A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
Sports gambling scandals abound in the U.S., but a new wager could open the problem to the solar system, the galaxy and potentially the universe with the announcement that Harvard astronomer and 3I/ATLAS interstellar object fan Dr. Avi Loeb and Dr. Michael Shermer, historian of science and editor of Skeptic magazine registered a bet with the Long Now Foundation’s Long Bets program on whether or not the “Discovery or disclosure of alien visitation to Earth in the form of UFOs, UAPs, or any other technological artifact or alien biological form, as confirmed by major scientific institutions and government agencies” will occur by December 31, 2030; At least two of the following three scientific organizations must confirm the discovery: NASA. The National Science Foundation (NSF). The American Astronomical Society (AAS); Shermer bet against it, and Loeb bet it will happen – the $1,000 will go to the Galileo Project Foundation either way. And you thought the lottery was the only gambling with astronomical odds.
Heads, I win; tails, humanity loses.
While promoting his new UFO documentary, ‘The Age of Disclosure’, filmmaker and director Dan Farah has been making some startling revelations, including one that some nuclear tests in the 1950s were conducted in secret by the U.S. military for the specific purpose of disabling alien UFOs and retrieving their wreckage for analysis and potential re-engineering; he claimed this practice was also conducted by the military of the then Soviet Union but did not provide any physical evidence of these crashes or a a government cover-up; however, Farah claimed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and other government officials told him there is a new ‘Cold War’ between the US, Russia, and China to weaponize the rumored alien technology and the result would be a conflict far worse than the nuclear Cold War. Can we ever get disclosure without it being linked to documentaries, elections or political power battles?
In his new book (with Andrew Bartlett), ‘Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry: on the borderlands of legitimate science.’, Dr Jamie Lewis of Cardiff University conducts more than 150 interviews of the biggest names in Bigfoot research and comes to the conclusion that “As well as drawing from scientific practices, Bigfooters use a suite of modern technologies such as drones, thermal imaging, and parabolic dishes in their investigations. They spend weekends, weeks, and even months in the field. This work is skillful behavior, as they need to detect, collect, and analyze the merest traces, remnants, and residues of the presence of an unknown-to-science animal”; that will not necessarily appease Bigfoot disbelievers, but Lewis tries to win them over with this argument: “Bigfoot exists. Not necessarily as a biological creature, but certainly as an object around which thousands of Americans organize their lives, collecting and analyzing evidence, and making knowledge. The idea of Bigfoot has captured the imaginations of people for decades”. One good reason to hate AI is that its computer-generated photos have muddled the quest for a non-blurry Bigfoot image.
The search for the Loch Ness monster attracts the same kind of skeptics as the hunt for Bigfoot, but it also has its proponents using scientific tools, like Gordon Holmes who is both a witness and a technical researcher; on May 26, 2007, Holmes used a camcorder (remember those?) to record what looked like an aquatic creature swimming across the lake near Urquhart Bay; the video received criticism for its blurriness – it was analyzed by Bill Appleton, founder of US-based software firm DreamFactory, who said he believed it showed a “giant eel”; while Holmes agreed at the time, he never forgot the thrill of possibly finding the monster, so he recently applied his knowledge from his years as a University of Bradford IT technician Gordon and used modern imaging software to upgrade the image, which he now says “is the most detailed close-up of the Loch Ness Monster at this time” and shows a 14-foot-long creature with two central humps that may be bulges caused by “recent fish-feeding events”; he still can’t say for sure it’s not a giant eel, so “The mystery and intrigue will go on”. And on and on and on as long as there are businesses making money on blurry images.
The last thing one expects to find in a deep crevice on a mountain is a flying saucer, but a video taken by Fer Valderrama Marin on November 14 of a rocky mountain crease in the Coquimbo region of northern Chile shows what appears to be a silver metallic disc in a position that would suggest it was parked rather than crashed; the local media published the video and noted the Elqui Valley in the Coquimbo region is well known in UFO circles for its many sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects; the video was uploaded to social media where comments run the gamut from those who want the exact location so they can get up close to it, while skeptics say it could be the tent of a camper distorted by the odd angle and sunlight. Chile indeed has many UFO sightings, as do its South American neighbors like Peru, so it would be nice to have a better inspection or a helicopter flyover before it replenishes its fuel and llama steaks and takes off.
The new movie ‘Wicked: For Good’ is doing better at the box office than the first ‘Wicked’ and one reason might be the support of real witches – NPR interviewed a number of them and there were plenty of compliments like this one from witch Mama Rainbow: “I love how they humanized Elphaba and Galinda to show that witches are just regular people”; witch Tiffany Walker liked that Elphaba is “no longer scary or something to fear. She’s really this misunderstood hero”; however, Oshun priestess Juju worries about the mainstreaming and “gentrification” of witchcraft, with Tarot cards on sale at Walmart and spells on Etsy. Tarot cards at Walmart sound like the perfect purchase to keep you safe while walking around the store on Black Friday.
