Glen Coe
Alan Murdie’s article “Spirits of Glencoe” [FT428:18-21] describes the infamous massacre, along with latterday commemorations of the event, and the general atmosphere of foreboding that seems to pervade the Glen and surrounding area.
Glen Coe is an area we have stayed in and passed through many times, and it certainly does have a power and brooding majesty all of its own, aided and abetted by the quite severe weather the Glen sometimes ‘enjoys’. The stretch of the A82 heading northbound just past the Falls of Coe, with the ‘Three Sisters’ to the left and Aonach Eagach ridge to the right being particularly impressive, the towering mountains which buttress each side of the Glen imposing their presence and grandeur. Nestled between two of these ‘Three Sisters’ lies the ‘Hidden Valley’, a place of quite uncanny stillness, over which some local traditions say no birds will fly.
The massacre of 1692 is also commemorated in a unique way by a sign above the door of the Clachaig Inn, at the western end of the Glen, which reads “No Hawkers or Campbells”, while a far more modern horror haunts the small cottage sitting diagonally opposite the waterfalls – a cottage once owned by the depraved, latter-day monster that was Jimmy Savile.
Stan Sweeney
By email
Nazi UFOs
I feel I must write in to defend Jerry Glover from Mark Pearson’s friendly criticism [FT429:62] of his kind review [FT426:52] of my recent book The Saucer and the Swastika. Probably the main reason Mr Glover doesn’t mention much about Germany and other nations’ various vaguely circular aircraft designs, specifically the alleged Nazi ‘Bell’ (Die Glöcke) time-travel spacecraft, in his review is because I barely mention them in my book itself either, beyond a page or two in the Introduction. The book reviewed was much more about the bizarre neo-Gnostic, neo-Nazi pseudoreligion later built upon legends about such things in the decades following Hitler’s defeat, rather than about rumours concerning actual WWII-built Nazi flying saucers per se. I tell the full story about that in my other recent companion-book, Nazi UFOs (not yet reviewed in FT), which provides relevant photos and debunks at length the myths Mr Pearson mentions in his letter.
As regards SS General Hans Kammler and his supposed involvement in building the Nazi Bell craft: yes, Mr Pearson is correct, there is “no smoke without at least fire”, but not in the sense he half-jokingly implies. Having proved his evil organisational genius by (wonder-weapons) like the V-2 ballistic missile used to attack London during the war’s dying days. No doubt he was indeed up to in his underground lair in Poland, as Mr Pearson suggests – but that doesn’t mean he was building spaceships. Various perfectly ordinary Nazi weapons-factories were set up underground to shield them from Allied carpet-bombing.
