UFOs & Disclosure

The conspiracy world is a strange place to step into. It is often a strange and potentially dangerous mix of obscured partial truths, bizarre claims that border on the preposterous, and muddied and distorted facts, statistics, and statements. Perhaps because of this, it is also a world where individuals or groups can hijack or even outright invent conspiracies for their own ends, a situation that potentially affects us all.
While we won’t debate the rights or wrongs of indulging in conspiracies here, other than to say the need to question everything, particularly where an authority is concerned, is very real, and that the simplistic statement that all conspiracies rise out of the lack of understanding on the part of the masses is as dangerous as some of more extreme and out of touch conspiracies themselves. With that in mind, we will explore several conspiracies here that, on the surface, appear bizarre and outlandish, but that, upon further investigation, have the potential to be more accurate than many people would like to think.
Perhaps a good place to start here would be with the alleged so-called Light Apparition Experiments, which not only feature apparent projects involving cold explosions, but also offer further testimony to the apparent credibility of remote viewing and just how far such projects went. Moreover, the alleged documents that gave birth to these conspiracies appear to correspond with documented events at the time.
Before we delve into these bizarre experiments, it is worth our time first turning our attention to the CIA’s remote viewing program, Project Stargate. This program began in the early 1970s, officially, at least, and involved various renowned remote viewers. Arguably the most well-known of these, and certainly one of the most accurate, was Ingo Swann. While we won’t go into them in detail here, Swann offered some remarkable details during his remote viewing sessions, including information about Jupiter during a mission to the gas giant, which was confirmed by scientists several years later. If we accept that Swann was truthful and accurate about what he discovered during his remote viewing mission to Jupiter, then we should perhaps also take his offerings of what he saw on the Lunar surface (huge domed buildings and non-human intelligent life forms) equally as seriously, at least potentially.  

Officially, the project was brought to a close in 1995; however, as we might imagine, there are many who believe these experiments have continued behind closed doors, and perhaps continue today. Whatever the truth, in the years that have followed, there have been many declassified documents that have offered peeks into the world of remote viewing, as well as multiple Freedom of Information requests that have done likewise. While many of these documents are thought-provoking and intriguing in their own right, some stand out more than the others, one that featured a very credible remote viewer seemingly “spying” on the Cold War nemesis of the West, the Soviet Union, and mysterious light apparition experiments. Although the document details these experiments and the consequences thereof, they don’t, unfortunately, detail the technology or methods used to achieve what appears to be the creation and control of huge bursts of energy that resulted in apparent temporal disturbances that seemed to alter time itself.
According to the documents in question, this particular remote viewing session took place on June 19th, 1984, with the remote viewer labeled as Source 01 (although many have suggested the viewer was Joe McMoneagle, one of the most renowned remote viewers on record). To begin with, Source 01 stated he was looking up from the ground and could see a “swirling mass of (what) looks like very low clouds”. After being asked to scan his surroundings, he stated that he was looking at some kind of building and that there were “some people off to one side”. He elaborated that the building was “in the form of a ‘T’” and that “it’s got twin domes on each end of the crossbar”. Moreover, he offered that he could see a large set of doors with an “inverted ‘V’ over them”. He further stated that he had the impression that he was “inside an energy field”. His instructors then told him to go inside one of the domed buildings.
Moments later, he began describing what he could see inside the building. He stated that he could see a table that appeared to have been pushed up against a wall, seemingly to make space in the middle of the room. More bizarrely, he stated he could see multiple colors all around him and that he could “sense flames of some kind”. He was then instructed to make his way to the other domed building. He did so, and reported that although this room was almost identical, he could also see something “like a mushroom shape” and “a pedestal of some kind” that had “very ornate gold handles on the base of something”.
Then, the session guide instructed Source 01 to “examine the 24-hour time window known as 9 April 1984”. He did as instructed, and his revelations take this account in a drastically strange and thought-provoking direction.
To begin with, Source 01 struggled to put across what he was witnessing, offering only that it had “something to do with time”. He then added that he had a “perception of a broadcast of energy that’s very finite, but it’s not, that’s very localized”, like an “energy ball”. Even stranger, he could see multiple people in the room, all of whom were concentrating on this “event”. Moreover, he sensed the overriding feeling among these people was one of uncertainty and even fear. He was then asked to concentrate on the “event” and describe exactly what he was seeing.
Source 01 did as instructed and responded that he believed he was witnessing something akin to a portal, elaborating that he looked “like a hole drilled through nothing”.  He further stated that this portal appeared like the “connected tissue of reality” that was “twisted around in a corkscrew-like fashion” that made a “very strange light effect”. He then clarified that this light was “not reflective light, it’s just light” with an “iridescent outline of some kind”. Then, the session turned even more bizarre.
He stated that it suddenly appeared “very much like something popped in our reality”, and that he could see a “hazy outline of light is like defining an area where there’s a whole different energy format”. He was asked to focus on this energy, but whenever he did so, he claimed to feel “a whole surge of different frequencies” that was “really strange, (and was) like thousands and thousands” of frequency waves. The session guide then asked where this energy came from, to which Source 01 responded that it was “from somewhere else, like, it just appears there”.
At this point, the session guide instructed Source 01 to concentrate on the people in the room who were viewing the event. He did as requested, noting first off, whether of consequence or not, that all of the people in the room had dark hair. Moreover, all of these individuals wore the same black and white uniform. Source 01 was then asked to select one of the individuals at random and focus his attention on them. He did so, and immediately sensed great fear within him, something he also stated he could feel from the group as a whole. Interestingly, he elaborated that although there was great fear among the group, so much so that they desperately wanted to flee, they also seemingly had a desire “to throw themselves down and worship this light!”
Source 01 was then asked if he could pick out an individual who appeared less affected than the majority of the people in the room. He scanned the room and picked out an individual whose emotion appeared much more in check than the rest. He then stated that this person believed that the “event” was “an effect from another location – like a broadcasting of a focal point”, before adding that this was “just a side effect to the real objective”, although he wasn’t clear what that objective was.
The session guide then directed Source 01 to examine the “mechanics” of the experiment in an effort to establish what was taking place. He did so, but because he had little understanding of what he was witnessing, he struggled to communicate this to the guide. He stated that he was watching some kind of “coming together of wave formats” that were “overlapping and colliding with each other”, which produced extremely high peaks and extreme lows. The session guide then asked about “the mechanics of what happens”, as well as the “machinery that makes this happen”. All Source 01 could offer in reply was that he could see “sets of coils” that appeared to be “protected by shields”. These coils, Source 01 continued, produced “extremely low frequencies”. Then, the session came to a close. There were, though, further sessions that took place on this event, which resulted in further remarkable revelations.
One of these sessions had actually taken place several weeks earlier, on May 30th, 1984, and involved a remote viewer referred to as Source 63. They claimed, for example, that they had witnessed some kind of “man-made explosion” while sensing a “muffled boom” and a “powerful light”, as well as “whining, ripping, and water sounds”. After this, Source 69 continued, they witnessed a “large, dome-shaped object (that) rose out of the water”. Moreover, they offered that these strange events were somehow connected to a “one-story fenced-in building” that had a “strange, secretive, quiet electric feeling” to it. Also of interest, Source 69 also claimed, just like Source 01, that all of the people present in the building wore black and white uniforms and had dark hair.
Yet another remote viewer, referred to as Source 02 in the documents, made their own startling observations during a session that took place on June 7th, 1984. With a focus on the date, April 9th, 1984, Source 02 reported seeing an “awesome explosion” which “produced a brilliant white flash containing colors and rainbows”. Moreover, this explosion “produced tremendous quantities of heat and measured in miles”. They continued that the explosion was “an energetic, electrostatic event producing static, humming, popping, and roaring sounds”, which is very similar to observations made by Source 01. Furthermore, the explosion “produced a column rising up” as well as “dirty, layered clouds”, with “shock waves, upheaval, and earth tremors” expanding out from this column.
With all of these remote viewing sessions made and the apparent revelations made in them, we might ask just what they were witnessing, and if we recall the date the remote viewers were asked to concentrate on – April 9th, 1984 – we might find clues as to at least part of the story.
On the date in question, around 200 miles off the coast of Japan, a freak and bizarre incident unfolded, one that is both documented and still without explanation, when residents on the Japanese coast saw a huge mushroom cloud rising above the horizon. Given the fact that the Cold War was still very much ongoing, not to mention Japan’s own tragic history at the end of the Second World War, many of those who saw this strange cloud rising high into the sky believed that some kind of nuclear weaponry had been deployed. This strange cloud remained for several hours, with multiple cargo planes and commercial airliners having to drastically alter their course to avoid it. One such plane was Flight 36 of Japan Airlines, whose captain, Charles McDade, began an emergency descent as well as changing course. He stated to flight controllers in Alaska that he could see something bizarre that “looks like a nuclear explosion, only there’s no fireball”.

