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I love this tale:
nwaonline.net/archive/2004/04/09/Entertainment/176150.html
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Imaginations Soar at UFO Conference
Secrets of Tatra Cave Still a Mystery 50 Years Later
Friday, Apr 9, 2004
By Becca Bacon Martin
EUREKA SPRINGS -- From the time he was a child, Ted Phillips has been looking up into the sky. In those early years, growing up in rural Missouri, all Phillips saw was stars. But it wasn't long before he started hearing stories about things that went "whoosh" in the night -- things other people swore they had seen -- and he wanted to know what they were.
He's has been investigating UFO sightings ever since.
This weekend, Phillips will be preaching to the choir when he speaks at the 2004 Ozark UFO Conference in Eureka Springs. And he admits he'll hear stories even he doesn't believe.
"Good stuff is hard to find," Phillips says of UFO evidence. "And the stuff that gets in the newspaper is goofy! Reporters don't want to write about plant evidence at a landing site."
That, however, is one of Phillips' specialties. Over the last 35 years, he has logged some 3,059 investigations and heard stories from witnesses so credible, he says, they could "send a man to the electric chair on their testimony. Yet once they start talking about flying saucers, they're no longer credible.
"If I'm in any group of people and the subject (of UFOs) comes up, I will hear of a sighting," Phillips says. "It's difficult to imagine science is not doing cartwheels to investigate."
Over the years, Phillips was involved in hundreds of investigations with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and a consultant to the U.S. Air Force on the subject of unidentified flying objects. Scientists and astronauts "privately admit great interest," he says, and he believes the government does indeed know a lot more than the public is being told.
"There's no question there is a cover-up to some extent," he says. "And you've got to wonder why: A case in 1950 can't affect our security in 2004."
Although Phillips will speak this weekend about the two best cases of physical UFO evidence among his 3,059 investigations, that's not his primary subject. In fact, he's not sure that "Project Tatra" is related to UFOs at all. It is, however, a fascinating story.
The short version is that Phillips gained access to the diary of a Czech soldier injured in fighting in Slovakia during World War II. Rescued by a sheep herder, the soldier and two of his comrades were hidden in a cave in the Tatra Mountains -- and there, Phillips says, "Tony" found something extraordinary. It was a "huge black wall, overgrown by cave formations, 2 miles back in a cave, 2,700 feet below the top of the mountain."
The "artifact," as Phillips calls it, was 27 feet high, about 20 feet wide and curved. "It looked almost like looking in a mirror of steel," he describes, "totally smooth, no seams, no rivets."
The soldier slipped through a narrow crack in the wall and found himself inside a "huge structure, shaped like a fat crescent moon, with 7-foot-thick walls that extended up beyond the light of his torches," Phillips goes on. On subsequent visits, he found that he couldn't even scratch the surface of the artifact with a pick -- but he could dig down through the limestone floor. About 60 inches in, he found a prehistoric cave bear skeleton and, under it, grillwork with warmth coming up through it. He also heard a sound, which he described as "something like a distant turbine."
"Remember, this is a mining engineer with four degrees from the University of Prague," Phillips reminds. "He knows about the sound of dripping water versus a turbine."
When Tony left the cave, he sealed off the crawlways that led to his discovery. According to Phillips, bombing later in the war also damaged the cave. But on trips to Europe in 1998 and 2001, Phillips located the cave and found confirmation that it is indeed the one where three wounded soldiers were sheltered in 1944.
Now, he wants to shore up the cave's interior and look for the unexplained black wall.
"Of course, funding is always difficult," Phillips admits, "because it's such a farfetched story -- unless you've spent 30 years looking into it!"
In the meantime, Phillips has found two more artifacts that might be related to the one in Slovakia. He won't even venture a guess what they are or where they came from, except to note that the one described in the soldier's diary had 6,000 years of limestone deposits inside it, along with the skeleton of an animal that had been extinct for 11,000 years.
"At first I thought it might be some kind of directional beacon, some kind of transmitter, but why? And who?" he wonders. "If I can figure out some way to get down into the lower section, maybe I'll figure it out."
Phillips is scheduled to discuss the Tatra Project at 2:45 p.m. Saturday at the Inn of the Ozarks Convention Center. Other scheduled speakers include:
• Don Ledger, "Shag Harbor Incident Then and Now."
• Beverly Trout, "Reptilian Perspective: Serpents of Wisdom or Snakes in the Grass."
• Nancy Talbott, "Eyewitness Reports and More Physical Evidence."
• Wendelle C. Stevens, "UFO Visitors From Planet Kermer."
• Grant Cameron, "The UFO Capital of the World."
• David Rudiak, "1994 Nellis Range UFO Video: New Insights."
• Linda Moulton Howe, "Earth Mysteries Updates: From Mars to Cuba."
• Timothy Good, "UFO Contacts, Mystery Triangles and the European Union."
More information on the UFO Conference, which is under way today, is available at http://www.ozarkufo.com.
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