post. Someone asks him, ‘Is that where you dropped them?’ ‘No,’ he replies, ‘but it’s a much easier place to look.’

That analogy plays out in the realm of UFO research, with the pragmatic investigator staying only under the brightly lit lamp-post, while the core of the mystery is off in the darkness. Midgley looks to the owl as guide into this shadow realm.

Owls, being associated with the night, are used in many cultures as symbols for two things—first for death, and second, rather differently, for wisdom. Going into the dark brings danger. But, if you have to go out, then surely it is wise to have with you a creature that can penetrate the darkness.

The owl, by this interpretation, is a companion for any traveler stepping off the path and entering the darkest part of the forest. One should expect the owl to show up, either symbolically or literally, whenever a seeker digs into the deepest mysteries. If this plays out to it’s fullest, the screen memory of a four foot tall owl might mean the observer is being told that their journey is difficult rather than clear and straightforward.

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Mary Beatrice Midgley is an English moral philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and is known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She is 95 years old.

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owl ushers in alien contact in Pinocchio

Owls and mystical contact with a non-human entity

An owl shows up right before the introduction of the Blue Fairy in Disney's Pinocchio (1940).

Jiminy Cricket, stares up at an owl clock not two seconds prior to the grand entrance of the Blue Fairy. She descends from the heavens as a star, manifesting as an orb of shimmering light in Geppetto's workshop. The scene plays out as a UFO bedroom visitation, where in some sense, the DNA of the inanimate Pinocchio is upgraded into some in between state, no longer a puppet, but not yet a real human. This mirrors a lot of the ancient alien lore, where intervention by beings from the stars tamper with genetics to create modern humans.

benevolent alien visitation and genetic tampering

Jiminy Cricket (an insectoid!) is dubbed as Pinocchio's conscious by the Blue Fairy in a ritual act involving a magic wand. Presently, the UFO field is all hot about "consciousness" and how it ties into the contact experience.

The owl as symbol of alien contact, punctuates the arrival of the Blue Fairy. Tall and blond and beautiful, she personifies the typical Pleiadian Nordic type. Also, the work of Jacques Valle is a must-read for making the the connection between modern UFO abduction stories and ancient faerie mythologies. Later, the Blue Fairy shows up again, to bring a dead mutant donkey puppet hybrid back to life. More genetic tampering!

Jesus was also ushered in at birth by a star from the heavens. Again like Jesus, the finale of the Pinocchio involves death and resurrection.

This low quality youtube clip (below) begins right AFTER the owl clock cameo. Please note, the clip is 3:33 long. This is often noted in the literature as the time of alien abductions.

Also of note is that author Whitley Strieber wrote about his youthful fear of a cat clock (the kind with the big eyes that moved with each click) in one of books. The owl clock in Pinocchio looks suspiciously like that the prototypical cat-clock. The implication was that the big eyes on the clock reminded young Whitley of the big eyed alien visitors.

These little plot elements from a fairy tale move aren't meant to imply some grand conspiracy. More that the same elements that make up the modern UFO abduction lore have been part of our mythology and consciousness throughout the ages. These telling elements have a curious way of welling up within our pop-culture.

Big thanks to a blog-reader who pointed out the owl and fairy connection in Pinocchio.

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Text added later the same day:

This kind of connect-the-dots riffing can be a bottlomess pit. Several commenters correctly point out that Spielberg's 2001 film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a reworking of Pinocchio, as well as a reworking of a script from Mr. 2001 himself, Stanley Kubrick. The alien/Blue Fairy connection is hammered home in this mess of a film.

Grey aliens watch as a virtual reality Blue Fairy resurects a "real-boy"

The heavily CG'd image above is from the finale of the Kubrick /Spielberg film. Read more in the comments below.

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my responsibility

Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840)

If someone out there in the world googles the terms UFO and OWLS, my name comes up on the top of that list. This means anyone searching for info concerning their own unusual experiences will find me.

Because of this, I've been receiving a lot of amazing owl stories arriving in my email inbox. Presently, it is about one a day. I have made the very real effort to reply to each one of these people, but sometimes it can be hard to keep up. There are stories from what I sense are very sincere people that I haven't contacted. Before I can reply in any meaningful way, there are new owl stories accumulating.

