Accounts of UFO encounters are inherently bizarre, and seem to cover a wide array of disparate unexplained phenomena associated with them. One very odd occurrence that seems to hang over some cases is instances of alleged teleportation of witnesses, sometimes individually and sometimes more than person, as well as objects and even whole vehicles and their occupants. With regards to UFOs this is sometimes referred to as “teletransportation,” and it can happen instantaneously or over the course of minutes or even hours, all ending with the common factor of UFO witnesses being in one place one moment, and in another the next, often very far away from where they started and without any idea of how they have covered the distance, nor any memory of what has happened. It all sounds rather outlandish, and it is, but there are numerous reports of this happening, and it seems to be a recurring unusual characteristic in an already unusual field.

In September of 1979, the Richmond Virginia Times-Dispatchreported on the strange case of truck driver Harry Turner, who was driving from Fredericksburg from Winchester, Virginia, in the United States, when his car was without warning enveloped by a blindingly bright light, which he at first had taken to be the headlights of an incoming truck. His truck was then surrounded by a “palpably thick white light,” and he noticed that the steering wheel had taken on a life of its own, no longer under his control. Turner then found that his truck was actually floating over the landscape, and before he could adjust to this precarious new predicament he claims that the door was suddenly ripped open by an unknown invisible entity, as another seemed to scramble about on the roof of the vehicle. It was then that the creature at his door reached in to grab him in an iron grip.

Fortunately for Turner, he had been carrying with him a revolver, which he instinctively drew and fired wildly at where he perceived the mysterious unseen being to be, but this seemed to have little effect. That was when he says he blacked out completely, and the next thing he remembers is being in a warehouse parking lot in Fredericksburg, far from where he had last been. In his hand he still gripped the pistol, and there were spent shells littering the vehicle all about him. Bizarrely, it was 3 AM in the morning according to the warehouse clock, whereas his own watch read 11:17 PM, and as far as his truck’s odometer was concerned he had only traveled 17 miles, when the trip to Fredericksburg should have been more like 80.

Although his memory was hazy at first, Turner would later recount how he had been taken aboard a craft and encountered strange beings “dressed in white, like doctors, with white caps on their head,” which he believed to be “ultra-terrestrials,” more or less inter-dimensional beings. In later days he would report more oddities, such as being confronted by a band of six of the creatures, five of which he reportedly knocked to the ground in his fight against them. On another occasion, he says that he suddenly became soaking wet for no discernible reason at all. In the meantime, animals seemed to be uncomfortable around him, and he often had ringing in his ears and suicidal thoughts. On one occasion he says that one of the creatures appeared there in his car with him as he drove along, which freaked him out and sent him into a mad dash that would culminate in him being pulled over and charged with two counts of reckless driving and two counts of failing to heed a siren and flashing lights. The alien was gone at this point. Turner has said of his thoughts on the matter thus:

Ever since it all began, I’ve just been sitting here going over and over it in my mind, trying to piece things back together. I’d feel pretty good if I could just figure out where I’ve been. Twenty years from now I’ll still probably never know what happened that night.

Also from 1978 is a perplexing case from the South American country of Chile, which involved two race car drivers named Miguel Angel Moya and Carlos Acevedo during the first Rally de la Vuelta de America del Sur in September of that year, and which was printed by researcher Guillermo Roncorconi in UFO Press No. 9, October 1978. The drivers departed from the city of Buenos Aires on August 17, 1978, embarking on the first leg of their exhausting month-long rally, which would take them thousands of kilometers to Caracas Venezuela and back down to where they had started.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

During their last 1,000 kilometers of the rally, on September 23 at around 3 AM, the drivers left the main road of Route 3 and began driving along a secluded rural road just past the town of Carmen de Patagones, which would lead them to a town called Cardenal Cagliero. At this time Carlos was at the wheel, and in his rearview mirror he suddenly noticed a bright light with a strange quality he described as “dense and yellowish,” which he at first thought to be perhaps headlights of another vehicle and which seemed to be growing closer and brighter at a rapid pace. Carlos pulled the car over to the side of the road, still thinking that this was another car or truck and thinking he would let it pass. Allegedly at that moment the entire vehicle was suddenly completely bathed in a breathtaking brilliant white light. Carlos would say of the bizarre events that followed thus:

