April 18th – Colorado’s Mysterious San Luis Valley

Christopher O’Brien (www.tmv.us) has spent approx. 20 years investigating and researching bizarre unexplainable reports and supernatural activity in Colorado’s mysterious San Luis Valley.  Having interviewed thousands of individuals from different countries over a span of time discussing their personal supernatural encounters in the San Luis Valley of Colorado has given Christopher a broad base from which to observe and glean insights not available to others.  His own personal experiences combined with extensive research and the interviews referenced above have given him the foundation for his numerous books covering myth, legend, folklore, reports and experiences with multiple paranormal phenomena in Colorado’s San Luis Valley.

Most recently Christopher has embarked on developing a live feed UFO video camera matrix designed to identify, automatically redirect cameras and track the movement of non-conventional craft in the Valley’s highest reported UFO activity areas.  This new (non-government) technological approach to documenting UFO activity will hopefully advance the awareness of the UFO reality and possibly the amount of UFO activity in this highly unique geographic location.

A number of his books and recent 5 DVD video set, which he co-produced and edited took top honors at this year’s 2012 International UFO Congress film awards in Phoenix, will be available at the Forum presentation.

Christopher’s books covering unexplainable and supernatural events in the Valley:

No other North American region has a documented variety and intensity of unusual phenomena found in the San Luis Valley: the world’s largest alpine valley. Since 1989 Christopher O’Brien has documented thousands of high-strangeness reports that range from UFOs, ghosts, crypto-creatures, cattle mutilations, Indian legends, skinwalkers and sorcerers to portal areas, secret underground bases and covert military activity. This mysterious region at the top of North America has a higher incidence of UFO reports than any other area of North America and is the publicized birthplace of the “cattle mutilation” mystery. Hundreds of animals have been found strangely-slain during waves of anomalous aerial craft sightings. Is the government activity involved? Are there underground bases here? Does the military fly exotic aerial craft in this valley that is radar-invisible below 18,000 feet? These and many other questions are addressed at this Forum presentation.

Media Projects

Christopher O’Brien is an entertaining, thought-provoking speaker and has been a guest on Coast-to-Coast AM Radio; developed, supplied footage, field-produced and appeared in four segments of the Paramount television program Sightings. He has provided visual elements and appeared on UFO Hunters, Inside Edition, Extra, Showtime’s Sci-Friday Chronicles; the TBS documentary UFO: The Search; the BBC2 program Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, Nippon TV’s Special Research 2000, the Discovery Channel’s two-hour documentary, Billion $ Secret with Jane’s Defence Weekly’s Nick Cook, the TV series Exploring the Unknown, The Unexplained, Secrets of:, Profiles in Ufology, Unexplained Mysteries and in the English documentary film Mutilation Files plus others. At home in front or behind the camera, O’Brien has field-produced and directed television segments for the nationally syndicated paranormal news-magazine Strange Universe. O’Brien also produced History, Mystery and Greed: the story of Snippy the Horse, and co-produced Dead Whisper. He is a consulting producer and writer/researcher for Stage 3 [Television] Productions. Chris has co-written an action/adventure film screenplay, Deadline, inspired by his field-research that was judged Honorable Mention in the Southwest Screenwriter’s Guild Contest.

Geography

Geography of San Luis Valley The San Luis Valley (SLV), (located in South central Colorado and North central New Mexico), is the largest alpine valley in the world. Zebulon Pike was the first white American to cross the Sangre De Cristo Mountains into this 120-mile-long-by-forty-mile wide territory. The four-thousand-square-mile, semiarid desert valley floor sits at an average elevation of 7,600 feet, over a mile and a half above sea level, and averages less than five inches of rainfall per year. Its entire wishbone shape is ringed by majestic forested mountains on all sides. Along the entire eastern side of the valley stands a solid wall of rock soaring to heights of over fourteen thousand feet–the imposing Sangres de Cristos. The second youngest mountain range in the continental United States, the peaks owe their jagged appearance to their relatively young age. The red dot is Archuleta Mesa and Dulce, New Mexico; alleged location of an underground base.

History

Some of the earliest traces of man in North America can be found at the foot of the Great Sand Dunes. Man may have started coming here 10,500 years ago, before the Great Sand Dunes may have even been formed. Breathtaking spear points have been found with mastodon tusks. 12 different Indian (Southwestern, Great Basin and Plains) tribes shared the sacred “bloodless” valley; location of the “Sacred Mountain of the East” and the Sipapu, or “place of emergence.” In the mid-1600s Spanish conquistadores and missionaries followed the Rio Grande River Valley north to the Taos Pueblo, oldest continuously inhabited dwellings in North America. The gold-seeking Spanish were driven out by the Indians for 13 years in 1680, but by the early 1700s, Spanish settlers had reached what is now Colorado. Life was hard at 7,000 feet. In the 20th Century-still physically and metaphorically isolated from the outside world, this unique Spanish-American subculture has developed its own unique character. The close-knit Hispanic community is very superstitious and generally wary of outsiders, creating an effective roadblock for researchers and investigators who’ve come here attempting to uncover the many secrets this valley holds on to so tightly.

Great Sand Dunes

The Great Sand Dunes Wilderness is the world’s highest (and probably strangest) dune field. Rising over ‘700 feet above the valley floor, the age of this 50 square-mile pile of sand is still not precisely known. Official dating puts its age at less than 11,000 years, but it could be older. Some of the earliest traces of man in North America can be found within a few miles of this enigmatic wonder. Man may have visited here before the dunes were formed.

Myths and Legends

The San Luis Valley, like many regions around the world, has always had its share of documented sightings and encounters going back as far as the early 1930’s, and many of these alleged events were covered extensively by local and regional newspapers. Over the past 30 or so years there have been intense “flap” periods of increased UFO sightings and of unusual animal deaths-UADs (“mutilations”), often with simultaneous periods reporting both phenomena. Could some of the most intriguing clues we have in regards to aspects of the UFO and unusual animal death phenomena lie in the the mythic tradition of this and possibly other unique bio-regions in the southwestern United States? The Indians believe that they were led underground to safety at this location just before a cleansing period of earth changes. Most traditions mention our current time-period as being the end of the fourth world. According to their traditions, they were warned of the upcoming cataclysms by sky katchinas (fireballs?) signaling them the time to travel to the Sipapu was at hand. Once underground, it is said, they were cared for by “ant people” for several generations until it was safe to re-emerge and re-populate the new world. Just southwest of the Sipapu stand the tallest collection of peaks in the valley, the Blanca Massif which is considered to be the “sacred mountain of the east” to most Southwestern tribes. This area is where the Dine, or Navaho Indians say “star people” enter into our reality aboard “flying seed-pods.” This impressive group of mountains lies at the western edge of a maximum intensity aero-magnetic zone. The Sipapu lies just to the west of the Blanca Masiff and the Great Sand Dunes, at the eastern edge of a minimum intensity aero-magnetic zone.