A lot of these emails will begin with a line like this, I've never told anyone about these experiences, but...

Or, they will say that my own work has triggered something in them to contact me. They'll say, I just watched your talk on youtube, and I simply HAD to contact you...

What I'm also getting is an additional weirdness, where folks will describe seeing an owl as they are reading my long format essay (Owls and the UFO Abductee) or while watching my on-line talk. Or, it might come across like this, I was trying to decide whether I should contact you when I saw an owl land on a branch just outside my window.

Each one of these stories are amazing, and they've confirmed that there is something very real happening. What it might be, I don't know, but it is truly is happening.

I am working on a book, and it would be impossible to include all the stories I've amassed. But what has happened is that I am at the point where I can almost feel the patterns that have emerged, and I can address this weird phenomenon in a way I never could have just a few years ago. I can now talk about (or write about) what is at play with an out-and-out certainty. I am certain that owls are playing a role in the mystery, but I still don't know the source.

Please know, I deeply appreciate that people are reaching out to me, and I take this responsibility seriously.

If anyone reading this has sent me an email, I wholeheartedly thank you. If you've sent me a letter and I didn't reply, I apologize. If you have any odd experiences involving owls, I want to hear your story.

Sincerely,
Mike C

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Quatermass and the Pit

I heart Hammer Studios!

This movie stands right along side Kubrick's 2001 (released a year later) in its depth and power. Both are very similar in their themes. This film has been hard to find on source like Netflix, but this is a gloriously clean version for youtube. The film was released in the US with the title Five Million Years to Earth.

The late Mac Tonnies once listed his 10 favorite science fiction films, but this wasn't included. I emailed him right away asking him why not? He replied that he had never heard of it. This is a movie I know he would have completely mesmerized him.

Full Movie in glorious HD

The Nigel Kneale script was produced for BBC in 1958. This six-part series is longer with more subtlety and complexity. On many levels it's better than the Hammer Studio version from nine years later. Christopher Knowles speaks to these ancient astronaut themes better than I could in series of posts on The Secret Sun, linked HERE and HERE.

Episode ONE of a glorious British Drama with ancient aliens

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In conversation with Aaron Gulyas and host Seriah Azkath

Part-one of a two-part conversation with author Aaron Gulyas and host Seriah Azkath on the radio show Where Did the Road Go? 

  Audio linked HERE  

The focus was UFO history, but we only makes it up to the 1950's, so we will be doing a follow up next month. We start back with Ancient Aliens, and then move forward exploring different ideas, theories and events.

Aaron is a teacher, historian, and writer (generally in that order),  He has taught history at Mott Community College since 2006.

Gulyas's first book, Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist: Contact Tales since the 1950s was published in May 2013. His newest book is The Chaos Conundrum, a collection of essays on the paranormal, religion, spirituality, an the atemporal, published by Redstar Books. In Fandom's Shadow, a 50th anniversary retrospective of Doctor Who, Fandom, and its relationship to geography and time, was published in September, 2013 by Deserted Moon Press.

Aaron's website is linked HERE.

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Nick Redfern writes about owls and UFOs

Author Nick Redfern penned an essay for Mysterious Universe, where he points out the connection between owls and UFOs. He also ties in the mid-70's Owlman sightings from the UK, and links these to a possible UFO origin. He links my long format article from 2013, (Owls and the UFO Abductee) early in his essay.

This essay has two parts, both are linked below...

   Nick's essay, part-ONE. and part-TWO   

And, a really good interview with Nick linked HERE.

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Latitude 33: Key to the Kingdom

Latitude 33: Key to the Kingdom, written by Walter Bosley, is now available in an updated format on Kindle for just 99 cents.

This is an investigation into arcane science and engineering at the Disneyland. Was there an inter-dimensional portal that influenced psychic perception of visitors and allowed beings to enter across time and space?

This book reveals surprising evidence that something otherworldly was built into The Magic Kingdom. Inspired by the author's personal experiences. Originally published in 2007. Walter was interviewed HERE.

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Lorin Cutts and High Strangeness

This episode it titled Strange Is The New Normal. Lorin and his longtime friend, Jenna discuss their shared experiences of high strangeness that have occurred over their twenty years of knowing each other.

The conversation is about friendship and experiences that can’t be easily explained. When two decades of experiences are condensed into just over an hour, it provides a somewhat different perspective on what might be occurring with these incursions into some peoples everyday lives.