Light flooded the passenger compartment and I couldn’t see beyond the hood of the car. It was a dense, brilliant light, yellow in color with some violet hues. I thought I’d lost control of the car at the moment. I looked through the window and saw were nearly two meters over the asphalt surface. I suddenly thought we had jumped over a speed bump and braced myself on the steering wheel, waiting for the moment we’d hit the surface again.

After a few seconds, I don’t know, maybe some 5 or 10, I reacted and realized that something completely abnormal was going on. I wanted to look out the window again, but all I could see was that dense light. I remember I started screaming ‘what’s going on?’ but Moya wasn’t answering. When I looked to my right, my companion wasn’t there, or at least I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t even see the dashboard. I could only see that dense light that looked liquid, I don’t know, sort of viscous.

Meanwhile, the other passenger, Miguel Angel Moya, was there, and was described as being completely terrified by the situation, which to be fair was probably the correct response to such a completely otherworldly series of events. Miguel would later recall of the surreal situation:

Initially I also thought it was a speed bump, and was scared at the thought of the vehicle overturning, but when I noticed that the car appeared to float in the air and wasn’t coming down, I became even more frightened. It was a situation I couldn’t really understand. I looked at Carlos and I saw him completely stiff, clutching the steering wheel with his arms outstretched and staring forward. It seemed like he was screaming but I couldn’t hear anything. I could see everything as if through a yellow fog, as if I was distant, somewhere else. I think my first reaction was to try and flee from there, but when I tried to open the door it wouldn’t budge, as if welded shut. I noticed the temperature was rising, although it could have been the result of my state of fear. Suddenly the light covered everything and I couldn’t see a thing, not even my hands, nothing.

The car then shuddered violently as it descended to hit the road, and the almost unbearably bright light began to dim and dissipate as the object was witnessed to travel off into the distance, and it was said to look like “a cone of yellow light, but one that didn’t end in a tip.” When their eyes had adjusted to the sudden dark, they realized that they had been deposited on the shoulder of the road facing the opposite direction of where they had been headed when the whole strange incident had started. They then watched the curious light travel off to the West, and Miguel would say of it:

It might have measured some five meters at the base and two or three at the cusp, measuring some six or seven meters in height. The base lit the ground, although you really couldn’t see what it was lighting, that is to say, you couldn’t see through the light. A few seconds later, the light…how can I explain it? …retracted itself or drew up like a curtain, from bottom to top, and all that remained in view was an oval, whitish-yellow light that kept heading west until it vanished in the distance.

The two shocked drivers reportedly sat there in awe and fear for a few minutes, trying to gather their wits about themselves, after which they went tearing off down Route 3 to get out of there as fast as they could. They would soon after reach a town called Pedro Luro, which was about 123 kilometers from where they had started and where the bizarreness would continue. Looking at the dashboard, they noticed that it said they had traveled just 52 kilometers from the city of Viedma to Puerto Luro, when in fact the actual distance it should have been was 127 kilometers. Somehow they had jumped a portion of that distance which had not registered on their vehicle. Even stranger still was that a look at a clock showed them that nearly 2 and a half hours had passed, when that journey should have only taken a little over an hour at the speeds they had been going, and adding to all of this it seemed that their backup gas tank was completely empty, despite the fact that they had just filled it up shortly before leaving Route 3. Although they at first thought about keeping the whole baffling event to themselves, they ended up going to the police with their story, after which it went on to become big news at the time.

Also from South America is a more recent case from May of 2017 in the location of the town of Hernandarias, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentina. According to the report, which was carried on Planeta UFO and CN Digital, a family gathered for dinner at their home on the night of May 22, 2017, and their 13-year old son was sent off on an errand to get something. The boy found that one of the doors was stuck, so another family member helped with trying to open it, but as he did this he allegedly turned around to find the boy was nowhere to be seen.