As the years have gone on, many people have put forward suggestions to explain the bizarre mushroom cloud that April morning and afternoon, including that it was produced by known underwater volcanoes in the region. However, no data support any such volcanic activity on the day in question, or any time near it. Perhaps because of the lack of a solid explanation, not to mention an apparent disinterest in the events by the authorities, many people have contemplated whether this strange mushroom cloud was part of something much more ominous than the natural world. And following the revelations of the remote viewers in the CIA documents we have just explored, we might consider if this unexplained cloud was the result of some kind of secret Cold War experiment. In fact, some researchers have seemingly pieced together a fuller picture based on these documents and the known events of the date in question. Before we turn our attention to them, however, it is worth our time here looking at the basics of Scalar Physics, which can, in theory, result in “cold explosions” that can, again, in theory, create portals or wormholes.
Scalar physics revolves around a hypothetical type of longitudinal wave that differs from electromagnetic waves, named scalar waves. Moreover, these waves, in theory, according to some scientists, may have the ability to influence and interact with the matter of the universe, and even the fabric of time and reality, including the potential to create portals or gateways. If we return to some of the details given by Source 01 in the remote viewing experiments for a moment, we might recall that they stated that they were aware of some kind of rip in the fabric of reality. Just one theoretical consequence of the manipulation of scalar waves is something termed “cold explosions”, which, unlike traditional explosions that release a massive amount of destructive energy and heat, cold explosions unleash huge amounts of energy but without the heat, making it a non-widespread destructive explosion.
If we now return our attention to the events of April 9th, 1984, off the coast of Japan, as well as the strange scenes described by the remote viewers regarding that date, we might ask if some kind of Cold War experiment was taking place, perhaps behind the Iron Curtain somewhere in the Soviet Union, perhaps in the far east of the country, experiments that involved scalar waves, and if this was what the coastal residents of Japan were witnessing. Moreover, according to another CIA document, Star Wars Now! The Bohm-Aharonov Effect, Scalar Interferometry and Soviet Weaponization, dated April 24th, 1984, written by T.E. Bearden, this might not be that of a stretch of the imagination.
According to the document in question, on the morning of April 9th, 1984, at 5:14 am, a vast explosion occurred around 200 miles off the coast of Japan in a known weapons testing area of the Soviet Union. The result of this explosion was a huge mushroom cloud that rose out of the ocean to a height of around 60,000 feet in only two minutes, with a diameter of around 150 miles. It is worth noting that official records do show that a weapons test in this Soviet territory was scheduled for April 9th, 1984, although they were scheduled to take place at 9 am. Could it be possible that these tests were brought forward at the last minute? Or perhaps the time was purposely incorrect to create even more secrecy?
Of even more interest, this document also details five commercial airplanes and two military cargo planes that found themselves caught up in the mushroom cloud, particularly the two military planes that had been sent into the cloud intentionally to gather data. This data revealed that the cloud was made of solid particles of ice, and furthermore, the cloud was substantially colder than the atmosphere surrounding it.

The document determined that the explosion and the strange events surrounding it were “man-made” and were very likely the result of a Soviet scalar weapons test. Moreover, the reasons for this test were seemingly to achieve a cold explosion. According to Beasdon, if two scalar waves were crossed at a specific location, the result could very well be a cold explosion. Of even further interest, Beardon put forward that one consequence of this explosion would be the presence of rainbow-like lights. We might recall that this was another detail that was witnessed by the remote viewers.
It is also worth recalling the remote viewers’ descriptions of the building connected to these experiments, particularly the T-shape. If we look at a proposed device that would be required to weaponize scalar waves – a Large Scalar Interferometer Transmitter – one detail that stands out to us is that its dimensions are distinctly T-shaped. Could it be possible that the T-shape of the buildings was part of some kind of upscaling of such a device?
What should we make of all this? Could it be possible that the Soviet Union was experimenting with scalar waves back in 1984? And if there is any truth to this, what should we make of the possibility that the United States, and possibly other Western nations, are experimenting with such energy? And perhaps more than anything else, did this speculative experiment result in the bizarre mushroom cloud that appeared off the coast of Japan that April morning?
Perhaps another seemingly bizarre conspiracy we should pay a little more attention to is one revolving around the Georgia Guidestones, which author Paul Blake Smith makes a compelling argument for in his book President Eisenhower’s Close Encounters. It is a conspiracy that not only involves an apparent elite group operating outside of the government framework, but also potential contact with intelligence from elsewhere. Of course, if there was any truth in such assertions, then we would have to reexamine the nature and context of the Georgia Guidestones from a totally different perspective. Moreover, the speculative origins of this equally speculative conspiracy stretch back to the start of the Modern UFO era in the early 1950s.
Before we delve into this fascinating conspiracy, it is worth examining just how the Georgia Guidestones came into existence and why. In fact, there is no mystery as to when the stones appeared. On the morning of March 22nd, 1980, in Elbert County, Georgia, the stones had been unveiled to the public for the first time, and were credited to “Robert C. Christian”, who claimed to represent “a small group of loyal Americans”. In fact, Christian had not made a secret of creating the stones. Only nine months earlier, he had commissioned the monument, claiming in the public record that the group he represented had planned the structure over the course of two decades, a group that wished to remain completely anonymous. It is also interesting to note that when Christian first approached the Elbert Granite Finishing company for them to construct the stones, the president of the company, Joe Fendley, determined that he was not mentally stable, and because of this, he drastically overinflated the quote, thinking that Christian would be put off by the high costs. To his surprise, they were accepted without question.
Interestingly, there were ten guidelines in total etched into the Guide Stones, which some people have taken as a twist on the Ten Commandments from the Bible. Moreover, these guidelines are written in eight different languages: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian, which were chosen, Christian claimed, as they represented the largest overall collection of humanity.
Ultimately, the Guidestones had been created, it was claimed, due to the belief of those behind them that nuclear war was imminent. The stones were to act as a guideline for potential survivors, or even a human civilization that might arise in the future. These guidelines were:

“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.”

