On Return from the Volcanic Zone

Copyright Joseph Burkes MD 2006

Tales of High Strangeness “Each object has its own unique signature”.

February 1993.

I was really happy to get back to the United States. I had just spent 5 amazing days with Steven and Shari down in the volcanic zone near Mexico City. Don’t get me wrong, it was the chance of a lifetime. Our CE-5s were incredible and the company was great, but after being shaken down twice by corrupt Mexican police, and after being shot at by some presumably drunken farmer, I was just happy to home. My flight landed in San Antonio and I literally got down on my hands and knees right there on the runway and gave thanks to be back in the US of A.

I was elated, nearly giddy I suppose as I was interviewed by the stone faced, very serious US custom officials. What was the purpose of my trip to Mexico?”  “Tourism. “ I replied with a laugh. I wasn’t about to lecture them on the importance of citizens’ interplanetary diplomacy. I just told them they looked “marvelous.” It was a relief to be among my own people, to speak English to people in uniform and not worry about drinking the water, or being asked for bribes.

In the weeks that followed I had several different kinds of  “high strangeness “ experiences.   I had two UFO sightings, During field work with my CSETI team an anomalous sound tracked through our research site.  I also started experiencing a recurring auditory hallucination that seemed to be some kind of communication.

I’ll start with the hallucination.

Tinnitus or ringing in the ears is a common complaint associated with a wide range of ear disorders. In all my years as a doctor however, I had never heard of a stereotypical ringing associated with talking about UFOs. This is exactly what I experienced after returning from Mexico.

As part of my duties as ER physician, I had the opportunity to work several shifts per month at our health plan’s corporate office. It was kind of a treat to get away from the ambulance area and do semi-administrative work. The Case Coordination Center is an office in Pasadena that receives phone calls from  hospitals all over Southern California. If one of our HMO patients presents at an ER not run by our health plan, say at Saint Elsewhere’s Hospital, the ER docs there are required to call us and discuss the case. Back in the 1990s were just putting in computer based record systems and we provided the St, Elsewhere  physicians with important patient data like past medical history and current medications. If our HMO patient was stable for transfer to one of our facilities, the Case Coordination Center staff made arrangements to have the patient admitted to one of our hospitals. It was all done over the phone, all conversations were law fully recorded and fax machines sent data back and forth across the region. It was a nice break from direct patient care. The nurses in the office were very friendly. There was a lot less stress there in Pasadena than during easiest shift in the ER. Best of all the corporate cafeteria food was far superior to the usual hospital slop I had been wolfing down while running between patients for the previous 15 years.

Needless to say I was quite enthusiastic about our CSETI investigations after I got back from my adventure in the Volcanic Zone. I talked about Dr. Greer’s CE-5 Initiative to anyone who would listen. At the Case Coordination Center when the phones were quiet I described the large triangular shaped craft that signaled at us near the base of Popocatepetl Volcano. The fact that Dr. Greer was a fellow ER physician and that three other skilled observers were present during the sighting increased the credibility of my account.

While talking about UFOs with my co-workers I noticed a strange ringing in my ears. It was not like the ringing I had experiencing in the past after high noise exposure. This sound was loud, somewhat low in pitch and only was loud for a few seconds before the volume dropped off considerably. Within a minute or two the ringing completely disappeared, only to recurr again later on in the shift immediately after I started up another conversation about UFOs. I was not suffering from any other symptoms of aural pathology. There was no ear pain, loss of hearing or dizziness. In fact I felt great.

According to my conventional medical training ,tinnitus is a symptom linked to pathophysiological mechanisms, it is not supposed to occur with conversations about one particular subject. I had to face the distinct probability that I was experiencing an auditory hallucination that was associated with my status as CSETI investigator. I had spent almost a week with Steve and Shari in Mexico carrying out the contact protocols. On several occasions I had been just a few hundred feet from what appeared to be ET spacecraft. Could the consciousness link established during fieldwork still be intact? Was my tinnitus serving as a kind of primitive ongoing communication between me and an unseen non-human intelligence? 

From the UFO literature I knew that I wasn’t the first experiencer to describe tnnitus as being associated with encounters. There was a kind of playful quality to my experience that was less threatening than full blown mind to mind communication. Perhaps a little ringing was all that I was deemed able to handle. Subsequent events later in 1993 when I became frightened during an encounter in Arizona and experienced a lost of self confidence as an investigator suggests to me this was case.

During several weeks the episodes of tinnitus linked to talking about CSETI became less frequent. I should point our that I did not have noticeable ringing at other times. Over the next few years only on very rare occasions would the symptom recur. It was completely absent for some time when it came back in quite a funny way.

During the 1980s I was an activist in the group Physicians for Social Responsibility. We carried out an educational campaign about the dangers of nuclear war and the nuclear arms race. As head of speakers’ training for our Los Angeles PSR chapter I studied the scientific literature about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. We gave many lectures about what would be the devastating effects of nuclear attacks on American and Soviet cities. PSR members became familiar with the various types of delivery systems for these weapons, these included submarines, jet-bombers and land based missiles.

One evening after work I watched with great interest a special documentary on educational television. For the first time in history a film crew had been allowed inside a US nuclear submarine equipped with missiles. The reporter interviewed one Navy officer about the highly sophisticated sonar equipment onboard. Using electronically produced sound waves, objects under the water are detected with great accuracy. I remember snuggling there in bed under the blanket when the crewman said that each type of vessel, each object produces a unique sonar signature. Suddenly out of nowhere a loud low pitched ringing sounded in my right ear. It lasted for just a few seconds, then decreased in volume and disappeared. Once again the consciousness link was apparently in evidence. My old friend had returned and at the best possible time for didactic purposes. It was so astounding, so funny that I threw the covers off, sat up in bed and laughed out loud.

Ongoing consciousness/mind based communications appears to be a regular part of contact work. I guess that my old one-liner was still true. “Once you join the contact underground you will never be lonely again.”

Long live the unity of all conscious intelligent beings in the universe.

One universe, one people!

Joe Burkes MD