This wasn’t really so weird at this point, as the adult figured he had just returned to the dinner table, but it would soon become apparent that he had not, and that no one had seen the boy since he had left. The concerned family began searching the whole property and the street outside, but there was no sign where he had gone. At this point, one of their cell phones rang and on the other line was the missing boy, who sounded quite confused and purportedly told them that he was at a taxi stand but was not sure where it was or how he had gotten there.

When police were notified and finally located the boy, he was around a kilometer and a half away from the house. Questioning him did not do much good, as he seemed to have very little memory of what had happened to him after he had left the dinner table. All he could say was that he had seen a blinding light and heard a “snapping noise,” after which he found himself suddenly and inexplicably at the taxi stand. The boy was found to be completely healthy and with no sign of any physical injuries, and no one else in the area seems to have witnessed the light he speaks of. The odd case has been investigated ever since, with some UFO researchers holding it up as a case of abduction, some saying it is a case of spontaneous teleportation. UFO researcher Gustavo Fernández, who wrote of the event in an article entitled “Argentina: The Hernandarias Event – UFO Teleportation or Abduction,” which was translated to English by Scott Corrales of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU) believed that it is the latter, saying of the case:

This then is the description of the facts – accepting its likelihood, ratified by Diego Wasinger, the local police chief – allows us to suppose the existence of another phenomenon, a parapsychological one with considerable background: teleportation. This is the name given to a spectacular but documented phenomenon consisting in the dematerialization of a person from a given location and their reappearance at another. Why speculate about an intervention by alien craft? This would be so if the protagonist had described having been taken into a spacecraft, or if other witnesses had seen this. But here, the youth only sees “a light” and this does not suffice to tag it as a UFO.

In fact, as I often say: we say a shining light behaving abnormally in the sky and we say: “Oh! a UFO!”. We see a bright light behaving strangely at a graveyard and we say: “Oh! It’s a ghost!”. The only certainty in both cases is that we have seen a light behaving oddly. The “explanation” is simply our own speculation.

Argentina seems to be a veritable hotspot of such cases, and there is even a whole road that is known for having a high concentration of these strange incidents. Supposedly, the stretch of National Route 5 connecting Trenque Lauquen and Santa Rosa is absolutely plagued by reports of phenomena such as UFOs, instances of lost time, and teleportation. One commonly reported anomaly is startled drivers suddenly transported from the kilometer 460 marker to the kilometer 580 marker in the blink of an eye, a phenomenon often said to be accompanied by an inexplicable fog that comes from nowhere or mysterious unidentified lights in the sky.

According to UFO researcher Diego Sánchez, one very strange case along Route 5 involved a car mechanic named Carlos Colón, who was driving along the road on August 25, 1999, when his ears were assaulted by a deafening “buzzing sound.” The puzzled driver allegedly pulled over to the side of the road to try and figure out what was going on. He reported that as he had sat there in the car he noticed a group of mysterious humanoid figures creeping through the dark to approach the vehicle. Terrified, Carlos began to exit his car, and at that point the figures apparently vanished and he instantaneously found himself standing out of the vehicle several meters away. At the time the witness says he was overcome by an odd pain emanating from all over his body, as well as profound exhaustion, and dizziness.

In another case, a man was driving along near Buenos Aires when he saw a strange purple light off in the distance, after which an unseasonable fog purportedly enveloped his vehicle. The next thing he knew he was lying on the ground in an unfamiliar location with his car nowhere to be seen. When he flagged down a passing vehicle he learned that he was in Salta, a full 1800 kilometers away from where he had been. His car would be found back where he had first seen the light, its engine still idling. UFO researcher Luis Burgos has said of Route 5 and its strange phenomena thus:

Route 5 and the communities located in the province of La Pampa are, without a doubt, prone to a variety of UFO experiences, of which teleportations are one of the most interesting episodes. One is atemporal teleportation, in which the protagonist takes minutes, even hours, in regaining awareness in a location far removed from the one he or she was in before. The other is instantaneous teleportation, which is the kind that usually occurs on Route 5 when drivers are not even aware that they have experienced the phenomenon, suddenly becoming aware when they see a mile marker or road sign that tells them they have traversed an unexpected distance in a matter of seconds.

