Day 4 - Sedona Part 2

Click here to see my photo album of our Sedona visit.

After our visit by Tom Dongo we drove out to see some of the scenes around Sedona. Although, again, the UFO link wasn't too apparent this was one of my favorite parts of the tour just for the sheer beauty of the location. Dongo had made a claim that, often, UFO's were seen over the buttes and mesa's around Sedona because, supposedly, they were powering up from the geomagnetic fields emanating from these structures. Well...maybe, I suppose.

My new hat.

During this visit I bought a new hat from a local American Indian vendor (pictured above). It was a cheesy little hat that said Sedona on it but it's shape and function were good and it got me by. After snapping some good shots and seeing the magnificent beauty Sedona had to offer we went back to the resort and the rest of the day was ours. Tony offered to drive us into the town, if we wanted, so we could shop or take a tour, but only Van, Bonnie, and I took him up on it. There I got some decent swag, for me, my wife, and daughter, then Van and I signed up for a Jeep tour at A Day in the West tours. Bonnie had abandoned us for an airplane tour to the Grand Canyon! but Van and I didn't want to pay the price tag for that big of an event. At A Day in the West we perused the tours they offered and were very excited to see a Jeep tour that catered to the UFO and Ghost phenomena around Sedona! Unfortunately, however, this particular tour was a "specialty" tour that had to be booked a few hours in advance and Van and I didn't have the time to wait. We opted for a semi-extreme tour that was going to happen in about 30 minutes and we figured we had enough time for that tour and to get back to the resort for diner.

Another, older couple had signed up for the same tour and once our tour guide, Amber, arrived, we loaded up and headed out to the desert outside of Sedona. Amber was a recent addition to Sedona having moved here from California about three years prior seeking a change-in-pace. She was a small slip of a girl who, I have to say, I didn't really think could handle the tougher parts of the Jeep tour, but she seriously proved me wrong. She handled that Jeep like a pro, even in the hardest elements of the desert. In looking back we should have gone for the extreme-extreme tour because the best parts of the Jeep ride were near-vertical descensions and ascensions within the desert environment! The tour was great, if a bit chilly (I was wearing shorts and seriously thought it was going to cause my cold to come back three-fold but I guess the healing powers of Sedona fought it off!) Amber told us about some of the fauna around Sedona but, unfortunately, we didn't see any snakes, rats, deer, scorpions, or spiders on our drive.  I did ask Amber about the supposed mysticism surrounding Sedona, such as the claims of UFO's and the so-called vortices that permeated the area. She gave me a good, solid answer, saying that the hype was seriously overly done for the sake of tourism but that some strange events did, indeed, occur with regular frequency. This was the part I liked...talking to a local who, from what I could tell, would give me the straight-talk about Sedona. Amber was skeptical of most of the claims surrounding the spot but said nearly every one of her friends had some sort of paranormal, or inexplicable, experience within their lives. Also, she said, she and a friend were hiking in Secret Valley (not so secret, really, everybody knew of it) and they saw a couple of black helicopters buzz them overhead. The 'copters had no markings and seemed to hover overhead just long enough to make note of her and her companion before moving on.

More pictures like this on my Picasa album, linked below.

During the tour we convinced Amber to drive us out to the Bradshaw Ranch which sits in the middle of the desert where, it was claimed, some pretty extreme events of high-strangeness occurred. The stories surrounding the Bradshaw Ranch mirrored those of The Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. Tom Dongo had made several claims and had many stories about this property. The location had recently been abandoned by the owner and it was now in possession of the United States government who had cordoned it off and did not allow trespassers, an action that added to the mystery and conspiracy surrounding the property. Personally I think the location was just shut down for legal issues but hey a good fantasy always brings the attention, and sometimes the money. We could only get within a mile of the ranch and Amber wouldn't take us closer for fear of being arrested or fined for trespassing. Van tried, several times and for a LONG time, to convince her to drive us back to the location later that night so we could sneak a closer look, but Amber shot him down (Van can be embarrassingly persistant sometimes, and this was one of those times.)

As the tour ended and Amber drove us back into Sedona we shared some ghost stories. Van told the others about the haunted (real haunted) house he owns, and Amber shared some of her own stories. We got back to Sedona just in time to have Tony pick us up, and we had a good diner, again at the Airport Cafe. One more sky watch that night (nothing really to report, there) while Tony, Van, and I shared a beer and got to know each other a little better.

