Fatima was a UFO related event? I've actually never heard that take on that event before. I've always thought of the Fatima and the later Garabandal stories to be the work of the overly active imagination of children. Ultimately, the predictions did not come true.
You need to read up on it. Jacques Vallee has covered it in several books. While it was only the children, and more specifically ten year old Lúcia Santos who saw the "little lady", it is estimated that at one point
70,000 people witnessed the "dance of the sun" event.
From Wikipedia:
As early as July 1917 it was claimed that the Virgin Mary had promised a miracle for the last of her apparitions on 13 October, so that all would believe. What transpired became known as "Miracle of the Sun". A crowd believed to be approximately 70,000 in number, including newspaper reporters and photographers, gathered at the Cova da Iria. The incessant rain had finally ceased and a thin layer of clouds cloaked the silver discof the sun such that witnesses later said it could be looked upon without hurting the eyes. Lúcia, moved by what she said was an interior impulse, called out to the crowd to look at the sun. Witnesses later spoke of the sun appearing to change colors and rotate like a wheel. Not everyone saw the same things, and witnesses gave widely varying descriptions of the "sun's dance". The phenomenon is claimed to have been witnessed by most people in the crowd as well as people many miles away. While the crowd was staring at the sun, Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta said later they were seeing lovely images of the Holy Family, Our Lady of Sorrows with Jesus Christ, and then Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They said they saw Saint Joseph and Jesus bless the people. The children were aged 10, 9, and 7 at the time.
It's a blurry image, but that's more people in the background.
Columnist Avelino de Almeida of O Século (Portugal's most influential newspaper, which was pro-government in policy and avowedly anti-clerical), reported the following: "Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people." Eye specialist Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem reported "The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceeding fast and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat". The special reporter for the 17 October 1917 edition of the Lisbon daily, O Dia, reported the following, "...the silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy purple light was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds...The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands...people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they."
Now the thing to remember here is that is a large crowd of people, and some where many miles from where the children where. So it wasn't a case of mass hysteria, since the people at the outer fringe would have no idea what the other people were seeing.
Also, it had been raining on the people, but they were all dry after this light darted around. In Vallee's book he talks that the real sun had grown dim when the silver spinning disk showed up, and that so-called angle hair had started falling from the sky on the people.
Now lets look at other religions events. How about the Lady of Lourdes?
On 11 February 1858, Bernadette Soubirous went with her sisters Toinette and Jeanne Abadie to collect some firewood and bones in order to be able to buy some bread. When she took off her shoes and stockings to wade through the water near the Grotto of Massabielle, she said she heard the sound of two gusts of wind (coups de vent) but the trees and bushes nearby did not move. She said she saw a light in the grotto and a girl, as small as she was, dressed all in white, apart from the blue belt fastened around her waist and the golden yellow roses, one on each foot, the colour of her rosary. Bernadette tried to keep this a secret, but Toinette told her mother. After parental cross-examination, she and her sister received corporal punishment for their story.
The Lady of Guadalupe is another very interesting case.
By all means check out Vallee's book
Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, which details many of these interesting cases. A case can also be made that the "little people" or fae, are part of this phenomenon.
---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 PM ----------
I don't disagree with him. I just think that the source is our brain, not something external. Religion stems from it, and it why I think man created gods, and not the other way around.
Why discount peoples experiences over the years of being contacted by beings not from here. What our brain has done is to try and make sense of it, and in that context it becomes religious to some, and technical to others. For millennia people have reported seeing angles, demons, fairies, gods and finally men in airships and then UFOs and grays. Why the change? Because we changed. So it has to modify itself so we accept it.
Also our brains don't make physical traces appear on the ground, or involve multiple witnesses who see the same thing. Then there is the fact that you can't see something that you can't imagine, and people, including myself, have seen some things that we can't understand. Or have been given information that we didn't posses before hand.
Saying its all your brain is the easy way out. It also can't be proven any more than UFOs. Maybe less. (your brain doesn't make things appear on RADAR)
---------- Post added at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 PM ----------
I chalk all this up as unknown. In examining anomalous events and experiences there is the internal logic of the event that can be considered and discussed that in no way necessarily reflect the actual sources of the experiences whatever that may be. A skeptic or no can discuss these experiences in that light without committing to some belief about them. There is no doubt in my mind that people have these very strange experiences and I find no single reasonable explanation for them. I find them incredibly interesting nonetheless and am interested in not only what was experienced but what the person having the experience thinks and feels about it regardless of any prosaic explanation that might be able to be applied later.
I agree. It's easy to say it's in your head, until it happens to you. Then if it were in your head, it would happen all the time. And you can tell the difference. And I think it's important to note that the experience is not as important as how you
feel about the experience.