Speaking of Argentina, one of the most bizarre, spectacular, and controversial cases of UFOs and teleportation ever comes from here. In May of 1968, a Dr. Geraldo Vidal and his wife Raffo de Vidal allegedly headed out from Buenos Aires on a trip to join a family gathering at the city of Chascomus, which lies around 120 kilometers away. After the get-together, they took a detour on the way back home, deciding they would visit some friends in the town of Maipu, lying around 150 kilometers from Chascomus. They would never arrive at their destination, no trace of their whereabouts could be found, and friends and family became increasingly worried. 48 hours after this mysterious disappearances, some friends were startled to receive a call from Dr. Vidal, but the really strange thing was that he was calling from the Argentinean consulate in Mexico City, some 6,400 km away.

When the Vidals were back in Argentina, a deeply strange story began to emerge as to why they had ended up so far away. Dr. Vidal would say that on the evening of their vanishing they had been driving along a stretch of road when their vehicle had been inexplicably surrounded by a thick, white fog, and this would be the last thing they remembered before they woke up in the daytime on an unfamiliar rural road. Astonishingly, all though they remembered nothing of how they had gotten there a look at a calendar showed them that a full 48 hours had passed. Physically they felt fine, but they reported that their necks ached and they had perceived a certain heaviness throughout their bodies, as if they had slept too long.

Getting out of the car they discovered that the vehicle had strange scorch marks all down its sides, as it someone had taken a blowtorch to it, but the car otherwise worked fine. When they were able to ask some locals where they were, they were surprised and not a little unsettled to learn that they were actually now in Mexico, far from where they had just been, for them, moments before. Allegedly the Vidals drove over to Mexico City, where they explained the whole bizarre tale to a Rafael Lopez Pellegrini at the Argentine consulate. In an ominous turn of events, they were warned not to tell of what had happened to them to anyone, and their car was whisked away to the United States for analysis.

Despite this, the Vidal story was soon all over the news and it has gone on to become a classic, widely-known UFO case, reported on and written of countless times. Unfortunately, in later years the case has come under scrutiny as perhaps being a hoax. It turns out that not long before the strange incident an Argentinean science fiction film titled Che OVNI was in production. Directed by Anibal Uset, the film’s story of a couple who are teleported in their car displayed many of the same beats and details of the Vidal case, and even the car used in the film, a white Peugeot 403, is the same as the Vidals’.

Uset would even end up eventually admitting that he had created the whole Vidal story to promote and drum up interest in the movie, and because no first-hand witnesses to the incident had ever been directly interviewed, as well as the fact that there was scant evidence to prove that the Vidals had ever even been real people at all, this all pointed to the whole thing being a sham. Weirdly, despite this revelation there have been many who believe that Uset’s admission is a cover-up, and there are plenty of people who have claimed that they have met the Vidals and that their tale is actually true. So strong was the backlash against Uset’s admission that at one point the director himself started to think that maybe it was real after all and that his version of events was wrong. He would say of this to journalist Alejandro C. Agostinelli:

So many people approached me to say that they had known the Vidals that I began to have doubts. What is more, the confusion was such that I began to think that our story coincided with something that had really happened.

The supposed hoaxer having doubts? What is going on here and where does this leave us? Was the Vidal case a hoax or not? Was Uset’s admission that he had created the story real or was it a cover-up to discredit a true account? If it was real did his lie somehow mysteriously mirror a real event? Agostinelli has himself said of his opinion on Uset and the Vidals:

At the time, the fact that he (Uset) questioned his own creation startled me. But I think that this helps to understand how UFO stories are built along with many other modern myths. If even a hoaxer can be led to doubt, this means that mysteries are able to overcome any denial. That’s why I think myths are indestructible. Countless teleportation cases have occurred in Argentina and around the world, but the Vidal Case was a lie.

