Houston Chronicle - Saturday March 29, 1997

Radio anchor says he's not to blame

Shramek cites incorrect media reports

Chuck Shramek thinks he's getting a bad rap.

Since it got out that he had posted a picture on the Internet of a "Saturnlike thing" shadowing the Hale-Bopp comet, he has received uncounted phone calls and thousands of e-mail messages - all of them ugly.

Various media have reported that members of the Higher Source cult believed that a UFO was trailing Hale-Boipp and they committed suicide in order to get on the spaceship and go to a higher plane of existence.

"I can identify with how Richard Jewell may have felt," said Shramek, news anchor for radio KLOL-101, in reference to the Olympic Park suspect that was identified by the FBI but was never charged in the explosion that killed one person and injured more than 100 July 27. Jewell was later cleared.

Shramek blames news wire services for linking him to rumors that a spaceship was following the comet. "I never dreamed anybody would link a picture I had taken with the events in California. It really upsets me because it is not true."

Shramek's picture, taken with a telescope connected to a computer, shows the comet and a nearby image he describes as "Saturnlike."

Professional astronomers say it's a star distorted by the optics of Shramek's telescope.

Shramek, however, still thinks the image is a mystery. "The object is far brighter than an eight-magnitude star," he said.

Besides posting the picture, Shramek called a talk show hosted by Art Bell that airs on more than 300 stations. Bell interviewed him on the air, but "I never, ever, ever used terms like spaceship, UFO or aliens to describe what I had seen.

Shramek said Bell later interviewed Professor Courtney Brown of Emory University in Atlanta, who went into detail about the oject being a spaceship filled with aliens.

"Others guests on the Art Bell show also agreed with Courtney that a spaceship was near the comet," Shramek said. "One guest who identified himself as a former NASA worker even said the craft was filled with aliens who were part human and part dolphin. The stories got very strange very fast."