This entire program was a state secret and the rest of the world would have never heard about it but for the Judica-Cordiglia brothers in Turin, Italy. They were obsessed with radio and for them radio broadcasts where the internet of the day and were begging to be hacked into. They captured and recorded several Soviet transmissions and had them translated. This included S.O.S signals from soon to be dead cosmonauts whose bodies never returned to Earth. They also knew that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space before then President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, did.

One of these dead cosmonauts has theoretically been hurtling at 18,000 miles per hour away from Earth for the last 45 years. Where will he end up? Staggeringly, I would imagine that the odds are that even with all that travel, his body still won’t encounter a living thing and may not ever collide with another object. Ever being a relative term to the existence of humanity. Maybe he’ll be recovered by an alien race and resurrected long after the rest of us are dead and gone. He is frozen after all. Can you imgaine what would happen if an alien craft crashed on Earth with a dead alien in it? Maybe it already did.

Statistically his odds of intercepting an inhabited planet with intelligent life are probably negligible, but what if?

There is an astounding article on this at Fortean Times.

∞ Arenas

Another Friday the 13th is upon us. Although there’s some debate over the superstition surrounding this unlucky day, The Count has a very strong opinion of it’s origin and has asked me to share his point of view on it.

A few years ago, an author named Dan Brown released a book called ‘The Da Vinci Code’ which was a bestseller and eventually made into a film. This book, while rooted in a very tangential way to some facts, was almost entirely fiction. Brown’s work was largely based on a very interesting historical fiction entitled, ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’. This book posed as a meticulously researched look into the idea that Christ was in fact mortal, and that his bloodline lives to this day. While plausible to some, nearly all of the research in the book has been shown to be completely fabricated. The book also looked at the history of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon or as they are more commonly known, the Knights Templar. I have read it and I concur that it is almost entirely a fabrication. It’s inaccuracies were later exposed, in some cases by close associates of mine, and thusly ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was revealed to be a fictional account based on a fictional research book. The pretense under which it was published is understandable as it draws more readers in for sales. Nevertheless, volumes of information exist on the Knights and The Count has had more than a few encounters with some of the Grand Masters of the order, including what is commonly believed to be their last official GM, Sir Jacques de Molai. The Count tells me he met Sir Jacques for the first time in 1274 at a secret meeting between representatives of Pope Gregory X and Genghis Khan’s grandson, Khubilai Khan whom he counseled having already served the Great Temujin Khan family for over 80 years at that point. The meeting was one in a long series of Papal attempts to facilitate a Franco-Mongol alliance (which never worked) and it was attended by the then current Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Guillaume de Beaujeu and a few of his Templar Brothers, including Sir Jacques. The Count and Sir Jacques remained friends until Sir Jacques’s death in March of 1314.

Sir Jacques joined the Knights Templar when he was 21 in 1265. That is the youngest age that one can be considered for a knighthood in the order. Eventually he became the leader of the order when Grand Master Theobald Gaudin departed his earthly vessel in 1293. The Grand Masters of the Knights Templar take orders from no one but the Pope. Unfortunately, Sir Jacques’s Pope was a weak man without moral strength or honor. The Count himself refers to him disrespectfully by his birth name Bertrand. Bertrand was a pawn of King Philip IV and he had fair reason to fear him. The King made a large public spectacle of burning one of his predecessor’s (Boniface) Papal Bulls, Unam Sanctum. This Bull had given the Pope’s office absolute power over all of mankind. King Philip IV feared that power and as such famously had the Bull burned in front of the public, effectively castrating the Papal authority. King Philip was also a greedy man as well as poor manager of money. He was in great debt to The Knights Templar after spending all of France’s treasury at war and could find no way to repay it without enduring some personal suffering. Since he would do anything to avoid suffering of any kind, he concluded that he would accuse the Knights Templar of being heretical. In order to trick Sir Jacques into traveling to Europe, King Philip IV made false pretenses of being interested in a new Crusade. Sir Jacques’s loyalty to the cross dictated that he answer this call and as such he delivered himself and several of his best men to the region where they would be easily arrested. On Friday the 13th of October 1307, Sir Jacques and the Knights Templar across the continent were rounded up, arrested and interrogated by the Inquisition. Within a few years, King Philip then convinced his weak pawn Pope Clement V (Bertrand) to back him up. On March 22nd, 1312 the Papal Bull Vox In Excelso by Pope Clement V called for the end of the Order of The Knights Templar. After significant torture Sir Jacques confessed to a wide variety of heresy and was condemned to prison in 1314. After this condemnation Sir Jacques retracted all of the statements he had made, declaring that they were made under torture. This incensed King Philip and he ordered Sir Jacques burned at the stake as so many other Knight’s Templar had already been.

