Mystery Archives

Alien abductions are inherently odd. The very notion that these alien intelligences are whisking people away for reasons unknown is to a lot of people absurd. Yet some accounts are even weirder than others. Recently, I covered some of these bizarre abductions, but there are so many of them I decided to bring some more to the table, so sit back, get your tinfoil hats on, and enjoy. 
A very strange series of events began to unfold on one January morning in 1954. On this dark early morning, at around 2 AM, a man by the name of Armando Zurbaran was in his car along dim winding roads on his way from Mexico City to Acapulco, in Mexico, in order to meet up with a business partner the following morning. At the time, this was a somewhat perilous journey, with rugged roads twisting and meandering through switchbacks and winding mountain passes, and Armando needed to give his full attention to the treacherous road ahead. He was completely on alert, watching that remote lane flash out of the night to pass him in the beams of his headlights, but despite his completely awake state, he claims that he was suddenly overcome by an intense tiredness, a “hypnotic state of lethargy,” as he would call it. And so would begin one of the odder, yet mostly forgotten, alien abduction reports on record.
Realizing that this was a dangerous state to be driving on while trying to navigate the harrowing terrain, Armando pulled his vehicle over to the side of the road in order to relax for a minute, and this is when he noticed a strange sight ahead. There, hovering right over the middle of this remote mountain road before him was what looked to be a luminous, brightly lit metallic disk of some sort, and as he tried to peer into the nearly blinding light, he could notice that he was no longer alone out on that road. Standing there on each side of the strange object were two very tall figures, who seemed to be dressed in some sort of one-piece suit cinched with very wide belts in the middle. They appeared to have long, flowing hair, and for a moment, they just lurked there, mostly obscured in the glare of that disk. As he sat there trying to figure out what to do, he claims that he suddenly felt himself compelled to get out of his car and begin walking towards these strangers, as if he wasn’t in control of his limbs, and things would only get weirder from there.
He could see as he drew closer that the figures appeared to be male, although they were rather androgynous in appearance, and that they were very human and Nordic-looking, with blonde hair and blue eyes. These two beings were quick to approach Armando to help him steady himself, and then they escorted him closer to what was now clear to be their craft, all as a buzzing sensation filled the man’s skull. When Armando was aboard the glowing ship, he looked around and asked why he had been brought there, to which one of these strange blonde entities replied in fluent Spanish:

“You are neither the first nor last earthman to be chosen for testing. Our task, slow though it may seem, is designed to persuade. We choose the likeliest, most malleable persons for contact, so that they might better transmit our messages.”

Armando was not sure what to make of this cryptic statement, but before he was even able to begin processing it all, the two entities began showing him a series of images from his own life, like a dream being played out over the wall of the ship. Some of the scenes he saw playing out before him were from his most intimate moments and half-forgotten corners of his memories, and he began to get the feeling that these creatures could either read his mind or had been watching him for a very long time. The images then stopped, and Armando was shown around the ship, which he was informed was no longer on the ground and not even on Earth, but rather far out into the solar system. This was startling, as the man had not felt any sense of movement or acceleration, and when he asked about this, he was allegedly told that they used a “gravity repulsion system,” without further elaboration. They also said that they were able to neutralize any debris in their path, and let Armando look out a portal, although he was unable to see anything other than a grey mist and a sea of darkness.

Armando then asked whether they were going to the aliens’ home planet, and they responded in the negative, then they proceeded to just sort of cruise about over several days. During this time, he became acclimated to the way their ship worked and spent much time with his mysterious captors. He would claim to have been perplexed by some of the technology aboard their ship, and he was especially intrigued by the bathroom facilities, of which he would say:

“I shall never be able to forget it. That bathroom was a new and unimaginable experience for me. Standing upright, facing an angle of the wall filled with tiny holes, I was covered in warm air, and as it grew stronger, it became transformed into damp air, impregnating my skin like a warm, wet breeze. When I was completely drenched, I was offered a sort of liquid soap, which I rubbed all over myself, from head to toe. Standing once more before the warm air sprinklers, I felt the soap begin to evaporate and my skin become completely clean. The air then ceased to be damp, turning dry and warm instead of becoming colder until agreeably cool.”

Armando also claimed that he ate with the beings, describing their food as being very much like what one would eat on Earth, including meat, vegetables, cheese, and even butter, although none of it anything he had seen on his own planet, and usually accompanied by a milky liquid that he was told was made from materials from their home world and was a chief form of sustenance. They claimed that they also utilized some vegetables and fruits grown on Earth, such as mangoes, which featured heavily in their diet and which they couldn’t seem to get enough of. The food, they claimed, was sort of beamed aboard the ship from an outside source via “telepathy” whenever they needed it. During his discussions with the entities, he would also learn that their average lifespan was 250 years, that they had a society in which everyone was treated completely equally, and that their whole way of life was heavily based on a sort of religion. They believed that a being known as “The Master” or also “The Beloved Number Nine,” had governed them for thousands of years, and kept harmony in their society.
After their time together was over, the aliens then whisked the man back to Earth, where he was dropped off right at the car, which was sitting there as he had left it. Armando bid them farewell and continued on his journey towards Acapulco, and he soon realized that only 90 minutes had passed since he had left his vehicle, despite his assertion that he had been on that ship for a few days traveling who knows where. Indeed, he wouldn’t even miss his meeting with his business associate. Making it all even odder still was that 15 years later, in 1969, Armando would be driving outside of Mexico City and stop to pick up a hitchhiker who was a tall, thin man with blonde hair and blue eyes. This hitchhiker would then admit that he was one of the crew members of that spacecraft all of those years before, but as to his purpose or what they talked about after this, Armando would never say.
Throughout the 1950s, there would be numerous other reports of what have come to be called the “Nordic” aliens, which, like in Armando’s report, appear as tall, blonde, angelic-looking beings, and it is hard not to wonder whether they were all connected somehow. This report would be written about by such esteemed UFO researchers as Albert Rosales, Scott Corrales, Ed Komarek, and Marcus Lowth, and it has remained an obscure yet intriguing report ever since. What were these entities that he encountered along that lonely road? Where did they come from, and why were they so human in appearance? Were they aliens, interdimensional beings, or even, as some have suggested, literal angels? Or is this just a tall tale and the ramblings of a delusional individual, perhaps fueled by the tiredness brought about by the road and his stress to make it on time for his appointment, and if so, how did this simple rural farmer come up with all of this fantastical technology? There are no answers to any of these questions, and it is a case that we can only add to the pile of truly outlandish alien abduction reports.
Moving along, one of the weirdest alien abduction accounts there is began in the early morning hours of April 6, 1974, in the remote farming town of Kitami, in Hokkaido, Japan. On this dark morning, a farmer by the name of Yoshihiro Fujiwara was sound asleep in his bed when he was pulled from his dreams by the sudden pounding of someone at his door and his dog barking and howling outside. Considering his was a fairly isolated farmstead in the middle of nowhere, it was odd indeed to get visitors at 3 in the morning, and the rather annoyed Fujiwara at first thought it was merely some kids messing around. There would have been no reason in this safe little hamlet to think it was anything else, and he trudged to the door to fling it open to a sight that would change him forevermore. And so would begin one of the most flat-out bizarre and controversial alien encounter reports that Japan has ever seen.

There standing in the chilly early morning darkness was a diminutive, 3-foot-tall being dressed in a clear one-piece suit that seemed to be made of transparent vinyl, and the thing itself was only passingly humanoid, resembling what the witness would later call a combination of “starfish and human,” with four tentacle-like appendages, a bulbous head reminiscent of an octopus clad in a blue helmet, slanted eyes, and a strange V-shaped set of nostrils, the whole of it covered with mottled brown and slimy, bumpy toad-like skin and rested on two of its stalk-like limbs and rounded nubs for feet. It was completely silent and motionless, except that its weird conical helmet had an antenna jutting from it, which generated a visible electrical humming charge that ominously rippled through the air.
The startled farmer and this anomalous being stood there for several moments merely staring at each other, perhaps each as surprised as the other, before that strange frozen moment in time was shattered by a sudden movement from the creature as it flicked one of its tendrils to point up towards the sky. This was followed by a ray of blinding light that washed over everything, generating a profound heat that sent the frightened farmer reeling back into his house to slam the door shut. A quick look outside showed that the brilliant orange colored light was emanating from an illuminated disc-like craft that measured around 26 feet across and was shooting off beams of orange light.
If Fujiwara thought he was safe merely gawking from his window at this outlandish sight, he was wrong, as he suddenly felt his feet being pulled forward by some inexplicable force. At first, he was merely dragged across the floor, much to his amazement, but then he allegedly began to hover, before finally being levitated fully off the ground to go flying out of the window and towards the inscrutable floating disc with its scintillating beams of light. He was drawn faster and faster towards the object, seemingly on a collision course, but rather than smack against its metallic side, he found himself being drawn through its walls to be dumped upon the floor of the craft.
The interior of the craft was described as being bright blue, with some sort of writing on the walls that the farmer could not fathom, and the whole of it all overlaid with a repulsive stink that made him feel lightheaded. It was then that two creatures identical to the one who had freaked him out at his doorstep approached him to tell him telepathically, “No danger. We promise to release you at your home.” As peaceful as this sounded, the two entities nevertheless made to grab him and forcefully hold him down, upon which Fujiwara felt the fear left him and his survival instinct take over, tearing away and dashing through an open hatchway to go careening through air to the ground below, which luckily for him was only around 10 feet down.
Fujiwara vaguely recognized that he was around 2 miles from where he had left, and went running wildly towards the house of a person he knew in the area, who let him in. It was at their house that he would realize that a full hour had passed, even though to him it seemed that it had been mere moments since he had been taken aboard the strange craft by its odd octopoid inhabitants. Although the experience had been baffling and not a little terrifying, Fujiwara was at least relieved that it was over, and he quietly went back to his home to try and find some way to get over what had just occurred. Little did he know at the time that it was not quite over just yet.
The very next evening, Fujiwara was sitting alone in his house, his thoughts no doubt wandering back to those strange tentacled dwarves and their otherworldly craft, when he was suddenly overcome with a sharp pain worming its way through his ears and fingertips. He felt himself slipping into a daze, and for some reason, his hands took on a life of their own and began to scrawl strange letters onto a piece of paper of their own volition. This was all followed by a voice that reverberated through his skull, which commanded him, “When the disc lands on the mountain, you will come and board by yourself,” which was accompanied by a potent vision of the area they wished him to come to, left blazing into his mind. After that, the pain abruptly left, leaving Fujiwara there shaken and with bizarre hieroglyphics etched onto paper by his hand, but the meanings of which he did not know.
The farmer took the voice’s command as being the nearby Nikoro Mountain, and although he was still frightened by his ordeal, he felt a compulsion to go there to see what would happen. To this end, he gathered up some supplies and two companions to join him, and they set out, unsure of what awaited them up on that lonely peak. Fujiwara then made his way alone to the area he had seen in his vision, where there awaited that same luminous disc-shaped craft, and he boarded it without a fight. Once aboard, the aliens then supposedly took him on a flight into space, flying around the moon and around the earth twice, all within about the space of an hour. When they returned from their dizzying journey, the farmer then lost consciousness, after which he was apparently just left lying there on the mountainside for his friends to find.
This wasn’t even the end of it all, as Fujiwara would claim that the last trip had left him with strange telekinetic powers that allowed him to move objects and bend spoons, and he was telepathically invited on yet another excursion on April 13, 1974. This time, the bizarre beings took him on a journey that went around the planet Jupiter, as well as the moon of Saturn, Titan, where one of the creatures would allegedly go out to retrieve a rock from the surface as a souvenir for him to keep.
This mysterious rock would go on to prove to be rather controversial, indeed. It was sent to scientists for analysis, but came back as just one of the many common rocks from a Kitami cave, which brought a fair amount of ridicule down on Fujiwara and his astounding tale. In the meantime, the farmer would begin to address himself as the earthly representative of the “Summon Call Space Union,” and he claimed that his telepathic powers increased exponentially, allowing him to levitate objects, predict catastrophes, and even teleport across vast distances, of which he would say:

“I can teleport to a star 250 million light years away in 6 minutes. My role is delaying natural disasters such as earthquakes and eruptions.”

He would also claim that he could actually travel within the Earth to stop volcanic eruptions, and pull together tectonic plates to prevent earthquakes. It is all bizarre to say the least, but one Japanese UFO researcher named Ninichi Arai has offered evidence that there was something to this when he found that several other locals who did not know Fujiwara also reported seeing strange lights in the skies during the same time frame, and there were others who claimed to have been first hand witnesses to the farmer’s mental powers, somewhat corroborating his weird tales. Was this all the doing of entities from another world or merely the tripping of balls? Is there anything to this account, or is Fujiwara a disturbed individual and unreliable witness? It is hard to know for sure, but it is a wild ride all the same, and goes to show that some alien abduction accounts can be truly surreal affairs to be sure.

From the 1970s, we have another outlandish account. 50-year-old school teacher Elsie Oakensen was in most ways unremarkable. She had a contented life in Church Stowe in Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom with her husband, John, and her life was more or less uneventful. However, on the night of November 22, 1978, this was all about to change. On that evening at just a little past 5 p.m., she was driving on her way home from work on her way out of Daventry on the A45 and on to the busy A5 road. It was a mundane routine, a drive she took every day and which only took 15 minutes, so as she stared out at the lane lines flickering by, she would not have expected the strange events that were about to transpire. 
As she approached her home village of Church Stowe, just 2 miles out, she noticed something weird in the sky. She at first could make out what she called “two very bright lights, one red and one green” about 100 to 150 feet over the road, and her first assumption was that it was an extremely low plane, but as she drew closer, she could see that it was no normal aircraft. She could now see that it was a “dumbbell-shaped object” made of what appeared to be a smooth plastic material the “color of old pewter,” and that it was hovering there completely motionless. At this time, she would later say that she had felt a strange sensation, as if time had slowed down or that she was in slow-motion or underwater. Her first reaction was to stop the car, but the road at the time was full of traffic and she could not find a place to easily and safely pull over, so she continued along, driving directly under it and noticing that it was completely silent and had no windows, portals, or any discernible propulsion system.
As she drove along, she could not get her mind off what she had seen, and she wondered if any of the many cars on the road had seen it as well. She could not resist looking back to see if it was still there, and it was, so curiosity got the better of her and she risked an accident to pull the vehicle over on a side road. As she stood there gaping at it, just hanging there like some inscrutable monolith, the green light, which had until then been a solid illumination, began blinking. This snapped her out of her wonderment, and she warily got back into the car to continue her way home, but almost immediately her car started to lose power until the power cut off completely, and it stalled. She tried several times to start it, but it wouldn’t turn over. It was strange because she had just had the car serviced earlier that very same day, but as she puzzled over this new predicament, things would get even odder still. She would say:

“A green light started to flash. I decided to restart the engine but when I turned into the village something strange happened – the car, which had just been serviced that day, completely cut out. Eventually it restarted but I had only travelled about 100 yards when it stopped again. The natural light disappeared and everything was in absolute blackness. Then suddenly a brilliant white circle of light about a yard in diameter shone on the road. The very next moment, as if someone had flicked a switch, natural light returned and I was driving my car normally.”

She didn’t get far before a bright light appeared very near the front of her car, followed by one at the rear and one on each side of her. These lights were almost blinding in their intensity and started to alternately switch on and off in some sort of pattern or sequence. As she tried to process this eerie situation, the lights all suddenly simultaneously blinked out, and Ellie was amazed to find that she had travelled a considerable distance down the road and that 15 minutes had passed that she could not account for. She would tell her husband about what had happened, and the next day she would notice a strange scar on the back of her knee that she had never seen before, and have a series of intense headaches so excruciating that she almost passed out from them. Now realizing that something truly outlandish had happened to her, she decided to report her experience.
When the report of what had happened to Ellie hit the news, it captured the attention of UFO researchers, and the British UFO Research Organization (BUFORA) reached out to her to find out more about what had happened. Ellie herself was a bit taken aback because she would claim she had never really even heard of UFOs before and had no interest in the topic, but she was finally convinced to undergo hypnotic regression to possibly glean some memories of what had happened after those strobing lights had surrounded her car. It would be a rather frightening session, to say the least, and during it Ellie would say to the researchers:

“My car engine has stalled, I feel hot. A band has tightened around my head as it did at lunchtime. I am getting hotter and beginning to sweat. The pressure hurts. It hurts my head. A brilliant white light is shining in my eyes, a pure white light, very bright. Circles of very bright light radiate from it as it comes closer until I can only see the top of the circles. My body gets hotter. The pain in my head is intense. I feel as if I am sitting. I can’t feel my legs. My arms are shaking. I am very frightened. The radiating circles of light seem to change to a small brilliant circle, obviously going away from me. It’s still light, but hazy and through this haze materialize two shapes. The first is a long, thin shape that appears to the left and then disappears. The second is more rectangular and appears to the right – disappears – then both appear together. They shine through the haze, a silver glow outlines both grey-coloured shapes which are smooth and rounded, rather ghostlike. The bright light now shines as a small circle in the distance. I get hotter, my arms shake more, my head hurts dreadfully. I am terrified.”

Ellie then began screaming and having some kind of panic attack or seizure, so the session was cut short. After that, Ellie tried to go about getting her life back to normal, and would write two books on her experience called One Step Beyond (1996) and Into The Unknown (1999). UFO researchers have long wondered just what happened to her and there have been all sorts of ideas tossed around, including that she somehow hallucinated the whole episode or that it was a hoax, but she has been described as a quiet teacher with a career, a reliable witness who would be unlikely to just fabricate a story about aliens and UFOs. Indeed, she and her husband faced much ridicule from the community in the wake of the incident, so why would she risk her career and peaceful life for some made-up event? BUFORA also vouched for her honesty and sincerity, calling her an ideal witness. Another idea is that this really was an alien craft and that it had somehow chosen her, a notion Ellie herself believed. She also entertained the thought that perhaps only she could see the object, and that it was a sign of some sort of psychic power manifesting within her. She would say of it:

“I feel that consideration could be given to the possibility that it may have been my first experience of clairvoyance. I wonder? But perhaps not, because there were physical effects also.”

There are certainly some interesting details to this case. One is that the witness is considered to be so reliable, and another is that during that very same month, there was an intense wave of UFO encounter reports coming in from all over the southwest region of England, where Ellie’s incident happened, and indeed the area has long been considered a UFO hotspot. Also of interest is the fact that there were no corroborating reports of the object she had seen, which is rather odd considering the A5 is a very busy road and by her own admission there had been a lot of traffic, as well as the fact that the object was claimed to be hovering directly over the road. This could be because no one wanted to report it, but it could also be because only Ellie could see it, either through psychic powers, hallucination, or hoax; we’ll probably never know because she has already passed away to take any secrets to the grave with her. We will probably never know what really happened out there, and it remains just another very bizarre tale of inexplicable alien abduction among many others. 
Moving into the 80s, in October of 1989, Steve and Dawn Hess headed out for a weekend of camping and hunting on the Mojave Reserve, in the Mojave Desert of the southwest United States. It was supposed to be a relaxing getaway for the young, happy couple, a chance to get away from their two small children for the weekend and have some time alone together. As they drove out towards the Midhills camping ground, just inside the Nevada border, they did so in very good spirits, having had a bit of luck gambling at a casino earlier in the day and looking forward to their trip. They had been planning it for a long time, and to be out there in the remote, scenic locale was like a dream come true, but the dream was about to become a nightmare, and they were about to become the center of a series of harrowing, otherworldly events that have never been explained.
It would turn out that the campground was uncommonly full, and so they decided to drive out into the wilds in their camper to go camping off the beaten path in a secluded valley between the Tabletop and Woods Mountains. That evening, the sky was full of a multitude of stars, like millions of tiny diamonds spread out over an expanse of black felt, and they decided to start a fire and have a romantic dinner there under that sprawling vista of twinkling lights. It was as Steve was cooking up a steak that things began to get odd. He noticed a pinpoint of light moving about over the nearby Tabletop Mountain that, for some reason, instilled a great sense of unease in him. He found himself perplexed and mesmerized by the gliding light, which looked like another star moving about in the sea of stars, and it wasn’t until Dawn called out to him that he snapped out of it. He tried to direct her attention to what he had just seen, but the light was gone.
Steve tried to put the weird episode out of his mind, and the two poured some wine, had their romantic dinner there under the dazzling night sky, and then settled down to do a bit of stargazing. As they sat there pointing out star constellations, they noticed a particularly bright star that wasn’t supposed to be there, and they soon realized that it was not a star at all when it started moving. It was then joined by several other lights, around nine in total, after which they created a sort of ‘M’ formation. Their first impression was that it had to be aircraft from the nearby Nulles Air Base out on nighttime maneuvers, but then, as they looked on, small red lights descended from the larger white ones and began silently gliding towards the desert below, blinking and pulsating as they did so. It was about then that they noticed that the night sounds of the desert had ceased, as if a veil of silence had descended upon them, and through that eerie clinging quiet, the red lights approached them. These bizarre lights then circled above them and configured and reconfigured into different formations as their flashing intensified, to the point that Dawn was beginning to panic. 

These lights began to flash and pulse faster and faster until they suddenly went out together. Shortly after this, there were sounds out in the brush, like something scampering about out there in the wilds, and there seemed to be more than one of whatever it was. The frightened couple hurried into their camper, and Steve grabbed his hunting rifle, thinking they were about to be attacked by wild animals. They could see out in the darkness what looked like glowing red eyes circling them, and at one point, something jumped onto the hood of the camper and scurried across to jump back down on the other side. Steve was about to take a shot at one of the red-eyed shapes, but Dawn stopped him, telling him that she had a very bad feeling that it would not be a good idea to fire on them, which she felt was oddly being projected into her head. As they peered into the murky night, the creatures got bolder and close enough that they could see that these were no wild animals, but rather what they would later describe as “small red-eyed gremlins.” 
The couple at this point were paralyzed with terror, and the entities roaming about outside seemed to sense this, becoming bolder and running right up to the camper to leap onto its roof and bang on the sides, the whole time jabbering with each other in some alien language. As this happened, nine tall, thin, translucent beings with large, deep, featureless black eyes, much different than the “gremlins,” bloomed out of the darkness and surrounded the camper, peering in at the terrified couple. As these beings loomed outside, Steve and Dawn would later claim that their minds had been filled with thoughts and visions that seemed to be telepathically forced into their heads, and as this happened a large, bright object descended nearby, almost right over them, after which their camper began to buck and shake wildly as a fog or mist filled the vehicle. The light got brighter and brighter, and then Steve and Dawn lost consciousness.
When they woke up, they were still in their camper, which was now filled not with the light of that bizarre craft but rather that of the coming morning. There was no sign of the creatures they had encountered the previous evening, and indeed, a look around the area showed no evidence that they had ever been there at all. There were no footprints, no sign of damage to the brush, nothing. The only thing they could find were two red pin pricks in Dawn’s neck that had not been there before. They could not remember anything about what had happened to them after that large light had appeared, they had no idea where the creatures had gone, but they did know that it had not been a dream or a figment of their imagination, and that they had experienced something truly outlandish out there in the desert. They quickly packed up and got out of there as fast as they could, driving home mostly in silence and trying to process what they had been through.
In the coming days, they mostly didn’t talk about what had happened, but it would seem that their ordeal was not over. They experienced intense, vivid nightmares, physical symptoms such as headaches and nausea, and then there was the really spooky stuff. They experienced seeing lights in the sky that seemed to be following them, intense feelings of being watched, strange sounds inside and outside of the house, and their children began to tell of seeing little “red-eyed monsters” prowling about their bedroom at night. On one particularly terrifying occasion, Steve and Dawn were woken by the panicked screams of their son and rushed to his room to find him suspended in the air, “spinning like a top.” Dawn would even tell of being accosted by unseen hands. 
At their wits’ end, they decided to undergo hypnosis with Dr. William Anixter, who, through a series of sessions, was able to uncover what had happened during their lost time. According to Steve and Dawn, they had been brought aboard a massive craft of some kind and subjected to a battery of medical experiments and tests, many of which were quite painful and one of which had left those red marks on Dawn’s neck. At several points during the hypnosis sessions, Dawn was seen to speak in a voice that was not her own, as if she were channeling an outside force, and on one of these occasions, she allegedly eerily and cryptically said, “I know where the Universe ends. Our Universe ends when its matter stops mattering to us, and starts mattering to them.”

