In bad times, farmers have been known to lose their heads over what to do when their crops won’t grow. Smart farmers in these situations learn to use their heads, not lose them. On Easter Island (Rapa Nui), a place known for its heads, it turns out farmers did both. New research has discovered that by creating and then removing those giant stone heads from a single quarry, the area around it became lush farmland. Will we soon be seeing giant heads coming out of Nebraska?

Easter Island Statue Project

Two Moai are shown during excavations by Jo Anne Van Tilburg and her team at Rano Raraku quarry on Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island.

“Our excavation broadens our perspective of the Moai and encourages us to realise that nothing, no matter how obvious, is ever exactly as it seems. I think our new analysis humanises the production process of the Moai.”

In a paper published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science, UCLA researcher Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project on Rapa Nui, described the surprising discovery during a five-year project focusing on just two of the more than 1,000 moai or statues on the island. These two, labeled Moai 156 and 157, are located in Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater where over 90 percent of the statues were quarried. Moai 156 and 157 are unique in two ways – they were placed upright with one on a pedestal and the other sunken into the ground, meaning they were not to be moved; and they were covered with engraved petroglyph motifs, indicating that they had a special purpose for being there. What purpose might that be?

“When we got the chemistry results back, I did a double take.”

Researcher and study co-author Sarah Sherwood of Tennessee’s University of the South, was referring to the soil analysis done on samples taken at the foot of each statue, which were erected between 1510 CE and 1645 CE. Those samples contained evidence of taro (a root vegetable), bananas and sweet potatoes. Further study of the soil in Rano Raraku found it to be a lot more fertile than the barren dirt on the rest of the island, containing calcium, phosphorus and moisture. That means Rano Raraku was much more than just a quarry for stone statues to be moved around the island and baffle visitors to this day.

“That is, these and probably other upright Moai in Rano Raraku were retained in place to ensure the sacred nature of the quarry itself. The Moai were central to the idea of fertility, and in Rapanui belief their presence here stimulated agricultural food production.”

So, which came first – the fertile soil or the belief that the statues helped make it and keep it that way?

“Everywhere else on the island the soil was being quickly worn out, eroding, being leeched of elements that feed plants, but in the quarry, with its constant new influx of small fragments of the bedrock generated by the quarrying process, there is a perfect feedback system of water, natural fertiliser and nutrients.”

I love the smell of fresh taro in the morning.

It sounds like the act of carving out the stone statues contributed to the natural system that made Rano Raraku the Nebraska of Easter Island. Perhaps the foods helped the islanders grow bigger and stronger like the farm boys of Nebraska and gave them the strength to move the giant statues around the island – a process that’s still a mystery.

All the corn does in Nebraska is turn those farm boys into linemen for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.

In part 1 of my 3-part recent article on (A) the Roswell affair of 1947 and (B) secret experiments undertaken on people from the 1940s onward, I highlighted the content of a huge, U.S. government document. It is titled Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report. Dated October 1995, it runs to no less than 925 pages and was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. I also said the following in part 1: “One of the days I’ll share with you the very strange story of how I got my copy and how it’s filled to the brim with annotations from the retired person who provided it to me.” Well, I figured that today is as good as any day to get the story out! So, here it goes: Most important, when it comes to all of the weirdness that went down, is the time-frame. As you will quickly come to see.

In the early 1990s, I corresponded with various U.S. agencies, while I was trying to determine if the notorious MJ12 documents (that tell of a top secret group created in 1947 to hide the truth of the Roswell enigma and to try and understand the alien technology) were the real deal or not. Those agencies included the FBI, the U.S. Air Force, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Admittedly, I was quite excited by the notorious documents when they first surfaced in 1987 (in the pages of Tim Good’s book, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up). Over time, though, I came to believe that the documents were bogus. I should stress that I don’t think the MJ12 documents were someone’s idea of a joke. What I do think, however, is that at least some of the well-known MJ12 papers were the concoctions of Russian intelligence (here’s where you can find more of my thoughts on all of this Russia/MJ12 issue). Moving on…

