Bob Shell Dispatches, 317 Old Mountain Road, Bluefield, VA (2026)

08/30/2025

FAREWELL OZZY AND REMINISCENCES

The recent news of Ozzy Osbourne's death saddened me and brought back my memories of briefly knowing him and those early days in my life.
Back in the early 1970s, I was running the east coast branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of Eastern Templars), or O.T.O., the esoteric order run for many years in England by Aleister Crowley. My authority came from Kenneth Grant, Crowley's close associate and the man who led the Gnostic Mass at Crowley's memorial service in Brighton, England in 1947, and was recognized by Grady McMurtry who ran an O.T.O. chapter in California under the direct authority of Crowley. Grady wrote about me and my relationship with renaissance man Robert Anton Wilson in his magazine. I also ran the O.T.O. Bookstore, a mail-order book store specializing in Crowley's many books and related esoterica. I've touched on all of this in my 2019 book 'COSMIC DANCE,' and plan to go into it in more detail in the sequel I'm now writing.
At that time I was also a regular columnist for Gnostica News, a "new age" magazine (later renamed simply Gnostica.) Gnostica News was published monthly by Llewellyn, the prominent publisher of esoteric books. My Editor at Gnostica News was P. E. I. (Isaac) Bonewits, author of the seminal book 'Real Magic,' and cofounder with Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan, which he'd broken away from.
Isaac was a good editor and taught me a lot about magazine writing/editing. He left me alone in choosing subjects to write about, but my main "beat" was writing about UFOs, a subject in which I'd long been interested and still am. (I'm coauthor of the 1997 bestselling book 'Beyond Roswell). I also wrote about ghosts in general and poltergeists in particular. (My personal poltergeist experience was recounted by Brad Steiger in his book 'Revelation: The Divine Fire.')
The writing job with Gnostica News didn't pay much, but it was the first real money I made from writing and led to my long writing career.
At the same time that I was writing for Gnostica News I was working as a photographer for PBS. That kept the bills paid, but wasn't particularly fulfilling. For more interesting work I did freelance photography, including for several music magazines that are now long vanished.
In 1973-74, I don't remember the exact year, I had an assignment to photograph a new band named Black Sabbath. They'd recently released their first album and were doing their first US tour. I photographed them in concert, then afterwards in the dressing room. The band had recently changed its name to Black Sabbath and taken on a dark, satanic tone in their music and persona as a band.
I was impressed by their onstage energy, particularly their singer, Ozzy Osbourne, a 'Brummie,' a man from Birmingham, England. He was friendly, intelligent, and made it clear to me that the satanic caste of the band's music was just an act, but he was personally interested in learning about mysticism.
I talked to Ozzy about Aleister Crowley, and Crowley's Magick. He didn't seem to know anything about it, so gave him a copy of 'Liber Oz,' Crowley's mid 1940s declaration of human rights. In one page it summarizes Crowley's philosophy very clearly. I used to carry postcard sized copies to hand out to interested people. Because of our conversation that evening, I believe that I am the man who first introduced Ozzy to Crowley. But he never learned to pronounce Crowley's name properly. It's pronounced CROW-lee, crow like the bird.
(Liber Oz is easily found on the Internet, for those interested.)
I was in contact with many Crowleyans in those days, and gave Jimmy Page's address at Plumpton Place in Sussex and his phone number to Ozzy, although I don't know if he ever followed through and made contact.
As the 1970s progressed I moved on to other things and no longer did photography of rock stars, but I learned a lot about egos and personalities in those days. Most of the musicians I photographed were nice people and interesting to talk to, while a few were arrogant pricks.
Other than Black Sabbath and Ozzy, some of the bands and personalities I photographed and got to know a little bit were; Faces (Rod Stewart and Ron Wood), Traffic (Steve Winwood, Jim Cappaldi, and Rebop Kwaku Bhah), (Iron Butterfly (Doug Engle, Ron Bushy, and Rhino), Black Oak Arkansas (Jim 'Jim Dandy' Mangrum, the most dynamic singer of all), Fairport Convention (Dave Swarbrick and Davy Pegg), Redbone (Lolly Vegas and Pete 'Last Walking Bear' de Poe, the first Native American rock band), and Mason Williams, composer/performer of 'Classical Gas.' I didn't only photograph rock musicians, I also photographed Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff, and other country music stars.
All of the names I've mentioned are from memory. I hope I've spelled them correctly. My photography archive is in storage until my release, and I hope to digitize most of these photographs then.
Of the many musicians I photographed, Ozzy stood out as unique. I watched his funeral procession through Birmingham on BBC news. I'm sure he'd have been delighted by the thousands of fans who turned out to send him off. He will be missed more than most.

