DOOMSDAY END OF WORLD-PLACE TO ESCAPE

Up to 100,000 expected to flock to Bugarach in hope of escaping the end of the world on a flying saucer

 

'Alien garage': Bugarach has experienced an influx of hippies

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Over 100,000 people are expected to surge upon the small village of Bugarach in southern France later this year – with camper van-loads of hippies believing aliens ‘parked’ in a mountain will save them as doomsday arrives.
According to a combination of cultish theories and astrological predictions, December 21 marks the conclusion of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar used by the Mayans .
And for some end of the world pilgrims making their way to the Pic de Bugarach mountain that looms over the commune, the highest summit in the Corbières range could prove their salvation thanks to an extraterrestrial Noah’s Ark contained within the “alien garage”.
The 1,230 metre-high peak has long been the subject of superstitious speculation thanks to its geological peculiarity, and is thought to have inspired Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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Known as the ‘upside-down mountain’ due to the rocks in its upper section being older than the bottom ones because of tectonic plate overthrust, it has attracted New Agers since the 1960s who insist it emits unique magnetic waves.
It is also rumoured that former French president François Mitterrand travelled to the peak by helicopter and that both the Nazis and Israeli intelligence agency Mossad oversaw cryptic digging projects there.
But it is the deluge of hippies looking to cadge an interplanetary lift that are now causing concern in some quarters.
Reports suggest some New Agers have been sighted hiking naked and also making bizarre outings carrying a ball with a golden ring, strung together with thread.
And although no concrete evidence of the alien carriage has been uncovered, French authorities are still taking the matter seriously with ‘ritualistic’ behaviour coming under scrutiny from Miviludes - a special parliamentary sect committee - to warn that factions may be considering mass suicides.

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A man identified as Jean, who has been living in a yurt in the forest for a couple of years in anticipation of being whisked away by little green men as the apocalypse lets rip is quoted as saying the area is one of the planet’s most important life force sites.
“The apocalypse we believe in is the end of a certain world and the beginning of another,” he is reported to have said.
“A new spiritual world. The year 2012 is the end of a cycle of suffering.
“Bugarach is one of the major chakras of the earth, a place devoted to welcoming the energies of tomorrow.”

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Baffled: Mayor Jean-Pierre Delord is staggered by rise in visitors to little village

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Entrepreneurs however, have been quick to cash in. Travel agents in the US are offering one-way deals to observe the end of the world as we know it, while a neighbouring village, Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, has produced a wine to toast the occasion.
The mayor of Bugarach, Jean-Pierre Delord, is baffled by attention from those looking forward to what they believe is the day of reckoning.
He is reported to have said: “We've seen a huge rise in visitors. Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months.
“They think Pic de Bugarach is an ‘alien garage’.
"The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering.
"After 21 December, this will surely return to normal.”
And although he may not plan to become a galactic hitchhiker himself, Delord does expect that residents will mark the period themselves.
“I'm sure we'll have a little fete to celebrate that we're still alive,” he is reported to have said.
“I suppose it's up to each of us to find our own way.”