memoment editorial

Most people in UFO circles are aware of the UFO wave of 1947 that, essentially, kick-started the Modern UFO Era, as well as the subsequent waves that followed throughout the fifties and sixties. Likewise, many are aware of the waves of airship sightings that swept the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are, though, many other UFO waves, sometimes specific to a particular country, that have flared up since the second half of the twentieth century, all of which are as intriguing as they are unique.
Perhaps a good place to start with these all-but-forgotten UFO waves would be with a series of strange aerial encounters that took place just over two decades before the start of the Modern UFO Era in the summer of 1926 over Maitland in Canada. The first of these sightings was documented in an article that appeared in the July 7th, 1926 edition of the Courier and Freeman newspaper. The article detailed several sightings of strange objects that had been made in the previous weeks, with many of the details being remarkably similar to the reports that would be made over the decades that would follow. Reports of strange objects over Maitland had been swirling for several months, with the first of these coming from the communities on the outskirts of the city. The details of these reports were remarkably similar to each other, including the detail of some kind of “searchlight” stretching down to the ground from the underside of these strange crafts. One witness, Peter Cunningham, a local farmer, stated that these lights “moved rapidly” and seemed to be “attached to a flying machine of some description”.
Another farmer, who wished to remain anonymous and who was from the nearby town of Prescott, claimed to have seen a strange light moving over his farm one evening. He stated that “the head one” seemed to have some kind of “powerful searchlight” that was “turned downward”. He also claimed, like many other witnesses during the Maitland UFO wave, that the lights appeared to be looking for someone, or something, on the ground. Moreover, Cunningham further claimed that this searchlight caused his cattle and horses to become extremely anxious and agitated. It is also interesting to note that Cunningham, again, similar to many of the other reports, claimed that this object moved in complete silence.
One of the strangest and most interesting reports of the Maitland UFO wave unfolded in the Brockville region of the city. An anonymous woman claimed that she had seen bizarre lights near her home on two separate occasions. Each time, the lights hovered directly above her house at an altitude of no more than several hundred feet. However, unlike many of the other reports, she claimed to have seen a humanoid figure that appeared to be “enveloped” in the light and who appeared to be holding an object that appeared similar to a rifle. This last detail, incidentally, has caused many people to suggest that this, and perhaps many of the other sightings of the 1926 wave, were, in fact, bootleggers looking to smuggle alcohol across the border to the United States, which was still under the Prohibition laws.
Three decades later in Japan, a surge of sightings was reported throughout 1958, with a hefty concentration unfolding throughout the summer. In mid-July, for example, multiple people witnessed an “object resembling a flying saucer” fly directly over Chitose Air Base near Hokkaido. The encounter began at a little after 9 pm on the evening of July 17th, when a security guard noticed a strange object approaching the base. Not long after, a soldier in the base’s control tower noticed what he later described as a “reddish star-like object” heading in their direction at an altitude of around 300 feet. Moreover, as well as the two visual sightings, radar operators soon declared the anomaly to be on their screens. When news of the sighting leaked out into the wider public arena, the base was asked to comment further by members of the media and UFO investigators. Interestingly or not, a spokesperson simply stated that “no such incident occurred” and refused to comment further.
While the summer certainly saw the UFO wave of Japan reach its peak, there had been a noticeable increase in UFO reports since the start of the year. On the evening of January 31st, for example, several United States Air Force pilots reported seeing “12 yellow-orange lights” flying in formations of three just outside Tokyo.
Several weeks later, on the evening of February 19th, at a United States military base in Asoiwayama near Hokkaido, several military personnel, who themselves were in the middle of a training exercise concerning monitoring Soviet targets, suddenly noticed a “strange return” on the radar systems. Whatever the anomalous object was, it was over the Sea of Japan. Moreover, it seemed to be expanding, eventually covering an area that was 25 miles wide and 65 miles in length. Stranger still, the mammoth object then rose from an altitude of around 3000 feet to one of 46,000 feet. At some point during the incident, the military personnel realized that the five Soviet military jets they had been tasked with watching were also aware of the aerial anomaly, with each jet approaching the object before turning away. It is worth noting that a “mock atomic battle” was in motion in the region at the time of the sighting, leading some investigators to suggest that it was this military exercise that had drawn the interest of the intelligence behind these objects.
It is also worth our time exploring a sighting that took place in early 1959, an incident documented by Timothy Good in his book Above Top Secret. Good came into possession of the account through a source who had been given it by a former colonel in the United States military. Moreover, in what is perhaps a clear indication of the military’s awareness following the wave of sightings the previous year, “four F-106 Delta Dart jets stationed in Okinawa and Misawa had been instrumented to track and fire on unidentified flying objects”. In fact, according to the witness, who was serving as a Weather Officer at a military facility just outside Tokyo, on the day in question, two of these jets stationed at Misawa were scrambled to intercept just such an unidentified object. One of these jets, however, suffered a serious malfunction before even leaving the runway, meaning that only one jet went off in pursuit of the aerial anomaly. The witness listened to the entire episode from the command center as it unfolded.
According to the witness report, the pilot was vectored toward the object by those in the control tower. A short time later, the pilot reported that he “had it in sight”, describing it as a “circular, metallic object” with a “cockpit on (the) top”. He then asked if he should “make a firing pass”. The control requested permission to fire from the Pentagon, which was granted. The pilot acted on his orders and fired his missiles at the strange craft. Moments later, however, his voice came over the radio, and it was a mixture of confusion and fright. He stated that the missiles had connected with their target and detonated, but “did not hit”. He elaborated that they “detonated just at the edge of it – like an invisible shield”. Then, things turned even stranger – and decidedly more ominous.
Over the radio, the pilot stated that the object appeared to be turning and had turned on “some kind of beam”. The next time he spoke, the terror in his voice was evident, as he blurted out, “They’re coming after me!” With that, the pilot put his plane into an immediate dive in an effort to outrun the craft. As soon as he did so, however, the object moved in the same direction, and it was closing in fast. Within moments, the two objects became one on the screen, with radar operators stating that there was “no separation” between the two objects. Then, the blip simply disappeared from the radar screen. Despite searches of the area taking place for several days, the witness stated that “they never did find anything”.