07/12/2025

MORE GOVERNMENT BS ABOUT UFOS

Some of you already know that I am the coauthor of the 1997 bestselling book 'Beyond Roswell.' My late friend Stan Friedman, the man who rediscovered Roswell long after the event had been forgotten, said it was the best book on the subject ever written. My two coauthors were Philip Mantle, at that time Research Director of BUFORA, the British UFO Research Association, and Michael Hesemann, Editor of Magazine 2000 and author of many UFO books in German.
In research for that book, Mike Hesemann and I spent time in New Mexico interviewing living witnesses to the 1947 Roswell event. We found witnesses that had never been interviewed before.
I was prominent in the field at the time, but had to keep my involvement low key because I was Editor in Chief of the photography magazine SHUTTERBUG. The owners of the magazine were uncomfortable with being associated with UFO research, which was stigmatized in those days.
Anyway, that's just background to what I am writing about today. The Pentagon has tried to debunk Roswell starting the day after something strange crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947 and the US military retrieved the wreckage.
First they claimed it was just a weather balloon. Major Jesse Marcel was the intelligence officer at the Roswell Army Air Force base in Roswell. He was sent to the crash site and retrieved some of the crash debris. Major Marcel was very familiar with weather balloons, had been involved in retrievals of them before, and wasn't an idiot. To claim that he mistook weather balloon debris for a crashed UFO is flatly absurd.
I knew Jesse Marcel Jr., his son, who handled some of the debris when his father brought it home. It was highly unusual material, certainly not parts of a weather balloon. Jesse wrote the foreword to our book.
In 1996 I was investigating the so-called 'Alien Autopsy Film.' I won't go into details here, but to my mind there are still many unanswered questions about the AA as we call it for short. Several other investigators have similar questions, but the film has been written off as a hoax by most ufologists.
I spoke about the AA as an invited speaker in The Republic of San Marino at their government-sponsored UFO conference, appeared on TF1 TV in France as a photography expert talking about the AA, and was interviewed for Hong Kong TV. I was also an invited speaker on the AA and UFOs in general at UFO conferences in Loughlin, Nevada, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Stuttgart, Germany.
In an attempt to make Roswell go away, the Pentagon published a book, "Roswell Case Closed,' written by an Air Force colonel. I've forgotten his name, but the colonel called me one day in my office and we had a lengthy conversation about the book. He said he'd seen other classified films similar to the AA showing dissections of dead aliens.
When I mentioned our conversation on an Internet UFO forum, he denied ever talking to me!
Fortunately for me, he'd mentioned our conversation to Phil Klass, prominent UFO skeptic. Phil and I liked each other even though we strongly disagreed on most points about ufology, and Phil sprang to my defense and confirmed my conversation with the colonel, who'd verified to me that his book was a whitewash.
Another colonel, Philip Corso wrote a book, 'The Day After Roswell.' Col. Corso claimed that he was the man in the Pentagon who was given custody of the Roswell crash debris with the job of giving it, a little at a time, to American industry for reverse engineering. Corso had the credentials to establish he was who and what he claimed to be. He was a close friend of President Eisenhower.
I talked to Col. Corso by telephone shortly before his death. "What crashed at Roswell was a time machine, not a spaceship," he told me.
All of this is to establish that the US Government has spent years and a lot of money to hide the truth about UFOs in general, and Roswell in particular.
Now they're playing the same stupid game about Area 51. The Wall Street Journal generally reports accurately, but they've been taken in by a government coverup. They claim that the stories of crashed UFOs at Area 51 were an elaborate practical joke. New arrivals at Area 51 were told of a secret program called 'Yankee Blue' to reverse engineer extraterrestrial technology, and that they could be prosecuted or even executed for talking about it. Supposedly, this was just a joke played on newbies.
Unfortunately for the Journal, this story is pure BS. There really was such a program at Area 51, although after whistleblowers like Bob Lazar and Bill Uhouse outed it, it may have been relocated to other secret facilities or outsourced to contractors like Bigelow Aerospace, which recently built a specially shielded research facility in Las Vegas to study alien technology. If so, the government can truthfully say that there is no such program at Area 51.
I believe Lazar and Uhouse. Although I haven't had the opportunity to interview Lazar at length, I have done so with Uhouse. I believe Corso, Lazar, Uhouse, and the other whistleblowers who have risked their reputations and lives to expose the government's secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering programs.
Claiming that the whole thing was an elaborate practical joke does a disservice to the whistleblowers and everyone who has done serious research into the subject. Shame on you WSJ!

