Mention an ancient site to the average man in the street and you will be met with a yawn and a puzzled look, as if to say, “Why are you asking me about something boring and forgotten?”
     However, mention that all sorts of weird phenomena are connected with the site in question, then you will get immediate attention! Such is the case with this new book by a qualified archaeologist and expert on the paranormal.
     Brian Haughton believes we should be vitally interested in these sacred places as they are telling us something unusual about ourselves and the nature of reality.
     In a wide-ranging survey, he covers 32 of the most unusual locales worldwide. Some are obvious, such as Stonehenge and Glastonbury; others not as much so. How many of us have heard of Davelis Cave in Greece, or the sunken land of Cardigan Bay in Wales?
     People in the dim and misty past did not simply build burial mounds and monuments at random. There was always a good reason for the veneration of such places, and that usually involved religion and the supernatural (which used to amount to the same thing).
     In the case of the Oracle at Delphi, it is said that the Pythia’s oracular powers were linked to the vapours arising from the Castalian Spring – a natural pIace to build a shrine. Alfred Watkins in the 1920s was one of the first to suggest that religious sites were connected with naturally occurring energy lines or “leys.”
     The aforementioned Davelis Cave, located within an ancient marble quarry that supplied marble for the Acropolis, is associated with many events of high strangeness. These include sightings of entities with long pointed ears, a “hairy” sphere or a sphere composed of thick, black smoke (shades of the TV series “Lost”), ghostly musicians, and a naked entity wearing a huge, mushroom-shaped hat. There have also been malfunctions of electronic equipment and the temporary disappearance of both people and objects.
     Mount Shasta, in northern California, is the second-highest volcano in the United States, and has long been a sacred place for Native Americans. It has also been associated with Sasquatch reports, survivors of Lost Lemuria and modern day UFOs. An American mining engineer supposedly met the Ascended Master Saint Germain while hiking on the slopes of the mountains in the early 1930s. He later founded the “I AM” movement.
     The strange blue lightning seen around the mountain may be associated with tectonic plate movements or subterranean volcanic activity. It has been noted by author Paul Devereux and others that strange lights and some UFOs are somehow connected with geological activity.
     The city of Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan is so old we cannot yet decipher its language found on seals, tablets and pottery. The site is incredibly ancient, being first occupied around 3500 BCE.
     There are unsubstantiated tales about radioactive skeletons found at the Lower Town, the residential district, leading to suspicions of ancient atomic warfare, possibly through the agency of flying “vimanas.” However the rumours seem to be virtually baseless, set in motion by nearby atomic energy plants and a manuscript written about vimanas around 1922.
     The Labyrinth of Porsena in Italy, long a whispered legend, may have some reality. English explorer George Dennis is said to have learned about numerous underground passages running for long distances underneath Chiusi, but because they were half-filled with water, they were never explored.
     The whole city is said to be undermined by these passageways. They could be a Roman drinking water and sewage system however, so they definitely merit further investigation.
     I was a little disappointed to see that Canada is not represented in this book. After all, we do have Oak Island which could be the repository of the treasure of the Knights Templar, gold from looted cathedrals, or even, it is hinted, the missing manuscripts of Shakespeare.
     Australia is represented by Uluru. The Aboriginal people prefer that no one uses the hiking trail as it apparently crosses one of many traditional “dreaming tracks” or invisible paths, a concept curiously similar to that of ley lines.
     The Sacred Hill of Tara in Ireland is one of those spots that everyone has vaguely heard something about, without any actual details. Haughton says that ancient megaliths with mysterious stone carvings have been found there, and the whole area is threatened by the construction of a modern motorway.
     The author, in each chapter adeptly balances known fact with legends. He demonstrates how little we know about our past and ancestors, and how much more there is to learn.