One other point of interest during the 1958 Japanese UFO wave was the emergence of a group that called themselves The Cosmic Brotherhood, and who claimed to have made contact with an extraterrestrial race with a device named the Master Unit Communicator. This device, they claimed, converted “sound waves to light waves and vice-versa”. They further detailed how they conducted these communication experiments on the top of Mount Takeo, just outside of Tokyo. Of course, how genuine and accurate these claims actually were remains open to debate.
A decade later, throughout 1968, Canada not only experienced a UFO wave, but a wave of encounters with humanoid entities. One of the first of these encounters unfolded in Saskatchewan on the evening of January 10th near the Carrot River. According to the report, on the night in question, the two witnesses were sitting in their parked vehicle close to the river when they noticed a strange light moving ahead of them. Moreover, as it moved, the object appeared to flash a bright blue color. They watched it for several moments, noticing that it disappeared and then reappeared in a different location, and did this several times. After 10 minutes, the object began changing colors, while at the same time, they could hear a bizarre “thumping” sound that seemed to come from the nearby forest.
Then, moments later, the two witnesses saw “several objects” pass in front of their line of sight. However, rather than being some kind of mechanical vehicle, the witnesses had the distinct impression that they were, in fact, “some kind of animal”. Eventually, when it was almost 1 am, the couple started the car engine and set out for home. However, it didn’t take them long to realize that the glowing object was following them, moving erratically as it did so. They eventually brought the craft to a stop outside their home, but remained in the vehicle, watching the glowing light for several more moments.
The next thing they realized, the object was heading straight towards them. As it did so, it disappeared for a second or two before reappearing again in a different location. As this was happening, they noticed a bizarre formation of ice appear all over the car. Stranger still, within the ice was the clear outline of what appeared to be a human face. They eventually left the vehicle and went inside the house. Whether the face in the ice was an attempt at some kind of communication remains unclear.
Just under three weeks later, on January 29th at Keats Island in British Columbia, another equally strange encounter unfolded. On the afternoon in question, after having witnessed several objects from her lonely cabin over the previous days, an anonymous female witness looked out once more at a strange but captivating display of lights overhead over a nearby lake. On this day, though, not long after she first noticed the glowing objects, “two men in neat, dark coveralls” suddenly appeared and knocked on her door. The two men claimed they were “from the water company”, but the woman was not convinced, recalling how they appeared nervous and awkward. Stranger still, after the brief conversation, the two men simply turned around and left very suddenly. In fact, the witness recalled it was almost as if they simply disappeared.
Several months later, in early April, an even more remarkable incident unfolded. On the night in question, at a little after 8 pm, in the Chicoutimi region of Quebec, Mrs. Tremblay was walking from her home to a nearby restaurant. As she walked, she dropped her bag and knelt to retrieve it from the path. As she did so, however, she noticed a “hovering UFO” a short distance away, hovering overhead. She rose back to her feet, keeping the object in focus, noticing that a strange beam of light came from the object, as if it was scanning the ground below. Her intrigue turned to concern when the light set out in her direction, and a moment later, more out of instinct than anything else, she closed her eyes. When she opened them a second later, the craft was no longer there.
At this point, Mrs. Tremblay was more than unsettled by the bizarre events and decided to turn around and return home. Moments later, her house was in her sights. However, before she opened the door to the property, she became aware of “something white and human-like” in the shadows a short distance from her. She remained where she was and stared into the darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she could make out what appeared to be the outline of a human form, approximately the size of a child. Although she couldn’t make out any of the facial details, she could clearly see that the humanoid had glowing blue eyes. Moreover, it was seemingly staring straight at her. Then, with no warning whatsoever, the figure vanished before her eyes.
These encounters only increased as spring gave way to summer. One of the earliest of these summer incidents (the exact date is not known) occurred in Sarnia, Ontario. The witness, a 10-year-old child, had been asked by their parents to switch off the outside lights at the back door of the property. As they were doing so, however, they noticed a “glowing white humanoid” standing a short distance away from the house. The young girl remained at the window by the back door and watched the strange figure. After several moments, it stood upright, revealing itself to be at least six feet in height. This movement caused fright to take over the witness, and she screamed as she ran to the living room to her parents. Although her father ventured outside and searched the area with his flashlight (he found nothing out of the ordinary), her parents essentially dismissed her claims as nothing but an overactive imagination.
Interestingly, at approximately the same time, at around 9:30 pm in Quebec, Mrs. BL and Mrs. AB were returning home after an afternoon and evening of shopping, the full moon providing extra lighting as they walked past a vacant lot. Then, without warning, the brilliant light of the Moon suddenly went out, plunging them into an environment lit only by the (by comparison) dull streetlamps. Just as the women adjusted to the lack of moonlight, its bright glow returned. Instinctively, the two women looked upwards, and were more than shocked to see “two figures floating several feet above the ground”. Moreover, the two figures appeared to be heading toward them. The figures both wore the same style, tight-fitting one-piece suit, and both had the same disturbing “expressionless” look on their face. Before the figures could get any closer to the two women, they turned and ran in the opposite direction, not stopping until the strange entities were out of sight.
Another curious encounter took place in late July in the Burnaby region of British Columbia. On the night in question, Joan Howard was drifting off to sleep when she suddenly heard the sound of two voices speaking in German. Moreover, from what she could hear, they were speaking about her. Joan later stated that she believed these voices belonged to her spirit guides, both of whom were Germans who had been “killed in World War Two”. With this in mind, she simply returned to sleep. Whether Joan was accurate in this assessment is open to debate. What is certain, however, is that these voices were simply the start of a bizarre and thought-provoking encounter.
She awoke a short time later and immediately realized she was no longer in her bedroom. Instead, she was in an environment that looked “a cross between the Moon and Mars”. Multiple figures dressed in clothing that looked like “space suits” moved around her, while in the background, she could see several tall, futuristic-looking buildings. Then, one of the figures approached her and immediately began asking her questions. To her amazement, she could understand the questions and began answering them. As this was happening, and perhaps suggesting she was in some kind of trance or state, several other figures carried out experiments and procedures on her body. It was at this point that she realized she was “looking down” on her body, as if she were in the middle of an out-of-body experience. Incidentally or not, almost as soon as this realization came to her, she felt herself rush back into her physical body. One last point of interest is that Joan claimed to receive further visions and downloads of information each night for several weeks following the incident, elaborating that the entities behind these visions and downloads were “instructors of the universe”.

At around 9 pm on the evening of July 2nd, three encounters unfolded with very similar details, with two of the encounters taking place in the same location. The first of these occurred in Ontario when several residents reported seeing a “bright object” land in a field. Even stranger, “several shadowy beings” emerged from this object and entered several of the nearby homes. Unfortunately, there are other details about these events. At around the same time, though, in Quebec, a local woman saw a green, hat-shaped object pass by her home. She immediately went to the window and was shocked to see around “20 small men, all of green color” through a window on the side of the strange object. Once more, there are no further details of the incident, so it is unclear if the object physically landed or simply carried on into the distance.
Half an hour later, also in Quebec, Constable Michaud and his colleague were on routine patrol when they witnessed “two naked little men”, each around three feet in height, running through the drainage system. Moreover, when the two officers set out in pursuit of the strange figures, several members of the public witnessed it, with several of them stating that the two figures simply disappeared into thin air.
Quebec would have several more similar encounters during the summer. On the evening of July 22nd, for example, in St. Bruno, six young girls claimed to have witnessed a bizarre figure appear in front of them, as if it were a ghostly apparition. Two of the witnesses even claimed to have heard a strange “soft and slow” voice appear in their heads at the same time. On the same night, this time in St. Basile, a young boy reported seeing a strange man who appeared to be “walking in the sky”.
Four days later, at around 3 pm on July 26th, two young boys were close to a local airport hangar when they witnessed a “three-foot grey-skinned humanoid” a short distance away. After several moments, the strange entity seemed to realize the two boys were looking at it and immediately turned and ran toward another, almost identical creature. Moments later, both of the creatures turned and ran into the distance, the two boys noticing that their movements were “stiff”.
Two days later, at around 9 pm on July 28th, in the St. Stanislas De Kostka region, five residents witnessed “two circular objects with brilliant red halos” overhead. Several moments later, one of the objects descended and appeared to land close by. With a single flashlight between them, the group decided to investigate further. Upon arriving where they believed the object had landed, they were confronted with the sight of a bizarre humanoid, around four feet tall, with a large head and no visible neck. The group immediately turned and ran back in the direction they had come and back to the house they were staying in. Not long after they arrived back at the property, however, the creature suddenly appeared at one of the windows, knocking on it several times. It remained there for several minutes before retreating from the house and returning into the darkness of the night. A short time later, the witnesses saw the object rise into the air and disappear into the night sky.
Around a week later, at around 5 am in the early hours of August 4th in Quebec, three friends, Guy Gagne, Jean-Guy Girouard, and Carol Marquiseach, were returning home after spending the night at an all-night fair when they noticed a “strange creature” walking by the roadside that appeared to be injured, with the witnesses later stating that it “used its hands to balance itself like a monkey”. The three friends watched the creature for several moments as it steadied itself against a lamppost. Then, without any warning whatsoever, it leaped high into the air and disappeared. A moment later, it reappeared, this time on the other side of the road. The three friends later calculated that the creature had jumped over 30 feet from its original standing position (a detail, incidentally, reminiscent of accounts of Spring-Heeled Jack, who terrorized many residents of Victorian England throughout the nineteenth century).
Interestingly, at the same time as the wave of humanoid encounters in Canada, on the other side of the Atlantic in Spain, a similar wave was experienced, with the key difference being that many of these humanoids were described as Reptilian. One of the most intriguing of these unfolded on August 31st in the La Yesa mountain range near Valencia. At around 4 pm on the afternoon in question, three friends and adventure seekers were in the area and decided to stop to rest and have something to eat. Moments after they stopped, they witnessed a strange and sudden “flash” overhead. However, as none of the three had any interest in UFOs, they all paid little attention to this aerial anomaly, at least to begin with. Several moments later, though, when one of the group – Mateo Chover – walked to the edge of where they were resting to relieve himself, he saw a strange, grey-skinned, muscular humanoid entity near a tree a short distance away. Moreover, the face of this bizarre creature was reptilian in nature, with eyes that seemed to glow red. Even more alarming, where its hands should have been were razor-sharp claws, a white helmet with a visor in one claw. The creature wore some kind of coverall, white boots, and some kind of “metallic box” on its back. He was certain the creature was not aware of his presence; instead, it appeared to be waiting for someone or something.

