“The ruins of the past are a constant record, of the individual’s inhumanity to man and the failure to keep the basic principles of his own survival.”— Manly P. Hall Litt.D

 

The “Dandelion Seed” Dr. Sagan planted was well secured in a fertile soil. From the hints he delivered in Cosmos about the “Pyramids of Elysium” my sub-conscious memory of that inspiration drove me on in a quest for truth, spurred on by Richard Hoagland’s revolutionary observations of the Cydonia area. I had always thought that if there were possible artificial structures on Mars, why not the Moon? We should, after all, be finding comparable artifacts there as well. I mentioned to my mom in 1989, that if there were ruins on Mars, placed there in pre-historic times, there must have been some kind of solar system wide “dark age” that has ensued since. The implication of this of course, is that more than one body in the solar system would have to provide some additional evidence for this—including the Earth. I was aware of the provocative possibility of the Avebury/Silbury/Cydonia connection as early as 1992, as I was a subscriber to Martian Horizons. If we were connected to these potential artifacts in some way, which seems probable based on the human like appearance of the “Face on Mars”, my thought at the time was that there should be corroborative evidence just about anywhere…

By the summer of 1994 I already had the opportunity to see Richard’s Hoagland’s Mars videos however, his lunar research I had not heard of yet. I was working at Salt Lake City’s old Hansen Planetarium that summer and we had a few people calling in about glass “skyscrapers” on the moon. I thought “pretty outlandish” and just laughed with the rest of the planetarium employees at the notion. I had not discussed my research into Cydonia with others much, although I had shared the research videos of Hoagland that summer with a few fellow employees of the planetarium. I also quietly wondered, “are the “glass skyscrapers” something Hoagland had discovered”? He seemed like just the person would work on that type of material, and at the time, he was the only person I could potentially connect with such a subject. (I had not realized at the time, that there had previously been others doing work on anomalous objects on the moon as, for example, Don Wilson who wrote Secrets of our Spaceship Moon and Fred Steckling with We Discovered Alien Bases on the Moon.) I had not heard anything current on Hoagland’s research for some time. Although I was not yet convinced that ruins were on Mars, I had an interest in Hoagland’s work, and had even as early as 1988 began to do a bit of my own independent Martian “anomaly hunting” of other inexplicable features of the Cydonian area that had not been discussed by Hoagland. ¹⁾In January 1989 I can be heard asking Richard a question about an anomalous feature, not previously discussed by him, in an interview on local radio at the very end of the program. Unfortunately, I was cut short.I had also spoken with him on more than one occasion, and was convinced enough about the importance of the Cydonia area to spend money on the Sierra Leone stamp set. ²⁾See part 2 of this series However, I continued to wonder in that summer of 94, could the strange questions about the lunar “glass buildings” we were getting at the planetarium be the result of Hoagland’s incessant curiosity?

In December of 1994 I got my answer. I had the chance to hear Richard on the radio show Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. It had not been since the 1993 Larry King Live show with Hoagland³⁾see part 2 of this series that I had any opportunity to hear any kind of update or live interview of Hoagland.

This was at a time when the Internet barely even existed. It virtually was a non-existent research tool. There were only a small handful of actual anomaly hunters in the mid 1990’s, given the paucity of imagery readily available, and information back then was hard to come by compared to today. Even when you got news on such subjects, it could be weeks or months before you heard anything “new”.

Near the beginning of the December 1994 interview with Art Bell, Hoagland referenced back to discussions from earlier that summer concerning his up to then “quiet investigation” into the lunar anomalies. I realized that indeed it was Hoagland who was researching the “glass skyscrapers” on the moon. (Art Bell had previously conducted an interview with Hoagland earlier that year, ostensibly, prompting the calls into the planetarium.) As a result of listening to this show, I was able to secure a copy of his Moon/MarsConnection video that same December.