Which witch just got her holiday shopping done?
Cemeteries seem like a logical place to see a ghost, but Rodrigo Quiñones and his co-workers were shocked when a photograph taken while they were working near an old graveyard in Quillagua in the Antofagasta region of Chile showed what looks like a small child standing behind them – something none of them remember seeing; the photo was uploaded to social media where there were a lot of believers that the girl was a ghost. But a local media site asked paranormal researcher Carlos Martínez for his opinion – Martinez said, “The photo is quite interesting because it has both credible and unbelievable aspects. Among the credible ones is the consistent lighting; it’s not artificial light. The shadows of the three workers also match. The figure of the child also casts a slight shadow. The resolution and focus are also quite reasonable”; he noted that locals said the cemetery is known for paranormal activity and child apparitions, but he took issue with the child’s size, which he said “appears very small next to the adults”; he ruled out the girl being a living child and instead suggested the photo was “an edit, a trick, a well-done montage”. How about bringing in a medium for a second opinion from a ghost?
While the mainstream media focuses on the travels of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it passes Earth and other planets on its path through the solar system, the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, announced that the total number of identified NEOs has surpassed 40,000, with 10,000discovered in the last three years alone; Luca Conversi, the center’s manager, predicts that next-generation telescopes like the new Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile “will discover tens of thousands” more; even scarier, the ESA predicts that of the 40,000 known NEOs, around 2,000 of them could crash into Earth, so its Planetary Defense team sent the Hera asteroid mitigation mission to the asteroid Dimorphos, where it will study how well NASA’s DART mission managed to deflect it; ESA is also planning the Ramses (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) mission to the asteroid Apophis and will tag along as it makes a very close flyby of Earth in 2029. Somewhere in the afterlife, dinosaurs are shaking their heads.
The idea that 3I/ATLAS is a spaceship in disguise is not the only conspiracy theory following the interstellar object as a post on Medium which claims that old images of it have been uncovered along with a 2005 academic paper referring to a project called CASSANDRA which was unveiled at the 57th International Astronautical Congress in Valencia, Spain in 2006 with methods of detecting dangerous objects at extreme distances before they become Near Earth Objects; this led to conspiracy theories that there was a 20-year plan to have a “controlled release of updates by media and scientific personalities to ease the idea into the general public so as to avoid causing a panic; the paper notes that “The abstract listed keywords that now in November 2025—read like a prophecy: “Asteroids, Moon, Kuiper Belt, RADAR, Commercial off the Shelf, Nuclear Explosives”, and suggests that CASSANDRA was designed to track dangerous objects continuously through cislunar space and coordinate defensive response using distributed sensor networks, concluding that “In 2025, it became operational”. Back to you, Avi Loeb.
Slender Man – the tall, thin, faceless being – entered the creepypasta world in 2009 with a photoshopped meme, but didn’t grab the attention of the mainstream media until 2014 when two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times and claimed they did it to please Slender Man, who they thought would kill their families if they did not commit the murder; fortunately, the victim survived and Anissa Weier was sentenced to be hospitalized for 25 years, while Morgan Geyser, was sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital; meanwhile, Slender Man panic permeated the minds of parents and the being became a feared paranormal creature; Weiser was granted supervised release in 2021, and Geyser in 2025, but Geyser is back in the news and in jail after she cut off her electronic monitoring device and leaving her group home; she was found in Posen, Illinois, where she told the cops she had “done something really bad” and told them to “just Google” her. But first, hide all the knives.
Another alleged revelation in the new documentary, “The Age of Disclosure”, comes from Dr. Eric Davis, an astrophysicist and former scientific consultant for the Pentagon’s AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), who claims that then former President George H.W. Bush told him in 2003 about an incident that occurred in 1964 at Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County, New Mexico; Davis says Bush told him that three spacecraft approached the military base and one landed on the runway; an alien then exited the craft and met with uniformed Air Force personnel and CIA civilians; Davis says Bush was informed of this and asked for more information after leaving office, but even someone who was a former president and the head of the CIA was denied access because he no longer needed to know it; the film links this to the so-called “Legacy Programs” that spanned administrations and were responsible for recovering and reverse-engineering UFOs, with Hal Puthoff, a quantum physicist and former member of AATIP, revealing that they “have been going on for a long time” and that bodies of various biological types have been recovered, including from an accident that occurred in Russia in 1988. Would the aliens talk to Joe Rogan?
British actor Will Mellor (he’s appeared in ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’, ‘EastEnders’, ‘Coronation Street’ and other films and TV shows) joins the list of celebrity UFO witnesses with his recent admission that he was on a commercial flight with his wife when he looked out the window and saw a “black, pyramid spaceship” at the very moment the plane experienced some sudden turbulence; he further claimed the black pyramid flew alongside the plane before making a surprise exit which caused an equally surprising (for a UFO) “sonic boom”; he says his wife and son also witnessed the black pyramid spaceship and he now believes that aliens are here and “under the sea, that’s where they all live” and that’s where we should be looking, although he’s hoping, if he’s the one to meet an extraterrestrial, that they have a “massive head and big eyes” because “I don’t want to see an alien that’s an amoeba – that’s f*****g boring”. Be prepared, Will – aliens may feel the same way about your appearance on ‘Eastenders’.
