Page 30 - 200710 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October 2007

30 Mass UFO Show Mass UFO Show 30 His eye is stuck on the A man in northern Massachusetts Fatima shrine given Fatima shrine given His eye is stuck on the sky described a large circular disc over his house. €80m facelift to counter The man was a machinist, ``a trained eye,'' and €80m facelift to counter sky he reported something specific and unusual on zealotry zealotry By Julia Spitz/Daily News Columnist the bottom of the disc, a piece of information a By Julia Spitz/Daily News Columnist MetroWest Daily News woman in New Hampshire reported a short time MetroWest Daily News later. By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid ``Two independent witnesses describing As an engineer, Greg Berghorn's drawn exactly the same thing,'' Berghorn said with a The shrine of Fatima, one of Europe's to things that can be calculated, quantified and broad smile. most visited Catholic pilgrimage sites, has explained. What was the thing? undergone a spectacular €80m (£56m) facelift, As director of the Mutual UFO Police investigating a crime often hold to welcome even more pilgrims than the Network's state chapter, his blue-green eyes back details so they'll know if a witness really 800,000 who flock annually to this once remote light up at things that can't. was at the scene. ``We don't usually publish all corner of Portugal. Most often a reported sighting is the information we have about a sighting.'' Fatima's revamped Holy Trinity church actually a flash from a satellite's solar panel or a The state chapter gets about 50 reports will be inaugurated next week in a massive comet streaking by. of unusual sightings a year, he said. ``Of those ceremony conducted by the papal envoy ``It's that 1 percent of the cases that are 50, less than five we find sufficiently unusual to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to mark the 90th not easily explained away that are the most investigate.'' anniversary of the supposed last appearance of fascinating.'' There are about 75 members of Mass. the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children. And it's elements of such cases that are MUFON, and ``we all have day jobs,'' so ``it Fatima's new church, big enough for on the agenda next Friday evening at the Mass. doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of time 9,000 seated worshippers, is low and oval, built UFO Show in Watertown's Hibernian Hall. investigating every case,'' particularly when you without internal columns so TV cameras can The conference's focus will be on USOs, know Venus was looking a little brighter than sweep unobstructed over services for live or unidentified submerged objects. ``There usual that day. broadcasts. seems to be some phenomena where UFOs For incidents that do warrant follow-up, The facelift is also intended to smarten submerge into the water,'' said Berghorn. information is shared with the national network. up the sanctuary's image and eliminate what its Researcher Chris Styles will speak about a 1967 ``Eventually, it'll all be computerized. But there rector, Luciano Guerra, calls "exaggerations in reported crash in Shag Harbour, Canada, and are many, many cases that haven't been put the devotion to Fatima". Pilgrims from the Don Ledger is slated to address ``Flying Black online yet. impoverished north of Portugal often make the Triangles.'' ``It turns out Massachusetts has the stony final approach crawling on their hands Berghorn's never had an encounter, or at oldest recorded sighting,'' he said, citing a report and knees, with cloths to bind their bleeding least ``nothing that I couldn't explain,'' unless from 1639, when ``two guys in a boat on the wounds. Such extremes of zeal lend the you count the crop circles in the mid-1990s. Charles River saw something in the air which sanctuary an atmosphere of medieval fanaticism Crop circles fascinate Berghorn because they described as flying pigs. They that church authorities seek to discourage. you ``can apply some sort of methodology to subsequently described themselves (being) The gathering on 12 October will also investigate, rather than (relying on) stories.'' several miles upstream an hour later.'' celebrate the life of Pope John Paul II, who was Actually, it wasn't the crop circles that Flying pigs? particularly fond of the shrine, 70 miles north of drew him to the south of England as much as it ``Both were pig farmers. They explained Lisbon. The late pope attributed his narrow was the chance to try out GPS technology. the phenomena in terms they could interpret. It's escape from death after being shot in St Peter's He visited four sites. all they had to work with. Square in 1981 to the divine intervention of the He visited four sites. ``We all tend to explain things we can't virgin of Fatima. ``Two of them looked like a Saturday night understand in terms of things we can.'' John Paul visited the following year, and hoax, kids playing. The other two defy For information on monthly MUFON meetings again in 2000 when he recalled before 500,000 explanation. I came away with the feeling ... in Framingham, go to massmufon.com. For worshippers that "when severely struck on 13 (confessed British circle-making hoaxers) Doug information on tickets to Friday's Mass. UFO May 1981, I was saved from the threshold of and Dave didn't do it.'' Show, go to www.ufoshow.org/mufo.html. [] death". He beatified two of the young Yesterday, Berghorn, who's lived in shepherds, Francisco Marto and his sister Framingham for 20 years, described the MASS UFO SHOW Jacinta, who had died in childhood. Their intricate patterns you can't see unless you're cousin Lucia became a cloistered nun and lived viewing them from the air, drawing angles and One Show Only until 2005. lines with the precision of, well, an engineer, to The church has five chapels, 16 try to show what he'd seen. confessionals, meeting rooms, a cafe and a 500- ``Each reed was lying down at a 90- metre gilded tiled mural created by Portugal's degree angle to the radius of the circle. ... There E Eaarrtthh TToouurr 22000077 best known architect, Siza Vieira. are circles within circles within circles. ... How in the world would you do that unless you Fascinating presentations about picked each reed up one at a time?'' spectacular UFO cases: The commonly accepted explanation is by using a board and string. ``Well, I found a lot of things that Shag Harbour UFO Crash couldn't be explained away by somebody in a Crop Circles field with a board and string.'' Flying Black Triangles The problem with investigating UFO Unidentified Submarine Objects phenomena is what Berghorn calls ``the Keystone Kop effect.'' In silent movies, the Roswell 60th Anniversary comedic cops always arrived too late, and ``they never really catch anybody. Friday Oct 12 2007 ``UFO stories always have a beginning. 7 pm at Hibernian Hall They always have a middle. They never have an end. That's my great frustration.'' 151 Watertown St., Watertown, MA His face lit up when he talked about a ``flap,'' a term used to describe a large number of UFO www.ufoshow.org reports, one March sometime in the late 1990s.