Tony's a great guy. Later on Terry, one of the other tour guests who had been on nearly 23 of Tony's tours in America and in Europe, had shared a few stories about how Tony helps WWII vets find locations and re-connect with their experiences in Europe during his WWII tours. Tony know's his stuff when it comes to tours, and the sharing of stories about family and other experiences was a highlight of our Sedona visit. It was sort of an off-the-record time with just us guys kicking back and sharing a beer while kicking around some of this paranormal stuff between us. We crashed after about an hour or so, and woke up the next day ready to visit the Grand Canyon.

Click here to see my photo album of our Sedona visit.

Day 4 - Sedona Part 1, The Speaker

*Warning: this post will have a LOT more cursing in it and is rife with personal opinion, angry rantings, and raw disbelief. There will be a lot of people out there who will not agree with some of the things I say in this post. There will be many more who do. Also, this one may be rather long.*


Click here to see my photo album of our Sedona visit.

Day four started with breakfast at the airport cafe on Airport Mesa then a presentation by a one-Tom Dongo. Tom, our guest for the day, was billed as a "Paranormal or UFO expert" on a few places on the Internet that I visited prior to the trip, and when I went to Tom's web page in the weeks prior to the tour I was dismayed to see a multitude of pictures of orbs. Orbs, orbs, and more orbs. Now, to say I'm not a believer in orbs is an understatement. I do believe that a very tiny percentage of orbs are paranormal in nature but 99.9999% of every single orb caught on camera and claimed to be a paranormal phenomenon is 100% bullshit. I guess it's my understanding of digital photography and what causes an orb, and how the little computer within the camera interprets dust, moisture, and insects, attribute to my disbelief in orbs as being spirits of the dead, but believers do NOT want to hear that their captured image of proof of the existence of life after death is actually just a little bit of the most common element on Earth....dirt. Believers in orbs tend to get offended at that, but before I get off on a rant about orbs, back to Tom.

Our group sat on a small outlook that was part of our resort, peering out over Sedona while Tom sat near a table, holding a backpack in his lap the entire time. He had with him a binder of pictures that he would juggle, flipping to the page he would want to show us as he told us his presentation, (overall Travis Walton did a better job with his slide-show presentation). Tony had introduced Van and I to Tom as ghost hunters so Tom, at the start of his presentation, made a comment about how we would "understand" what he was talking about on a variety of his subject matters. And off he went.

Tom Dongo during his presentation.

Tom showed us pictures of some rather mundane things that he was pawning off as being paranormal. For instance he showed us a picture of a dog, a Husky by the look of the animal, and in the picture the dog's eyes were "glowing" (see below). As soon as I saw the picture I thought, "Oh, what a beautiful Husky," oh but Tom had a different interpretation for it. According to Tom a friend of his and some other people were out in the desert when they came across this animal at night and took some pictures, including the one he was showing us. The friend stated that the animal did not run, it did not flee, simply regarded the people as they moved past with mild interest, (I'm thinking "pet" here all-day-long! A pet would be accustomed to people and not run when it saw humans. der!). Now, according to Tom, this animal was actually a Timber Wolf!, a species of wolf who had been extinct in the Sedona area for many decades and that he had shown the picture to an "eye surgeon" who said that it was impossible for an animals eyes to glow "like that."  I think this so-called eye surgeon needs to have his own fucking vision checked! Later I tried to do some serious research in how to tell a Husky from a Wolf and came up pretty thin. I'd thought there would be bone structure differences and such but I found answers such as, "A Husky is tame. A Wolf isn't." Jenius. Nevertheless, Tom's paranormal Timber Wolf picture and the story that accompanied it, I found to be utter bullshit. What I saw in that picture was a Husky who's retina were reflecting back the flash from a camera to create a glow.....like below. Anybody who owns a dog will know what I'm talking about. Sorry, Tom. Not paranormal.

Tom's "Timber Wolf" picture above. Puppy Timber Wolves (aka, my dogs) below. Now that's paranormal!