Initially, while some people were skeptical of the message behind the Guidestones, most people were indifferent to them, and Christian eventually agreed to transfer the rights of the land they stood on to Elbert County, which, in turn, agreed to protect and preserve them. They would eventually erect a barbed wire fence around the stones to prevent cattle from approaching the stones and causing damage to them. However, the move seemingly lit a slow-burning conspiracy that swirled around the Georgia Guidestones and grew steadily as the 2000s unfolded. While there had been unsubstantiated rumors of Devil worship and Occult rituals secretly taking place at the monument for years, claims that the monument was connected to the “New World Order” began to grow, specifically, that they were a blueprint for their “depopulation” agenda, which many people insist is underway.
Whatever the truth, those conspiracies seemingly boiled over, and at 4 am on July 6th, 2022, a purposeful explosion completely destroyed the stones written in Swahili and Hindi, as well as significantly damaging the capstone. Not long after, the monument was dismantled by the authorities due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, investigators had highlighted a vehicle leaving the location shortly after the explosion on CCTV. However, no leads came from the back of this potentially suspicious vehicle. Moreover, no organization ever claimed responsibility for the act, something which we might expect they would, given the statement-like brashness of the move, leading some to question just who was behind the move, and why. Although there are plans to rebuild the monument, the remains of the original stones are still in the hands of the Elberton Granite Association.
Now here is where we turn our attention back to the research of Paul Blake Smith and his previously mentioned book, President Eisenhower’s Close Encounters. He detailed how it could be possible that the six men behind the Georgia Guidestones (sometimes dubbed the “Secret Six”) could be men who had close connections to President Eisenhower during his presidency. Moreover, if there was any truth to such claims, then these men had almost certainly been privy to what was discussed during Eisenhower’s alleged secret meeting with extraterrestrial representatives in 1954.

Smith goes on to highlight a group of six mystery Georgia police officers who, it appeared, had been recruited to act as some kind of secret security unit for President Eisenhower. What’s more, this unit had accompanied Eisenhower when he went to California in February 1954, when the alleged meeting with extraterrestrials took place. Smith, whose research is extensive and thorough, highlights a note in the following year in the official appointment logs. For the date, February 12th, 1955, the official logs state that at around 4 pm, “The President autographed a group picture taken February 19, 1954, showing members of the Georgia State Police who assisted the Secret Service in setting up the security on that occasion.” Of course, this is the date of the alleged meeting with alien representatives. As Smith asks, why would a photograph have been taken with this particular group unless they had been part of some truly momentous event? Moreover, the picture had been signed during what was, officially, a hunting vacation that the “secret six” security unit was also part of. Was this really a hunting vacation?
Smith then relays the research and revelations of Art Campbell. According to Campbell, during the hunting vacation in question, President Eisenhower was accompanied by the secret six unit on a “covert middle-of-the-night trip somewhere out west”. He detailed that at around 3 am on February 11th, 1955, Eisenhower and his security unit discreetly made their way to Spence Air Force Base. From there, they flew to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. According to Campbell’s source, the plane touched down just before 9 am and immediately made its way to the furthest point of the runway, as far away as possible from the barracks. The most suspicious move of all, though, was the alleged order to radar controllers to switch off their equipment on the morning in question. Then, things turned even stranger.
Two shiny disc-shaped objects were seen hovering over the base, while a third identical object hovered a short distance away. Then, one of these discs landed at the base, a short distance away from the plane containing the President and his secret six-member security unit. Moments later, with many of the soldiers watching from the barracks, an opening appeared on the side of the object before a silver ramp extended from it. Moments after that, the steps were put in place at the side of the President’s plane. President Eisenhower then appeared at the top of these steps and made his way down them. He crossed the short distance between the plane and the disc-shaped object before walking up the ramp and into the disc. He remained inside for around 45 minutes before he appeared at the top of the ramp to make the return journey to his plane.
Was this secret security unit – the Secret Six – privy to briefings by the President before and after this alleged second meeting with extraterrestrial visitors? And did they preserve and then use whatever knowledge or information they learned to put onto the Georgia Guidestones just over two decades later? As bizarre as it might sound, there could be more truth in such assertions than many people would like to believe.
There is little doubt that one of the most bizarre conspiracies of the Internet era is that of Mel’s Hole, which, although we should treat it with extreme caution, is certainly very interesting. The tale of Mel’s Hole first surfaced in the late 1990s on the popular radio show Coast to Coast. Mel Waters contacted the show’s host, Art Bell, in February 1997 and informed him that he had discovered a well-like hole on his property, which was somewhere near Ellensburg in the state of Washington in the American northwest. Waters described the well as measuring around nine feet across, with a brick retaining wall that went around 15 feet down. He also admitted that, like the property’s previous owners, he regularly dumped trash and unwanted items in the well. In fact, it was because of this that he began to suspect there was something out of the ordinary about the well, as despite what he threw into it, he never once heard anything hit the bottom, as if the well itself was endless. He had spoken with his neighbors about the well, and all offered that no one had any idea who had constructed it or when. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, it had simply always been there.
Waters then went on to detail how he had carried out several experiments as a way of determining just how far down the well actually went. He first attached a weight to one of his fishing lines, which was 4,500 feet long, and then unreeled the line and lowered the weight into the well. However, when the line was fully unreeled, the weight had still not touched the bottom. After this, thinking there could be water at the bottom of the well, he attached Life Savers candy to the end of the line. If he was right and there was water there, it would dissolve the Life Savers upon contact. However, after unreeling the line and then reeling it back in, all of them were still fully intact. He began increasing the lengths of the line he was using, eventually using a line that was 80,000 feet long. He still, however, hadn’t reached the bottom.
He had also begun to notice other strange details about the well. His dogs, for example, refused to go anywhere near it, even when he tried to coax them with treats. After noticing this, he realized that no animals seemed to want to go near it, not even birds. It was at this point that Mel revisited with his neighbors, asking them if they had ever seen any animals near the well, or if their own pets had acted strangely near it. It was during these conversations that Mel learned of a particularly unsettling encounter.
One of the neighbors told Mel that when one of his dogs had died several years earlier, they had decided to dispose of the body by dropping it into the well. However, several days later, to his utter shock, he saw his dog walking through the woods near the property. To begin with, he tried to tell himself he was looking at a dog that simply looked like his own. However, when he noticed the very distinctive collar the dog was wearing, he was in no doubt that this was his dog. Despite this certainty, when he tried to call the dog, it completely ignored him, seemingly having no memory of him.
Mel also experienced further bizarre incidents while at the well, including sudden and intense interference with radio broadcasts. In fact, one afternoon, Mel tuned his radio to what he believed was a modern baseball game, only to eventually realize he was listening to a radio broadcast from 30 years earlier in 1967. It was not long after this strange experience that Mel made the decision to contact the radio show. There would, though, be immediate consequences.
The following day, after going about his normal daily routines, Mel returned to his property to find his access blocked by a heavily armed military unit. He was told that a plane had crashed onto his land, and this access to the area, including his property, was temporarily prohibited. Although Mel accepted the explanation, he couldn’t find any information on a plane crash in the area anywhere on the news or online. He returned to his property and asked for an explanation. However, rather than provide one, Mel later claimed that he was threatened with “false charges of drug possession” unless he complied with the orders to stay away from the area. Around a week later, according to what neighbors told Mel, a strange beam of light suddenly appeared, shining directly upwards, as if coming from the ground near the well.

