www.ufomatrix.com Volume 1 Issue 4

ww

w.u

fom

atri

x.co

mU

FO

MA

TR

IX

–

Vol

um

e 1

Iss

ue

4

ANCIENTASTRONAUTSTHE AGE OLDQUESTION OF: IS GOD ANASTRONAUT?

EXCLUSIVE

IS THERE ASECRET

SPACEPROGRAM?

UFO

INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO TSOUKALOSBY SEAN CASTEEL

MoD X-FilesTowards a Scientific and Societal Agenda on Extraterrestrial Life by Nick Pope.

UK £5.99

A UFO MATRIX EXCLUSIVE BY PAOLA HARRIS

THE 1945 SAN ANTONIO

SPOTTED ATRENDLESHAM

30 YEARS ON!

UFO Matrix Cover_Iss.4_v4 14/1/11 13:20 Page 1

IFC 14/1/11 13:23 Page 1

04 UFO MATRIX

26 NICK POPETowards a Scientific and Societal Agendaon Extraterrestrial Life.

32 INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO TSOUKALOSSean Casteel interviews Giorgio Tsoukalos.

36 ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS Smoking Gun of Egyptolgy found or not ?Wayne Herschel examines the evidence.

40 BACKLIGHTMike Hallowell looks at another 'cold case'file and sheds new light on an old mystery.

06 1945 UFO CRASH PART 1The 1945 UFO crash at San Anotonio - PartOne by Paola Harris. A UFO MATRIXexclusive. The Reme Baca and Jose Padillawitness case.

14 BERWYN DEBUNKERSScott Felton answers the critics of theBerwyn Mountains UFO crash.

22 PHILIP GARDINER FEATUREPhilip Gardiner's regular sceptical column.This time the Retilian agenda comesunder scrutiny.

44 UNX-X DIRECTORS CUTRaam Barros gives us information weshould be aware of, having put aside thenegatives which come with making adisclosure and decides to explain theoccurrences, which were literally out ofthis world

48 SECRET SPACE PROGRAM Is there a secret space program? RichardThomas looks behind the Gary McKinnon affair.

68

40

96

contents 16/1/11 13:04 Page 1

UFO MATRIX 05

CONTENTS

54 JAMES GILLILANDLorin Cutts takes this opportunity tointerview James Gilliland at his ranch nearMount Adams.

60 ET CONTACT FROM PERUUFO sightings and videos from Peru bythe Proyecto UFO team.

64 MCMINNVILLE The most famous UFO photo-case in UFOhistory is looked at by Kal Korff.

94 COMPETITION A fantastic DVD collection up for grabs inour competition!

95 COMING NEXT ISSUEFind out what UFO MATRIX has in store forour fact packed issue 5.

96 NAZI RAIDERSPaul Stonehill looks at the Nazi's hunt forthe crystal skull in Brazil.

Volume 1 Issue 4

85

48

COMPETITION

26 68 30TH ANNIVERSARY RENDLESHAM LECTURESJohn Hanson gives us an account of therecent Rendlesham anniversary lectures in Suffolk.

74 OZ COLUMNOur regular look at UFO sightings fromdown-under by Sheryl Gottschall & Lee Paqui.

77 MAHABHARATA Is there proof of ancient astronauts in theancient Indian text? Jijth Nadumuri Raviexamines the evidence.

85 THE BERWYN MOUNTAINSixteen years later, the BerwynMountains would again be the focus for astory involving a downed UFO. But thistime, some said, the story was for real.

91 SUBSCRIBE TODAY!Subscribe with UFO MATRIX and nevermiss an issue or reported sighting!

92 READERS SIGHTINGSA round-up of sightings by the readers ofUFO MATRIX.

UFO MATRIX has 3 copies of theDARK SKIES DVD to give away.For your chanceto win a copy ofthis DVDcollection, turnto page 94 and answer the simplequestion.

GOOD LUCK

contents 16/1/11 13:04 Page 2

AD Moore & Ladan Ratcliffe 16/1/11 09:42 Page 1

Human Hands:

32 UFO MATRIX

entered the realm of “make-believe”.