Well the presentation went on and the claims became more and more outrageous as it did. A few things about Tom that Van and I both noticed; Van pointed out that Tom appeared to have an "expert" for everything, such as the "eye surgeon" who analyzed the Husky photo. I also noticed that when Tom wanted to validate something, something usually absurd, he would look you in the eye and say very dramatically and with the appropriate pause before hand, "That's real. Oh yeah, that's real."

Tom was obsessed with orbs and he showed us countless pictures of them. I'd imagine that living in the desert you'd get a lot of orbs in pictures since it's so dry and dusty, but some of his more outrages claims where that you could see faces in the orbs. Another claim was that he'd seen a picture of an orb that had a little door, or portal, within it and a tiny alien was either climbing out or in of the orb. An alien climbing in or out of the orb?? Like it's a little tiny spacecraft??!! later on I told this claim to a friend of mine and his expression in response looked like I'd just shit in his hand. Now, for as ridiculous as this sounds you have to keep in mind that Dongo was 100% serious in these claims.  I had heard the "faces" claim before in my years of ghost hunting, with some people claiming that the face of Jesus or Mary appeared to them within orbs, but the orb with the tiny door and alien had me crapping my pants. After his barrage of orb pictures, Tom produced several other pictures of supposed paranormal activity, such as the Husky picture, and many light-reflecting pictures taken with the Sun in the shot. These reflecting pictures were supposed to show angels descending from Heaven and I have to admit some of them looked pretty amusing, but when you're taking a picture of the Sun the light and heat are going to play no-end of tricks on your film and camera. As we went on Tom just kept shitting claims out of his mouth about himself and Sedona, almost as if a flying saucer was going to appear behind him and puke out several orbs that were going to fly around Tom's head while he spoke.

Near the end of his presentation Tom produced two more astounding (and when I say "astounding" I mean bullshit) photographs. I can't recall the details surrounding the first one, I think I blanked them out in my utter disbelief of the claim around it, but it was a picture of Jesus Christ walking along someone else in a robe, an apostle, perhaps, seemingly discussing something. The claim was that this was an actual photograph of Jesus Christ. Of course Tom "validated" the claim by saying he'd had a religious expert look at the picture and that this expert was unable to explain or disprove the photograph. Now I was born and raised Lutheran and I've seen no-end of religious artwork very very very similar to what Tom showed us, typically on the bulletins of Easter or Lent church services, but Tom was convinced this was an actual photograph of Jesus Christ taken in modern day, or at least he was trying to convince us it was.

Finally Tom showed us a picture of an alien that was very high quality in design and execution. This item looked like an Olan Mills photograph, a large profile picture of the alien as it was holding up it's hand as if to say, "Howdy," with a soft-light source streaming in from the side to display the image of the being. Tom claimed this was a genuine photograph of an alien. Although it was an impressive picture I seriously doubted it was a genuine alien photograph. My suspicions were realized later on during the tour when we went to the Little Al'e'Inn and there, on the wall of the Inn, was the same picture. Well, Tom, seems someone copied your picture of Klatu! 

During the presentation I kept my thoughts and beliefs to myself, only asking the question of what type of camera Tom and his associates used to capture the orbs. I knew the answer before he told it, that he used the cheapest point-and-shoot camera's he could find because they produced the most orbs. "Produced" is right. Outside of that I didn't attack his claims or question them, mostly because there were a few people in our group who seemed to be genuinely interested or even believing of Tom's claims, and since they were on this tour to enjoy it as much as I was I didn't think it would be right to attack one of the guests and piss on everybody else's parade.

Not-so here on my own blog. The claims that Tom was shitting out of his mouth were absurd and I can honestly say they were the most absurd I'd ever heard some one say to me face-to-face. Later that night Tony approached Van and I and asked what we thought of Tom's claims. I looked Tony in the eye and with an enormous amount of self-restraint said, "I'm skeptical about most of it." Tony nodded as if he expected the answer from me.

As Tom's presentation ended we packed up and drove out to the desert. I honestly can't remember why we went where we went but Tom said it had some sort of paranormal link. When we got there we had to park in a lot a fair ways distant from the actual location and no one on the tour was too interested in hiking the distance to the location itself. Actually I think Tom said we couldn't get there, maybe because the government had shut it down or something like that. Oh well, it was still a nice drive into the desert and it had been a pleasant day, weather-wise. We did some more activities during the day in Sedona which I'll relate in my next post, but since this one is so long I'll break here to avoid boring you. And if you're Tom Dongo....sorry Tom, but I disagree with many, if not all, of your claims, buddy.