His two friends were now aware of his prolonged absence and so set out in his direction. He quietly motioned for them to remain quiet as they approached. They joined him, and for several moments, all three of them watched the strange creature. In fact, they were so focused on the reptilian entity that they hardly noticed the “black, metallic, cylindrical object” appeared overhead at an altitude of around 20 feet. Despite the close proximity of the object, none of the group could hear a single sound come from it.
At this point, a wave of fear swept over the three friends, and all three of them threw themselves to the ground to keep out of sight. As they were contemplating how they could move away from the edge of the clearing without being seen, a loud metallic sound broke the silence, quickly followed by a bright flash of light overhead. Still fearing what was unfolding, the trio remained where they were for several more minutes before finally raising their heads to view the scene in front of them. Much to their relief, the menacing creature and the hovering UFO were no longer there. They took several moments to compose themselves and then ventured to the area where the strange creature had been standing. They immediately noticed the damage to the tree, as well as a strong smell of sulfur. Perhaps most remarkable of all, though, were the large footprints that were still visible on the ground. They later estimated that the footprints were the approximate equivalent of a size 16 (50) shoe. They further estimated that the creature was at least seven feet tall and likely weighed between 20 and 25 stone.
The three witnesses then investigated the immediate area around the scene, eventually finding the entrance to a cave. They initially contemplated if the creature might have taken cover in the cave. However, after exploring the entrance for several minutes, they concluded that the vegetation was too thick for them to gain access to the cave, although we might consider if this overgrown vegetation was part of a cover for the entrance. Ultimately, the three friends decided to report what they had seen to the local police. To their shock, the officer they spoke with simply offered that “many other people had seen them” and that these strange creatures were “normal” for this part of Spain.
Whether there is a connection or not, only three nights previously, at around 7:30 pm on August 28th, retired police officer, Pedro Galvez, had his own interesting encounter. He was walking through fields close to his home when his entire vision was filled with a bright light. He looked upwards and saw a bizarre object descending out of the early evening sky. He later described this object as looking similar to a tire with a large beam of light shining upwards from the middle of it. Then, as the object moved across the field, the beam of light swung downward and struck Galvez in the face, temporarily blinding him. By the time his sight returned, he could see the craft had almost reached the ground. From this proximity, he could see several windows in the side of the object, from which a bright glow emanated. Suddenly, three small objects were hurled to the ground from the craft, but were then gathered back up several moments later (we might suspect these “objects” were taking some kind of ground sample). After several more moments, the object rose into the air before heading off into the distance with great speed.
Four years later, in 1972, a wave of UFO encounters spread throughout South Africa, with one of the most intriguing occurring on the evening of June 26th at Fort Beaufort in Cape Province. On the evening in question, farmer Bernardus Smith was working in one of his fields, checking on the irrigation system, when he noticed one of his workers rushing in his direction. The worker blurted out that he had noticed smoke rising into the air in the distance. When he had gone to investigate, he had discovered a “shiny object with a star on top” that shot suddenly upwards out of the trees before coming to a sudden stop and hovering overhead. The farmer followed his worker and was more than shocked to see the hovering craft exactly where his worker had said it would be. He later reported that it glowed several different colors, from red to green and then to yellow. The farmer rushed home to call the local police before returning to the location with his rifle and firing several shots. When the police arrived, they too opened fire on the craft. However, the object simply rose into the air and disappeared from the location, seemingly sustaining no damage whatsoever.
Several months earlier, at around 7 pm on the evening of February 12th, in Durban, several residents reported seeing a disc-shaped object hovering directly over the town before disappearing into the distance. The following night, at around 8:30 pm, this time in the Forest Hills region, several residents reported seeing a strange formation of egg-shaped objects passing overhead at considerable speed. In Inanda on the same evening and at the same time, several witnesses claimed to have seen an “ovoid-shaped” object appear, disappear, and then reappear several times in a 15-minute period before heading off into the distance.
Several weeks later, on the evening of April 1st in the district of East London, several “unusual objects” were reported by multiple residents who claimed they performed maneuvers unlike any conventional aircraft. Around six weeks later, on May 18th, a bizarre object was seen making equally bizarre moves in the skies overhead, with another almost identical sighting was reported over Vryburg Molopo Road unfolding at around 10 pm on the evening of June 5th.
At around 8 pm on the evening of July, as a commercial airliner made its way over Durban, a strange light approached it and remained alongside it for several moments. Then, without warning, the glowing object suddenly shot off into the distance. On the same evening over Johannesburg, approximately an hour later, an almost identical object passed by a Boeing 727 just after it had begun its descent to land.
The following evening, beginning at 7 pm over Port Elizabeth, multiple residents of the city reported seeing strange objects overhead, with many of the reports stating these objects were of different shapes and sizes. Only 15 minutes later, over Braeside, several residents claimed to have seen a disc-shaped object performing almost impossible turns in the early evening sky. In the early hours of July 5th, in King William’s Town, several residents witnessed a “sailor cap-shaped” object descend and land in a nearby field before suddenly rising into the air and taking off again. In fact, throughout most of July, sightings across South Africa were reported every night, and while the sightings began to slow down as August unfolded, there were still some intriguing encounters.
On the evening of August 16th, for example, in Roosboom, a truly strange “creature with a square head” and flames around his feet was seen taking off from the ground before speeding through the air. Around a week later, in the same location, a sighting of a humanoid figure that wore a shiny white suit and was around 11 feet tall was witnessed moving through the sky, a strange, white fog seeming to envelope it as it did so.

In mid-November, several reports of strange aerial anomalies were reported over Rosmead, while the following day, an almost identical object was reported passing over Rosmead School. Just short of a week later, on the evening of November 17th in Middelburg, Gert Pretorius and his wife were driving on the outskirts of the city when they suddenly noticed a round, glowing object descend out of the night sky. It eventually came to a stop a short distance above the ground several feet in front of them, forcing them to bring their vehicle to a stop. Moments later, they saw two strange figures emerge from the craft, each standing around two to three feet tall and shining a strange red color. They seemed to have something akin to a flashlight in their hands, as well as a backpack on their backs. The flashlight was extremely bright, making wherever the figures shone appear like day. Then, without warning, the flashlight went out, and a moment later, the strange craft rose into the air and disappeared into the night sky with a great sky.
Just over two decades later, throughout 1993, a wave of UFO sightings unfolded over Israel, many of which received considerable news coverage. One of the most intriguing of these occurred at around 3 am in the early hours of March 30th and comes to us from the research files of humanoid researcher Albert Rosales. According to the report, Aviva Carmel awoke in her bed with a sudden and unexplainable urge to go outside, something she immediately gave in to. Once outside, she could see a huge “silver metallic craft” that was hovering almost directly overhead. Aviva continued to watch as the strange object landed close by. She remained where she was for several moments before deciding it was safe enough for her to approach the strange craft and take a closer look.
Before she could reach the object, though, she noticed a bizarre seven-foot-tall humanoid standing in front of it. The figure was wearing a skin-tight garment that appeared to be made of a material that was similar to foil, as well as wearing a helmet on its head with a dark visor covering its face. She remained where she was for several moments before eventually deciding to discreetly return to the house. The following day, however, she returned to the scene and discovered definite markings on the ground where the strange object had been. Moreover, within the parameters of these markings, all of the grass and vegetation was dead.
Just over two months later, also in Kadima, in the early hours of May 13th, Danny Rotem awoke suddenly. Similar to Aviva Carmel, he had a sudden urge to get out of bed, get dressed, enter his car, and start driving. He did so, and as he was driving along a quiet road with a forest running alongside it, he noticed a strange egg-shaped craft on the ground ahead of him. Although he didn’t understand why, he brought the car to a stop, turned off the engine, and got out of the vehicle before he set out walking towards the strange object. Before he reached it, however, a strange figure suddenly appeared in front of him. This figure was around two to three feet in height and told Danny, directly into his mind, that “we were waiting for you”. Once more, without fully understanding why he was doing so, Danny followed this figure towards the landed craft.
The next thing he realized, he was standing inside the craft (it is interesting to note that he had no memory of physically entering the object, something that shows up in many other alien abduction cases). Moreover, the room appeared to be much larger than the dimensions of the craft from the outside would suggest. He also recalled seeing a large pillar that stretched from the ceiling to the floor in the middle of the room, another detail that also shows up in many other alien abduction reports.
He looked around the room and claimed he counted no less than 13 figures in the room. Two of these figures approached him and led him to some kind of side-chamber. Once more, a voice appeared inside his head, telling him that he was “on a mission” and that he would “know what it is in time”. One of the creatures stepped forward and made a small incision in his wrist. The next thing he knew, he was waking up sitting in the driver’s seat of his car.
Just over two weeks later, in the early hours of May 30th in Bourgata, Hannah Somech awoke at a little after 3 am to the sound of her dog barking outside. She got out of bed, made her way downstairs, and over to the kitchen window. As she looked out, and much to her horror, she saw the dog “fly through the air” and slam into the garden wall. Determined to go to the dog’s aid, she immediately went to the door and pulled it open. However, when she tried to step outside, she was prevented from doing so by some kind of “invisible wall” in front of her. On the other side of this invisible divide, she suddenly became aware of a humanoid figure wearing bright orange overalls and standing at least eight feet tall. She recalled that, in her mind, she contemplated if the man was a prisoner who was attempting to rob the house. Almost as soon as she thought this, a voice appeared in her mind that was seemingly a resentful question that asked her, “You think I am a thief?” A moment later, the strange incident turned even stranger.
The next thing she realized, Hannah was screaming out loud at the menacing figure, asking what it had done to her dog. The response once more came directly into her mind, with the figure seemingly stating that the dog had “disturbed” him, just as “she was doing now”. Then, as an afterthought, the figure stated that it could “crush her but didn’t want to”. At this point, Hannah turned and ran back to her bedroom to wake her husband. By the time they returned to the door, however, the creature was no longer there. The couple did search their yard and discovered footprints that were equivalent to a size 16 shoe in the garden, very similar, incidentally, to the footprint the three adventurers discovered in Spain. With this in mind, then, might we contemplate if this creature was, in fact, a reptilian entity? Ultimately, the incident remains a complete mystery.
Around the same time as the above sighting, this time in Rishon Le Zion, a local resident reported seeing an eight-foot-tall humanoid wearing “silver coveralls” suddenly materialize in their bedroom. It remained there for several moments before it floated out of the apartment, even going through the wall as if it were a ghost. The witness then looked outside and saw the strange figure float towards a mushroom or disc-shaped object. As it reached it, a “hatch” opened in the side of the craft, and two other strange beings emerged. It isn’t clear what happened next, although we might assume the humanoid entered the craft before it disappeared.
In more recent times, during the summer of 2008, a bizarre UFO wave struck Bucks County, a town around 30 miles north of Philadelphia. One of the most mind-blowing of these UFO encounters unfolded on the night of June 3rd, when retired contractor and businessman, Cliff Taylor, was walking his dog, Rusty, around the quiet urban neighborhoods. Although the walk was uneventful, though pleasant. Several hours later, when Cliff and the rest of the family were asleep, the night would take a remarkable turn. Cliff and his wife slept in separate bedrooms due to Cliff’s chronic snoring. Rusty slept at the bottom of Cliff’s bed, as he was this particular night. At around 4 am, however, Cliff awoke to the sound of Rusty’s agitated barks. He immediately noticed some kind of flashing outside the property, as well as the presence of a strange mist. He leaped from his bed and went straight to the window.
He stared through the thick fog-like mist outside and was able to make out what appeared to be a solid hexagon-shaped craft. Moments later, the aerial anomaly emerged from the mist. Interestingly, Cliff later described the movement of the object as being stop-start, as if he were watching an old cinefilm that had every other frame removed. He stated that the object was approximately the size of a modern sports stadium and appeared to move in absolute silence. Realizing he was watching something truly out of the ordinary unfold, he called out to his wife. She did eventually arrive at the window, but the object had disappeared. Needless to say, she dismissed his claims and returned to bed. Cliff felt a huge sense of frustration, certain that he had seen something very real. Despite making several calls to the police and the newspaper, Cliff could find no other reports. Several weeks later, though, the craft returned.
At around 4 am in the early hours of July 27th, Cliff once more awoke to the agitated barks of Rusty. This time, an intense electrical storm raged outside, sending random flashes of light across his bedroom. Sensing something strange was afoot once more, he immediately made his way to the window and looked outside. There in front of him was the huge mothership-type craft he had seen several weeks earlier. It was as he watched the mammoth craft that he realized what he thought had been lightning was actually intense flashing lights on the underside of the object.

