Katiya stared at the fire, lost in thought. After a moment, she looked at Amanda. “I think I’m starting to piece this together now.”
“Piece what together?”
“Do you remember our conversation on the boat?”
Not only did Amanda remember the entire conversation, but she could probably repeat it verbatim. She had hung on Katiya’s every word. She nodded.
Katiya’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “I think I’ve discovered a link between CERN and the place we’re marching toward here in the Amazon. But it doesn’t stop there… I think I’ve been able to find a thread that links places all over the earth, including sites in the United States.”
“What?”
Katiya leaned forward and whispered, “In regards to extraterrestrials, you’ve probably heard the word disclosure. People keep waiting for governments to finally admit that alien life exists and that they’ve been visiting us for decades, if not centuries or longer. Well, if I’m right, then I believe that in the not-too-distant future, they won’t have a choice any longer. They’ll have to admit it because the flood gates will have opened, and there’ll be no turning back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Okay, you’ve been way too cryptic,” Amanda said. “Time for some answers.”
“I agree,” Katiya replied. “Stay right here.” The anthropologist rose to her feet, skirted the fire, and entered her tent.
As she waited, Amanda thought back on what Katiya had just said: that she’d discovered a link between CERN and the place they were trying to find deep in the jungle. But other than the audio transmission picked up by NASA, Amanda couldn’t imagine what that link might be. She’d conducted her own research on the crater while they were on the boat, and she’d only been able to find out a few insignificant facts. One being that scientists weren’t sure whether the crater had been caused by a meteor or whether it had simply formed that way.
Katiya returned with her tablet and sat down once again. “Okay, here we go.” She turned on the device as Amanda scooted closer. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to share this information. Remember, I’m an academic, which means I don’t like to share things until I’m certain I’m on solid ground.”
“Has Zane seen this?”
“No, but I’m going to show it to him as soon as we’re done.” Katiya tapped on a folder titled Global Research. Then she opened a subfolder titled Map. “I actually started putting this together a couple of years ago.”
An interactive map of the earth appeared, filling most of the screen. Hundreds of red dots were scattered across every continent.
“As you may have already guessed,” Katiya continued, “the red markers represent sightings, abductions… any event potentially linked to extraterrestrials.” She used a finger to rotate the image of the earth. Some places had only a few dots, while others had clusters so thick the entire region became red. “I thought it might be nice to see if there were any geographic trends.”
“Amazing how many sightings there are.”
“Keep in mind these only represent the ones we’ve accepted. Each event has to go through a vetting process. First, we screen each one for fraud. As I told you before, we do that by conducting interviews and performing background checks on the person or persons making the claim. Next, we make sure the sighting couldn’t be explained by something mundane. For example, UFO sightings near Air Force bases are often just stealth bombers or other classified aircraft.”
Amanda nodded. “I’ve often wondered about that.”
“If an event makes it through each of our hurdles, it becomes official. It’s then, and only then, that we place a red marker on the interactive map. As expected, we discovered there are indeed areas of high activity around the world. You can see a UFO anywhere, but they tend to be clustered in areas we call hot zones.” Katiya used the touch screen to zoom in on the southwestern US. She traced a finger along a rectangular red blotch that seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles. “This corridor in Arizona and New Mexico is one of the biggest on the planet.”
“Amazing,” Amanda whispered.
“It is, but you haven’t seen anything yet. What I’m about to show you will blow your mind. Take a look at this.” Katiya selected an option from a drop-down menu, and suddenly green dots appeared, many of them clustered in the same places as the red ones. “As we plotted all of this out, one of my graduate students noticed something strange. As our map began to take shape, she recognized something immediately. She noticed that the places with the most UFO sightings were also places associated with high levels of paranormal activity: floating orbs, mysterious lights, ghosts, apparitions, strange creatures, animal mutilations… basically things that go bump in the night.”
“How did she know that?”
“She had been obsessed with paranormal things her entire life. She watched horror movies and read books on ghosts as a kid… she was even a ghost tour guide at one time.”
“So do you think there’s some sort of a connection?”
“There is no doubt in my mind there’s a connection. To be sure, there are a few places where the correlation isn’t precise, but it’s the exceptions that confirm the rule. Here, let me give you another example.” She moved the map until the eastern United States came into view. She pointed at a spot along the southeast coast that was smothered in red and green. “This is Savannah, Georgia. I always knew it was famous for its resident ghosts, but until we started gathering data, I had no idea it had more than its share of UFO sightings as well. Go fifty miles in any direction, and the sightings seem to dry up.”
Amanda nodded slowly. “My parents took me to Savannah when I was a kid. I remember hearing someone say it’s the most haunted city in the United States.”
“Precisely. Show me a haunted area, and I’ll show you lots of UFOs and abduction claims. The two go hand in hand.”
Amanda leaned back. “Any theories as to why that might be?”
“The way I see it, there are really only two possibilities. You could take the alien view, which means extraterrestrials are responsible for events that we would classify as paranormal. Or, conversely, there are some who might say that all of these things, including UFOs, have some sort of spiritual explanation.”
“I’m confused. How can extraterrestrials be responsible for ghosts?”
Katiya shrugged. “Cloaking devices, for one. We may see them only when they want us to or only when there is a malfunction of their technology. Ghosts could also be some sort of hologram, images projected by the aliens. A lot of this could be experimentation, with Earth as their test tube.”
“Okay, so we know we’re dealing with either ETs or something from the spirit world,” Amanda said. “Whatever the source, why do they congregate in certain areas?”
“That, my friend, is what I’ve been working on night and day. And I think I have the answer.” Katiya looked at the map again. “Let’s go back to the area of high activity in the southwestern US.” She zoomed in on the area. “As you can see, a large corridor of markers stretches across two states, Arizona and New Mexico. The most infamous event in this zone was the crash of the alien craft in Roswell, New Mexico. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” Katiya pointed at the swath of green that also covered the area. “What most people don’t realize is that this region is also known to have some of the most haunted pieces of real estate anywhere on earth.”