Nevertheless, the Vidal case continues to generate a fair amount of debate and discussion, it remains a classic case, and there are many who still think that it is a genuine event. Whether the case is real or not, one intriguing detail is the type of damage they supposedly found on their car, as if it had been subjected to some scorching heat, and this is a curious detailed in another bizarre case, in which one supposed UFO teleportation event seems to have apparently been stopped in the middle of the process. The witness claims that she had been driving through Chicago, Illinois, one evening in November of 2008 when she suddenly heard a series of loud thuds and bangs on her vehicle, as if someone were hammering at it from outside. These impacts became steadily stronger, to the point where some caused the whole car to shudder, with one particularly powerful tremor sending her into another lane.

When the incessant bangs stopped the understandably frightened woman pulled over to investigate any damage that had been caused to her car. Strangely, although there was no sign of dents or scratches that would have been caused by a collision or strike, the ides of the car looked as if they had been partially melted as if by an intense heat. It has been speculated that the woman had possibly been in the process of being sucked into some sort of portal, and the sounds that she had heard were perhaps it opening and closing around her, although why this all abruptly stopped is anyone’s guess.

Are any of these stories true, or are these hoaxes and tall tales? If they are genuine, then what is it that is happening to these people and who or what is behind it and for what purpose? Nobody knows. What we do know is that the UFO phenomenon is rife with the strange, the otherworldly, the surreal, and the downright insane, with seemingly no end to the wellspring of bizarreness that comes forth from it. With cases such as we have seen here we can add teleportation and teletransportation in some form or other to the long list of baffling details and clues already orbiting UFOs and their purported abilities, one more piece of weird to add to the considerable pile.

Despite the seemingly endless reports of UFO sightings, ghost encounters, Bigfoot videos, strange hums, falling fish and other paranormal occurrences, there are days when it seems that nothing out of the ordinary is happening (we exclude politics from consideration, unless a UFO is involved). When all other countries or geographical areas fail, Peru always seems to come through. Within the past week, that fine country has provided stories about a truck driver destroying some Nazca lines and a DNA analysis of the mysterious Paracas elongated skulls. The paranormal riches of Peru paid off once again today, with the report that an ongoing investigation of the three-fingered mummies found in a Nazca cave has determined that they were once definitely alive. Muchas gracias, Peru!

Here’s a quick update. The chalky-covered three-fingered-and-toed, big-headed, small-bodied mummies were allegedly found in a Nazca cave and revealed to the public in 2017 by Gaia.com. Since then, there have reports of one being pregnant, another carrying eggs, the total reaching 20, a guy named Mario taking credit for the discovery, a possible sighting of live ones, DNA tests showing they’re human or human-like and more. Now, a video has surfaced with new insights from a member of the team.

“Each of three small specimens has been analysed and bone density belong to that of a living being. The preservation is amazing, it is really surprising, especially the bone parts of these small creatures. “You see that, the base of the skull has its own characteristics. We can scientifically prove the skull of these creatures have a cranial cavity similar to humans, but they have some strong differences.”

It was reported this week by express.co.uk that radiologist Dr. Raymundo Salas Alfaro, a new name in these three-fingered mummy reports, made those observations after claiming to see CAT scans of the mummies. A video dated October 2017 shows Alfaro discussing the mummies but an English translation was not provided. That’s too bad because, in the express.co.uk account, Alfaro seems to disagree with the DNA report by saying that the skull does not look human. (Did he look at the fingers?)

“Here another image you see the soft tissue – a big surprise about these small creatures. Of course they have existed this is not a fake.”

Alfaro then addressed the most famous of the three-fingered mummies – the one the team has named Maria – and said this:

“We are scientifically proving that this is a real body that was once alive.”

So Dr. Alfaro seems to be refuting those who claim this is an elaborate and morbid hoax perpetrated by someone who pieced together the mummies from human body parts. However, the evidence he presents is still just the CAT scan and the DNA test. That isn’t enough to convince skeptics, which includes the World Congress on Mummy Studies and the Peruvian government, which doesn’t like foreigners messing with any of its mummies, real or otherwise.