At this point, Cliff rushed to the front door of the house and ran outside. As he stared up at the craft, he realized for the first time that the mothership was, in fact, five or six individual vehicles that were somehow linked together. He later stated that each of these individual crafts was at least the size of a commercial airliner. The object eventually disappeared into the distance once more. Cliff Taylor, however, was now certain that what he had seen, on both occasions, was a vehicle that appeared to be of otherworldly origin.
It is interesting to contemplate why such a craft – or combination of crafts – should appear in the exact spot twice in several weeks. Is there some kind of portal or gateway close to the Taylor property, one that allows access from one realm of existence to another? Or could there be some kind of extraterrestrial, or even top-secret military base close by? Or could it be that there is something, unknown to us, of intense interest to the intelligence behind this strange craft? Of course, there were many more sightings of strange objects in Bucks County in 2008, so we might consider where the sightings of Cliff Taylor sit within this wave of sightings.
One of the first significant sightings of the 2008 Bucks County wave unfolded several months earlier, at around 10 pm on March 28th in the Montgomery County region. On the night in question, a resident was walking his dog when he noticed a strange object moving at a particularly fast pace. He watched the object for several moments before continuing on his walk. Several minutes later, however, he became aware of “four unusual looking shapes” that appeared to be heading towards him. Moreover, these four objects were moving at a significantly lower altitude than the object he had seen several minutes earlier. He noted that these objects were seemingly moving in complete silence, and each had a flashing red light at the top. The objects got closer and closer. At the last moment, however, they suddenly changed their direction and headed away from them.
At this point, the witness was more than unsettled and quickly made his way home, immediately informing his wife of what he had just witnessed. As he did so, he made his way to the window and looked outside. He was more than shocked to see the four objects, seemingly circling overhead above his house. He called out to his wife, telling her to look outside the window. She did so and saw the bizarre display for herself. Their son joined them moments later and also saw the four strange objects. All three of them agreed that the object appeared to be “looking for something” on the ground. They remained visible for almost 15 minutes before finally heading off into the distance. When they did, the family came away from the window, thinking the night’s events were over. However, moments later, the roaring sound of several military jets passed overhead. Of course, whether the jets’ presence was pure coincidence or not remains open to debate.
Another significant sighting occurred on the evening of April 20th in the Falls Township area, when a local woman woke in her apartment to hear her dog growling intensely. She noticed that the dog’s attention was on the sliding doors at the back of the room. Moments later, she heard an ominous “ripping” sound, “like someone was ripping someone’s (window) screen”. At this point, she got out of bed and looked out of the window, noticing “an object hovering around the sky”. She immediately backed away from the window, stating later that she “thought I would be sucked up, that’s how believable it was”. She decided to wake her husband, and they both watched the object from the apartment window. It remained visible for almost half an hour before it simply vanished.
Only three nights later, during a baseball game in Newtown, multiple people saw an “orange fireball” scream out of the sky. The night after that, on April 24th, near the Lincoln Highway, a resident was smoking a cigar on the deck of his property when he noticed an “egg-shaped UFO” flying in a straight line directly above the road. Then, as the man looked on in awe, the object suddenly dropped “straight down like an elevator” before it hovered for several moments just below the clouds. After several moments, it shot off into the distance, disappearing within seconds. Multiple other sightings of a very similar nature were reported over the following weeks, with one witness stating they saw a “disc-shaped object fly out of the clouds” from the downtown Bucks County apartment. Even stranger, a Bucks County police officer reported seeing an object shaped like a “sideways comma” moving silently across the sky before it morphed into a shape he simply couldn’t describe.
At around 4:20 am on the morning of June 3rd, a local man was sleeping when, for reasons he couldn’t fully explain, he suddenly awoke and felt a compulsion to walk over to his bedroom window. When he looked outside, he could see what looked like a “small cloud” that appeared to be heading in his direction. As this cloud got closer, he realized it was a solid object that looked like an “elongated hexagon”. He later stated that the object was approximately 100 feet by 100 feet and was flying at an altitude of around 500 feet. The object circled his house, remaining completely silent as it did so. Then, without warning, the object ascended into the sky with great speed.
A similar encounter unfolded several weeks later on the evening of June 23rd, when a Bucks County resident was taking pictures of “weird cloud formations”.  When she viewed the pictures later that evening, however, she noticed that the cloud formations looked more akin to some kind of “vortexes”, perhaps the remains of a portal that an anomalous craft had just passed through. Of further interest, the witness reported seeing several black helicopters in the sky as she was taking the pictures. Only two days later, at around 1 am on June 25th, a “boomerang-shaped object” with blue, white, and green lights was reported by a resident who happened to be standing on his front porch. The witness claimed that a strange sound alerted them to something strange taking place, a sound that was “similar to a passenger jet but not as low and at a higher pitch”. The sound caused them to look upwards, which is when they noticed the strange craft moving across the sky “fairly low to the ground” and at a “fairly slow pace”. They noticed that the object had white lights on its underside that were evenly spaced out and contained a “football-shaped body”. On the evening of July 2nd, multiple people witnessed strange lights hovering directly over the Oxford Valley Mall, while on the same evening, multiple people also reported an orange light that was “falling from the sky” over I-95 between Bucks County and Philadelphia.
In the early hours of July 8th, several reports came from Bucks County residents of two orange lights, both different sizes, hovering overhead. On the same evening, multiple reports of a “pink light with blue fog” as well as “three other bright lights” were received. Two nights later, on July 10th, multiple residents witnessed a bizarre craft that appeared to be sending “fairy dust” down to the ground. At just before noon on July 16th in Philadelphia County, a resident noticed a bizarre “H-shaped object” hovering overhead. She watched the object for several minutes before it disappeared behind the trees at the roadside. When she reported the sighting later, she stated that the object was completely silent and moved much more slowly than one might expect. Moreover, she claimed that the craft reminded her of an X-Wing fighter from the Star Wars movies.
Undoubtedly, one of the most intriguing sightings occurred at around 10 pm on August 3rd, close to Philadelphia International Airport. The witness was on their apartment balcony when they noticed a strange “humming sound” coming from above them. Moments later, he could see a “bright ball of light” moving across the sky at a significant pace. He noticed immediately that the glowing object was moving much slowly than an airplane would, making him realize that he was seeing something completely out of the ordinary.  
As the fall of 2008 turned into winter, sightings of these strange objects began to slow dramatically. During a MUFON conference in January 2009, it was noted that sightings in Bucks County had tripled during the calendar year of 2008. It is important to note, however, that sightings of strange aerial objects continue in Bucks County, as well as the entire state of Pennsylvania, today. It is also interesting to note, although we won’t detail them here, that during the Bucks County UFO wave of 2008, reports of Bigfoot encounters also increased, most often in the same (relative) locations as the UFO reports.
It is important to note that the waves we have highlighted here are but some of the many lesser-known and almost forgotten UFO waves from history. The fact is, there are more flare-ups and surges of sightings of strange aerial objects around the planet than many people might think. Indeed, there are most likely many more that have yet to be recognized, hidden in plain sight as random encounters that are not connected. In fact, it is very likely that if every single UFO report were recorded, correlated, and placed in some kind of global database, we might find that these UFO waves are not waves at all, but a constant barrage of strange objects traversing our skies.

