In late 1991, astronomers may have detected an extraterrestrial space probe in near Earth space. Who makes such a startling statement? Some wild-eyed UFO believer? A renegade scientist? A tabloid psychic? No, not at all. His name is Duncan Steel.

Who is Steel, you wonder? I'll quote from the jacket of his new book, Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets (Wiley, 1995): "Duncan Steel, Ph.D. is a research astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory and a research fellow at the University of Ad elaide, Australia. A world renowned authority on the comet, hazard, he has served on both the Detection Committee and the Intercept Committee created by NASA to assess the threat of comet and asteroid collisions and investigate technologies to avert such impacts." Not only that, but Steel is thought of as a "longtime skeptic" and "as someone who almost invariably has his facts right," according a reviewer in an Australian magazine (Colin Keay in The Skeptic, Vol 15, No.3, 1995).

So how did Steel come to his startling conclusion? Here's the scoop. On Nov. 6, 1991 Jim Scotti using the Spacewatch telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona discovered a body which he initially described as a "fast moving asteroidal object," a month befo re its closest approach to the Earth. Later, the object's heliocentric orbital elements suggested instead that "the object might be a returning spacecraft." As the approximately 30-foot object, now labeled 1991 VG, neared the Earth, astronomers at the Eur opean Southern Observatory tracked it and found strong, rapid brightness variations suggestive of reflections from a rotating spacecraft.

His curiosity piqued, Steel decided to investigate the different probabilities for the nature of this object, according to his account "SETA and 1991 VG," published in The Observatory (Vol. 115, pp. 78-83, 1995). "SETA," by the way, stands for "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Artifacts" within our Solar System. Steel first wondered whether the object could be a returning spacecraft, given those brightness variations and its very Earth-like orbit. But he found that none of the handful of man-ma de rocket bodies left in heliocentric orbits during the space age have purely gravitational orbits returning to the Earth at that time. Besides, if 1991 VG was a man-made rocket body, then its return to our vicinity and its accidental detection by Spacew atch was, Steel calculated, a very unlikely event, on the order of one in 100,000 per year.

So could it be a natural body, Steel then asked himself? One factor that strongly argued against this interpretation was the light variation the object exhibited, which resembled those of rotating artificial satellite trails seen in wide field astronomic al photographs. The second factor is that the object's pre-encounter orbit of 1991 would have made it unstable in close approaches to the Earth on a time scale measured in millennia. This means, that if it is an asteroid, it would have recently arrived in that orbit, which is, Steel states, very unlikely.

Therefore, concludes Steel, we have to seriously consider the possibility that this object has "an alien genesis." Given our meager surveillance of near-Earth objects, there is little chance that objects of this kind would have been spotted in the past. There is nothing here, in other words, that would contradict the alien probe hypothesis, says Steel.

Steel's probability analysis does not end here. He goes on to tackle an issue that not doubt made his colleagues pale. Was 1991 VG under control or making a random passage by the Earth, he asks? Since only "about one in 50 objects passing randomly within 0.022 AU have perigee heights as low as 0.0031 AU," Steel thinks there is a "possibility that it was a singular alien space probe on a controlled reconnaissance mission."

Steel ends his surprising analysis on a cautious note, however. His personal bias, he states, is that 1991 VG is really a man-made artificial object. But if it was, he concludes, then it's observation was really an incredible fluke. So much so, in fact, that scientists, he says, should "consider the possibility of some other origin for it."

All in all, it's quite an amazing piece of work. But I can't help but wonder if he's being serious. After all, it does appears in an April issue. Nobody likes to be a fool.

On the other hand, Steel is not the kind of scientist who pulls his punches. In his new book about the threat that asteroids and comets pose to life on Earth, he speculates that Stonehenge was originally erected during a period of intense celestial bombar dment--some perhaps of Tunguska-like force--about 5,000 years ago. Stonehenge's purpose, he ventures, was "to monitor meteor rates in order to predict when storms were due." Steel doesn't expect this hypothesis to be warmly welcomed by anthropologists and antiquarians. Nor will SETI astronomers take kindly to the notion that an alien probe may have performed a reconnaissance mission of Earth in 1991. Of course, human-built space probes have done just that in our solar system for the past quarter century. Why couldn't someone out there be taking a peek at us?

--Patrick Huyghe, New York

Poltergeist is a German language term composed of two words: "poltern" meaning "to knock," and geist," meaning "spirit." As such it is the name of a paranormal event that involves movements of objects and other physical disturbances, usually of mischievou s character. The term poltergeist is most often connected with teenagers reaching puberty. The other term for this type of phenomenon is Repetitive Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK.

