(The Vintage Tempest)
Available on Prime Video and iTunes.
Anyone who thinks they’ve run out of Ancient Aliens to watch can easily hit streaming services to get their dose of UFOs until the little green men finally land. This History Channel program is no stranger to Hollow Earth theories, and the fact that there are also unidentified submerged objects (USOs) doesn’t mean they are treading water. But to understand the types that enter volcanoes require watching Volcanic UFO Mysteries by Stephen Bassett and Darcy Weir.
The latter has been prolific of late with documentaries on this subject, and he’s the mind behind Crop Circle Realities. To really cover the gambit of both subtopics means covering where else these unidentified or landmarks appear in.
With Volcanic UFO, the focus is on Central America, where the most of the activity happens. We’re still treated to low resolution videos and shaky cam because trying to film these spaceships up close is next to impossible. Sometimes, the witnesses do not have the best technology available to them, and any videographer will tell you that the more they try to zoom in from a distance, the more jitter occurs unless the camera is mounted on a tripod.
Bassett is a self-proclaimed expert on UFO lore. He’s also an information lobbyist, trying to get Capitol Hill to lift the embargo on the data they gathered about all alien visitations. The Pentagon declassified some documents, but there’s still more. For Jaime Maussan living in Latin America, digging into the truth for over 40 years is still a struggle.
This documentary doesn’t answer the questions that I literally want to dig into. I’m particularly curious if the aliens are using these volcanoes as a shortcut to travel from one side of the world to another. Or could there be colonies existing deep in an Inner Earth?
A request to interview the filmmakers as one UFO enthusiast to another was met with silence. They may be simply cautious in not offering any ideas of their own because their work is the same way. Or they won’t talk to every media outlet or blogger who is just as interested in the topic. Unlike Erich von Däniken who is very outspoken, Bassett and Weir, in contrast, rather have the video speak for itself.
Darcy is more invested in Crop Circle Realities as it offers a few thoughts not commonly thought of. He maintains a low-fi approach to putting together the segments making up this documentary and it has a lot more thought-provoking moments in its presentation. This piece features lectures and lengthy interviews with researchers (and television personalities, namely José Jaime Maussan Flota) to say something about its history and where the world is at now for trying to decipher a different kind of DaVinci Code.
Perhaps the best well known recording is with the circle found at Beacon Hill at Oliver’s Castle North of Devizes. The only surviving clip of its creation is still hard to debunk.
The theory to which I can believe is the idea of the circles encoded with information for humanity to decipher. I would not be surprised to learn that the disc shaped ones are like hard drives. Each stalk of bent wheat may well represent a byte of data. These days, most storage is contained on solid state drives, which are basically microchips. Instead of circular formations, we have circuit board-like designs-seen in later parts of this documentary-to which may be a hint of what our science has to design in order to read the previously etched patterns on land. It’s safe to assume that previous circles have been photographed. As for still existing, some have simply been regrown over.
It’s funny the creators of the circles didn’t consider the fact humanity doesn’t have the proper means to interpret these formations. But it’s rare to get a work that goes beyond all the what ifs and conjectures found in History Channel’s many shows on this topic.
Flota is an ufologist and journalist who is really passionate about Ufology. When considering his country as a hotbed of activity, I’m glad there’s a television personality who is truly invested instead of answering to the demands of his bosses (or even the military attempting to hide secrets). The documentary is an excellent reminder and primer of what we currently know, and in what shines is Jose’s attempt to answer the questions we all have. He’s Mexico’s version of von Däniken, and we all love him for it.