What A Thorney Croft We Weave

Let me back up to when this most recent line of questions began…

Last week, while doing research for my upcoming installment- “Conspiracy Theory Is Not A Thing”- I was working down several lines of research at once. What I was looking for were examples of various types of actions and events which are often considered to be “proof” of one or another conspiracy. Troll attacks, flip-flops, sudden silences, organized suppression/intimidation, suspicious suicides- things like that.

On August 27th I came across a press release from NewsWire Today which caught my attention. It was entitled “Strange Goings-on Follow Discussions About Potential UFO Evidence” and the summary read “Publisher and Author experience interference and other phenomena since discovering strange images in UFO footage related to new book.”

The release read in part:

The book, Eye to the Sky: A Paranormal Odyssey, by Paula Thorneycroft, recounts the author’s amazingly frequent and vivid interactions with both craft and extraterrestrial beings, but it is the footage she submitted to substantiate her manuscript that seems to have caused a stir already – and this has not even been released, yet.

Since signing contracts and discussing, superficially, the fact that the footage does appear to contain some very intriguing material none of us has seen the like of before, the author has had her entire photographic files and emails uploaded by at least one hacker, perhaps more. EcceNova has had particular telephone conversations ‘scrambled’ for no apparent reason, and an interview with the Editor on a well-known radio show was mysteriously “lost” immediately after being recorded.

In an effort to advise potential viewers and readers of the veracity and importance of the images we are planning to reveal upon publication of the book, we feel it necessary to release news of this material now.

I believe they mean “downloaded” instead of “uploaded.” Otherwise we go from weird to sublime and the cat collapses instantly (i.e., “Hello, I am an evil hacker and I broke into your server in order to give you some free footage you can use in your book.”) The release continues:

We have taken the precaution of copyrighting the entire footage, and have copies of it in several safe places. Should any hacker(s) attempt to reveal the images before EcceNova is ready to do so, we want to let the world know that they only had access to a fraction of the material, and that the ‘best’ images were not held on the computer at the time of the theft.

Now honestly, do you call that a threat?

The whole thing smelled weird. I started searching for possibly-related terms, information and stories. The big search engines turned up nothing at the time (they’ve spidered it by now). But the Eccenova website itself now had a second release, which mentioned the first. It read in part-

We sent out a Press Release in an effort to counter any effect the hackers might have had, but judging by all the so-called “UFO sites” out there who condone and eagerly await stolen property, there is little discretion anyway, so perhaps we have been a little naive in this. Luckily, as we said, the thieves did not get the best of the footage or stills, as we had anticipated such an eventuality and removed the most important images from the computer. Those stolen were/are going to be released soon, anyway.

Ok- let’s tally this up. They’re naive- but they’re also prescient enough to have anticipated the theft as an eventuality. And they’ve been hacked- that is, illegally entered and burglarized- but if someone releases their photos before the publication date they’ll let the world know that the quality is less than optimal? The logic of this narrative is so broken the mind starts wandering. Frankly right now I’m wondering about the scare quotes around the words “UFO sites”. Is this really the best time for gangta bravado and chest-puffery? Shouldn’t they be filing a report with the police or something?

I did a WHOIS search on the domain name “Eccenova.com”. I learned that it’s been around for over three years- and not much else-

Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Status: ACTIVE
Dates: Created 12-mar-2003 Updated 06-feb-2006

Of course I also searched on “Paula Thorneycroft”- Google returned only copies of the press release itself- no other pages referred to this author. I then tried alibris.com (my personal favorite online bookseller) and amazon.com- but neither site carries any books by this person. Her bio page at Eccenova says she is a scriptwriter and Reiki practioner who has been employed as a consulting psychic. It also says that her July 2006 sighting is posted online at www.ufosnw.com– although I could not find it there.

Ok- it’s a marketing hoax, right? Sure, ok. Looks like a dead cat. So let’s try one good attempt to keep it alive- to see if we can collapse it the other way.

If this is a marketing hoax it’s a very strangely-performed one. For the very next day when I hit Technorati- bingo. I found a fresh blog entry at a site I had noticed several months prior- a place called Alien Video (yes I was lured in by the name, but it was not what I expected). This new entry- dated August 25th- not only indicated that these guys had read the same press release I had, but added a bizarre semi-admission…

Hackers Leak UFO Video
Some amazing new UFO Footage may soon be available for viewing right here on AlienVideo… just as soon as the hackers upload it to us. Apparently, hackers have infiltrated the computer of Paula Thorneycroft – author of a yet to be released book about her vivid interactions with alien craft…

“As soon as the hackers upload it to us?”

Excuse me- WTF? The words themselves practically implicate AV in the alleged crime. Is there not some sort of investigation going on? Why would the AV people write this sentence?

I next ran a WHOIS report on “Alienvideo.net”.

Domain Name: ALIENVIDEO.NET
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Created on: 04-May-06

This may look like more information, but it’s actually about the same. “Domains by Proxy” is a complete dead-end- they won’t release any information to the likes of me. But it does show us that Alienvideo.net is only 3 months old.

Surely the two sites are connected somehow? Ok- let’s postulate that. But if the two sites are connected in some way, then the AV blog post stands out even more starkly- as if one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. And this is true whether the alleged crime actually happened or not (in fact it’s even stranger if the crime didn’t happen). Such inter-departmental confusion is more common in coverups and post-facto actions than in pre-planned, linear actions like marketing campaigns. In other words: this type of error usually indicates a situation in which two or more autonomous agents- each with incomplete data- are all scrambling to cover an obscured item- and generally their own asses as well. The sense of incongruity arises from the fact that the various agents are all making different assumptions about the overarching narrative or timeline. Their internal communications are incomplete.

If we postulate that Eccenova and AlienVideo are connected, then we have to explain why the execution of this maneuver is so bizarre. Perhaps we are looking at two parties- both of which believe they are operating in the same overarching narrative structure- but without any intercommunication. So if we go down this path we have to accept that any such connection is a very poor one.

Update 1:

On August 31st Eccenova published another press release on EYE TO THE SKY. It reads in part-

Having experienced a number of attempts to steal the video footage, attack our computers, tap our phones, follow us, and bribe us, we finally decided that it would be prudent to get the images out into the public domain as quickly as possible, while still remaining true to our original plan to release the most profound images in concert with the book, to ensure integrity and create context.

We had planned to post certain images online, from the start, and today we have done so. About 25 new stills are posted on the website, revealing just a glimpse of the brilliant light show and ‘morphing’ that was evident on the first of the two night’s shooting.

One of those stills is reproduced above left. In addition the publication date of the book has been moved up from December 26th to October 31st.

Update 2:

On Sep 2nd Eccenova released the following note on their press release page: “We have acquired the services of a professional paranormal research and filmmaking team to assess the video footage independently.”

~ by theylive on September 2, 2006.