Sorry Maria, Dr. Alfaro and the rest of the three-fingered mummies and researchers. The needle on this case is still stuck between ‘Skeptical’ and ‘Hoax’. However, we’re leaving it open in the likely event there’s another slow paranormal news day.

Image credit: YouTube/Unsplash

Muchas gracias!

In the paranormal business, the cure for a slow news day is to see what’s cooking in Peru. Last week, we had the truck driver plowing his vehicle over the ancient Nazca lines, destroying portions of these famous and unexplained geoglyphs in the name of avoiding to pay a toll. It’s been a while since we heard anything about the three-fingered mummies but there’s nothing new to reports. Fortunately, the elongated skulls came to the rescue!

“This could re-write history as we know it.”

Yes, it was another “This changes everything” moment over the weekend when the Elongated Skulls Symposium was held in Los Angeles. Hosted by author, lecturer and film maker L.A. Marzulli, it brought together a variety of speakers on the subject of the Paracas skulls, including videographer Richard Shaw, forensic expert Chase Kloetske, archaeologist Mondo Gonzales, 3D forensic artist Marcia K. Moore, anthropologist Rick Woodward, medical doctor Dr. Michael Alday, and chiropractor Dr. Malcolm Warren. However, the big news on DNA testing of the skulls came from Marzulli and Brien Forester of Hidden Inca Tours.

If those last two names sound familiar, it’s probably because they had a similar “this changes everything!” moment in 2016 when DNA tests were reportedly conducted on the Paracas elongated skulls of Peru. At that time, they revealed that the test results showed the skulls were not from Peru but were not alien either. The humans were believed to have come from Europe and Mesopotamia, especially Syria. That was interesting and certainly added a twist to which humans first arrived in the Americas, but not a game-changer. Was the Elongated Skulls Symposium?

The website megalithicmarvels.com gave a synopsis of the talk by Brien Forester.

“The DNA results actually were incredibly complicated… It’s gonna take me some time to actually figure out what the results mean. What it does show for sure is that the Paracas elongated skull people were not 100% Native American. They were a mix or even you could say, in some ways, a hybrid of different people.”

Wait a minute … this sounds familiar. That’s when Forester adds a new twist.

“It appears that the largest elongated skulls on the planet have been found, “A” in Paracas, Peru and “B” in the Caucasus area in between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea… so my theory is that there was a sub-species of human which we are going to be eventually calling Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens-Paracas, and they were living in the area in between the Caspian and Black Sea.”

And …

“They were invaded by somebody… and so they were forced to flee.”

Forester lays out a path for this sub-species to sail from the Persian Gulf to Peru. That’s where he believes, and says some of the other speakers agree, that these naturally long-skulled people settled and flourished for a time.

“ … because of the abnormalities found with some of the Elongated Skulls from the Chongos cemetery in Peru they have no other choice but to state that some of these ancient Paracas were a sub-species of humanity… it had to be genetic, they had to be born with these abnormalities. They had dark red hair… the royal Paracas were the ones with elongated heads, not the common people… the royal family of the Paracas, they lived in subterranean underground houses and I think the reason for that is that they had light-colored skin, probably sensitive eyes because of the extreme sunshine…”

So, Forester believes the long skulls are a genetic abnormality, not the result of binding, and those with them were regarded as leaders and superiors. The key word is “believes,” not proves. This certainly reinforces the idea that the genetic makeup of Native South Americans is truly a varied mix. It also continues to disappoint those who want to believe the elongated skull beings are aliens. However, it doesn’t prove how the Paracas could be a separate sub-species while all other elongated skull cultures are not.

Let’s hope the next ‘this changes everything’ DNA tests come during another slow news week.

