By Sean Casteel
Throughout the modern era of ufology, and arguably before, there have been time anomalies associated with UFOs. The phenomenon of “missing time,” a common element of the alien abduction experience, in which the abductee will return to normal consciousness only to realize there are several hours of time unaccounted for, is an obvious example.
In the book “Weird Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Time and Space,” author, editor and publisher Tim R. Swartz and I have assembled an overview of time-related mysteries using UFOs as a starting point and then moving on to other contexts in which the nature of time is somehow bent or altered.
Swartz and I worked alongside a dozen other authors, researchers and contributors to create “Weird Time,” a team effort that has resulted in a thorough study of the many ways time eludes our everyday understanding.
For example, Briton contributor Nigel Watson writes about time anomalies associated with the appearance of fairies. He tells the tale of a farmer who disappeared for three weeks after going into the mountains to check his sheep and cattle.
“A search found no sign of him,” Watson writes, “and his wife gave him up for dead. When he reappeared, he thought he had been away for only three hours. He explained that he had been playing his flute when some little men-like beings made a circle around him. They sang and danced, and he lost all sense of time. Against the common advice never to eat anything that the fairies offer you, he ate some of their small cakes and had the most enjoyable time of his life.”
The diminutive size of the “men-like” creatures the farmer saw recalls the familiar gray aliens, who are also short in stature. A typical alien abduction encounter often involves long stretches of missing time, though rarely would that last as long as three weeks. The abduction experience is also seldom described as “most enjoyable,” but still there are similarities between fairies and the grays that are worth noting.
Watson includes a longer and more detailed list of those similarities, such as the fact that both types of entities can render themselves invisible or appear in virtually any human or animal form, as well as appear and disappear at will. They can induce trance states, paralysis and levitate people into their realms. Some believe that aliens and fairies can live among us undetected. They are both associated with UFOs and strange lights. Lights in marshland, graveyards or swamps are referred to as “fairy-fire.” Both are also associated with poltergeist happenings. The common factor of time anomalies demonstrates that mankind has existed both inside and outside of linear time for many eons and that our species is no stranger to “weird time.”
Editor and publisher Tim R. Swartz recounts the story of a Benedictine monk named Pellegrino Maria Ernetti who in the 1950s claimed to have invented a device through which he could see and hear events of the past. He called it the “chronovisor,” and was assisted in his efforts by the Vatican and well-known scientists, including Enrico Fermi and Wernher Von Braun. Swartz says the story of Ernetti and his chronovisor has been mostly forgotten, though it is still possible to track down a few elements of its history.
In 1952, Father Ernetti traveled to Milan to meet Father Agostino Gemelli at the laboratory of experimental physics of the Università del Sacro Cuore. The purpose of this meeting was to conduct some experiments using oscilloscopes on recorded Gregorian chants. During the experiments, the wire recorder stopped working, and the two men tried to fix it. During this repair, Father Gemelli grew frustrated and exclaimed, “Oh, dad, help me, please!”
After the recorder was repaired, during playback of the chants, the men were shocked to also hear the voice of Gemelli’s deceased father saying, “But of course I help you. I am always with you.”
How could someone long dead have been recorded using an electronic device?
“This was the beginning of what would later be called the ‘chronovisor,’” Swartz writes, “based on the idea that energy waves emitted both by objects and people are forever present and can potentially be captured and reverted back into their original sounds and images. This process is also known as Instrumental Transcommunication and is being used to try and speak with people who have passed on and now live beyond time and space.”
Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi similarly conducted experiments with radio receivers in an attempt to receive living voices from all human history.
But Ernetti exceeded merely summoning up voices from outside time and space. The chronovisor allowed him to witness the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. “I saw everything,” Ernetti said. “The agony in the garden, the betrayal by Judas, the trial, the ordeal – I was a witness to it all.”
In 1972 Ernetti was interviewed by an Italian newspaper, which included a photograph claimed to be the face of Jesus dying on the cross, obtained by the chronovisor. As would be expected, the photo was quickly called a hoax. A priest associate of Ernetti’s admitted the photo was not genuine and that the device could only show scenes at a distance, unlike the closeup published by the newspaper. But the priest maintained that it was still within the device’s capabilities to show the Passion of the Christ.
When Ernetti showed some of the chronovisor recordings to the Pope and other cardinals, they unanimously concluded that the machine was dangerous to humanity and ordered it to be dismantled. In fact, if the device could see any time, any place, any person at will, there would no longer be any privacy or secrets. Anything and everything that a person does would be open to viewing. Were the chronovisor to fall into the wrong hands it could tip civilization over the edge and into annihilation.
Ernetti was subsequently kept under surveillance by the Italian and other foreign governments, and he worried that the CIA might have gathered enough information to build their own chronovisor. Nevertheless, he kept his promise to the Vatican and remained silent about the details of his invention. Ernetti died in 1994. Shortly before he passed, he wrote an open letter insisting that the chronovisor was real.
Longtime friend and contributor Hercules Invictus offers a chapter on Kronos, who is Father Time in Greek mythology and characteristically struggled mightily with other Greek deities. Meanwhile, renowned Egyptologist Michael Waterman relates the narrative of the Egyptian deity Neith, who “literally created the fabric of time.” The Greeks and Egyptians, as did all cultures throughout history, grappled with the nature of time in their various myths and religious lore. Perhaps it is a short step from their ancient beliefs to our present-day exploration of time through the lens of quantum physics and such portals as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?
“Weird Time” covers such a wide range of time-related phenomena that it is not possible to adequately summarize its contents here. But for the reader who dives into its 350+ pages with an open mind and a willingness to learn, a rewarding time awaits.
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