Fascinating Sealed Documents

5. Dr. David Kelly’s Post Mortem

Sealed Until: 2073

David Kelly worked for the U.K Ministry of Defense as an expert in bio-weapons. He was also one of the key UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. In 2003, he became concerned about the US/UK claims of WMD in Iraq in the build-up to the Iraq war. The trouble started when Kelly became an anonymous source for a BBC journalist, who quoted his doubts about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. After Kelly’s identity was leaked, a Parliamentary committee, tasked with investigating the intelligence on Iraq, asked

Kelly to testify, which he did. During his testimony Kelly denied any knowledge of the quotes. Several days after his testimony, he went for a walk, as he did almost every day. In a wooded area about a mile away from his home he ingested up to 29 tablets of painkillers then cut his left wrist. The British government announced that Lord Hutton would lead the Inquiry into Kelly’s death. The Hutton Inquiry reported, on the 28th of January, 2004, that Kelly had committed suicide. Although suicide was officially accepted as the cause of death, some medical experts have their doubts, suggesting that the evidence does not back this up. In January 2010, Lord Hutton ordered that all files relating to the post mortem remain sealed for 70 years from the date of his death, for reasons that have not been explained.

Interesting Fact: Most of the articles I came across concerning Dr. Kelly were pretty much agenda driven, with a lot of conspiracy theories. I do admit that the sealed post mortem does make it seem a little fishy. However, it should be pointed out that there are still many who believe that Kelly committed suicide. They explain that the killer, or killers, would have had to kidnap him and march him into the woods, then force tablets down his throat and make him cut his own wrist. All of this without leaving any trace of forensic evidence on Kelly. It is also said that just before he was found dead, he was seen alone by a friend on his way to the woods, where they exchanged pleasantries.

4. Shirley Ardell Mason Files

Sealed Until: Indefinitely

The life of Shirley Ardell Mason was chronicled by Arthur Flora Rheta Schreiber in the book “Sybil”. It was published in 1973 and then made into a television movie in 1976, starring Sally Field. Mason’s real name was not used in order to protect her identity. In the early 1950s, Mason was a student at Columbia University and had long suffered from blackouts and emotional breakdowns, and had started therapy with psychiatrist Cornelia B. Wilbur. It was their psychotherapy sessions together that was the basis of the book. Wilber diagnosed and treated her for multiple personality disorder, with, reportedly, up to 16 co-existing personalities. In 1998, Robert Rieber and John Jay of the College of Criminal Justice claimed Wilbur had manipulated Mason in order to secure a book deal. Neither Rieber nor Jay are psychologists, but the miss-diagnoses was also supported by Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who saw Mason for several sessions while Wilbur was on vacation. Spiegel argued that Sybil had disassociation disorder, not multiple personalities. Shirley Ardell Mason died of breast cancer in 1998, at the age of 75. The case still remains very controversial and, due to privacy laws, it is very unlikely that Mason’s therapy records will ever be released to the public.

Interesting Fact: Dr. Herbert Spiegel recalled that Wilbur came to him with author Flora Rheta Schreiber and asked him to co-author the book with them, and that they would be calling the book Sybil a “multiple personality.” Spiegel told them, “But she’s not a multiple personality!” When Spiegel told Wilbur and Schreiber that multiple personality would not be accurate, Schreiber got in a huff and said, “But if we don’t call it a multiple personality, we don’t have a book!”

3. Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Sealed Until: This Year

One of Mark Twain’s wishes before he died was that his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death, which was April 21, 1910. Twain left behind thousands of unedited pages of memoirs, together with handwritten notes. Included in the memoirs are 400 pages detailing his relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after his wife died in 1904. Twain says he was so close to Lyon that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy. However he later turns on her, saying she had seduced him and “hypnotized” him into giving her the power of attorney over his estate. Also included are his doubts about God, and questions the imperial mission of the U.S. in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The first volume of the autobiography is to be published November 2010 by the University of California, where the manuscripts were sealed in a vault. The eventual trilogy will run close to half a million words.

Interesting Fact: No one really know for sure why Mark Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some scholars believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends. I think it was probably both.

2. Identical Twin Study

Sealed Until: 2066

In the 1960s and 70s renowned New York psychologist Viola Bernard and her colleague, Dr. Peter Neubauer, conducted a nature-nurture study. They persuaded an adoption agency to send twins to different homes, without telling the respective adoptive parents that the children were, in fact, twins. In 1963, Dr. Bernard wrote that the study “provides a natural laboratory situation for studying certain questions with respect to the nature-nurture issue, and of family dynamic interactions in relation to personality development.” She also believed that, if separated, identical twins would be better off with their individual identities. When the families adopted the children, they were told that their child was already part of an ongoing child study, but neglected to tell them the key element of the study. The adoptive families would travel separately to the center once a month for 12 years for IQ tests and speech analysis. They would also visit their homes and film the children playing. The study ended in 1980, and a year later, the state of New York began requiring adoption agencies to keep siblings together. Realizing that public opinion would be against this type of research, Dr. Neubauer decided not to publish it. Yale University gathered all the information from the study and sealed it until 2066, when most of the participants will likely be dead.

Interesting Fact: I know these twins were already featured in a twins list a while back, but I think they are worth another look. The two women pictured above, Elyse and Paula, were one of the sets of twins studied. When Elyse was 35 she registered with the Adoption Information Registry, and later received a call telling her she had a twin sister. She was also told about the controversial study. When the twins were reunited they started to investigate the details of their adoption. Dr. Bernard had already died, but the twins were able to track down Dr. Neubauer and, after many requests, he agreed to meet with them. The doctor showed no remorse and offered no apology. Of the 13 children involved in the study, three sets of twins and one set of triplets have discovered their siblings. There are still four people who don’t know that they have an identical twin. Efforts to have Yale University release the records by the sisters and other twins have failed. For those who want to know more about Elyse and Paula’s remarkable story, you can watch an interview of the two here SaveFrom.net.

1. France’s Secret UFO Files

Opened in: 2007

In 2007, France’s National Center for Space Studies made available over 1000 files on UFO cases, that have been researched by the French government for over 50 years. The archives were made available onto its Internet site for worldwide viewing. The files include pictures of possible UFOs, eyewitness accounts, field journals and inter-governmental documents on those sightings. Within three hours of posting the first cases, the French space agency’s Web server crashed because of the flood of viewers seeking the first glimpses of official government UFO files. Jacques Patenet, who heads the Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena said “the data that we are releasing doesn’t demonstrate the presence of extraterrestrial beings, but it doesn’t demonstrate the impossibility of such presence either”. The French government is the first to release this type of information to the public. Great Britain then followed by releasing their files in 2008. You can go on the French website here and the UK site can be found here.

Interesting Fact: One of the more interesting cases included in the files happened on Aug. 29, 1967. A 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister were watching over their family’s cows near the village of Cussac when the boy spotted “four small black beings” about 47 inches tall. Thinking they were other youngsters, he shouted to his sister, “Oh, there are black children!” But as they watched, the four beings became agitated and rose into the air, entering the top of what appeared to be a round spaceship, about 15 feet in diameter, which hovered over the field. Just as the sphere rose up, one of the passengers emerged from the top and returned to the ground to grab something, then flew back to the sphere. The sphere “became increasingly brilliant” before disappearing with a loud whistling sound and left “a strong sulfur odor after departure,” The children raced home in tears and their father summoned the local police, who “noted the sulfur odor and the dried grass at the reported place where the sphere took off.”