 

 

Things started to get interesting. It now seemed there might have been potential activity up there on the Moon in the pre-historic past after all. The overall hypothesis of intelligently created Martian ruins had a larger context. My thoughts from years earlier about a solar system wide “dark age” seemed to be gaining some additional evidence. Controversial to be sure, but evidence nonetheless.

I watched the Moon Mars connection video several times and combed over all the observational evidence Richard presented. Of course, for me, the “castle” and the “shard” were very compelling, and the bright reflective feature just above the shard was interesting. Even hauntingly familiar…

Having watched the video several times and getting a basic idea of what to search for, I began my own forays into lunar anomaly hunting. This is when I took out my copy of Cosmos and “remembered” something…

Now recall, as I outlined in the previous installment of this series, Dr. Sagan was one of the most vocal and prominent proponents of the potential ancient lunar artifact model that we had during the Apollo Program time period. This was one of the scientists who advised the Apollo Astronauts! His comments about lunar artifacts almost certainly occurred during preparations to going to the moon! If he did not mention “hey guys, you might want to look for “complex overlapping craters” and other geometric regularity” directly to the astronauts, he at least might have advised those who did. In his public statements, he appears mostly concerned about the far side of the moon, but as we will see in due time, the entire moon is covered by anomalies. I believe, as many of us “anomaly hunters” do, that what Sagan proposed about artifacts on the moon, was almost naïve and trivial by comparison. This may have prompted the withholding (to use the Brookings recommended terminology for this) apparatus and contingency that we are living in today.

Leafing through Sagan’s Cosmos amidst all the provocative talk about the potential Viking landing area at Cydonia and the “Pyramids of Elysium” and how intelligence manifests itself in “geometric regularity” on planets and other intriguing hints of information…was a picture. In Sagan’s words, “…a lovely picture”, which is how he described it to children and young students in 1977 during his Royal Institution Christmas Lecture #1: “The Earth as a Planet”. This was 3 years before the publication of Cosmos.

A “lovely picture” indeed Dr. Sagan. A picture I had seen long before—as far back as the year 1980. I would soon be convinced that this picture, on page 84 of Sagan’s magnum opus, is perhaps the most stunning image, from the Apollo Program, of a prehistoric intelligently engineered lunar dome. Complete with the sun reflecting off it, the lunar surface light refracting up through it distorting the lunar horizon and all this with Mother Earth rising magnificently behind it.

 

A fitting picture from a man who predicted that we might find something like this on the moon. “Science is nothing if not prediction”. You might have heard that from someone before…

I had seen this picture when I first read Cosmos in 1980. The specular reflection of the sun looked like a printing error or something similar common to comic books. Later, in 1983 I distinctly recall looking at the picture again from a totally different copy from my Jr. High School’s library. This told me that it was actually in the field of vision and in focus. It was part of the picture—not an error. This got my attention and I wondered what the “flare” or sun reflection was. I even thought it might be a rocket coming up from the lunar surface (not understanding at the tender age of 13 that the Lunar Module ascent stage would not approach at such an angle or even give off an “afterburner” effect). But whatever it was, to my 13 year old mind, it was strange. It didn’t belong. It remained so and was forgotten until, years later, in January of 1995 when the “persistence of memory” reignited my wonder and I went back and looked again to finally realize what it was I might be looking at.

My first reaction to the picture as potentially having something interesting in it, was a skeptical one. (The old Sagan skepticism again.) My intuition was telling me something else but I was not sure about it. I needed to scan the image and get better resolution to at least work with the gamma levels a bit to assist my eye. It took several weeks to save enough money to purchase a handheld black and white scanner. In February of 1995, once I had the scanner, I naturally went right to work on page 84 of Cosmos. The process took a few attempts as the hand held scanners were awful if you moved a bit but, once I did that, I then looked at the monitor hooked up to my old 486 computer and was as stunned as I think I will ever be in this field of anomalistic inquiry. I could clearly see, not only the obvious specular-like reflection of the sun in closer detail, I could see the entire area was part of a large, hexagonally reinforced, crystalline structure with definite refractive qualities over the lunar surface, the major portion of which is the “bend”, or distortion, of the lunar horizon right at the point where you can see the left hand side of the lunar surface blue shifting, and the right side of the surface in red shift.