Needless to say, Mel contacted Art Bell once more, who wasted little time in informing his audience of the developments surrounding Mel Waters’ claims. As we might imagine, there was a flurry of interest and suggestions as to what was taking place there. Some people suggested that the light beam was likely the opening of a portal, possibly connected to the bottomless well, while others pointed to how UFOs are witnessed in the area. Bell eventually dispatched a broadcast team to the property to take a look for themselves. They didn’t locate the well. They did, though, find evidence of a military presence in the area, including tire tracks from heavy-duty vehicles, and military-style boot prints on the ground.
Then, with no warning, Mel Waters seemingly disappeared. He failed to show up at the studio for a pre-arranged recording, which prompted the show’s producers to contact him. However, he failed to answer his phone on multiple occasions, and he didn’t respond to any messages. Then, just as mysteriously, three years later, he suddenly reappeared. And what’s more, he had yet another captivating and potentially ominous encounter to share.
Waters told Bell that shortly after his initial contact with him, a mysterious man approached him and offered him $3 million to lease his land. The man refused to name who would be leasing the land and insisted that Mel must sign a nondisclosure agreement preventing him from speaking to anyone about the arrangement. Of more concern, though, he would have to leave the United States and never return. Mel, figuring he had nothing at all to lose, accepted the deal and left America to start a new life in Australia. However, as time went by, he began to feel increasingly homesick, so much so that he decided to return, only temporarily, to the United States to spend some time with family and friends.
Indeed, Bell attested that Waters had contacted him upon his return to the United States, and an interview was arranged. Mel, however, didn’t show up at the studio once more. Mel now told Bell that on the day of the planned recording, he was visiting a family member. However, at some point during the journey, the bus he was traveling on was stopped by a patrol unit. Here is where Mel’s memory began to get hazy. The last thing he could recall was being ordered to board a different bus. Then, he seemingly blacked out. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in an alleyway in San Francisco, California. He eventually realized that 12 days had passed since his last memory of traveling on the bus to visit a member of his family. He discovered that both his wallet and his keys were missing, and he noticed a distinct puncture mark on his arm, suggesting that he had been injected with something. More bizarre and unsettling, he further claimed that several of his back teeth had been removed.
By the time he had returned to Washington, he was officially served papers informing him that his property and land had been seized due to “illegal construction”, something he claimed he was not responsible for. Even worse, all of the funds in his bank account were gone, with no explanation from his bank. He offered that his decision to return to the United States, even temporarily, had resulted in those he had made a deal with in making good on their threats if he were to return.
Around the same time as this was happening, Mel was contacted by representatives of a Native American tribe in Nevada. They had heard of his encounters on his property and invited him to their reservation, where, they claimed, a similar bottomless hole existed. Mel accepted the invite and traveled to Nevada to meet the tribe and inspect the anomaly on their land. Upon inspection, Mel determined that the hole was approximately the same diameter as the one on his land. However, unlike the ground surrounding the well on his property, he could feel intense heat coming from the hole, as well as from the ground itself around it.
The group decided to use ice to conduct experiments in an effort to learn more about this strange hole in the ground. Keeping a bucket of ice at the surface, they lowered another bucket of ice down the hole. When the ice on the surface had melted, they raised the bucket of ice from the well. However, not only had it not melted, it had changed into what seemed like large grains of sand or salt. The men attempted to set these strange cubes alight, expecting them to melt away immediately. Instead, however, they burned brightly for several minutes. After several more experiments with the ice, the group, rightly or wrongly, decided to lower a living creature down the hole. The results were unsettling, to say the least.

The men placed a sheep into a crate and began lowering it into the hole. The closer it got to the entrance, the more agitated it became, much like Mel’s dog. Unlike with the ice, however, after the sheep had been lowered into the hole, they heard a strange humming sound, as if something was taking place deep below the ground. Half an hour later, they raised the crate back to the surface, and while the sheep appeared unharmed with visible wounds, it was clear that it was dead.
They performed an autopsy on the sheep, and were shocked and perplexed to find that although the exterior of the animal was undamaged, its insides were completely cooked. Even more ominous, they discovered a large, tumor-like mass that now occupied almost all of the animal’s internal body cavity. Then, they noticed something move inside this mass. Cautiously, they cut into the mass, revealing a truly strange creature that looked seal-like but with an umbilical cord-like appendage that connected it to the sheep. However, more than anything else, the most disturbing detail of this bizarre creature was its human-like eyes. The group looked on, a mixture of awe and horror, as this monstrous-looking creature crawled out of the sheep’s dead body and onto the autopsy table. Mel eventually picked up the curious animal and carried it to the entrance of the hole. Eventually, the creature re-entered the hole and disappeared.
The strange events, though, were far from over.
According to Mel, shortly before his trip to Nevada, he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had been given only months to live. However, upon his return, after attending a routine appointment with his doctor in light of his recent diagnosis, they were astonished to discover that Mel was suddenly cancer-free, something Mel believed was down to his interaction with the creature, quite possibly his act of returning it to the hole.
Several months after this, Mel contacted Art Bell again. He claimed he had remained in communication with the people from the Nevada reservation, and he had learned of further remarkable developments. He claimed that one person on the reservation had used the transformed ice as a fuel source to heat his home. However, not long after, he began to experience an unquenchable thirst, as well as noticing that the atmosphere in his home appeared to be extremely dry. Perhaps strangest of all, though, whenever he would boil water, the steam would rise from the pan and head directly to the burner where the transformed ice was.
One particular evening, the man heard a loud crashing sound in his kitchen and discovered that the heater had somehow crashed through the floor of the cabin. However, as it was undamaged, the man placed a board over the hole and continued to use it, and the transformed ice, to heat his home. Several nights later, however, he returned home to find the entire cabin had seemingly collapsed in on itself. When the ruins were cleared several weeks later, the heater was discovered several feet down into the ground, as if it, or the ice inside it, was attempting to burrow deep under the ground.
Following these revelations, despite promising to remain in touch and appear on the show very soon, Mel Waters vanished once more, this time, it would seem, for good. Further attempts were made to contact him by telephone, but all calls went unanswered. A short time after this, the number was permanently disconnected.
To many people, the claims of Mel Waters, whoever he might be, are nothing but a hoax, and they very well could be right. However, there appeared to be no claims from Waters to benefit financially from his claims, and we should note that three years of silence is a long time to perpetuate a hoax. Moreover, he seemed to wish to protect his identity and didn’t appear to be seeking fame or celebrity.
There are also several other thought-provoking details to examine. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, for example, the equivalent of Google Earth was Terraserver. On Terraserver, the location where Mel Waters claimed the mysterious well was located was greyed out, with no explanation as to why. And we should further note that Terraserver wasn’t operational until six months after Mel first contacted the radio station, meaning that he couldn’t have used it for credibility or even known of this greying out at the time he made his claims.
We should also note, though, that his claims of the hole being 80,000 feet deep go against our modern understanding of science, which suggests that such a hole would simply collapse in on itself – essentially, it couldn’t exist. Unless, of course, either a scientific explanation resides outside of our understanding, or somewhere down this hole, science, as we know it, morphs into something not yet understood.
Whatever the truth, the account of Mel Waters continues to fascinate researchers and enthusiasts today, either through intrigue or spectacle. Of course, if there is any truth to the claims, as much as it would fascinate us as to just what these strange holes might be and where they might lead, it would be lengths the authorities, or perhaps a group even higher, would go to keep public knowledge of such matters largely under wraps.
Ultimately, while we should treat all of the conspiracies and claims we have explored here with a pinch of salt, like myths and urban legends, almost all conspiracies have some kernel of truth to them, even if that truth has been twisted dramatically. We know, for example, that remote viewing is very real and governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain experimented with it. We also know that both Cold War sides sought bigger and more technologically sound weapons to threaten to use against the other. We also know that there are people who believe in depopulation, and while most are sensible and are looking at a very long-term plan over such matters, others perhaps have a more radical and extreme view. And we know that governments around the world will put any location off-limits in the interests of “national security”. Indeed, if any of the conspiracies we have explored here today are true, even in part, and they are but three of many that exist, it would perhaps be a great concern to each and every one of us, as should just what else goes on that we are not aware of, at least not yet.