The physical disturbances caused by poltergeists can be of great variety. Most frequent are movements, or flight of objects--a sort of bombardment--that often break or shatter to pieces by striking walls, furniture, or people. Less frequent is spontaneous combustion.

Rarest of all are events involving water. In their book The Return of the Elusive Power (Powrot Nieuchwytnej Sily, Warsaw, Phenomen, 1994), Anna Ostrzycka and Marek Rymuszko describe a RSPK that took place in 1993 in Piotrkow, P oland. The main phenomenon involved a frequent and sudden gushing of water and other not identified liquids from the ceiling, walls, door bays, and furniture. Water splashed out of glasses, pots, and other containers, besprinkling the family members or wh oever was present at that time. Inspectors from the city water department came, but did not find anything wrong with the plumbing and could not explain the disturbances. I do not know how, or if, this poltergeist case has ended, but I intend to write to t he authors and find out.

Last year, a friend from Poland informed me of another "liquid" poltergeist where water was running not only from the ceiling of the apartment inhabited by the family with a young son, but also from the ceiling of buses which the boy was riding.

Such cases are worth serious study. Unfortunately, parapsychology is so inadequately funded by government institutions that these rare cases come and go without being studied by competent scientists.

--Alexander Imich, New York
Editor of Incredible Tales of the Paranormal (Bramble, 1995)

The island of Puerto Rico has sheltered some pretty weird tales of late. But I know of none that have withstood the winds of rational explanation. With that caveat in mind, herewith the latest news.

Puerto Rico is presently in an uproar "over reports of a mysterious blood sucking beast," according to a Reuter report filed by Doug Zehr on Nov. 19, 1995. Known as a "Chupacabras," or Goat Sucker, the beast is said to rip out the organs of its animals victims. Police acknowledge that in addition to goats, the beast has been blamed in the deaths of dozens of cats, dogs, turkeys, rabbits, even horses and cows. The attacks are being reported daily on news radio and in El Vocero, the island' s largest and perhaps most sensational newspaper.

During the past three months the Chupacabras has struck 35 times in Canovanas, a city of 40,000 people near San Juan. In one incident, a witness described the animal as being about four feet tall and looking somewhat like a monkey without a tail. The mayo r of the city, who claims his people are frightened, has been leading a hunt in search of the beast every Sunday--so far without result. The police do not participate, though they do investigate each reported animal slaying.

The latest Chupacabras attack occurred in Caguas where the beast entered a bedroom window, destroyed a stuffed teddy bear, and left "a puddle of slime and a piece of rancid white meat on the windowsill." The homeowner described the animal has havi ng huge red eyes and hairy arms.

Earlier in this north-central city, the beast reportedly killed five sheep, four geese, and a turkey during an early-morning attack in a junkyard. "It just showed up and--poof--it vanished," an employee told the wireservice reporter.

Hoping to calm hysterical residents, the Agriculture Department dispatched a veterinarian to investigate. He concluded that all the animals had died of natural causes and that none had been bled dry. Skeptics claim that a colony of wild monkeys has been attaching the livestock.

But the major of Canovanas won't buy that explanation. "Monkeys' don't suck blood," he told the Reuter correspondent, "they don't steal organs."

Don't lose your stomach on this one.

--Patrick Huyghe, New York

An excerpt from "Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, Part One--Executive Summary" by Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ, SRI Project 3183, Final Report, Covering the Period January 1974 through February 1975. RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED BY THE CIA.

"The goal of this program was to determine the extent to which certain individuals obtain accurate information about their environment under conditions thought to be secure against such access and without the use of known human perceptual modalities...

"As a result of exploratory research on human perception carried out in SRI's Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory, we observed the emergence of a perceptual channel whereby certain individuals access and describe, by means of mental imagery, randoml y-chosen remote sites located several miles or more away. In this final report, we document the study at SRI of this human information-accessing capability which we call 'remote viewing'..."

"Perturbation of Remote Equipment"

"Additional experimentation was initiated to investigate the possibility that the remote sensing channel may possess bilateral aspects; for example, it might be possible to couple energy from an individual to a remote location as well as in reverse. To te st this hypothesis, experiments were carried out with a sensitive magnetometer in an adjoining laboratory as the remote target. Use of an ORD-developed magnetometer was arranged by ORD personnel. In a series of thirteen 10-trial runs with 50 seconds per t rial, perturbations of the magnetometer by a subject gifted in remote viewing were obtained under strict randomization protocol, yielding a positive result significant at the p=0.004 level. Because of the potential significance and implications of such fi ndings, we intend to collect considerable additional data before arriving at a a hard conclusion. Nonetheless, as a tentative conclusion there is evidence that a piece of sensitive equipment can be perturbed by a subject during remote viewing, thus implyi ng that the information channel under investigation may sustain energy transfer in either direction."