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(and filmy as it looked, I can only call it 'clothing*) was so brilliant a white it almost hurt my eyes to look at them... Although I felt weak, somehow, it left a solemn and pleasing impression on my mind. Vitfify is a ten-dollar word meaning to change into glass. Glass is made by heating sand (silica) and/or various oxides of silicon, boron, phosphorus, and other materials, then cooling the result rapidly to prevent crystallization. The process is fairly simple, and men have been manufacturing glass for thousands of years. When the first atomic bomb was exploded in New Mexico in 1945, it not only left a big hole in the ground, but the tremendous heat melted the sand and fused it together in glasslike fragments. These scorched particles were identical to the objects known as tektites. Tektites have been found all over our haunted planet and have baffled science for years. One recent expedition found tektites scattered over an area six thousand by four thousand miles from Tasmania to north of the Philippines and from the East Indies to the east coast of Africa. These were analysed as being approximately seven hundred thousand years old’. Like nature, science abhors a vacuum. So most books on mineralogy blandly assert that tektites are of 'meteoric origin*. It is a nice little theory, and everybody seems to believe it. However, a majority of all meteorites are made out of solid iron, and most are vapourized by the intense heat of friction when they enter our atmosphere. Substances capable of melting into glass would, of course, burn up before they hit the surface of the earth. In 1969 a group of NASA scientists dished up a delicious new version of the meteorite theory. They announced that tektites were from the moon. Aeons ago, they speculated, a huge meteor plummeted into the moon, striking with such force that its impact hurled tons of moon dust into space. This lunar material attained escape velocity and passed into an orbit around the earth, where it gradually was sucked downwards by gravity, entered the earth's atmosphere, melted, and fell into the Pacific Ocean. So another mystery was solved... unless you happen to have an eighth-grade education, a slide rule, and a basic knowledge of the mechanics involved. Then you would find that the impacting meteor would have to be of enormous size and be travelling at fantastic velocity in order to accomplish the first step - casting debris beyond the moon's gravity. Such a meteor would, in all probability, affect the moon in other discernible ways - such as changing its orbit. Next, a long series of spectacular coincidences would be necessary for the debris to enter the proper orbit at the proper time so that it would lapse into a retrograde orbit around the earth. Finally, since tons of tektites are scattered in paths across the Pacific floor, and since we know that less than 5 per cent of a mass entering the earth's atmosphere is likely to Chimney Rock is only one of the countless haunted places on this haunted planet. CHAPTER FOUR TOWERS OF GLASS AND THEORIES OF PUTTY ' See Tektites and Geomagnetic Reversals’, B. P. Glass and Bruce C. Heezen, Scientific American, July 1967.