There’s no doubt that it was during the decade of the 1990s that Roswell – the event – became big news. In 1994, the movie, Roswell, starring Kyle McLachlan and Martin Sheen, was released. In that very same year, the U.S. Air Force published a fairly slim Executive Summary on the Roswell case. The USAF concluded that what came down on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in early July 1947 was a giant Mogul balloon array. For those who may not know, the Moguls were designed to monitor for secret atomic bomb tests of the Soviets. Then, in July 1995, the Government Accountability Office (which, in 1995 was called the General Accounting Office) published the details of its very own investigation into Roswell. That report, too, referenced the Air Force’s Mogul theory.

After the GAO report appeared and got the UFO research community fired up, yet another Roswell-themed document surfaced from the government. This one was called The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. In stark contrast to the two earlier reports (one of the GAO and the other of the USAF) this new report was gigantic in size: it ran to almost 1,000 pages. It was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. I was very surprised – but pleased – when a copy of the report came my way shortly afterwards. The Air Force had very generously mailed me a free copy of that massive report – probably because I had that aforementioned, earlier correspondence with them a year or two earlier.

In October 1995, the previously mentioned  Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report was published – also by the U.S. Government Printing Office. This too is a huge report: it runs to 925 pages.  So, we have three intriguing reports published in 1995; two on Roswell and one on “human radiation experiments.” Now, this is where things get weird. In the first week of November 1995 a copy of that giant Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report reached my door. Whereas the Roswell-themed “Fact vs Fiction” report was mailed to me in an official package of the Department of the Defense, the one on human experimentation was not. Rather, it came in a cardboard box covered in scotch tape, with no sender address and with my name and address written in black-marker. When I opened the box and saw the “experiments”-based report inside I was puzzled. After all, I certainly hadn’t ordered a copy. And, this wasn’t an area of research that I was actively looking into.

Around two weeks later (or thereabouts), there was a phone call in the afternoon. I answered it. For about four or five seconds there was nothing but loud static. Thankfully, it went away. What was clearly an old man with a weak voice – and an American accent – asked me if I had “received the report yet?” Or, something broadly along those lines. It was, after all, twenty-four years ago when all of this occurred, and I didn’t record the call. I asked: “Which report?” It was a legitimate question, as I had then recently received two, huge U.S. government reports, both on extremely controversial topics. After I asked that question, the man kind of chuckled, and said, in his very own questioning tones: “Now you have both?” I replied with something like: “I guess I do.” We had a chat for what was only a few minutes; three or four at the absolute very most. He said that if I wanted the truth of Roswell I should carefully read both mighty tomes. The pair, he added, were, in sinister and strange ways, interconnected. At least, in terms of looking for answers to what really happened at Roswell. I dug deep into it all, to the extent that my own copy of the Roswell report is now, today, in a very worn and tattered state.

Despite the passage of a considerable amount of time, answers were apparently still to be found – potentially. I asked the guy how knew that. His far from satisfactory – and admittedly unclear – response was that prior to retiring he worked for the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and he knew of certain things that could open certain doors to the truth of Roswell  – and that would explain how the incident was still hidden and under wraps. Yes, it was all pretty vague and concisely worded. In relation to comments connected to budgetary issues, it all rather reminded me of the famous “follow the money” words of Watergate’s Deep Throat.

I never did find out the old man’s identity. Nor did I learn how he knew that I had a copy of that bulging Roswell report. Or why, even, he decided to send the “human experiments report” to me. In terms of looking for answers, approaching the CBO did no good at all. I can only think that my persistent attempts to get to the heart of the MJ12 controversy – and filing significant numbers of Freedom of Information requests on the subject – sparked something somewhere with someone. I wish I could end this article in a satisfactory and clear fashion. Unfortunately, I can’t.

It’s just one of many weird experiences I’ve had when digging into the Roswell puzzle.