Ever since we as a species have reached for the sky, since our first planes took off to untether us from the ground, there have been mysteries that have followed. History is littered with great aviation mysteries that have never been solved, from vanishings to mysterious crossings and more. Here we will look at a selection of some baffling air mysteries that have never been solved, and which incite debate and speculation to this day. 
Among the great aviation mysteries of history are those people who seem to have just flown off to vanish into thin air. The first person that may spring to mind concerning this is undoubtedly the famous case of Amelia Earhart, but there have been many others who have joined her in the realm of baffling unsolved mysteries of the air, and one of these is a British aviation pioneer, who embarked on a monumental flight only to vanish off the face of the earth and leave behind a historical mystery that has never been solved.
Cecil Stanley Grace was one of the great pioneering aviators of British history, and a member of the Aero Club of Great Britain, later called simply the “Royal Aero Club,” an organization that had its start in 1901 by Frank Hedges Butler, his daughter Vera, and Hon Charles Rolls, who was one of the founding members of Rolls-Royce. The club has an interesting history in its own right, an air sport club having its start as mostly concerned with ballooning, before actively embracing the airplane and its emerging technology in 1908. They would go on to teach piloting, becoming an officially recognized distributor of Aviators Certificates, as well as becoming the official governing body in the UK for air sports, which they remain to this day. They would build their first flying ground over a swath of marshland at Eastchurch, near Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey, in early 1909, and this is where Grace’s tragic story would begin.

Cecil Grace

Grace was already well-respected, having earned only the fourth Royal Aero Club Aviator’s Certificate ever, and been involved with giving flying lessons to the Royal Navy, and he was one of the early members of the club, so when a major aviation event was pursued by the club in 1910, he was very enthusiastic about participating. Called the the Maurice de Forest’s Baron de Forest Prize, the goal of the event was to see who could clock in the longest flight across the English Channel from England into continental Europe, which in the era when the first flight had been made in Britain just 2 years before and the Wright Brothers historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was not even a decade in the past was quite an ambitious feat. There were plenty of dangers, but the £4,000 prize money, quite a kingly sum at the time, was enough to get plenty of aviators to try, and Cecil Grace was one of them.
There had already been some bumps in the road for the event, with aviator Claude Grahame-White crashing before he could even really start, and things were off to a bumpy beginning, but one pilot named Tom Sopwith was able to achieve a 170-mile flight into Belgium. Grace thought he could do better, and on December 22, 1910, he took to the air in his Short S.27 biplane aircraft in a bid to win the prize. It was to be a flight that would cement him in history as one of the earliest and most baffling aviation mysteries there is, as he flew off into the sky and seemingly right off the face of the earth.
It is known that Grace managed to fly from Swingate Downs, near Dover, all the way to Calais, in France, but it was still not enough to earn him the prize. Undeterred, he began heading back to England to refuel and make another attempt. The weather was not ideal at the time, with high winds making for slow going, but even so, it was thought that the seasoned and experienced Grace would have no problems, and that the flight should only take about 40 minutes, yet he never arrived. The only clue anyone had as to his whereabouts was a sighting by the Coast Guard of what they thought to be Grace’s plane off the coast of Kent, England, but after that, there was no sign. By 3:30 PM that afternoon, the pilot had still not arrived, and was hours over schedule. It was assumed that he may have turned around to go back to France in the face of the high winds whipping through the region, but others raised the ominous idea that he had simply crashed. No one knew, and the search was on, but not a scrap or sign of the missing pilot or plane could be found.
Days would go by with no sign of Grace or his plane, and there was still hope that he might have managed to make an emergency landing somewhere, but with every hour that passed, those hopes faded. Things looked even grimmer when, on January 6, 1911, a pair of aviator goggles and a man’s cap were found washed up upon a beach at Mariakerke, Belgium, and were thought to have belonged to Grace. However, there was no other sign at all of a clue as to the fate of the missing pilot until months later, when on March 14, 1911, a body was discovered washed ashore at Ostend, Belgium, and it was believed that it could perhaps be that of Grace. The problem was, the corpse was so waterlogged and decomposed that it was impossible to make any sort of positive identification, and some had been close to the pilot, who insisted that it was not him. Another argument against it being Grace was that it was simply too far away from where he had last been allegedly seen off Kent, and so the mystery remained.
Despite no concrete answer to what had happened to Cecil Grace, no trace of the plane itself,  and the doubts that orbited it all, he would be declared officially dead soon after the discovery of the body. He would be posthumously awarded the distinguished British Royal Aero Club’s Gold Medal and hailed as an aviation hero, with a stained glass window at All Saints’ Church in Eastchurch devoted to his achievements, all while the mystery of what had really happened to him swirled. What happened to Cecil Grace? Considering no wreckage was ever found and the body was never conclusively proven to be his, the disappearance has never been completely solved, and it seems likely that the mystery will continue as a historical aviation oddity.