Dawn and Steve Hess would keep mostly quiet about their bizarre experience for years, but author Ron Felber would find out about it and approach the couple about possibly writing a book about it. Interestingly, Felber was known as a true crime author, and had never had any real interest in UFOs or paranormal phenomena, but after talking to the Hess’s, he changed his tune. He would say of this in an interview with Shadows Of Your Mind magazine:

“I met them through a man called Paul Moran, an employee who was working as a sales rep for the company I ran. He lived in Southern California and confided in me that he had a best friend (Steve) who he’d played varsity football with while a student at the University of Redlands. Paul told me that his friend had had an alien experience in the Mojave Desert that had “changed his life forever” and though he’d promised not to tell anyone about Steve’s experience, he thought that as a writer I’d be interested in hearing about it and that telling his story to someone like me would be “cathartic”.

My first impression before meeting the Hess’ was that I wasn’t interested in writing about “alien abductions”. The subject was not one that fell into the genres of writing I’d done before, and I wanted to focus on true crime stories or fiction. However, after meeting them, that all changed. I found Steve and Dawn to be exceptionally stable, upwardly mobile, well-educated, and rational. They were solidly middle class with two children, a mortgage, and hopes of a successful career as a project manager for the construction of shopping malls for Steve, and ardent in her ambitions to raise a stable family for Dawn.
More than intriguing, I found their story to be absolutely mind-blowing. The detail, the emotional manner in which they told the story, and the sweeping nature of their experience told me that this was a one-of-a-kind experience, unlike anything I had ever personally heard or heard about. It was, to me, as if a curtain had been lifted and an entire realm of existence heretofore unknown to humankind suddenly exposed. The authenticity of the Hess’s themselves told me that this was undoubtedly true and that their story needed to be shared with the world. As a writer, I know a heart-stopping true story when I hear one, and this was definitely one. What the Hess’s story did do was convince me that there exists another realm of existence. Humans, albeit rarely, can sometimes catch glimpses of something that is perhaps more real than the existence we live now, or believe we are living.”
Felber would go on to write a book on their experiences called “The Mojave Incident,” which is a harrowing and detailed account of the ordeal of that fateful evening and the traumatic series of events that unfolded. He has also kept in touch with Steve and Dawn Hess, who now have six children, and claims that they have continued to experience strange phenomena right up to the present, although it would seem no further abductions. 
We are left to wonder what is going on here. Is this a case of a genuine abduction, and if so, where did these entities come from and what did they want? We will never know for sure, and these all remain rather odd and spooky cases of the alien abduction phenomenon. 

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
No less of a mainstream media source than The New York Times has weighed in on the latest popular theory that UFOs are either deliberate “deep state” psychological operations aimed at covering up top secret technologies, bureaucratic pranks that made some personnel into UFO believers, top secret experiments that the government allowed its own personnel to interpret as possible close encounters, or similar deceits from the Russian version of our own UFO disinformation; opinion columnist Russ Douthat writes that default psy-op coverup does not explain every weird U.F.O.-related phenomena, and concludes with the obvious question: “If many stories of insider U.F.O. knowledge originate in deliberate disinformation projects and we have been living through a veritable golden age of strange leaks and tales of insider knowledge, then what, exactly, might this era’s particular psy-op be intended to conceal?” That’s nice, but if The New York Times can’t give us all the news that’s fit to print about UFOs, how about digging up some of the stuff that’s NOT fit to print?
A famous image from 2016 shows an unidentified metallic orb recorded flying over Mosul, Iraq, in April 2016 by an MC-12 twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft; the image was published by investigative reporter George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell in 2023 and now The UAP Register, in response to a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in March 2024, has received and published a video of the same sphere, referred to as the ‘Mosul Orb’; the publication notes that the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) confirms these metallic orbs are the most widespread types of UAP reported by servicemembers and show no visible means of propulsion; the metallic orb UFOs have been reported by military witnesses since at least 1944 but the AARO has no comment on the video as of this writing and The UAP Register has filed another Freedom of Information Act request for more information. Would it be too much to ask for the makers of actual balloons to put identification marks on them so they don’t get confused with UFOs – or is that the idea?
UFO researcher and lawyer Danny Sheehan is someone who believes the Pentagon and the CIA have worked together since the Roswell incident of 1947 to cover-up the “truth” about aliens and he now suggests that the war in Vietnam was fought to prevent other nations or entities from obtaining alien technology that could give them a military edge; he further suggests that chemical engineer and whistleblower Karen Silkwood, who was investigating her employer, the Kerr-McGee Corporation, over health and safety at the nuclear facility where she worked when she mysteriously died in a car accident, was an example of the actions the US government will take to silence whistleblowers in UFO cases. If you don’t believe these threats are real, you haven’t been reading the news.
If you are wondering what the government could be covering up, US Congressman Eric Burlison revealed on social media that whistleblower and former intelligence officer David Grusch told him that “there are half-breed aliens — hybrids — living in the world” and that President Donald Trump was given a “sensitive” briefing about their existence which “was an existential event that completely changed his (Trump’s) perspective on reality; Burlison also said that Grusch identified two types of aliens – the “Nordics” who resemble humans and have a technological level a few hundred years more advanced, and the “Grays” who are much more developed and capable of operating their ships with their minds; he says Grusch told him the Nordics were developing hybrids and “Some of them are alien-human hybrids living on this planet” but he wouldn’t say if the hybrids were aware of their origin. Trump does not appear to be the kind of person who keeps secrets well, so his inclusion in the story casts a shadow on the rest of Grusch’s revelations.
The Bigfoot Field Research Organization shares the report from an unnamed witness who was driving from Deadwood to Rapid City, South Dakota, at around 10 p.m. recently when she saw “a large animal was on two feet, easily clearing the top of my vehicle (greater than 6.5ft.)” while looking out her passenger side window; she said “It came up out of nowhere” so it must have hopped over guard rails; she described the creature as being “Very dark brown, more red in undertone than gray so could not be mistaken as a large elk or deer”; it was too dark to see where it went and she didn’t go back to investigate; BFRO noted that the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks releases mountain goats around this time each year ahead of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to give tourists a chance at seeing a mountain goat and that could explain the creature, but the nearby Black Hills National Forest has had many Bigfoot sightings and “is perfect for hosting a resident population of sasquatches”. What kind of biker would rather see a mountain goat than a Sasquatch?

This is what you missed while looking for mountain goats.

Paranormal researcher Philip Kinsella claims he and his twin brother, Ronald, and fellow investigator Paul Sinclair were in a densely wooded nature reserve called Danes Dyke in Bridlington, England, when he saw and managed to photograph an 8-foot tall, shadowy, bipedal figure that many who look at the picture believe is a werewolf; Philips doesn’t rule it out, saying “The figure’s huge “ and something is “not right” about it, but “We’re not saying it’s a werewolf. We’re saying something is there”; when it appeared, “This figure manifested like a ghost, but with physical presence. I don’t know what it is but I know it’s weird”, which fits with his paranormalist’s description of Danes Dyke – “’a strange area… There’s just something weird about it” and he wouldn’t want to visit it after dark; the one thing most people notice is a strange glow around the being’s head. A costume is easy to rent, but the height and that glowing head make one wonder what kind of steroidal magic mushrooms this werewolf might be eating.
From the “You can do a study on anything “ file comes a study on what would happen if a person snorted Moon dust – whether it be in a lab at NASA or through a lunar straw on the Moon’s surface; Michaela Smith, a graduate student (go figure) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and lead author of the study, was inspired by stories of the Apollo moon walkers who found that when they re-entered their landing module, “fine dust that had clung to their spacesuits became airborne in the confined cabin and was subsequently inhaled, leading to respiratory issues, sneezing, and eye irritation”; the researchers on her team used state-of-the-art simulations of lunar dust and found that it is indeed irritating to the nose and lungs, but will not put any future lunar astronauts at risk of long-term oxidative stress or inflammation; further, “it does not appear to pose a risk for chronic, long-term diseases like silicosis, which is caused by materials like silica dust”; for the curious astronauts who might be looking for a lunar high, the study warns them that “you’ll sneeze, cough, and have some physical irritation” and wonders why they would even consider it. Spoken like someone too young to have listened to Eric Clapton.

It seemed like a good idea back on Earth.

Instead of snorting moon dust (see above), lunar astronauts may be getting their buzz from drinking Moon tea after University of Kent researcher Anna-Marie Wirth planted tea plant seedlings provided by Dartmoor Estate Tea in soil similar to lunar and Martian dirt in simulated outer space conditions; the soil is not as fertile as on Earth and the conditions are harsher, but the plants are growing and a lunar cuppa could be ready for astronaut taste-testing soon. Coffee lovers may want to put lunar dust in hot water and pretend it’s just really strong.
In a recent podcast, Dr. Gregory Rogers, former Chief of Aerospace Medicine at NASA, claimed he once saw a video of a hangar and “what was in the middle of the hanger was an actual flying saucer” and an unnamed major told him “we got it from them”; as he watched, the vehicle, which “was sort of a modified egg” in shape, began to move without an visible means of propulsion and “it lifted off just like a feather. It rose about three feet in the air and then just hung there”; then it at it rotated 360 degrees clockwise so he could see writing on its side that said “U.S. Air Force” and an American flight insignia above it; Rogers said it was in 1992 and “only three years after Bob Lazar had come out with his information about reverse engineering spacecraft from non-human intelligence” and he thought the flying saucer resembled “what Bob Lazar called his “sports model”; he also said it could have been an early version of what he (and the rest of us) saw in “the tic-tac video” but he believes this vehicle was not reverse engineered but “was probably owned by a contractor” who was demonstrating it for the Air Force. How many hangars have to be stormed before this gets found?
Jessica Ortiz of Compton, California, was looking at her doorbell camera footage on June 6, 2025, when she saw what appeared her as a 3 to 4 foot tall blue-grey alien-like creature walking past the camera; the audio reveals some loud banging noises which she says are from her back gate, but motion-sensor cameras in that area were not triggered; she says her aunt lives next door and she claims she heard 3 loud bangs on the roof of her house at 12:45 am and scratching sounds after the second bang; while the figure looks like a classic alien, doubters say it could be a puppet or a small person in disguise or an animal which is unidentifiable in the low light; they have no explanation for why only the front camera caught but not the back one. Are we ready to give up our security to install cameras everywhere and finally get a clear picture of an alien, Bigfoot or a ghost?
Many things which were once part of the U.S. government are now being turned over to the states, but not UFO research – at least, that’s the case in New Hampshire, where a bill (HB 436) filed by Rep. Aidan Ankarberg to set up a state commission to review testimonies and reports from witnesses of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) within the “skies and territory” of New Hampshire did not pass; it was supported by Rep. John Cloutier, who said that “Long ago, I had a questionable sighting that with physics, I cannot explain” and “Now we have citizens, be it one or a thousand, who have come before us with things in the sky”, not to mention “mystery drones flying around but “there’s no one right now who can take testimony or evidence, whatever it may be”; on the opposing side was Rep. Michael Harrington, who said, “Just because someone comes up with an idea doesn’t mean we should even be considering it as a bill”. Rep. Harrington, did you know that New Hampshire has laws banning carrying seaweed at night, tapping your feet in a tavern, and eating more than three sandwiches at a wake?
A new article released by former Intelligence Officer Geoffrey P. Cruickshank, Caren Gallaudet and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet alleges that a UFO was shot down during the Bluegill Triple Prime nuclear weapons test on  October 26th, 1962, and the USS Princeton and other ships were ordered by the Pacific Fleet Salvage Officer, Commander Willard F. Searle, to recover the object; the article claims crewmembers of the USS Abnaki and USS Tuscumbia received excessive radiation exposures far beyond levels for their official assigned duties; further, they claim “the event may have caused severe psychosocial injury to one of the divers involved that had negative effects for the rest of his life.; the authors call for an AARO investigation, saying they will “provide the name, rank and serial numbers of US Navy personnel (now deceased) that may have had direct involvement in this incident to properly credentialed and cleared investigators if required”; a Royal Navy diver who claimed to have located and activated the wreckage said he couldn’t believe the size of “this thing” and “he said that he put his hand out – he put his hand out to touch it and his hand went inside of it! As soon as his hand went inside of it, he thought that it was going to suck him in”. Don’t get distracted by trying to link this to the 1963 Kennedy assassination – focus on finding the records that these whistleblowers claim exist.
Many people say they love Bigfoot or would love seeing a Bigfoot, but Christy Chaffin and Ron Howes are not only both, they expressed their love of the big hairy one by getting married in his own backyard at this year’s West Virginia Bigfoot Festival in Sutton; Christy is a resin artist who focuses on cryptids and Ron is a Bigfoot speaker and they met each other at a Bigfoot event, got engaged at a Bigfoot event, and finally got married at a Bigfoot festival; Christy said, “It’s a community, and getting married at a Bigfoot festival, it was what we wanted to do because we’re a part of the community”; the ceremony was officiated by Bigfoot himself – a costumed impersonator who officiates weddings in the Morgantown area. Who handles the divorces – Mothman?

After she caught the bouquet, we figured … why not?

The gravesite of Vlad III, best known as Vlad the Impaler, has been a mystery since his death in either late December 1476 or early January 1477 – and not just because people fear the inspiration for Count Dracula rising from the ground as a vampire; while most accounts and legends say Vlad died in battle against the Ottomans, but researcher and Professor Giuseppe Reale, the director of the Santa Maria la Nova monumental complex, has spent 10 years studying a mysterious inscription on a tombstone in the historic center of Naples, Italy, and now believes it is an epitaph in praise of Vlad III and confirms that the remains of Vlad the Impaler are located in the monastery complex of Santa Maria la Nova in the ancient heart of the city; according to Reale, Vlad III was not killed in battle against the Ottomans but was instead captured by them and later freed by his daughter, Maria Balsa, who had been adopted by a noble family in Naples to escape persecution; after Vlad III’s death, it appears she buried him in the tomb of her father-in-law, Matteo Ferrillo, inside the Turbolo chapel at Santa Maria la Nova. How could Vlad Dracula have survived in Italy, home of garlic-laden pizza and spaghetti sauce?  
From the “’Don’t believe everything you read on a note from a ghost’ file comes a story from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where Jason Cooper, an employee of the Grand Strand Visuals sign company, was working in the attic of the Build-A-Bear Workshop at Broadway at the Beach on the wiring of its malfunctioning sign when he discovered a pair of old boots nailed to a beam and a note reading: “These here boots were worn by the famous truss man of ‘Broadway at the Beach,’ Dave English, his ghost will roam until they are returned” and dated February 24, 1995; Cooper assumed English was a construction worker who died and was memorialized by his co-workers building the Build-a-Bear workshop; even scarier, he assumed the ghost of English might be haunting the attic and posted his fear on social media; sure enough, the ghost DID contact him – but it was the still-living David English, who admitted the boots were a prank he pulled in 1995 with a friend who signed the note ‘Dave’ English – a sign that it wasn’t the real English who always, and still does, went by David. Sounds like an opportunity for Build-a-Bear to expand into Build-a-Haunted-Boot.

There is little doubt that one of the most mysterious and intriguing locations on the planet is the seventh continent of the world, Antarctica, an icy land that almost certainly holds secrets that are simply awaiting discovery. It is also a location that is highly protected, and as such, has a number of conspiracies that have persisted through time.
Antarctica is under the control of the Antarctic Treaty of 1961, which is overseen by multiple countries, and anyone who wishes to go to the icy continent, whether they are individuals or an organization, needs to get permission from this group. The area has been put off-limits for scientific preservation and investigation. Given that this location is the last place on Earth that is largely untouched by human activity, it is perhaps easy to understand why these protections have been put in place. However, as we might imagine, some people have questions about the rigid control such a small group has over an entire continent. Indeed, when we explore some of these conspiracies, we can see why, along with the secrecy that surrounds Antarctica, they have endured for such a long time and are likely to continue.  
The mysteries of Antarctica stretch back centuries, arguably with the discovery of the Piri Reis Map, which was made in 1513, and appeared to have Antarctica accurately placed, even though it wasn’t officially discovered until 1820. Moreover, as pointed out by the late Jim Marrs in his book Our Occulted History: Do The Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?, this was “especially puzzling because (Antarctica) has been under an ice cap for at least four thousand years!” Where, then, did the information come from that had this ice-covered world not only accurately placed but depicted (presumably equally accurately) without ice?
Most research suggests that the map was created by a Turkish admiral, Piri Reis, who had used other, much older, perhaps even ancient maps to create the map that would be named after him. He also claimed to have “made use of charts and maps dating back to ancient Greece!” Making the creation of the map even more mysterious, these maps and charts from ancient Greece, according to Reis, were themselves based on documents from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, meaning he was working with information that could have been, even during his time, 4000 years old, perhaps even older. What makes these alleged ancient Egyptian documents even more intriguing is the potential that this information could itself have come from much further back than even the time of the ancient Egyptian civilization. In his book Temple of the Stars, author Brinsley le Poer Trench offered that “tradition tells us that ancient Egypt was a colony of Atlantis!” If there was any truth to this, could the information the Piri Reis Map was based on stretch back to Atlantis which would, in turn, offer proof that tales of Atlantis are much more than pure legend and myth, and that survivors of the legendary land somehow made their way to Egypt, perhaps even kick-starting the ancient civilization there.

A fragment of the Piri Reis Map (public domain)

What is even more interesting and thought-provoking is that recent satellite images taken over the icy continent appear to match the basic outline on the Piri Reis Map that most people assume to be Antarctica. If the outline is proven accurate, then other information detailing extensive forests, mountains, and other terrains would also likely be accurate, and would perhaps offer further speculative proof that Antarctica, many thousands of years ago, was once an inhabitable and inhabited land. In fact, when we consider such claims of the planet undergoing a pole shift that plunged Antarctica into the icy conditions it endures today in a matter of hours, we might also find further connections between the legends of Atlantis, as well as what was responsible for its sudden destruction. Indeed, we might contemplate that if Antarctica was once much further north than it currently is, if there had been any kind of advanced warnings, that a small group of survivors could have reached Africa and, eventually, what was the land of ancient Egypt.
One of the first people to suggest such a possibility was researcher Charles Hapgood, who, among other things, suggested that Antarctica could have been free of ice and inhabited as recently as 4000 BC. While this speculative end to Antarctica and its presumed advanced civilization would still put it 1000 years away from the accepted start of the great civilizations in Egypt and Sumer, we should also note that these dates are often the result of guesswork and might not be entirely accurate. Moreover, we might also consider that a small group of survivors, even a group that numbered several hundred, might have taken a considerable amount of time to rebuild themselves anywhere close to where the legends tell us such lands of Atlantis once were, perhaps even several hundred years.
While these suggestions might sound preposterous to some, we should consider that the Piri Reis Map also includes other accurate information before it was, once more, according to mainstream history, known to the people of Europe. It shows, for example, what appears to be the Falkland Islands just short of a century before they were discovered. Moreover, and even more impressive, the map also showed an accurate coastal outline of what is modern-day South America, including several of the major rivers, rivers, incidentally, that would not be fully mapped out until the twentieth century.
We know that the Piri Reis Map is not a silly hoax and that the map is genuine. Just how those whose work Reis used to so accurately depict such coastal outlines, including, remember, Antarctica, and how it might look without the covering of ice,  remains a complete mystery. Had an ancient civilization, one that was at its peak before the time of the ancient Egyptians, somehow managed to map out most of the land masses of the planet? And if so, just how had they done this? Were they masters of the waves and had mapped out the land masses of the world that way? Or might they have even had access to aerial vehicles, machines, and devices, in much the same way as we do today, and is this how they so accurately recreated such coastal outlines?
Even considering these possibilities forces us to look deeper into the mystery, which, in turn, brings up further questions. For example, according to mainstream science and history, Antarctica has been under a huge sheet of ice for approximately the last 15 million years (just think about that number for a moment!). So, does that mean that the coastal outline of Antarctica was mapped out by an advanced civilization over 15 million years ago, obviously much earlier than mainstream history says advanced humans existed, or does that mean that Antarctica was, as Hapgood suggested, not covered by ice as recently as several thousand years ago? If either of those possibilities were true, it would be highly significant for our understanding of human history.
Of course, we should perhaps also consider, if mainstream history is correct and Antarctica has been under ice for around 15 million years, as well as being correct about advanced humans not existing so far back, then might whoever made the outlines of Antarctica before it was covered by ice not have been human at all but some other intelligent species that once existed on Earth and whose knowledge and wisdom was somehow preserved right up until the time of ancient Egypt, before the scribes and scholars of ancient Greece preserved it further, with it eventually falling into the hands of Piri Reis himself in the early sixteenth century. It is also interesting to note that Hapgood speculated that this information was likely passed down through the generations in an “underground stream” – essentially, through secret societies, whose presence in such matters only makes them more mysterious.
Before we move on, it is worth our time briefly examining another mysterious map that Charles Hapgood discovered hidden in the Congress archives in 1960. Known as the Terra Australis Map, it was drawn up in 1531 (less than 20 years after the Piri Reis Map, incidentally), and contains an area of land, named Terra Australis on the map, that appears remarkably similar to the ice mass of Antarctica. Moreover, there are even markings for mountains on this particular piece of land that also match those known to exist on Antarctica. Once more, considering that no type of known exploration of Antarctica had taken place in the early 1500s, then we have to assume that this map, or at least the information it was based on, was created thousands of years previously, quite possibly around the same time as the documents used to create the Piri Reis Map were created.  
Without a doubt, some of the most enthralling and equally outrageous conspiracies concerning Antarctica have taken hold since the years following the Second World War, and it would be impossible to explore the mysteries of Antarctica during this time without turning our attention to Operation Highjump, which took place in late 1946 and early 1947. Whether the real reason for the expedition was for training exercises in “cold conditions” as well as to establish a multinational research base or not remains open to debate. There were, however, even then, rampant rumors of a Third Reich base in Antarctica, as well as even more bizarre rumors that the Third Reich had stumbled upon an entrance to the alleged Inner Earth and had established contact with an extraterrestrial race that had resided there for thousands of years. As bizarre as these suggestions might be, we might also consider that many Third Reich engineers and scientists had been transplanted to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, and could very well have passed on such information to their new superiors.
With these last thoughts in mind it is also worth considering the contemplations of researcher and author Graeme Davis, who claimed in his book Nazi Moonbase that the Third Reich had managed to transfer the Haunebe Disc to this base in Antarctica, and high-ranking Third Reich member, Hans Kammler, had also traveled to the base to carry on working on the program with a view to “continuing the war!”