Can a place be evil? Is it possible for so many atrocities and death and anguish to seep into a place and permeate in to the point that it actually becomes, in a sense, malevolent? Throughout history, there have been those places around which orbit murder, suffering, and grotesqueries to the point that they are saturated with evil, and in many cases, these places are haunted, cursed, or both. These are some of those places. 
Lying out in the dim woods near Charlottesville, Virginia, at the end of a meandering dirt road winding under arches of ancient-looking gnarled trees is a stately old house that is one of the oldest in the area. The land was originally acquired in 1724 by Major Thomas Carr, better known as the brother-in-law of Thomas Jefferson himself, for unspecified “services to the crown,” after which the sprawling house, called Dunlora Mansion, more a large farmhouse really, was erected in 1730. After that, the history seems to have been pretty mundane, just another rich person’s plantation estate, but perhaps because of its location, tucked away in deep forest in the 1900s, it began to accrue some interesting legends about it, and has earned itself a reputation as a witch’s den full of ghosts, madness, and murder.
It was around this time that the stories say the Dunlora Mansion apparently was owned by a reclusive woman, who, rumor had it, was a nefarious witch. The area, which had been a popular site for camping in earlier times, gradually became a place to be avoided by around 1920, and there were numerous tales of people seeing strange things in the woods near the mansion. Shadow figures, strange rituals, mystery lights, these are just some of the oddities people reported seeing through the trees, and when the old woman died it apparently only got worse, her ghost supposedly roaming the area and vehemently chasing trespassers away. Adding to these spooky legends was the persistent claim that there was a weed-choked, overgrown graveyard nearby, hidden amongst the trees that had been the final resting place of the previous owner’s slaves.
By far the most pervasive scary story attributed to Dunlora Mansion is that of a group of people who perhaps got a little closer than the legendary witch wanted. This apparently happened in the summer of 1920, when a group of six Boy Scouts and their Scout Leader were in the area on a camping excursion. They had not really been acquainted with all of the spooky lore surrounding the eerie place, and perhaps foolishly chose to set up their campsite right within the notorious, forlorn property of Dunlora Mansion. At first, things were pretty normal, the group enjoying dinner and a quiet night while sitting around their campfire telling stories, but according to the tale, it was the last thing they would ever do.

It was the middle of the night when the Scout Leader was awoken by some sort of scratching sounds and what almost sounded like a grumbling noise coming from the vicinity of the boys’ tents. Thinking that it was maybe some wild animal prowling about or just the kids messing around, he got up, grabbed his flashlight, and went out in the night to see what it was and to chase it off or to admonish his charges. When he got to the tents, there was no sign of any animal, and indeed, there was no sign of the boys either. The tents were empty, the flaps fluttering and rustling in the slight breeze, and all around there was a crushing quiet calm, his calls to them answered with silence. The stabs of light from his flashlight illuminated only the trees, nothing more, but at this point, he was not yet scared, as he figured they had wandered off to explore or were just pulling a practical joke. When he stalked off into the woods to find them, he wasn’t really truly frightened yet, but he would be.
After some time of stumbling through the brush and trees, futilely calling out to the boys and not finding any sign of them, he purportedly noticed a light flickering off in the distance through the murk of night. Not knowing if it was perhaps the flashlight of the boys, he crept towards it, and soon found that the light was set within the looming shadow of an old, decrepit house, feral and rotting away, squatted there in the forest. He had found Dunlora Mansion, and trapped behind one of its cracked windows was this one, dancing light, as if cast by a candle, feeble yet defying the wind. It seemed as if the boys might have gone within its dusty walls to explore, but there was no response to their names being shouted repeatedly. In fact, nobody seemed to be home at all despite that maddening glimmering candlelight that stood defiantly in that window. He went to knock on the door, only for it to go creaking open, totally unlocked and seemingly not having been locked in decades. He went inside.
The interior was every bit as unkempt and deteriorated as the outside, with moldy furniture scattered about, a thick layer of grime upon the floor, and a film of dust frosting everything, and it seemed as if it had not been lived in for some time. He searched the filthy old abandoned house, and it was not until he was about to leave to continue looking in the woods that he apparently heard what sounded like a child’s voice coming from somewhere in the bowels of the house’s cellar. Having apparently never seen a horror movie before, the Scout Leader went right down those rickety, rotted-out stairs to find himself in a wide-open cinder block room draped in blackened shadows that almost seemed to cling to everything in there, only sluggishly banished by the flashlight. According to the version of the story he found either nothing or a single Boy Scout hat on the floor, but every version agrees on what happened next.
As he waved his light about, trying to push back the stubborn veil of shadows, the beam apparently came about to cast upon the ancient-looking face of an old woman standing there in that room with him, and what made it even worse was that she had an insane smile plastered upon her face, with yellowed teeth sharpened into points. Was this the owner of the house or something else? The Scout Leader, very unsettled by this point, did not wait to find out; instead, bolting right back up those stairs to go careening out back into that forbidding forest, regurgitated by the ominous house into the gloomy trees. According to the story, he then tripped over something in his path, his foot hitting it with a wet thud. It was no log or tree stump, but rather one of his missing Boy Scouts, lying there upon a mix of mud and blood, the stomach opened up like a zipper to reveal the entrails underneath. As the Scout Leader gasped in horror, his beam illuminated a row of bodies, the other scouts all lined up and similarly disemboweled.
The police would purportedly find the Scout Leader the next day, lying half-conscious on the side of the road in a shocked stupor, and when they went to the campsite, it turned out that all of the boys were back in their tents, yet just as dead as they had been the previous evening, some of their organs roasting over a dying campfire. The Scout Leader babbled on about what had happened, but this was met with raised eyebrows and did not keep him from being arrested for murder and eventually committed to an insane asylum. In the meantime, it is said that seven old, twisted trees would suddenly spring up in the area practically overnight, where none had been before, supposedly conjured up to house the spirits of the dead scouts and the sanity of their leader.

Interestingly, in more modern times, the surrounding area has been somewhat developed into an upscale private residential district. It is mostly quiet except for the myriad seekers of macabre curiosity, who come snooping around hoping to see something supernatural, and a few have succeeded, coming away with tales of seeing the ghosts of the boys or even the witch herself. In one account posted on the site Saturnsmoons, the witness says that he and some friends went to investigate the area, and he explains:

“It’s fairly easy to find the road you need. Dunlora is mostly known for being a rich neighborhood, but while you’re driving along the main road in the subdivision, there will be a road that clearly does not belong. It’s a gravely dirt road. I already had a sense of foreboding when we turned onto the road. As we continued our drive down the road, I spied a wispy translucent something at the top left of my windshield. It couldn’t have been a tree branch because the majority of the trees are bare, plus the last I checked, trees don’t grow wispy objects.
We eventually made it fairly far back when we came across two stone pillars on either side of the road ahead of us. Beyond these pillars was absolute darkness. Immediately we all had a reaction of SOMETHING not wanting us to be there. We all had this strong feeling at the same time. I immediately turned the truck around and we got the hell out of there. I wish we had gotten pictures but at that moment we all just wanted to leave. One of girls with me has friends who previously explored the area and they had the same feelings about the place that we did. On Tuesday evening we will be returning with a posse of people to explore.
I don’t normally get this way about places. My legs were shaking during the drive away from there. Whatever it could have possibly have been didn’t follow us because that feeling left after we got off that road. A part of me thinks that it was all in our imagination and there are rational explanations for everything while the other part of me knows there was something there that didn’t want us there.”

