May 21, 2001: NDEs - Dr. Jeffrey Long | NASA & Cydonia - Richard C. Hoagland & Peter Gersten
The letter acknowledges Cydonia as an enigmatic landform and invites FACETS to submit additional imaging requests for five more Martian sites. Hoagland suspects an internal division between NASA headquarters and JPL, speculating that Malin may have withheld or hidden the images despite orders from above. Gersten confirms the letter is authentic through NASA's own records.
Later, Dr. Jeffrey Long presents a harrowing near-death experience from a man named Cougar, whose third NDE involved a descent into a hellish abyss. Stripped of all spiritual protection, Cougar encountered dark beings who presented an alternative creation story designed to recruit him. The account parallels ancient Sumerian writings about the goddess Inanna's descent to the underworld, discovered by Cougar 13 years after his experience.
Key Moments
NASA agrees to re-image the Face on Mars: Peter Gersten reads NASA's three-page response to FACETS' formal request: NASA acknowledges that on April 8, 2001 it targeted the Cydonia 'face' feature with the highest possible resolution, optimized illumination, and stereo, and posted the data on April 19 - explicitly because Gersten asked.
But the new Face image cannot be found: After NASA's letter claims the high-resolution stereo Cydonia image was posted April 19, FACETS members spent three days scouring NASA, JPL, and Malin Space Science Systems websites - and found nothing matching Weiler's description. Hoagland concludes Ed Weiler 'has been stabbed in the back' inside an internal NASA war.
From 'tricks of light' to 'enigmatic landform': Gersten reads NASA admitting in writing that the new images reveal an 'intriguing MESA-like feature' but in the same letter calls it an 'enigmatic landform.' Art notes how far that has moved from NASA's old 'tricks of light and shadow' explanation; Hoagland: 'You can't have it both ways.'
Cougar's hellish NDE in a Cherokee medicine circle: After three days at a Cherokee medicine man's pothouse, the guest 'Cougar' is sent to a stone medicine circle with a fever-like sickness. He blacks out, comes back stripped of every spiritual protection he had, and finds himself on a narrow bridge over an abyss with the daylight closing overhead - a hell experience Dr. Jeffrey Long says paralleled the Sumerian Inanna myth.
Dark Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather: On the bridge, Cougar describes two huge beings approaching him - figures he can only call the dark great-grandmother and dark great-grandfather, the lower polarity of the great-spirit, equivalent in his words to the devil. Long compares the descent and the stripping-away of identity to Inanna's descent into the underworld.