The Black Knight from Space

I was in a bookstore and was just flipping through a bargain book of weird happenings. One entry, only a couple of paragraphs long, caught my interest because I had never heard of it before.

The basic blurb was that in 1957, an unknown satellite was detected shadowing the Sputnik I craft. It was in a polar orbit, something that neither the Americans or Soviets were capable of at the time. There was a statement that ham radio operaters pickd up radio transmissions that were "decoded" (whatever that means) as being a star map that indicated the craft originated from Epsilon Bootes 13,000 years before. This object was dubbed "The Black Knight."

Also in this blurb, there was mention that science fiction author Philip K. Dick believed that he was in contact with this object, which he wrote several novels about, and gave it various names (VALIS, Zebra).

So obviously intrigued, I did some searching on ATS and found no mention of it. Google had a few returns which indicated this story was first written about in John Keel's "Disneyland of the Gods." The effort is hampered because there are several legit satellite projects codenamed "Black Knight."

The information of Dick's experiences and writings indicated he received visions, and seemed to interperet the experience and object in somewhat Christian religious terms, in addition to strange communications and diagrams he couldn't interperet. He eventually became paranoid Russian scientists were attempting to control the satellite. A science fiction writer infamous for his heavy drug use eventually living out a sci-fi story... seems to me just as likely that it was just his lifestyle catching up to him than any ET communication. But who knows.

In my searching, I also discovered a very close story from 1927, 30 years earlier. It involves the phenomena of Long Delayed Echoes. Essentially, these are radio transmissions that are reflected back, apparently from space, seconds to minutes after they are first sent. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It could be atmospheric effects just making it appear as if the transmissions are coming from space, or it could ben an alien craft attempting to communicate with us. Logically, it would send back transmissions it recieved from Earth because it could be almost positive that we could receive it. Anyway, the story is that Norwegian scientists received strange radio "echoes" in 1927-28. In the 1970's Scottish astronomer Duncan Lunan interpereted the delayed transmission as a star map... of Epsilon Bootis. Whether these are two instances of the same stragne transmissions, or one story is a retelling of the other is unknown to me. It wouldn't be the first time the same ideas were repackaged and attempted to be passed off as a "new" anomalous story.

Anyway, I made this thread just to get the story out there, and to ask if anybody has any additional information regarding it. Below are links to everything pertinent I could find on the internet, and most are just retellings of the same story in different forms.

The Black Knight from Space- Inspiration for the title and a good overview.

Mystery of the Alien Satellite- The 1927 story.

Alien Artifacts in the Solar System- Article detaling several strange incidents, including the one above. Also discusses theoretical Bracewell Probes.

ASTRA and SETI- Introduction by Duncan Lunan, as far as I can tell originator of the Epsilon Bootis inteperetation.

ET Radio Signals- More info on the 1927-28 events.

Phildickian Gnosticism- OVerview of Philip K. Dick's involvement in the affair.

Edits are spelling cleanup

[edit on 7-21-2007 by Esoterica]

Nice post. I was going to start a thread on this at one time, but Phil Dick's involvement with it threw any credibility out the window for me.

Excellent Post/Thread!

Thank You Esoterica!

This is a very interesting series of events indeed, like you I agree the trick is to decide whether this a retelling of an earlier story as new or two (or more?) genuinely separate events that actually happened.

Lots to look into with this.

Very interesting thread. It make me wonder about a member here named D4rk Kn1ght. I am paraphrasing here but here is what I remember. He said that either a close family friend or relative had confessed on his deathbed about future world problems peaking with the arrival of (a) Dark Knight. He said that he was going to look for signs in the sky and when he saw or heard about a specific occurence in the sky he was bugging out to some remote area to sit it out with a small group of followers. He said that prior to the arrival of the Dark Knight there would be strange visions in the sky and I think this was to be global. The sights in the sky and other events were going to escalate until the Dark Knight arrived.

Here are the links to threads dealing with what he is saying (he was back recently as well):

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This is interesting to me as the Dark Knight in his thread and Black Knight in yours could be related. I wonder what others will think.

Strange, I was reading about this just recently as well. I find the Philip K Dick story fascinating. If it were just an everyday person who spoke of such experiences, he would be branded a nutcase, but here is a guy who was was an extremely successful artist. It makes me wonder about the labels we tend to attach to people as a society. Perhaps the thin line between genius and madness is success.

[edit on 21/7/07 by Implosion]

Nice thread.

There is a case commonly known as "Fast Walker" where an American DSP satellite picked up an object that passed within 15km of its orbit on a trajectory that came from outside earth orbit and, instead of succumbing to gravity, sent it right back out again, all at approximately 22,000mph.

