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on this edition of Sightings.

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Something is riding this scenic railway line,

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and it's leaving passengers and workers

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frightened and confused.

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It's haunted by something that wants to find peace.

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The haunting story of the mystery on board,

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the spirit of Oregon.

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Their spirit would not rest until the truth was known

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about that damn wreck.

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Then, was the most powerful and mysterious explosion

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the world has ever known,

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the result of one man's misguided genius.

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It boils down to the fact that Tesla had the death threat.

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Later, the man who started the controversy

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sets the record straight about the alien autopsy film.

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Let me just make one point very clear.

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I have no interest in the subject of UFOs or the paranormal.

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And, Mercy Brown's horrible secret.

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There was a spirit that was in the grave,

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draining the life of the living.

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Welcome to Sightings. I'm Tim White.

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According to legend, Halloween is the one night of the year

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when the dead are allowed to come out to play.

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To keep the evil spirits away from the living,

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we're supposed to wear scary masks and costumes

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and place a grinning jack-o'-lantern on the doorstep.

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These are the traditional talismans of Halloween.

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But in one small town in the Pacific Northwest,

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it's going to take more than a car pumpkin

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to keep away the ghosts who ride an old steam train

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to the spirit of Oregon.

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For passengers, a ride through Oregon's coastal mountains

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on this great old train is a trip through history,

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where the rails have a story to tell.

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But one chapter in the story is disturbing.

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The story of a great train wreck and its victims

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seem to have come aboard the spirit of Oregon, perhaps,

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because she is one of the very last of a dying breed.

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The spirit of Oregon is very much alive.

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Five years ago, this was the spirit of Oregon,

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a great hulking piece of Americana rusting on the scrappy.

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Vicki Steele took this picture before the restoration began.

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My husband has refurbished railcars for the last 12 years,

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and one day he decided that we should have our own dinner train,

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so he built it, and now it's here.

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All aboard!

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The spirit of Oregon carries its passengers along a scenic 50-mile route,

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then stops just short of an old bridge before returning home.

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And some people have come to believe that it is this route

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that has caused apparitions to appear in the coaches

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and on this photograph.

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We were showing the before pictures that we took of the train,

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and one of the gentlemen said,

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hey, you've got a ghost in your picture,

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and we kind of scuffed at it because all you could see was a blue haze.

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But from its maiden voyage on,

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there were also personal encounters with strange forces

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that seemed to be targeting the train's staff people.

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There was a bartender on the train

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that would have glasses blow up in his hand,

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or, you know, the dishes will fly off,

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or chairs will get jerked out from underneath you.

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We had a lot of really strange things happen,

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beating on the walls on our offices when there's nobody out here.

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And we'll see people walking through the trains

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when we know the train's locked up and it has a security system on it.

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When you catch something in the corner of your eye,

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you always look back.

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When I looked back, it was like somebody had taken ice water

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and shot it through from my head to my toes.

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It was just a real cold, cold feeling.

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And some people have reported feeling an overwhelming sense of dread,

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despite the train's smooth ride and hospitable interior.

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I can honestly say that that's probably the most depressed I have ever been in my life.

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Michael and Sharon Palmer had been invited on the train

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for a special anniversary dinner.

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It was August 6, 1995, a date Michael will never forget.

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I was overcome by this overwhelming depression.

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It was like a despair, an emptiness.

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Suddenly a realization came to me that the feelings I'd been having

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must be very similar to the feelings that someone has just before they're going to die.

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Naturally, I broke down and I started to cry at that time.

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Michael Palmer did not understand why he was experiencing those unnatural emotions,

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but somehow he felt it was connected to the railroads past and the photograph.

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We could see it was changing.

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We could understand it at first, and then as it kept getting clearer and clearer,

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we happened to mention it to a gentleman by the name of Edmund Stone.

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I started to wonder, I know it sounds strange,

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if perhaps there was a reason it was happening at that time.

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Stone is a producer for a Portland television station.

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He and director-camera operator Wade Evans produced a TV special

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about the strange happenings on the Spirit of Oregon.

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Their first trip on the train occurred on August 6, 1994,

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one year to the day before Michael Palmer's emotional ride.

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I felt something was inside of me trying to get out, actually.

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Then I started feeling emotional.

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Tears were rolling down my eyes.

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I felt very sad.

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Towel or the lavatory, you get a cold towel.

