Chris Vola - I is for Illuminati

Contents

Contents

A is for Aliens, both ancient and new

Grays, Blues, Reptilians, every conceivable hue.

You can stargaze all night, wait for saucers to appear

But isnt it more likely theyre already here?

The Predator. ALF. Lieutenant Commander Worf. Your crazy cat lady neighbor who uses crystals to communicate with the little green ancestors she met on an acid trip at a Phish show twenty years ago. Most everyones familiar with the fictional (we assume?) extraterrestrials that infiltrate our screens and lives, but what about the real thing? Is there a real thing?

Unidentified flying objectsand the creatures piloting themhave allegedly been entering Earths atmosphere since long before people had cell phones to record those encounters. The oral traditions of ancient tribes like the Dogon in West Africa and the Hopi of the American Southwest speak of star beings descending from sky chariots to teach our primitive ancestors useful things like agriculture, medicine, and why a Capricorn should never date a Taurus. Numerous historical figures like Ramses II, Alexander the Great, and the Roman Emperor Constantine witnessed what they described as massive flaming shields or crosses streaking through the sky, which, in some cases, directly influenced the results of major battles. However, up until the twentieth century, most of these brushes with the unknown were chalked up to angels, witchcraft, or being dangerously overserved at the local mead spot.

The hysteria sparked by Orson Welless 1938 radio narration of The War of the Worlds first thrust the idea of technologically advanced spacefarers into the mainstream cultural consciousness. Then, the supposed crash of a flying saucer in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 really got things heated up. The subsequent explosion of UFO sightings and claims of alien abductions stoked the publics imagination, provided a nice source of income for countless science-fiction writers, and, according to thousands of whistleblowers, sent the United States military and defense industries into a tizzy.

From the alleged creation of clandestine 1940s ET-monitoring programs like Majestic 12 and Project Blue Book to President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly meeting with small, gray-skinned visitors at various air force bases in the 1950s; from claims of reverse-engineering faster-than-light-speed vehicles in places like Area 51 to recent revelations by former military employees about a decades-old space program called Solar Warden wherein humans have been secretly using that extraterrestrial technology to colonize the solar system and fight wars against evil Reptilian overlords from the Pleiades star cluster, the rumors of behind-the-scenes alien influencers have only gotten crazier as the years go by. Some researchers have even alleged that most so-called ETs arent from other planets at all but are actually extradimensional, interdimensional, or trans-dimensional beings who have been traveling from their sub-universes to ours using wormholes.

While anything alien- or UFO-related has historically been dismissed as the paranoid fodder of overly imaginative basement dwellers, dozens of highly credible sources have also come forward to offer some startling insights. Paul Hellyer, the former Canadian defense minister, has stated that there are approximately eighty extraterrestrial races visiting Earth at any given time, including nine-foot-tall Nordics with pale skin and blond hair, the commonly depicted short grays with their big heads and black slit eyes, and different types of bird- and lizard-headed creatures (similar to depictions of various ancient Egyptian deities). He claims that most of them are benevolent, and that their increased interest in us stems from their fear that our misuse of atomic energy will send the entire cosmos into a tailspin. Yikes.

Perhaps more shockingly, in the fall of 2019, the US Navy admitted that videos taken by pilots in 2004, which depicted a cigar-shaped craft performing seemingly impossible maneuversand were later featured by former Pentagon employee Luis Elizondo on the History Channels Unidentified: Inside Americas UFO Investigationwere indeed evidence of unidentified aerial phenomena. It was the first time a government agency had ever explicitly confirmed the existence of UFOs, upending more than fifty years of absolute denial. It was also a victory for an unlikely coalition of truthers led by Elizondo, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon, and former Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge (yes, seriously).

To paraphrase TVs spookiest FBI agent, Fox Mulder, the truth is probably out there. But what ifin all likelihoodthere is already here? What do our neighbors from the sky really want? Maybe, like Hellyer and others have speculated, theyre here to help, surreptitiously saving us from nuclear disaster while slowly disseminating technologyyay, iPhones!and disclosing their presence in a way that wont blow our collective, puny human brains.

Or maybe, like the grim reaper figures who supposedly heralded the arrival of the bubonic plague (and were also probably ETs), the UFOs shooting across the sky these days are markers of impending doom, and all the abductions are part of a massive experiment to create a hybrid human-alien race. Boo, forced evolution through genocide! Lets hope its the former, because if any being capable of piloting a possibly interdimensional craft that goes from zero to fifteen million in less than a second wants to take us out, theres really nothing you, me, or Will Smith can do about it.

B is for Bermuda, the Triangle specifically.

Where things have a habit of disappearing terrifically.

Strange lights, deadly whirlpools, and forced teleportation

Might make you rethink your next cruise destination.

When considering Bermuda, you might think of pink sand beaches, pristine snorkeling opportunities, and pasty British legs unfortunately exposed by khaki short-shorts. But for most people, the stormy waters just to the south of the archipelago conjure a much more sinister vibe. Covering around five hundred thousand square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, the Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Devils Triangle) is best known for the disturbing number of ships and aircraft that have vanished or been found mysteriously abandoned while traversing the area. Though it was first brought to light in a 1950 Miami Herald article, the phenomenon had been occurring for years, including the 1919 disappearance of the US Navy cargo ship USS Cyclops and its 306-person crew, representing the largest single noncombat loss of life in American military history.

There have been hundreds of similar accidents. An entire fleet of torpedo bomber planes seemingly evaporated into the clouds in 1945. A collision between two military aircraft somehow leaving two separate debris fields 160 miles apart from each other. A seaplane pilot named Bruce Gernon flying into some fog and suddenly finding himself 100 miles off course in the blink of an astonished eye. Despite this, mainstream scientists and various busybodies (including more than a few government-contracted aeronautics experts) have always given predictably boring explanations for the disappearances and accidents: magnetic anomalies, bad weather, rogue waves, or that meddlesome Gulf Stream are some of their favorite go-tos.