The Road to Strange: UFOs, Aliens and High Strangeness is the new book from Michael Brein and Rosemary Ellen Guiley.  It’s a book which is filled with literally dozens and dozens of cases of the ufological kind. Those cases cover such issues as crop circles, alien abductions, pilot encounters, Men in Black, UFO landings, and much more. But, it’s very important to note that this is not just a collection of events and incidents. Rather, the emphasis is on how the experiences impacted on the witnesses themselves. This is a good, solid and refreshing way of demonstrating to the reader the way in which the UFO phenomenon can affect people – and not always in a positive way. The same goes for their families and friends. Ridicule, fear, denial, amazement, and paranoia are just some of the results of the close encounter cases in The Road to Strange. Let’s take a look at the content.

As far as the accounts are concerned, they are split into four categories: “I Know What I saw,” “Mystery Lights and Craft,” “Alien Encounters,” and “High Strangeness.” One of the intriguing issues that surfaces in certain events described in the book is the “Why me?” factor. As Guiley and Brein note, in profound UFO cases witnesses sometimes develop a sense that the phenomenon deliberately targeted them, that there was a specific reason for the encounter, that there was more to the sighting than just something unusual of a random nature. It’s this “Why me?” aspect which provokes anxiety in some, fear in others, and a sense of wonder in those who see the matter in a positive light. One of the weirder aspect of the UFO enigma revolves around how one person can see a UFO, but someone standing right next to them sees nothing at all. Again, there is the matter of “Why me?”

Seeing how people deal with such matters – or don’t – makes for revealing reading. As for the reaction of family members, well, at one end of the spectrum there is the sense that their relative is mistaken, lying – or, of course, telling the truth. At the other end of the spectrum, though, there’s the tragic story of T.L. Murdock who, as a child in 1931, was “backhanded” with “full force” by his mother for claiming an encounter with something strange in the sky. This, of course, was long before the dawning of the flying saucer era in 1947.

As for that aforementioned matter of ridicule – or the concern of it becoming an issue – it surfaces on several occasions. Again, the impact that this has on the witness is as significant as it is eye-opening. As an example, we have the words of the late Graham Sheppard, who was a captain and pilot with British Airways. Sheppard, who died in 2005, had a couple of profound UFO encounters. One such case, from the 1960s, is described by Sheppard in his own words: “When we were over the Midlands of England we got a radar alert about an object traveling at high speed directly in the airway. We saw this disc coming towards us! It was about 30 feet across, and it looked as if it was going to come extremely close to us.”

Sheppard noted the reluctance on the part of colleagues to talk about UFO encounters, “even though I knew other pilots and flight engineers had seen UFOs.” Sheppard tells a fascinating story of how, decades ago, he was aware of a kind of unwritten code of silence among air-crews when it comes to UFOs. Again, we get to see- first-hand – how the phenomenon of the UFO alters lives and directs their beliefs and approach to the mystery.

One of the most interesting stories revolves around a bizarre encounter with dwarfish humanoids floating in self-illuminated “pods of light” in the direct vicinity of Wiltshire, England’s famous Silbury Hill. It’s one of those cases which is hard to fit into any particular category. Fear, denial and and an attempt to rationalize the incident by suggesting it was connected to a “military exercise” or “a projector” are all part and parcel of a story that undeniably changed lives.

Silsbury Hill

High-strangeness in the heart of crop circles is an important aspect of the book and our authors note that those visiting the formations experience drowsiness, a feeling of “cosmic connection,” and “mystical rapture.” Men in Black of a clearly supernatural nature pop up, too – in a North Carolina library, and who appear to have the ability to affect electrical equipment. The menacing MIB reports and the crop circle cases demonstrate just how weird certain UFO-themed events can become – and they too are shown to profoundly affect those in close proximity. Add to that stories of missing time, alien-human hybrids, strange “holes” in the sky, an incident at Area 51, and much more and you have a book that makes for absorbing reading.

I have often said that the most important people in the field of the unknown are not the writers, the authors, the radio-show hosts, or those who appear on TV shows.  The most important people are the witnesses. A great deal can be learned from studying them, their reactions, their words, and how their lives have been changed, altered and even scarred. The Road to Strange does a great job of getting right to the heart of what it means to be a UFO witness.