Whatever the truth, the multinational mission resulted in some of the strangest encounters ever documented, as well as some remarkable statements from one of the highest-ranking members of the mission, Admiral Richard Bryd. The fleet was approaching the Antarctic coast in December 1946. However, it was in February 1947 when Byrd took to the skies in order to observe the icy land that was Antarctica. He would, if we are to believe his reports and diary notes to be accurate, see a lot more than he bargained for.
He claimed that, as opposed to being continuous sheets of ice below, the terrain suddenly changed to vast fields of green vegetation. What’s more, he could see multiple animals that “shouldn’t have been there”, including some kind of “mammoth-like animal!” Even stranger, at one point when he looked down from his plane, he saw something that appeared “to be a city!” Then, as he ventured deeper and deeper over the land, a voice suddenly came over the radio. However, it wasn’t from his Operation Highjump crew, but instead had a “Nordic or Germanic accent!” This foreign voice welcomed Byrd to “our domain!”
It was around this time that he realized he had been flying into some kind of “opening” in the Earth, and only moments after this realization, some powerful force suddenly took control of his aircraft. Before he had time to contemplate what was happening, his plane was surrounded by several saucer-shaped vehicles – and each of these strange vehicles had what appeared to be a Third Reich swastika on their exteriors. Realizing he was in a helpless situation, Bryd remained as calm as he could as his plane was brought down calmly to the ground.
According to his flying notes, after his plane was brought down, several “tall men with blond hair” approached the aircraft, while “in the distance,” he could see “a shimmering city pulsating with rainbow hues of color!” He noted that he couldn’t see any signs that the men were carrying any weapons before ending his flight notes, stating he could “hear a voice ordering me by name to open the cargo door!” According to recollections he later revealed from memory, he did so and stepped out of the plane.
Upon scanning his surroundings, Byrd found himself standing inside a “mammoth cavern”. As he looked around further, he could see what appeared to be large stretches of vegetation, as well as what looked like lakes. Stranger still, Bryd claimed he could sense or feel the presence of some kind of sun. The next thing he realized, he, along with one of his wingmen, was led towards a large building. As they walked, Byrd could see that many of the buildings of this inner city were “made of a crystal material!” Once inside the building, the two men were led inside a room where they were each given a “warm beverage which tasted like nothing I have ever savored before!” They were left alone for several minutes before two of the tall, blond men returned, requesting that Byrd join them, which he duly did.  
According to what Byrd later stated, he was taken to meet representatives of a civilization that resided inside the Inner Earth, and that they had allowed him entry to their subterranean domain because he was “of noble character and (was) well known on the ‘Surface World’”. Further, according to Byrd’s recollections, this civilization had taken a great interest in the human race following the dropping of the atomic bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not least because of the potential danger the use of such weapons had to their own civilization. Moreover, at least according to claims Byrd made during a press conference interview with a Chilean newspaper shortly after his encounter, he was told by these representatives of this inner race that “in the case of a new war, the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds!” Although it wasn’t perhaps picked up on that much at the time, in the years and decades that have followed, it appears that Byrd was describing many of the disc-like objects that would be witnessed regularly following the wave of UFO sightings in the summer of 1947, just one of which, remember, was the infamous Roswell crash.
As we might imagine, there was and has been a mixed reaction to Byrd’s statements and claims. It is interesting to note, though, that Byrd was “hospitalized” only days after his famous press conference, the last such press conference he would ever give. He did, though, make further references to the incident, both in his reports and his writings. In one of his reports to his superiors, for example, he stated that he had been “ordered to remain silent regarding all that I have learned on behalf of humanity!” One of his final thoughts, committed to paper in December 1956, however, is particularly interesting. In this writing, he stated his desire that “this secret will not die with me!” It is, though, his last line of this particular piece of writing that his of most interest, when he states, “…for I have seen the land beyond the pole, that center of the great unknown!”
Byrd, incidentally, passed away suddenly in 1957 from an “underlying heart ailment!” While you might make of that what you will, it is also interesting to note the sudden death of Byrd’s son, who had accompanied his father on Operation Highjump, whose dead body was discovered in suspicious circumstances in an abandoned warehouse in New York.    
Several years before Operation Highjump, in the immediate months following the end of the war in Europe, according to a series of articles by James Roberts in Nexus Magazine between late 2005 and early 2006, a discreet British military unit was dispatched to Antarctica on a highly secretive mission. James claimed his source was a (then) serving British soldier, whose unit was “resting in a cave in the former Yugoslavia” following the end of the fighting in Europe. His unit was expecting to be dispatched to Japan, where the conflict was still raging, but they instead were sent to Palestine to help ease rising tensions in the country. Then, out of the blue in October 1945, he received orders to immediately report to his commanding officer, where he was informed he had been selected for an ultra-secret mission – a mission so secret that “none of his senior officers knew why!”
He found himself on his way to Gibraltar, where he would be sent to the Falkland Islands. Once there, he found himself among other soldiers from various units across “other elite British forces”, all specifically selected for this top-secret mission. Moreover, during the flight to the Falklands Islands, all of the unit was told they were under strict orders to speak to nobody outside of the unit about their mission. Once on the Falkland Islands, the unit was met by a British Officer who would be leading the mission, as well as a member of the Norwegian Resistance, who, they were told, would train them in “winter warfare and survival!”
For the next month, the unit underwent intense training in cold-weather warfare, including exercises in the icy waters of the South Atlantic Ocean. Following this, the unit was finally briefed on the nature of their mission, a mission, incidentally, that there was “little chance” of all of them surviving. They were informed they were to be transported to the British base in Maudheim on Antarctica, where they would investigate “anomalous activity” in the Muhlig-Hoffmann Mountains, which was, they were told, part of “Britain’s secret war!”
The unit was then briefed on the British military’s secret operations and activity on Antarctica. According to the briefing, the British military had begun establishing bases on Antarctica following the Third Reich’s establishment of a presence there in the late 1930s. Moreover, Maudheim, where they would be based, was less than 200 miles from this main Third Reich base. Then, the briefing turned even stranger.
The unit was briefed on “extensive German activity” in the water of the South Atlantic Ocean, specifically off the coast of Antarctica, activity which appeared to increase at the same time as several German U-boats went “missing” after the war. According to their briefing, following the fall of Berlin and the end of the war in Europe, British forces had captured leading Third Reich members, Rudolph Hess, Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler’s named successor, Karl Donitz, which gave them the chance to question the men extensively, away from the Americans and the Soviets. This meant they managed to extract information that remained with the British only, allowing them to act independently of the Allied powers. This intelligence suggested that the Third Reich had not only managed to establish one base on Antarctica, but several, and what’s more, not only were these bases used to house high-ranking Third Reich members, but the results of ominous and bizarre experiments.

The briefing continued that several months earlier, a first unit had been sent to the region to investigate. This unit, which consisted of a mixture of soldiers, scientists, and engineers, had discovered an “ancient tunnel” that they, ultimately, investigated. The mission, though, seemingly took a tragic turn. Only two members of the unit returned from wherever the tunnel system had led. However, as the intense winter had now set in, the pair were stranded in their location for several months. They managed to remain in radio contact with the main base for some time, but their communications became increasingly bizarre and absurd. They began reporting, for example, of surviving Third Reich members who had control of strange creatures referred to as “Polar Men!” Then, in late July 1945, the main base received a final message from the pair. This communication ended with a panicked voice stating that, “The Polar Men have found us!”
At this point, the newly assembled unit received the directives of their mission. They were to head to Maudheim and then locate the ancient tunnel network that the first unit had investigated. They were then to venture inside and report back on what they found. Moreover, they were to investigate the claims of the surviving Third Reich members, as well as the mysterious and ominous-sounding Polar Men. Ultimately, if they were to find such a base or survivors, they were under orders to completely destroy it.
According to Roberts’ source, the unit then bombarded their superiors with a flurry of questions – questions which he stated, to their credit, their superiors were “honest and direct” in answering. The unit asked, for example, why Britain had decided to undertake such a mission alone, to which they were told that the British government did not wish the United States or the Soviet Union to gain access to any further Third Reich technologies, or scientists or engineers in the interests of keeping the balance of power on the international stage.
Not long after this brutal briefing, the unit was taken to their drop-off point approximately 20 miles from Maudheim Base, where they “parachuted into the icy wilderness” below. Once on the icy terrain, they discovered snow tractors awaiting them to negotiate their route to the base. Ominously, each of the units realized that as soon as they touched down on the ground, they were “on a war footing!” Moreover, they all knew that there was “no back-up or chance of retreat!”
It didn’t take long for the unit to discover the base, which very much appeared abandoned. They split into several smaller groups and began searching. Moments later, some kind of tripwire was broken, and alarms blared out all around them. As the unit quickly scanned their surroundings, looking to identify any potential threats, a voice sounded out, telling the men to identify themselves. Suddenly, with all members of the units with their guns at the ready, the leader of the mission ordered them to lower their weapons before telling them the voice belonged to the surviving member of the first unit.
The men quickly went about debriefing this surprise survivor. He informed them that the other missing soldier was locked in “Bunker One” with one of the savage Polar Men. Not long after, members of the unit were ordered to gain entry to Bunker One and inspect inside. The surviving soldier warned the unit not to open the bunker, but his concerns were overruled by the leader of the mission.
After opening the bunker, one of the soldiers stepped inside. For a moment or two, there was nothing but silence. Then, two gun shots rang out before a huge, bulking figure sprang from the darkness and vanished from the base with remarkable speed. The unit then inspected the bunker from which the figure had emerged, and into which their colleague had entered. Once inside, they were greeted with the sight of their dead colleague, his “throat ripped out!” They then turned their attention to a grim pile of bones close by – bones they presumed belonged to the other surviving soldier.
The leader of the mission then turned his attention back to the lone surviving soldier, who told them everything that had happened. He claimed that when his unit had searched the ancient tunnel system, it had gone on for several miles before they entered a “vast underground cavern” that he recalled was “abnormally warm!” Even stranger, they noticed several large lakes within this cavern, as well as artificial lighting – lighting they assumed belonged to the Third Reich presence they had come to investigate.
As the unit searched this huge, cavernous space, they made further, even more remarkable discoveries, finding huge hangars large enough to fit several aircraft, as well as a docking station for U-boats, with one U-boat even being docked there. It was as they were investigating these parts of the cavern when they were suddenly surrounded by a unit of Third Reich soldiers. The soldier informed them that he and the other surviving member had somehow managed to go unnoticed and had managed to slip back into the tunnel system, although not before they witnessed several of their unit executed by the Third Reich soldiers. It was as they were making their way back through the tunnel systems that they realized two large figures were pursuing them – figures they would call Polar Men.

By the time they arrived back at the base, the two soldiers, realizing they would be unable to reach the main base on foot and that a rescue attempt would be doomed, decided to each take a radio and then head to a separate bunker. Here, though, is where the story became a little strange. For reasons the surviving soldier simply couldn’t fathom, his fellow soldier seemingly enticed one of these Polar Men into the bunker with him, perhaps in an attempt to kill it, an attempt that clearly failed. Following this, the surviving soldier simply remained in the bunker until the second unit arrived – a unit, remember, that he would have had no knowledge of.
The survivor was then asked who these monstrous Polar Men were, and the answer he gave turned the whole affair even more bizarre. He stated that they were the result of some kind of Third Reich experiment that involved the “mastery of an unknown power source!” These Polar Men were men that had been genetically altered to allow them to adapt to their environment – in this case, the brutal cold conditions of Antarctica – as well as making them aggressive, obsessive human killing machines, essentially, a super soldier who would stop at nothing to hunt and kill its target.
Despite what they had learned, the following day, this second unit received orders to investigate the tunnel system. They set out for their destination, amazed that the icy environment around them suddenly changed to one of a “dry valley” that was more akin to a North African desert than the subzero conditions of Antarctica. Not long after finding themselves in this region, they discovered the tunnel’s entrance. Rather than investigate immediately, they decided to camp down near the entrance for the night in order to rest. However, several hours after doing so, one of these mysterious Polar Men approached their camp. This time, though, the unit was not only quick to react to the threat, but they managed to kill the intruder. They quickly dissected the specimen, noting that while it was indeed human, it was much stronger than even the strongest human might be, and seemingly had the ability to grow thick hair on its body, seemingly to protect it from the harsh, icy conditions.
The following morning, after leaving two soldiers to guard the tunnel entrance and the carcass of the Polar Man, the rest of the unit set off into the tunnel network. There were nine men in total, including the unit leader, one of the scientists, the Norwegian Resistance member, and the surviving member of the first unit, each carrying with them heavy weapons and “enough explosives to wage a small war!” For a large part of the descent, the unit found themselves in almost complete darkness. Then, suddenly, they could see a light in the distance ahead of them. A short time later, they found themselves in the artificially lit cavern.
At this point, they moved quietly and were soon looking down at various Third Reich personnel “scurrying about like ants” below them. As this was happening, and with the unit leader relaying the plan for their operation, the scientist scribbled down as many notes as he could of the activity unfolding below them. This discreet surveillance continued for the next 48 hours before specific targets in the base were identified as locations to plant explosives. This operation went perfectly, with the Third Reich personnel remaining ignorant of their activities. In fact, things went so perfectly that the unit even managed to capture a member of the Third Reich unit who could be used as a hostage or source of information. However, as they were about to vacate the cavern and set off the carefully planted explosives, a number of Third Reich soldiers spotted them. Moreover, they, along with what appeared to be several of the Polar Men, began in pursuit of them.
The unit decided to quickly set up some of the explosives near the tunnel entrance in an attempt to destroy the way out of the cavern, and so buy them some time to escape their pursuers. This worked, but by the time the mines had gone off, several Third Reich soldiers as well as several Polar Men had already managed to venture into the tunnel. According to Roberts’ source, by the time they reached the tunnel’s outer entrance, only he, the scientist, and the Norwegian Resistance member remained alive. Along with the two soldiers who had remained guarding the entrance, the three of them quickly set up the rest of their explosives at the tunnel’s entrance. They managed to detonate them before their pursuers had reached them, and by the time the air had settled, there was “no evidence of any tunnel ever existing!” Ultimately, the unit was successfully recovered from the base a short time later and transported back to the Falkland Islands. Once there, they were debriefed, with a lot more urgency and harshness than before. They were told that it was strictly forbidden for any of them to speak to anyone about their mission, including their superiors. As Roberts’ source noted, the cover-up was already unfolding, and it appeared to be more than just the mission that was being suppressed.
As they had ventured into the tunnel system, for example, the scientist had noticed that not only was it clear that it was ancient and not recently created, but that it was not a naturally occurring tunnel but one of precision planning and execution. Their superiors, however, insisted that the tunnel was the result of “glacial erosion”, something they were quite insistent on. Perhaps most remarkable of all, though, despite the clear findings of the dissection they had performed, not to mention the superhuman strength and speed they had witnessed, the unit was told the Polar Men were “nothing more than unkempt soldiers who had gone crazy!”
The source also told Roberts that the Royal Air Force continued to fly mysterious missions over this part of Antarctica for several years following the mission. The official reason for these flybys was to scout potential locations for scientific bases. However, the source stated to Roberts that “one can’t help but wonder!” Indeed, one can’t.
We might contemplate just how true such claims might be, and who might have been the source of such information to the British military. According to some researchers, a likely candidate could very well be none other than the previously mentioned named successor to Adolf Hitler, Karl Dönitz. Dönitz was in charge of the German Navy and, in turn, the German U-boat program, something that Hitler became quite fixated on towards the end of the war. Most mainstream researchers suggest that this fixation likely came out of a hope that the U-boats could turn the tide of the war back in the Third Reich’s favor. However, some researchers have suggested that the real reason for a concentration on the U-boat program was so they could be used to secretly transport high-ranking members of the Third Reich – perhaps even Hitler himself – to locations in South America, and perhaps, Antarctica.

Another thing to keep in mind about Dönitz is his trial as a war criminal following the war. While many of his fellow Third Reich members were executed, Donitz insisted that he was “ignorant of Nazi atrocities” and that he “only fought a legal war!” He further claimed that he had no knowledge whatsoever of the horrors of the concentration camps. Ultimately, he was not only spared the death penalty, but he received a prison sentence of only 10 years. We might ask how likely it is that someone so high up in the Third Reich, not to mention the person named as Hitler’s successor, would have been unaware of the full horrors of the regime’s actions. Moreover, we might indeed ask if some kind of deal was arranged behind the scenes between Donitz, the British, and those at the Hague.
It is also not unrealistic to think that the British military would have had relatively free access to Antarctica following the end of the war in Europe, with various factors at play. Of immediate concern for the United States, for example, was bringing the conflict with Japan to an end, something that happened several months later with the dropping of the atomic bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Moreover, it was becoming apparent to the United States that the Soviet Union was about to join them as a superpower on the world stage, and that despite their alliances in the conflict with Germany, their political ideology of communism set them against the United States and its interests – ultimately, the Cold War was just about to unfold.
Of course, by the time of Operation Highjump, the secretive British missions were over a year in the past. However, if Admiral Bryd’s claims are true and accurate, if only partially, it would very much attest to a prolonged Third Reich presence on Antarctica after the secretive British mission.
Whether a secret British mission to Antarctica took place or not remains very much open to debate, at least for some. With this in mind, we might ask, if there was any truth to such claims, just what the real importance of the nearby Falklands Islands might actually be. Could it be that it provides the British military with a quick launch-point to the icy continent should further discoveries be made or anomalous activity detected? Perhaps they are still monitoring the region today.
Another thought-provoking detail to note, however, before we move on, was the discovery in 1984 (although not made public until 1985) by the British Antarctic Survey of a hole in the Ozone layer – a hole that was over the same location as the secretive British missions at the end of the Second World War. The cause of this hole was determined to have been due to an increase in the use of CFCs. However, some researchers into the alleged strange goings-on in Antarctica have offered that this hole in the Ozone layer could very well have been the result of powerful explosions from nuclear weapons deployed in a war that the vast majority of the world is completely ignorant of.  
One last thing to consider is another detail put forward in the Nexus Magazine articles that detailed the secret British mission in late 1945. It stated that in 1999, a team of scientists on an expedition in the area allegedly discovered a new virus that no animals or humans had immunity to. While it is not clear what happened to this virus and how it was contained, as well as the fact that we need to treat such claims with a considerable helping of salt, it is also interesting to think that if Third Reich scientists were continuing their experiments on Antarctica in the years following the war could very well have established some kind of new virus to attack their enemies. Perhaps their bases were destroyed before this virus could be unleashed, but the virus itself remained within the icy ruins of these facilities.
Several years after these events, including Operation Highjump, one of the first recognized UFO researchers and investigators, Albert Bender, also made some remarkable discoveries about Antarctica, at least according to reports in the years that followed. As Bender began to investigate the many UFO reports that were surfacing across the United States, he formed the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) and soon caught the attention of the authorities and, as we shall see, the Men In Black. Bender spoke to hundreds of people who claimed they had witnessed these strange craft, and put out multiple articles and books. Then, out of nowhere in the mid-1950s, he suddenly claimed that he had ”solved the mystery of UFOs!” He also stated, though, that he was unable to speak further about his findings and that he would no longer comment publicly on UFOs. He then closed down the IFSB and disappeared from public life. However, that wasn’t the end of Bender’s story.
In 1956, Gray Barker released the book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, and in it, he made some claims as to Bender’s mysterious statements and behavior several years earlier. He stated that Bender was at home one evening when he suddenly felt an intense feeling of dizziness overtake him. The next thing he knew, three strange men were standing in his living room, each dressed in the same style of dark suit. Even stranger, where their eyes should have been, there were instead glowing red orbs. Moreover, several times, these glowing orbs appeared to “flash,” and with each flash, a surge of pain went through Bender’s head. It wasn’t made clear exactly what was said, but they certainly scared Bender enough for him to draw back from the public.
Then, however, six years later in 1962, Bender suddenly returned to public life with a new book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, in which he made some truly remarkable and, to some, outrageous statements. He claimed that the three men who visited him – essentially the Men In Black – were, in fact, extraterrestrial entities. Moreover, they appeared as they did because their real appearance was “so monstrous” that they couldn’t allow human beings to see their true form (a statement, incidentally, that was often attributed to the gods of the ancient world). Of most interest to us here, though, are his claims that he made several journeys with these strange men to a subterranean base in Antarctica.
Although we should perhaps treat it with a considerable pinch of salt, it is worth examining an article by Jonathan Gray in the newsletter of World Education Research Ltd., Archaeology News Flash, in which he claimed that a video that appeared to be some kind of unfinished documentary or news report from a television crew from California who had seemingly gone missing while reporting in Antarctica in 2002. Moreover, the article claimed that the video detailed “spectacular ruins” on the icy continent. Even more interesting, and remember, we should treat the claims with caution, the article claimed that the video showed “intense activity” in the region by what appeared to be American authorities (we should note that the American presence in Antarctica on scientific missions all denied any knowledge of the missing crew, or the claims made in the video). Whether the video does exist, and where it might be now, remains unknown.  
There have also been several strange and chilling encounters in more recent times. On December 10th, 2019, for example, a military plane left a runway in Chile and disappeared while on its way to Antarctica. The BBC reported on the incident, claiming that 38 people went missing with the plane – 17 crew members and 21 passengers. The plane was on its way to a military base on King George Island on a “logistical support” mission. What made the disappearance even stranger was that the pilot, who had extensive experience, didn’t issue any kind of distress call. What is also of interest is that the last known location of the plane – the Drake Passage – is known to be home to some of the most vicious waters on the planet. Of course, whether or not the plane’s mission was something other than what was officially declared remains open to debate.
As we can see, then, while some claims and conspiracies are perhaps more likely than others, Antarctica is one of the most mysterious and enigmatic locations on the planet – perhaps, outside of the world’s oceans, the last unexplored region on Earth. And, due to it being one of the most guarded and off-limits locations on Earth, it makes it a hotspot for conspiracies – conspiracies that are almost certain to continue to swirl for the foreseeable future.
Is it possible that this icy, inhospitable world was once the legendary land of Atlantis, or even some older advanced civilization from prehistory hundreds of thousands of years ago? And what should we make of the claims of some kind of entrance to the Inner Earth? Could it be the case that, if there is some kind of connection between Atlantis and Antarctica, some of the Atlantean survivors had used this entrance to escape disaster, perhaps even permanently residing in this Inner Earth? And if there are connections between Atlantis and some of the ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians and the Sumerians, perhaps these were outposts of Atlantis. There is, as always, much for us to consider and contemplate, regardless of how outrageous it all might seem.

“Who tampers with Google maps once an image with lat/long are given in a public web forum or news media about a subject as apparently sensitive to government intelligence agencies as the alien presence of ancient archaeological structures and artifacts in Antarctica?”
– Linda Moulton Howe, Reporter and Editor Earthfiles.com

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© 1998 – 2025 by Linda Moulton Howe.All Rights Reserved.

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
It’s not the Wardenclyffe Tower but fans of Nikola Tesla will recognize the similarity in a new announcement from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) that its Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program has “absolutely obliterated all previously reported optical power beaming demonstrations for power and distance” by beaming a laser carrying more than 800 watts of power across a distance of 5.3 miles (8.6 km); according to Paul Jaffe, the POWER program manager, a 30-second laser beam pulse arrived at the receiver, passed through a small aperture, bounced off a parabolic mirror onto solar cells, and still had 20% of its power, which was used to (we are not making this up) pop popcorn; while that is a valuable benefit, the next goal is to use the wireless beam to power unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Tesla would probably be underwhelmed, but still more impressed by this than by the accomplishments of the EV company bearing his name.
A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters explains how researchers used data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to analyze HD 100453, a young star about 330 light-years from Earth with about 1.6 times our sun’s mass, and found isotopes of methanol – alcohol – in the planet-forming dust ring around the star; according to the researchers, these isotopes methanol “gives essential insight into the history of ingredients necessary to build life here on Earth”; these same isotopes have been found in comets in our solar system, suggesting that these frozen particles in protoplanetary disks could eventually clump together to form comets loaded with complex organic molecules that could be deposited on planets via collisions; co-author Milou Temmink, a doctoral candidate who studies protoplanetary disks at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said that the presence of alcohol in this star’s dust ring “may be the reason why life, including us, was able to form here”. Forget ashes to ashes – our life is actually alcohol to alcohol.

Shouldn’t this be the first planet we explore?

From the “I’m not saying it’s aliens but I’m not saying it’s not aliens” file comes a revelation from astronomers studying a short (less than 30 nanoseconds) fast radio burst (FRB) detected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder in June 2024 which was so strong that it was assumed to have come from deep space and led many to hope it was evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence; while it was indeed created using intelligence, the researchers determined that the signal came from the Relay 2 – a communications satellite launched by NASA in 1964 that went dead in 1967 and has been stuck in orbit ever since – that suddenly came to life and blasted a signal so strong that astronomers mistook it for a fast radio burst from a distant galaxy; as they explained in their study, the zombie satellite most likely had a buildup of static electricity that suddenly discharged a pulse of energy over Earth; however, it could also have been caused by a collision with a micrometeorite that released a very small cloud of plasma in front of a real FRB signal, magnifying it so that it seemed stronger. We saw Zombie Satellites open for Foo Fighters.
The so-called ‘Pharaoh’s Curse’ – the alleged spell bringing death and destruction upon anyone disturbing the final resting place of a king – has been blamed for deaths to tomb explorers occurring soon after the openings of King Tut’s tomb in Egypt and Casimir IV’s tomb in Poland, but scientists eventually determined that at least some of those deaths were due to Aspergillus flavus, a fungus that can cause serious lung infections; now, a new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reveals that the Pharaoh’s Curse might actually be a Pharaoh’s ‘Cure’ for cancer – the scientists isolated and purified four RiPPs (ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides) from Aspergillus flavus and found that they cursed and killed leukemia cells; the fungi are difficult to purify and don’t work on other kinds of cancer, but it is hoped that there are more fungal RiPPS to be discovered. All we need are more curses and scientists brave enough to study them.
If you’ve ever wondered who would win a drinking contest between Hercules and Dionysus, the Roman god of wine, you need to get a hobby – but before you do, you may be interested in the recent discovery in Israel of a sarcophagus decorated with a depiction of what appears to be a drinking contest between Hercules and Dionysus; according to the press release posted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) on its Facebook page, the marble Roman sarcophagus was discovered during excavations in Caesarea on the northwest coast of Israel by IAA archaeologists Nohar Shahar and Shani Amit; the scene shows Hercules lying on a lion skin and holding a cup in his hand across from Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, in what can only be described as an ancient Roman drinking contest; while these bouts have been found before in ancient art, this is the first between Hercules and Dionysys; if you’re wondering who won, the archeologists say: “Hercules’ condition, depicted on the sarcophagus as someone who is no longer able to stand, points to the obvious answer: Dionysus”. Which part of ‘god of wine’ did Hercules not understand?