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In fact, I actually threw up and got weak.

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I couldn't stand for a moment.

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Like Palmer, Evans felt that he was being targeted by an unseen force

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with an important message.

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Since I was trying to record the images that were happening in the train at that time,

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I was more sort of a conduit for anything else that wanted to be recorded, perhaps.

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But what was the message?

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Why had these two men been transformed by an inexplicable sense of dread

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and why did both incidents happen on August the 6th?

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The more I looked into it, the more I thought that if there's a reason

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that things are happening, maybe it's connected with a train crash.

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In fact, on August 6, 1935, on the same rails with the Spirit of Oregon rides today,

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there was a devastating accident.

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A bridge collapsed and five men died, including the father of Mary Jane Walker.

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Unbeknownst to them that all the support had been taken away from the trussel.

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The train stopped before the bridge, but railroad workers waved the freight train on.

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And they didn't even get all the way over and it went down like a decade's time.

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They had 112 feet to fall.

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They probably had something in the region of about 10 to 15 seconds of realization

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that we're going to die a horrible death.

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The rails simply fell away below the wheels of the train.

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Five men, including Mary Jane's father, died in slow motion.

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The breakman was found clutching the brake in his hand with the death grip so strong

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he had to be buried with the brake in his hand.

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Is it possible that perhaps in that last moment they understood that sadness of death?

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And is it possible that that feeling is being transmitted 60 years later

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through my government and my friend?

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I don't know. That sounds far-fetched, but it might also be an explanation.

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An accident report absolved the railroad of responsibility

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and the families of the victims were quietly given cash settlements.

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And that's been the way it's been for 60 years.

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And we start to look, we're like, hey, maybe this wasn't such an accident after all.

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Maybe there was negligence.

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Maybe if these presences on the train are trying to tell us something,

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then what if they were trying to tell us, hey, look at this because we shouldn't have died?

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When Stone first began discussing these conclusions,

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the ghost image in the photo was, again, becoming more pronounced.

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And not only was the original photo changing,

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all the copies of the photo were changing too.

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You could see where they had the old-fashioned blue railroad shirt

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and the old-fashioned vest, and then you could actually start seeing a lantern hanging down.

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As the images continued to develop,

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we showed the photo to Mary Jane Walker,

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who had ridden that very train with her father so many years ago.

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She saw three clear images.

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Oh, yes, I immediately recognized Ted Johnson, the engineer.

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And then there was the man holding the lantern, and I could see,

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well, that's got to be Adolf Booth, the breakman.

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And the other would be my dad.

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I'm a believer. I think that it had to come.

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Somehow they had to get it out, the men.

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Their spirit would not rest until the truth was known about that damn wreck.

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And now, in part because of the hauntings aboard the spirit of Oregon,

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the message is getting out.

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Mary Jane recently dedicated a plaque near the scene of the accident.

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It's a tribute she hopes will outlast wreckage from the accident, rusting nearby.

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I do hope that the spirit of Ted Johnson, Adolf Booth, and my father,

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know that we know now that it was negligence.

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Perhaps now that their story has been told,

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the five men who lost their lives on this line will be at rest.

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Yes, it's haunted.

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It's haunted by something that wants to find peace.

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That's all it wants.

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And I think it's heading in that direction.

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Although there have been a number of terrifying events on the spirit of Oregon,

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it seems that the ghosts on the train are selective about whom they target for vengeance.

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So far, not a single paying customer has had a haunting experience.

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Next.

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He was one of the half-dozen most famous men in the world.

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If Nikola Tesla was so successful, why did he destroy a large part of Siberia?

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Halloween and horror movies just naturally go together.

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And if you've ever rented an old black-and-white horror movie,

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you've seen the wild-eyed, wild-haired mad scientist

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hunched over a weird contraption spewing electricity.

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But did you know that that character is based on a real-life American scientist?

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His name was Nikola Tesla, and there are those who believe that he was mad.

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The night he inadvertently blew up part of Siberia.

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On June 30, 1908, a remote area of Siberia known as Tunguska

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is devastated by a mysterious force, 2,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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It left no crater or residue, the usual calling card of a meteor.

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Russian investigators have been investigating the bomb.

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It left no crater or residue, the usual calling card of a meteor.

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Russian investigators who found metal fragments of the site

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suggested the blast had been caused by an alien spacecraft colliding with Earth.

