Make 'contact' with alien experts at Joshua Tree event

Giant Rock Convention, Landers, 1966. (Courtesy Morongo Basin Historical Society)

Denise Goolsby
The Desert

MORONGO BASIN — Tim Gaul had an extraterrestrial experience — in sales.

Gaul, an artist who graduated from Indio High School, found out how mainstream the fascination with other possible life has become when he rolled out his newest necklace creation earlier this week at a festival: porcelain alien faces — featuring those familiar almond-shaped eyes.

He sold dozens within a few days.

Although Gaul doesn't think a bunch of E.T.s are walking the Earth, he doesn't rule out the idea that other beings exist.

"I believe there's life on other planets," he said. "Maybe there's a race of other people on other planets."

And if there are, they aren't evil.

"Or they would have taken us out already," he said.

Extraterrestrials, ancient aliens, crop circles, contact experiences and UFO sightings are among the many out-of-this-world topics that will be explored during the "Contact in the Desert" four-day conference beginning Aug. 8 in Joshua Tree.

The second such conference, it features scientists, researchers, archeologists, best-selling authors and experts featured on History Channel shows such as "Ancient Aliens" and "Hangar 1."

It's in "stark contrast to UFO conventions famous for attracting fanatics in foil hats," according to organizers.

The event coincides with the Perseid meteor shower — one of the brightest meteor showers of the year — which occurs every August, peaking this year between Aug. 10 and Aug. 13.

The location of the conference is significant.

"Joshua Tree has a long history of sightings," co-organizer Paul Andrews said. "We think that, scientifically, there's something about the area that is attractive to this phenomena."

Just as us earthlings are drawn to Joshua Tree — its other-worldly beauty amplified by a sense of spiritual serenity — visitors from other worlds might also be lured by the charm of this secluded, sprawling high desert sanctuary.

George Noory, host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show, "Coast to Coast AM;" Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, host of "Ancient Aliens;" and Erich von Däniken, author of "Chariots of the Gods," are among the headliners of the event, which features a lineup of nearly 40 speakers, including local historian Barbara Harris, who has studied the Morongo Basin communities, specifically Morongo Valley, Landers and Joshua Tree for the past 30 years.

Harris said the history of the area's connection to UFOs dates back to at least 1947 when George Van Tassel — an aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who worked for Douglas Aircraft, Hughes Aircraft and Lockheed — left Southern California's aerospace industry and moved his family to Landers, site of the mysterious Giant Rock, a massive, freestanding boulder standing seven stories tall.

The 25,000-ton behemoth, purported to be the largest freestanding boulder in the world, covers 5,800 square feet — the size of an estate-size home in the Coachella Valley.

"That's where all of the UFO stuff began," she said. "Van Tassel started having visions or connections with space beings from Venus."

During one of these encounters, he received some advice.

"They told him, 'You human beings are coming along OK as a species. However, when you finally get to the place where you 'get it' you die.' They gave him some information on how to build the integratron — a time machine or rejuvenation device to help extend human life."

The one-of-a-kind, all-wood parabolic dome-shaped structure was built on a powerful geomagnetic vortex. Construction began in 1954 and he worked on it until his sudden death in 1978.

The structure, which still stands today, is open to the public.

Van Tassel put on open-air conferences called the Interplanetary Spacecraft conventions, which began April 4, 1953.

"In the 50s and 60s, as many as 10,000 people found themselves driving to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the desert to listen to George Van Tassel speak, to listen to contactees," Harris said.

Harris believes UFO activity — and sightings — are related to specific times in history.

The upheaval of World War II and the development and use of nuclear weapons may have drawn intelligent life closer to Earth, she said.

"Certain people believe the UFOs and the E.T.s come here as a support system to the human race. They're here, basically, to help us grow as a species. They were showing up so we wouldn't destroy ourselves."

"During this time period, people were just starting to come out of their shells and talk about UFOs, talk about X-Files and talk about government conspiracies. At the same time, things were happening in Roswell," she said.

Harris said people living in the high desert at the time had such an interest in UFOs that a newsletter was published — known as The Smoke Signal — that reported specifically on UFO sightings.

Interest in aliens ebbed in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

"There are times when the subject has its peaks and its lows, depending on media coverage," said Nick Redfern, an author and lecturer who writes about a wide range of unsolved mysteries including Bigfoot, UFOs, the Lochness Monster, alien encounters and government conspiracies.

"Fortunately today, there's a great deal of media coverage and attention given to the subject. History Channel, Nat Geo, Discovery. The more attention it gets, the more people listen to it."

Redfern, who is a featured speaker at the conference, will present a lecture on "The Pyramids and the Pentagon" and a workshop, "The Real Men in Black."

In the past, the media would laugh at the subject, poke fun and make jokes about "little green men," he said.

