Since I got on the subject of lost time and aliens from unknown netherworlds, I might as well bring in Area 51, without which the American mythos just wouldn't be the same. Somewhere around here I've got a book titled Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51. I never finished it (too often the case these days) but the guy can write, oh yeah.

In a 19997 article in Psychology Today, he asks: "Is it any coincidence that flying saucers first appeared shortly after the Cold War began -- in June of 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine bright discs In the sky near Mount Rainier in Washington?"

More to the point and closer to home, is it any coincidence that I was born in November 1947 after my parents were vacationing in New Mexico the previous summer? I have always wondered about this. Does it perhaps explain my excellent night vision, or my ability to compute π to 29,352 places in my head -- but only during severe electrical storms? Here Dreamland author Phil Patton expands on his findings...

...what I was astonished by was the whole cast of characters I found up there, and the way that the place functions as a kind of weird magnet for theories and a mirror to the predilections of the people who come up there. There were characters with names like Agency X and Psycho Spy -- a whole group I referred to as the "decentral intelligence agency" -- who picked together little bits of information.

But there were also the flying saucer buffs who believe that the -- that they were using Nazi technology developed from the theories of Nikola Tesla...

from: UFOs and Conspiracy Theories by Barbara Bogaev
source: Fresh Air (NPR), 5 October 1998
via: HighBeam Research

And with that we can leave this whole alien theme and return to more serious matters like Nazis and New Agers and the Theosophical ravings from which they both grew -- and, sad to say in both cases, are still growing. However, for a quick overview of the state-of-the-paranoia conspiracy theory regarding Nazi flying saucers, you could do (no) worse than to dip into Jim Mars's barking-mad Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us, or a weird, weird, weird little outing titled Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, which one Amazon reader-reviewer describes as "an interesting book about occult and pseudoscientific theories on polar shifts, the succession of ages, the Aryan race, the 'hollow earth' theory, Nazi underground bases, lost cities, UFOs, mystical powers, theosophy, sex magick and a host of other obscure topics."

But here's my question: who needs aliens when we've already got bloggers?