Atlantis and the Giant Serpent

Two ridiculous stories appeared on the internet last week. The first involved supposed photographic evidence of a giant serpent making its way down a river in Borneo. For some time, locals in the region of the Baleh River had dispersed stories of a shape-shifting serpent existing beneath the surface of the water. Named ‘Nabau’, it was a terrifying snake one hundred feet long, bearing a dragon’s head with seven nostrils! The photograph, supposedly taken by a disaster team monitoring flood regions, caused much panic among the local villagers.

The photograph below appeared on the Mail Online website – special mention must be paid to the individual who thought it necessary to insert a large red circle around the creature in question. Thanks for that – I doubt myself and countless others would have been able to discern the serpent without it! The photograph is obviously a fake – even someone without a background in graphics could reach that conclusion.



The second story revolved around the supposed discovery of Atlantis buried under the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of northwest Africa. Keen observers on Google Earth reported the ‘amazing’ discovery of what seemed to be an ancient grid of a city – the location of which was identified by many excited amateur and professional archaeologists as one of the possible locations of Atlantis, citing descriptions from Greek philosopher Plato amongst others. But what they failed to address was Plato’s vivid description of the mythical city, described in writings as being circular and residing beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar).

According to legend, Atlantis was a wonder of the ancient world, carved from the rock of the land in a formation of concentric circles. The size of the city was comparable to the scale of modern-day London. Access to the different levels of the city could only be achieved by traversing a waterway that spiralled inwards to the residences of the ruling elite. This prevented any successful invasion of the city as the circular formation and high walls leading up from the river surface provided an insurmountable defence. This description is a long way from the rectangular grid depicted in the Google Earth images.



In their book, When The Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, authors Rand and Rose Flem-Ath present a strong argument that Atlantis is in fact buried beneath the ice of Antarctica – the geographical features of lesser Antarctica being a possible match to the few descriptions of Atlantis in ancient writings. Needless to say, there was some disappointment expressed when Google Earth finally revealed that the supposed ‘grid’ of the ‘underwater city’ was merely an artefact of sonar imaging used to create the underwater maps.

by Max Drake
(Freelance writer and artist for GritFX.)

Dropa – Fact or Fiction?

In 1937, a Chinese archaeologist named Chi Pu Tei discovered strange cave burial sites in the Baian-Kara-Ula mountain range, located in the borderland between China and Tibet. The skeletons found were roughly 4 feet tall, and displayed heads which were considerably larger than their slender frames. In each of the 716 graves, Chi Pu Tei found a stone disk approximately a foot in diameter and almost an inch thick. Chi Pu Tei published his findings stating that the burial sites were made by mountain gorillas and that the disks were placed there by later cultures. Chi Pu Tei was rightfully ridiculed by the Chinese archaeological community for this absurd claim.

The caves themselves had the appearance of being ‘carved’ from the mountain, according to Chi Pu Tei. The walls were squared and glazed and were more akin to an underground system of interlinking tunnels. The disks, upon closer inspection, were inscribed with a strange, unknown writing. In 1962, Chinese scientist Professor Tsum Um Nui managed to partially decode the inscriptions, telling a wild tale of an alien spacecraft that had crashed to Earth. Many of the occupants were hunted and killed by local tribes because of their strange appearance, and with no means to re-build their craft, were stranded on our planet. Indeed, an old Chinese legend describes a race of small, yellow-skinned humanoids, with large heads and slender, frail bodies. Their supposed descendants live in the area of the Baian-Kara-Ula and are of very small stature, encompassing none of the features associated with the Chinese, Mongols or Tibetans.

In 1947, Dr Karyl Robin-Evans travelled through Tibet bound for the “mysterious land of the Dropa”. He met with the Dalai Lama and eventually found the tribe, who were indeed small in stature and of strange appearance. He conversed with a language teacher of the Dropa who told him the same story of an alien race being stranded on Earth. Apparently they had been here roughly 12,000 years ago on an exploration mission, and that another craft had crashed here around 1014AD. Robin-Evans took a photograph of the supposed Dropa leaders (see below) but this seems to be the ONLY photo of this race of people in existence.