Sir Jacques may have had the last laugh however. While burning at the stake he reportedly yelled, “You who behold us perishing in the flames shall decide our innocence! I summon Pope Clement V to appear in forty days and Philip the Fair in twelve months before the just and terrible throne of the everliving God, to render an account of the blood which they have unjustly and wickedly shed.” The count was there however, and states that in actuality Sir de Molai said this on his way to the pyre. Nevertheless, Philip the Fair died four weeks later and Pope Clement V (Bertrand) died 9 months following that.

Perhaps Pope Clement V was shown mercy when he faced God for unknown to anyone outside the Church, he secretly absolved the Templars of all heresies just one year after they were arrested. See the Chinon Parchment, just now published in 2007 after having been ‘misplaced’ since 1628. Isn’t it odd how the Vatican’s can suddenly produce mitigating historical documents when it falls out of favor?

There is obviously a great deal more information on this subject. It is in fact far too grand for us to address in depth here at The Immortal Count. I bring it to your attention only to show you what many people believe is the true origin of the dark cloud that surrounds the day of Friday the 13th.  2009 has already seen 1 of them and another one is just around the corner. There will not be another year with 3 of them until 2015. The next true Friday the 13th, falling in October as the day of the arrest of the Knights Templar did, is in 2017. That will most certainly be an unlucky day. On the last true Friday, October 13th, in 2008, Her Majesty’s Treasury had to bailout the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Halifax Bank of Scotland with $64 billion dollars to prevent a possible global financial sector collapse. Perhaps that event was only postponed.

∞ Arenas

References:

templarhistory.com

The Freemasons’ Monthly Magazine – 12 Feb, 1864. Page 14

On February 2nd, 1959, Igor Dyatlov and 8 of his friends who were all cross-country skiers set themselves out to go on a camping trip roughly 1260 miles northeast of the aforementioned Battle of Kalka. They were killed. The only man, who survived, did so because he fell ill and had to break off from the ascent. His name is Yuri Yudin, and he is still alive today. He has no clues about what happened to his friends any more than anyone else, but whatever did happen was a state secret for quite some time. The matter was classified by the Russian government until 1993. Their first campsite on the mountain after hiking in was set up in the evening, 50 years prior to the very moment I am committing these words to my personal computer. Mr. Yudin knew that they were planning to stay out longer than originally intended, and he shared that news with the friends and relatives of the group, so there was no concern for their absence until 18 days later on February 20th.

This is where the mystery begins, and there are more details to be found in the cited references below, but the camp was found abandoned and their tent was cut open from the inside, as has been determined by forensic analysis. Everyone seemed to have fled the tent in varying states of disarray.  Some of the party was barefoot and some of them had only one sock on, others a single shoe. The trail of the fleeing skiers lead towards a forest, where they could have easily set their original campsite for cover, and simply disappeared. 2 young men were found at the edge of that wood, barefoot and in their underwear. 3 more bodies were found between those 2 and the camp. Those 3 were apparently trying to go back to the ruined tent. 2 months later the other 4  were found 82 yards away. These 4 suffered the worst trauma with broken ribs, and a crushed skull. 21-year-old Lyudmila Dubinina had her tongue cut out.

