Buenos Dias
Broadcasting from an undisclosed and undislosable location, this is the Spectral Skull Session, and I am your host Dane.
Today, a news roundup for the week of April 30th, which includes: the holiday of Beltane, Harry Reid suggests UFO swarms are Russian technology, and the hauntings have resumed at America’s most haunted Ranch..
First in our news is this is a holiday weekend for so many of our listeners. It is the Easter Weeekend, for Orthodox Christians around the world.
Saturday, May 1st is the workers holiday for China, Russia, and some parts of Eastern Europe, including Belarus.
May 1st is also Beltane, for Celtic people, especially the Scottish and irish.
Beltane refers to the Fire of Bel, or Belenus. Belenus is a celtic sun god.
The Beltane holiday is marked by maypoles, dancing, and fertility rites.
It is a popular time for Pagan weddings, or ‘handfasting’ a handfasting is a pledge that a couple takes to stay together for a year and a day.
Another celtic tradition is for young couples to spend the night of Beltane out in the fields. And come back with armfuls of Hawthorn blossoms to decorate their homes. Children born 9 months after Beltane are known as “Beltane Babies”
During Beltane, Herdsmen will drive their cattle, sheep, or other animals, between two closely aligned bonefires. The belief is that passing through the smoke of the fires, blesses a living creature, and helps protect it from harm in the year to come. A variation on this practice is to jump over the Beltane fires.
I looked up Beltane in the seminal work on comparative western mythology, Sir James George Frazer’ The Golden Bough. Written in 1890 and revised 1900, The Golden Bough has influenced everyone from Christian apologist and children’s book author, C.S. Lewis, to scholar Joseph Campbell, to poet T.S. Elliot. Even Aleister Crowley is said to have been studying Frazer as he staged his own attempt to revive magickal spirituality in the West, crafting what would become the religion or philosophy of Thelema.
So here is what Frazer has to say about Beltane:
He says that in the central highlands of Scottland, the Beltane rituals are strongly suggestive of a now-abandoned practice of human sacrafice.
One Scottish ritual is the Beltane cake. A cake of oats or meal is prepared in the fire. And a bean or some kind of token is hidden inside it. The community divides the cake up. Whoever finds the token is the Beltane Carline. Certain members of the community then stage a dramatized attempt to throw that person into the fire. Other members of the community intervene, to rescue the Beltane Carline. As a compromise between being immolated and allowed to live, the community all throws eggshells at the Carline. That person then is treated as an odious character for the remainder of the year, with people even referring to him and her as if they were dead.
In a variation on this practice, the Beltane Carline may be asked to jump over a roaring bonfire three times, to spare the community from harm. Or may be asked to pass repeatedly between two bonfires that are painfully close together.
So Beltane may be a good day to get outside, and perform a fertility ritual of some kind. And smoke some meat, to ask the fairy people to protect you and your herd, for another year.
Moving on. Let’s follow-up on two stories previously reported here.
First, we’ve been covering Russian President Vladamir Putin’s suspicious activities in the Former Soviet Union. And we have good news. First, the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has ended his hunger strike, after he was allowed to see a doctor for his legs.
Appearing by video-link in a Russian court, Navalny said the following:
“You are all traitors. You and the naked king are implementing a plan to seize Russia, and the Russians should be turned into slaves. Their wealth will be taken away from them, they will be deprived of any prospects, you have implemented that plan.”
Not sure what Navalny is talking about there. Remember this is a Russian man who was poisoned, and barely survived, then voluntarily returned to Russia, only to be imprisoned in solitary confinement without medical care.
But, it sounds like Navalny is warning of a plot to destroy Russia, by President Vladamir Putin.
He also called the judge a traitor, and we sentenced to contempt of court.
Also, good news from Russia, a major Russian military build-up in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine has been partially reversed. Concerns of a renewed war between Russia and Ukraine, amid heightened tensions and growing exchange of gunfire, may be laid to rest for the time being.
This de-escalation, along with the improved condition of Alexei Navalny, both come on the heels of U.S. President Joe Biden, contacting President Putin, and inviting him to a summit.