"The stereotype is a 40-year-old UFO researcher living in mom and dad's basement," he said. "The reality is, most people, we have normal lives, but we just happen to be interested in unusual subjects. It's not like it's an obsession. It's a fascination which I've made into a job."

If you go

Contact in the Desert

Joshua Tree Retreat Center, 59700 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree

Date: Aug. 8 - Aug. 11

Cost of four-day pass: Single: $250; Couple: $475

All lectures and panels are included. Workshops, intensives, tours and meal plans sold separately.

To order tickets, call (760) 365-8371 or visit contactinthedesert.com

High desert sightings: Something is out there

Barbara Harris, who is giving guided tours and a lecture Friday at Giant Rock as part of the Contact in the Desert conference, says local residents placed a 1947 Crosley car on the top of the huge boulder by nailing spikes into the rock and lifting it up with rope, block and tackle. This photo appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in 1951.

Bruce Fessier
Desert Sun

Full disclosure: I saw a UFO one afternoon in the summer of 1981.

I was driving through the curvy section of Highway 62 between Morongo Valley and Desert Hot Springs when a winged vessel, the likes of which I had never seen, flew between —not over —the hills, sandwiching the road. It paused and hovered for a moment, like a helicopter, and then accelerated faster than a Lear jet. By the time I got down the hill a minute later, it was gone. Without a trace.

I told a grocer in Morongo Valley about it and he wasn’t fazed. He said lots of people saw UFOs there. He attributed it to the Marine base in Twenty­nine Palms trying out experimental vessels.

I accepted that and just waited for that flying vehicle to be publicly unveiled. Three decades later, I’m still waiting.

That’s why I don’t think of the people attending this weekend’s Contact in the Desert convention at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center a bunch of kooks. I actually felt more sane after interviewing one of the speakers, Barbara Harris, chairwoman of the Morongo Basin Historical Society, who will give a lecture and tour of Giant Rock near Landers on Friday morning.

“Where you said you saw that, I have documentation,” she said. “Probably in the ’70s, there was a list where they had watchers who were calling in —a constant flow of sightings in that particular area. In their little town newspaper, people were writing what they were seeing and all these people were talking about the UFOs in that area. So that particular space, it’s very common for sightings.”

I lived in Joshua Tree in 1981 and have made regular trips to Joshua Tree National Park ever since. I attended the Joshua Tree Retreat Center when it was the Institute of Mentalphysics and I heard the story of how its founder, Edwin Dingle, was guided to that spot by a guru in China and how Frank Lloyd Wright and his son, Lloyd, designed the complex on what has been called an energy vortex.

I had heard Joshua Tree has the highest rate of UFOs in the nation, but never knew who measured those things. Harris, 56, said what drew Dingle to Joshua Tree also inspired Cabot Yerxa to build his pueblo in Desert Hot Springs, George Van Tassel to build his Integratron near Giant Rock and hold UFO conventions there in the 1950s, and actor Ted Markland to take celebrities to his hill in west Joshua Tree National Park to hear the voice of an ethereal being.

“The high desert has a special, unique, you might say ‘attraction’ within the world,” Harris explained. “There is a special ley line called the 33rd parallel. It’s used in astronomy to arrange where you mark your sightings to the North Star. The 33rd parallel is really an auspicious type of parallel line in the world and for some reason it’s very provocative and has a lot of synchronicities. The area up here in the high desert, we sit on the 33rd parallel and it’s noted for the most UFO sightings in the world. It sits on the same parallel as Roswell (New Mexico). It’s also the same parallel where the Japanese bomb went off. It also sits on the same parallel as the Bermuda Triangle. It’s also on the same parallel line where the Phoenix lights have happened.”

I noted Joshua Tree also is a popular place to take hallucinogenics such as magic mushrooms and peyote. The late Markland hosted Timothy Leary’s wedding at his Yucca Valley home with massive doses of LSD. I asked if that might be partially why the high desert leads the nation in UFO sightings.

Harris, like my Morongo Valley grocer, thinks it has more to do with the area’s proximity to the Marine base. But she won’t rule out Van Tassel’s assertion that he received the technology to build his Integratron from Venus.

Based on science?

Van Tassel worked on the Integratron from 1954 until his death in 1978 —two weeks before it was scheduled to open. He built it, partially upon the research of engineers Nikola Tesla and Georges Lakhovsky, as a “nonferromagnetic” structure to study the rejuvenation of people’s cells, anti-gravity and time travel. Howard Hughes reportedly invested in his experiments.

Harris doesn’t lecture on Van Tassel because she says he pulled some fraudulent stunts to attract business to further his research. But the Integratron is an engineering marvel and many visitors say its sound baths have therapeutic value. Harris notes the technology for his research didn’t exist before Van Tassel claimed to have had contact with someone from Venus.