The official report states that the 9 were killed by an ‘unknown compelling force’. Witnesses camping 31 miles away reported seeing bright orange spheres in the approximate area the Dyatlov party was located. Reportedly the victims were all found to have an unusally darkened tone to their skin.

Many have posited the theory that the group was inadvertently killed by a poorly planned military exercise, including the possibility of a missile launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It was the only base in range at the time, but extensive and legitimate research shows that there are no records of anything having been fired. The most prominent investigator of what happened believes that it was a military exercise. He cites the skin tone, and compression damage that some of the bodies had. He is of course predisposed, and rightfully so, to think it is a state secret or a cover-up.

The Count is not so sure. He bears witness to a particular type of aircraft that is not of our standard realm that may have created all of these symptoms. The craft is nuclear powered and man-made, although the men who made it are not part of the world you and I know. He feels that one must take note of one of the most unusual aspects of this mystery. Why was poor Lyudmila’s tongue removed?

When trying to determine an accurate level of radiation poisoning in an animal of any species, the best tissue to test is dense tissue and the easiest place to find it is in the tongue, eyes and genitals. Nerve centers are the densest tissue sources. Why does one test for radiation? Some would say to evaluate what exactly happened to any subject that may have inadvertently been exposed to a nuclear blast. If the subject was present, why not collect the data? Others might also measure that radiation to try and determine what kind of device might have created it and was it known to man’s known world? Perhaps some of you are familiar with cattle mutilation in the southwest of the United States. Cows and even buffalo are sometimes found dead, drained of blood and with their eyes and tongues removed.

The Count tells me the Ural mountains are exceptionally beautiful. He marched throughout a great part of the range when he served directly under Subedei Ba’adur, known throughout history as ‘Subotai the Valiant’. Most notably at the Battle of the Kalka River in late March of 1223, where Ghengis Khan and his Mongols defeated the dog Prince Mstislav and the 78,423 men he brought from Kiev, even though they had only 36,212 men to fight them with. The Count feels that if Xerxes, as he is known today, had had  Sebedei under his command, he would have conquered all of the Earth. Time however often prevents great men from co-existing, and Sebedai and Xerxes missed each other by 800 years. What would have happened if they had met?  That story is for another time.

I wish to cite an outstanding article on the Dyatlov incident from “The St. Petersburg Times” – Issue #1349, dated Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 and written by: Svetlana Osadchuk.

You will also find many of the recovered photos from the incident here.

Coordinates: 61.754722, 59.462778

∞ Arenas

I would like to apologize for the long delay since our last entry. Our team often gets caught up in the research process and some of our researchers lives move at a slower pace than the rest of humanity, so they don’t always relate well to mankind’s perception of the normal passage of time. This is in spite of many heated discussions regarding productivity. I digress and that’s the last apology you’ll hear from me on our often retarded pace. Those of you monitoring RSS Feeds, I promise that even though the postings may sometimes be several weeks apart, they will always come.

Many of you have pointed out in your correspondence with me that the nature of our work is very Fortean in nature, and with this point we cannot argue. We find a certain irony in the fact that Charles Fort came and went long after some of our members began their work. However, Mr. Fort did an excellent job of quantifying the nature of the type of history we find ourselves compelled to bring to you. We share what we find with you because we think people have a right to know, but rest assured that we are digging for something more self-serving and when we find it, by your perception we may vanish. I’d like to think that our goal is around the corner, but our group has been at this for several hundred years and there is no way to know when we will achieve the completion of our quest.

From this point forward, our posts are going to be more abbreviated in the interest of getting them published quicker. We will return to the postings and add additional information as time allows.

“I am more fit to die than people think.” – Lord George Gordon Byron

The prospect of immortality has dazzled man since the dawn of time. It is not without it’s shortcomings however. I have spoken to many men who suspecting that I am older than I appear begin to barrage me with sometimes-hostile questions about how I came to be what I am. Unfortunately no series of questions can get to the root of it or the root of my own question about it, the answer to which escapes me to this day. What a normally aging man does not realize is that while it may appear that I have what they want, it is they who are the lucky ones, they who are the ones that have a gift. I am cursed.