07/12/2025

WHY CITROEN

In 1955 the French automobile company Citroen introduced the DS series of cars. They were in continuous production until 1975. Prior to the DS series, Citroen had introduced 'Traction Avant,' front-wheel-drive, in 1937. The Traction Avant series featured front-wheel-drive, unit-body construction, and advanced aerodynamic styling. Andre Citroen said his company would never make a car that he had to take his top hat off to get in, so Citroen cars always had plenty of headroom.
To demonstrate the advantage of front-wheel-drive, he had men try to move sacks of potatoes across a warehouse floor, some by pulling the sacks, some by trying to push them. The advantage of pulling the sacks was obvious.
The DS cars took those early innovations farther, being much more aerodynamic with totally unique futuristic styling. DS is pronounced Day-ess in French, and means 'goddess.'
Although the engine was a fairly standard, four-cylinder, pushrod design, beginning with 1.8 liter displacement, progressing ultimately to 2.3 liters, coupled to a four-speed transmission that sat in front of the engine. Massive disk brakes were mounted inboard on the sides of the transmission. The brake shoes could be replaced without any dismantling of anything, they simply slipped into slots. Electrical contacts illuminated a light on the dashboard when the brake shoes needed to be replaced.
The cars were almost entirely hydraulic. A pump driven by a belt from the engine provided the hydraulic pressure (3,000 psi I've been told). The transmission was manual, but there was no clutch pedal. Shifting was controlled by a complex hydraulic system called Citromatic. Brakes were also hydraulic, controlled by a round brake button on the floor to the left of the accelerator pedal. Steering was hydraulic, operated by two opposing hydraulic rams connected to the steering rack. If the hydraulic pressure failed, a standard pinion gear engaged the rack, so you could still steer.
That's not all that was hydraulic. The car's suspension was hydraulic. Over each wheel a sphere was located. The sphere had a rubber diaphragm on its equator, with pressurized nitrogen gas above and hydraulic fluid below. This was essentially a hydropneumatic 'spring' with a lot of travel. The Citroen DS cars are the smoothest riding cars I've ever driven.
Another advantage of this hydropneumatic suspension was that ride height was adjustable. When I owned my DS cars, flooded streets didn't faze me, I just raised my car to it's highest position and drove through the water!
If I needed to change a tire, I just ran the car all the way up, clipped a metal stand under one side, then lowered it and both wheels on that side lifted up off the ground. The rear fenders could be removed to access the wheels with a single bolt. The original wheel design had a single bolt in the center which tightened and loosened the wheel, but they switched to standard lug nuts later on.
The only problem I ever had when I owned a number of DS cars in the 70s and 80s was that the tire used by the DS cars was an odd size made only by Michelin, and only DS cars and one model of Triumph sedan used that tire. I had to special order tires when I needed them.
Sitting in a DS was like sitting in an airplane cockpit. The steering wheel was a unique design with a single spoke and no central column to push into your chest in a collision. Instead, the curved single spoke would push you toward the center of the car.
Being front-wheel-drive, there was no hump in the floor, of course, which gave you more leg room.
I've read that Jay Leno says his DS is his favorite car to drive.
Because of all the hydraulics, it was difficult to find a mechanic who knew how to work on DS cars, so I learned how to do my own work, and, once word got around, the few remaining DS owners on my area used to bring their cars to me for service. I was living on a small farm in rural Virginia at the time, and there was an old country store on my property. I filled it with Citroen parts and special tools so I could service my cars and those of others.
Unfortunately, in the mid-70s Citroen pulled out of the US market, and parts became harder and harder to get. For a while Peugeot sold Citroen parts, but then Peugeot pulled out of the US. I ordered parts from a Citroen dealer in Holland then, but I eventually gave up on keeping my cars running, and sold my last DS to a homesick piano tuner from Paris.
When I was going to England and Europe during my magazine editor days, I used to rent Citroen cars whenever they were available, but those later cars just didn't have the magic of my old DS cars.
The car I always wanted, but could never afford, was the Citroen SM. It was a futuristic sportscar based on the DS mechanicals and hydraulics, but powered by a Maserati V6 engine. I got to ride in one once, and it was an amazing experience.