“Because the modern scientists of that planet

will then say, ‘There is no way that all those

ancient texts about these gods descending

from the sky have ever been true. They were all

just a fantasy.’So what Erich is saying is that the

ancient astronauts theory transcends the whole

idea of ‘GOD’because God is much bigger than

could be put inside a book or God would not

need a vehicle to travel from point A to point B.”

Therefore, according to Tsoukalos, God in the

Old Testament was anything but God.

“He was a misunderstood flesh-and-blood

extraterrestrial,”Tsoukalos said. “And, if you

subscribe to ancient aliens, it does not have to

diminish your belief in God. Quite the contrary,

because it means that creation was way more

magnificent than we’re seeing right now.”

Tsoukalos also does not believe that early

mankind was any less intelligent than we are

Perhaps that question can best be answeredby Giorgio Tsoukalos, the official spokesmanin the English-speaking world for legendaryancient astronauts scholar, Erich von Däniken.

Tsoukalos is also the editor of Legendary

Times, the official publication of the

Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI Research

organisation, which is a revamped version of

the earlier Ancient Astronauts Society. The

Ancient Astronauts Society was founded in

1973 by a von Däniken enthusiast named Gene

Phillips and when Phillips decided to retire in

1997, Tsoukalos was tapped by von Däniken to

replace him.

“So basically,”Tsoukalos said, “I was asked to

run the English-speaking department because I

was living in the States at that time. I’ve always

been interested in this and I’ve been a friend of

Erich’s since my early teens.”

Tsoukalos’duties also include a certain

amount of travelling and research. When this

interview was conducted, he had recently

returned from visiting a series of Native-

American reservations, where he viewed some

petroglyphs and carvings that may have a

bearing on the ancient astronauts theory.

“Plus there are many, many museums that

are available in the United States, such as the

Natural History Museum in New York City,

which is a treasure trove for ancient astronaut-

related stuff,”Tsoukalos said. “So whenever I’m in

New York, I make sure to visit there. They’ve got

some really amazing things there that can be

found nowhere else.”

“For example,”he continued, “in the Maya

section, they have a little statue of this guy with

six wings and a pack on his chest and tubes

coming out. He’s wearing a skullcap and a suit.

It looks very interesting, from a modern

perspective, and seems to clearly reference a

type of astronaut.”

But Tsoukalos warns that the ancient

astronauts depicted in ancient carvings, like the

six-winged figure above, are not to be confused

with the literal presence of God. In fact, while

von Däniken is the primary mover and shaker in

the ancient astronauts community, he himself

prays to what he believes is a higher God than

that depicted in our religious texts.

“One of the main arguments for the ancient

astronauts theory,”Tsoukalos cautioned, “is that

whoever or whatever was described, for

example, in the Old Testament, wasn’t

necessarily ‘GOD’, as in the Force of the Universe

or the Force of Creation or the Spirit of

Everything or whatever you want to call it, but a

misunderstood flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial.”

“It would be the same thing if a thousand

years from now, we Earthlings arrive on a

distant planet and we encounter seemingly

intelligent life. Let’s say that that life is,

technologically speaking, still primitive. What

would we do? Would we just stand back and

then depart again? Or would we actually

meddle, would we interfere with their

development? And the answer is clear. Of

course we will meddle with their development

and we will interfere with their culture, because

we know that we would have instant god-like

status with them because we’re descending

from the sky. We’re coming down in flying

vehicles which they would then describe as

‘flying chariots’and things like that.”

Tsoukalos said that we should imagine fast-

forwarding five thousand years into the future

of the primitive species, when our visit will have

So what’s new in the ancient world?

by Sean Casteel

Not Made By

An Interview withGiorgio Tsoukalos

Giorgio Tsoukalos

Interview with girgio tsoukalos 16/1/11 10:29 Page 1

UFO MATRIX 33

AN INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO TSOUKALOS

producer, and a new series on NBC called The

Event. When this interview was conducted, a

new movie called Skyline was soon to be

released that featured people being sucked up

into UFOs.