“Museum CCTV footage shows protective dome over a fragment of Chelyabinsk meteorite rising apparently ‘all by itself’. Museum director & staff insist they or faulty electronics had nothing to do with it.”

Talk about ‘uncovering’ a mystery! Sputnik News and Siberia Times both reported a strange story about a piece of a meteorite seemingly lifting its protective cover into the air for no apparent reason and with no apparent humor or electronic aid at a historical museum in Chelyabinsk, Russia. OK, this isn’t a piece of just any meteorite – it’s a chunk of the one which blasted the skies over Chelyabinsk in 2013, injuring 1,500 people and causing over $15 million in damages to structures. A large portion of the rock survived its crash to Earth and was not only recovered from Chebarkul lake but captured on video, a first for meteorites. And now, it makes history on camera again. (Watch the video here.)

“We spoke to all our specialists in electronics and wiring, who said unanimously that it was impossible to have it opening by itself. Yet it happened. Right after it happened I queried what could it possibly be, and there is no answer so far.”

As of this writing, museum spokesman Yuri Bogatenkov has no explanation, but he and the staff seem adamant that it wasn’t an equipment malfunction that lifted the protective dome. Museum employee Aivar Valeev told Sputnik News that the dome was too heavy for a thief to lift and too well-protected for anyone to override the electronic system. That leaves the mystical power of the meteorite as the leading explanation, at least amongst museum employees.

“But jokes aside, our female staff are still a bit shaken.”

What caused the cover to rise over the piece of Chelyabinsk meteorite? Many people believe that meteorites have powers that defy explanation. Meteorite crystals are said to be associated with the third eye and can be used for relieving stress, freeing the mind and other metaphysical treatments as well as healing physical ailments, treating injuries, improving the circulatory system and producing other bodily health benefits. Because they’re from other parts of the solar system (and perhaps even other stars), they are often used in spiritual rituals and for summoning UFOs and extraterrestrials and interdimensional activities. Each of those powers depends on the mineral makeup of the meteorite. The Chelyabinsk space rock is an ordinary chondrite meteorite and contains 10% iron. According to metaphysical meteorite experts, that means it’s good for circulation, stamina and healing. It has a frequency that connects to the third eye and has a strong electrical energy that stabilizes and grounds higher vibrational energies to the magnetic core of the Earth.

Does the Chelyabinsk meteorite have any of these powers? More importantly, does it have the power to lift its own cover? Was it, as some people speculate, trying to escape and return to wherever it came from? As of this writing, there’s no evidence of such powers. However, there’s also no explanation of what happened.

Did anyone look at it with their third eye?

Over the years, Annie Jacobsen has written a number of good books on the matter of government secrecy. They include Surprise, Kill, Vanish; The Pentagon’s Brain; Phenomena; Operation Paperclip; and Area 51. It’s the latter title that we need to focus our attentions on today. Jacobsen’s Area 51 is a solid, insightful and illuminating study of the history and secret world of Nevada’s infamous, impenetrable base. When Area 51 was published, what really caught the attention of both the UFO research community and the nation’s media were the words that Jacobsen had received on Roswell, the world’s most famous (or infamous) UFO case. It all came from a solitary whistle-blower. In the pages of her book, Jacobsen’s source for the Roswell story is not identified (although he does appear, by his real name, in other sections of the book that specifically don’t deal with Roswell). We know, though, thanks to the digging of UFO researcher Tony Bragalia that the man in question was one Alfred O’Donnell, who died on April 9, 2015, then in his nineties. Bragalia spoke with O’Donnell. Bragalia said of this: “This author has identified and located Annie Jacobsen’s anonymous source. I have also decided, after much consideration, to ‘out’ him. In this article I will openly name him. I have also contacted him very recently. He reluctantly spoke with me for some time. I believe that the source was indeed told this bizarre story by officials.”