06/02/2025

PBS WRONG ABOUT POLAROID

On Monday night, May 19, PBS ran a program in their 'The American Experience' series about the Polaroid company and its founder Dr. Edwin Land. I am a photographic historian and have had a close relationship with Polaroid management and research people.
The program was filled with inaccuracies, some minor, some not so minor. Viewers who didn't know better were given the impression that Polaroid and Dr. Land collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa. The truth is that Polaroid's groundbreaking self-developing cameras were distributed worldwide, including in South Africa.
When Polaroid developed a system to produce instant ID cards, the system was quickly adopted by numerous companies and countries, not just South Africa. South Africa had nothing to do with its development. The system speeded up the production of passport photos as well as ID cards for a wide variety of purposes. That the South African government used the system to produce ID cards that Black South Africans were required to carry didn't mean that Polaroid was responsible for apartheid, or encouraged it. If the Polaroid system hadn't existed the South African government would have produced the ID cards anyway, using more traditional methods.
When Polaroid pulled out of South Africa in response to protests, South Africans who'd bought Polaroid cameras were left high and dry, with no access to film.
I knew a man named Katz who operated a large photographic distribution company in South Africa called Photo Cats. He and other independent photographic distributors had to obtain Polaroid film from secondary sources for their customers, making an expensive product even more expensive. And, in reality, Polaroid pulling out of South Africa had no effect on apartheid, which died for other reasons.
To its credit, the program did point out Dr. Land's pioneering diversity program in hiring, emphasizing the hiring of talented women and people of Black and other ethnic backgrounds. Polaroid was diverse at a time when most US businesses weren't.
A major omission in the PBS program was that Dr. Land's support for photographic artists through Polaroid grants was not mentioned. Land provided serious photographers with cameras and film at no cost, allowing them to explore the capabilities of the products. Polaroid had a massive collection of photographs from photographers like Ansel Adams, who enjoyed working with Polaroid cameras and film.
Polaroid even developed a giant camera that produced very large instant prints. As I recall, this camera made prints measuring something like thirty by forty inches, but I'm not positive about the dimensions.
In my own case, Polaroid provided me with film from four by five inches to eight by ten inches, film holders for my big cameras, and processing devices so I could explore the capabilities of these products in my studio, which I'd built as a teaching studio. Polaroid wanted photographers to push the boundaries of their products and I wanted my students to learn the serious use of Polaroid products.
A division of Polaroid in Cambridge, Massachusetts, did innovative work in optics, designing advanced viewfinder and other optics for Polaroid cameras and devices. They also had an advanced testing lab for lenses and other optical devices. When I was Technical Editor for PhotoPRO magazine, we hired them to test lenses for us. We got some surprising results -- some highly reputed lenses weren't really very good optically. FYI, the Zeiss lenses for Hasselblad cameras were the best lenses they'd ever tested, testing very close to the theoretical maximum performance.
The program briefly covered Kodak's venture into instant cameras and the lawsuit that resulted. But there was no mention of the Russian cameras that copied the early Polaroid cameras but used their own film, also made in Russia, or the Japanese instant Instax cameras made by Fuji, which are still in production today. Agfa also produced a system for photographic darkroom use to produce instant prints via dye diffusion similar to the Polaroid process. Kodak was far from alone in copying Polaroid.
After Land was foolishly forced out of the company he founded, Polaroid went through a series of poor management teams and floundered. I knew many of these people. They were out of their element in the photographic industry. The final nail in the coffin was digital photography, which undermined the advantage Polaroid had with instant imaging. The company went through bankruptcy, and all of the people I'd known there ended up retiring or moving on to other jobs. I last saw some of them in 2003.
PBS could have done a much better job in researching their program.