Time for me has slowed to a crawl. I am not an immortal. I just age at a very slow pace. I can still get sick and often do, and I can still be injured as well although I have outlived everyone who has injured me to date. Because of the retarded pace of my metabolism, one of the unpleasant side effects is that injuries take quite some time to heal. The more serious ones can take years, so I am very careful to avoid them. Once the novelty of perpetual youth wore off for me, I went through a period of wonder at the freedom of time that I had been granted. This was exciting at first, but only at first. I enrolled in the finest institutions, sought apprenticeships with scholars and studied a myriad of foreign languages, starting with Latin and the romances. Then I moved on to physical skills. This period for me was replete with fencing, war strategy, consumption of epic poetry and a broad immersion in fine literature as well as artistic painting, which I was not so good at. All the time in the world does not make one an artist. These pursuits were rewarding, but they lead me down another road that is often overlooked when people debate the merits of immortality. There is a limit to the quantity of knowledge that one can retain in a single mind, especially if you do not call upon it frequently. That realization dampened my thirst for knowledge, but fortunately I recovered it after a period of profound intellectual laziness.

What does one do upon the discovery that you may be afforded many lifetimes of experience? The first 70 or 80 years can be puzzling. It takes some time to realize that you are not aging like your peers or that time has seemingly stopped for you. These lessons are hard learned. Although my faith preaches celibacy, I find myself unable to avoid falling in love when I meet the right woman. It is that love that taught me the worst lesson of all. I cannot travel through life with a companion, because there is no companion who can match my pace. I have buried wives, lovers, children, grandchildren and more. I keep a watchful eye on my living descendents, a group which has grown to several hundred people. I had children with three wives and two lovers at varying times in history, but I do not wish to share more on that today.

Mankind was built to experience things that have a beginning and an end. To humanity, time sees infinite but it is in fact not. It is only meant to appear infinite to man. This is the way of things. Every day has a beginning and an end. Mankind is too small to change this and always will be, irrespective of his desire to develop God-like technology. People of my faith believe that all matter is inherently evil, and that the body is a prison fashioned by the apotheosis of evil, Rex Mundi¹. Following the doctrine of my faith, the only conclusion for me is that this long life that I am living is a punishment and I must have done something very, very wrong to deserve this tar pit of despair. I have attempted to end my suffering on three separate occasions by taking the endura². I met the requisite of serious physical illness only one of those three times, possibly condemning me to a longer life than I was originally sentenced to. Fasting is not very effective when you have the metabolism that I possess.

My faith, once common is now among the more rare in the world, and I am but a handful of practitioners. Since I am quite aware that very few readers will take this letter seriously, I offer it in selfishness. Drafting it has given me one of the few pleasures I now have in life, writing. In a few moments I will wash the ink from the bottom of my hand and seal this letter to my dear friend, Arenas. Then it will be one less thing that I must keep to myself in the infinite loneliness created by having more deceased loved ones than living loved ones.

___________________________

1 - Rex Mundi: The ancients knew the ‘man in the pupil of the eye of Horus’ was ‘Rex Mundi’, King of the Universe or King of the World. One of two Gods recognized in The Count’s Faith, Catharism. Rex Mundi is not worshipped by the Cathars, but feared and despised. Horus Reference: Dennis J. Stallings, “Catharism, Levitov, and the Voynich Manuscript” The Voynich Manuscript,  Jul. 2006 <http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/voynich/levitov2.htm>.
2 – Endura: A Cathar ritual of euthanasia, translating literally to fasting. The Cathars:  Cathar Beliefs:  Ceremonies:  Endura <http://www.cathar.info/12011005_endura.htm>.