It is all an incredible story, but is there any truth to it, or is this all an urban legend? Unfortunately, there are many things that point to this possibly being the latter. Newspaper accounts and police records show no evidence of the Boy Scout murders that supposedly took place here. There is also the fact that the caretaker of the Dunlora Mansion, Kenny Taylor, has claimed that the same family has owned the house since its construction, making one wonder where the mysterious witch comes into all of this, or if she was a relative or not. The story also mostly took off when it was released onto the Internet in 2016 and went viral, meaning that there is a good chance this was a creepypasta that sort of took on a life of its own. Yet there are still plenty of reports from people claiming to have been there and that all of this is true, so what are we to make of this? Whether it is merely a tall tale or there is something more to it, the Dunlora Mansion continues to draw thrill seekers in, much to the chagrin of locals looking to keep them out. Legend or not, it is an intriguing tale that will probably live on no matter what the truth may be.
Moving along on our tour of haunted murder houses, we come to the settlement of Quindaro, Kansas, in what is now Kansas City, which originally began life in late 1856, created by abolitionists along the bank of the Missouri River as a resistance to stop the westward spread of slavery and to serve as an effort to make Kansas a free state. The town soon saw a deluge of migrants who were trying to help secure Kansas as a free territory, and became an important runaway-slave settlement and port of entry for abolitionists and free state activists, with Quindaro heavily involved in aiding the underground railroad at the time, helping slaves who had escaped from Missouri. When Kansas eventually became a free state, its growth slowed somewhat, and parts of it became abandoned. It still functioned for some time as a gathering place for former slaves, and in 1865, the Quindaro Freedman’s School was established, which was the first black school west of the Mississippi River. It was a very important town in its time, but it also has a secret dark history of a house that seems to have been hungry for blood, and which proved to be a magnet for strange phenomena and was rumored to be cursed.
It was at about this time when in 1867, a Mrs. Wilhelmina Miller and her husband moved to a modest farmhouse in Quindaro, and it did not take too long before things went south. Mrs. Miller began having an affair with a farmhand by the name of Manz, and it was no secret to anyone at all. She would apparently do little to hide the affair, and was even caught in the act by Mr. Miller on several occasions, who just seemed to try and look the other way as much as possible. Yet, one day it seems as if he wasn’t prepared to be cuckolded anymore, and he snapped, sneaking up behind the two lovers one day to blow Manz’s head off before running off to be found hanging from a rafter in the barn from an apparent suicide. So far, so dark, but this property was just getting started.

Mrs. Miller hired a new farmhand by the name of Theodore Seidrich to replace the one whose head had been blown off, and she also started living with a new boyfriend, who was a soldier. Unfortunately, Miller was soon having relations with the new strapping young farmhand as well. The soldier boyfriend found out about it and left, which is what the farmhand should have done, it appears, as he would soon after be found dead in an apparent accidental overdose of medicine given to him by Miller. It is unclear whether she had intentionally killed the young man or not, but it is curious that she, straight after this, shacked up with a new boyfriend named John Fanschel, who ended up leaving after becoming increasingly spooked about the rumors he was hearing about his new girlfriend and the house they were living in, now developing a reputation as being haunted. After he left, one day, people just stopped seeing Miller around, and it was assumed that she must have abandoned the property and left town. Even at this point, locals were whispering that the Miller house was haunted and even cursed, but they would soon have more reason to think this.
It seems as if another farmer in the area decided to go check out the creepy abandoned Miller farm one day in 1899 after one of Miller’s cows wandered onto his property looking underfed and emaciated. When he went to the spooky home and went inside, he soon found Miller dead on her own bed, and the body of a man named Jacob Shaler on the floor. Miller had been killed with two gunshots to the chest and one to the mouth, whereas Shaler had died of a single gunshot to the side of the head in an apparent suicide. Authorities would conclude that Shaler had killed Miller several days before he had finally killed himself, although it could not be determined what he had been doing during that time. 
Rather spookily, another local man who lived nearby claimed that this had happened there at the house before, indeed in that very same room. The man claimed that 21 years before, another couple had lived there, who had apparently quickly become recluses. No one really knew much about them, and he himself could not even recall their names, but they would soon make waves in the community when they turned up dead of gunshot wounds in the very same room where Miller and her apparent lover had been found, and according to the witness, on the same day. He would say:

“Twenty-two years ago a strange couple moved into the house an cultivated some of the adjoining land. They kept to themselves, did not interfere with anybody’s business, and so the neighbors did not learn their names. Twenty-one years ago this very night we came down to this house on the same errand on which we came this morning. not having seen them around for a week or so, and as sure as you stand there, sir, we found that man and woman in this same room, dead– both with pistol shots in their head. Not having any friends, the county buried them, and no one to this day knows who they were or where they came from. I hardly think that anyone who knows the circumstances would wish to live in this house, and it will be avoided as a terrible spot.”

After all of this death and misfortune, no one dared live in the house again, and indeed most people chose to avoid it altogether, reluctant to even walk past it, with rumors that even looking upon it could drive one to insanity. The rumor was that all of these deaths had been brought about by supernatural forces worming their way into the brains of these people to drive them to do what they had done. Reports of all manner of ghostly activity would be reported from the property over the years, including orbs of light, shadow figures, and the sound of disembodied screams, moans, or even gunshots from within the house. 
Interestingly, the town would face a great decline in later years until it was completely abandoned and was only rediscovered in 1980 during an archeological study. In 2019, the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act designated it the Quindaro Townsite National Commemorative Site, and much of the site was restored to be preserved for educational purposes, but the Miller farmhouse is long gone, taking whatever dark forces that may have lurked there with it. Whatever was going on here it has been lost to history, and we are left to wonder. Was there some dark force hovering around this farm, driving people insane and feeding off of death? Or is this just folklore building upon tragedy? There is no way to know, and it is a curious mystery surrounding a local historical oddity.
In our next case here, in 1836, a successful German-born brickmaker by the name of Balthasar Kreischer made his way to the shores of the United States with his wife and children, arriving in New York City with impeccable timing. A great fire had recently raged through the city, gutting large swaths of it, so Kreischer set up a brickwork factory for manufacturing what were called “fire bricks,” used in the construction of more fire-resistant structures. Considering the tragedy that had ravaged the city, the massive rebuilding going on, and the demand for more fireproof materials, Kreischer made a killing, with a ripple effect from his business creating an economic boom that caused the area to be reverently called “Kreischerville,” which would later be changed to Charleston. Things were not all rosy for Kreischer. He lost a son, Henry, at the age of 6, his wife Caroline died in 1853 in childbirth, giving birth to their seventh child, Edward, and in 1877, his second wife, Mathilda, also died, only made worse when his factory burned down to the ground, although he managed to rebuild. It is perhaps from here that the legacy of this mansion would grow to include dark fates, death, murder, and misfortune that would contribute to it becoming one of the most haunted places in New York.
Kresicher would retire and hand his business over to his sons, Charles and Edward, and build two mansions for them at Charleston, Staten Island, in 1885. At the time, the business was booming again, and things had never been better; however, this seems to be where things started to derail into darkness and tragedy. Just a year after the houses were complete, Kreischer suddenly died in 1886, leaving the business solely to his sons. Shortly after that, the factory was razed yet again by a fire, ironic for a fire brick making facility, and although the sons tried to rebuild, this was the beginning of a downward spiral to doom. They were never able to get the business back to where it had been, their fortunes diminished, and in 1894, Edward took his own life with a gunshot to the head. In later years, Charles’ mansion would burn to the ground during the Great Depression in the 1930s, leaving just one left. 