05/08/2025

THE LOSS OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST WRITER

"Writing makes the extraordinary natural and the natural extraordinary, dissipates chaos, beautifies ugliness, eternalizes the moment, and turns death into a passing spectacle." -- Mario Vargas Llosa

There are many good writers whose books have made important contributions to literature and culture, but there aren't that many really great writers. I've recently learned of the death of the man I consider the greatest writer of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Mario Vargas Llosa, who summarized his philosophy on writing above.

I first discovered Vargas Llosa's writing about ten years ago when I stumbled on a pretty badly worn copy of 'The Bad Girl' in our library at Pocahontas State Correctional Center. Since most of the books there were of minimal interest, I didn't expect much. But I had a lot of time on my hands, so I settled in to read it. To say I was bowled over by the book would be a gross understatement.
His style combined realism, erotica, crude local slang, and complex characters who were multidimensional. His tales often encompassed political corruption and moral compromise.
Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 in Peru, but but grew up in Bolivia. He came into his own as a novelist in the 1960s when there was a Latin American literary boom, with writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Colombia and Julio Cortazar of Argentina drawing world acclaim. His first book was 'The Time of the Hero,' a scathing denunciation of life in the military school his parents forced him to attend. The book was denounced by the generals, which brought it and him much attention at the age of eighteen. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2010. He even ran for president of Peru in 1990.
He once said, "If you're a writer in a country like Peru or Mexico, you're a privileged person because you know how to read and write. It is a moral obligation of a writer in Latin America to be involved in civic activities."
He lost the election, but that was probably good for his literary output. As president of Peru, he might have been too busy to write. He left Peru after that and spent most of his adult life in Europe where he became a columnist for El Pais, a major newspaper in Spain.

The second Vargas Llosa book I read was 'The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.' This complex novel involves forbidden eroticism, cultural commentary on Peruvian society, and a history of Egon Schiele, who just happens to be my favorite artist. The book is illustrated with small Schiele drawings at the ends of the chapters. I previously wrote about Schiele and his influence on me here. Seeing him thrown into the mix in this book was a delightful surprise, and a validation of my love of Schiele's art.
'The Feast of the Goat," Vargas Llosa's novelization of the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic is a gripping and masterful tale of political corruption and perversion based on reality. I hadn't known much about this part of Caribbean history before reading this book last year.
Right now I'm engrossed in 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,' Vargas Llosa's second book, inspired by his marriage at nineteen to his twenty-nine year old sister-in-law. I hope I am able in time to read all of his other books, although all were written in Spanish, which I can't read, and some seem to have never been translated into English.
He continued writing into his eighties, and late in his life he said, "Writing is a way of living with illusion and joy and a fire throwing out sparks in your head. This is an experience that continues to bewitch me as it did the first time."

04/30/2025

FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER SALLY MANN HARASSED

Sally Mann was named 'America's Best Photographer' by TIME magazine in 2001. She has exhibited her photographs worldwide to acclaim and awards. Although we're not close friends, I've known Sally for many years and bought all of her books. She lives in rural Rockbridge County, Virginia, and has made the area famous internationally in the world of art with her photographs of the area and local family life.
Now several of her photographs have been seized by police from the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Fort Worth police removed four of her five photographs that were featured in a group show called 'Diaries of Home.' The show 'explored family and domestic life.'
Apparently some prudes complained that the photographs, which depict Sally's children naked, were 'child po*******hy.' I've seen the pictures in question and there is absolutely nothing sexual about them. We're living in an America where far too many people equate simple nudity with po*******hy.
Of course, I am victim to this thinking, too. My n**e photos were used against me at my trial, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with the case against me.
Those of us who are aware of the world of photography know of multiple cases of photographers harassed over their photography. Jock Sturgess is a well-known example. His innocent photos of young women on n**e beaches in France were used against him in a federal witch hunt.
Lee Higgs, a Chicago photographer I know, had his house raided in the middle of the night by FBI agents, who terrorized his wife and children over his photography. His classic book 'Generation Fe**sh' is kinky, no doubt, but nothing in it is illegal. When he finally got some of his photographs and equipment back after a long legal battle, most had been intentionally damaged. Valuable photographs had been folded, ruining them.
But, to return to Sally Mann, both the ACLU and the National Coalition Against Censorship have condemned the police's action and say it 'raises serious First Amendment concerns,' and is 'a dangerous escalation of law enforcement targeting ... constitutionally protected artwork.' That's a gross understatement.
This nonsense was started by Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare who called the seized photos 'deeply disturbing.' Po*******hy, like beauty, is often in the eye (and mind) of the beholder. Sally's photographs 'remain in custody pending investigation.'
(Credit: Details from The News-Gazette, Lexington, Virginia, March 26, 2025, story by Scotty Dransfield. www.thenews-gazette.com)

