Guest Column MUFON of Indiana |
From National Travel Club 1935 USA (Space Animals - A Fact of Life from 'Everest' 1933) The Attack on Everest (Page 228) Climber Frank Smythe writes of the second assault on Mt. Everest as follows: The second phenomenon may or may not have been an optical illusion. Personally, I am convinced it was not. I was still some two hundred feet above Camp 6 and a considerable distance from it when, chancing to glance in the direction of the north ridge, I saw two curious-looking objects floating in the sky. The strongly resembled kite balloons in shape, but one possessed what appeared to be squat, underdeveloped wings, and the other a protuberance suggestive of a beak. They hovered motionless, but seemed slowly to pulsate, a pulsation incidentally much slower than my own hearbeats, which is of interest supposing it was an optical illusion. The two objects were very dark in color, and were silhouetted sharply against the sky or possibly a background of cloud. So interested was I that I stopped to observe them. My brain appeared to be working normally, and I deliberately put my self through a series of tests. First of all I glanced away. The objects did not follow my vision, but the were still there when I looked back again. Then I looked away again , and this time identified by name the number of peaks, valleys and glaciers by way of a mental test. But when I looked back again, the objects still confronted me. At this, I gave them up as a bad job, but just as I was starting to move again, a mist suddenly drifted across. Gradually they disappeared behind it, and when a minute or two later it had drifted clear, exposing the whole north ridge once more, they had vanished as mysteriously as they had come. It may be of interest to state that their position was roughly midway between the position of the 1924 camp 6 and the northeast shoulder. Thus they were at a height of about 27,200 feet, and as I was at about 27, 600 feet when I saw them, a line connecting their approximate position with my position would not bring them against a background of sky, but against lower and distant mountains. It is conceivable therefore, that it was some strange effect of mist and mountain magnified by imagination Mr. Smythe prefaces by saying: Men under physical and mental stress have experienced curious things on mountains, and instances are described in the Alpine Journal. Effects of oxygen lack on the brain are complex and but little understood. Frank Smythe was a member of several famous expeditions of this type, and from the point of view of character an background, he is a witness of integrity. A graduate electrical engineer educated at Faraday House Engineering College, was a former Royal Air Force officer and a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army. An accomplished author, he wrote several books and many articles on mountaineering. He died in 1949 by will be accounted among the earliest observers of biological UFOs- when their determinism is established. Trevor James Constable From the book "The Cosmic Pulse of Life" by Trevor James Constable |
Guest Column MUFON of Indiana |
