The Case of S T Nikos

The Ideas of S T Nikos

The reason why I began this account with the story of Albert Bender is that I think that the case of S T Nikos is similar, except that Nikos has disappeared whereas Bender survived. Bender had an important theory about UFOs and it turns out that Nikos also had such a theory�perhaps the same one!�and he too was threatened by men-in-black before he vanished.

Bender sent his theory to a trusted companion only to find it turning up in someone else�s hands. I can vouch for the fact that I placed Nikos�s papers and tape, and his letters and postcards to me in a large manilla envelope labelled Insurance Policies and deposited them in a safe deposit box at my suburban bank. When I learnt of the Nikos�s disappearance, I went to the bank to check the safe deposit box and found it contained only the empty envelope. There was little I could do. I had deposited an envelope and the safe contained the same envelope.

Fortunately, I had taken notes and have a good memory anyway, and so can reconstruct much of my correspondence with Nikos. The trouble is that I no longer have the proof�Nikos�s letters in his characteristic green ink and florid style of writing.

I should perhaps emphasise that, until I started corresponding with Tino Nikos, I was completely sceptical that UFOs were anything other than natural phenomena, usually misidentified. It wasn�t that I was closed-minded about them�you will have noted that I was aware of Persinger�s ideas. I pride myself on being ready to consider anything, but having examined the evidence, its quality, the reliability of the witnesses and the precision taken in recording the details of the sightings, I had come to the conclusion that unidentified aerial objects were rare natural phenomena, when they were not complete misidentifications of common objects.

With all the light pollution in these modern times from street lights, car headlights, aeroplane landing lights, and even firework displays and laser shows, it is hardly surprising that people can be surprised when they actually notice a natural object in the heavens. There are confirmed reports of even a rising full moon being described as a UFO. So you will see that I was a sceptic, but only because, on the basis of the evidence, I considered people gullible, and the so-called proof to warrant nothing other than a sceptical attitude to UFOs.

Nikos changed my views slowly. Not that we spent our time discussing such controversial matters. I am giving it undue attention with the benefit of hindsight. We did talk about such matters but spent far more time talking about history, and particularly antiquity. At first we would simply exchange ideas about our mutual interest in old civilisations. I had forgotten his original comment about gods not finding peace in their graves, or perhaps I dismissed it as a his deliberate tease. However in about his third letter he began an essay on the antiquity of man and the miserliness of Old Man Time in keeping his secrets so secure.

Nikos pointed out that "the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was sensational but no one knew where the huge ship had come to rest until seventy years later when salvagers with modern detection equipment finally located the wreck. The Titanic was an enormous ship but five hundred years before, the Mary Rose, had capsized in shallow water off Spithead within sight of the cheering multitudes on shore. Though thousands witnessed the tragedy, the site was lost until underwater archaeologists rediscovered it only a few years ago.

"For 500 years a shallow estuary concealed the Mary Rose, a wonder of its day. What greater secrets, do you suppose, Miss Griffiths, are hidden in Old Man Time’s vast domain?" It was a rhetorical question for Nikos went on to write about the Hittites, mankind and the dinosaurs, each one spanning a greater distance in time from the present.

"Though the Hittites were a superpower of their day, sharing the domination of the known world with the Egyptians and the Assyrians, they almost disappeared from history. Only the Bible, in references thought to be mythical, preserved their name until modern archaeologists uncovered and identified their ruined cities. And they lived only 3000 years ago," Nikos explained.

"Poor scurvy mankind has been evolving from a common ancestor with the modern apes for several million years, Nikos went on, but scholars know little about it. The history of early man and his precursors is still secure in Father Time’s coffer. Human knowledge stems from a scant collection of pieces of bone and fragments of skulls, together with chippings and artifacts that a layman cannot distinguish from natural pebbles and flints. We have scarcely uncovered any of our prehistory though we are a geologically recent animal."

Coming to the dinosaurs Nikos wrote: "Vast families of huge creatures lived on this earth for hundreds of millions of years until they died out about 65 million years ago, but they remained unknown to mankind until the end of the 18th century. The Old Miser Time�s safe was prised open, only by a chink, but enough for us to know that dinosaurs existed. Since then we have done a little more prising, but the interior of Father Time’s secret chest hides much more about those astonishing beasts than mankind has imagined."

Nikos concluded this letter saying: "Miss Griffiths�it is incumbent upon us all to come to terms with one humbling truth. We are not the first!"

I suppose that at this stage I was beginning to get a little uncomfortable about Nikos. I knew him to be a man of, perhaps, excessive gravitas, and no little eccentricity but he had proved he was an extremely well informed man, and capable of a certain degree of old fashioned charm. But now I wondered whether I read him correctly. Was he suggesting that the dinosaurs preceded us as God�s intelligent creation on earth?

"Grasp the nettle," I thought. If the man�s mad then it is better to find out now and not waste a lot of effort trying to penetrate the tortured labyrinth of a maniac�s mind. So I directly posed the question to him in my next letter.

Michaela Magi Griffiths, Bloomsbury, September, 1993
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