02/25/2025

For Facebook:

MR. PRESIDENT -- YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO.

In the new administration's first press conference on January 28, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the 'drone mystery' had been solved. The mystery drones seen in New Jersey and other parts of the USA were all research drones operated by the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration.
That is simply nonsense! Some of the 'drones' were the size of SUVs, at least one was the size of a schoolbus, and they hovered for hours completely silently, or darted around in seemingly random ways. They moved in prohibited airspace over sensitive government facilities, even caused closure of airports. FAA research drones? I don't think so.
In addition to being seen in the USA, they were seen in England, Europe, and Australia, and most probably other countries as well. The FAA, even if they had gigantic silent drones, does not operate outside the USA.
I was pleased that Chris Cuomo on NewsNation called out this ridiculous pack of lies. He's followed the 'drone' story from the beginning, and knows just how idiotic this 'explanation' is.
Whatever people were seeing, and shooting video of, they weren't drones. They were UFOs. Quite simply, they were unidentified, they were flying, and we must assume they were objects, not hallucinations. Hallucinations don't show up on video.
I had hopes that the Trump administration would treat the American public as adults, not children. We've been lied to about UFOs since at least the coverup of the Roswell event in 1947. We've been told we were seeing weather balloons, stars, planets, the moon, swamp gas, swarms of fireflies, etc., etc., and now FAA research drones.
Professional pilots have been insulted by being told that they did not see what they knew they did see. Astronomers have been similarly insulted.
I can only hope that President Trump is unaware that he's being lied to and hasn't signed on to this conspiracy of mistruth. The American people deserve to be treated as adults, they deserve the truth.
Back in 1997, when I was heavily involved in UFO research and writing, I had a long telephone conversation with the Air Force Colonel who wrote the Pentagon's book, 'Roswell: Case Closed.' He told me that this book was simply propaganda, that he'd seen films of the autopsies of alien bodies. When I mentioned this conversation on an online UFO forum, he denied ever speaking to me.
But he forgot that he'd mentioned our conversation to Phil Klass. Phil was the most vocal UFO skeptic, and published a skeptical UFO newsletter. In spite of our disagreements on the subject, Phil and I were friends. And he was an honest man. He called out the lie that the conversation I mentioned never happened. Nothing more was heard from the Air Force on the subject.
I personally interviewed most of the living Roswell witnesses in the mid-1990s, and came away convinced that they were almost all telling the truth about what they saw in the summer of 1947. Some of the people I interviewed have never gone public with their stories. They were not publicity seekers.
People have been seeing things of nonhuman origin for thousands of years, what government whistleblowers call things of NHI, Non Human Intelligence. In an exclusive, NewsNation recently broadcast video of the recovery of an NHI egg-shaped craft by the US government. These things are real, we know very little about them, and they move through our skies with impunity.
Mr. Trump, the time has come to stop the lies.

11/06/2024

ANCIENT ALIENS?