Putin reportedly told Russian media that Biden said he does not want worse relations between the countries, but wants to normalize relations. Normalizing relations would be extraordinary, as Russia has been under sanctions since 2012.
Sanctions only got worse in March 2014, when U.S. President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13660 , signed on March 6, 2014, authorizes sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, or for stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people. (source: U.S. State Department)
Related to this, Former Senator Harry Reid, has publically said that the mystery UFOs swarming America’s naval destroyers, are, owned by, you guessed it, Russia.
Speaking to the U.S. Sun on the topic, Reid said “Always remember Russia, it is run by a man who once ran the KGB. They had 31,000 agents at one time. Russia is involved in this no question about it.”
Reid is of course referring to Russian President Vladamir Putin, 1975, Putin joined the KGB and . After training, he worked in (counter-intelligence), before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where he monitored foreigners and consular officials in St. Petersburg.
But A former member of the U.K. Defense ministry, also chimed in, telling the Sun, that these UFOs could be “hypersonic drones from Russia or China”
We’ve already talked about the possibility that the UFOs could be Chinese drones on this show. But how about the possibility that they are Russian drones?
Well, the Russian military claims to be in the process of developing almost two dozen different kinds of hypersonic missiles at this time.
Hypersonic missiles are missiles that move much faster than the speed of sound. So, fast, that they can be invisible on radar. And even if detected by radar, they cannot be intercepted. If a naval ship using horizon-restricted radar detected a hypersonic missile, it might have less than a minute to react. This acccording to Military.com (Source: Military.com)
In 2018, President Putin, said they had completed testing of one hypersonic missile, the Avangard. Putin said the Avangard is a high-velocity glide vehicle that can move 20x the speed of sound and engage in manuvers. This would allow the missile to not only outrun, but also dodge intercepting misiles.
The Russian military also claims to have deployed another hypersonic missile, called the Kiazhil, which can be launched from planes. It can also move several times the speed of sound.
And in March 2018, Putin also claimed that the Russian military was working on a kind of wunderwaffen – a nuclear-capable nuclear-powered missile, called the 9M730 Burevestnik.. NATO calls it the SSC-X-Skyfall. The Skyfall is supposedly a missile that flies using a nuclear reactor and a ramscoop.
The idea here is that you put radioactive ore inside your missile. Your ramscoop is a nossle at the front of the missile that sucks up air. You run the air across the ore. It becomes super-heated, then it shoots out the back of the missile. This means the missile doesn’t burn fuel, it just heats air.
In theory, such a missile can fly almost indefinitely. The United States researched building a nuclear-power missile in the 1950s, but decided against it, because if the missile crashed before reaching its target, it would have spread radioactive material everywhere. I also read that the missile was so loud that it would have permeneatly defeaned anyone it flew over. So, the Americans decided this was a bad idea.
Putin, apparently, thinks its a great idea, or that’s what he wants us to believe. Because this Skyfall is just one of many of these terrifying new russian weapons.
But here is the thing about Russia’s claims to have all these wunderwaffen hypersonic missiles. I’ve mentioned three now.
Well, arms-control experts have pointed out that the missile that launches from planes? It looks suspiciously like another missile the Russians already have. Other arms-control experts have questioned the idea of a glide vehicle, saying that missiles can only glide at much slower speeds, far below hypersonic speeds.
And finally, the Russian military tested the Skyfall engine in August, 2019. And it blew up, spewwing radioactive material everywhere. Killing the entire staff of the research project. Five top scientists died of radiation exposure. So that is a set back for the Russians.
The point I want to emphasize here: I’m very skeptical that the Russians are up to the task of developing next-generation super-drones. Yes, the Russians do continue to punch above their weight in cyber-warfare, and technology. But my sense is this: the Soviet Union was a very science and educated oriented utopian dream. The Soviets heavily invested in tech and education, so they still have good Universities, and lots of secret cold war inventions mothballed in hidden factories. Whenever Putin’s government wants to make it look like Russia is making progress, he has someone go dig up some secret Soviet era technology, and then they pretend to be mass producing it.
I suspect the only nation besides the U.S. Capable of actually developing a next-generation breakthrough drone, would be China. I am also skeptical that even China could do it.