Why didn’t I challenge him to an arm-wrestling contest?

The so-called Buga sphere – the mysteriously engraved metallic orb tracked and retrieved in Colombia and now being ‘inspected’ in Mexico by controversial journalist and UFO researcher Jaime Maussan – continues to dominate the international UFO news with a statement by Maussan that men disguised as police tried to steal the Buga sphere; this was confirmed by UFO researcher Dr. Stephen Greer who, after he, US Congressman Eric Burlison and other US officials listened to a report from Maussan, said that “fake policemen” attempted to enter the vault in Mexico City where the orb was secured and warned that “Those scientists and their information have been provided to the top law enforcement… Any sort of attempts to interfere with this examination will be known, and the people and perpetrators will be held to account for it”; Burlison said that he believed governments and other groups were working to suppress the public’s knowledge of UFOs and alien life but “We have too many people reporting and too many videos to ignore it’”. It would be nice if UFO research looked more like science and less like theater.
April Newton of Texas had a lifelong dream of visiting loch Ness and looking for its monster, so it was understandable that when she finally got tot her wish recently she immediately booked a boat tour with her traveling companion; what she didn’t expect was that soon after the boat left the dock, she’d be standing in the back when suddenly she’d see “Several serpent-like humps appeared one at a time”; as she described it to The Scottish Sun, “They caused rings of water to ripple out like something was rising from below”; Newton managed to take some photos which convinced her that “The shapes I saw are Nessie”; others on the tour boat were looking in the wrong direction to see her brief encounter, but she showed the photos to the captain and guide and “He told me he had been doing this for years and hadn’t seen anything like them before”; they were on the Jacobite Warrior boat to Urquhart Castle and the photos have not yet (as of this writing) been accepted by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. Perhaps the monster can pick and choose to reveal itself to those it thinks are worthy of a sighting?
Those who believe crop circles are messages left by aliens may see this a sign aliens have a sense of humor – a crop circle in the shape of a creepy clown face was discovered in a field near Bush Barrow, a few hundred yards from Stonehenge; crop circle researcher Hugh Newman said, “It’s a new one for me. It’s different from the usual designs”; however, some skeptical researchers saw something familiar about the clown and traced it to a painting by British artist Harry Pack; meanwhile, other doubters pointed out that the hole at the center of the clown’s nose was left by a pole used to attach a rope and served as the radius for the human making the circular face in the field’s crop. Steve Miller fans look at it and see a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker who don’t want to hurt no one.

Alien art teachers would give something like this an ‘F’ (not the crop crircle in the story)

Rocky Mountain Sasquatch Organization (RMSO) posted a video of an alleged Bigfoot sighting on the Ammonoosuc River in northwestern New Hampshire near Mt. Washington; the witness shot a video of the woods and river where the sighting occurred and included a separate photo of the creature which Rocky Mountain Sasquatch magnified and analyzed, noting that what the witness thought was a baby on the back of the creature was probably just a large shoulder on a muscular back; RMSO also said the creature did not look like a human in a costume and pointed out that this spot was 60 miles from a location in Vermont where another Bigfoot was seen a few years ago. Keep your camera ready and steady and practice holding your breath so you can get a good clear photo and then yell for help.
In a recent podcast, John Ramirez, who spent 25 years as a CIA analyst, revealed that he had access to classified information confirming the existence of a secret program designed to track alien DNA in humans and analyze how genetic markers in children could indicate hybridization with non-human beings; after collecting the DNA, Ramirez claimed that “There were human traits in the alien DNA and vice versa. Hybrids are real. This is not a conspiracy”; he did not know how the hybridization occurred but speculated that they were altered, manipulated or “enhanced” by aliens; in the podcast, he also claimed he saw classified documents describing “UFO propulsion systems” but did not have the security clearances to actually see them; however, Ramirez claimed he did have an encounter with a reptilian being heard of incidents related to implants and the monitoring of individuals with lower genetic ancestry than human. What we need now is a test to determine if a whistleblower is a government plant trying to distract us or a shapeshifting alien doing the same thing.
This week’s psychic news comes from Brazilian prognosticator, Athos Salomé, who calls himself ‘The Living Nostradamus’; Salomé says his latest proclamations are backed by military documents, declassified reports, and high-level leaks and they connect quantum AI, extraterrestrial life, and what he calls “humanity’s psychic transition” that “cannot be dismissed as conspiracy”; he first describes a covert project codenamed Sentient Atlas that is backed by “credible sources from US and UK intelligence” and designed to intercept and decode anomalous gravitational signals which have caused atmospheric disturbances in Patagonia, Nevada, and Mongolia, and are being analyzed by private AI firms and a ‘stealth startup’ in Dubai whose technical documents referring to ‘reverse gravitational engineering’ and ‘interdimensional non-human intelligence’ are locked in encrypted digital vaults with military-grade security; Salomé also claims that at least nine nations have initiated covert social conditioning programs in anticipation of public disclosure of alien life which he predicts will culminate in 2030. While his predictions are definitely more detailed and current than the real Nostradamus, the Living Noz needs some winning predictions before he is replaced by the Living Nostradamus 2.0.
After a Bigfoot sighting in Monroe, Michigan, a marijuana dispensary there offered a free rolled joint to anyone who brought in a clear photograph of a Sasquatch; this was not the hairy one’s only link to Michigan marijuana as another pot shop, the  Higher Love cannabis dispensary in Menominee just across the border from Wisconsin, is causing a local uproar by advertising the business with a menacing 14-foot tall Sasquatch statue at the entrance; locals attending a council meeting said they feared the Bigfoot will make children believe marijuana is OK and endorsed by the “big gorilla by the bridge”, while the dispensary’s management points out that the Bigfoot as depicted is big and mean; however, it also admitted that the chain is considering adopting Bigfoot as its mascot (there are a number of Bigfoot-related strains) and putting statues at all locations. Does Bigfoot have an obligation to humans to avoid being associated with controversial products? (Yes, even beef jerky is controversial to vegans.)
The theory that there is a huge structure, or even an entire city, buried underneath the Giza pyramid complex and in particular the Pyramid of Khafre jut got deeper with a scientific presentation by Professor Filippo Biondi of the Khafre Project at its first international conference held recently in Malta; Biondi described the SAR-Doppler technology used to map the underground area, but the most important revelation was details on how the researchers on the project translated the electromagnetic response of the ground into physical vibration patterns in a radical technique developed by them which he likened to using “a stethoscope on rock”; this allowed them to detect differences in mass, shape and resonance below the surface; he then noted that the signals then interpreted not by generative artificial intelligence, but by human experts who reconstruct three-dimensional models based on probabilities calculated by algorithms; based on their analysis, Biondi said that  “The detected signatures do not resemble natural formations or geological fissures. Their orientation is almost perfect in relation to the cardinal points, and the symmetry leaves no doubt: someone built them”; and because the technology and engineering involved to build them does not match what is known of the period, they believe the structure predate them; a researcher at the conference let this comment: “If this is validated, we will have to rewrite part of Egypt’s history”. That’s a big ‘if’ which will only be resolved with excavation and the list of approvals needed to do that is as tall as the pyramid.
Space physicist Agnit Mukhopadhyay of the University of Michigan says his field can be used to explain the extinction of Neanderthals and the survival of homo sapiens; he starts with the shift in the Earth’s magnetic poles around 41,000 years ago known as the Laschamp event and suggest that it caused an extreme weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field which allowed for greater penetration of cosmic and ultraviolet radiation that created aggressive environmental conditions that Neanderthals could not withstand – because their clothes were too loose; that’s right, Mukhopadhyay proposes that homo sapiens used needles to make better and tighter-fitting clothes which covered more of their bodies and both blocked harmful rays and kept them warmer; he also suggests that homo sapiens used ochre on their skin for decoration, therapy, cosmetics, healing, and as an insect repellent, and that same ochre was also an effective sunscreen against the harmful radiations; archeologists dispute this theory, pointing out that there is no evidence humans in other areas wearing loose-fitting and no ochre died from radiation to the point of extinction like the Neanderthals. Does having Neanderthal DNA preclude one from becoming a tailor?
The question of whether journalists with secret information leaked to them by inside sources have an obligation to reveal the info has now been applied to the psychic world, as spoon-bending prognosticator Uri Geller claimed that he had read the mind of U.S. President Donald Trump and found out what Trump would do in the Israeli-Iran conflict – this was days before Trump authorized the bombing of three Iraqi nuclear facilities; Geller said he did not reveal what was on Trump’s mind,  explaining that “I cannot say because I will not compromise US-Israel secrecy… but remember even Golda Meir famously said Uri Geller read her mind!”; however, Geller, who lives in Tel Aviv, did tweet what he called “A vital message for Donald Trump: You MUST use your B52s to bomb Fordo! It is the ONLY way to end Iran’s nuclear threat. Don’t leave a single piece intact. This is a pivotal moment in history and I am urging you with all my energy to do it for the sake of mankind!”” Did Geller give a hint of what Trump would do? Are psychics morally obligated to tell what they know – or are they morally obligated to keep it a secret in order to avoid causing mass panic – especially if they’re wrong?

— “My government, NASA, which many of us in the U. S. say stands for Never A Straight Answer, proceeded to erase 40 rolls of film of the Apollo Program — the flight to the Moon, the flight around the Moon, the landings on the Moon, the walking of guys here and there. NASA erased, for Christ’s sake, 40 rolls of film of those events! Now we’re talking about several thousand individual frames that were taken that the so-called authorities determined that you did not have a right to see … (because) they were ‘disruptive,’ ‘socially unacceptable,’ ‘politically unacceptable.’ I’ve become furious. I’m a retired Command Sgt. Major. I was never famous for having a lot of patience.”
– Bob Dean, U. S. Army Command Sgt. Major /NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE),speaking to European Exopolitics Summit, Barcelona, July 25, 2009

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© 1998 – 2025 by Linda Moulton Howe.All Rights Reserved.

One corner of the UFO phenomenon that has always drawn to itself weirdness and raised eyebrows is that of alien abductions. These are cases in which the witness has been whisked away by alien intelligences for inscrutable reasons, often enduring examinations and experimentation in the process. Some reports can be so strange that they are seen as bizarre even for UFO phenomena, and here we will look at some such cases. 
In October of 1957, a strange series of events began to unfold in a rural area near São Francisco de Sales, Brazil. Here lived a humble farmer by the name of Antônio Villas Boas and his brother, Joao, and their family, and on the night of October 14, they would have an odd experience while out ploughing a field. Because of the sweltering heat during the daytime and the fact that the work was typically grueling, it was common for them to do their work at night, but this evening would be different from most. As they toiled away in the field, their attention was captured by what they described as a ball of red light in the sky that was so bright they could not look directly at it. Antônio crept forward to investigate while his terrified brother stayed behind, but whenever he tried to approach it would speed away from him, almost as if it were playing a game. The two men could only watch as it emitted some beams of light in all directions and then sped off into the night. However, the weirdness would not end there. Indeed, it was only just beginning for Antônio.
On October 16, 1957, Antônio was out working the field again, this time alone, and he looked up to the starry sky above to notice a red star amongst the twinkling lights. Thinking this was odd, it got even stranger when it began to grow in size and brightness and he realized that it was the same light he and his brother had seen before. This time, rather than retreating, the light seemed to be approaching him rapidly, getting close enough that the scared farmer could see that it was an egg-shaped craft of some sort with a rotating dome and a bright red light on its top. The bizarre craft then gently landed upon the field upon three metal legs that extended from beneath it to come to a rest not far from Boas, after which a hatch opened to disgorge a 5-foot-tall humanoid being dressed in a helmet and grey coveralls. This was frightening enough that Boas turned his tractor around and tried to get out of there, but the machine soon stalled, forcing his to continue fleeing on foot. He wouldn’t get far.
Whatever the creature was managed to catch him, joined by three other similar beings that communicated through a series of yelps and barks. Boas would claim that he was unable to effectively fight back against them and that these beings proceeded to physically drag him up into their otherworldly craft. There he was forced into a brightly lit room where the creatures took off all of his clothes and covered him with a slick gelatinous substance, before then taking him to another room adorned with strange red symbols. Here in this new room, the beings supposedly cut his chin to extract blood, and then he was led into yet another room and left alone for a while. As he sat there, terrified and unsure of what was coming next, a gas was piped into the room that was apparently so foul-smelling that Boas vomited. He was still recovering from being violently ill when an hour later the door opened and he was confronted with another of the beings, this one an attractive female, with long platinum hair, large blue eyes, and, by Boas’ description, totally hot. According to Boas, he had sexual relations with this creature, after which she rubbed her belly implying that she would bear his child, and he was then dropped off back at his tractor to find that 4 hours had passed and that he had strange burns on his body that he could not remember having gotten.

Over the next few days, Boas suffered from various health issues, such as intense headaches, nausea, and unusual lesions that popped up on his body for no discernible reason, and the burns also remained. Not knowing what to do, he sought out medical attention and was finally examined by Dr. Olavo Fontes, of the National School of Medicine of Brazil. According to the doctor, Boas was in pretty bad shape and suffering from radiation poisoning, and he would say of the farmer’s symptoms:

“Among [Boas’s] symptoms were pains throughout the body, nausea, headaches, loss of appetite, ceaselessly burning sensations in the eyes, cutaneous lesions at the slightest of light bruising…which went on appearing for months, looking like small reddish nodules, harder than the skin around them and protuberant, painful when touched, each with a small central orifice yielding a yellowish thin waterish discharge. The skin surrounding the wounds presented a hyperchromatic violet-tinged area.”

The story was soon picked up by UFOlogists when Boas approached journalist Jose Martins about the experience, and by 1958, the whole bizarre tale was becoming increasingly mentioned in the mainstream media as it received worldwide fame, as well as more than its fair share of raised eyebrows. After all, the whole thing is so outlandish as to be almost absurd. At the time, tales of alien abduction were practically nonexistent, as it was, indeed, Boas’ account is one of the earliest to ever get any major attention, and many people didn’t know what to make of it all. Even UFOlogists were skeptical of it all, and it was pointed out that he most likely made it all up after reading a similar obscure account in a popular magazine called O Cruzeiro, and that he was probably heavily influenced by the incredibly bizarre reports of alien contactees written by the Ufologist Georges Adamski. It is even suggested that he came up with the idea in 1958 and then predated his story to make it more believable, and the fact that he was able to produce the entire story from memory without the need for hypnosis has also seemed suspicious to some.
In the end, tales of such sexual encounters and alien hybrids have continued to flutter out on the fringe of even hardcore UFOlogists. It is all so completely off the rails and also scientifically implausible, as how would an alien have DNA compatible with us to the point that they could bear one of our children? Because of this, the case has mostly been labelled a hoax and a tall tale that has been largely shunned. However, Boas himself was no loon, going on in later years to become a respected lawyer, and he always stuck by his outlandish tale up to his death in 1992. Was this the ramblings of a troubled individual, a hoax, or was there something more to it all? Whatever the case may be, it is one of the earliest widely publicized UFO abduction accounts and continues to generate discussion to this day.
In another bizarre account from Brazil, in March of 1978, a fisherman was out by a river in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, when his concentration was broken by screams from the nearby jungle. Alarmed, the fisherman stopped what he was doing and ventured into the thick, murky underbrush towards the desperate cries, until he came to a teenage boy lying there upon the ground. The boy seemed to be in rough shape, unable to move, and even when asked who he was, he could only respond with gurgled cries of pain. Whoever the boy was, he seemed to be in a sort of spaced-out daze, and considering there was blood coming from his mouth, the fisherman assumed that he had been attacked by someone. When authorities arrived, the boy was taken to the hospital, and it was found that he had four missing teeth, with other teeth jagged and broken, patches of hair that appeared to have been singed off, some kind of red marks like sunburn around his ears, and by the time doctors looked at him he was in some sort of unresponsive, catatonic state. He was moved to a more modern medical facility, and only after a few days did he begin to come out of his mysterious stupor. When he did, he had quite a bizarre tale to tell, and so would begin one of the weirdest alien abduction accounts Brazil has ever seen.

It started as a normal day for 16-year-old Luis Carlos Serra, who in March of 1978 was out in the wilds near his home in the village of Penalva, collecting guava fruit for his family. The area was covered in thick jungle, but he had been out here many times before, and for Luis, it was all rather mundane, that is, until the day began to take a turn for the strange, starting with a loud noise like a siren that boomed out to reverberate among the trees. This was not a normal sound of the jungle, obviously not natural, and at first Luis thought it might be from an aircraft overhead, but when he looked up, it would prove to be no normal airplane.
When Luis peered up through the canopy of trees stretching far above, he felt nearly blinded by an intensely bright light. What was causing the light he could not see, but it was so brilliant that it lit up the normally dim jungle floor, and as he stood there, frightened and wondering what could possibly produce such a light, he suddenly found that he could not move his body. Luis would claim that something had paralyzed him, and he fell to the ground, unable to move or even cry out. As he lay there helpless, the light began to sort of congeal around him, until he was enveloped by it, and that was when he felt his body lift off the forest floor into the air, as if something were pulling him upwards.
The now terrified boy continued his ascent, right up through the branches of the canopy and above the sea of jungle green, and that’s when he finally saw the source of the light. According to Luis, hovering over the jungle was a large round object with a domed top and lined by windows along its side, and it was towards this inscrutable craft that he found himself floating. He would claim that he was pulled towards the mysterious sphere, and right through one of the windows, until he was inside it. He was then allegedly gently lowered to the floor, from which Luis looked up to see three humanoid beings in metallic suits and visors standing around him, speaking in some unknown language. As he tried to comprehend what was going on, the craft began to move, and things would get even stranger still. Although his memory of the event would remain somewhat murky, he says the craft went to a place that was dark and devoid of mountains, sky, stars, and trees; just a vast expanse of some sort of strange tall grass and nothing but blackness above. He was levitated back out of the craft and set down upon a flat rock in a clearing, and he would say of what happened:

I was taken to a strange land with no trees and only with tall grass. I do not know how long it took to get there. I went out the window just as I came in, with nothing supporting my back. I was still paralyzed. It was a strange place I did not know. It seemed like a field, but no birds or sides. The grass was very high, about one meter. I did not see any house or building. I could not see the sky, there were no trees or stars. It was very dark. I was still paralyzed. So those people approached me and put a tube in my nose. It did not hurt. Then they put a transparent ball in my mouth, and a liquid down my throat too fast. I fell asleep and did not know what happened later, I woke up in the bush.

It would not be until three days later that he would be found there by that fisherman, but it would turn out that there had been an intensive search effort to locate the boy carried out by the villagers. The incident would capture the attention of UFO researcher and journalist Bob Pratt, who would go to the region to interview Luis and other locals about what had happened, also finding out that there had been several other sightings of UFOs in the area at the time. Pratt would also interview medical personnel who had examined the boy, including a neurologist and two psychiatrists, and he even spoke with the town’s mayor, none of whom had any rational explanation for his condition when found. Rather curiously, according to researcher Albert Rosales, in August of 1978, there was a sighting of three glowing humanoids in silver coveralls and round, translucent helmets in a field near Penalva, although what connection this had to Luis’ case remains unknown.

It is hard to know what to make of this utterly bizarre case. Investigators who have looked into it deem Luis to be a perfectly rational and calm witness who has never deviated from his core story. There is nothing about him that suggests he would simply fabricate such an otherworldly tale, and no reason to suspect he ever gained anything from it. There are also the corroborating reports of other strangeness in the area, so what are we to think of all of this? Is this just tall tales mixed with local superstition and maybe a dose of minor hysteria, or is there something more to it all? For now, the strange case of Luis Carlos Serra remains an intriguing mystery that sees no concrete conclusion in sight, and it is left to the realm of speculation.
One of the most oft-discussed and bizarro alien abduction cases on record began in the early hours of November 30, 1989, with a 41-year-old woman by the name of Linda Napolitano, also formerly known as Linda Cortile. She lived in an apartment in Manhattan, New York, in the United States, and on this morning, Cortile woke up to find a humanoid figure standing there, obscured in the gloom by the foot of her bed. This was alarming enough as it was, as her apartment had been locked and her husband was sleeping soundly next to her, but it went into the realm of the truly outlandish when she would claim that whatever it was obviously was not human, and that it would spirit her away to what she describes as an “examination room,” where she distinctly saw herself on a table surrounded by thin, large headed and big-eyed aliens. She then found herself back in her bed, her husband still off in dreamland, and left with only fragmented memories of what had happened.
Cortile was sure it had been no dream, but tried to put it out of her mind until she came across a book that caused her to pause and take notice. The book was Intruders: The Incredible Visitations of Copley Woods, by seasoned UFO researcher Budd Elliot Hopkins, and was about an alien abduction. After perusing the book, Cortile became convinced that something very strange had happened to her that night, although she was still not quite sure what. Desperate for answers and not sure what she should do, Cortile sought to contact Hopkins himself, after which things would steadily get stranger still.
Hopkins turned out to be very willing to hear Cortile’s story, and considering that she only remembered fleeting shards of the event, he arranged for her to undergo hypnotic regression to try and see what was lying down under the surface within her psyche. Under hypnosis, Cortile would say that she had been levitated out of her room through the window, and had then been taken out over the city lights to some sort of otherworldly craft hovering outside, where she was subjected to some kind of medical experiments by non-human entities. She would say of her terrifying experience:

“I’m standing up on nothing. And they take me out all the way up, way above the building. Ooh, I hope I don’t fall. The UFO opens up almost like a clam and then I’m inside. I see benches similar to regular benches. And they’re bringing me down a hallway. Doors open like sliding doors. Inside are all these lights and buttons and a big long table. I don’t want to get up on that table. They get me on the table anyway. They start saying things to me and I’m yelling. I can still yell. One of them says something that sounds like {Nobbyegg}. I think they were trying to tell me to be quiet because he put his hand over my mouth.”

All very curious indeed, but it would go even further down the rabbit hole when Hopkins was later contacted by two additional witnesses calling themselves “Richard” and “Dan,” who were according to them bodyguards who had been tasked with escorting a high-ranking diplomat on the night of the incident, eventually identified to have most likely been United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. On that night, they claimed that they had been taking their charge over the Brooklyn Bridge in a limousine when the vehicle sputtered out and they spotted a large hovering craft in the vicinity of Cortile’s apartment, and not only that, they even claimed to have seen the body of a woman levitate up towards it, along with some other non-human beings of some sort. They then claim that the craft had shot towards the East River to go plunging into the depths. All of this had been witnessed by them and also the diplomat they had been with. Richard would say of the scene that played out:

“There was an oval-shaped object hovering over the top of the apartment building two or three blocks up from where we sat. We didn’t know where it came from. It happened too fast. Its lights turned from a bright reddish orange to a whitish blue coming out of the bottom. Green lights rotated round the edge of the saucer. A little girl or woman wearing a white gown sailed out of the window in a fetal position – and then stood in mid-air in this beam of light. I could see three of the ugliest creatures I ever saw. I don’t know what they were. They weren’t human. Their heads were out of proportion, very large heads with no hair. Those buggers were escorting her into the craft. My partner screamed, ‘We have got to get them.’ We tried to get out of the car but couldn’t. After the woman was escorted in, the oval turned reddish orange again and whisked off.”