Bragalia then goes on to detail O’Donnell’s working career. Also, Bragalia provides us with an interview that he conducted with O’Donnell on the afternoon of May 26, 2011. According to data that Alfred O’Donnell claimed he was exposed to during his time working for EG&G, what came down outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947 was not a UFO from another world. Nor was it a weather-balloon or a Mogul balloon. And, apparently, there was not even a single crash-test dummy anywhere in sight. O’Donnell made the controversial and sensational claim that the craft and its crew originated in the Soviet Union. But, we’re not talking about your average aircraft. The same goes for those who were allegedly aboard it, too. O’Donnell said that Joseph Stalin – the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and Premier from 1941 to 1953 – was the driving force behind what was, supposedly, a diabolical, manipulative plot designed to make the U.S. government and the people of the United States think that an alien invasion was underway. The purpose: to plunge America into a state of overwhelming terror.

O’Donnell said that Stalin had secretly enlisted into the grim plot Dr. Josef Mengele. He was one of the vilest, evil and most deranged and dangerous figures of the 20^th century. Mengele spent a great deal of his time at Auschwitz, a complex comprised of more than forty camps in then-occupied Poland, at which more than one million people died in horrible fashions at the hands of Nazi shit. Mengele had a very disturbing fascination with dwarfs, to the extent that he undertook awful experiments on them. By this point, you might have deduced where things are leading. Stalin, said O’Donnell, had a warped plan to have a number of children physically altered by Mengele and his team of doctors (although, calling them “doctors” is a disservice to doctors all around the world and throughout recorded history). They would go from looking like children to resembling something wholly unearthly. Then, there was the matter of the “alien spaceship” that Stalin needed to complete the nightmarish ruse.

So O’Donnell’s tale goes, Stalin brought in a team of experts in the field of aviation and had them create two strange-looking aircraft, both based upon the designs of a pair of aircraft engineers. They were Walter and Reimar Horten, both born in Germany; the former in 1913 and the latter in 1915. There’s no doubt that during the Second World War the pair constructed some very strange aerial vehicles. According to what Annie Jacobsen was told, by 1947 Stalin’s infernal plan was just about ready to go. A glaringly obvious question needs answering: how on Earth could a number of poor, surgically-altered children fly a highly advanced aircraft all the way from Russia to the United States? Well, according to Alfred O’Donnell, they didn’t. He claimed that the vehicle the children were strapped in was actually remotely-controlled – and flown all the way to the United States, no less – by the crew of a second Horten-type craft.

The plot was for the aircraft containing the children to land in a visible location in the United States and then have the children exit the strange-looking craft and present themselves to the highest echelons of the U.S. government. The outcome: a unanimous belief that an alien invasion was about to begin, and widespread chaos and fear across the land would inevitably follow. It didn’t quite work out like that, though. As history has shown, the craft crashed rather than landed, and all of the action went down on the remote Foster Ranch, New Mexico; not on the lawns of the White House, as, perhaps, may have been the plan. And the whole thing was hastily hidden and covered up by a tale of a torn and tattered weather-balloon.

There’s no doubt that this saga is filled to the brim with controversy. But, where did it come from? Yes, we know that Annie Jacobsen was told the story by Alfred O’Donnell. What we don’t know – 100 percent fully – however, is how it all developed. My personal opinion is that O’Donnell got at least some of it from the notorious MJ12/Majestic 12 documents. In my 2019 book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin: UFOs, Russian Meddling & Cold War Secrets, I provided data that strongly suggests the Soviets were secretly behind at least some of the MJ12 papers. The reason: disinformation, psychological warfare, downright Soviet meddling, and outright mind-fucking. One of those documents, which surfaced back in the 1990s, is titled “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary.” There are a few points within the summary document that make me think O’Donnell had access to this document – and, probably, to other MJ12 forgeries that we, the public, still have yet to see – and which led to the story he told to Jacobsen.