Let’s move on to another mysterious story, also linked to Former Senator Harry Reid.
Back when he was Senator, Reid arranged for taxpayer funds to be used to investigate various mysteries. One of these mysteries was UFOs. Another one, was Skinwalker ranch.
Skinwalker Ranch is located in Ballard Utah. The Northeast Corner of that State. It is a highly-recognized center for High Strangeness. High Strangeness is whenever you have multile different categories of paranormal phenomena happening close together in space and time.
The region was long known for UFO sightings. The Indigenous tribes in the area used to avoid it, saying it was cursed land.
In the 1990s, a ranching family took posession of a 500-acre ranch. They reported immediately being visited by a giant wolf, who tried to eat their prized calfs. They shot this wolf repeatedly, eventually with a high caliber rifle at point-blank range. The wolf survived and left.
The family struggled for some time, tormented by strange events. They would hear voices laughing at them, coming from the sky at night. They had poltergheist-like activity inside their home. At one point they saw what appeared to be a Winnebago that had wandered onto their land, they even were caught in its headlights, but then it took off into the sky.
And more importantly for ranchers, they gradually lost more and more of their cattle herd.
Eventually, they shared their story with the world. And this caught the attention of Robert Bigelowe. Bigelowe is an aerospace tycoon. He’s also a close friend of Harry Reids.
Bigelow was able to get tens of millions of dollars, to assemble a team to investigate Skinwalker Ranch. Reportedly, they witnessed a number of spectral phenomena, including camera equipment that was mysteriously torn apart. A couple investigators reported seeing a doorway open up in the sky, and a bigfoot like creature ran out.
Skinwalker ranch is absolutely the weirdest place I’ve ever heard of. But, the activity supposedly died down when Bigelowe’s team came to investigate. And I heard that Bigelow was disappointed, and that was the end of the whole project.
Now, recently, Bigelow sold the property to real-estate tycoon, Brandon Fugal. Fugal said he bought the property as a skeptic but then:
Well that all changed. I had with multiple witnesses with me an occasion where we saw what can only be described as an unidentified flying object, a craft a forty, fifty-foot-long silver disc hovering right above the mesa. Right in front of us. This wasn’t just a blinking light in the sky or something that was a little bit ambiguous. This was a solid object that appeared out of nowhere could move in the blink of an eye and over a twenty second period perform maneuvers that I believe defy any propulsion physics that we’re acquainted with.”
Fugal is saying that people who visit his ranch have “acute medical episodes” including nausea, altered-perception, and even temporary paralysis.
This latest saga in the story of Skinwalker Ranch, will be covered in the
“The Secret of The Skinwalker Ranch” which will be on the History Channel, starting May 4th.
And if you are looking for more documentaries about cryptids. There is a new documentary series exploring whether Bigfoot may have murdered Cannabis Farmers.
Sasquatch a documentary on Hulu, follows filmaker Joshua Rofe, and investigative reporter, David Holthouse. Holthouse investigates three men who were allegedly murdered by bigfoot.
Holthouse was working on a cannabis farm in California in the Emerald Triangle region, which is near Mendocino, when a man came to him saying three workers had been torn limb from limb, and their weed left undisturbed.
Holthouse and Rofe found themselves caught up in a shadowy northern californian underworld of AR-15s weilding smugglers, hostility directed against migrants, and numerous unsolved murders.
I would like to mention that Mendocino is where Robert Anton Wilson retreated and suffered through a period of his life that he refered to as “Chapel Perilious” a period where he was haunted by spectres, weird synchronicities, and questioned his very relationship with reality.
I wonder if in addition to being a center for the cannabis black market, this region in Northern California may also be a place like Skinwalker Ranch, or, the place we covered on this show, the BridgeWater Triangle in Massachuttes.
Alright everyone. That is the show for this week.
It’s Beltane. It’s Easter. Go outside and enjoy the woods. If you see anything, then send me a message and let me know.
Remember, if you see bigfoot, maybe offer to share with him some of your stash.
This is Dane, signing off,
Stay Strange and Stay Sane.