Fatima. 1917. The Buzzing.

I read this posted book extract that T. Peter Park put on the forteana Yahoo group list and I thought it was most interesting as the Fatima experiences are classed by many as UFO events… and it has always fascinated me regardless of whether that’s the case or not. If it is, it puts a rather different perspective on alien interaction with humanity, doesn’t it? And if not… well… that may even be more fascinating.

Enjoy… (images added by me)

THE “BUZZING” SOUNDS IN FATIMA APPARITIONS 1917 by Joaquim Fernandes Posted to the Yahoo group forteana by T. Peter Park

The final FATIMA SIGHTING / APPARITION, witnessed by c. 60,000 people, was 13 October 1917 – at a rural spot used by the three shepherd children, near their homes at Fatima, Portugal. Accounts below seem to come from earlier sightings by the three children, which led to ever-increasing numbers of people attending the forecast ‘returns.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Fatima

THE “BUZZING” SOUNDS IN FATIMA APPARITIONS 1917 by Joaquim Fernandes* Exerpt from the book Heavenly Lights. The Fatima Apparitions and the UFO Phenomenon, by Fina d’ Armada and Joaquim Fernandes, translated from Portuguese and edited by Andrew D. Basiago and Eva M. Thompson, published by Anomalist Books, 2007.

“The buzzing of bees”

And the Being spoke. To Lúcia, it was not strange at all. They understood each other in Portuguese, as if Mary, the Mother of Jesus, had become a polyglot, or as if two thousand years of history had not altered the language of the people. The news spread throughout the village, and on June 13th, part of the neighborhood came to the site of the Apparitions.

They were not many. “I counted the people and saw that only 40 were present,” wrote Inácio António Marques. 1 And those people anxiously waited in that deserted place for the veritable Queen of Heaven to descend to the oak tree, in the hopes of contemplating her serene face, one popularly imagined being young, soft, and extraordinarily beautiful.

Stella 2, through the voice of writer Maria de Freitas (who behind the scenes wrote a great part of the book about Fátima attributed to Father João de Marchi), captured forever the impressions of that first day in which onlookers participated. Among them was Maria Carreira, who, in the language of a simple countrywoman, later described for the journalist her memories of the event:

At the same instant, Lúcia jumped up and exclaimed, ‘O, Jacinta, there she comes already, there was the lightning,” and then ran to kneel at the foot of the oak.’

“And you did not see anything?,” de Freitas asked.

“Me? No, ma’am. And no one boasted about having seen the lightning. We would follow the children and kneel in the middle of the field. Lúcia would raise her hands and say, “You bade me come here, what do you wish of me?” And then could be heard a buzzing that seemed to be that of a bee. I took care to discern whether it was the Lady speaking.”

“And everyone heard it?,” the reporter asked.

“Well, it could be heard very well!,” Carreira answered.

The buzzing of a bee – here is the voice attributed to Our Lady of Fátima by the miracle’s greatest publicist. She, and the other onlookers, did not hear a voice speaking Hebrew, Aramaic, or even Portuguese, but a voice like that of an insect.

This same witness recounted this same episode to Father João de Marchi. In his work, entitled Era uma Senhora Mais Brilhante que o Sol [It was a Lady More Brilliant than the Sun], we read 3: I had been sick, and was feeling very weak. It must have been around midday, when Lúcia was asked: “Will Our Lady be long delayed?”

“No, ma’am, she will not be long,” she responded.

The tiny child was watching for the signs.

We prayed the Rosary and, when the girl from Boleiros was going to begin the Litany, Lúcia interrupted her, saying that there was no longer sufficient time. She immediately rose to her feet and shouted:

“Jacinta, there comes Our Lady, the lightning has struck.” All three children ran to the oak, as we ran behind them. We knelt upon the thickets and shrubs. Lúcia lifted her hands, as in prayer, and I heard her say:

“You bade me to come here, please tell me what you want.”

Then we began to hear something like this, in the manner of a very fine voice, but what it said could not be comprehended or put into words, for it was like the buzzing of a bee!

But that buzzing did not disturb the silence of the mountain only in June. The following month, word spread throughout the entire region and nearly four to five thousand people found their way to Cova da Iria. 4 Jacinto de Almeida Lopes, proprietor of the site of the Shrine later established by the parish of Fátima, was among them. He would be one of the eyewitnesses chosen by the parish priest to testify during the Inquiry. The parish priest, writing in the third person, related the evidence given by Lopes:

“Then what is it that you want of me?”

After this question, she waited in silence for a short period of time, the time of a brief response. And during this silence, he heard, as if coming from the oak tree, a faint voice, similar, he says, to the humming of a bee, but without distinguishing a single word.

In July, Manuel Marto, the father of Jacinta and Francisco, made his way to the site for the first time. Questioned as to what he experienced 5, he told João de Marchi:

“I heard a sound, a din, such as a great fly makes inside an empty water pot,” and wondered whether it was “far off or close by.”

Manuel Marto helped himself to odd comparisons. When interrogated about the same matter by the Italian priest Humberto Pasquale 6, he affirmed: “I heard something like the buzzing of a fly inside an empty barrel, but without articulation of words.” For his part, Pasquale added: “Mr. Manuel Marto explained to us that, during the entire duration of the appearance, those present heard an indefinable sound, like that which is heard next to a hive, but altogether more harmonious, even though words were not heard.”