Russian scientist W. Saitsew published a paper in 1968 which raised the interest of extraterrestrial visitors in our past. Much of the information published was from the work done by Professor Tsum Um Nui, but included information of the make-up of the stone disks, which had large metallic traces such as cobalt. When the disks were placed on an oscillator, they produced a vibratory hum that suggested the flow of energy. The centre hole in the disks was cut with such precision that it defied explanation, considering the disks were aged at around 12,000 years.

In 1974, Austrian engineer Ernst Wegener was able to photograph two of the disks being displayed in the Banpo Museum in Xian. The museum curator could tell Wegener nothing of the disks, and when Hartwig Hausdorf visited the museum twenty years later, the disks had disappeared. Wegener’s photos are published all over the internet, but their quality is poor, having been taken with an old Polaroid camera. No inscriptions are visible, and while they are as they had been described in the past, the photos are hardly proof of anything.

For this is the problem with the story of the ‘Dropa Stones’ and the small skeletons supposedly found in the mountains of the Baian-Kara-Ula – the lack of proof. It is highly unlikely that Dr Karyl Robin-Evans trekked into Tibet and took only ONE photograph of this mysterious race of people supposedly descended from extra-terrestrials. There might be a logical reason for this, but it escapes this author. The other ‘facts’ of the case are suspect as well – for instance the reported transcription by Tsum Um Nui and the details regarding the properties of the disks. The complete lack of evidence to support a discovery of this magnitude lends credence to the idea that this is all an elaborate hoax. A number of photos have surfaced on the internet claiming to be the skeletal or mummified remains of the Dropa ‘aliens’, but most are proven fakes or from another location on the planet, passed off as ‘Dropa’. And where are the 716 stone disks supposedly discovered by Chi Pu Tei in 1937? Were subsequent expeditions undertaken to recover any disks or skeletal remains that were left behind? It’s a great story, but is it anything more than that…?

Of course, a discovery like this would invariably draw the attention of the world’s governments and it is quite possible that the entire discovery has been quashed. Perhaps the evidence is locked away deep underground in a top secret installation – deemed far too unsettling for the minds of the average person….

by Max Drake
(Freelance writer and artist for GritFX.)

Great Balls Of Stone

In the 1940’s, plantation workers clearing tropical jungle areas in Costa Rica discovered hundreds of spherical balls hidden beneath the foliage. The largest weighed almost 16 tons and was as tall as a man; the smallest was roughly the size of a tennis ball. When seen from the air, the balls were arranged in patterns – gigantic triangles, circles, squares and cosmological arrangements.


The balls were originally thought to be a product of perhaps Incan or Mayan civilisations, yet some archaeologists estimated their age at 400,000 years! Further examination revealed that the balls were almost perfectly symmetrical within a centimetre or two, and it was highly unlikely that they were the product of man. Incredible rumours began to spread regarding the ‘power’ of the balls – it was said that electronic equipment refused to function in their immediate vicinity, and that people experienced abnormal behaviour after coming into contact with them.

Found mainly in the Diquis Delta region, the balls are also found on Isla del Cano, to the west of Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast. In the subsequent years since their discovery, many of the balls were looted and can be found in the streets and gardens of San Jose. Some believed that riches could be found within the stones, which lead to many being destroyed by zealous thieves. In the late 1970’s, three large balls discovered near Guadalahara were sent to the American University in New York state. The balls were cut and analysed, revealing the complicated internal structure – a coiled alloy of rare-earth metals whose chemical properties were mysterious. The scientists at American University declared that the balls were not man-made, but most likely formed by natural events.

Yet this does not explain the patterns the balls formed when first discovered. Would natural origins arrange the balls in triangles and circles and squares? It is said that there are no straight lines in nature, which lends speculation to the ‘natural’ theory. Of course, many theories have been expounded relating to the ‘Giant Balls Of Costa Rica’, the most outlandish being that they were used by giant creatures for some sort of gameplay. Similar balls have been found in other parts of the world and continue to fascinate to this day.

by Max Drake


(Max Drake is a freelance designer for GritFX. Max has an interest in all things weird and will have regular posts on this blog.)

For more on the “Giant Balls Of Costa Rica”, visit http://www.mysteryspheres.com/info.htm