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But a new, compelling theory about the Tunguska incident

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suggests that a highly concentrated beam of electrical energy

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caused the total devastation in this region,

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and that only one man had the scientific knowledge to pull it off.

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Nikola Tesla, I feel he's the greatest inventor of the past 500 years.

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He is a Michelangelo. He is a Leonardo da Vinci of science.

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He gave us AC power, the fluorescent light, radio, robotics.

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By 1900, he was the emperor of invention. He had eclipsed Edison.

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He was one of the half-dozen most famous men in the world.

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Yet he prays for a man we seem to know so little about.

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When Tesla emigrated to the United States from Croatia in 1884,

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his dream of working for his hero, Thomas Edison, became a reality.

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But Tesla's development of a more efficient form of electricity

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called AC, alternating current,

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didn't sit well with a new boss who had already developed

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the more cumbersome director of DC.

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Edison just shut him down. He said, it's DC here.

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America, Washington, DC. Forget this AC stuff.

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You're working for me. I don't want to hear another word of it.

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But AC was superior, as Tesla's biographer Ted Wise points out.

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DC is like a fine wine that doesn't travel well.

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It's a power that cannot be stepped up to extremely high frequencies,

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whereas AC can be transported in these extremely high voltages

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and then stepped down very safely to be used in a home or school or a factory.

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Tesla's brilliant discovery so impressed industrialist George Westinghouse

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that he enlisted Tesla in his bid to harness the hydroelectric power of Niagara Falls.

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Finally, the movers and shakers of the day were noticing Tesla.

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He met Kipling, he became a good friend of Mark Twain's,

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and he met all the millionaires. He made a point of meeting all the millionaires.

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One of those millionaires was J.P. Morgan.

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And J.P. Morgan was the fellow that gave him $150,000,

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probably the equivalent of $10 million or better today, to build Wharton Cliff.

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Wharton Cliff was the name Tesla chose for what he believed would be his greatest contribution,

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a huge transmitter that would provide electrical power to the world without the use of wires.

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What he didn't tell Wharton was that he wanted to send power to the world for free.

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Journalist Ellen Sherman believes this was the beginning of the end for Wharton Cliff.

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J.P. Morgan did not want to back something that was going to give free energy to people

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who he could put no meter on, he could not get any money from it whatsoever.

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When Morgan pulled his support, he not only ended Tesla's career as the major scientist of his day,

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but he made laughing stock of it in the eyes of his scientific peers.

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When that was all pulled away from him, he was a desperate man on any number of fronts.

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And that desperation may have led him to use the partially constructed tower

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to conduct a fateful experiment in the summer of 1908.

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Tesla was something of a showman, he had lost the backing of his principal financial supporters,

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and he was the kind of person who might try a large public event that would bring attention to his work.

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Oliver Nicholson has found evidence that Nikola Tesla may have been planning to aim his electrical beam at the North Pole

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in order to put on a dramatic light show for Admiral Perry, who was in the midst of his historic expedition.

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A small miscalculation in distance could have had devastating results.

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There was Tesla's research station in Long Island, and I drew the line to Tunguska in Russia.

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Then interestingly enough, that line crossed right near the North Pole

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and came very close to Ellesmere Island where Perry would be camping over for the winter.

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Nicholson and others theorized that Tesla's aim was true,

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but he grossly underestimated the effect gravity would have on his electrical energy beam.

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Instead of this operating as he thought it was going to, there is a tremendous explosion in the Siberian region.

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Forests are laid flat, reindeer herds disappeared, small towns are completely gone.

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J.W. McGinnis of the International Tesla Society is convinced that the Tunguska tragedy is linked to Tesla.

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He disagrees with those who believe Tesla was purposely building a weapon of mass destruction on a global scale.

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Of all of the great scientists of this country that went to work for the Manhattan Project,

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there was one scientist that refused to do that, and that was Nikola Tesla.

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He did not believe in a general destructive weapon and wanted to introduce something that was a lot more incisive

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and certainly indefensible, and that was his death ray.

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This thing was so powerful, it would deliver 50 million volts into an area that was one-tenth of a millionth of an inch in diameter.

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If you put that much pressure in that smallest space, there is nothing that can stand up to it.

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You could cut a ship in half.

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While the U.S. government went ahead with its atomic bomb strategy, a secretive interest in Tesla's work seemed to be at work shortly after his death in 1943.

