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The following material was imported from The Mana Bros. Page of Cthulhu in Turin. |
Mount Musiné - From Cursed Mountain to UFO Landing Base
Mount Musiné is one of the first peaks encountered upon entering from the italian side the Susa valley that connects Italy with France.
The mountain is 1.150 meters high, and characterized by a supposedly "sterile" belt, in which nothing grows, midway up. Also, optical anomalies have been recorded in the Musiné area, resulting in strangely distorted photographs, double shadows and similar oddities.
A serious geochemical analysis of the true nature of the "sterile belt" (a rather patchy belt, if truth must be told) has never been done or even proposed, but softer naturalistic studies have shown that similar stripped areas on mountain sides are rather common in Italy, usually connected with ore deposits in the rocks and with legends dealing with creatures burrowing in the mountain (Mount Verugoli, near La Spezia, Etna and the metal-ore bearing hills of Tuscany).
Originally called "Mons Asinarius" (Donkey's Mountain) by the Romans, Musiné was always considered ominous by the locals. From the earlier times, strange lights have been seen by night and sudden fires have scarred the sides of the mountain.
One of the best documented cases was witnessed by many in 966, while on the opposite side of the valley, on Mount Pirchiriano, the newly built S. Michael monastery and shrine was being visited by Bishop Amizone. Lights (described as "planks and globes made of fire") were seen by the monks during the night; they started on Musiné mountain, then rose in the sky and started circling around the new building.
Similar events are documented ever since the IV century a.D., and have been ascribed both to angels and demons, depending on the chronicler's inclinations.
Just to be on the safe side, a large iron cross was placed on the top of the mountain.
In much more recent times, the lights on the mountain have downscaled their targets, scaring witless young couples necking in the bushes instead of bishops, and the Musiné has become the favourite playgrond of at least three categories of people.
- UFO watchers. Both the CISU (Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici) and the CUN (Centro Ufologico Nazionale), plus lots of "independents", are keeping an eye on the mountain. Many cases of UFO sightings have been reported and documented in the area in the last 25 years. According to this people, the "sterile belt" could be caused by radiations leaks from some UFO engines. Also, the mountain is said to be riddled with galleries, originally of volcanic origin and later artificially enlarged, to be used as a UFO base.
It must be noted that:
- radiation levels are in the normal,
- Musiné has no volcanic affinity.
Neolhithic graffiti found on the mountain represent people kneeling in front of three suns (rising, high and setting); the rising and setting suns have a bowl-like shape that has been variously intepreted as a "flying saucer".
- Satanists. Musiné is considered a "place of power" by occultists, and is often used in night ceremonies by the (many?) satanic groups that supposedly have their seat in Turin.
A few altars have been found over the years, and Black Mases witnessed by reliable persons.
Rituals suddenly going out of control have been seen as the main cause of the various fires that often ravaged the mountainsides in the late '70s.
- Various Psichic Researchers and New Agers. Once again the "place of power" interpretation, this time with a more positive bias (expecially in the case of the New Agers). These were delighted when a metal plaque was placed in the early '70s, not far from the iron cross, by people unknown.
The text of the plaque seemed to imply that the mountain is broadcasting the planet's positive energy.
Other researchers, putting the "radiating psichic energy" postulated by some (see further on) and the UFOs witnessed by many in the same boat, see the mountain as a space beacon of sort, a role that Musinè has in common with Easter Island and two not better identified "points" in Tibet and the Andes.
Various mysterious characters are also somehow connected with Mount Musiné.
- A person calling himself "ECHNATON" has been known to send letters to people showing interest in the Mount, and in the criptic plaque expecially; his (?) messages usually contain instruction to use the mountain's energy to improve oneself's being, to act for the common good and the improvement and growth of future generations "not only of Turin but of the whole of Europe". According to some sources, the mountain has "an alchemical meaning of the highest level" - a level so high that the meaning is only known to initiates, and ECHNATON would then be one of these.
- Mount Musiné "caught fire" (causing no smallproblem to the local Fire Department) on the evening december the 14th 1973, in connection to the visit of "spaceman" Absu Imaily Swandy, a man claiming to be 256 years old and coming from a distant planeth, that gave a series of widely publicized lectures with the help of never-heard-before SIC (Sedereal Intercontacts Center), that provided the media coverage by contacting magazines and newspapers and offered ready-made press releases. The stay of the man in Turin was preceded and followed by anomalous phenomena and lights in the sky over Musinè. In particular the mountain fire, that destroyed many acres of forest, was announced as a retaliation for a debate, organized by Turin newspaper La Stampa, with the intent of bebunking the self proclaimed spaceman.
Absu Imaily Swandy - very tall, with long white hair and beard, dressed in black - resurfaced in 1991, being sighted in various Turin locations, but apparently he no longer seeked the attention of the media (too busy covering Desert Storm to care, anyway).