Abandoned and tainted, with the suicide that had taken place on its grounds hanging over it like a cloud, it went through a quick procession of owners and became a magnet for all sorts of spooky stories. There were lots of rumors, such as that a chef had been murdered in the kitchen and that the Kreischers had often locked their many children in closets as punishment, with at least one said to have died in that state. Paranormal tales were numerous, such as shadowy figures standing at the windows, orbs of light moving about within, the sound of wailing, and even the ghost of Edward ambling about; such reports were common.
One of the only things keeping the decrepit building from being condemned was its being made into a landmark in 1968, after which it would be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It was at one time in the 90s a restaurant said to be frequented by the mob, but this operation did not last long. In 2000, the property was purchased by a man named Isaac Yomtovian, who renovated it and restored it to somewhat of a shadow of its former glory to be resold, but it was mostly just inhabited by a caretaker by the name of Joseph Young, also known by the nickname “Joe Black.” Little did Yomtovian know that Young was a dishonorably discharged ex-soldier who was heavily connected to the mafia, which would lead to another dark and sinister splotch on a place that was already well-known for being haunted and possibly cursed.
In 2005, a mafia associate named Robert McKelvey apparently owed money to the Bonanno mafia crime family patriarch, Gino Galestro, and was lured to the Kreischer mansion by Young, after which the caretaker strangled and stabbed him, drowning him in a nearby pond for good measure. It would come to light that Young had been doing a bit of side work as a mob hitman for the Bonanno family, and that several associates had helped him to hack apart the body into pieces to be disposed of in the mansion’s basement furnace. Young would be found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2008, and in the meantime, the ghost of McKelvey has been said to join the roster of spooks said to haunt these halls, and what a roster it is.
Among the ghosts said to dwell at the mansion are those of Edward Freischer, his wife Frieda, the German chef who was rumored to have died there, that of a young boy whose identity is unknown but who is thought to have been one of the Freischer children, and other less definable shadow figures. Common paranormal activity here, other than the sightings of these apparitions, includes slamming doors, rooms locked from the inside only to be unlocked later, flickering lights, and all manner of anomalous noises such as disembodied footsteps, whispers, and screaming, and videotapes made by paranormal investigators have been mysteriously erased. The house has become the site of an annual Halloween haunted house and has appeared on the TV dramas Boardwalk Empire and Gotham, with the crew and actors reporting various strange phenomena, such as moving objects, and freak equipment malfunctions, and the apparition of a little girl, as well as the paranormal investigative shows Paranormal Lockdown and Ghost Hunters. It has gone on to become a very well-known locale in New York, and a prominent murder house that has managed to have paranormal phenomena stick to it. What is going on, and why do these forces swirl around it? We may never know for sure, but considering the death, tragedy, and strife that permeate these walls, it is perhaps not that hard to see why it might be considered haunted.
Next up, we have a perhaps more well-known case of a murder house. In 1886, a man named Henry Howard Holmes came to the city of Chicago, Illinois, and began a humble job working at a corner drugstore owned by Elizabeth S. Holton. And by all accounts, he was an intelligent, hard-working, and very charming man who, before long, had made quick friends with everyone in the area. He also seemed to be moving up in the world, eventually buying the store and becoming the owner. What many people did not know was that the man they knew as H.H. Holmes was not who they thought he was, and that he was to begin a reign of terror that would shock the city, and indeed the nation.
What most people did not know back then was that Holmes had begun life as Herman Webster Mudgett, born in 1861 in New Hampshire. He also had a rather turbulent past, moving from school to school before finally settling at the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, during which time he had worked at a medical lab and began his first steps on the road to a criminal career by using cadavers to defraud insurance companies. Also during his university days, he was married, had a son, and got separated, and after graduating, he began the first of his many jumps around the country, settling in Mooers Forks, New York, where his history would begin to take on a tint of the sinister.

While living in New York, he was suspected of having something to do with the mysterious disappearance of a boy he had last been seen with, and although he was never charged with any crime and denied any wrongdoing, he rather suspiciously moved on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he took up work as a pharmacist at a drugstore. Here, too, there would be suspicions aimed his way when a young boy overdosed and died from taking medication from the store. Once again, Holmes was not prosecuted, but he once again skipped town right after, this time finding his way to Chicago, where he changed his name and planned to start a new identity.
This is where we come back to Holmes and his new life, where everyone was blissfully unaware of any of his shady past and where he seemed to be successful and well-liked. Yet, it was during this time that he would get up to his old manipulative ways, marrying another woman, Myrta Belknap, while still technically married to his previous wife, although they soon separated as well. Despite this, no one had a clue what he was up to, and he was still ever the charming, successful businessman.
He was so successful, in fact, that in 1887, in the years leading up to the 1893 Chicago World Fair, he bought a lot across the street from the drugstore and began the construction of a massive 3-story building that he planned to turn into a hotel. The construction would prove to be unorthodox to say the least, with Holmes changing architects, contractors, and workers frequently, but this wasn’t quite strange enough to gather any suspicions at the time. When the hotel was completed in 1891, he began hiring employees, and oddly enough, he demanded that they have life insurance and additionally that they make him the beneficiary. Strange, but again not weird enough to arouse any suspicion at the time.
The World Fair would come and go, and unfortunately, the hotel portion of the building seems to have never been opened due to various disputes over payment with the various contractors and architects who had worked on it, but the storefront section on the first floor proved to be a success. Holmes was still up to his ways, marrying yet another woman, Georgiana Yoke, in the meantime, as well as allegedly having numerous mistresses, mostly employees, but there was no reason yet to think that he was anything other than another rich, charming playboy. No one knew that during the World Fair, Holmes had been hard at work completing a string of insurance scams all over the country with an accomplice by the name of Benjamin Pitezel, and there was no particular suspicion raised when he suddenly left Chicago to go off and pull off more scams.
Not all of these schemes were successful, and Holmes once ended up in jail for a scam. On another occasion, he tried to scam an insurance company by faking his own death, only for it to fail when red flags were raised. Not long after this, Holmes kept at his faked death scam, this time turning to his accomplice, Pitezel, and having him fake his own death so that they could collect the insurance money, the same plan he had unsuccessfully tried before with himself. It is unclear just what part of the “faked” of a fake death Holmes didn’t understand, but he ended up making Pitezel just plain dead, after which he collected the money and skipped town. Police wanted Holmes for an outstanding warrant for fraud, but also began to suspect Holmes of foul play when they learned of the scam that he had planned, coupled with Pitezel’s disappearance, and they eventually tracked him down in Boston with the help of information provided by a disgruntled former accomplice of Holmes.
He was arrested on November 17, 1894, and this would be the beginning of the end for Holmes, and the start of a show of horrors the likes of which the country had never seen. As they dug deeper into the case, the investigation discovered that not only had Pitezel been murdered in cold blood, but that three of his five children, who had last been seen with Holmes, had also been killed and buried in the cellar of a house Holmes had been renting. Holmes was now a murder suspect, and he was also increasingly linked to more and more mysterious disappearances, namely, several women who had worked at his hotel. However, it was when they began searching his hotel’s premises that the real horror show began.

It was immediately found to be a rather odd and unsettling place, with doors and stairways that led to nowhere, doors that opened onto brick walls or only opened one way, a complicated, labyrinthine floor layout that seemed almost designed to confuse people, and various trap doors, secret doors, peepholes, and anomalous holes that would later be found to have been used to insert hoses for pumping poisonous gas. It was also found that several of the rooms were soundproofed, had been rigged with alarms, and held chutes leading to the basement as well. These baffling and hazy clues would all become very clear and draw sharply into focus when police searched the murky depths of the hotel basement.
One of the first things they discovered down there in those dank depths was a pile of animal and human bones, which would later be shown to have come from children. More macabre discoveries followed, such as other bone fragments, an acid vat presumably for dissolving human remains, chemicals for just that purpose, and a large stove for cremation, found to have a pile of ashes containing a woman’s gold chain, a watch, and some metal buttons. There was also a dissecting table with bloodied women’s clothing lying atop it, as well as various tools for dissection. According to some accounts, it was even claimed that there were various horrific torture devices, like something out of a medieval dungeon, scattered about. For all appearances, this was a veritable murderer’s playground, and police began to suspect what he had been up to.
It was thought that Holmes had rigged the rooms with alarms that sounded in his own room and peepholes so that he could secretly watch guests and keep an eye on their movements, and the secret doors would have allowed him to move about unseen. He could then administer gas into their rooms to knock them out when his victims were least expecting it, after which he would drop them down a chute to the basement, where he would torture them, kill them, chop them up, and then dissolve or burn any remains. He also seemed to have intentionally designed the hotel to be confusing, along with its non-intuitive layout, one-way doors, and stairways to nowhere, to thwart any effort to escape. Although the hotel seems to have never actually opened for business, it was suspected that he still had some guests from time to time, and that he had numerous mistresses stay here as well, although how many he may have killed in this death trap was unknown.
In the end, for all of this there were found no full human bodies were found, and the bones could have come from anywhere. After all, Holmes had worked with cadavers before, so they may have been from people who were already deceased. Despite all of the gruesome and disturbing evidence on hand, there was nothing concrete to prove that Holmes had actually murdered anyone there, and so he was not charged with anything concerning the hotel, which was now widely becoming known as the “Murder Castle” by sensationalized news reports. Additionally, Holmes insisted that he was innocent and had done nothing wrong.

Eventually, after a very highly publicized and bizarre trial, Holmes would only officially be found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, but he was highly implicated in the murder of Pitezel’s children as well. In the wake of his murder conviction, Holmes underwent a sinister change, going from proclaiming his innocence to a full confession of having carried out 27 additional murders, as well as 6 attempted murders. He also began to make claims that he was under the influence of Satanic forces and that he was at times even fully possessed by the Devil. One of his most famous quotes while incarcerated was:

“I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the ‘Evil One’ standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.”