The IPU summary states that on “…3 July 47, radar stations in east Texas and White Stands Proving Ground, N.M., tracked two unidentified aircraft until both dropped off radar.” So, we have the “two aircraft” scenario that O’Donnell provided to Jacobsen. But, we are not done. Nowhere near. Now, let’s address the matter of the “aliens,” or the altered children – take your pick. Still with the IPU summary paper, we are told the following concerning the bodies: “From what descriptions the team was able to learn and from photographs taken by intelligence photographers, the occupants appear in most respects human with some anatomical differences in the head, eyes, hands and feet. They have a slight build about five feet tall, with grayish-pink skin color. They have no hair on their bodies and clothed with a tight fitting flight suit that appears to be fire proof (some of the bodies looked as if they had been burned on head and hands). Their overall stature reminds one of young children. It is believed that there were male and female genders present, but hard to distinguish.”

It’s important to note that the words “young children” are specifically underlined in the IPU document. I believe, and I conclude, that those words “young children” were underlined in the document for a purpose. They were meant to stand out. My view is that the purpose was to sow the seeds of the rumors that the “crew” just might have been children. Or, at the very least, to have people muse upon that theory, and based on those underlined words. By being underlined, those two words stand out, which – as I see it – was clearly the point. Not only that, as the IPU document gets near to its end there are these words from the unnamed creator of the paperwork: “Our assessment of this investigation rests on two assumptions: 1) Either this discovery was an elaborate and well orchestrated hoax (maybe by the Russians), or; 2) Our country has played host to beings from another planet.” So, we have yet another aspect of O’Donnell’s story brought to the fore: that of the possibility that the whole thing was a “well orchestrated hoax” of the Soviet Union. That, of course, is the absolute thrust of the story told in Annie Jacobsen’s book.

All of the main ingredients of O’Donnell’s story can be found in the “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary.” Within that summary are (A) the reference to two craft; (B) the conclusion that the “overall stature” of the beings “reminds one of young children;” and (C) the theory (or the possibility) that the Russians had pulled off a strange and very disturbing “hoax.” Moreover, point (C) suggests that those in the know had spent time looking at the Russian hoax scenario. We cannot fail to see that Alfred O’Donnell told a long and winding story to Annie Jacobsen that absolutely mirrored certain key issues contained within the IPU material.

My conclusion is that O’Donnell didn’t fabricate anything. I conclude that he saw the IPU document long before it surfaced into the public domain in the 1990s. I believe he honestly shared his story with Annie Jacobsen as he recalled it. And I believe Annie Jacobsen told the story – 100 percent accurately – as it was told to her. And, taking into consideration the fact that the same document is referred to as only being a “summary,” it makes me think that O’Donnell very likely saw a much bigger and far more detailed report  than the 6-page summary that I have quoted from. Somewhere, I suggest, a far lengthier IPU report is hidden away. But, here’s the most important thing of all: it won’t tell any truths. None of the documentation does. And none of it ever will. The IPU papers amount to a complicated and controversial creation of Soviet experts who worked in the fields of psychological warfare, counterintelligence and disinformation. O’Donnell totally bought into the document and its contents, rather than dismissing it as a Soviet-created hoaxed document. Ironically, and somewhat confusingly, U.S. intelligence may also have decided to use the Russian angle, as a means to hide what really happened at Roswell; something else that would have led O’Donnell to conclude that the Roswell enigma had Soviet origins. And, the rest is history, as they say

Part 1 of this 3-part article began as follows, in relation to my research into the Roswell “UFO crash” of 1947.

“Last week I was interviewed on the subject of my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. It is a follow-up to my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Both books focus on the theory that what happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947 had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with classified programs connected to high-altitude experiments in New Mexico, exposure to radiation, huge balloons and much more. As for that interview, it was for a new book that the guy is writing on Roswell from the E.T. perspective. As a full-on believer that aliens did come down on the Foster Ranch in forty-seven, he was having none of what I had to say. He basically said there was no way that terrible experiments – of the types described in my books – would ever have been undertaken back in the 1940s. Clearly, he didn’t know his history. I said something to the effect of: “You’re joking, right?” He assured me he was not joking. So, I told him to check out the ultimate report on this angle of “human experimentation” back in the 1940s (and onward). It is titled Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report. Dated October 1995, it runs to no less than 925 pages and was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. One of the days I’ll share with you the very strange story of how I got my copy and how it’s filled to the brim with annotations from the retired person who provided it to me. But, that’s for another day. Back to those experiments.”