According to these witnesses, the sight had left them in quite a state of shock and disarray, and from here the story gets even weirder still. After this report, they apparently began to stalk Cortile, following her around and generally absolutely obsessed with her, to the point that they supposedly carried out an abduction of their own. On April 29, 1991, Dan and Richard allegedly kidnapped Linda Cortile in order to grill her on what she had experienced that evening. Not long after this, Dan would purportedly kidnap her yet again, even going as far as to have her wear the same nightgown she had been wearing on the night of the abduction, during which Cortile would claim she had seen what looked like CIA files lying around. She was constantly harassed by these two mysterious men, leaving Hopkins to wonder just what in the world was going on.
In the meantime, there would be yet another possible witness to the event who would come out of the woodwork, when Hopkins was approached by a woman calling herself Janet Kimble, sometimes called Kimball, who said that she had also seen the hovering object after her car had broken down at the time, and had assumed that it had been the set of a science fiction film. It was then that Hopkins, who had until that point kept the case to himself, decided to go public with information on it. As all of this was going on, Hopkins was trying to see if he could get a statement from the diplomat who had been in the car with the bodyguards, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and he apparently did make contact. Although Cuellar would supposedly admit to the sighting, he made it very clear that he did not want his name associated with it and so declined to make an official statement on the matter, saying he would deny any such news that came out. In other words, he meant to keep quiet about what he had seen.

Of course there was a bit of skepticism towards Hopkins’ research, most notably from fellow researchers George Hansen, Joseph Stefula, and Richard Butler, who would spend a lot of time poking holes in the case. For instance, it was pointed out that Hopkins had failed to do some basic checks on the conditions of the abduction, such as the weather at the time, and had not even checked to see if security guards at the building had seen anything unusual. Other criticisms of the case abound, such as the fact that it seems that although this incident supposedly happened at a sprawling apartment block complex in a busy downtown area, there were very few actual witnesses to the event. None of the other tenants saw anything unusual on the night in question, nor did night security guards, and the witnesses that there are cannot be corroborated. There are two near-anonymous bodyguards with testimony that cannot be verified, the supposed diplomat Cuellar, who has refused to confirm or deny any of it, the mysterious Kimball, who could be anybody, and, according to Cortile, supposedly a truck driver on the Brooklyn bridge who has remained unnamed. Very vague, indeed.
Interestingly, as the case has gained more awareness, there have been other alleged witnesses to the abduction who have come out of the woodwork over the years. The most prominent of these is a man named Yancy Spence, who alleged that he was a New York Post journalist and had been at his office right across the street on the night of the abduction, from which he saw the entire thing along with several others. He also made the ominous claim that he believed several other people had also been abducted, although who these other people were is anyone’s guess.
In the end, no one really knows what is going on here with what is now widely known as the “Manhattan Transfer Abduction.” Was this woman abducted by aliens right from her apartment in the middle of New York City? Why are there so few witnesses, and actually, who are those witnesses? Did they ever really exist at all? Theories have flown that this was a vast conspiracy to the idea that aliens carried out a mass mind-wipe on everyone who saw what happened, but why would they have gone through all of the trouble in the first place in such a populated area? Or maybe she was just abducted by humans and her mind filled in the rest? If so, how do we explain what the other witnesses supposedly saw, if anything at all? Or does this perhaps all have its origins in just a tall tale conjured up by Cortile herself, pulling Hopkins into her delusional world in the process? Whatever the case may be, it has managed to become a curious and often debated case that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
Moving along, in the hours just after dark on August 8, 1993, a 27 -year-old housewife and mother of three children by the name of Kelly Cahill was driving with her husband between Belgrave and Fountain Gate, in Victoria, Australia, to attend a birthday party later that evening for Kelly’s friend’s daughter. At around 7 PM, they were passing the quiet foothills of the Dandenongs mountain range, approaching the outer Melbourne suburban housing estate where the friend lived. Since it was a fairly remote and dark road, there were few other cars around, although on this evening, Kelly would claim that there was another vehicle down the road behind them with a man and a woman within. It was a quiet, peaceful night, and other than that, there wasn’t much to see, so Kelly sat back watching the evening float by her passenger window. Yet something would come up out of the dark that would snap her awake.
As Kelly looked out over the rural, increasingly mountainous landscape, she allegedly saw a “ring of orange lights” sitting on the ground in a nearby paddock. As she watched this mystery object, wondering what it could be, they passed by and she told her husband that she had just seen a UFO, but he didn’t seem to really believe her, saying it was probably just a helicopter. They sort of just put it out of their minds and went about going to the friend’s party and having a normal evening before heading back for the drive home. As they did, they would both then see what appeared to have been the same object Kelly had seen earlier, only this time it was hovering over the road right in front of them. Kelly would later tell UFO researcher Robb Tilley of what happened then:

Anyway, we were driving back down the road in the same stretch. Both of us,just me and my husband . . . we both saw this ring, mind you … . in front of us, hovering above the road. It was just something sitting there. . . . I couldn’t tell what it was. We were at first far away, but as you got closer to it was sort of . . . well, it wasn’t like the orange light in the field. It was a round shape with some sort of glass around, or what looked like windows and lights around the bottom. Because it was dark, you couldn’t really tell at first. But as we got closer and closer, there was no noise or anything. Even my husband’s going. “You’re right! That’s something. That’s very, very strange.” And I swear we saw people in there, and then just as I said to him, “I swear there’s people in there,” it just shot off to the left as fast as it could go. I mean it just disappeared. Within a split second it had gone.

We kept driving, and about a kilometer ahead, all of a sudden, there’s this really, really bright light in front of us, and I’ve got my hand up, up above my brow, to look out the window, because it’s that bright, but I can’t see anything. I said to [my husband], “What are you going to do?” He said, “I’m going to keep driving.” From there, that is the last we remembered until . . . I knew I was going to see a UFO, you know, I just knew, because of what we had seen, I’d seen it twice in one night and he had seen it once… and the adrenaline is pumping, the heart is thumping, I’m so excited. All of a sudden, I’m sitting in the car, and I’m saying to my husband, “What happened?” And he says to me, “I don’t know. We must have gone around a corner or something.

They both felt very strange at this point, as if they had had a blackout, but they weren’t sure quite why they felt this way, but it was unshakeable. There was also apparently a “smell like vomit” permeating the vehicle, although there was no sign that either of them had thrown up. They had the very surreal sense that something was not quite right, and that something had happened to them, and as they talked about this, it got even stranger still when Kelly saw a tall, dark figure pass by along the side of the road that she did not think was human. It was not until they got home that they realized that they were both missing an hour of time, and Kelly noticed an odd triangular mark right above her navel and a scar above that, neither of which she had had before that night.
On top of this, they both experienced inexplicable headaches, nausea, stomach pain, and severe muscular fatigue over the coming weeks, during which time Kelly began menstruating out of cycle and fell so sick she could barely walk. Her husband would rush her to the hospital, where they were told that she had a womb infection. As all of this was going on, Kelly began to have little fragments of memory come back to her from that lost time, little flickers that floated up from her subconscious like fleeting, half-forgotten dreams. First, she remembered going into an intense, blindingly bright light, then there were faint images of shadow figures moving in that light, and then one day, when they were driving past the same spot, she felt a sudden sense of overwhelming terror and it all came back to her. She would say of this:

On the way home from bingo that night, we went along the same road, and as we passed a certain spot, I just got this incredible feeling of terror go through me, I mean absolute terror. All of a sudden I just started remembering, and by the next morning I had remembered just about everything that happened, except there’s still missing time that I can’t. What we had actually done, we had driven into the light, but the road curved, and the light we had thought was in front of us was actually to our right-hand side. It was in the field, and it was massive… the “size of a house” or perhaps close to 5O meters. So it was very big. Why I knew it was very big was because we could have driven for five minutes. The road sort of wound around this part. You could have driven for five minutes and not had it out of your sight the whole time.

She remembered that she and her husband had then stopped the car and gotten out to get a better look at the light. At this point, she somehow noticed that there was another car that had stopped down the road, and that three people had stepped out of it. She turned her attention back to the otherworldly craft in front of them, and that’s when she saw a very tall, thin black figure, estimated as about 7 feet tall, and possessing luminous red eyes, which she describes as “burning red, like . . . fluorescent stop lights, I suppose, that sort of real burning red.” The entity was approaching them, and she felt overwhelmed with a cold, gripping terror. She would explain what happened next:

All of a sudden I started screaming out to my husband. . . . Now this has really got me baffled because of the fact that a human being doesn’t know this, so I don’t even know how I came out with this, but I started saying, “They’ve got no souls.” And then I started screaming, “THEY’VE GOT NO SOULS!” Then all of a sudden there were heaps of them in the field, not just one, a whole heap of them, and they started coming towards us . . . faster than a man could run, and they were gliding off the ground. They got halfway across the field. They split up. Some of them went towards the other people [two or three, Kelly thought]. and some of them [the rest] came towards us. I was hysterically terrified. . . . I had never felt terror like that. Not even in my worst nightmares had I experienced terror like that. The next thing I know, I felt this oomph! in my stomach, right across here like I was winded, but I was thrown right back, and I was on my back on the ground. I sat up, with my head between my knees. Here, I’m trying to stay conscious. I couldn’t see. My eyes. . . . It was all black.

She says that during this encounter, she was only vaguely aware of her husband nearby, who was mostly silent, and that the creatures kept sending telepathic messages into her mind, assuring her that they meant her no harm. Despite these insistent assurances, she felt with every fiber of her being that they were actually all evil somehow, and she says she suddenly felt a surge of anger overcome and usurp the uncontrollable fear that had paralyzed her. She remembers shouting at the beings to go away and cursing and threatening them, and the next thing she remembers is being back in her car, any other memories just a whirlwind of shards and pieces. In the coming weeks, she would have extremely vivid dreams of being she had seen, as well as of being within their ship and speaking with them. She would say of one of these “dreamings” as she calls them, as follows:

When after I did remember it, I had another dream, and these dreams seemed very physical. I know I’m dreaming, and I’ve got to wake up out of them. . . . In this particular one, I felt as if my legs were being pulled off the bed, and it was like I was paralyzed from my waist down, and my legs were being pulled over to the side; yet I could almost use the top of my body. Then I’m grabbing a pillow, trying to hit my husband, to wake him up. . . . I’m fighting this. I’m not going to let this thing drag me off the bed by my legs. Then I woke up and saw it standing there again! This time the hood covered the eyes, and it didn’t scare me. . . . I was still terrified, but it didn’t scare me quite as much, because each time it scared me, it was that same power like I felt out in the field that night.

During all of this, her husband remained unable to remember anything of what had happened, and it was all very bizarre to say the least. Kelly would contact Sydney-based researcher Bill Chalker, of the UFO Investigation Centre, who would launch a full, in-depth investigation into the events along with a group called Phenomena Research Australia [PRA]. They were not only able to track down other witnesses in two other cars who had passed that night and seen the UFO at the time as well, but also locate the three people described by Cahill who had also been approached by the strange entities on that fateful evening, who all also just so happened to have triangular marks on their bodies very similar to the one Kelly had. In addition to this, upon investigating the site of the UFO landing, Chalker and his team claimed that they had managed to find various physical evidence such as chemical and magnetic anomalies, as well as unusual radiation and magnetic readings and strange marks in the field that could not be explained.

In the meantime, the whole bizarre tale had hit the news, and Kelly Cahill would become a bit of a celebrity, appearing on TV shows, at UFO conferences, and writing a book about it all in 1997 called Encounter: The True Story. She would add other details to her account over the years, claiming that she had been menaced by an unmarked black helicopter and had forged a telepathic link with the aliens, who warned that they planned to invade Earth. Although her story may sound fantastical and almost absurd to some, she has long been seen as a rather reliable witness, as she no history of mental illness, no reason to lie, no prior connection to the UFO field, and was largely praised by neighbors and family as being an honest, sincere woman. Indeed, this perceived reliability, as well as the corroborating reports and the physical evidence left behind, has made Kelly Cahill’s case very significant in the UFO field, with Bill Chalker saying of this:
Here we have a striking situation. Two groups of persons unknown to each other have witnessed the same UFO encounter and entities. They also experienced missing time, and each group has been available to competent investigators. Independent witnesses have provided information that enables cross-checking and correlations to reveal a remarkable amount of similar information. The result is a compelling case for the reality of the strange events described. The ontological status of the events is further strengthened by a range of apparently related physical traces, including ground traces, a magnetic anomaly, and effects on some of the witnesses.
Indeed, the case of Kelly Cahill has become one of the most intriguing and baffling UFO cases Australia has ever seen, yet it remains a frustrating nut to crack. The main problem is that, although Phenomena Research Australia claims to have compiled a detailed report on all of the data and information pertaining to the case, this report has never been released to the public and remains under wraps. The names of the supposed other witnesses have also never been revealed, and they have never been interviewed by independent, mainstream sources. Indeed, even the name Kelly Cahill is a pseudonym, and so there is a thick cloud of mystery obscuring the real truth. In the end, we may never know exactly what happened out there on that lonely road, and it remains a strange mystery that will perhaps always elude us, as well as one of the most bizarre alien abduction accounts Australia has ever seen.
In the end, all of these cases make one scratch one’s head and think what was going on here? These are among the strangest alien abduction cases there are, and they leave more questions than answers. What happened to these people, and was this really aliens or was it something else? I leave it for you to decide. 

‘Tis the season of prophecies; about monster tsunamis leaving a trail of devastation across multiple countries located along the Pacific Ring of Fire. Two different women psychics – one from Thailand and another from Japan – have revealed bone-chilling prophecies about a Pacific mega-tsunami that could originate somewhere between Japan and the Philippines, and inflict catastrophic damage. While one of them said that it could occur anytime in July or August of 2025, the other was more specific: the date that she saw very clearly in her precognitive dream was July 2025. 
Why should we take these prophecies seriously, one might wonder? Aren’t there enough instances of prophecies of doom and destruction that have failed miserably? Well, yes, but these two psychics are very different. Their track record of accuracy is so surreal that it would put any Baba Vanga to shame. It is only because of the language barrier that they are not as widely known or celebrated outside of their home countries. In fact, many tourists from East Asia have already paid heed to their warnings and canceled their travel plans to Japan, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries this summer. The word has now got out to the rest of the world through YouTube and other social media channels, and that is how I came to know about it as well.

When I started digging a bit deeper in order to get to the “real information” about these prophecies, I realized that most of the original sources were YouTube videos and interviews in the Chinese, Thai, and Japanese languages. The videos that were being made in English contained scant and often incorrect information, and left out a lot of the relevant details that I was interested in. So I did a lot of YouTube research to identify the genuine and informative videos, and used YouTube’s auto-translate feature to jot down the information. And, of course, I had to make minor grammatical adjustments to the text in order to make it reader-friendly.
Mor Plai, the Thai Prophet
Let’s start with the fortune teller from Bangkok who calls herself Mor Plai, but whose real name is Navaracha Pinitlokakorn. She is a doctorate, and, after she acquired the gift of prophecy sometime around the year 2010, she made some uncannily accurate predictions about major events, which gave her celebrity status in Thailand. Since then, she has been frequently interviewed by Thai TV channels and newspapers. However, it was only after she had accurately predicted the recent Myanmar earthquake that she turned into an internet sensation, and people all over East Asia frantically tried to find out more information about her life and her prophecies. 

Mor Plai, in a recent interview with Woody’s live broadcast

The most informative video about Mor Plai’s life and prophecies was published in the Chinese language by a popular YouTuber named Wen Zhao. In his video titled, “Thai female prophet: 95 days left before the 2025 global catastrophe, the way it will happen is chilling” (published April 27, 2025), he refers to Mor Plai as “Pura” or “Mor Pura”. In Thailand, the generic term for a fortune teller is “Mor Pra” (or “Mor Doo”), which could be why Wen Zhao used the term “Mor Pura” to refer to her. Initially, this caused me some confusion because I could not find any famous Thai fortune teller named “Mor Pura” using Google search, and it was only after using some more keyword-based searches that I figured out that the name she went by was Mor Plai. 
Now that the little confusion about the name has been cleared up, let me share some of the interesting stuff that Wen Zhao said about Mor Plai’s bizarre childhood experiences, how she acquired her special prophetic abilities, some of her amazing predictions till date that have come true, and what she foresees for the future. 
“Pura is very different from the prophet that everyone imagines. She looks like an ordinary Thai modern girl. She will post all kinds of beautiful photos on her social media platform…Pura claims that she has had psychic abilities since she was a child. In 2014, Pura was interviewed by Thairath Talk, a TV station under Thairath Newspaper, one of the largest media in Thailand…Pura said that, since she was a child, she was able to see spirit beings that other people couldn’t see. Sometimes they were ghosts, and sometimes they were gods. But she had assumed that everyone else must be seeing these entities as well, just as she was…
Opposite Pura’s house was an abandoned house, which looked empty from the outside. But little Pura could see people coming in and out from time to time. During these times, little Pura would stand under the eaves of her house and wave and say hello to these people, but they usually ignored little Pura. Family and friends thought that little Pura was a strange girl, for they would see her waving and saying hello to the empty air. But they felt that she was just being childish or naughty, and did not give it much importance. 

One day, Pura saw a strange old man walking out of the abandoned house. As usual, Pura waved to him. This time, the old man also waved to Pura. Little Pura was very happy, and she ran across the street to talk to the old man. Pura’s family and neighbors were unnerved to see her standing alone in the front yard of the abandoned house, dancing and talking to herself, and laughing from time to time. Everyone thought that the little girl must have finally gone crazy. The family hurried to take Pura back home, but Pura struggled and refused, saying that she was playing games with her uncle…Some of the neighbors got curious and went into the abandoned house to check. They were shocked to find an old man’s body in the house. While the adults were panicking, little Pura ran into the house, pointed at the body, and said that it was this uncle who was playing with her. 
From then on, the news spread in the neighborhood that little Pura could interact with ghosts, and no child dared to come to her house to play. Of course, no one dared to bully her, either. As Pura grew up, she realized that she could not only see spirits, but also different gods. She even saw the Hindu god Krishna and communicated with him. When Pura told her family about these things, her parents were shocked and scared…So, when she was a teenager, her parents took her to see a psychiatrist. Pura passed all the tests, and the doctor told her parents that Pura was not mentally ill. While her parents were relieved to hear this, they also warned their daughter that, in the future, she was not to blurt out what she had seen in front of outsiders. As a result, the older Pura grew, the fewer friends she had, and the more she kept her special abilities a secret.
But a change occurred when Pura was about 20 years old. A spirit who looked like Yama, the King of the Underworld in Buddhism (and Hinduism), came into contact with Pura and taught her how to read faces and tell fortunes. He also gave her the ability to predict the future, and the spirit asked her to use the name “Mor Pura”. After that, Pura began to tell fortunes for people around her and would occasionally post her predictions for the coming year on her social media channel. 

Yama, the Lord of the Underworld and the judge of the dead, in a Chinese Temple.

The scope of her predictions is wide, ranging from politics, economy and society, to natural disasters. Pura calls herself the “medium of the gods” because, every time, before something big happens, the gods come to tell her about it, sometimes using voice and sometimes with the help of images. Some pictures appear very clear to her, while others are blurry. Although Pura does not understand some of the information she receives, she feels that her duty is to be a faithful messenger to convey the will of God. So, she simply says what she has heard or seen.
It so happened that, in 2014, Thairath Newspaper started its own multimedia platform called Thairath Talk. In order to attract viewers, it invited various people to interview. Mor Pura was also chosen. The program team wanted to do a simple interview, but Pura did not follow the guidelines and talked about her predictions for the future in the program. She made two strange predictions. The first was that a major aviation accident would happen in Southeast Asia, which would shock the world. The strangest thing about this accident would be that it would be a mysterious disappearance without any clear clues. Before the reporter could come to his senses, Pura made a second prediction. She said that she saw a boat carrying children, which would disappear at sea…

Just two months later, both of her predictions came true. In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously disappeared on its way to Beijing. More than ten years have passed and it is still missing. And then, in April 2014, a Korean passenger and cargo ferry named Sewol sank. Sewol is a 6825-ton ferry. On the morning of the 16th, it sank while carrying passengers and cargo from Incheon to Jeju Island. A total of 780 passengers and crew members died, including 250 high school students. It was, indeed, a ship full of children. This was the worst maritime accident in South Korea’s history. It attracted great attention not only in South Korea but also around the world. Only then did the audience suddenly realize that Pura was, indeed, a prophet. 

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a few months before it disappeared. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Sewol ferry disaster of April 2014. Source: YouTube

From then on, many media outlets came to interview her. But Pura did not accept interviews every time. She would only show up when something big was about to happen. In June 2015, Pura made another shocking statement when she was interviewed by “Women’s Magazine”. She looked at a map on the wall and pointed her finger towards the location of Malaysia. Talking about the possibility of a disaster in Malaysia, she pointed to Kuala Lampur, the capital of Malaysia, saying that a famous building in the city would catch fire. Around 20 days later, a fire broke out on a small hill called Bukit Aman in Kuala Lampur. The building that caught fire happened to be the headquarters of the Royal Malaysia Police. So, this matter became the focus of new reports for several consecutive days. Pura’s accurate prediction shocked the Thais yet again…

Fire at the Malaysia Police Headquarters, Bukit Aman, in 2014. Source: theborneopost.com

In the second half of 2024, Pura was interviewed by Thairath Talk again, and in course of the discussions she suddenly said that, a few months later, probably between March and April 2025, an earthquake would occur in the Myanmar area, and would affect the northern part of Thailand, but the impact would not be great. After saying this, she paused, thought for a while, and added, “Bangkok will be affected by the earthquake, and the buildings will shake.” The host didn’t quite believe this when he heard this. He looked at Pura with suspicion because earthquakes are not common in Thailand…But an earthquake occurred in Myanmar in March 2025 and many high-rise buildings in Bangkok also shook. These scenes confirmed Pura’s prediction, and everyone was shocked…

The collapsed skyscraper in Bangkok after the 2025 Myanmar earthquake. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In April 2025, Pura appeared again. She first appeared on the popular talk show of GMM, the largest entertainment media group of Thailand, and then on the live broadcast room of Woody, a well-known Thai host. In both shows, Pura made even more terrifying predictions. Let’s look at them one by one. Let’s start with Pura’s prediction on the GMM program. She said that, before August 2025, that is, from June to July, a province in Thailand that begins with K or Kai should pay attention. It will be affected by floods, but this flood is not caused by rainfall, but by the fluctuations of the sea or the earth. In other words, a disaster like a tsunami will occur, and tsunamis are caused by earthquakes. This statement shocked all Thais. The word tsunami also reminded all Thai netizens of the tragic consequences of the 2004 tsunami, and they couldn’t help but shudder…

Pura explained the disaster more clearly in the live broadcast room of host Woody. Pura said that this was almost like a global disaster. The volcano is about to erupt. The places Thai people like to travel to would be affected, and tourists would die. To be specific, it would be Sashimi (i.e., Japan) and Indonesia. Sashimi means “raw fish,” and Japan is famous for eating raw fish. Japan is also a favorite tourist destination for Thais. Pura said that there is a ring of volcanoes on the seabed that had been dormant for a long time. The big one has not exploded yet. The smaller volcanoes will erupt first, followed by the big one, which will cause a tsunami.”

With that, we come to the end of Wen Zhao’s narration of Mor Plai’s bizarre life and remarkable prophetic powers, and needless to say, he has done an excellent job of pulling together information from many different sources to give us an illuminating account of this enigmatic Thai psychic. The account is also quite accurate, since I have listened to many YouTube interviews of Mor Plai where she essentially repeated the same things. The unreal accuracy of her prophecies so far is quite amazing to say the least, which kind of gives you an uneasy feeling of inevitability about her tsunami prediction in the July-August timeframe this year. 
There’s one correction that I would like to make to Wen Zhao’s presentation. Wen Zhao said that, according to Mor Plai, the undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami will occur “before August 2025, that is, from June to July”. That is not entirely correct.  In the GMM interview, she had said that the tsunami will occur “by August”, by which she meant, “by the end of August.” We can be certain of this, because on Woody’s live broadcast she spelt it out even more precisely: “The time is in July and August,” she told Woody. 
As Wen Zhao mentioned, once netizens realized that Mor Plai had successfully predicted the Myanmar earthquake, she became eagerly sought after by social media podcasters. In an interview with a Chinese YouTube channel published on April 12, 2025, Mor Plai was forthcoming about some of her childhood experiences. When asked what kind of spirits she used to see as a child, she replied, 

“When I was a child I saw many spirits. For example, there were some spirits under some lamp posts, some were wearing school uniforms, and some were in different colors, either black or white, and their eyes were either black or white. I saw many, many of these…sometimes spirits asked me for help but I could not do it when I was a child.” 