Harris, who co-owns Adset Graphics in Yucca Valley, prefers to talk about Giant Rock, the seven-story, 5,800 square-foot free-standing boulder. Nomadic Indians used it as a site to contact the dead, Harris said. Legend has it that a Hopi shaman predicted before 1920 that man’s destiny in the 21st century would be foretold by the way Giant Rock would split. If it split in half it would mean the Earth Mother would not accept prayers for mankind. But if it split on the side, then man’s prayers would be answered and a new era would be revealed.

On Feb. 23, 2000, the Hi-Desert Star reported that a slice of the boulder split off at 8:20 a.m. on Feb. 21 after a group led by spiritual leader Shri Naath Devi spent two days praying and meditating at Giant Rock. Devi then declared “a great shift” was at hand.

Harris has interviewed a woman at that prayer session. She doubts they fulfilled the legend.

“To me, it was some people capitalizing on the moment,” she says. “This rock is millions of years old, 25,000 tons, seven stories high. It defied millions of years of wear and tear. Why did it pick Feb. (21), 2000 to split?”

She’ll explore that and her own 30-year study of UFOs in the high desert at Contact in the Desert. She’ll help kick off a three-day event featuring some of the biggest names in science and metaphysics to explore ancient legends. Harris says 500 people are expected.

Space lineage

Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, the star and consulting producer of the TV show “Ancient Aliens,” who is leading a workshop at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, says he’s never seen a conference quite like this one.

“This is a really, really great conference to attend if you’re interested in talking in person to the people that have appeared on ‘Ancient Aliens,’ ”said Tsoukalos, an associate of “Chariots of the Gods” author Erich von Daniken. “I am always incredibly grateful to be not only invited to speak at these things, but also to go to them and meet people interested in these topics because, back in the early ’90s, the average age of conferences like this was in the 80s. Now there are young people coming and that to me clearly indicates a craving for knowledge —knowledge that clearly exists.”

Tsoukalos believes von Daniken’s theory that ancient aliens have been seeding mankind for centuries. He says their visitations are the reason there are missing links in the evolution of species and paradigm leaps in civilizations. He also believes aliens are still visiting our planet.

“According to the Ancient Astronaut theory I subscribe to, we are essentially their offspring,” said Tsoukalos. “We’re all hybrid beings —half human, half extraterrestrial. This will one day be determined (by) geneticists. So, if you’re a parent and you have kids, you’re interested in what they’re doing for the rest of your life. So, I think that is the reason they’re still here —to keep an eye on our progress or to simply see how did the ‘experiment’ work out?”

Tsoukalos doesn’t necessarily believe we’ve had contact from Venus. He doesn’t want to know where the aliens are from because, he said, “That to me adds another level of speculation that actually turns off the general public to our ideas. I think it is better to approach the general public with just the idea that we’ve been visited.”

He’s excited about the gathering of such other experts in their fields as Jason Martell, George Noury, Michael Cremo and Graham Hancock. There are 31 speakers giving lectures and workshops and Michael C. Luckman, founder of the Cosmic Majority, will do a live stream. The event also coincides with the Perseid Meteor Shows, which are always spectacular in the high desert.

So, I can agree with Tsoukalos when he says, “It’s definitely going to be a star-studded event.”

Encountering the Integratron in the Mojave Desert

Out There Southern California

Three sisters take over the dome in Landers, where therapeutic 'sound baths,' time travel and who knows what else are said to be possible

By Scott Gold, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

If you set off one morning and drive into the desert, past swirling dust devils and Wile E. Coyote rock formations, and then you drive some more, all the way until the paved road ends, you might find yourself at the Karl sisters' place, where time travel might, or might not, be possible.

Here's Joanne Karl now, at 53, the oldest of the trio, striding across the compound. Today, she's all desert flower -- billowing dresses and sun-bleached tresses. Like the others, she's strayed from her roots.

The sisters grew up in the New York suburbs. Their father worked in plastics; Saturday meant the country club and Sundays meant church. They also had a whimsical mother who, at 79, has yet to acknowledge that questions have been raised about the existence of Santa Claus.

"Be bold," Jackie Karl told them time and again, "and mighty forces will come to your aid."

That, topped off with a collective case of wanderlust, helps explain how Joanne, Nancy and Patty Karl came to own 11 acres of unforgiving Mojave Desert moonscape -- and one 38-foot-tall, blindingly white dome called the Integratron.

Modeled after the Tabernacle that some believe was built by Moses and built atop an unexplained spike in the magnetic field, the place might, or might not, have been imbued with healing powers -- and that's not all. The dome's architect also believed that he could harness energy, creating what he called a "proprietary frequency" and distorting the space-time continuum.

