Kembara Langit - A Journey Into Twilight

This blog is dedicated to the study, documentation as well as any possible analysis of what I consider to be the most intriguing things in life. UFO's; odd scientific/technological/philosophical break through; pondering on the super/preter-natural; tinkering on plausible conspiracies. The type of things that defies the limitations of science, stretch the very depths of our imagination and ultimately shows us that we basically know very little about this universe called LIFE. This blog is thus not meant to provide or pretend to provide definitive answers for anything.

December 24, 2011

Time To Relax?

The holidays are coming aren’t they? So maybe it’s time to relax the curious, ever intrigued mind and have a bit of fun. Let emotions runs free, like this silly cat does for example...

Enjoy the holidays. Let’s hope for tons of intriguing sightings around the globe this New Year’s Eve.

December 07, 2011

The Pyramid Story

Somewhere in 2011, there was information circulating in the local ‘UFO rumor mill’ of a group of people making interesting (well, in their perspectives, it is more like earth-shattering than just interesting) discoveries in West Java Province.

Contact was also initiated with BETA UFO by one of the group ‘alleged’ member (I cannot remember the exact date), calling for support and cooperation. It received mixed reaction among BETA UFO members, but I never recalled any formal agreement to positively respond to the call.

Turangga Seta

The main hypothesis presented by the group called Turangga Seta is that there are several mountains/hills in Indonesia that are actually man-made mounds. To be exact, that they are actually ancient pyramids rather than natural constructs. This is further hypothesized as ‘proof’ of an alleged highly-advanced ancient civilization that once flourished in the archipelago, and supposedly became the real source of the Atlantis myth.

Turangga Seta promotion of its pyramid hypothesis

The Atlantis Argument

Not long before the circulation of Turangga Seta’s hypothesis, somewhere in 2009, there was also the weird upsurge of an idea that Atlantis could actually be located in Indonesia. For some uncanny reasons, it also received quite a lot of attention from the local press.

Two books, written by foreign authors, became something of a cornerstone in the argument despite the lack of tangible facts/prove (as well as good translation) supporting the books. These are the writings of Arysio des Santos (Atlantis, The Lost Continent Finally Found, The Definitive Localization of Plato’s Los Civilization- 2005) and Stephen Oppenheimer (Eden in The East - 1999) which were translated to Indonesian language in 2010.

The Latest Hype

The hypothesis has recently re-surfaced with more intense local press coverage and hype, this time presented by a different group (reportedly named as the Ancient Catastrophic or Ancient Cataclysmic Catastrophe Team) that also -strangely enough- received support from Andi Arief, an official with the current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration, formally in charge as the President’s Special Staff on Natural Disasters. Coincidentally, the man is also renowned for a score of controversial statements in the national press.

Speaking to the local press in late November 2011, the man explained that his Ancient Catastrophic Team has found indications that there are at least four possible locations of pyramids in Java Island. One in Mt. Sadahurip, Garut Regency, West Java Province; one other in Mt. Putri, also in Garut; and two others at Mt. Kaledong and Mt. Haruman, all in West Java Province. According to Arif all of the mountains have shown indication of being man-made structures.

Widely publicized photograph of Mt. Sadahurip by Turangga Seta Group

So far, the only detailed information available publicly of whatever tests have been done on the alleged pyramids in West Java is given by the Turanga Seta group. Allegedly, geo-electrical testing at Mt. Sadahurip suggested that there are artificial structures beneath the mountain’s surface.

A graphic illustration of the alleged geo-electrical testing result at Mt. Sadahurip.

Where Will It Leads To?

Where will all this go is anyone's guess, but it is interesting to note that someone in the government is actually interested in the matter. Of course, it could all end up as nothing more than a politically-calculated window dressing scheme.

Rampant corruption and collusion have made it rather hard for the average Indonesian to feel proud about anything related to the country nowadays. An alleged finding of the country’s ‘glorious past’ surely wouldn't hurt any parties keen on garnering support from the cynical public.

Strange Skyscraper Photographs

It doesn’t happen often that reports of alleged UFO sightings in the country would come from witnesses inside or around skyscrapers. February 2011 saw one of these rare cases, in the Kelapa Gading Sub-District, North Jakarta region, where an unidentified silvery and seemingly spherical object was photographed by 2 different people in the sky near several buildings in the area.

Although not all of the buildings in the February case are actual skyscrapers, it does fit the emerging pattern of sightings in the city’s bustling centers.

October 2010 saw at least 2 other cases in Jakarta. One of which was also supplemented with photographs. These earlier cases seemed to pose the same intriguing possibility that more and more UFOs are actually appearing in the city area, rather than just on the country side.

One could only speculate as to why these UFOs would ‘expose’ themselves in Jakarta’s crowded business center areas, with so much possibility of being sighted and photographed. Did they actually ‘want’ to be seen and photographed?

The main facts of the 2010 reports, as received by BETA UFO, are as follows:
22 October 2010

Location: Standard Chartered Tower building; 31st floor; Jln. Prof. Dr. Satrio; Karet Kuningan Sub-District; South Jakarta region; Jakarta.
Time: 5 PM


Description: A witness, taking photographs from his office window, saw several strange objects appearing in the sky. One of the object looked like a Hang Glider/Delta Plane while about 6 others looked like black dots. The ‘Hang Glider-like’ object was observed moving upward & disappeared into the gathering storm clouds while the ‘dots’ seemed to moved away from the witness’ view.