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The day following his death, the FBI under the auspices of the OAP, which is the Office of Alien Protection,

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broke into his apartment, broke into his safe, and stole, or confiscated, all of his papers and effects.

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Now, the OAP had no business being there. He had been a citizen of the United States since the previous century.

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So this was a ruse. They needed to get in there somehow.

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Recently, declassified documents only hint at the great discoveries that may have been hidden in Tesla's safe.

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He had developed a sophisticated particle beam death ray, and he had to know how to successfully transmit an enormously powerful wave of electrical current through the atmosphere and halfway across the world.

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Could it be that through his perloined papers, our government gained knowledge that should, by rights, make Nikola Tesla the father of Star Wars technology?

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They realized that Tesla was always ahead of his time.

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What amazing discoveries did the FBI find inside Tesla's safe at the Hotel New Yorker? We may never know.

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Shortly after their retreat, the files disappeared and have not been seen, at least not publicly, since then.

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Next, dramatic new evidence that our government is covering up the truth about Roswell.

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And what Americans really believe about UFOs? You might be surprised.

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Here are some of the stories that Sightings is following in the news.

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After more than 45 years, the federal government's general accounting office has finally started auditing government records to determine what really happened in Roswell, New Mexico.

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In Washington, D.C., America's auditor, the general accounting office, has finally released the results of their full-scale Roswell investigation.

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The investigation was prompted by citizen protest and by demands by New Mexico Congressman Stephen Schiff, who insisted that all documents relating to Roswell be released.

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I have confidence the GAO will bring forward anything they find with respect to the Roswell incident.

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The result is a terse report nearly as inconclusive as the famous saucer crash itself.

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Fifteen government agencies complied, including the FBI, CIA, Army, Air Force and Navy.

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However, few documents were turned over.

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The GAO report states that nearly every relevant record from Roswell Army airfield has been destroyed and that it is not known who destroyed the records or under what authority.

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While the U.S. Air Force has explained the Roswell incident as the crash of a classified balloon project aimed at the Soviet Union,

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the National Security Council, the CIA and the Office of Science and Technology have no record of such an operation.

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The report concludes that the GAO's findings are inconclusive, fueling rather than dispelling the Roswell mystery.

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In a related news story from Ohio, a statewide survey by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University has found that a majority of Americans believe in UFOs.

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We interviewed a thousand and six people. We had people in every area code in terms of age, education, income. So it does represent the entire country.

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UFOs were a new topic for this my annual poll, which is designed to survey our attitudes about government.

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We put the question about flying saucers in as another kind of dimension of how people feel about what government does and says.

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The question posed was this. Do you believe that UFOs are real and that the government is hiding what it knows?

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Fifty percent of the people said it was very likely or likely that flying saucers are real and the government was hiding the truth from us.

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Forty-three percent said that it was not likely that saucers are real and the government was hiding the truth.

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That means that half of all Americans not only believe in UFOs, they also believe that the government is covering up the truth of their existence.

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And it's an opinion that crosses all age, gender, ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

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There is some evidence after all of the government hides things from us. You can dismiss a lot of these, but there are some of them you can't explain.

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In Tibet, China's inner kingdom is considered one of the most spiritual places on earth.

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The leaders for life of this autonomous region are called Lamas, the holiest of all Buddhist monks.

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Although the exiled Dalai Lama is perhaps more famous to Westerners, since 1959 the people of Tibet have been led by the Pung Chin Lama.

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But recently the 10th Pung Chin Lama passed on and the search for his successor began.

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Because Tibetan Buddhists believe in rebirth and reincarnation, the new Pung Chin Lama had to be the reincarnated spirit of the old Pung Chin Lama.

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What happens is the Tibetan government sends out word that they're looking for a reincarnation.

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And they're asking whether there are any unusual children who have been born recently, once having unusual knowledge,

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or once who are born in the midst of miraculous activities.

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Dr. Jeffrey Hopkins is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

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He has written over 20 books on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

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Once they've narrowed down the candidates somewhat, they'll test those candidates by asking the child to choose,

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for instance, a rosary used by the Lama in the last lifetime as opposed to another one.

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Monks from the Pung Chin Lama's monastery believe they have recognized the spirit of their former leader and spiritual teacher,

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reincarnated in the body of a young boy.

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But Tibet is part of China and the secular Chinese government is demanding a role in choosing and educating the new Lama.