Meteors and space debris don't do that

I shall read up more on this "Black Knight" subject. Sounds interesting.

Originally posted by Moserious
Very interesting thread. It make me wonder about a member here named D4rk Kn1ght. I am paraphrasing here but here is what I remember. He said that either a close family friend or relative had confessed on his deathbed about future world problems peaking with the arrival of (a) Dark Knight. He said that he was going to look for signs in the sky and when he saw or heard about a specific occurence in the sky he was bugging out to some remote area to sit it out with a small group of followers. He said that prior to the arrival of the Dark Knight there would be strange visions in the sky and I think this was to be global. The sights in the sky and other events were going to escalate until the Dark Knight arrived.

I was thinking the same thing my friend.

Excellent thread! Flagged for sure. Anything that has to do with space captures my fancy.

Definately will look into some of those links posted.



-Droops

[edit on 21-7-2007 by DrOOpieS]

Most likely is that the "mystery satelite is the burned out final stage of the
booster rocket which goes into orbit with the satelite. The near earth
space is full of this "space junk" which orbits the earth until the orbit
decays and reenters atmosphere and burns up.

Was expecting some idiot having a nice long unreadable rant.

Instead I am shown new information on something I have not seen before.

Thread delivers.

Originally posted by thedman
Most likely is that the "mystery satelite is the burned out final stage of the
booster rocket which goes into orbit with the satelite. The near earth
space is full of this "space junk" which orbits the earth until the orbit
decays and reenters atmosphere and burns up.

Ummm I suppose you missed the facts that it was in Polar orbit? and that it was there before we started leaving our junque in space?

Brilliant deduction !

Originally posted by Esoterica
I was in a bookstore and was just flipping through a bargain book of weird happenings. One entry, only a couple of paragraphs long, caught my interest because I had never heard of it before.

People forget that those exist... book stores... with books

Excellent find! This will take some time to research to be sure. I wonder if its still there.

Yep it could have been space junk if it wasnt the first launch by man.
However this still doesnt explain its orbit and behaviour as well either.
Funny I type Black Knight UFO into google and I got this really neat Nasa Shuttle video site with some pretty wild UFO activity and all from untouched NASA media. Oh My!

www.greatdreams.com...

And this is deffinately a great thread OP. Applause is in order.

[edit on 21-7-2007 by VType]

Wow, front page. Didn't expect so much interest

Anyway, I spent some more time researching. The first polar orbiting satellite was launched in 1960. The Black Knight story (apparently from Keel) states the polar orbit in 1957 was impossible. It is possible that there may have been a test of a polar orbiting satellite in 1957 coinciding with the Sputnik launch, but it may have met catastrophic failure and swept under the rug after the success of Sputnik. But I don't think there ever was a Black Knight.

The first article I linked to stated polar orbits were impossible in 1960, which is flat out wrong, as I've discovered. Also, Keel's book mentioning the subejct was apparently first published in 1988, long after Dick had died and Lunan had released his analysis of the 1920's event. Ample time for Keel to purposely or accidentally merge many stories together.

Honestly, I believe the Black Knight event to simply be a retelling of three separate events. One, is the LDE event from 1927-28, interperetted in 1970 by Duncan Lunan. The second was the large object detected in polar orbit in 1960. The third was Dick's experiences. By 1988, these had merged into a single story, with Sputnik as a backdrop to give an added degree of mystery because at that time, polar orbits were "impossible." After all, it's our first object placed into orbit, of course the mysterious alien probe will be interested in it. It's a great story.

But, just because I believe the Black Knight story to be a synthesis of different events doesn't mean there's nothing to those events. The LDE from 1927-28 I find interesting, as the supposed massive object detected by NORAD in 1960. Dick's story is a little to odd for me to touch at this point, and it's hard to palce it into a timeline when one fo his main points end sup being that time is an illusion . I'll do a little more reading tomorrow, but it's late. If anyone has any information they know of (or something to discredit my confabulation theory), please feel free to add it. It'll probably be appropriate to modify the OP as well, I'll get to that later.

As an aside, a "Black Knight" is a term for a knight which either has no allegiance or wished to hide it, covering his colors and symbols. It would be a good name for a mysterious alien satellite.