Moving along, many great air mysteries start as if everything is going normally. On November 8, 1957, Pan American Flight 7 took to the skies from San Francisco International Airport on its way to Honolulu, Hawaii, carrying 36 passengers and 8 crew members. This was to be just the first leg of a much longer journey for the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, also known by the nickname Romance of the Skies, as this was to be an around-the-world flight, stopping at a further 15 intermediate stops before eventually arriving in Philadelphia the following week. Pan American was the first airline to offer such around-the-world flights, and at the time, it was a pretty exciting thing, a big deal, but this particular flight was not to complete its ambitious journey. In fact, it would never even reach Hawaii and would fly into the domain of great unexplained aviation mysteries.
The flight went normally at first, taking off at 11:30 a.m. for an estimated 10-hour flight, and at 5:04 p.m., the captain made a routine position report at a position about 1,028 miles east of Hawaii and informed ground control that he would contact them again at 6 p.m. So far, so normal, and there was nothing ominous or worrying reported at this time, with an experienced crew and pilot making everything seem fine. 6 p.m. came and went with no further communication from the flight, and when nearly 2 hours passed with no word, the Coast Guard was scrambled to mount a search with planes. Since there had been no distress call, there wasn’t too much alarm at this point, but it was still highly unusual, and it was even stranger when no sign of the plane could be found, nor were there any replies to efforts to contact the plane. It was as if Flight 7 had just vanished into thin air. This is when people began to panic.
The disappearance of Flight 7 sparked one of the most massive sea searches in recent memory, the largest ever launched up to that point, mobilizing the Coast Guard and U.S. Navy and utilizing aircraft, submarines, and ships, including the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea. The entire region of the plane’s last known position, covering a total of 150,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii, was scoured for days by a flotilla of ships and numerous aircraft before finally locating a 33-square-mile swath of scattered, floating debris, as well as 19 bodies, bobbing about around 1,000 miles northeast of Honolulu. The bodies and debris confirmed that this was where Flight 7 had gone down, but there were many strange clues and anomalies. For one, the plane was determined to have gone down more than 90 miles north of its intended flight plan, which was odd because there had been no message from Captain Gordon H. Brown to that effect, and he was a seasoned pilot who had been with the airline for over a decade. The lack of any distress call was also seen as very odd, as many of the dead passengers had on life vests and none of them had shoes on, suggesting that they had some advanced warning before crashing. Why wasn’t there a distress call? No one knew. Also odd was that when autopsies were done, the bodies were found to have a higher-than-usual concentration of carbon monoxide.
As the investigation into the crash began, there was a compelling possible lead when three pilots reported hearing faint radio distress signals from a hand-operated emergency radio of the type used on life rafts. A total of ten such broadcasts were heard over a period of 45 minutes, mostly unintelligible, but the words “four four” could be heard, which matched the last two numbers of the plane’s tail number. However, it was determined that there was no way to know if the transmissions had any connection to Flight 7, and they could have originated from the mainland. In the meantime, authorities were trying to figure out why the plane had gone down in the first place, which was proving to be a frustrating challenge. Some pieces of the debris showed signs of burn damage, but it was above the water line, none of the bodies had been burned, and it was found that the fire had likely happened post-crash. Another idea was that the plane might have run out of fuel, but if that were the case, why had there been no distress call, and why would the plane head away from its intended destination to run out of fuel in the first place? The plane had had more than enough fuel to make it to its destination, so what was going on aboard that plane? Unfortunately, no major components of the plane could be recovered, and so speculation was rampant. Had there been a mid-air explosion? Was the plane sabotaged? Had it been hijacked? No one had a clue and there simply wasn’t enough evidence to support any one idea.

One area that was looked into was why there had been elevated levels of carbon monoxide in the recovered bodies, as it was thought this could be an important piece of the puzzle. One idea was that it could have been due to gas leaking into the fuselage, perhaps through a leak caused by a failure of one of the engines. It could also have been caused by the acetate film in the cargo hold releasing the carbon monoxide after being exposed to high heat. It could also have been maliciously pumped into the cabin to incapacitate those aboard, or it could even have been due to just the normal decomposition process of the bodies. In the end, the only thing that could be determined for sure was that none of the victims had died from the carbon monoxide. There was no solid proof to support any of these possibilities, and the presence of the carbon monoxide remained a mystery.
Another avenue of the investigation was that the crash could have been due to poor maintenance of the aircraft or some technical malfunction, as the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser did not have an entirely sterling record, but as the investigation continued, they also looked more and more into the possibility of foul play. Authorities looked into any suspicious insurance policies that had been taken out before the flight or anything else that seemed off, and turned up some suspicious activity. One person of interest was Eugene Crosthwaite, who had been a purser on the plane and apparently had held a grudge against the airline. Not only that, but just a few days before the flight he had changed his will and left a copy of it in his abandoned car at the airport. Another suspicious passenger was a former Navy underwater demolitions and explosives expert by the name of William Harrison Payne, who just before the flight had purchased three separate insurance policies, including a policy that paid double in the event of accidental death, and making it even more suspicious was that he had been heavily in debt, had bought only a one-way ticket to Hawaii, and his body was not among those found. He was also known for having had exceptional bomb-making skills, but in the end, this led nowhere, as the Civil Aeronautics Board determined that there was no evidence at all that an explosion had brought the plane down. In fact, laboratory examination of the plane’s wreckage had ruled out the possibility of a bomb explosion of any kind. In the end, no one was ever actually arrested in connection with the crash, the leads dried up, and investigators were still as stumped as ever.
Other, more radical theories were proposed during all of this. There was the idea that the plane had been hit by a meteor, and there was even talk of being shot down by or colliding with a UFO, but there was never any definitive answer. After years of multiple investigations and pursuing every clue and lead, the Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that there was just not enough information and recovered bodies or wreckage to adequately come to any solid conclusion as to why Flight 7 had vanished and then crashed, eventually stating, “The Board has insufficient tangible evidence at this time to determine the cause of the accident.” The final verdict was that all of their efforts to get to the bottom of the incident were inconclusive, and it has wallowed in the realm of uncertainty and debate ever since, managing to generate discussion and debate despite the fact that the official investigation is basically shelved. We are left to wonder just why this seemingly routine flight just sort of wandered off the face of the earth, with no distress signal or any warning whatsoever, to turn up crashed in the middle of nowhere, far from where it was scheduled to be. Why did this plane go down, and why were the victims found to have such high levels of carbon monoxide? Was this pilot error, a mechanical failure, foul play, or something else? We still don’t know, and Pan Am Flight 7 has gone down as one of the greatest aviation mysteries of recent times.
Moving on to another disappearance, on March 14, 1962, Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, which was a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation propliner chartered by the United States military and operated by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), took off from Travis Air Force Base, California, on its way to Saigon, Vietnam. On board were 11 crew members, three South Vietnamese soldiers, and 93 highly trained U.S. Army Ranger specialists on their way to help train South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, and there were four scheduled refueling stops along the way at Honolulu, Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and Clark Air Base in the Philippines. The mission was routine at first, going smoothly all the way up their refueling stop at Andersen Air Force Base, in Guam, so when they took off in clear weather with calm seas and with around 10 hours’ worth of fuel on the next leg of their journey there was no reason at all to think that their 6-hour flight would be anything other than another routine jaunt, but they were about to fly right off the face of the earth to become a persistent and puzzling unsolved air mystery.

A Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation propliner

The plane departed from Guam at 12:57 GMT, with an estimated time of arrival at the Philippines at 19:16 GMT, and less than two hours into the flight, the pilot, Captain Gregory P. Thomas, radioed in their position and informed ground control that they were on track to land at their destination on time. Although there was reportedly some temporary heavy radio static, at no point during this transmission was there any indication that anything at all was wrong or that this was anything other than a routine position report, yet the flight failed to make its next scheduled transmission, and all attempts to re-establish contact were unsuccessful. There had been no distress signal, no word from the plane that they were experiencing any difficulties whatsoever; Flight 739 was simply gone. 
The disappearance would ignite one of the largest search operations in the history of the Pacific, indeed one of the most extensive searches ever conducted in the history of aviation, during which the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines scoured more than 200,000 square miles of ocean over the course of 8 days using numerous vessels and aircraft, but they found not a single trace of the missing plane. There was no wreckage or debris, no oil spills, no bodies, nothing. It was as if the plane had just completely evaporated into thin air. The only possible hints of what may have happened to Flight 739 was a report from a Liberian civilian tanker of seeing a bright flash of light “strong enough to light a ship’s decks” and some sort of possible explosion in the sky in the same general location of where the plane would have been expected to be and at the same time, and the International Civil Aviation Organization would write of this in their report on the matter:

“They recalled that a vapor trail, or some phenomenon resembling one, was first observed overhead and slightly to the north of the tanker and moving in an east to west direction. As the vapor trail passed behind a cloud, there occurred an explosion, described as intensely luminous, with a white nucleus surrounded by a reddish-orange periphery with radial lines of identically coloured light. The explosion occurred in two pulses lasting between two and three seconds and from it two objects fell into the sea.”