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The decision has outraged Tibetans because the care of its most spiritual leader is a task that has been left mostly to Tibetan monks since the 18th century.

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Dr. Hopkins believes the government's motivation is obvious.

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As British spies used to say, there's no way of controlling Tibet without controlling or having a Lama on your side.

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We'll have more stories from the news next time. Now, here's what's coming up on Citing's.

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Why Mercy Brown's final resting place was anything but restful.

303
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There was a vague power of spirit that was in the grave that was draining the life of the living.

304
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And the man behind the alien autopsy film speaks out.

305
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On Halloween, tens of thousands of make-believe counter-acculars roam the countryside, blood dripping from their plastic fangs,

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impersonating the fictional vampires a popular and harmless tradition.

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But 100 years ago, there was a real cult of vampires who roamed the New England countryside.

308
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They performed grizzly acts, digging up gravesites and defiling the remains.

309
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One biographer of Count Dracula referred to Rhode Island as the Transylvania of America,

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meaning that more vampire incidents have happened here than anywhere else in the country, which is probably true.

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In an old cemetery just outside of extra Rhode Island is the grave of Mercy Brown.

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You would never know by looking at it, but this is perhaps the most famous site in the history of American vampirism.

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Mercy Brown was just the farmer's daughter. Nothing remarkable about her, apart from the fact that her body was exhumed and her heart was cut out.

314
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What do you think of when someone mentions the term vampire?

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Michael Bell is a folklorist who specializes in the study of New England's vampires.

316
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He's lecturing on the life story of Mercy Brown and how her own brother came to consume her blood-drenched heart.

317
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Mercy Brown probably is in the forefront of importance in terms of the vampire practice in America,

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because she's the most well-known and as far as I can determine the very last case.

319
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Mercy Brown was born in Exeter in 1873, a town some of her descendants including Louis Peck still call home.

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Exeter was a farming, log-cutting, wood-cutting town, timber, timber and farming.

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Exeter, that's what exeter people were.

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Mercy attended a one-room schoolhouse and led a typical New England farm wife.

323
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But as she grew up, her family grew ill. She watched helplessly as her mother and sister died from consumption.

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What we know today is tuberculosis.

325
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In the meantime, Mercy Brown became ill with consumption and it was a kind called galloping consumption, and so it progressed very rapidly.

326
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In January of 1892, at the age of 19, Mercy died.

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Her surviving family feared Mercy's brother would be the next to go.

328
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The general belief was there was a vague force or power or spirit that was in the grave that was draining the life of the living.

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In an effort to stop the inexorable march of the disease, the bodies of the Brown family were unearthed

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to determine which corpse was draining the life from the living.

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If you knew nothing else to do, what would you do? Try anything.

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Well, the mother and the first daughter were basically decomposed the way they thought they should be.

333
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But when they came to Mercy, she looked too fresh.

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They come back here, dug her up, found her turn on her side.

335
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Which, how do you turn on your side if you bear it?

336
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The 19th century gravediggers knew nothing of forensic science.

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They saw what they believed to be unnatural hair growth, nail growth, and a heart still full of blood.

338
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Mercy was considered to be one of the undead.

339
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Well, she'd only been dead a few months before they exhumed the body, and these were winter months,

340
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so the rate of decomposition would have been quite slow to begin with.

341
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Paul Sledzik is a forensic anthropologist with the National Museum of Health and Medicine,

342
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who has also studied the Mercy Brown case.

343
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They would be looking for things like lengthening of the fingernails,

344
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which is actually not lengthening the fingernails, but just receding of the tissues underneath,

345
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so it appears as though the fingernails have grown.

346
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They also look for evidence of new skin, like a whitish skin appearing over the reddish old skin.

347
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That's also just a byproduct of decomposition, it's called skin slippage.

348
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On a bitter cold night, Mercy's heart was torn from her body, burned,

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and the ashes mixed with water for her sick brother to drink.

350
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Although he died soon after, he was the last member of the family to succumb to the disease.

351
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So they thought for sure that they had got the vampire, and all the time it was tuberculosis.

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Mercy was not alone.

353
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Researchers have uncovered more than 15 incidents in which corpses were exhumed and then consumed.

354
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In 1990, Paul Sledzik discovered this defiled burial site in rural Connecticut.

355
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Upon starting to excavate the graves, they found one particular burial that intrigued them

356
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because the bones had been rearranged after death.