I brought it to Richard’s attention immediately.

Result?

A subdued and dismissive chuckle of disbelief.

Again, this was February 1995. Since December of 1994 Richard and I had several discussions concerning the artificial construction of the solar system and moving planets about. I had recently brought up the idea to him that the large super giant, Betelgeuse, might go supernova as a sort of sign (exploding in the upper apex in the so-called Winter Triangle). Why a sign? Well the totally outlandish idea of mine that they actually moved a star (or maybe two stars –remember a star with it’s entire solar system) into place. Basically, more of Sagan inspiring me via the “persistence of memory” theme with his suggested astro-engineering projects on vast scales. ⁴⁾Along similar lines, Dr. Paul LaViolette has researched the possibility that pulsars are part of an extra-terrestrial communication network. See his book Decoding the Message of the Pulsars: Intelligent Communication from the Galaxy. See the advanced civilizations discussion in the latter part of Intelligent Life in the Universe and The Cosmic Connection and also Cosmos by Sagan for the groundbreaking discussions on how you might engineer solar systems and galaxies. Of course, an alternative scenario could be that all you would have to do is, rather than move a star system, engineer one in the right place, that is, create this solar system in the right phase angle for a correct backdrop from our solar system view of a supernova signature event. The basic idea I presented had something to do with the seeding of solar systems in specific areas of the galaxy for specific events to occur around specific times. There are too many problems with this idea including problems with stars constantly moving over the ages, (again a notion I picked up from Cosmos) but in any event, the “artificially constructed solar system model” is a subject that we will have to get to at another time, because the main story we are focusing on is the pre-historic lunar dome I found in Dr. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

So, after having discussed moving stars about, I wanted to make sure that what I thought I found in Cosmos was up to observational standards that Richard would find compelling. As I mentioned, the first time I brought up the picture to Richard he just laughed at me and followed with something dismissive. A second and third attempt he seemed equally uninterested. I assumed at this point, that he probably thought I was wacko. After all, up to that time, I had been proposing enormous pre-historical astro-engineering projects involving the moving of whole star systems. So for my last attempt I was hoping that someone else would answer the phone namely, Susan Karaban, who was a friend of Richard’s and worked at the United Nations. Thankfully, she answered the phone. I had actually planned that if Richard answered that I would ask for Susan, because I figured she would listen to me. I asked her if she had a copy of Sagan’s non-paperback version of Cosmos and I asked her to turn to page 84 and put it in front of Richard and make him look at it. She said she knew of a copy in storage but would do as I asked. I also mentioned that it could be seen in the small paperback version in the insert. With that, the call ended.

I had tried enough times, as far as I was concerned, to bring the picture to Richard’s attention. If Susan Karaban would not do it, it might never have been seen by Hoagland as I was not in the mood to beat a dead horse over the subject. Basically, I did not want to call again and ask if he “had seen it yet” anymore.

I had not found out if Susan Karaban had done as I had asked or if Richard finally took me seriously until, by happenstance, I caught the latter part of a radio interview with someone talking on the radio about the lunar ruins. I figured, “this has got to be someone who is working with Richard” so I called into the show to see if Susan had done as I asked. It had only been a few days since I asked her to retrieve a copy of Cosmos. The radio show was the old Paranet UFO Continuum.⁵⁾http://www.thefullwiki.org/Paranet_Continuum I had never heard of the Paranet UFO Continuum before and, as I mentioned, I had only caught the latter part of the conversation on air. Having tuned in late, I realized that they were talking about the ruins discovered on the moon but I was not sure who Corbin’s guest was. In any event I called in and, as I talked to the guest on air, I began to realize that it was Dr. Bruce Cornett whose name I had heard in the Ohio State University video presented by Mr. Hoagland.