When asked to describe how the King of the Underworld, Yama, (who taught her how to read faces and tell fortunes) looked like, she replied, “When you first see him, he appears very big, and you will feel very hot because there are a lot of fires around him.” So, “big and fiery” seems to be the keywords. Not surprising, because in many sacred texts we find that, whenever a person gets a vision of God, he seems to appear enveloped in flames. For instance, when the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel saw Yahweh on the throne above the cherubs, he saw a human-like figure, glowing like fire, and enveloped in a brilliant light. (Ezekiel 1.26 28) 

Regarding the mysterious disappearance of Flight 370, when she was asked if there was any chance it may be found later, she said, 

“The Golden Triangle (possibly referring to the Bermuda Triangle), the mysterious delta, some of the aura and magnetic field of the mysterious delta changed, causing it to fall…many years later, they may see its wreckage, but not the entire thing. The people inside are no longer here. All you will see is the wreckage of the plane. This may happen in another forty or fifty years.” 

While some people may feel hopeful to know that the wreckage of Flight 370 might be found some day, if you are one of those who had expected that all the passengers will walk out of a time portal without aging a single day in all those years, you are likely to be disappointed.
In a video published by the YouTube channel Kiinthailand in the Thai language on March 30, just a few days after the Myanmar quake on March 28, Mor Plai was asked how she had known that the disaster would occur. Mor Plai replied, 

“The earthquake was more serious than I had expected. At the time of making the prophecy, I saw a map of Thailand, and around Bangkok there were multiple branching cracks. That’s why I made the prophecy. I also saw images of buildings collapsing, but I thought they were in Burma (Myanmar).” She went on to add that Bangkok will experience aftershocks in 2025, and this is just the beginning.

In an interview with the YouTube channel CD Chai published on April 7, Mor Plai clarified that she acts as a “spokesperson” of the spirit realm. This is what she said: 

“When I first mentioned the earthquake (Myanmar), it was not directly related to this matter…it was just a conversation. We just continued to talk and continued to visit (other topics) and then I accidentally said it. I can hear some whispers. I tell everyone what I hear, and say it in the gentlest way. It often says it. It often repeats. I have to say it because I act as a spokesperson. If I don’t speak out, I am afraid of being scolded. I was afraid of being scolded at that time.”

I found this really interesting. I can’t recall any other channel or medium saying that he or she is afraid of being scolded by spirits. It almost sounds like a family. But how exactly do the spirits scold her? What if they come down too hard on her and she starts feeling sad or depressed? Would it be a good idea for her to go to a psychiatrist and say, “My spirit family is acting unusually mean with me”? I would really like to be able to chat with her one day about these things.

In this video published by the YouTube channel Kiinthailand on April 3, we can listen to what Mor Plai had actually said in the GMM and Woody interviews, following the successful prediction of the Myanmar quake. During the GMM interview, she had made additional predictions: “During the Water Sprinkling Festival (i.e., Songkran Festival from April 13-15) this year, there will be flooding and fire accidents.” And when the host asked, “How can there be rain in summer?” she replied, “It’s going to rain!” 
And guess what? That’s exactly what happened. There was heavy rain in Bangkok during the Songkran festival, and a flash flood in Chiang Mai washed away the temporary furniture set up by the food vendors along the riverbank. However, no tourists were injured in this incident, since they had left by then, thanks to an early warning. Once again, Mor Plai does not cease to amaze with her incredible predictions.
Mor Plai had made another interesting prediction during the GMM interview. She said that one of the buildings in Bangkok, which had been damaged by the recent earthquake, will collapse. But she did not specify which building it is, and when exactly it will collapse. “It’s the damaged building. It will collapse. Everyone is running out again from that building. It’s a big building. The interior space is empty. I feel this building is not for people to live in.” On Woody’s live broadcast, she continued on this theme. Regarding the future of Bangkok, she said, 

“Wealthy people who live in tall buildings will sell their residence and relocate to different places. The tall buildings will start having problems, and later it will not be possible to sell these flats, and they will be discarded. Government offices may be relocated to other provinces. Stay away from tall buildings. Many people in Bangkok will quit their jobs and move to other provinces. There will be many foreigners taking over their jobs. People from Burma, Laos, Cambodia etc. The Thai economy shall face severe problems.”

One can imagine that if a person living in a Bangkok high-rise listens to these scary predictions, he might start shivering and trembling long before the next earthquakes arrive. Mor Plai is clearly foreseeing a lot of difficulty for Thailand in the coming years, and, understandably, the Thais who follow her prophecies could be feeling jittery. If her dire prediction about the volcanic eruptions and tsunamis in July-August also materializes, it could, potentially, trigger a sell-off in the real estate market in Bangkok. Those of you who are reading this – don’t get conned into buying a high-rise apartment in Bangkok at throwaway prices right now.
Let me touch upon one final apocalyptic prediction made by Mor Plai, which reminded me of some of the prophetic utterings of Edgar Cayce. More than ten years ago, on a Woody broadcast, Plai had made a stunning prophecy about a global apocalypse in the coming decades that would completely alter the geological profile of our planet. She said,

“In another 78 years, the map of the Earth will be completely changed. There will be very little land left. There may be less than a third of the land left.”

In a reading given in 1934, Edgar Cayce had said that large portions of many continents would sink under the oceans in the period from ’58 to ’98, which, as I have argued in my book Yuga Shift, refers to the period from 2058 to 2098. 

“As to the changes physical again: The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America. There will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid areas, and there will be shifting then of the poles – so that where there has been those of a frigid or the semi-tropical will become the more tropical, and moss and fern will grow. And these will begin in those periods in ’58 to ’98, when these will be proclaimed as the periods when His light will be seen again in the clouds. (Reading 3976-15, January 19, 1934)

The fact that Cayce had prophesied that the “greater portion of Japan must go into the sea” and there will be “the eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid areas,” brings additional context to Mor Plai’s prediction of a volcanic eruption and tsunami close to Japan. A lot of things seem to be adding up and falling into place, and the eerie alignment in prophetic utterings across centuries, in combination with the ongoing changes in the environment, geopolitics and human consciousness, is making it increasingly evident that we are now living in the times of the greatest shift in recorded human history. 
What makes Mor Plai’s prediction even more ominous is that an almost exact scenario was foreseen by a clairvoyant Japanese manga artist named Ryo Tatsuki in one of her precognitive dreams. And the date that she saw clearly in her dream for this mega disaster was July 2025!
The Prophecies of Ryo Tatsuki
Ryo Tatsuki is a Japanese manga artist who has been having vivid, precognitive dreams since she was young, starting sometime in the 1980s. Her dreams varied from mundane, private matters to incidents of global importance. For years, she kept notes and made sketches of her dreams in her “dream diary”. Then she began to notice a pattern. Some of her dreams came true, maybe days, months or even years later. Later, she realized that her dreams came true at times that are multiples of 5: such as after 5 days, 15 days, 5 years, 15 years, and so on.
In 1999, she published a manga book titled “The Future I Saw”. The comic book contained illustrations of 15 precognitive dreams that she had between 1980 and 1995, with brief notes in the margins. At first, her book received a lukewarm response. After all, by the time the book was published in 1999, many of her dreams had already come true. People are more interested in predictions about the future, and not about events that have already happened. 

The 1999 edition of Ryo Tatsuki’s manga, “The Future I Saw”

But things changed dramatically after Japan was hit by the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Some people remembered that, on the cover of her book, Ryo Tatsuki had included the phrase, “A great disaster will occur in March 2011”. That immediately sparked off a nationwide interest in her book, and it flew off the shelves. People began to dig into her older predictions and found a few others that matched up with major events. However, some of her dreams related to mundane matters or were too cryptic to be interpreted. 

The date 3.2011 is mentioned on the cover of Tatsuki’s book

The reason why Ryo Tatsuki’s dream prophecies have once again come into the limelight is because, in the year 2021, Tatsuki came out with a reprint of her manga, in which she added a new, terrifying prediction: a catastrophic undersea volcanic eruption would occur somewhere between Japan and the Philippines in July 2025, which would make the ocean boil and trigger a tsunami three times larger than the one in 2011. She believes that Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Northern Mariana Islands will be in the direct path of this immensely destructive wave, although many other countries are likely to be affected as well. She wrote in the book, “The future version of me said: ‘It’s not over. The real beginning is from 2025.'”
I became aware of Ryo Tatsuki’s work while researching Mor Plai. In the comments section of the videos, many people said how the tsunami prediction made by Mor Plai was remarkably aligned with what Ryo Tatsuki had seen in her dreams. Once again, I had to hunt down the informative videos, which were mostly in Japanese or Chinese, and I used YouTube’s auto-translate feature to note the interesting points. If I were to recommend a video in English, I would say this one contains the most detailed information about the prophecies of Ryo Tatsuki that have already come true. However, when it comes to the new prophecy about the disaster of July 2025, I will refer to a different source when I get to it. 
Here’s a summary of what I managed to find out about the prophecies of Ryo Tatsuki that have already materialized and have been included in her 1999 manga, “The Future I Saw”.
1. Freddie Mercury’s Death (1991)
Tatsuki had a lucid dream on November 24, 1976, when she saw a clear image of Freddie Mercury dying while performing on stage. She took note of the dream, but at the time, she did not think much of it, of course. Freddie Mercury passed away on November 24, 1991, exactly 15 years later. That was when Tatsuki started taking her dreams a little more seriously and began to think that maybe these dreams are precognitive.
2. Princess Diana’s death (1997)
In 1992, Tatsuki had a dream in which she was walking down a long corridor inside a palace. At the end of the hallway hung a portrait of a blonde woman holding a baby. The name written on the painting was “Diana”. In her diary, she drew the lady who appeared in her dream and scribbled a note, “Diana? Died?” 5 years later, Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
3. 1995 Kobe Earthquake
In January 1995, Tatsuki had a dream in which an old man led her to a place with cracked ground, and she got the feeling that it was the city of Kobe. She jotted the dream down, thinking that something might happen there later. 15 days later, the Great Hanshin earthquake struck Kobe on January 17, 1995, resulting in over 5000 deaths, and the city was left in ruins. It was Japan’s second-deadliest earthquake of the 20th century.

A collapsed expressway after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Source: Wikimedia Commons 

4. 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami
On the cover of her 1999 manga “The Future I Saw”, Tatsuki had written, “A great disaster will occur in March 2011”. Almost like clockwork, the devastating undersea Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011. The enormous waves devastated Japan’s coastline, killing nearly 20,000 people and causing the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant. This 9.1 earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan. In the Sendai area of Japan, the tsunami waves traveled at 700 km/h and reached up to 10 km inland. More than 100 evacuation sites were washed away by the waves. 

The city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, was almost entirely destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

5. Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)
Tatsuki’s 1999 manga contained a prediction about a virus causing global disruption in the year 2020. One of her entries stated that, “in 25 years, an unknown virus will come in 2020, disappear after peaking in April, and appear again 10 years later.” This is an obvious reference to the COVID-19 virus, and her timing of the event is eerily accurate as well, for it was around April 2020 that many countries started experiencing their first wave.
Now we come to the more interesting part – the prophecies of Ryo Tatsuki that are yet to pass. The one about the July 2025 tsunami was included in the reprint edition of the manga that came out in 2021. She also has a prophecy about an earthquake and a tsunami that could occur between June and September 2026. This was mentioned in the 1999 edition of the book itself.

The 2021 reprint edition of “The Future I Saw” has the date 7.2025 on the cover.

While searching around for an informative video that would explain the newly included prophecy about the July 2025 mega-tsunami, I came across this YouTube video titled, The prophetic dream manga “The Future I Saw”, what’s the catastrophe that will happen in July 2025? This was published on a Japanese YouTube channel called the Naokiman Show on October 3, 2021, just one day after the new edition of Tatsuki’s manga came out. Interestingly, the podcaster personally knows Ryo Tatsuki and had a conversation with her about her new precognitive dream. So, the explanation in this video is about as informative and authentic as it can possibly get. Here’s what he said:

“I was able to meet up with her (Ryo Tatsuki) a few times and got to hear her stories. Just yesterday, on October 2nd, a new comic book about her dreams were published. Tatsuki san (“san” is a common honorific suffix in Japanese) says that she still sees precognitive dreams, and all of her dreams are recorded in her dream diary. Tatsuki san has shared with us her new dreams, which might come into reality….
Tatsuki san had travelled to India in the past (in 1998), and her experience on this trip became the turning point in her life. I will explain in detail later, but she saw this particular dream in India. Using her expression directly…” You know how bubbles come up when you’re stirring a thick soup, right?” She saw that in a vision of the Pacific Ocean near Japan. It was bubbling up. It was hard for her to understand what it meant. Did it indicate an explosion? Or maybe a submarine eruption?
Surprisingly, Tatsuki san recently saw the same dream again (July 5, 2021). The same thing happened, but this time with two dragons in the area. And a date was clearly indicated in this dream. July 2025. In her dream, Tatsuki san was looking down on the earth, and the patterns on the below image shows the two dragons she saw. It was like seeing the earth with Google Earth, and there was a sudden eruption in the water between Japan and the Philippines. This caused waves to spread out in all directions, causing huge tsunamis hitting the Pacific Rim…

However, this is not the end of Tatsuki san’s dream. In her dream, the submarine eruption not only triggered tsunami waves but pushed the lands to rise, resulting in the lands of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines to be connected as one big land. I know, it’s hard to understand. But she said that an island emerged from the ocean floor, which connected all the lands…
Tatsuki san says that she sees a bright future. People are not depressed from the disaster, but were cooperating to create a stable future. She says the “age of spirit” will arrive…”

So, that’s what we know about Ryo Tatsuki’s new prophetic dream, and it seems to clearly hint at a huge undersea volcanic eruption in July 2025 that would make the waters boil and trigger a mega-tsunami, which Tatsuki believes could be much bigger than the 2011 tsunami. The enormous quantities of magma released from this eruption could create new “islands” in the sea, connecting other landmasses. And what about the dragons she saw in her dream? My guess is that those shapes could be formed by the ash clouds coming out of the ocean. 
It goes without saying that a massive undersea eruption of the kind Tatsuki saw in her dream, would inflict catastrophic, widespread, damage, not only from the tsunami waves and earthquakes, but also from the ash clouds, and gases such as sulphur dioxide that would be released from the eruption, which could block out the sun partially, thereby lowering global temperatures and causing famine-like conditions. 
Since the same scenario was prophesied by the Thai prophet Mor Plai, there is a high likelihood of this disaster happening in the July-August timeframe, as the earth goes through its own cleansing process at the time of this shift into the ascending cycle of consciousness, which Tatsuki called the “age of spirit”. The inner-earth spirit beings, who are the true caretakers of our planet, and have the ability to foresee catastrophic earth changes, may be trying to warn us by transmitting these messages through these two mediums.
Some people have been saying on YouTube and elsewhere that the tsunami predicted by Tatsuki is going to occur precisely on 5th July, 2025. This is an online speculation that has garnered momentum, and now many people are repeating it without checking for facts. Tatsuki said July 2025, and the date 7/25 is also displayed on the cover of the reprint edition of her manga. However, Tatsuki saw this dream for the second time on July 5, 2021, exactly at 4:18 am (as per a note in her book), and there have been instances in the past when her precognitive dream was fulfilled many years later on the exact same date. This must have been the reasoning that gave rise to this rumor.

Ryo Tatsuki had the dream about the tsunami for the second time on July 5, 2021, at 4:18 am.

As innocuous as this rumor might sound, I am getting a bad feeling about it, maybe due to years of watching Hollywood thrillers. Imagine what might happen if July 5 passes uneventfully. Many people across Japan and East Asia will be relieved and start celebrating, they will say that the prophecy was a dud, scientists will come out bravely and admonish people for believing baseless rumors, the government will organize fairs and festivities on the promenade, and families will bring out their swimsuits and barbeque sets and rush to the beaches. And then, one day, they will hear the ocean roar, see the waters boil, and, just maybe, an enormous, fiery dragon will emerge from the ocean, look at the people with angry, bloodshot eyes, and say in a rasping voice, “Why don’t you guys ever listen?” 
For the moment, however, many tourists have taken these two prophecies seriously, because of which there have been lots of cancellations of travel bookings to Japan, particularly from East Asia. Travel agencies in Hong Kong and China have reported that nearly 80% of bookings to Japan for late June and early July have been canceled, and overall bookings for the region are down 50% year-on-year. CNN has also picked up on this news, and as per their report,

“CN Yuen, managing director of WWPKG, a travel agency based in Hong Kong, said bookings to Japan dropped by half during the Easter holiday and are expected to dip further in the coming two months. The speculations have scared off mostly travelers from mainland China and Hong Kong, which are Japan’s second and fourth-largest sources of tourists, respectively. But the fear has also spread to other markets such as Thailand and Vietnam, where social media platforms are overflowing with posts and videos warning people to think twice before traveling to Japan.”

While tour operators in Japan may be ruing their misfortune, and Japanese government officials and scientists are urging people not to believe in “unfounded speculations”, tourists to the region are unwilling to take their chances against a tsunami, especially since the memories of the devastation wrought by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and the Tohuku tsunami of 2011 are still fresh in the minds of many. 
Besides, the possibility of underwater volcanoes erupting in the Pacific is going up by the day. Japan, Philippines and Indonesia are located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is the most active volcanic and seismic zone of our planet. It contains between 750 and 915 active or dormant volcanoes, around two-thirds of the world’s total. About 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur within the belt. 
Although most of the volcanoes on land have been identified, many more remain hidden under the ocean. The NOAA estimates that “80 percent of the volcanic eruptions on Earth take place in the ocean.  Most of these volcanoes are thousands of feet deep and difficult to find.” The topography of the Pacific sea floor is very complex and contains a number of subduction zones and volcanic arcs. Subduction zones are places where tectonic plates collide and the heavier plate gets shoved (or subducted) under the lighter plate, forming deep ocean trenches. The subduction zones are places of high volcanic activity and powerful earthquakes.

The Pacific Ring of Fire, with oceanic trenches in the subduction zones. Volcanic arcs run parallel to the trenches, although volcanic arcs are not restricted to subduction zones. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The “Submarine Ring of Fire” program of the NOAA has identified some of the undersea volcanic arcs of the Pacific, such as the Mariana Arc, NE Lau Basin, Kermadec Arc and Explorer Ridge, all of which contain many submarine volcanoes. The Mariana Arc extends along the seafloor between Japan and Indonesia and is, therefore, of more interest to us in the context of these prophecies. NOAA has found that “the Mariana region contains 9 volcanic islands and more than 60 submarine volcanoes, of which at least 20 are hydrothermally active.” It is not difficult to imagine that, if the submarine volcanoes of the Mariana Arc start exploding one after the other, they could precipitate the kind of scenario foreseen by Ryo Tatsuki and Mor Plai. 

The Mariana Volcanic arc stretches between Japan and Indonesia, east of the Mariana Trench, and consists of volcanic islands and submarine volcanoes. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Besides, there has been increased magma movement and volcanic activity across the world in recent months. New volcanic eruptions in the Pacific Ring of Fire have occurred in Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan, and on the other side of the Pacific in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. Even the entire Mediterranean region is showing signs of increased magma activity and earthquake swarms in places like Santorini, Crete and Campi Flegrei, and recently, Mount Etna unleashed its most powerful eruption in a decade. Scientists are warning that Mount Spurr, a volcano close to the town of Anchorage in Alaska, is likely to erupt soon, and a large underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon, known as Axial Seamount, is showing signs of impending eruption. It wouldn’t be surprising, therefore, if submarine volcanoes near Japan or the Philippines start erupting as well. 
Ryo Tatsuki, in her 1999 manga, had foreseen another catastrophe that could occur in 2026. She said that an earthquake and tsunami will affect the Kanagawa Prefecture between June and September 2026, and she believes that it will be a Nankai megathrust earthquake that will be the culprit. In an interview with Japan Today, she said, “But in the case of the Nankai earthquake, I was also washed away by a tsunami. As shown in my illustrations, extensive parts of Kanagawa Prefecture are inundated, including the area around Aokibashi in the Kinko-cho area of Yokohama’s Kanagawa Ward.”
Not leaving anything to chance, Tatsuki says she plans to move out of Kanagawa Prefecture before June 2026. Asked if she had a message for Friday readers, Tatsuki replied, “If a major earthquake occurs, even if you are living in a place that was never hit by a tsunami back to your grandparents’ generation, evacuate at once!”
What are Nankai megathrust earthquakes, you might be wondering? These are powerful earthquakes that occur along the Nankai Trough, a subduction zone off the coast of southeast Japan, where the Philippine Sea Plate subducts beneath the Eurasian (or Amur) Plate. The immense pressure and friction between these plates can cause them to lock up, and when the stress becomes too great, they rupture, resulting in a megathrust earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater.

The Nankai trough is located on the Pacific coast of Japan. Source: Wikimedia Commons 

This BBC report provides more details about these powerful quakes that occur periodically every 100 years or so.:

“Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough – an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast – have already been responsible for thousands of deaths. In 1707, a rupture along its entire 600km length caused the second-biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and was followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji. These so-called “megathrust” earthquakes tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last ones were in 1944 and 1946. Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake striking somewhere along the trough in the next 30 years, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it would cause trillions in damage, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands.”

That’s all I have for the astonishing prophecies of these two lady prophets: Mor Plai of Thailand and Ryo Tatsuki of Japan. Both of them have made some stunningly accurate predictions till now that defy all rational explanations, and they seem to be acting as intermediaries between the human and spirit realms, as our planet goes through its purification rites in preparation for a new cycle of the ages. Whether or not their terrifying prophecy of a volcanic eruption and tsunami sometime in July or August this year comes to pass, we will be better off by keeping our ears and minds open to new thoughts and possibilities, as we navigate this period of epochal shift.

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
On a recent podcast, investigative reporters and UFO researchers Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp released a video they say was recorded by US military personnel stationed on the Afghan-Pakistan border in November 2020; the video shows what appears to be a large flying disc (Corbell calls it ‘huge’) shot from above as it is traveling through the clouds at a high speed while making seemingly impossible turns; it was captured on a thermal sensor which indicated no thermal propulsion, just like the famous Tic Tac UFOs in other military videos; the object is estimated to be between 200 and 400 meters (218 to 436 yards) in diameter and the depth of field confirms its classic flying saucer shape, especially in the enhanced and magnified clips; Corbell says this video was “leaked” and hints that there are more. With conflicts heating up in the Middle East, our military will undoubtedly be seeing more of these UAPs – will we?
If you don’t trust the mainstream media’s coverage of the attacks in the Middle East, Emily Eaton, also known as Divine Magik and the “Inter-Dimensional Communicator” because she claims she can speak with  “aliens and angels”, released the latest telepathic message she says she receives regularly from “Alien Lilith”, who previously said we will be able to “see the Motherships” of her extraterrestrial civilization this month; now Alien Lilith told Eaton that the ETs “see the events playing out all around your planet right now” and, unlike many humans, sees that “some of these events are not as bad as your media wants you to believe” while “other events are as bad or worse than they appear”; she warns that “there is Evil in the world created by humans that has been in control for a very long time” and her species is on its way to help, but in the meantime we should “face your challenges and you listen to the part of your heart that knows they are just temporary”. Comments like that won’t get her elected or on any cable news programs, so those motherships better show up soon.
Many countries have their own version of Sasquatch, so it should come as no surprise that someone in Argentina uploaded a video showing what they claim is an Ucumar running across a field “very fast”; the cryptid research group ‘Ucumar Metán Salta’ which received the video told local media the sighting was in the Metán department located in Salta Province in far northwest Argentina; the witness appeared to be about 300 feet from the creature; Ucumar folklore tells of the creature kidnapping women and children and having a human voice; some say it is half human and half bear, leading to speculation that the sightings are a case of mistaken identity of a spectacled bear; the fast movement and upright posture of the creature in the video suggest to others that it is a human in a costume hoaxing the witness. Some say it’s not a true cryptid unless it has an annual festival and carved statues for sale at garden centers.
A rare and somewhat mysterious black iceberg was photographed by fisherman Hallur Antoniussen about 100 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in Northeastern Canada and it shocked the experienced boater not just because of tis jet black color but also because it was smooth and shaped like a diamond; glacier expert Lev Tarasov from Newfoundland’s Memorial University told the CBC that it could have been formed from ancient volcanic ash from Greenland and the smoothness suggests it could be anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 years old; however, Tarasov also speculated it could be from a meteor strike in Greenland or it just accumulated its black color from centuries of floating through waters filled with dirt and debris. ‘Titanic Meets the Black Iceberg’ sounds more like a horror movie than a romantic tragedy.
In the folklore of West Bengal in eastern India, mysterious lights seen over swamps and marshes are believed to be the spirits of dead fishermen who lost their lives in these murky waters swamps; for five months, fishermen from the Sundarbans region, a massive mangrove forest and wetland region spanning the border between India and Bangladesh, have been reporting these flickering lights and many fear, as is the case in the folklore, the lights are coming to drown them too; this current spate is unusual because it is a 300% increase in past sightings of the so-called Aleya lights in a similar period, they are occurring in the dry season rather than the usual monsoon months, and they are appearing for hours rather than minutes and exhibiting behaviors never seen before; scientists attribute the lights to methane gas rising from the swamps to mix with phosphines and create the blue lights, but they are at a loss to explain why they seem to ‘react’ to the presence of humans; that doesn’t comfort people in the area who see the swamps as the  most haunted place in West Bengal and attribute 1000 deaths in the past 100 years to them. Swamp gas gets blamed for murderous ghost lights and UFOs – methane just can’t catch a break anymore.