357
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The skeleton had been tabbed with years after his death.

358
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The bones had been separated and rearranged in a skull and crossbones configuration,

359
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a ritual designed to keep the undead in their graves.

360
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Well, if you look generally at the New England folklore about how to kill a vampire,

361
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they're essentially causing disruption to the corpse.

362
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In the Mercy Brown case, they're removing the heart and burning it.

363
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They're just trying to cause some disruption to the normal appearance of a body within the grave.

364
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But did the ritual performed on Mercy Brown work?

365
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This is why we were told not to play.

366
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According to Peck, Paul is still not quiet at the Brown family plot.

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He recalls a night many years ago when he saw an unnatural force rise up from the grave of Mercy Brown.

368
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And I'm in my 20s and it's in the wintertime.

369
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So we pull in here and in this same direction to where I'm sitting now,

370
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about three foot off the ground was a ball of bright light, so bright it was blue.

371
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I don't know where it come from and I don't know where it went to.

372
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And we went to the corner to where another relative of mine lived.

373
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We told him what we just seen and he laughed and he said,

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what's been seen before?

375
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The gruesome acts performed by the vampire called of the last century

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were the natural result of ignorance, fear and superstition.

377
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But they were also based on a belief in supernatural forces that continued to be cited in this century.

378
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In that field, I guess she's made bloody history without a heart.

379
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Bram Stoker, the creator of the original Dracula, is believed to have based his character on a 15th century barbarian called Vlad the Impaler.

380
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But among Bram Stoker's original notes for his novel, researchers recently founded Newspaper Clipping from 1892.

381
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It was a report on the bizarre case of Mercy Brown.

382
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Next, an elaborate hoax or the real thing, sightings goes to the source.

383
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Once the film is deemed to be real or not, we can then decide how we're going to move forward.

384
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Ray Santilli is the most sought after man in ufology today.

385
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Santilli claims that he has found film footage of a government autopsy of an extraterrestrial.

386
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His supporters believe Santilli has uncovered the conspiracy of the century.

387
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His critics cry foul.

388
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Now, in a rare interview with sightings correspondent Carla Wall,

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Ray Santilli answers charges that he is closer to P.T. Barnum than to Woodward and Bernstain.

390
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Ray Santilli claims he's just a businessman with absolutely no interest in UFOs.

391
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Yet we have only this man's word for the UFO story of the decade.

392
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Santilli claims he's blown the lid off the Roswell saucer crash mystery.

393
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In 1993, Santilli says he was researching a music documentary, searching for footage of Elvis Presley,

394
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when a former U.S. military cameraman sold him some footage that is out of this world.

395
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This, according to Santilli, is film of an autopsy,

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being performed on an extraterrestrial life form which died following the impact at the Roswell crash site.

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Santilli bought it, marketed it, and sold the rights to television producers around the world.

398
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It's already aired twice here in the United States.

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Stills taken from the film can be found on nearly 200 websites on the internet,

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usually accompanied by a lively debate about their authenticity.

401
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Is the film proof that aliens have in fact landed on planet Earth?

402
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Or is it an elaborate hoax?

403
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As we sit here talking, I don't mean there's a shred of evidence to suggest that the film is a hoax.

404
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In a rare interview, Ray Santilli agreed to talk to sightings about his motives, the film, and what some critics are saying about it.

405
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First, let's talk about what some special effects people are saying.

406
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We've talked to two highly respected people, one here in England, one in the United States,

407
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and both say that's a fake body, not a bad fake body, but nevertheless a fake body.

408
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:20,000
Well, that's the opinion of the special effects company that you visited and saw.

409
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However, a special effects company can have you and I sitting in the car with John F. Kennedy driving down Dealey Plaza.

410
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That's the job they're in. They can recreate anything.

411
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I mean, recreating something and the event itself are two separate issues.

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Amid the hype and promotion surrounding the release of this film were claims that then-president Harry Truman was among the witnesses at the autopsy.

413
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No one has yet seen that footage.

414
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And in fact, President Truman Library says that there's no record of him being in that area during that time.

415
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Firstly, President Truman is listed on one of the canisters as being there at the autopsy.

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Now Cameron Moon confirms quite categorically that he was there.

417
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The Truman Library states that he couldn't have been there. He was somewhere else.