It was very difficult to hear the conversation but I just wanted to make sure at that time that Richard finally looked at page 84 of Cosmos. I found out on air that he did and that Susan actually did as I asked (you will note I said Susan first and not Richard in the audio)

Briefly summing up the conversation. Dr Cornet misspoke on the actual name and area of the moon from which the image was taken. It is an Apollo 12 image from over Pasteur Crater. We will focus on the image itself in detail in our next installment of this series.

I fully understood, even before Dr. Cornet misspoke about it being an Russian image, that it had to be an Apollo image. So his telling me it was a Russian image surprised me, as is evident in the audio. I remember thinking for a moment after he said this that it might have been from one of the late early 70’s unmanned missions to the moon from the Russian program but that he had to be mistaken. Obviously, he was.

In any event, Richard had finally saw what Sagan had published. I called him a few days later. It seemed impossible that Sagan could not have allowed this into his book without knowing what it really was. Richard said to me “Of course he knew this was in his book…He’s no dummy!”. (Richard punned the words regarding Sagan’s statement concerning Democritus from his Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series.)

Perhaps one reason Sagan published the Apollo 12 image of a dome in Cosmos had to do with a paper trail or bread crumbs in case something broke in the media concerning this and he could show and prove that he knew about it for some reason. This, a priori, gives him a say in the “meaning” or the “management” of the revelation. But there is the “keeping it in the shadows” model as  well. Its potentially more “manageable” when it’s easily dismissed. Dr. Sagan does seem to have contributed to this kind of “trick of shadow”. Perhaps its some sort of plausibly deniable trick of “light” of his own? He did, after all, predict we might find artifacts on the moon. And, it looks like he was right. By publishing this Apollo 12 image in Cosmos, an image that “reflects” perhaps “one of the best pieces evidence” we have of an ancient lunar dome in ruins, the choice of this image, out off all the images he could have chosen, overwhelming proves that he knew.

Unfortunately Dr Sagan is no longer with us to speak on the matter.

After coming to terms with the possibility that one of my heroes (Sagan) might have been part of a subversive plan to withhold information from the world, I grappled with all the evidence I had at that time into a rationalized fashion. I became convinced enough to pursue continued attention into the whole field of solar system anomalies, which led me to examine as much of the lunar data as I was able to get my hands on at that time and within my limited budget. One really important book from this early time period of lunar research was the government publication Apollo Over the Moon: A View from Orbit. (Which is nowadays available online) I was able to secure from this book the additional imagery and frame numbers to help me understand what crater I was looking at from Cosmos. Another book I encountered published by Lawrence Allen was entitled Mans Greatest Adventure. This book had an additional image from the same sequence of pictures that the Sagan dome image was taken from. I used this for my research.

 

My interest increased, the evidence was compelling enough for me to reveal the research to friends and family and I continued to have many conversations on the telephone with Richard over the ensuing years which led ultimately to me inviting him to come to Utah and present his research in May of 1998, mere days after the first new images of Cydonia since Viking were beamed back to Earth. We had Mr. Hoagland deliver his Utah presentation of the Mars Global Surveyor imagery of Cydonia a week after a previous lecture was delivered, at the exact same auditorium, by none other than Michael Malin.

Dr Sagan invoked the famous “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. (Paraphrasing Laplace’s “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.”) With the publication of the Pasteur crater image in Cosmos, it is my estimated opinion, that he furnished that extraordinary evidence and hid it in plain sight. He did this probably to prove his 1960’s hypothesis, perhaps to show very quietly, his own discomfited conscience over the withholding mandate that was being held on the information as per the Brookings report. Intuitively, the entire situation makes sense in hindsight. If he knew, but could not speak about it, how would he present the evidence that he knew all along?

We will begin to go over the “extraordinary evidence” of this “extraordinary claim” when we examine the image in detail in our next installment.

Continue to part 5

Back to part 3