Who knew fishing could be this dangerous?

The study of the Denisovan extinct species of archaic humans just took a dramatic ‘this changes everything’ turn with the release of two papers in Cell and Science revealing that paleontologists studying a nearly-complete heavy-bowed skull found near Harbin in northeastern China and nicknamed ‘Dragon Man’ has finally been identified using ancient DNA and is not a member of a new species designated Homo longi but is actually Denisovan, giving us the first definitive evidence of what this species, whose DNA is carried by many modern humans, looked like; the skull can now be used to help identify other unknown skulls and give more data on the murky period known as the Middle Pleistocene epoch, around 789,000 to 126,000 years ago, when at least three different hominins — humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans — lived, mated and, in two cases, went extinct in many parts of Eurasia. If a friend has a pronounced brow, are they of Denisovan descent or just a heavy concentrator?
The hot UFO recently has been the inscription-covered metallic Buga sphere, so called because it was seen flying and landing in Buga, Colombia, by a witnesses who then retrieved it from a field and then turned it over to investigators, including the controversial UFO journalist Jaime Massan; X-ray imaging showed it was built in layers, had a central “chip” surrounded by 18 microspheres, optical fibers and other elements which suggested it was a communication device; while the researchers argue over whether it is of extraterrestrial origin, human-made or a hoax, a second similar sphere was recorded on video recently in Yumbo, about a 1.5 hour drive from Buga, and authorities say other visual reports are coming in; since the Yumba sphere was not recovered, some suggest it was a metallic balloon or a lightweight hollow sphere towed by an unseen drone; others proposes these spheres have been seen near power lines because they are harvesting electricity for fueling their silent propulsion systems. If you see a large, round, spherical vehicle parked at a gas station with charging stations, it may not be a modified Tesla.
The silver orb in the sky phenomena is not limited to Colombia as a video from China has appeared showing what looks like a round metallic object flying above the Shayukou Reservoir near the  Dayangshan National Forest Park in China on June 5; according to the witness, “it seemed to hover occasionally before continuing to fly, and it disappeared behind a hill”; a few hours later, it reappeared in a different spot on the reservoir and this time “the sphere was able to fly at varying altitudes, hovering midway before continuing to fly” on a night with no discernable wind, eliminating ‘balloon’ in the witness’ mind; they said it seemed to hide behind trees and reappear for ten minutes before it disappeared completely”; while ‘silver balloon’ is the general consensus, the appearances of other metallic UFOs recently convinces others that these deserve further investigation. Do aliens celebrate birthdays with rocket-shaped balloons?

Next, we break open the Space Station pinata!

Ghostly dogs are a popular legend in England, with black Shuck being one of the more famous, and Andy Bolton added his name to the list of ghost dog witnesses when he captured the image of what he believes to be one while conducting paranormal research at Blackfriars in Gloucester, one of the most haunted buildings in England; he photographed the dark shadowy figures in the south wing on the first floor of Blackfriars; another person there showed him the “pointy ears and its eyes” by zooming in; he also photographed an orb and claims he put three “cat balls” which light up when they are touched on the window bay and one had moved 10 feet when he returned; ghost dog sightings like Black Shuck are never a good sign but he didn’t report anything bad happening. The power of suggestion is often greater than the power of apparition.
In celebrity ghost hunting news, singer, songwriter, ghost spouse (and ex-spouse) and paranormal investigator Brocarde claims she was filming her latest music video in the Gloucester Prison, said to be one of the most haunted in the UK, when she claimed “the undead turned up to head bang” to her music in what she described as “a ghoulish punk rock party’; she claims that ghostly apparitions of multiple prisoners appeared while she sang and “I could feel my body being overtaken by third party energy, this felt a bit dangerous at the time as I was head banging over the edge of a balcony three stories up”; she says “I felt like I had an army of spirits dancing alongside me at certain points, it was very electric” but, since she was working on a recording, not a ghost hunt, she finished the video and immediately left the prison; it wasn’t until she got home that Brocarde said she identified two of the ghosts as the infamous Kray Twins – notorious English gangsters and murders who died in 1995 and 2000 and had been incarcerated there. Head Banging Ghost Gangsters sounds like a great name for a band.
Not all UFOs defy explanation as many people found out when the Internet was flooded with shares of a photo from Google Maps showing what appeared to be a crashed or hidden ‘flying saucer’ uncovered after being buried in the Sahara Desert; UFO researcher Scott Waring claimed to find it first while looking at a satellite image of the down of Bordj Omar Driss in Algeria, deep in the Sahara Desert; the clear image led Waring to speculate that the ‘flying saucer’ was in a hole 34.4 feet deep; as usual, there were plenty of believers before it was determined that the flying saucer was actually the round concrete foundation or base of a wind turbine; expanding the map, another UFO researcher found a similar foundation with a turbine under construction near the now debunked flying saucer. The most dangerous exercise for UFO researchers is jumping to conclusions.
The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register announced just the second official Nessie sighting of 2025 as a witness submitted photos taken on May 23, 2025, while participating in the annual three-day Loch Ness Quest; the witness said he was on a hill overlooking Urqhart Bay when he saw through his binoculars something long and thin in the wake of a small boat; the afternoon (3:40 pm) sightings lasted 3-5 minutes and he photographed it with his cell phone; magnifications of the image don’t really clarify what he saw, but it was enough to be added to the register in what is a slow year for Nessie sightings. No monsters were seen during the quest, which disappointed the hunters but no doubt made fans of Don Quixote happy.
While not accepted by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register as of this writing, Tim Campbell of Antrim, Northern Ireland, set up a live webcam near Urquhart Castle and recorded what looks like one dark hump surfacing and then submerging; that was followed by a second, smaller hump between six and 10 feet long; Campbell speculated that he captured “a definite black shape that appears and definite deliberate movement. I think it looks animate. It looks like a hump. It seems to glide up out of the water then go back down. There could be two of them – it looked like a second one came up too”; he considered the possibility that this could be a family of Nessies because “There would have to be more than one if it has survived for all these years”; Campbell also saw something in the loch 40 years ago with his brother but has no photo of that encounter. A family of Nessies makes sense but, as Fermi said when considering aliens, where are they?
In a recent YouTube video, retired US Air Force F-16 Thunderbird Pilot and F-15E Combat Fighter pilot Ryan Bodenheimer revealed that he encountered a rectangular UFO at 30,000 feet while flying his F15 jet at 400 knots over Wyoming; he said he thought he would collide with the UFO before it approached his jet and kept pace with it; the UFO was “a perfect rectangle shape… maybe 30 to 50 feet high” and “bright white” around the edges; Bodenheimer had a clear enough view that he could rule out the craft being a weather balloon, plane or drone; however, he couldn’t explain how it flew, saying “There’s no wings on this thing, no exhaust. The edges were so bright they were pulsing. Aerodynamically, this thing shouldn’t be going at close to 400 knots. For a rectangle to be flying through the air was a wild experience”; he didn’t talk about the UFO until now because he believes the stigma surrounding military pilots seeing UFOs is much less than it once was. Do UFOs have precision flying teams like the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels? If they do, why don’t they train other pilots on how to avoid crashes on Earth?

Sorry, we don’t think you’re ready for flying uside down just yet.

It’s fine to believe in the paranormal but that belief shouldn’t lead to destructive behavior of the kind that happened in Kabale, Uganda, where the principal of a middle school was forced to close it after pupils and teachers complained about demonic attacks ever since the term began; local media reports that students believed to be possessed were screaming, fainting, crawling, hitting themselves and speaking in incoherent words; a spiritual conference and prayer service was organized but that didn’t seem to help; a school meeting just made matters worse when at least nine students began barking like dogs, crawling on their bellies like snakes, and calling out the name of a teacher, claiming he had “sacrificed” them; that prompted some parents to storm the teacher’s home and set it on fire, causing massive destruction; the teacher reported losing reportedly lost four houses in total, plus several goats, sheep, pigs, and crops; he continued to deny any involvement in the alleged possessions but the principal suspended him and another teacher; meanwhile, the local police promised to arrest and prosecute the vandals. Sometimes, the people with the smallest guts have the biggest gut feelings.
Lily Nova of St. Louis, Missouri, claims that she has had a UFO encounter of many kinds every day since the COVID 19 shutdowns in 2021, including sightings of orbs, metallic ships, and extraterrestrials; Nova described one female-like alien as being “very beautiful” with light blue skin, no hair, and wearing a skin-tight grey suit; the first ships she saw were triangular and they “did some impressive maneuvers to show me that it wasn’t a regular aircraft before they disappeared above me”; she claims to have met other aliens ” with light blonde hair, fair and glowing skin and bright blue eyes. I believe they send images of themselves to me through telepathy”; the telepathy allows them to ease into an encounter that Nova says “would be such a shocking experience for any human to have an alien walk up to you”; she has subsequently abandoned her career as a nutritionist to become a UFO and extraterrestrial researcher. If an alien with light blue skin approaches me and reads my mind, its first telepathic thought to me will be: “I am not a Smurf!”
For those who want something stronger than skepticism when it comes to UFOs, we present Joseph Gutheinz, a criminal defense attorney and retired senior special agent with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, who said in a recent interview that he tells people to “Prove it. Honestly, prove it” when they come to him with UFO and alien stories; Gutheinz says he used to tell his students that “the possibility of anybody coming from another world to visit us was beyond unlikely” and anyone who talked to him about aliens should “see a psychiatrist”; Gutheinz admits that there are things in the sky which are real, but “it’s coming from the Chinese or the Russians or your next-door neighbor flying around with their drone” and he admits the U.S. government has been covering up advanced technology tests with fraudulent UFO stories and “I think that we use the UFO cover to hide a lot of things.”; however, he accepts the possibility of life on other planets and even nearby moons, but “it is primitive, it is microorganisms, it’s nothing that’s going to visit us in a flying saucer”. Are you going to argue about UFOs and aliens with a lawyer?

The world of aviation has more paranormal encounters and strange mysteries swirling around it than many of us might think. While most of us are familiar with the Bermuda Triangle, for example, which has seemingly claimed multiple planes over the years. Most people have heard of the MH370 plane that seemingly vanished into thin air in the 2010s, many people are not so familiar with monstrous and beastly creatures that terrorized military pilots during the Second World War, or with aircraft that have seemingly become caught up in strange wormholes in the air and transported thousands of miles in an instant, or even disappear completely before reappearing again, and even planes that manifest in the skies as if they have traveled here directly from a past era. The fact is, the world of aviation is much more mysterious than many of us might be comfortable with.
While there are plenty of aviation mysteries that have taken place in the air (as we might expect), it is perhaps worth our time exploring a side of aviation very much on the ground – airports, or more to the point here, haunted airports, of which there are more than we might expect. In the book Haunted Airports: Ghostly Tales, Unexplained Phenomena, and Eerie Encounters from the World’s Most Mysterious Airports, researcher and author Lee Brickley details just some of these.
Perhaps a good place to start when examining some of these ghostly tales from airports around the world is with one of the world’s busiest and certainly most well-known airports, Heathrow Airport in London. While the airport opened in 1946, it appears that the ghostly activity began to increase following the numerous expansions that have taken place since then.
One of the most interesting, if chilling, of these is a “Crying Child” that has seemingly been witnessed many times. The first apparent sighting of this chilling entity occurred at some time in the 1970s during construction work on Terminal 3. Many of the workers began reporting hearing the sound of a crying child while they worked, which seemed to come from the empty corridors of the terminal. Many of these workers were so convinced by the sounds that they even ventured into the tunnels to search for what they thought was a lost child. The sounds of the Crying Child progressed to sightings once the work on Terminal 3 was complete, with both passengers and airport staff reporting seeing the specter. All described the same manifestation: a young boy of around six years old who was carrying a small, untidy-looking suitcase. While sightings have been reported at all times of day, the majority of these encounters seemed to take place either late at night or in the early hours. Moreover, the Crying Child was witnessed in multiple different locations around the newly constructed terminal, with sightings occurring in the departure lounges, in the baggage claim areas, and, on some occasions, on the tarmac outside the terminal.
Brickley details a particularly bone-chilling encounter with the Crying Child that occurred in the early hours one morning, when the airport was particularly quiet. A female passenger was in Terminal 3 waiting to catch a connecting flight. Suddenly, the sound of a child crying reached her ears. She quickly scanned her surroundings, eventually spotting a young boy holding a suitcase near a set of doors that led out onto the tarmac. The woman immediately stood and headed toward the young child, thinking he must be lost. As she got closer, she could see the boy’s face was “pale and translucent” while his eyes were “hollow and full of sorrow!” Just as she reached out her hand towards him, however, the young boy vanished right before her eyes.
It is thought this recurring apparition is the spirit of a young boy who was involved in a plane crash that departed from Heathrow in the 1960s, although his actual identity, ultimately, remains a mystery. Some paranormal investigators and psychics, however, have claimed to have communicated with the young boy, offering that his name is Thomas and that he was traveling with his family when he met his untimely and tragic end.

While perhaps not as heavily reported, the spirit of the infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin, is also said to haunt England’s busiest airport, who was sentenced death back in 1739 for multiple counts of robbery. It is not known if Turpin committed at least some of his crimes on the land Heathrow Airport resides on today or not, or whether he simply had a hideout of sorts on the land. Many people, though, have reported not only seeing his spirit, but that of his black horse, usually near the main terminal.  
A similar ghostly entity to the Crying Child can be found at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain, a strange figure referred to by those who have seen her as the Lady in White. And, similar to the crying child of Heathrow Airport, sightings of the Lady in White seemingly began in the 1960s during expansion work at the airport. This strange specter is seen wearing a “flowing white dress and (is) shrouded by an aura of melancholy”, and appears to be in her mid-30s with long hair. The first reported sighting of her was at Terminal 1, with several people seeing her near the departure gates late one evening (again, similar to the Crying Child of Heathrow, who also often appears in the late hours). Many people have reported seeing her since, with most stating that she appears to be “waiting for someone!”
One particularly intriguing encounter with the Lady in White occurred during the early hours of a winter’s morning, when a janitor spotted the ghostly woman standing at Gate 16 staring out onto the tarmac. At this point, thinking the woman was simply a late-night passenger, the janitor approached her to ask if she needed any help. However, before he could reach her, she simply faded away, disappearing into thin air.
Another encounter with the Lady in White featured a veteran commercial pilot, who had landed his plane at the airport late one evening. As he was taxiing it back to the terminal, however, he spotted a woman dressed in white standing out on the runway. He immediately reported what he was seeing to the control tower, fearful he would hit and kill the woman. A security unit was immediately dispatched, but when they arrived, there was no sign of the woman or anyone else.
It isn’t just sightings of the Lady in White at Madrid-Barajas Airport that might be of interest to paranormal investigators. There have been multiple reports of sudden temperature drops and cold spots, most often, incidentally, in and around Gate 16. Moreover, electronic equipment often malfunctions with no obvious reason.
While the sightings of the Crying Child of Heathrow and the Lady in White of Madrid-Barajas are unsettling enough, even stranger, more disturbing supernatural entities can be found at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, which has boasted reports of strange, dark figures since it opened in 1998. These figures are often described as shadow-like and are unnaturally fast, often seen racing from one side of the airport corridors to the other. Some of these figures are visible only briefly, while others are much more detailed, with several reports of a “man clad in traditional Malay attire, his face obscured by shadows!” Even more interesting, unlike the sightings at Heathrow and Madrid-Barajas, these sightings occur at all times of the day as opposed to only in the early hours or late at night. Moreover, as well as sightings of strange figures, many passengers and staff alike have reported hearing strange voices seemingly coming from nowhere, with some witnesses even claiming these strange figures have called them by their respective names.
One of the most unsettling accounts to have unfolded at Kuala Lumpur International Airport involved an air traffic controller who witnessed a strange “shadowy figure” simply standing on the runway in the early hours one morning. Thinking the person might be attempting to harm themselves, or even that they might be part of a terrorist organization, he immediately notified the security teams on the ground. However, when they arrived at the location, there was nobody to be seen.
Another report features a group of passengers who were waiting for a late-night plane that had been delayed. As they waited in the departure lounge, they noticed a group of figures seemingly dressed in old-fashioned clothing waiting near one of the departure gates. Most of the group was watching as the strange figures simply faded into nothing before their eyes.
Yet another incident occurred in January 2020, when a passenger named Farah, who had arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from London and was waiting for a late-night connecting flight to Penang, witnessed something truly strange. As she was walking through the largely empty terminal, she suddenly became aware of “a group of women in traditional Malay attire, their faces obscured by shadows!” Thinking they were some kind of performance group, Farah immediately headed towards them. However, as she approached them, she noticed that the terminal had turned decidedly cold. Of more concern, she could hear a strange whispering sound that seemed to come from all around her. Despite this, she continued toward the group. It was only when she was a short distance away that she noticed the “women were transparent” and that “their forms (were) shimmering like a mirage!” Then, the next thing she realized, the figures were turning to face her, and she could see their faces had seemingly been “replaced by a deep, unsettling darkness!” She instinctively looked away in shock and disbelief. By the time she had looked back only a second or so later, the group of faceless women was no longer there.

We can find similar disturbing goings-on at Hong Kong International Airport, an airport that, coincidentally or not, was built on a one-time fishing village that saw many of the villagers displaced in order to make way for its construction. In the years since, there have been multiple reports of people hearing strange whispers and “fragmented conversations”, with some people even claiming to have been called by name by an invisible presence. While these strange voices are undoubtedly unsettling, they are not necessarily ominous. One account came from a staff member at the airport named Liu, who claimed that when he was alone in the baggage area late one evening, he heard a sudden whisper in his ear telling him to “step back!” He did so without thinking about it. A moment later, a machine nearby suddenly malfunctioned, sending a piece of machinery hurtling to where he had been standing only moments previously.
As well as the unsettling whispering voices, many passengers and airport staff have reported seeing a strange woman dressed in traditional Chinese clothing (thought to be the spirit of one of the villagers). She is almost always seen during the early hours and appears to bring with her a sense of sadness and melancholy. There are also regular sightings of an old man, mostly seen near the check-in desks. He is always seen to be looking for something and in a state of distress. However, when people approach the man to offer assistance, he simply vanishes into nothing. Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, is the apparent manifestation of a pilot who is seen wearing an old-fashioned pilot’s uniform and looking out towards the runway where the planes take off from, “his figure illuminated by the glow of the runway lights!” A particularly disturbing encounter involved one of the airport’s janitors, who was cleaning one of the airport bathrooms when he heard a voice coming from one of the stalls. He went to the door and knocked on it, upon which the strange voice stopped. He waited several moments before gently pushing open the stall door. Although there was no one inside, the janitor claimed he saw a “fleeting shadow disappear” in the second before the door was fully open.
Rather than just being haunted by specific entities or spirits, there is some evidence that the land Hong Kong International Airport resides on is some kind of magnetic paranormal hub that allows all manner of manifestations and apparitions. One such account that demonstrates this was also documented by Brickley and featured a British traveler named Evelyn, who was waiting for a delayed flight when she heard a whisper in her ear telling her to “go home!” She turned around to see who was speaking to her, but much to her surprise, there was no one there. This instruction was repeated several times. Evelyn did her best to put the bizarre episode out of her mind. However, when she discovered a short time later that her father had passed away at around the same time that she had heard the strange whispering, she believed that the voice behind the instruction was none other than her father, or more specifically, his spirit.
Perhaps what makes the bizarre supernatural happenings at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, unique is that, rather than witnesses seeing the manifestation of a person, they have seen the apparent manifestation of an entire plane. Not only is Schiphol Airport one of the busiest in the world, but it also dates back to 1916 when it served as a military airbase. During the Second World War, it served as an air base for the German air force, which had taken over the Netherlands in the early years of the conflict, and it is to when the airport was under the control of the Third Reich that the origins of the phantom aircraft witnessed by many stretch back to.
According to the account, one night in November 1943, a British Lancaster bomber was making its way back to the United Kingdom following a bombing mission over Berlin. It had sustained significant damage during the mission, so much so that the pilot was struggling to keep the aircraft in the air. Perhaps because of the deteriorating condition of the aircraft, the crew mistook where they were, and when they saw lights on the ground, they believed it was the lights of a friendly airfield. By the time they were almost on the runway, they realized it was Schiphol Airport, which was, of course, under German control. German forces opened fire on the stricken aircraft, which plummeted to the ground, killing all the crew.
Whether the strange, phantom plane witnessed by passengers, staff, and pilots at Schiphol Airport is the unfortunate Lancaster Bomber that was shot down at the airport that cold evening in November 1943 or not is perhaps open to debate. The sightings, though, are numerous and stretched out across the decades, and these sightings have a typical scenario that is usually played out. Many of them, for example, have taken place on cold, foggy nights, as if the conditions somehow attract this phantom aircraft. The plane is usually spotted flying dangerously low, with people usually reporting hearing the engines “sputtering” as if it is struggling to stay aloft. Those in the control tower have also heard or seen the plane, and most always look to their radar screens for confirmation of the anomalous craft. Their screens, however, never register it. Just as the aircraft is about to crash into the ground, it simply vanishes into thin air.
During late 1985, an experienced pilot with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Jan Van Der Kolk, was preparing for a short flight from Amsterdam to London. He recalled that it was “just past midnight, and a thick fog had settled over the airport!” He went about his pre-flight checks when he noticed a plane coming in towards the airport at a particularly low altitude. He could immediately see that the plane was an “older model” and that “it was in trouble!” He radioed the control tower but was informed no scheduled flights were arriving at the airport, and they couldn’t see the plane on their radar screens. He continued to watch as the plane descended. However, before it crashed, it simply disappeared. He recalled that, “It was there one moment, and gone the next!”
A similar account comes from a maintenance worker at the airport, Els Van Dam, who was working a night shift and was fixing a faulty light near the runway when he suddenly heard a plane that was “in distress” overhead. He looked up and saw the “outline of an aircraft descending through the fog!” He watched in disbelief as the plane headed toward the runway, describing the event as a “haunting sight!” He recalled that “just as it was about to crash, it vanished into thin air. The noise, the smoke, everything disappeared!”
Here would be a good place to explore other cases of phantom planes, specifically, sightings of these strange ghostly aircraft over Derbyshire in England. Although these strange aerial sights have occurred for years over the skies of Derbyshire, a particular surge of sightings in early 2018 received significant news coverage, with several tabloid newspapers and media platforms dedicating space to covering the sightings.
On the evening of March 26th, between 6 pm and 7 pm, dozens of reports were made to authorities of an “old World War Two” plane flying relatively low to the ground over the Derbyshire region. Reports of these sightings were so widespread that the military was forced to issue a statement that the plane was, in fact, a Hercules C-130 on “training exercises!” However, a look at the reports that came from the public appears to describe a completely different plane to the Hercules C-130, specifically, a Douglas Dakota, a military transport plane that was regularly used by the Allies during the Second World War. Even more intriguing, many reports stated that at the same time of the respective sightings, the sky turned “eerily dark” – unnaturally so. Many of the sightings specifically stated that despite the plane being low to the ground, it appeared to move in complete silence (similar, we might note, to how UFOs are often described). Some reports stated that the plane looked as though it was about to crash to the ground, while others stated that the plane appeared to be in pursuit of something.