[edit on 7-22-2007 by Esoterica]

Sputnik was launched at orbital inclination of 65 deg to equator - report
said object was following Sputnik. If other object was in polar orbit
(inclination close to 90 deg) would not be following Sputnik. Most likely
the high inclination orbit was mistakenly called "polar" by somebody
not familar was astronautics.

neformore what a beautiful picture in you bio-- love them red heads

This is a beautiful thread Esoterica..I wonder if this event of a shadow or lost satellite was the impetus for an early or late 50's movie about a spacecraft that kept circling the earth then would dip and fly at such high speeds over major cities,as to cause a thermal blast like an Hbomb. It was then destroyed by an american missle withits own nuclear device. I think the same actor as in invasion of the body snatchers was the actor on that.
I don't think looking into any of the issues raised by old masters will be a wasteful exercise, i think it will be a very enlightening and rewarding journey

Thanx Much
SyS

I read somewhere that NASA recovered the satelite and Carl Sagan was working on decoding the message it contained on an underwater base.

I don't remember where I read about it, I think it was Dan Burisch related.

Don't know if it has any truth to it, but....

I was thinking about Epsilon Bootes and remembered an article I had seen in conjunction with the OP's thread. Great thread by the way!


www.space-2001.net/html/signals_.html

I'm a newbie by the way! so still working it all out!

He quoted that in 1960 a Professor RN Bracewell of the Radio Astronomic Institute of Stanford University, "had said that if an alien intelligence had wanted to get in touch with us it might possibly do so by the delayed return of radio signals!"
An even more bewildering twist to the saga was soon to be revealed! Studies made by the president for the Association in Scotland for Technology and Research in Astronautics, revealed that the signals could be broken down and decrypted in a manner that seemed to show the outline of a star chart. When this outline was converted onto a detailed map of the sky the bewildered researcher found to his amazement that it corresponded to a region in the constellation of Bootes! The evidence seemed to focus on the star Epsilon Bootes, and a delighted Professor Bracewell of Stanford University is on record as claiming: " The maps produced.... can be adduced as a possibility of communication with another intelligence!"
Bracewell also went on to add that such a satellite camped in orbit around our world would want to communicate with us in a pictorial method of digital origin! In this way the decrypted picture - like the star map - could furnish important information in the universal language of science - numerical evidence!””

[edit on 22-7-2007 by Havalon]

Originally posted by Moserious
Very interesting thread. It make me wonder about a member here named D4rk Kn1ght. I am paraphrasing here but here is what I remember. He said that either a close family friend or relative had confessed on his deathbed about future world problems peaking with the arrival of (a) Dark Knight. He said that he was going to look for signs in the sky and when he saw or heard about a specific occurence in the sky he was bugging out to some remote area to sit it out with a small group of followers. He said that prior to the arrival of the Dark Knight there would be strange visions in the sky and I think this was to be global. The sights in the sky and other events were going to escalate until the Dark Knight arrived.

Here are the links to threads dealing with what he is saying (he was back recently as well):

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This is interesting to me as the Dark Knight in his thread and Black Knight in yours could be related. I wonder what others will think.

I read the thread and would advise you not to waste your time The OP made some very vague statements about some signs that were to begin showing in the skies in 2007. It is now almost August of 2007 and none of his predictions have materialized.

He told this very brief and vague story of some appocolypse on Octoner 12 2009. In twelve pages of threads he supllied exactly zero new evidence beyond his original post. The thread was eventually closed. IMHO it was a total hoax. If you wan't to waste an hour following the thread have a ball, but is a waste of time.

I hadn't considered that the Black Knight satellite might be connected in some way to Philip K. Dicks "VALIS" satellite, the one that downloaded his enlightenment from the good folks on Albemuth (Aldeberan).

No, I don't know of much research ever having been done on satellites that were supposed to be in orbit either before or during Sputnik.

The reason I tie Philip K. Dick's experience with pre-Sputnik satellites is that his experience has some very close similarities with other accounts of people getting hit by beams coming from the sky that grant them some kind of special knowledge. Of course, there's good old Paul (aka Saul) from the Bible. But I also seem to recall anecdotes about Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli also getting the "pink beam of light from the sky hitting them in the forehead" treatment, which later resulted in them coming up with some awesome theory or another.

One would think, however, that any pre-Sputnik satellite would have long ago been detected and tracked by the good folks at NASA or the CIA, or the Secret Space Force, or whoever. Or, for that matter, by all the amateur astronomers who have made a point of tracking satellites over the years. But we know all about NASA, right (wink wink)? They probably went up and snagged that thing years ago to find out what it is and now it's sitting in some underground bunker of some sort. Supposedly.

I do kind of like that idea, though. That a few people in the world are selected (or are predisposed) to receive some cool super advanced knowledge from a large library located somewhere out there. Aldeberan, I guess. Hopefully it hits somebody smart enough to know what to do with it. Otherwise, I could see where it might drive somebody nuts.

[edit on 22-7-2007 by SuicideVirus]