Close Encounters of the First Kind

The UFO research community has been buzzing after what appear to be two incredible sightings in the last few weeks. Among the myriad encounters that are reported nearly every day across the globe, these two events have prompted many to ask if we, the inhabitants of this planet, are on the verge of a major revelation regarding the UFO phenomenon. Yet there are others who yet again ask for substantial proof of these events (such as a clear photograph or video footage) other than the verbal testimony of eyewitnesses.

Just over a week ago, it was reported that a group of eight Chinese fire-fighters observed an object in Liu Pan Shui City for over an hour. The strange craft was filmed by one of the group and a still frame from the footage was released (see above). Similar craft have been observed in the past and described as “diamond UFO’s” – two rotating cones joined at the base and flashing a range of colours. Twenty minutes of footage was shown to staff at the Liu Pan Shui meteorological bureau. They were at a loss to explain the craft. The footage was then handed to government astronomical departments for further examination.

Many would consider the relegation of the footage to a government body as being the last time it would ever be seen. However, unlike their counterparts in the west, the Chinese media and government are more open to the possibility of alien visitation and regard the UFO phenomenon as fact, not fiction. Many in the UFO community are confident that the footage will soon be made available to the general public.

The other incident occurred in Saudi Arabia, and was reportedly witnessed by millions of people. On the evening of January 7th, a loud noise was heard in the sky and a bright object was observed, east of the capital Riyadh. Locals in the region said they heard an explosion and felt a tremor, indicating the object had crashed to Earth. Many stated it was nothing more than a satellite or meteor, yet others claiming to have seen meteors in the past, disagreed. It was reported that the object was a blue green colour and was discarding what seemed to be laser beams as it moved across the sky.

Again, the incident received no attention from the western media, but the usually conservative Saudi press has given the event much coverage. Many witnesses to the incident feared for their lives and began to pray – such was the magnitude of the sighting. The Saudi government has not released any information regarding the object or its supposed crash, but have reportedly sealed off the area where it was believed to have gone down. Many pictures have surfaced (such as the one below) but have done little to quiet the sceptics due to the camera focus problems that inevitably cloud the UFO issue.



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

(Source: http://www.allnewsweb.com)

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.)