After news of the sightings began to circulate around media platforms, a “flood of reports” arrived at the local newspaper of almost identical sightings. One resident stated in a comment on the paper’s social media page that he was sitting in a car on the A38 with his father at around 6:45 pm one evening when “two aircraft flew over us. It was scary; they were so low. They made no sound and produced no contrails!” Another resident from the town of Belper stated the planes went directly over her house, adding that although they were flying very low and were huge, they were strangely quiet.
It is worth returning to the suggestion from the military that what had been seen over Derbyshire by residents had been a Hercules transport plane, while being misleading, might not have been a complete untruth. We might recall, for example, that while some witnesses reported the plane being completely silent, others reported that they could hear the faint sound of engines. Not always widely reported, though, was the fact that some witnesses reported seeing two planes – one that was completely silent, and one that appeared to make a noise. What’s more, it was this second plane that appeared to be “giving chase!” Might we ask if the military did indeed scramble a Hercules plane on the nights of reports of “ghost planes”, not only in an attempt to pursue these aerial anomalies, but also to use this military plane as a way of dismissing the many reports from the public?
Of course, if there is any truth to the notion that the military was attempting to suppress or even cover up sightings of these apparent ghost planes, we might ask why they would be interested in such matters in the first place. History tells us that, generally speaking, the military only takes an interest when it comes to defense or the possibility of weaponization. So that would mean the military either sees these ghostly planes as some kind of threat, or there is something in the mechanism of their appearances that the military can somehow translate into a technology that, in turn, will be turned into some kind of weapon.  
What is interesting is that the region where these ghost planes are spotted – planes that are aircraft that were utilized during the Second World War – is that this region is home to over 50 plane crashes involving these 1940s aerial vehicles, with these crashes resulting in over 300 deaths. These reports have come from all over the Derbyshire area, as well as the Moors of the Peak District, and the Howden Moors, which border Yorkshire.
Perhaps one of the most interesting sightings occurred one evening in April 1995, when a local man, a retired postman, Tony Ingle, was walking his dog on the moor. Suddenly, he noticed a huge shadow fall over him, causing him to look upward. There, directly overhead, was a 1940s-style plane moving at an altitude of around 50 feet. Strangely, although he could see the movement of the huge propellers, no sound came from the aircraft, and it moved silently. As he looked on, the strange plane suddenly turned downward, eventually going out of Ingle’s sight, appearing to crash in a field behind a large hedge. Ingle rushed over to the field, but much to his shock, he found it empty. There was no wreckage, no flames, no anything. Interestingly, though, his dog, despite having walked in this field many times before, refused to do so now, and would not do so again.
Some of the strangest encounters have unfolded over the Ladybower Reservoir in the Upper Derwent Valley. And that is perhaps not a surprise, as multiple aging pieces of aircraft wreckage remain in the area today. Back in the Second World War, this region was used as a training and testing ground for Allied forces, and during this time, many aircraft, as we mentioned earlier, crashed to the ground. Two of these crashes happened in the final weeks of the war, between May and July 1945, and both were on routine training missions at the time.
We should perhaps not be too surprised, then, to discover that there are many sightings of “World War Two-era” planes in this region, usually of Lancaster Bombers that circle above for several minutes. On some occasions, these planes will suddenly drop and “swoop” over the area before disappearing. There is an encounter on record that was similar to Tony Ingle’s that we examined earlier. However, when the plane crashed to the ground on this occasion, the witness heard and felt a powerful explosion, before seeing flames and smoke rise high into the air. When they arrived at the crash site, however, the fire and smoke were nowhere to be seen, nor was any wreckage.
As we mentioned earlier, following the news coverage on the ghost planes, a surge of reports came from the public, some of which are particularly interesting. A local resident named Chris Pryce, for example, claimed that she was driving along Sheffield Road at around 2 pm on June 17th, 2013, with her husband when a “large aircraft” suddenly appeared in front of them, rising from the valley below the Millstone Inn car park. The aircraft appeared to be banking in an attempt to gain altitude, eventually disappearing from their sight into the valley. A few moments later, as the couple’s car reached the junction, they each looked into the valley, thinking the aircraft might have crashed. However, much to their shock and bewilderment, the plane was nowhere to be seen. The witness continued that her husband had offered that the aircraft appeared like a “World War Two Dakota and was the color of khaki green!” She also stated that despite the aircraft being so close to them and so low to the ground, they couldn’t hear any sound at all coming from it.

Another resident, who stated her name was Caroline, claimed that she and her sister had “seen a ghostly plane” at Calver on three occasions. Each time, it was an “old war-type plane with propellers turning but totally silent!” One of those sightings was during the day, and the plane flew so low that it was “practically touching the roof of the Eyre Arms pub” before it went below the level of the houses into the valley. Caroline and her sister saw the ghost plane again, this time one evening. Once more, it was flying particularly low and was again completely silent. On this occasion, though, the sisters could see the bright navigation lights of the aircraft. The final sighting occurred when Caroline was on her own. This time, the plane appeared directly over the top of her and was no more than 30 feet from the ground as it banked to the left. Caroline pulled her car to the side of the road in order to watch the strange aircraft, but when she returned her focus ahead of her, the plane had simply disappeared.
Of course, we can’t look at aviation mysteries without briefly exploring the bizarre aftermath of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. On the evening of December 29th, 1972, Pilot Captain Bob Loft and Second Officer Don Repo were piloting Flight 401 when it came crashing to the ground in the Florida Everglades. Both Loft and Repo, as well as 99 other people onboard, were killed in what was one of the worst commercial air disasters in United States aviation history.
It appeared that some kind of systems malfunction had caused the crew to be temporarily distracted, leading to the crash. In the moments before they lost contact with the plane, the control tower heard First Officer Stockstill suddenly announce that, “We did something to the altitude!” Loft expressed immediate concern at this before Stockstill is heard to ask, “We are still at 2000 feet, right?” A moment later, communication was lost, and the aircraft had crashed full speed into the ground.
Investigators eventually managed to establish a timeline of events and a fuller picture of exactly what happened that fateful night. It appeared that a systems problem had gotten all of the crews’ attention and, for reasons uncertain, led to increased movement in the cockpit. During this movement, the autopilot, which had been set to maintain an altitude of 2000 feet, had been knocked in exactly the right way to disengage it. Even worse, the system didn’t register that the plane had lost altitude by 500 feet. It was only when they then dropped their altitude purposely that they realized they were not as high up as they thought they were, by which time, it was too late to react.
In the months that followed the deadly crash, many passengers and staff on Eastern Airlines flights began seeing two of the dead pilots, Bob Loft and Don Repo. An unnamed flight engineer, for example, was performing pre-flight checks on an Eastern Airlines plane when Don Repo appeared right in front of him. Not only that, Repo informed the stunned engineer that he had already performed the pre-flight checks.
Another account came from a flight attendant, who saw someone in an Eastern Airlines uniform on the galley, appearing to be repairing an oven. She immediately went to the serving flight engineer to report what she had seen and to ask who this other flight engineer was. To her shock, she was told that he was the only engineer on the flight. The attendant, however, was certain of what she had seen and described the “other engineer” in great detail. She was later shown photographs of Eastern Airlines employees, eventually picking out Repo as the man she had seen, even though she was not aware at the time that he had passed away several months earlier.
Yet another encounter involved an anonymous female Eastern Airlines passenger, who left her seat temporarily in order to find another flight attendant, as one of the flight attendants had sat down next to her, clearly unwell. She returned to her seat with a flight attendant, and both women looked on in shock as Don Repo, sitting in the chair next to hers, simply faded away and vanished into thin air.
Without a doubt, one of the most unsettling and thought-provoking encounters concerning Flight 401 occurred several years after the tragic crash, in the mid-1970s. On Flight Tri-Star 138, Eastern Airlines flight attendant, Faye Merryweather, was performing her usual in-flight duties when she suddenly spotted Repo’s face in the over door of the plane’s kitchen. She did her best to remain calm, backing out of the room as she went to find another member of staff. She returned to the kitchen with two other flight attendants. All three of them saw Repo’s face in the oven door, with one of the flight attendants even having worked with Repo years earlier, and as such, was able to positively identify the dead pilot. Then, things turned even stranger – and unsettling.
As the three of them stared at the face in the oven door, all three of them suddenly heard Repo’s voice stating, “Watch out for fire on this plane!” A short time later, during the last part of the flight, the aircraft began to experience trouble with one of its engines and had to make an emergency landing. A fire in the engine had caused it to malfunction. Had it remained airborne, the flight could have been another disaster. Interestingly or not, the section where the three flight attendants had witnessed Repo’s face in the oven door had been made from recovered parts from Flight 401.
Arguably, one of the most credible claims of ghostly sightings connected to the downed Flight 401 came from the Vice President of Eastern Airlines, who stated on record that he had been traveling in First Class when he began speaking to what he thought was one of the pilots on the flight. That was until the “pilot” disappeared right before his eyes. When he arrived at his destination, he immediately sought out a picture of the dead pilots of Flight 401 and was shocked to see that the man looked identical to Bob Loft.
Incidentally, sightings of Bob Loft and Don Repo continued right up until the closure of Eastern Airlines in 1991. It is also interesting to note, whether it is of consequence or not, that the two spirits were never seen together on the same flight. Perhaps a reason for their repeated and seemingly calculated appearances over the years can be found in an encounter of an anonymous Eastern Airlines captain, who claimed to have seen Repo only moments before he was about to board a flight he was piloting. The dead man, or at least his spirit, told the captain that, “There will never be another crash (on an Eastern Airlines flight). We will not let it happen!” Was this determination what kept the spirits of Repo and Loft boarding Eastern Airlines flights? Or perhaps it was a sense of guilt at their mistake, having caused the crash in December 1972. Or might it have been that the energies of both men were somehow contained within the salvaged wreckage of Flight 401 that was then repurposed on other Eastern Airlines’ aircraft? Whatever the truth, the ghosts of Flight 401 is one of the strangest, most thought-provoking cases on record, and one that appears to very much suggest there is indeed some kind of existence after death.

Before we move on, it is also worth our time quickly examining another, lesser-known ghostly aerial encounter that occurred on a Virgin Airlines flight, when a flight attendant approached a gentleman standing in the plane’s galley to see if he needed any help. The man named a woman, who was a passenger on the flight, and asked the attendant to pass on a message. The message was simple – just to tell the woman that he was OK. Although she was a little confused, the flight attendant sought the woman out and passed on the message as she had been asked. The passenger appeared equally as confused and then reached into her purse and retrieved a photograph. She showed it to the flight attendant and asked her if this was the man she had spoken to, to which the flight attendant agreed. The passenger then went on to state that the man in question had recently passed away, and his coffin was in the cargo hold of that very flight.
Without a doubt, one of the most unsettling and disturbing aviation encounters, if we are to believe the incident to be true and not just an urban legend for a moment, occurred somewhere off the coast of San Diego, California, in the summer of 1939. John Keel relayed the encounter in his book Our Haunted Planet, and Jerome Clark also documented the incident in an article in Flying Saucer Review years later.
Both reports agree that the story begins with a United States military cargo plane leaving the runway at Marine Naval Air Station in San Diego, destined for Honolulu, Hawaii. The flight progressed as normal, to begin with. Then, around three hours after leaving the mainland United States, the control tower in San Diego received several sudden and panicked distress calls from the aircraft. Then, of even more concern, the cargo plane went completely silent. The control tower frantically tried to reestablish contact, but all efforts proved unsuccessful. As the perplexed and distressed staff at the control tower tried to come to grips with the surreal situation unfolding around them, the bizarre events took an even stranger twist.
Much to the surprise and even disbelief of those at the naval base, the sight of the cargo plane appeared in the distance as it made its purposeful approach to land. From the control tower window to the runway itself, shocked personnel watched as the aircraft touched down on the ground in what was a perfect, textbook landing. Emergency services vehicles were already approaching the runway, and within moments had surrounded the plane, and a moment after that, a security unit gained access to the aircraft. None of them were prepared for the scene that would greet them.
It became quickly apparent that all of the crew were dead. Each of them was seemingly killed following an attack from something monstrous, with each having a huge, gaping claw-like wound on their torsos. As the unit looked around the interior of the aircraft, they could see similar carnage, with large sections appearing to have been clawed apart. Interestingly or not, all of those who touched these ravaged parts of the plane’s interior developed a strange, unknown skin infection in the days that followed. There were, though, further, even stranger discoveries awaiting the unit in the cockpit, inside which both the pilot and co-pilot were discovered dead with identical injuries to the crew of the plane. Each had a .45 automatic weapon in his hand, and each had several empty shell casings around them on the cockpit floor, suggesting they had been firing at some unknown assailant in their final moments.  
There were several other thought-provoking details and unanswered questions that plagued the security unit, as well as the superiors they would ultimately report to. Why, for example, was there a strong sulfur-like smell present throughout the aircraft, particularly so in the cockpit of the plane? Even more perplexing was just how the plane had managed to land in the first place. Had one or both of the pilots remained alive long enough to guide the aircraft back to the runway? Such a suggestion appeared unlikely. Who, or what, then, ensured the plane landed back at the military air base? And above all else – who, or what, was the attacker, why had they killed all onboard, and where had they disappeared to?
What is perhaps particularly interesting about this alleged account is that, at least according to research at the time, the incident could well be one of gremlins, real-life gremlins – strange creatures who many in the aviation industry believed sabotaged their vehicles while in flight. And there is ample evidence of this public belief, as well as many accounts on record from pilots and crew who claimed to have had encounters with these strange and menacing creatures.
The first known recorded mention of these bizarre “gremlins” was in an article in The Spectator newspaper in the United Kingdom in the early 1920s, which stated that, in 1918, the Royal Air Force had “detected the existence of a horde of mysterious and malicious sprites” who had been responsible for several mischievous acts mid-flight. Arguably, the first documented encounter unfolded in 1923 when, after ditching his plane in the waters off the English coast, a British pilot claimed that a “tiny creature which had followed him aboard his plane” caused such havoc that he had no choice but to abandon his aircraft.
Without a doubt, however, it was during the years of the Second World War when the vast majority of gremlin reports surfaced. In fact, the Ministry of Defense took reports of the sightings extremely seriously, with some even suspecting these strange creatures were somehow connected to German forces. Eventually, as the Americans entered the war, British pilots realized that their American counterparts had seemingly encountered the same creatures, and moreover, following the end of the war, Allied Forces discovered that German pilots had reported aerial incidents with what appeared to be the same entities.
Arguably, one of the most unsettling of these gremlin encounters featured an American pilot who was serving over Europe during the conflict. He is named only as LW in the report, and on the night in question, was piloting a Boeing B-17 aircraft when an unsettling noise that appeared to be coming from the engine got his attention. At the same time, his navigation equipment suddenly began to malfunction, which caused him to automatically run a check of all his equipment. It was as he was doing so that he spotted a monstrous creature looking in at him through the cockpit window, seemingly clinging to the outside of the aircraft. This creature, he later recalled, had pointed ears, green skin, and glowing red eyes, as well as “razor-sharp teeth” that lined its mouth. Then, things turned even stranger.

To his further shock and disbelief, as he was watching this strange creature, a second identical creature appeared, this one on the nose of the aircraft. For a moment or two, he was in shock before he snapped back to attention. He immediately put the plane into a dive before leveling off again. He repeated this several times, eventually causing the creatures to lose their grip and fall from his aircraft, presumably to the ground. By the time he had landed his plane, he had decided to keep it to himself. However, after hearing several other pilots speaking of almost identical creatures they themselves had witnessed, he reported what he had seen to his superiors. 
One-time aviation expert with both the British and Australian aviation industries, John Laming, researched and documented many encounters with gremlins involving pilots during the Second World War. One of the most interesting of these occurred in August 1944 and involved Captain Wikner, who was delivering an Avro Lancaster Bomber to an unidentified air base in the United Kingdom. However, as he was approaching his location, his engines suddenly cut out. Due to his extended experience in the air, Wikner was able to guide his plane to an emergency landing at the next available air base. As soon as he touched down on the runway, however, his engines roared into life once more. The tale, though, took a further twist once the plane had come to a stop. For reasons that were never explained to him, Wikner was suddenly taken off the mission, and another pilot replaced him in taking the plane to its final destination. Even stranger, the plane was kept under armed guard for the duration of its stay at the base.
Another equally intriguing encounter documented by Laming occurred two years earlier in 1942, as pilot Chris Jarrett was guiding his Lancaster aircraft over northern France, returning from a bombing mission to Germany. However, and almost identically to all of the wartime encounters we have explored here, without warning, the plane’s engines suddenly failed. Now, with a considerable amount of fuel remaining and with all of its bombs still loaded, the plane began a straight descent towards the ground. Realizing there was nothing he could do, Jarrett activated his ejector seat, landing on the ground just in time to see the aircraft disappear over a hill before a mushroom cloud of flames appeared where the plane had vanished.
It is interesting to note that while there are many records of engine failures during the Second World War, seemingly particularly so with Lancaster Bombers, it is suspected that the total number, unofficially, is much higher, and that the word among the pilots and other Allied air force personnel was that these mysterious creatures – gremlins – were to blame.
It is perhaps also interesting to note that many of these incidents occurred during reconnaissance flights and, as such, at particularly high altitudes, leading to some suggesting that these colder and much more pressurized conditions at such altitudes might have played a part in the respective witnesses’ encounters.  
Whatever they were, reports of these menacing and mischievous entities slowed dramatically in the years following the Second World War, eventually stopping altogether. Although we should once more note that, at least according to some researchers, the reasons for this could very well have been due to strict orders behind closed doors to no longer speak of such encounters. Indeed, the truth about “real-life gremlins” might never be fully known.  
According to an article in the March 24th, 1975 edition of The Deseret News, at some point in the early 1970s, a commercial airliner, along with the crew and passengers, “skipped” forward in time for 10 minutes as it was preparing to land, something that “has never been satisfactorily explained!” According to the report, National Airlines 727 was approaching Miami, Florida, and was being tracked by Air Traffic Control when it completely vanished from radar.
As was standard procedure, as soon as the aircraft vanished from radar, the control tower put out an emergency call to all other aircraft in the area for them to attempt to visually locate the missing plane. Because of the suddenness with which it had vanished, the control tower feared it might have exploded or plummeted into the waters off the Florida coast. With this in mind, pilots and crews were asked to look for signs of any wreckage in the water or on the ground below. None of the pilots in the region could see any sign of the plane, nor did any of them have it on their radars.
Then, 10 minutes later, the plane suddenly reappeared – both on the radar and visually. Even stranger, it was in the exact same location as it had been 10 minutes earlier when it had vanished from radar. This meant – as unlikely as this scenario would be – if the plane had somehow simply been cloaked and was simply “invisible” to radar and even the naked eye, it would have traveled a considerable distance in 10 minutes. Stranger still, during the 10 minutes it was missing, several aircraft, including search and rescue planes, had flown through the exact airspace where the airplane had vanished and reappeared. It also became apparent to those in the control tower that the crew – and almost certainly the passengers – were completely unaware that anything untoward had taken place.
A relaying of the account also appeared in the book Real Time Travel Stories From A Psychic Engineer by Martin Ettington, and he detailed that as the aircraft came in to land, the captain was instructed to land the aircraft on an isolated runway – one that was specifically designated for “security risks and special situations!” The plane came to a stop, and moments later, it was boarded by security forces. They quickly rounded up the passengers and the crew and took them to a specific section of the airport, one completely separate from the rest of the airport’s passengers. To say the passengers were confused would be an understatement, not least because on their way to the airport building, they were surrounded by emergency response vehicles and heavily armed airport police.
Eventually, the head of airport security arrived where the passengers and crew were being held. He stated that their plane had “disappeared into thin air for 10 minutes”. He later took the captain back out to the plane and stated that he “might want to take a look at your clock!” When the captain did so, he could see it read 9:20 am. He quickly compared this to his wristwatch, and it too read 9:20 am. However, when he looked at the clocks on the airport walls, they all read 9:30 am – exactly 10 minutes ahead. Or, put another way, they (the passengers and crew) were exactly 10 minutes behind everyone else. Ultimately, by this point, the crew and passengers were more than aware that something truly out of the ordinary had taken place, even if they didn’t know what that something was.
Ultimately, the account is one that remains open to debate as to its authenticity. On the one hand, there is documented evidence that something strange did indeed take place, but on the other, there appear to be very few facts to back up the account. However, while it is easy to conclude that the reasons for this are due to the incident being more urban legend than fact, it could be a sign that the encounter has been, for the most part, successfully suppressed. One person who suspects that there could be to the account than it merely being a tall story is researcher and author Martin Caidin, who wrote of the encounter in his 1994 book Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings. In it, he wrote that, “Federal investigators and officials of National (Airlines) couldn’t get into that jetliner fast enough” following its landing. We might ask, what exactly might that have been? Just what did authorities know or expect to find? The incident remains a complete mystery.
Perhaps a good place to end our look at some of the most bizarre mysteries in the world of aviation is with a similar encounter that took place three decades later, in November 2009. However, on this occasion, a plane, crew, and passengers didn’t simply vanish and then reappear several minutes later but were transported thousands of miles away in seemingly no time at all. And even more remarkably, at least according to some commentators and researchers, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland was responsible for this anomaly, an unintentional consequence of it being restarted and generating a time warp or time wave.
While we should perhaps treat this incident with a pinch of salt, it is intriguing nonetheless, not least as the claims do appear to match other strange goings-on around the planet at the time, including a huge power blackout in South America that appeared to have “emanated from the mysterious Bolivian Andes region called Tiahuanaco” where the Gateway to the Sun resides, a monument said by some people to be a gateway or portal to another world, no less. These events, as an online report offered, were also the result of an “anomalous event” connected to the Large Hadron Collider.
The report continues that “time waves” – sometimes referred to as “gravitational waves” – which cause “fluctuations in the curvature of spacetime!” Moreover, according to the report, scientists at CERN noticed that “their testing was distorting Earth’s magnetic field,” which resulted in a time wave spreading around the planet. When this time wave erupted, an Iberworld Airbus A330-300 (flown by Air Comet as Flight A7-301) was approaching Santa Cruz in Bolivia and was preparing to land. It seems their plane was right in the path of the time wave, and “instantly and mysteriously,” they found themselves over Santa Cruz in Spain – over 5000 miles from where they had been only seconds earlier. As they didn’t have enough fuel to travel back over the Atlantic Ocean, the plane landed and spent the next 17 hours in Spain before setting off to Bolivia once more, arriving there almost 24 hours later than they had been scheduled to.
In the days and weeks following the report, there appeared to be some questionable statements and actions from those connected to CERN. For example, shortly after the alleged transportation of the Airbus, the Large Hadron Collider was suddenly shut down, with an official reason for this being that a “bird had dropped a piece of bread on outdoor machinery at the facility!” As we might imagine, some people simply refused to accept this explanation, insisting that the sudden shutdown was because of what the LHC had opened. When CERN’s Director for Research and Scientific Computing, Sergio Bertolucci, stated that CERN scientists had discovered a “previously unknown natural phenomenon” that could lead to an “extra dimension,” those researchers saw this as proof of the claims of unintentional timewaves.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Airbus encounter of 2009 is just one of many strange, bizarre, and often disturbing encounters from the world of aviation. And the encounters we have explored here are but a small number of the many bizarre anomalous events from the aviation community on record, and this is without even considering the many cases of planes that have gone missing without a trace over the decades. The fact is, the world of aviation, potentially at least, is often one of the most mysterious and thought-provoking communities on the planet. And we might expect, as humanity advances, so will the world of aviation, and with those advancements will almost certainly come more mysteries for us to collectively grapple with.