More about Lorin's podcast series HERE.
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The Fairy Faith

This is a glorious documentary. It is calm and thoughtful, with long takes where people are allowed to share their experiences. If you watch nothing else, just jump forward to the 55:30 time-count and sit rapt as the man from Glasgow tells of seeing two fairies trying to steal his shadow! 

 Directed and narrated by Canadian documentarian John Walker, from 2000. Thanks to Chris Knowles for telling me about this joyous 75 minutes of film-making.

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Elaine Douglass audio interviews linked

Below is a listing of audio interviews with the late UFO abduction researcher Elaine Douglass. I considered her a close friend. These interviews were collected doing google searches, and ganged here for your listening. A few of these links have poor audio, but most are well worth listening and very interesting.

The first is a fascinating interview with Elaine Douglass where she talks about her research into UFO abduction and mind control. I spoke to her shortly after this interview, and she was very concerned she shared TOO much, as if she had talked about parts of her research that might be best kept secret.

  1) Night-Vision-Radio audio download HERE  

This was aired in March of 2013 on LA Radio Night Vision Radio with Rene Barnett. There was a guest host for this interview, and whoever it was (God bless him) just let Elaine talk.

All the postings that I could find of Elaine's audio interviews:

2) My Hidden Experience interview from October of 2013 (linked HERE)

3) Dark Matter Radio: (With Don Ecker, Elaine shows up 19 minutes in)

4) A two-part youtube interview on a Canadian podcast: (part one) and (part two)

5) This page links a three-part series of Jerry Pippin round table discussion with Elaine with other researchers and abductees focused on the problems at MUFON: (part 1) and (part 2) and (part 3)

6) Jerry Pippin interviews Clifford Clift and Elaine Douglass in a Two-Part interview: (linked HERE)

7) UFO Undercover - NOTE: LINKS NOT WORKING: (with Joe Montaldo) and (another interview with Joe Montaldo)

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do you see an owl?

The source book for loads of Disney weirdness

Do you see an owl in the book cover above? I am at the point where I am seeing owls everywhere, and I fully realize that my frenetic obsessive examination is causing this, owls emerging out of the ether.

Grimm's Fairy Tales was first published in 1812 by the German Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. These stories include Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Snow White.

I saw a small low resolution image of the book (left), and to me it was clearly a stylized owl. It is so obvious in the tiny jPeg that I have to wonder if the artist from way-back-when was trying to create an owl for the cover. This tiny image was posted so small that you could just barely make out the title. I noted the little icon in a Secret Sun blog post from 2012, where Christopher Knowles points out the similarities of his own script idea and the 2011 movie Hanna. Both are an updated version of Snow White. The blog post is linked HERE.

Also, I noticed this foggy owl image on the Secret Sun just moments after sending an email to a researcher in Germany, the source of these stories. After that I had the thought "I wonder if there is a new post on Secret Sun?" When I clicked on it, I realized it had been posted less than two minutes earlier.

In the 1812 edition of the book there is an exceedingly strange story simply titled The Owl. It's short and worth reading (available as a PDF file HERE). Basically, a honed owl is portrayed as a terrible monster, striking paralyzing fear even to the bravest men in the town. A simplistic example of the owl as something horrible in folklore.

excerpt from The Owl

By some mischance one of the great owls, called horned owls, had come from the neighboring woods into the barn of one of the townsfolk in the night-time...

In the morning when the manservant went into the barn to fetch some straw, he was so mightily alarmed at the sight of the owl sitting there in a corner, that he ran away and announced to his master that a monster, the like of which he had never set eyes on in his life, and which could devour a man without the slightest difficulty, was sitting in the barn, rolling its eyes about in its head.

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beautiful design by Talwin Morris

Text added January 4th 2015

I just got a helpful message from a reader (C.M. Mayo) who pointed out that there is also an old edition of Little Women with the same cover. To me, this means that the cover for the Grimm's book was just some template used by some long ago publisher and NOT any kind of owl reference related to the story within the book.

This Art Neuvo cover was created by book designer Talwin Morris for a series known as Blackie Books out of Glasgow Scotland.

