Word: shramek
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Given that far-out environment, it seemed only natural last November when amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek called in to report he had spotted and photographed "a Saturn-like object" trailing the approaching Hale-Bopp comet. But even the most jaded Bell fans were excited when Courtney Brown, an Emory University professor, called to make a patently ludicrous announcement: his team of three psychic "remote viewers" had focused on Shramek's object and determined it was a spaceship full of aliens. Furthermore, Brown claimed, he had a photograph of the craft taken by a "Top-10-university astronomy professor...
Even after astronomers identified Shramek's "object" as an ordinary star and Bell himself exposed Brown's picture as a fake and his "Top-10" professor a no-show, the cult members were not dissuaded. When news of their suicide was reported, says Bell, "I started getting a lot of messages saying, 'Art Bell, you killed 39 people.' It's important to understand that the only person who ever said there was a spacecraft following Hale-Bopp was Courtney Brown...
Speculation reached a fever pitch last November when Chuck Shramek, an amateur astronomer based in Houston, Texas, announced on a nationwide radio talk show that he had photographed a "Saturn-like object" that seemed to be following in Hale-Bopp's wake. Shramek's breathless claim elevated Hale-Bopp fantasies from supermarket tabloids to the mainstream press and generated thousands of posts to message boards and astronomy home pages on the Internet. One fast-spreading rumor had it that the object was an alien spacecraft four times the size of Earth...
Hale was barraged with reporters' queries, and in an effort to calm the waters, he investigated Shramek's photograph and determined that the "object" in it was an ordinary eighth-magnitude star. After posting his conclusions on the Net, Hale became the target of a flood of hate E-mail, much of it accusing him of being part of a conspiracy to suppress the true nature of Hale-Bopp...
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