All of this added to the macabre allure of the case, which was splashed everywhere in the news, drawing intense interest from all over. These sensational news stories were often exaggerated, adding grim details or inflating the death toll, with some pulp tabloid-style newspapers claiming that the monstrous Holmes had slaughtered up to 200 people, but no matter what the real number was, he was only convicted of one murder, the murder of Pitezel. For this murder, he would be sentenced to death and executed by hanging on May 7, 1896, in a spectacle that included a botched execution that led to Holmes dangling about on the rope for 20 minutes before finally dying and ending his reign of terror. Oddly, Holmes had requested that his body be encased in a huge slab of concrete to prevent grave robbers from stealing it, and this was done in accordance with his wishes.
In the aftermath of Holmes’ death, there began a string of mysterious accidents and deaths involving people and places who had been associated with him or who had helped put him behind bars. The first strange incident occurred not long after Holmes was dead, when a coroner who had testified against him suddenly developed serious blood poisoning for no reason and died. Next was a mysterious explosion and fire that completely razed the hotel to the ground in 1895. After this, other deaths followed in quick succession, including another coroner and the judge who had sentenced Holmes to death, who both fell with mysterious illnesses, as well as the prison warden, from suicide. Then there were the deaths of the father of one of Holmes’ alleged victims, a priest who had read him his last rites, and a jury foreman from the trial, who died in a freak accident when electrical wires fell on him. All of this quickly convinced people that Holmes had left some dark curse behind.
The curse continued when one of the offices of the insurance company that had foiled his fake death plot burned to the ground. There were also more strange deaths in later years. The man who had pointed authorities in Holmes’ direction, who had been pardoned for providing the information, was shot and killed in a violent shootout with police in Chicago in 1909. Then there was the suicide of the former caretaker of the hotel, who killed himself in 1914 after claiming that he had been haunted by constant, strange hallucinations. One of the detectives who helped track Holmes down also fell seriously ill, although he survived. Whether any of this had anything to do with a supernatural curse or not is unknown, but it is all very creepy nevertheless.
Other strange mysteries hover about Holmes and his Murder Castle as well. Although the building was destroyed in a fire, people claimed that at night, there could be heard ghostly screams and moans coming from the charred plot, and that shadowy figures could be seen stalking about in the darkness. Animals were also said to avoid it like the plague, with dogs refusing to go anywhere near it. Even when a post office was built there in 1938, the hauntings didn’t stop, and the building is said to be incredibly haunted. Postal workers have described all manner of paranormal phenomena occurring here, such as anomalous noises, moving objects, roving cold spots, shadowy apparitions, and even the ghost of Holmes himself, and this is all experienced the most in the basement, which is a surviving remnant of the original hotel.

Besides the “curse” and hauntings, there have also been conspiracy theories associated with the story of Holmes. It was long believed that he had never even died at all, and that the body they buried that day was not his, his final masterpiece of a scam. This conspiracy was so rampant and pervasive that in 2017, his grave was actually exhumed to see if there was any truth to it. Within the immense 2-ton chunk of concrete, the remains and even his clothes were found to be remarkably intact and well-preserved, and the body would be conclusively identified as that of Holmes, ending the conspiracy theory.
With the dark and sinister infusing it all, it is understandable why the grotesque story has gained so much attention and has produced so many spooky accounts. The colorful, morbid tale of Henry Howard Holmes has achieved an almost legendary status, but is also so peppered with exaggerations and unknowns that it is hard to know sometimes where the truth of the man ends, and the myth begins. Very little is known of the man himself, and even his deeds have been played up for maximum creepiness. We don’t even know how many people he really killed. With all of the stories of hauntings and curses, it all gets even further pushed into the murky realm of strange mysteries and the unknown, where it is hard to really know what to make of any of it. Nevertheless, it is certainly a breathtaking tale of horror and serial killers from a time when that wasn’t even a common phrase in America, and it will remain indelibly imprinted upon history as a glimpse into pure evil.
Continuing our tour, in 2001, the Bernal family moved into a pleasant little home in Canoga Park, California, thinking that it was more or less their dream home. At first, things were great, but there would turn out to be something rather off about the place. It began with simply a strange, creeping sense of foreboding, and that of eyes watching when no one was there. Although this could have been written off as a trick of the imagination, the feeling of some dark presence was often almost unbearably stifling, and everyone in the household would profoundly feel it. Before long, other strange things began happening, such as lights flicking on or off and moving objects, and the family’s daughter, Gaby Bernal, would later explain:

“The house had a bad energy when we moved in. Weird things would happen. The garage door would open and close, I had like cold spots in my room. I didn’t really sleep at all. I felt like someone was watching me. Stuff like that makes it very real and scary and very unsettling.”

Gaby would start talking with an imaginary friend she called “Joseph,” who she felt following her around and who she would talk to, which when coupled with all of the other strange things going on unsettled her parents. Gaby would claim that Joseph would sometimes move things or open and close the garage door, as well as turn lights on and off. It was all completely baffling for the family until the father, Guy Bernal learned from a neighbor that there was something in the home’s past that the realtors had failed to mention and which they had been unaware. It seems as if this house was the location of a rather violent and high-profile crime that would put a new spin on everything.

It would turn out that the house was where a prolific child actress by the name of Judith Eva Barsi had once lived in the 1980s. Barsi was in countless TV commercials and television shows, as well as appearing in Jaws: The Revenge, and lending her voice to the films The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven. Barsi was a popular pick for directors looking for actresses to play someone younger, as she was very short for her age and so was often cast in the roles of younger children. She was all over the place at the time, pulling in an estimated $100,000 a year. Yet while it all seemed that they were living the life, there were dark horizons ahead.
Eza’s father, Hungarian immigrant József Barsi, had a bit of a drinking problem. He would routinely get completely stupid drunk and fly into depressive rages in which he would threaten to kill himself, and also direct physical violence towards his family. He would make abusive threats, such as that he was going to kill them all or burn down the house, and would continue his physical assaults. It all took a toll on little Eva, who was eventually taken to a child psychologist, where it was found that she was suffering extreme physical and emotional abuse, and the Child Protective Services stepped in, only to be turned away by the mother, who claimed that divorce proceedings were underway. On July 28, 1988, the bodies of József Barsi, his wife, Maria Virovacz, and Eva were found dead in their house in an apparent alcohol-fueled murder suicide, each of them shot once in the head. József had apparently killed them and then sat with their dead bodies for two days before attempting to burn them and the house down and kill himself.
This was all certainly an eye-opening revelation for the Bernal’s, who had had no idea about any of this, and it seemed to explain a lot, such as the paranormal phenomena, and even Gaby’s shadowy invisible friend was called “Joseph,” which sounds an awful lot like “József,” even though she had not known about the tragedy at the time she was spending time with her imaginary friend. The idea then became that Eva and her father were still tied to this place, perhaps imprisoned and tethered there by the trauma and anger involved with the murders. Unfortunately, the whole story would only really come to the attention of the public through the most vulgar of means: reality TV.
It seems that there is actually a reality show that focuses on renovating so-called “murder houses,” to liven them up, get rid of the bad energy, and straighten up their Feng Shui, one would presume. This show is called Murder House Flip, available on the streaming service Quibi, and yes, it is perhaps unfortunately, a real thing. On the show, designers, paranormal experts, and other pros will appraise a location that has a haunted, dark past and go about sprucing it up, and in this case, the task fell to interior designers Joelle Uzyel and Mikel Welch. Over three entire episodes, they went about repainting the hallways, installing recessed lighting, rearranging Gaby’s room, which was where the murders had actually taken place, and adding French doors that open to a renovated backyard, all of which ended up reportedly somewhat airing out the ominous energy that once lurked here. Gaby Bernal herself would say on the program after the make-over:

“I felt bad energy here and now it feels like it’s dissipated. The negative energy that we felt in the house is gone already. No more sadness, no more crying. It is going to be one of the greatest things that has happened in my life.”

Besides the mystery of why anyone would think that renovating haunted murder houses would make a good and tasteful TV show,  we are also left with the conundrum of what is really going on here. The Bernal family was experiencing this weirdness before they even knew of its troubled past, and they have always insisted it was all true, no matter the sensationalism attached to it afterwards. What exactly was going on here? Did the dark history of this place manage to seep into its very being? Were there restless spirits tied to it in their anguish and pain? Or is it nothing more than an urban legend? Whatever the case may be, such places draw reports such as these to them, and in the end, we can only wonder at what it all means.
After looking at cases like these, what do you think? Can places be evil? Can they be imbued with the atrocities of their pasts to make them haunted or cursed places? There is the idea in the world of the paranormal that locations can absorb certain energies of what happens within them, so if that is true, can these negative energies stain these places somehow? Whatever the case may be, these don’t seem to be the kinds of places anyone would want to wander around at night.