Yes, I admit it, I watch the History Channel's 'Ancient Aliens' programs. Why? Because, even though they are about 60% horse hockey, they do slip in some interesting accurate facts.
But I strongly disagree with their basic premise, which is our ancient ancestors were too stupid to do this stuff, so either: A. They had the help of aliens; or B. The aliens did it.
Our ancient ancestors were as intelligent as we are. They just understood things we don't. They had a lost technology for moving very heavy things with little effort. What was this technology? We simply don't know.
In Florida there is something called the Coral Castle. It is made of very large pieces of coral rock, pieces weighing tons. One stone, a revolving doorway weighing tons, is balanced so precisely that a child can turn it. I've been there and found it astonishing.
All of the stones were moved and positioned by one man, working alone at night, with only a wooden tripod. There was a rectangular box mounted atop the tripod. We have no idea what was in it. The man who accomplished this amazing feat claimed he had rediscovered the technology the Egyptians used to build the pyramids. Whatever that secret was, he took it to the grave with him. He certainly did not claim alien assistance. All attempts to duplicate his feat have failed. I'm sure you can find photos and more info by Googling 'Coral Castle.'
Around the world there are ancient megalithic structures. Megalith means 'big stone,' and the stone are big. Some are larger than city buses and weigh hundreds of tons. We'd be hard pressed to move them today with our most advanced machinery. I'm sure the ancient builders used big stones because it was easier for them than using lots of little stones, as later cultures had to do. But I don't think aliens had anything to do with it.
Ancient humans, and by human I mean Homo sapiens, had brains just as large and developed as ours. Their culture and cultural references were just different. As was their technology. At a time when they supposedly only had tools made of stone or soft copper they created gigantic, polygonal stones, and fitted them together like three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles as though they weighed nothing.
Since we find the same building style worldwide, I believe there was once a worldwide civilization that vanished at the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,500 years ago. There is considerable evidence that this Ice Age ended suddenly, causing worldwide flooding that is the root of flood myths in nearly all cultures. Graham Hancock has discussed this idea in his books.
Archeologists say the Giza pyramids and Great Sphinx are only about 3,000 to 5,000 years old. But geologists, who know more about rock weathering say they're far older, dating to that same 12,500 years ago. I trust the geologists a lot more. This means that the ancient Egyptian civilization we know about did not build them. They were already there when that civilization arose. There is clear evidence that the face of the Great Sphinx was originally different, not the face of a pharaoh. That was changed later during dynastic times. Probably the original face wasn't human at all, more likely a lion's face.
Many of the programs in the 'Ancient Aliens' series are old, but they keep running them. Stan Friedman, my late friend, has been dead for years, but he still pops up there.
Because many of the programs are old, they don't reflect the latest discoveries. For example, we now know that those famous cave paintings in France and Spain were painted by Neanderthals. They used their own saliva to mix with the pigments, and left their DNA behind. It's Neanderthal DNA. The Neanderthals weren't apelike subhumans. They had red hair and blue eyes. Dress one in a business suit and he wouldn't attract any attention on Park Avenue. The slouching, bowlegged reconstruction that we saw for years came from a single old man discovered early who suffered severe osteoarthritis and other ailments.
Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans and considerably larger eyes, so they may have been primarily nocturnal or crepuscular. Because there is no DNA in the megaliths, it is quite possible that Neanderthals were the builders.
And Neanderthals are alive today in most of us. Unless your heritage is 100% sub-Saharan African, you carry Neanderthal genes. Apparently they never migrated south of the Sahara, which, to my mind, casts doubt on the 'out of Africa' theory of human evolution.
In the 1920s, when the great Roy Chapman Andrews led the American Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic Expeditions, the dominant theory was that humans originated in central Asia. Those expeditions were looking for ancient humans. Unfortunately, Andrews found that the rocks of the right age to contain fossils of early humans had weathered away, and he became famous for finding dinosaurs instead. I believe that the reason most early human fossils have been found in Africa is that the rock strata containing the fossils have weathered away everywhere else or are under dense tropical jungles and inaccessible. Fully modern humans lived worldwide millions of years ago, in my opinion.
I do not believe that the various Australopithecines found in Africa are human ancestors, just products of convergent evolution. Unfortunately, they're far too old to extract DNA and set the record straight. Like gorillas and other apes, they are our distant cousins, not our ancestors. Fully modern human skulls have been found that are older than our supposed ancestors. See 'Forbidden Archeology' by Michael Cremo for details. More on this topic later.

Bob Shell Dispatches

08/30/2025

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