“It looks quite spectacular,”he said. “So all this

entertainment stuff serves as some type of

reconditioning, of telling the public, ‘Hey, not

only are we not alone, but we’ve never been

alone and we’ll never be alone and they’ve

always been here. Get used to it.’And the whole

idea that, if the extraterrestrials show up, that

they will eat us or annihilate us, is complete

nonsense, in my opinion. Because, why wait so

long? Why not do it while we were still hunting

with bows and arrows? There’s this whole

doom and gloom scenario, in my opinion, and

today, but that they simply lacked a frame of

reference for understanding alien technology.

He quoted science-fiction writer Arthur C.

Clarke’s famous saying, “Any sufficiently

advanced technology is indistinguishable from

magic.”

“And that pretty much sums up the whole

ancient astronauts theory,”Tsoukalos added.

Von Däniken’s newest book is called Twilight

of the Gods (New Page Books, 2010) and among

the many subjects the new book tackles is the

mystery of what’s to come in 2012, when the

Mayan calendar comes to an end. Tsoukalos, for

one, is not buying into the doomsday scenarios

being put forth by many.

“To the great majority of people who have to

sell books, to them, the world is coming to an

end. The Judgement Day will be here, the End

of Days, the Apocalypse. All this crazy, crazy

stuff.”

Tsoukalos is quick to point out that nowhere

do the Mayans themselves say that the world

will come to an end, but that there will, instead,

come the beginning of another cycle of time.

He explained, “Just like at the end of the year,

every December 31st, your office calendar runs

out. What do you do? You go out to the store

and you buy yourself another calendar.”

Tsoukalos said that von Däniken also poses

this question: Everyone only talks about the end

of the Mayan calendar. Why does nobody talk

about the beginning of the calendar?

“Interestingly enough,”Tsoukalos explained,

“scholars have determined when the beginning

was and that is the 11th of August, 3114 BC. So

we’d all have to agree that the Maya didn’t exist

back then, as far as we’re told by mainstream

science. According to a Mayan text from the

‘Chilam Balam’, from the Book of the Jaguar

Priests, written after the Spanish conquests, the

opening date of the calendar is when the

highway to the stars descended from the sky,

bringing with it a host of gods who taught

mankind various disciplines.

“If and when they return, they will rectify

everything that was once wrong,”Tsoukalos

said. “So will extraterrestrials come back on the

21st of December, 2012? I speak for Erich on this,

and I’m quoting him right now: ‘Absolutely not.’

Nothing will happen in 2012, actually. It might

be an astronomical alignment, but the only

thing we have to worry about is one huge

hangover on December 22nd. That’s about it.”

Another topic that is frequently kicked

around is UFO Disclosure, about which

Tsoukalos, again, has definite opinions. He said

that at a speaking engagement at the 2010

Bay Area UFO Expo, in San Jose, California, he

was repeatedly asked when he felt Disclosure

would happen.

“I can tell you right now,”he said, “that

Disclosure, as such, will never happen in one

press conference. Disclosure is happening right

now. We’re in the middle of it. Disclosure is

happening all around us.”

To bolster his argument, Tsoukalos made

reference to the many alien and UFO-related

television programs in the United States,

including the History Channel programme,

Ancient Aliens, for which he is a consulting

Puma Punku Overview

Erich von Daniken

Interview with girgio tsoukalos 16/1/11 10:29 Page 2

34 UFO MATRIX

“This is book number twenty-nine that Erich’s

written,”Tsoukalos said. “So, obviously, there is

some rehashing of old material. But, in this

book, for example, he goes into great detail

about a site in South America called Puma

Punku. Puma Punku is a place on the border of

Peru and Bolivia, right next to Lake Titicaca, in

the highlands of the Andes. It’s also right next

to a site called Tiwanaku (also spelled as

Tiahuanaco – Editor). Every day, dozens of

tourists go to Tiwanaku and photograph the

site and walk around. They huff and puff when

they walk around because we’re at thirteen

thousand feet up in the air, so the air is very

rarified up there.”

But what many of those tourists don’t know,

and the guides won’t talk about, is that only a

hundred and fifty yards away is the little known

site called Puma Punku, a place that “completely

defies logic,”according to Tsoukalos.