However, a massive and intense search of this area turned up nothing, and there was no way to know what this light was and whether it had anything to do with the disappearance. Nevertheless, the official report would be that the flight had been destroyed in a mid-air explosion, despite no hard evidence of this, no proposed cause, and no wreckage to prove it. Maj. Gen. J.C. Lambert, the Adjutant General of the U.S. Army at the time, would say:

“All reports of debris sighted were investigated, but nothing was found that could be remotely associated with the plane,” Lambert wrote to Sargent’s parents in a letter more than a month later. “The search by sea and air was of such an intensity and thoroughness that it can be conclusively stated that debris and survivors from the plane did not exist… Consequently, after a full review and consideration of all available evidence, it has been concluded that for an unknown reason the plane plunged into the sea with all its passengers.”

In the void of any real answers, there have been plenty of other theories put forward over the years. One of the main ideas is that the plane was sabotaged, shot down by a missile, or even hit by a meteorite, largely because the investigation found no evidence that there had been anything scheduled to be on the plane that could have accounted for such an intense explosion, and it was a craft with a robust safety record. Of course, when talking about the possibility that the plane was bombed or shot down, there has come sinister talk that it may have been carried by enemies of the state or even the U.S. government to cover up some sort of secret mission the men on board were involved in, with the official mission description being a front. Interestingly, this dark conspiracy theory gets a little bit of a boost when looking at a curious incident that happened aboard another Flying Tiger Line flight on the very same day Flight 739 vanished. On that day, Flight 7816 (N6911C), another MATS-operated Super Connie in the Flying Tiger Line, departed from the same airport, Travis AFB, and at nearly the same time as Flight 739, on its way to Japan with an unspecified “secret military cargo.” As the plane approached Adak Naval Air Station in Alaska for a refueling stop, it came down more than 300 feet short of the runway to crash and go skidding for over 2,000 feet, killing the flight engineer and causing a fire that destroyed the plane and its mysterious contents. Coincidence or not? 
There have been other theories as well, including that the plane was hijacked or even that it was the victim of UFOs and aliens, but there have never been any concrete answers, and neither the plane nor the people on board have ever been seen again. The U.S. government has always simply maintained that it was an in-flight explosion and has mostly kept the case closed. Oddly, the government has never added the names of those missing aboard Flight 739 to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., despite constant pleas from the victims’ families to do so. The only monument for these lost men and their plane is a privately commissioned one that sits at Columbia Falls, Maine, and reads:

“Missing in action; Presumed dead. Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 went missing on March 16, 1962, with 93 U.S. Army soldiers on board. These men and their flight crew perished in what would become one of the biggest aviation mysteries out of the Vietnam War era. The names of those who gave their lives and who remain missing are inscribed here so that they will be said aloud and their memory will live on.”

It is poignant that they finally got some recognition and a memorial, but there is little to say about what actually happened to them and where they actually went. How could this enormous plane fly out in calm, clear conditions and just vanish without a single trace? Was this a crash, an explosion, a hijacking, or something more sinister still? There is no way to know, because the plane has never been seen again, and we are left to wonder on one of the greatest aviation mysteries there has ever been. 

Our next mystery here is not a disappearance, but it is every bit as strange. Born on 24 November 1964, Craig David Button grew up in a military family that moved often, and it was the influence of his father, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force (USAF), that made him want to become a pilot himself from a young age. At just 17 years old, Button began flying and working towards his professional pilot’s license, and when he graduated from the New York Institute of Technology in 1990 with a degree in aerospace engineering he was soon commissioned to the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) and completed Air Force pilot training, eventually working his up the ranks to become a United States Air Force captain. He went on to get an assignment as an instructor pilot, starting as a Cessna T-37 Tweet first assignment instructor pilot at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, before transferring to begin initial A-10 flight training at a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II “Warthog” unit at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, called the 355th Fighter Wing. He was considered by all who knew him to be a no-nonsense, hardworking, honest, and by-the-book professional who did not smoke or drink, always had impeccably shined shoes, and followed rules to the letter at all times, which would make the strange series of events that was to come all the stranger. And so would begin the odd mystery of a man who flew off into the history of strange unsolved aviation mysteries.
On April 2, 1997, Captain Button took off on a training mission from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on a flight that consisted of two student pilots and one instructor pilot in A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthogs. This particular training mission was what is called a SAT-6, or a “Live Ride,” meaning that the planes were carrying live ordnance including 60 magnesium flares, 120 metal chaff canisters, GAU-8 Avenger guns loaded with 575 rounds of 30-millimeter ammunition, and most importantly four live Mark 82 500-pound general purpose bombs apiece, which were to be dropped at a designated area for the student pilots to know what it was like to actually blow stuff up for real. It was one of the most exciting parts of A-10 pilot training, so Button at the time was in great spirits, with this being the first time had would actually drop live bombs rather than practice training bombs that merely emitted puffs of smoke.
The mission started off smoothly enough. They took off in clear, calm weather without issue, took up perfect formation, and from there it was a simple matter of going out to the target, blowing it up real good, and then flying back to base on the correct trajectory. It should have been a fairly routine procedure, and even the hardest part of the mission, a mid-air refueling at the Barry M. Goldwater Range complex west of Tucson near Gila Bend, Arizona, went off without a hitch, but from there things would get strange. Shortly after the refueling, Captain Button suddenly broke formation without any explanation to head off on his own on a northeast heading toward the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. There was no radio contact from his plane, no distress signal, and the transponder was apparently turned off. All attempts to contact the wayward plane were met with silence, but there was no indication that there should be anything wrong. Button’s plane had enough fuel, it had been perfectly maintained, and the plane gave indications that it was under intelligent control. For whatever reason, it was as if Captain Button had just decided to go off on a joyride.
He would proceed to fly hundreds of miles off course, avoiding bad weather, and be spotted all over the place as he flew a meandering north-northeast course toward Aspen, in Colorado, sometimes rising, falling, or zig-zagging for no discernible reason. Witnesses and various radar stations in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Denver spotted him numerous times, determining that his aircraft was flying manually and purposefully, until it finally went into another final zig-zag pattern and was last sighted in the air about 100 miles (160 km) west of Denver before coming down at a remote place called Gold Dust Peak, in the Holy Cross Wilderness, around 15 miles from Vail, Colorado. Button did not attempt to eject and just suddenly dropped out of the sky, despite the fact that he is estimated to have had around 5 minutes’ worth of fuel left in his tank. What had happened here?
The Air Force, Colorado National Guard, and Civil Air Patrol immediately launched a search for the wreckage of Captain Button’s plane, but the remote, inaccessible terrain and bad weather, high winds, deep snow, rock slides, and avalanches all created obstacles for the operation, and it would not be until three weeks later that they were able to finally locate a debris field near the summit of Gold Dust Peak, 800 miles from where Button had initially deviated from his formation. The impact had been apparently so bad that the wreckage covered a quarter-mile-square area, and pieces of the canopy and cockpit had been projected over a ridge and onto the opposite side of the peak. Most of the wreckage was fragmentary, the plane disintegrated, and Captain Button’s remains would not be found until four months later.