In this same month, we find other testimony, however, which demonstrated that the buzzing must have been heard quite well, which, as a matter of fact, Maria Carreira stated. António Baptista, from Moita, in the parish of Fátima, was then 50 years old. When interviewed by the Viscount of Montelo on November 13, 1917, he declared, “on July 13th, I was at Cova da Iria. She (Lúcia) knelt. I thought I heard, at that moment, a little wind, a zoa-zoa sound. While Lúcia was listening to a response, it seemed there was a buzzing sound like that of a cicada.” 7

“Many people say that when the Apparition was speaking, it could be heard,” wrote J. de S. Bento, in a letter possibly penned on October 13th of that year.

8. “But they could not distinguish what She was saying.” And another witness also made reference to the sounds of the “speech” of the Being. Manuel Gonçalves, Jr., a 30-year-old farmer from Montelo – the place name that the Canon Formigão adopted in his pseudonym 9 – also declared on October 11th “some people have affirmed that they hear the sound of the answers.”

Herewith we arrive at 1978. In July 18th of that year, the authors interviewed the relatives of the seers and eyewitnesses then still living. One of the people with whom we spoke was Lúcia’s sister, Maria dos Anjos. Sitting in an armchair, beside the house where she was born, living out the rest of her days, smiling to the daily visitors, she narrated for us once again the story that had forever altered the life of her family:

“Did you know Maria Carreira?,” we asked on that hot summer afternoon.

“I knew her as well as I knew my own mother.”

“She said that when Our Lady would speak, she would hear something like the humming of a bee…

I also heard that little buzz. I also got to hear it, but I know not what it was.”

“Was it as if there were many bees?,” we asked.

“No, only one,” she responded, categorically.

“Do you recall what month that was?”

“At that time, I did not go there every month. It seemed as if a bee was around there whenever Lúcia was listening. But I have no idea what it was!”

“I have no idea what it was!” Her statement gives one pause to consider whether the event should have been given a Marian interpretation, if the sound that the Being made was not even understood. In truth, who can explain why her voice was comparable to the buzzing of a bee? Or yet to the buzz of a great fly inside a water pot, or of a fly inside an empty barrel? Have these sounds been heard solely in Fátima? Or have there been, in other parts of the world, other witnesses to identical sounds?

13. Experimental observations of the effects of microwaves

One working hypothesis, subject to experimental verification, attributes some of the physical phenomena occurring at the time of the Apparitions to the eventual effect of microwave radiation (that falling in the electromagnetic spectrum between 30 and 300,000 MHz.) We refer, namely, to the following:

a) the declaration of the “fourth seer,” Carolina Carreira, when she alluded, in the course of contact with an “angelic being” of small height, to the non-auditory reception, inside her mind, of a repetitive order: “Come and pray three Hail Mary’s … Come and pray three Hail Mary’s …”;

b) the various indications by witnesses near to the site of the “contact” by the three young shepherds with a communicating “being,” who heard a “humming of bees,” which is, as we have seen, one of the characteristics of modern Ufological phenomenology that appears with some frequency;

c) the properties of microwave radiation, discussed by McCampbell 1, among others, and [which] would justify the triple effect registered by the testifying masses of Fátima during the solar phenomenon of October 13, 1917: intense heat, rapid drying of clothes, physiological effects.

The most suggestive fact to retain is furnished to us by the witnesses when they refer that the “buzzing of bees” cited was always produced when the “luminous lady” spoke with the three seers, “but without moving her lips.” Since McCampbell, other labs have reproduced the experiences that confer a coherent principle to the totality of witnesses in regard to this question of “communication / reception of messages,” and, particularly, as regards the hearing of sounds identified as the “buzzing of bees.”

We refer, for example, to the experiences of investigators from the Canadian Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, specifically, to the works of James C. Lin, Sergio Sales-Cunha, Joseph Battocletti and Anthony Sances, published under the title, The Auditory Microwave Phenomenon 2. These investigations could prove to be promising for the gradual comprehension of this problem and, in a general way, for the elaboration of explicative models of certain secondary effects, of a physical and physiological nature, registered in human beings and lesser animals, in the presence of unidentified aerospace phenomena.

Scientific exploration of the auditory “phenomenon” of microwaves may help to explain, in a rational and coherent way, what type of reception/communica tion is involved in cases of “contact with messages,” whether they occur in a secular context (i.e., UFO’s) or a religious one (i.e., “Marian apparitions”.)

This may be especially true in situations like Fátima, where the contact includes altered states of consciousness.

The Canadian case cited above gives an account of the effects of small discharges of microwave radiation reverberating in the crania of human subjects. The heads of the individuals subjected to these emissions were placed outside the reach of a conical antenna. The experiments took place in an appropriate compartment. The perceptions that resulted consisted of a combination of audible sounds.

The studies showed that the individuals perceived buzzing types of noises or pops within the head, when subjected to microwave radiation between 200 and 300 MHz.

Generally, these sounds were perceived as something produced in the interior of the head or in the posterior part of the cranium. Remember, once again, that the “fourth seer” of Fátima would hear the commanding words of the “little angel” inside her head.
…

Returning to the Fátima case, we verify that the “buzzing” or “humming” was not exclusive to the three small seers.

In fact, others who were in the vicinity of the “contact” site gave various accounts of those impressions. They underscored that they were “clearly hearing” that noise when the “Lady” was speaking with Lúcia “without moving her lips.”

This detail comfortably sustains the notion, maintained by the accounts, that the “buzzing” or “humming” phenomenon would be audible within a determined area around the three children and would come from a source external to the onlookers. In our working hypothesis, the means of communication between the “luminous lady” and the principal “message” receptor was the previously described beam of focused light.

END OF EXTRACT

For details, extracts, interviews, etc. – Google << 13 October 1917 – Fatima, Portugal. Many sources: Press reporters & photographers and priests present, meteorological events witnessed over area of several miles, and massive inquiries made by religious ‘authorities.’ >>

See this specialist site also.