That is definitely not a weather balloon.
In 1933, National Geographic published aerial photos of a mysterious mile-long series of about 5,200 holes stretching across the Pisco Valley in the southern Peruvian Andes which was formally called Monte Sierpe, or “serpent mountain” but became better known as the “band of holes”; while archeologists say the holes are hundreds of years old, no written records of their construction have been found and no one has been able to explain their purpose, leaving the public to speculate that aliens were somehow involved; a new study published in Antiquity looked at drone footage and a microbotanical analysis of pollen grains found in the holes and proposes that the holes were used to display goods at a marketplace for a pre-Inca civilization, and their large number may have been due to them also being used as an accounting system for bartering goods during Peru’s Late Intermediate Period, between CE 1000 and 1400, We saw Band of Holes open for A Flock of Seagulls
If you believe that private UFO investigators have more information than the government and are more willing to disclose it, then you may be interested in a forthcoming auction in East Vancouver of the collection of Chris Wyatt, who produced documentaries such as “UFOs: Above and Beyond” in 1997 and “Close Encounters: Proof of Alien Contact” in 2000; the collection, to be auctioned by Jeff Schwarz’s Direct Liquidation warehouse, is said to contain photocopies of documents from U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and the National Security Agency, concerning unidentified flying objects; in an interview, Wyatt says the most intriguing item may be a 1947 yearbook for Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico, which Wyatt claims shows everyone who was at the base at the time of the UFO incident and is one of the few, if not the only, yearbooks that was not destroyed by the Air Force; there is also a binder full of UFO photos collected from the public by Lt.-Col. Wendelle Stevens, an air force officer and UFO investigator; there are books and magazines about UFOs, including a 1950 paperback called “The Flying Saucers Are Real” by Donald Keyhoe and a 1998 book called “The Aliens and the Scalpel: Scientific Proof of Extraterrestrial Implants in Humans” by Dr. Roger K. Leir, and interviews with and books by physicist Bob Lazar, who claims he worked in reversing UFO technology at Area 51; when asked if he has ever had a visit from government officials, Wyatt said: “Multiple times. But that’s not something I’m talking about in the press”; the auction is expected to take place in a few months.
Noah Cyrus, the sister of singer and actress Miley Cyrus, revealed in a recent interview that she when she was a child, she “was like (actor) Haley Joel Osment – I see dead people”, referring to the movie “Sixth Sense”; Noah said she remembers “seeing this one man a lot in our home in Nashville as a little girl, this older man who was like in a nightgown. And what’s interesting is I’ve told this to a couple of people and they were like, ‘I saw that too as a kid…like different area’”; she also claims their Achy Breaky Heart dad, Billy Ray Cyurus, can see ghosts and his song “The Man in the Field” is about a Civil War ghost he saw; Miley Cyrus has seen UFOs and aliens but apparently no ghosts. Why don’t ghosts and aliens ever visit polka musicians? (Asking for an accordion-playing friend.)
We’re booked playing gigs on Mars.
In a new paper titled “The Perils of Pits”, Professor Vincent Gaffney from the University of Bradford reveals that a new study of massive Neolithic pits surrounding the Durrington Walls near Stonehenge, which were discovered in 2020, are not natural structures but have been identified as a “cohesive structure” that could be “one of the largest prehistoric structures in Britain, if not the largest prehistoric structure”; the 4,000-year-old pits are ten meters (33 feet) wide, 5 meters (16 feet) deep and spaced at regular intervals, making the study authors certain they are man-made; the researchers found the DNA of sheep and cattle, indicating the area had been farmed and occupied by the people working on Stonehenge; moreover, Gaffney states that “The size of the structure demonstrates the society they lived in was capable of planning and motivating large numbers of people for religious purposes”. It’s amazing what one can do when not distracted by cell phones and social media.
If, after reading the above accounts of aliens and UFOs plus news from the recent documentary and coverage of UFOs by the mainstream media, you are still not convinced that aliens are real, consider yourself to be in the minority of Americans holding such beliefs – a new poll of 1,114 U.S. adults found that 56% said they “definitely or probably” believed aliens exist, 30% said they believe UFOs are extraterrestrial in nature, 47% believe that aliens have visited the Earth, and 42% think these visitations have occurred “in recent years”; belief in aliens beat out beliefs in Bigfoot (28%), Yeti (23%), the Loch Ness monster (22%) and the Chupacabra (16%); politically, Democrats (61%) and Independents (59%) are more likely than Republicans (46%) to say aliens definitely or probably exist. Will this change how many politicians say they believe in aliens, or will they wait until after the next election?