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audio conversation with Kathleen Marden

Author, researcher and abductee, Kathleen Marden

Kathleen Marden is mostly known for being the niece of Betty and Barney Hill, the first widely publicized UFO abduction case. She has also been an abduction researcher for over two decades as well an author working with both Stanton Friedman and Denice Stoner.

Kathleen recently came forward, publicly sharing her own abduction experiences. This act of bravery is the focus of our interview. This is a big deal, and I wanted to explore the reasons and emotions for her profound decision.

  one-click audio download HERE  

She authored the 2007 book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story of the World's First Documented Alien Abduction, with nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman.

Her more recent book is The Alien Abduction Files: The Most Startling Cases of Human Alien Contact Ever Reported co-authored by Denise Stoner.

Her website is linked HERE.



Also posted (below) is a youtube video of her recent talk, where she stands on a podium and comes forward with her own contact experiences. This powerful confession happened at the Experiences Speak conference in September of 2014. This event was organized by Starborn Support, a team of dedicated experiencers and therapists performing the much needed role of supporting individuals who are dealing with the challenging issues of their own experiences.

the third and final part of a three part video series of her Sept. 2014 presentation
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an enormous owl and missing time

Christopher Knowles seen with four owls in approx 1973

There is a short posting on The Secret Sun from July 16th 2009 titled Owls. Christopher Knowles shares a few ideas about the imagery of the owl, most specifically how his mother would collect owl figurines and display them in their home. The photo above gets used in a presentation I have given at UFO conferences. I have a few examples where experiencers will say their mother collect owls.

Screen grab from the comments on an essay titled Owls. Click on image for a HI-rez view.

What is of great interest to me was a comment on this 2009 Secret Sun posting, left by someone named Jessi. The full text is below:

Wanted to share an owl story from my childhood. My family was moving to another town which took four hours by car to commute. My dad was in a truck in front of my mom, me and my sister who were riding in a car behind him. It was late at night and we were making our last load for the day. We were moving into an old farm house out in the country. We were on a dirt road and my dad was right in front of us. My mom stopped the car because she saw something walking in the road. It was the most enormous owl any of us had seen. It simply walked in front of the car, turned to look at us (realize that it was big enough to see us over the hood of the car) and continued to walk across the road (or waddle maybe) when we got to the house my dad was irate and wanting to know where we had been. Evidently, over an hour had passed while we watched that owl cross our path.

Jessi doesn't give an estimated size of this enormous owl, but she does say the it was big enough to see us over the hood of the car. This is something I have heard repeatedly from various witnesses. This puts the owl at about four feet tall. I even photographed a four foot tall cardboard cut out of an owl in front of my car to show how improbable it would be to see an owl that large. I’ve used this image in a series of presentations at UFO conferences. What I need to say is that this propping this photo was super creepy even though the owl was nothing more than cardboard.

cardboard owl positioned in front of my Subaru

There is also over an hour of missing time reported by the people in the car who saw this owl. This plays out as a series of clues that seems to imply a UFO contact event with an impossibly large owl as a screen memory.

What also stands out, especially for me, is the time count on this comment, 1:23 PM. This number sequence screams at me to pay attention.

I have come back to this post repeatedly over the last five and a half years, and it is quite likely I even read this comment, but it didn’t really jump out at me until just a few days ago.

 If anyone knows Jessi, who wrote the comment, please get a hold of me! My email is HERE. 



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Dr. John Mack talks about his research

Dr. John E. Mack About Our Worldview and Alien Abductions

An excellent video of Dr. John Mack talking about his research with experiencers. 

I have been working on a book project over the last year and a half. Much of what Mack is saying here fits with what I've been digging into for my own research. In the beginning of this video Dr. Mack talks about Stanaslov Groff, spiritual emergency as well as a past life memory. I have been writing exactly about these topics and issues, and wrestling with the challenges that arise. 

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Adrienne Dumas talks with her sister about their family exeriences

I first met Adrienne Dumas when I stumbled on a video of her talking about owls in relation to a UFO sighting. Some of her experiences are featured in the essay Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee.

This is a podcast where Adrienne talks with her sister Kember about their family's UFO encounters as well as other paranormal experiences.

  one-click audio download HERE  

There is something about this conversation that I really liked. It is calm, and you can hear the very real questioning about the things they've experienced. I posted a video of Adrienne describing her faery sighting HERE.

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