A good Sunday afternoon to all of you, we start a new one here with Dead Men's Secrets by Jonathan Gray...

...At the time, Professor Martin Byron was in Melbourne, Australia, on a scientific lecture tour. He had just stepped under the shower, when a sharp tingle sent him scurrying to his bedside phone.

Pasadena, California. “Martin, there’s been another sighting of the Black Knight. The NASA men are calling for details. Kazantsev in Moscow is pushing for an immediate expedition to the vicinity. We want you back as soon as possible.”

Byron set down the receiver. So it was on again. Not sighted for twenty years. And now…He snatched up the mouthpiece and dialed another number.

I was still some fifteen minutes away from Byron’s hotel apartment, which afforded time for reflection.

It was, I recalled, in October 1957, that man’s most daring triumph— Sputnik I—had been rocketed suddenly into orbit 584 miles above the earth. With excitement, mingled almost with disbelief, millions worldwide had scanned the night sky to glimpse that shining artificial moon skimming on its path east to west against the canopy of stars. Within four months America had followed suit.

So, after aeons of tortoise-paced development, humanity had suddenly leapt off the planet; it was startling—and we were alive to see it!

Then came a bizarre discovery. It was hushed up quickly, I recalled.

I was now at Byron’s hotel. The ignition key off, I sat, musing.

As tracking stations swung into action to monitor these new moons, the night sky had tossed up an awesome mystery. Another satellite was discovered already in orbit. Certainly it was neither American nor Russian—and the uncanny truth was nobody else had the technology.

French astronomer Jacques Vallee of the Paris Observatory, saw it three times in 1961 and got eleven data points in forty-five seconds. It seemed to he orbiting in reverse at an altitude of over 22,000 miles above the earth.

Experts were jolted. Who put this satellite into orbit? How long had it been there?

“I’m glad you could come.” smiled the professor. offering a chair. “Now there’s something for your research. I might say the Russians have the edge on us, in this investigation. Lev Gindelis and the Pulkovo Observatory in Leningrad concur that the Black Knight is out there waiting for us to explore its cargo, and God only knows, whatever we find aboard it may change the course of history.”

I shuffled intently. ‘So you believe this is an intelligently placed vehicle?”

“Well, it’s not a meteor, and you can rule out space junk.”

Truly the last twenty-five years had plunged us into some unsettling mysteries concerning our unknown past.

I reminded Byron of that day in February 1961—the thirteenth to be precise—when Mike Mikesell, Wallace Lane and Virginia Maxey were exploring 4,300 feet up in California’s Coso Mountains and stumbled upon a fossil-encrusted rock. That in itself was not unusual. But wait for this.

Expecting it to be a hollow geode stone containing crystals, they broke a diamond saw on it the next day. The surprise turned wild when, instead of crystals, they found inside the rock a mechanized device resembling a spark plug. A sophisticated relic, if you please. But the riddle was its enormous age. Authorities dated it at half a million years.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2023/01/part-1-dead-mens-secrets-tantalising.html