26 October 2010

Location: The 21st floor of an unknown office building in Kemayoran District; Central Jakarta region; Jakarta (exact location unknown).
Time: 1 PM
Description: A witness took some pictures from the 21st floor window of an office building. Some of the photographs supposedly showed at least 12 strange objects hovering in the sky. When the photographs were zoomed they allegedly showed objects shaped like a rocket, a sphere & a Saturn-like sphere, with legs protruding from underneath it.

December 06, 2011

The Central Java Circles

January 2011 saw the occurrence of one of the most widely reported phenomenon regarding UFOs in Indonesia in the last decade: Crop Circles in the Central Java region. Although not a typical UFO sighting/encounter type, the phenomena still stirred the biggest attention to date regarding the general theme of UFOs.

Local Ufology group, BETA UFO, first received the information of a crop circle pattern reportedly appearing somewhere in the Central Java region between 23 and 24 January 2011. It wasn’t until later in the day, after the buzz of confusing information on where exactly the pattern had emerged, did BETA UFO managed to get a fixed idea of the location.

There were three identified locations of the Crop Circles, that were investigated by BETA UFO as early as 24 January 2011, as follows:

Jogo Tirto Village, Berbah District, Sleman Regency; Yogyakarta Special Region (D.I.Y.) [See photograph below]

Srimartani Village, Piyungan District, Bantul Regency; D.I.Y. [See photograph below]

Banyusari Village, Tegalrejo District, Magelang Regency; Central Java Province (Jateng). [See photograph below]

While details of BETA UFO’s investigation will be published in a separate special report it can be said here that the phenomena in Central Java did show intriguing features commonly attributed to genuine Crop Circles. In a wider sense, it has also brought up interesting reaction from local scientists as well as putting the topic of ‘Ufology’ quite abruptly at the forefront of public attention.

Stay tuned for the special report to come.

November 09, 2011

Changes

I suppose anybody could clearly see, whether they have been checking up on this blog regularly or not, that not much new things have been posted all along 2011. The main issue has been the lack of time (and not lack of reports or interest). I guess every blogger in the world has that problem or at least has cited it often.

Nevertheless, I have updated the blog format and added the 'label index' somewhere down below to hopefully give anyone blog walking here a decently pleasant experience. I have also prepared new stuffs to live up to what I said in a 2010 post about getting new posts up.

Lastly, I don't know how informative or useful this blog has been so please do drop a few line in this post's comment box or the shoutbox somewhere at the bottom if you have something to say about that or the blog in general. I don't like e-mails so let's just stick to the commentary/shout boxes shall we?

So, some changes have been made. Hopefully for the better.

February 20, 2011

Strange Lights in Bandung

On June 22 strange light orbs-like objects were witnessed in the eastern sky of Bandung City, West Java Province, by a single witness. The objects were said to be stationary & was visible in the clear sky for 2 to 3 hours long, but no one else has so far reported sighting the same objects. The witness also took several photographs of the objects as can be seen below. BETA UFO has so far put this sighting into its unexplained file for 2010.




February 19, 2011

The Shanghai April Sighting – Part 2

The following are screen shots of the two unidentified objects spotted and video recorded in the skies above Shanghai, China on April 24 2010.









The Shanghai April Sighting – Part 1

This is one case that almost got drowned in the multitude of case reports coming into the BETA UFO network back in 2010. I suspect that the scant attention it received also has to do with the fact that it was a sighting case that took place in another country. In addition, the case was also reported through BETA UFO’s online testimonial channel that was pretty dull to ever attract much attention back then.

Coming onto the case, the report was filed by an Indonesian guy that was on holiday in China, back in April 2010. The sighting took place on April 24, at around 8:55 PM, as the witness and several other tourists were queuing for a bus taking them to a hotel in Shanghai. It was at this moment that he then noticed 2 strange objects high up in the clear, cloudless sky and start filming them with his hand held video recorder (see the video below).

According to the witness, he decided not to publish the video recording due to fear of censorship (or worst) by the Chinese government. He also considered the fact that the Shanghai Expo was just about to be opened in 5 days and that therefore the 2 objects he saw might just be promotional blimps for the event. When news of UFO sighting in Hangzhou appeared in July he then decided to publish the video and inform BETA UFO of his strange experience.

Things To Come in 2011

A lot of things were left un-posted, as the saying doesn’t go, in late 2010. Some of these things have to do with the general increase of reported UFO sightings across Indonesia. Some others have to do with the finishing of the BETA UFO’s Case Review for 2010 and the fact that a link for the 2009 report hasn’t been provided yet in this blog. These are the things that are going to be corrected now, in 2011. It’s always better late than never, isn’t it? To start off, the BETA UFO Case Review Reports for 2009 and 2010 can now be downloaded here and here.

Posts of sighting reports that basically stopped in October will be continued after this posting. Along with that, I will also be posting BETA UFO’s analysis of the much publicized Crop Circle phenomena in Central Java that occurred in January 2011.