“You have this entire field of ruins of gigantic

stones,”Tsoukalos said, “all of which are cut out

of granite and diorite. We have formations there

that we still today would have difficulties

recreating. And that’s not me talking. That’s

actually a stonecutter by the name of Roger

Hopkins, who has his stone quarry in Palm

Springs, California.”

After viewing photos of Puma Punku, shown

to him by Tsoukalos, Hopkins said that you

also in Erich’s opinion – you can keep a society

captive by instilling fear and I personally want

to go as far away as possible from that. And also

Erich. Erich looks forward to giving lectures in

2016 and 2020. 2012 is just a date.”

Von Däniken also looks forward to a future

free of the Apocalypse described in the Bible

and believes that prophecy, by definition, does

not exist.

“The reason why prophets were prophets at

the time is because they had knowledge that

was given to them by extraterrestrials,”

Tsoukalos said. “But that does not make them

prophets in the sense of what we know today,

of what we think a prophet is. There is no way

of predicting the future. The future is unwritten.

Even according to the Bible, we have free will.

One argument renders the other useless.”

Meanwhile, von Däniken does lend some

credence to modern-day beliefs about UFOs

and alien abduction.

“Erich definitely says those things are

happening right now,”Tsoukalos affirmed.

“There’s no question about that. But he also

thinks that some of the abductions are done by

human beings. It’s our people who are

abducting people and putting them in a lab or

something like that. But that does not negate

the fact that UFOs, extraterrestrial UFOs, are

visiting Earth and abducting people. Even if

ninety-nine percent of all abductions are

manmade, well, that one percent is still

extraterrestrial and that’s all we need. So, yes,

Erich definitely thinks that the modern-day UFO

abduction phenomenon does take place.”

In fact, in the mid-1990s, von Däniken was

among the first to invite the late abduction

researcher, Dr. John Mack, of Harvard University,

to speak at one of his conferences, so that Mack

would have a public forum to discuss his

findings regarding abduction.

“Dr. Mack, at the time, was one of the first

university professors who, in public, maintained

that the abduction phenomenon is, in fact, real,”

Tsoukalos said. “For any professor to do that,

especially one from Harvard, is a big deal. I really

don’t think that Mack fell on his head. I really

think he had some tangible evidence.”

Tsoukalos recalled spending time with Mack

at a 1996 ancient astronauts conference in

Berne, Switzerland.

“He was great and he was completely,

quote, unquote, ‘on our side’. That’s become

more the norm now, but, back in the Nineties,

that was completely out of the norm; it was not

normal for bona fide university professors to

side with us.”

The conversation turned again to von

Däniken’s new book, Twilight of the Gods, which

covers some interesting new ground.

Puma Punku Overview

Interview with girgio tsoukalos 16/1/11 10:29 Page 3

UFO MATRIX 35

AN INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO TSOUKALOS

could not pay him enough to tackle the near

impossible task of building anything remotely

similar to the ancient site.

Tsoukalos asked, “And if a stonemason says

that to me, who am I going to listen to? A

professor who says all of this was done with

chicken bones and string? Or am I going to

listen to a real-time, real-life stonemason,

stonecutter, who tells me this would be

extremely difficult for us to replicate today?”

“God bless the professors,”he continued. “But

in some ways, they just have to concede,

because neither Erich nor I are saying, for

example, that our ancestors did not know how

to cut stone. Of course they knew how to cut

stone. In fact, they were very good at it – when

they cut limestone or soft, porous stone. I don’t

care about those stonecutting things. But what

I care about is how on Earth did they cut diorite,

andesite and dolerite? That is the question.”

In order to cut granite (and the other rocks

mentioned) in this day and age, a diamond-

tipped saw is required. It can’t be done with

obsidian or the aforementioned chicken bones

or any kind of bronze tools. Given that we

moderns couldn’t easily recreate it, what was the

ultimate purpose of the Puma Punku stones?

“Puma Punku is certainly not an altar,”

Tsoukalos replied. “Yes, our ancestors did build

things that were intended for worship, for

rituals. But those places usually contained or

featured some type of hieroglyphics or glyphs

or some wonderful ornamentation that’s been

carved into the rock, of faces or flowers or

anything. Just beautiful carvings.”