In 1893, legendary Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen was embarking on an expedition north to explore previously unknown territory. He undertook this trip aboard the world’s first icebreaker the Fram, which still holds the world record from his trip for northernmost passage by a wooden surface vessel in history. She also holds it for the south after a bait and switch departure at the hand of Roald Amundsen who told the world he was headed north, but we digress. One might expect that Nansen encountered a great deal of phenomena that would have at the time been new to mankind and of course he did, but the one that we find the most fascinating is what he described as dead water. His log reflected the experience which happened in the Nordenskiöld Archipelago (approximately  76°34′37.65″N  96°41′41.33″E):

“When caught in dead water Fram appeared to be held back, as if by some mysterious force, and she did not always answer the helm. In calm weather, with a light cargo, Fram was capable of 6 to 7 knots. When in dead water she was unable to make 1.5 knots. We made loops in our course, turned sometimes right around, tried all sorts of antics to get clear of it, but to very little purpose.”

Dead water is a good example of a scenario that lacking an explanation, over the years might have lead many people to all sorts of speculation about it’s cause. Nansen however was not prone to such speculation.

“Never stop because you’re afraid – you are never so likely to be wrong.”  – Fridtjof Nansen

The researchers at Immortal Count feel that because it was Nansen who encountered this problem, this event passed relatively unnoticed by maritime mythologists into the annals of time. Nansen may have felt that even though there was no plausible explanation for it, one would eventually be discovered and therefore there was no need to speculate on its origin. In October of 2008 the University of Lyon revealed that it was able to recreate Dead Water in a lab and even shared proof of this on video.

“The human factor is three quarters of any expedition.” – Roald Amundsen

From the experience of research into legends and folkore, the Immortal Count researchers feel that had someone else been in Nansen’s place, this event may have easily unfolded into a fascinating story of maritime legend detailing how a mystical unseen force held their ship motionless in the sea even though her sails were full and a brisk wind was blowing. A vessel caught in such circumstances could lead a superstitious crew to panic, and since dead water may be perceived as a potentially indefinite event even if calmness prevails initially, the crew might eventually unravel. Once the propriety of their hierarchy devolves, a lot of things could go wrong. They might even abandon the ship, convinced that it is cursed and unable to ever move forward again, held back by Neptune himself. In so doing, they might find that since dead water acts differently depending on the draft of the vessel upon it, that they can easily escape it in a yawl or lifeboat that sits higher on the surface. If they abandoned that vessel, far out at sea with only the provisions they could carry, wouldn’t there be a reasonable chance that they might not survive nor ever be found? Perhaps. It could be that a set of circumstances like this befell the infamous ghost ship the Mary Celeste, but that is another tale, which we’ll be posting our analysis on in the coming weeks. It is an enthralling story.

It is difficult for people who’ve not been at sea for extended periods of time to understand the isolation or the magnification of the full spectrum of human emotions that inevitably becomes prevalent among the passengers and crew on a long trip through uninhabited realms. In the United States, NASA has spent millions over the years studying this phenomenon in an effort to guarantee the success of long-term deep space missions. There is a point at sea when even the most scrupulous man realizes that there is no law but the law in his head. There is that moment when he comes face to face with his dark side and begins to live with the idea that most likely there would be no consequences to his amoral actions other than living with his conscience. If you are at sea with that man when he has that thought, and he is fearful or distrustful of you…God help you – because no one else can.

* Note – Although sometimes we cite Wikipedia as a source, we encourage users to explore further as Wikipedia entries are wildly inaccurate more often than not. An perfect example of this would be the Fridtjof Nansen Wikipedia entry that as of this posting states he was a pioneer of Neuron Theory. This is patently false.

Last October, Eric York, a 37 year old Park Ranger in the Grand Canyon found a deceased Mountain Lioness with no sign of trauma save a bloody nose. Lacking the facilities to do a proper necropsy, he carried the poor beast to his garage where he began one himself. On November 2nd, he was found dead. Was he killed instantly by a cloud of escaping bacteria from her carcass? It turns out to be the pneumonic plague.

This particular story recounts how United States Pilot, Milton Torres, was scrambled to intercept and shoot down an unidentified flying object the size of an aircraft carrier and traveling at over 7,600 Miles Per Hour. The picture is from another event in Barcelona that is unrelated, but was among the 800 MegaBytes of data released today by the British Ministry of Defence.