Craig David Button

Rather strangely, although Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel scoured the area for any sign of the four powerful 500-pound Mark 82 bombs that had been aboard, they were never found. Considering that the durable bombs were designed to survive a crash, it had been expected that they would be recovered, but not a trace of them has ever been seen, making the whole case even weirder. There is no indication that he dropped them anywhere; indeed, the aircraft’s bomb racks were recovered in the wreckage and showed no signs that the bombs had been released, but they weren’t there, so where did they go? Dozens of witnesses would claim to have heard loud booms in northern Arizona and near Telluride and Aspen, Colorado at the time, but no evidence of what would have been immense explosions was found to verify these claims, nor any reason for why he would have wanted to release them in the first place. It is all one more piece of the puzzle of a very bizarre case.
Why had this upstanding, honest, and well-respected pilot suddenly chosen to fly off course from a mission he had been looking forward to, to go flying hundreds of miles off course and then crash into that remote and rugged mountain without any radio contact and no attempt to eject? There have been all sorts of theories, ranging from the plausible to the outlandish. One idea is that he had suffered from inhaling jet fuel fumes, which had impaired his judgment and caused him to eventually crash, but it seems unlikely he would have been able to guide his plane so well for 800 miles if this were the case. He also may have suffered some malfunction, but if that were true then why hadn’t he radioed for help, and why would he go so completely off course? Other wilder ideas include that he was on some sort of domestic terrorist mission to bomb a location, that his plane had been sabotaged due to something he had seen or heard as a cover-up, or that he was mind-controlled by aliens or drawn away by a UFO. The military itself believes that he committed suicide, but there was no indication of why he should have wanted to do this, as he had been driven to be a fighter pilot, was in good spirits, and was not suicidal at all. Add to all of this those missing bombs, and you have a case that U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen has called “a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma, inside a riddle.” Whatever happened to Captain Button remains a strange aviation mystery that we may never fully solve.
In our final case, on August 14, 2005, Helios Airways Flight 522 was scheduled to fly from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a stopover at Athens, Greece. At 9:00 a.m., the plane took off from Larnaca with 115 passengers on board and a crew of 6 for what was to be just a short flight over to their stopover at Athens. It was a short flight, with an experienced captain in 35-year veteran pilot Hans-Jürgen Merten, so there would have been no reason to suspect that the flight would be anything other than smooth and routine. Indeed, the take-off was flawless and everything was going fine as the aircraft climbed, but shortly before the plane entered Greek airspace, there was an eerie transmission received from the flight by the Helios operations centre on the ground, in which the captain said, “The take-off configuration warning on. Cooling equipment is normal and alternates offline. The ventilation cooling fan lights are off. Where are my equipment cooling circuit breakers?” When the engineer on the ground asked, “Can you confirm that the pressurization panel is set to auto?” there was no response, and all communication was lost. However, the plane kept flying normally as if nothing had happened. When it then entered Greek airspace without any further word, the flight was declared to be “renegade,” and it would only get stranger from there. From here would begin the strange and sad saga of a doomed plane that would go on to become known as the “ghost plane.”
At this point, when communications were lost and that airline was just silently flying around, the operations room on the ground was in major crisis mode, and had become a hive of activity as they scrambled to try and figure out what was going on. At 10:40, the aircraft entered the holding pattern for Athens Airport and circled around as if preparing to land, and throughout all of this, numerous attempts to establish radio contact were met with silence. Two F-16 fighter aircraft from the Hellenic Air Force 111th Combat Wing were scrambled from Nea Anchialos Air Base and sent to intercept and investigate the renegade plane, as it was now feared that a terrorist attack was in motion. The jets approached Flight 522 at 11:24 and circled, trying to get a view of the passenger plane. What they found would shock them. 

In the cockpit, the captain’s chair was empty, and the co-pilot was slumped over in his seat, motionless and unresponsive. In the passenger cabin, it could be seen that oxygen masks had been deployed but not used, merely dangling freely, and three passengers could be seen sitting motionless as if frozen. As the F-16s continued their appraisal of the situation, an unidentified flight attendant could then be seen to enter the cockpit to sit in the captain’s chair and struggle to gain control of the plane. This flight attendant would later be identified as Andreas Prodromou, who held a UK Commercial Pilot Licence, but was in no way qualified to fly a Boeing 737. An unidentified woman, later found to be his girlfriend, Haris Charalambous, also entered to cockpit, seemingly trying to help him control the plane. It was still unclear where the captain was, or why these two were moving about while everyone else on board seemed to be slumped over and unresponsive, and Prodromou would wave at the F-16s just before one of the engines on the plane burned out, spewing smoke as the plane went into a descent. It then crashed into the hills of Grammatiko, 25 miles from Athens, setting ablaze a swath of land but causing no ground casualties. However, no one on board would survive, tragically making it the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history.
When the wreckage was sifted through, it was found that most of the bodies of the victims had been frozen solid before crashing, still strapped to their seats and with the oxygen masks dangling right in front of them, but never used. How had this happened? What had happened? An investigation was immediately launched, and it was soon found that the plane had been experiencing some unusual problems even before it had touched down at Larnaca. It would come to light that the crew arriving from London had reported that the door seal was frozen, as well as some strange and anomalous noises heard from the right aft service door. There had then been carried out a pressurization leak check, and the system had then been switched to manual. The same plane had experienced pressurization problems before, and there had been numerous complaints about the aircraft often getting cold or having air conditioning problems. So what had happened? How had this plane lost everyone aboard only to keep flying as usual? 
The main idea at the time was that there had been a catastrophic pressurization malfunction due to the system not being set back to auto during the maintenance check, even after various checks during the pre-flight procedure, the after-start check, and the after take-off check. This would have resulted in a slow depressurization of the entire aircraft as it climbed to cruising altitude, with most people not even aware that it was happening, other than an uncomfortable sensation in the ears, but the results would have been devastating. A dwindling oxygen supply would have crept up on them to totally immobilize them. If it had been set back to auto mode, the pressurization system would have automatically pressurized the cabin at a higher altitude, but in this case had failed to do so, and the pilots are surmised as having overlooked this fact due to slowly losing their cognitive functions due to lack of oxygen. The pressure in the flight had then become abnormally low, and this caused everyone to lose their consciousness before they even had a chance to use the oxygen masks that had dropped down. A warning would have sounded at this point, but it is thought that the pilots had mistaken it for a take-off configuration warning, which signals that the aircraft is not ready for take-off, and can only sound on the ground, further making matters confusing. It is still not clear why the captain would have left his post, but it seems there was some amount of confusion going on at the time. 
On top of this, a sudden decompression at 30,000 feet and above can plunge temperatures inside the cabin to below zero degrees, which would have further incapacitated passengers and crew. The captain had then at some point turned on the autopilot, which had taken the plane along its planned course even as those aboard lost consciousness. As for Andreas Prodromou and his girlfriend, it was thought that they had only managed to avoid this fate because they had been carrying a personal oxygen supply and had been able to buy themselves some more time before commandeering the plane and losing control of it as it ran out of fuel. The whole thing would lead to various lawsuits, with families of the passengers suing for up to $125 million in compensation, all of which would be settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. 
Several of the people involved with the airline would be found guilty of negligence and even manslaughter, and were let off with a stiff fine. In the press, this was all being reported as the mysterious “Ghost Plane,” and it ramped up a lot of attention at the time. Indeed, it all hasn’t been completely explained to everyone’s satisfaction. There are even theories that this wasn’t an accident at all, but rather the result of the airplane being haunted. In the end, there are still many mysteries to it all, and at the very least, the Helios Flight 522 Ghost Plane has remained a very eerie aviation mystery that has continued to be picked apart and debated to this day. 
Here, we have looked at just a few of the many, many aviation mysteries that have played out since our very first furtive flights into the air. What are we to make of cases like these? What happened to these people, and will these mysteries ever be solved? Perhaps time will tell. 

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