“Puma Punku, on the other hand, is one

hundred percent anonymous. Not a single

glyph has been found, not a single carved

flower or carved ornamentation. The blocks that

we find there, some of them up to eighty-five

tons, are all very technical in nature. You’ve got

a whole lot of little inside boxes that have been

cut out. Every block at Puma Punku looks as if it

was the counterpart to another block. Like a

female piece and a male piece fitting together

and vice versa. Another interesting thing is also

the fact that it’s as if only master stonemasons

were allowed to work there, because nowhere

do you find any mistakes. Nowhere is there a

place where a guy slipped while he was cutting

a stone. It’s all perfect.”

All of this leads Tsoukalos to conclude that

Puma Punku is, by far, the most “inexplicable”

site in the world.

“I would even venture to say,”he declared,

“that Puma Punku is the only place in the world

that was not built by human hands, that that

place was, in fact, built by extraterrestrials using

some type of machinery.”

He went on, “Of course, nobody knows the

purpose, but I theorise that Puma Punku might

have been one of the base camps of the

extraterrestrials. It was basically their place. All

the mythologies and legends surrounding

Puma Punku and Lake Titicaca say the location

has been one of the ‘navels’of the world. ‘Navels

of the world’was a term used in ancient times

when they wanted to signify where life

originated. For example, in ancient Greece,

Delphi is considered the navel of the world.

Why? Because the Greeks think that life

originated at Delphi.”

“And how did life originate? From outer

space. All those different origin stories are

always the same, that some type of silver egg

appeared or a cosmic egg arrived from the

deep, dark nothingness. From then on,

humankind thrived, out of nowhere. The idea is

that our ancestors’genetic make-up was

tampered with by extraterrestrials and thus we

were made, quote, unquote, ‘humans.’And they

used Puma Punku as a base camp to explore

the rest of the world, as we know they did.

Puma Punku is pretty central for all of South

America, so it’s a perfect point from which to

travel all over.”

For von Däniken and Tsoukalos, Puma Punku

is a kind of diamond hidden in plain sight.

Many volumes have been written about nearby

Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca, but there are only a

handful of scholarly references to Puma Punku,

usually a paragraph or two presented in

passing. Twilight of the Gods devotes a large

chunk of its more than two hundred pages to

examining the site, but most questions about

it remain

unanswered.

When this

interview was

conducted,

Tsoukalos was in

the midst of

shooting the

second season

of Ancient Aliens

for the History

Channel. The

season will

eventually number ten one-hour episodes and

Tsoukalos is enthusiastic about the project.

“We’re very busy running around and trying

to get everything done,”he said. “It’s very

exciting. How many times have we been part of

a television programme and then it was

completely botched up and we were made to

look like idiots? And this time, with Ancient

Aliens, they’re actually taking this stuff seriously.

Being a consulting producer to the show, if I

have a suggestion or if I have something to

say, guess what? They’re actually listening. It’s

totally awesome.”

[To learn more about Erich von Däniken,Giorgio Tsoukalos and the Archaeology,Astronautics and SETI Research Association,visit www.legendarytimes.com

Sean Casteel is a freelance journalist and aContributing Editor to the American UFOMagazine. He is also the author of the booksUFOs, Prophecy and the End of Time, Signs andSymbols of the Second Coming and TheExcluded Books of the Bible. To read more of hiswork, visit his website atwww.seancasteel.com]

Puma Punku Slab

Interview with girgio tsoukalos 16/1/11 10:29 Page 4

HOA AD 16/1/11 12:40 Page 1

THE STONE AD_iss.4 16/1/11 12:24 Page 1

WEIRD AD 16/1/11 09:44 Page 1

www.ufomatrix.comwww.healingsofatlantis.com

AD PAGE_QUARTERS 16/1/11 09:43 Page 1

COMING NEXT ISSUE

UFO MATRIX 95

South African UFOS – A Brief HistorySpirituality & UFOsA Turkish MothmanJuly 2010 UFO INVASIONThe Pascagoula Abduction Case

Coming NextIssueComing next issue 16/1/11 10:03 Page 1

IBC 14/1/11 13:25 Page 1

11th dimension ad 14/1/11 13:26 Page 1