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Now, I don't know, you know, if-

419
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Have you seen him on the film?

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Yes, but if the event occurred, as we believe it did, and you know, quite a few people have kept quiet,

421
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would the Truman Library actually have information that we could rely upon if it was such a secret operation?

422
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I don't know. But it is a discrepancy.

423
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If this was such a top secret thing, how could a cameraman get 22 reels of film and it never be investigated and then not track it down?

424
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How's that possible?

425
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That's an incredible story itself.

426
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There were hundreds of canisters of film during the event itself.

427
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Each of the canisters or reels of film were three minutes in duration, and he separated during the filming reels that he felt were problem reels.

428
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He'd sent the remainder straight on to Washington, and he spent more time on the 22 reels of film, which he'd processed or whatever.

429
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And once he'd got to the stage where he felt he could send them on, he'd called Washington and asked them to pick up the film, collect the film,

430
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and he'd tried on numerous occasions, but he just failed to do so.

431
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Who is this mysterious cameraman and why did he wait 45 years to sell his film?

432
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Santelli says we may never know the answer.

433
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Whether he decides to talk and give his story to the public is something that's in his control.

434
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,000
Why not? I mean, wouldn't it clear everything up if he came...

435
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:32,000
In your mind, and in the mind of the world and people that are interested in the subject,

436
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,000
but this guy is in his mid-80s, he's not interested in the subject, that's the first point.

437
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:41,000
Secondly, he's got his family to consider, and his family are his only consideration.

438
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:46,000
He doesn't want to lose his pension, he doesn't want to lose his position in society.

439
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:50,000
Why would he? What's at risk by coming out?

440
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:54,000
Because your media, I'm media, and as far as the media is concerned, this is a great story,

441
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:58,000
and wouldn't it be wonderful if he came out because it would really then be a really fantastic story.

442
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:04,000
I have a letter right here from Congressman Steve Schiff, and he says that he offered to take the film

443
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:09,000
to the U.S. government to see if they could authenticate it, and that, I'm quoting now,

444
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:11,000
the Santelli group has not accepted my offer.

445
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:14,000
I've never seen an offer, I've never seen that letter before.

446
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:19,000
Will you give it to Congressman Schiff though? Directly, why not? I mean, why not try and authenticate it at this point?

447
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:25,000
Because we have a contractual relationship with Kivgette Green and Fox, and it's up to them what they do with it.

448
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,000
Does that contractual relationship prohibit going to a congress?

449
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:35,000
Let me just make one point very clear. I have no interest in the subject of UFOs or the paranormal.

450
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:40,000
I do not have the ability to research or investigate the footage.

451
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:46,000
Therefore, we appointed broadcasters in various territories, and the responsibility is with them.

452
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:51,000
Well, you have made no bones about the fact that you are a businessman, and that your business is marketing,

453
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:55,000
and you've done a heck of a job marketing this film. I think you've probably made a bundle from it.

454
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:00,000
Haven't made, in terms of profit, we haven't made our money back by any stretch of the imagination.

455
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:05,000
The ultimate aim is commerciality, but we still have to get past that first hurdle.

456
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:10,000
We have to satisfy broadcasters, we have to satisfy the world of ufology, and the general public.

457
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:14,000
But they haven't been satisfied in terms of the authenticity.

458
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:17,000
So don't you have some obligation to try and do that?

459
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:23,000
You're at the very start of it. It will go on, and once the film is deemed to be real or not,

460
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:28,000
we can then decide how we're going to move forward. But we're still at those very early stages.

461
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:34,000
Despite Ray Santilli's claim that he has exposed the UFO scandal of the century,

462
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:38,000
most Roswell researchers are distancing themselves from the film.

463
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:42,000
They believe that if, and when, the footage is proven to be a hoax,

464
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:49,000
the serious strides that they have made in unraveling the Roswell mystery may also be called into question.

465
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:53,000
Next, does this man have the final word about the Loch Ness Monster?

466
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:59,000
But a lot of people don't realize is that the familiar Nessie image is only cropped close up.

467
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:10,000
In 1994, a story was circulated that Christian Sperling had gone to his grave claiming

468
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:14,000
that he had faked the world's most famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.

469
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:19,000
But now, New Jersey researcher Richard Smith believes that he has found evidence

470
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:23,000
that Sperling's deathbed confession may have been the biggest hoax of all.