Click here for my photo album of pictures taken during our day in Sedona.

Day 3 - Meteor Crater and Drive to Sedona AZ

The next morning we got up and after a quick continental breakfast loaded into the van and headed toward Meteor Crater. When we settled for the drive I asked my fellow tour members if I'd seemed snippish toward Travis Walton the night before and they said no, that I seemed just genuinely curious and didn't see where Walton would have taken my question offensively. Ah well. I let the matter drop.

At Meteor Crater I was again introduced to a vastness of the desert that took my breath away. What was funny, too, was the fact that one of the reasons why my wife didn't come on this trip was because she said, "There is nothing out there except dirt and a big hole in the ground." Although she was talking about the Grand Canyon her words were not lost on me as we saw Meteor Crater for the first time. The museum at the crater was pretty impressive but, only Van, Tony, and I took the tour around part of the rim. The tour was interesting and we got some pretty good, scenic shots. While on the rim tour Tony walked with me and asked me about what had happened with Travis the night before (he'd heard me comment about it in the van.) I explained that I think Walton mis-interpreted my question and took a bit of offense to it. I told Tony that I just chalked it up to a conflict in personalities and little more.

The remains of the only cabin on the rim of the crater. The cabin was used for a variety of purposes until it was burned down by some workers. The high-velocity winds of the area did the rest. (Curtesy TST.)

Click here for my online album of Meteor Crater and Sedona.

Again there was little UFO connection with Meteor Crater but it was an astronomical event and a very good stop. Once back in the car we were heading to Sedona and I must say everything you've heard about the natural beauty and majesty of the place is 100% true. It took my breath away just driving there through Oak Creek Canyon, and once we arrived at Sedona and saw the Painted Desert I was in love. The Southwest Mecca of New Age'y'ness Sedona also has a blend of old Western American style that I think my wife and kids would have enjoyed. To me the scenery was better than any beach I'd been to.

After we arrived and settled in our hotel we had a little bit of time before diner. Tony drove us back to the shopping strip of Sedona for a little time there and while walking among the quaint little shops and touring businesses a small rain shower rolled in. It rained a good 10 minutes but when it was done the residents and tourists of Sedona were treated to a majestic double rainbow the likes of which I have never seen in my life. It arched over one side of the valley, a full rainbow so striking even I, with my mild color blindness, could clearly see the colorful bands. The scene literally brought tears to my eyes but then, I realized, they probably do this type of thing for all the tourists. I figure the rainbow is actually created by some illusionary device that they turn on once in a while just to impress people! (I'm being sarcastic, of course.)

The double rainbow over Sedona. I'm typically not very spiritual or religious, but this was something stunning to see and experience.

That night we had a small sky watch. It was a bit of a bummer for my first watch in Sedona because it was really cold outside. Myself, Van, Bonnie, and Linda were joined by two other people, a young man and woman who Tony had arranged to guide us through the skywatching process. Tony, himself, had to drive into Sedona for some batteries for two pair of night vision goggles he'd brought. According to our sky-watch guides (Jeff was the guy, I believe, but I never caught the name of the girl), aside from looking for actual flying saucers you want to look for high-altitude objects moving across the sky. Many of these objects were probably satellites but satellites move the same path and direction every time (east - to - west like the sun, I believe) and they do not turn, so with this criteria in mind we kept an eye out for objects moving in different directions or objects that turned. 

We actually saw some objects that fit these standards. We saw high-altitude lights that would bank or sway. Objects that blinked out of existence and such. It was interesting but, for me, it was still just lights in the sky. I wanted to see a physical craft and that wasn't in the stars, that night. Off to bed and a full day in Sedona tomorrow.

Side-note: I was researching the claim that all satellites travel in the same direction across the night sky and this claim is false. Only geosynchronous satellites travel east-to-west. Depending on their mission parameters, satellites can and often do travel in various directions, including pole-to-pole. The reason why I thoroughly looked into this question was because I was sitting on my back patio last night around 10:15 pm and observed a very bright-but distant light traveling directly over my zenith in a path from south-west to north-east. The light was extremely bright but not flashing as the lights from an aircraft would. After researching satellite flight paths I realized what I was observing was, indeed, probably just a satellite.