The sisters want to give it a shot. If only they could figure out how to turn the thing on.

More than 1,000 devotees visit each year. About a third are musicians who record here, taking advantage of the wooden dome's unusual acoustics. Most, however, come to kind of be, and to undergo therapeutic "sound baths," which Joanne describes as "kindergarten nap time of the third kind."

"OK," Joanne says, climbing a steep ladder into the rotunda. "Here we go."

As you lie on the floor, Joanne begins to circle the rim of quartz bowls with a wooden pestle -- the same principle, she'll explain later, as when you used to wet your finger and "play" the rims of grandma's crystal glasses. "Take the deepest breath you've taken today," she says, tenderly.

The quartz begins to sing. Here's where the similarities to grandma's crystal end.

It's 105 degrees outside, and sunlight is streaming in through 15 windows ringing the rotunda. Somehow, it is not hot, not in here. The notes clash over your head, some in breathtaking harmony, some in startling dissonance. Just when you're starting to see patterns in the grain of the wood in the soaring ceiling, it's over.

There is silence, and no one moves. The acoustics are so good you can hear a man swallow from across the room. It has been either the shortest or the longest half-hour of your life.

"It's a cleansing," said David Williams, 48, reverently.

He's a recording engineer who recently underwent a sound bath; he's here to record an album for a Los Angeles band called Finn MacCool. "It's like you've had a massage -- but no one has touched you."

Southern California, of course, has no shortage of New Age gurus pleased to pump you full of herbs and plunk you in baths of minerals and shoot lasers into a variety of orifices, often with dubious results. And yet, somehow -- even way the heck out here in the wind-swept town of Landers, between Joshua Tree and Big Bear -- the Integratron draws a crowd.

A couple weekends ago, it was 60 emergency responders training in nonconfrontational mediation. Shortly before that, it was acupuncturists from Boston, who took a sound bath with needles sticking out of them.

The crowds are drawn in part by the perceived healing, but largely by the site's zany history, which starts with its architect, an iconoclast named George Van Tassel.

In the midst of a career in aerospace, Van Tassel effectively dropped out. In 1947, he leased four square miles of desert from the federal government and built an "Interplanetary Airport" and a tiny restaurant, famous for his wife's apple pie, near fabled Giant Rock, a seven-story-high boulder that has since split in two.

Van Tassel claimed to have been visited by aliens in 1952, and thousands began making pilgrimages to his "Spacecraft Conventions" in the desert. He said the aliens had imparted information regarding time travel and rejuvenation.

Van Tassel began building the Integratron. He never quite finished, however, and died in 1978. Everyone who had worked with him left immediately, Joanne said, and his diagrams and documents vanished. Someone even ripped out the copper coiling that was the heart of the purported time-traveling aspect of the dome.

The dome sat unused and forgotten until 1987, when two investors bought it and opened it to the public for the first time, though only on occasion.

The sisters, meanwhile, were spending an increasing amount of time in California, particularly Nancy and Joanne. Nancy had worked in dot-com marketing and Joanne in heart monitoring systems. But they were burned out and started running adventure retreats for professionals -- mountain treks, dolphin swims and desert outings.

The first time they visited the Integratron, they broke in. Knowing none of its history, they began visiting regularly. Often it seemed they were the only ones who ever came; sometimes they would arrive and a coffee cup they'd left on a fence post was in the same place they'd left it months earlier.

"When we were here, no one knew where we were or what we were doing," Joanne said. "It was like being on another planet."

They began to spruce up the place, planting pomegranates and plums, and Joanne and Nancy bought it with two other investors in 2000. (They won't reveal the price but say it was less than a typical house in Los Angeles.) Three years ago, they bought out their partners, and Patty, who still lives back East, became the third owner.

Since then, the sisters have learned more about the Integratron, though there is still plenty of mystery. They found an underground bunker, for instance, and old-timers in the area have suggested that there is more below ground on the property than is visible on the surface of the sand and gravel.

The big remaining hurdle is figuring out if they can do what Van Tassel never did: turn on the Integratron, spinning a system of spokes circling the dome, generating electricity, capturing it in wiring and -- probably not, but just maybe -- tinkering with time. If they can retrace his steps and rebuild the destroyed copper coil, they'll give it a shot, Joanne said.

Van Tassel claimed that the aliens had told him that humans were "remedial" -- and that the Integratron could extend life, allowing us to become better educated.

"I think we can all embrace that. People are starving. We are at war. We're morons," Joanne said, laughing. "Do I want to live to be 800 years old? Not really. But it would be fun to see what happens if we try."

Carlos Coyan of Rancho Cucamonga meditates as more than a dozen people gather at the Integratron in Landers for a "sound bath." "I would describe it as the fusion of art, science and magic," said co-owner Joanne Karl.