471
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:29,000
On the morning of April 19, 1934, Lieutenant Colonel R. Kenneth Wilson,

472
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:34,000
who was also a practicing physician in London, was on a vacation in the Highlands of Scotland.

473
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:40,000
And he claimed to have stopped his car along one of the shores of this immense lake, Loch Ness,

474
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:45,000
and seen a disturbance in the water and seen the head and neck of a large animal emerge.

475
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:50,000
Made some exposures of plates, went up to the city of Inverness and had them developed.

476
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:55,000
And one of the results was, of course, the most famous of all Nessie images.

477
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:59,000
You could say it's the face that launched a thousand ships.

478
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:03,000
This is the most enduring image we have of the elusive Loch Ness Monster.

479
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,000
The photo was judged authentic until last year.

480
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,000
The newspapers reported it was a hoax.

481
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:14,000
But Richard Smith believes he has new evidence that proves this photo is real.

482
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:23,000
Recently, there have been widely publicized allegations that Colonel Wilson was actually part of a conspiracy

483
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:29,000
and that the object in the photograph is a modified toy submarine, which has a plastic wood neck on it.

484
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:34,000
And these sensational claims were made by a man by the name of Christian Spurling.

485
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:40,000
Frankly, Christian Spurling's story is full of holes that are big enough for a Nessie to swim through.

486
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:46,000
Christian Spurling was a confidant of M.A. Weatherall, who first gained fame in 1934

487
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,000
during his highly publicized but futile attempt to capture the Loch Ness Monster.

488
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:58,000
After this failure, according to Spurling, he and Weatherall concocted a plan to take fake photos of Nessie

489
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:04,000
and then switch them with photos their unsuspecting friend, Colonel Wilson, was about to develop.

490
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:11,000
The major claim is made that this alleged toy submarine with the neck on it was floated in a small bay.

491
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:19,000
What a lot of people don't realize is that the familiar Nessie image is only a cropped close-up taken from the original picture.

492
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:27,000
The original picture clearly shows a wide central expanse of this immense lake, with the opposite shoreline clearly visible.

493
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,000
It's not a small bay.

494
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:35,000
There's also something which is extremely interesting and the public is not generally aware of,

495
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:39,000
which is that Colonel Wilson was able to get two exposures of this object.

496
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:45,000
This second photo has rarely been seen by anyone except a handful of Nessie experts.

497
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:50,000
It's very important because the head and neck in this picture are now rather straightened out,

498
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:53,000
unlike the first photo where they're at a right angle.

499
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:59,000
And this shows that this object, whatever it is, is not made of unbending plastic wood, as Christian Spurling claimed.

500
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:06,000
But what's even more significant is the fact that Christian Spurling apparently did not know about this photograph.

501
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:14,000
Is this photo real? It's an interesting puzzle, but according to Nessie investigator Adrian Shine, in the end the photo is immaterial.

502
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:19,000
The Loch Ness monster lives in people's minds and cannot be dislodged from there.

503
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:24,000
It doesn't matter how many photographs are disproved, it doesn't matter what the scientific implications are.

504
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:31,000
The Loch Ness monster is something which does exist and will always exist because people want it to exist.

505
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:39,000
In recent months, the only sightings of the Loch Ness monster have been on t-shirts and coffee mugs.

506
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:46,000
Scientific research on the existence of real-life lake monsters has now moved west to the freshwater lakes of North America.

507
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:51,000
Unlike Loch Ness, sightings on this side of the Atlantic are up.

508
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:59,000
If you've had a paranormal experience, please write to us at Sightings.

509
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:04,000
Sightings can also be contacted at America Online at keyword Sightings.

510
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:08,000
At the Sightings Forum, download images, sounds and quick-time clips.

511
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:12,000
Also, join us for Monday evening chat sessions live on AOL.

512
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:18,000
Until next time, remember, no mystery is closed to an open mind.

513
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,000
For Sightings, I'm Tim White.

514
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,000
Next on Sci-Fi Dark Shadows.

515
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,000
You're stuck in the middle.

516
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:46,000
You're gonna run that by me one more time.

517
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,000
What they wanted was a way home.

518
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,000
They got was each other.

519
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,000
I love hanging with you, man.

520
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:57,000
Experience the best Sci-Fi show on television from the beginning.

521
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:01,000
Farski Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m. on Sci-Fi.

522
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,000
Sci-Fi Dark Shadows