If all of the above is true  – that what happened at Roswell, New Mexico in early July 1947 involved not a UFO and an alien crew, but a homegrown, top secret experiment of highly disturbing proportions – then why can’t we prove it? Well, first and foremost, no theory that has been put forward for the incident has proved to be the precise answer. For example, even the U.S. Air Force admitted that it couldn’t state with 100 percent certainty that their conclusions told the correct story. Many of you will know that in 1997 the Air Force presented a theory that the so-called “alien bodies” were really crash-test dummies. Actually, that’s not quite right. If you read the 1997 report on Roswell carefully, you’ll see that the Air Force said that the bodies were “probably” dummies. Yes, probably. That was their word, not mine. That’s because the Air Force couldn’t find any papers that confirmed dummies came down in Lincoln County, New Mexico in July 1947. If even the USAF couldn’t find the files back in 1997, then what chance do we have today? The answer is, to be honest, not much of a chance at all. The same goes for the Mogul balloon theory, for the idea that Roswell was a hoax initiated by the Russians, for Mac Tonnies’ “cryptoterrestrial theory” and for the data in my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy.

Can the data in the 1995 report help us to solve the enigma of Roswell? If, in the late-1940s, people were used against their collective will, and used in experiments that led to the creation of a UFO legend, we could make a case – based on logic – that the files on Roswell should be held deep somewhere in the government’s, mindbogglingly-massive collection of “human experiment” files, rather than in hidden UFO records, right? Yes, that should be the case. Unfortunately, however, the report does not help us to solve Roswell. And why might that be? Almost certainly for one particular, eye-opening reason: numerous files that the Advisory Committee hoped to examine couldn’t be found. Let’s see what the Committee had to say about all of this. Its staff stated: “One of the most difficult tasks before the Committee was determining how many federally sponsored human radiation experiments occurred between 1944 and 1974 and who conducted them. When President Clinton established the Committee, he also directed the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group to provide us with all relevant documentary information in each of the agencies’ files. Teams were formed to identify the hundreds of government sites where relevant documents might be located. We discovered there was no easy way to identify how many experiments had been conducted, where they took place, and which government agencies had sponsored them [italics mine].”

The Committee asked an important question: “What rules or policies, if any, existed, to govern federally sponsored experiments in the pre-1974 period?” The response was: “The prevailing assumption was that, with a few notable exceptions, it was not until the mid-1960s that federal agencies began to develop such policies in any significant way…As we began our search into the past, we found that it was necessary to reconstruct a vanished world. The Committee and the agencies had to collect information scattered in warehouses throughout the country.”

In other words, it wasn’t just a case of examining the old “human experimentation” files; it was also a matter of trying to find them. And, we know that a significant body of old material was not found. Just maybe, if Roswell was a secret experiment, rather than the crash of a UFO, then – for decades- we may have been looking in all of the wrong directions for the answers. Instead of searching for tales of dead aliens, we should be looking outside of the box. By that, I mean if people were used in terrible experiments in New Mexico in July 1947, then the truth of Roswell may be buried somewhere – yes, still, more than seventy years later – in a warehouse that has yet to be addressed and examined that remains overlooked. Perhaps, today, there is no Roswell cover-up. Maybe, the files are just sitting somewhere, out of sight, stored away on a dusty shelf and overlooked. Shades of the final seconds of Raiders of the Lost Ark? Kind of. Just maybe, to get the answers to Roswell we –  just like the Committee – need to “reconstruct a vanished world” too.

With this three-part article now at its end, I’ll say this: I’m as certain as I can be that if the files on Roswell still exist, they won’t be found in the UFO archives of the U.S. Air Force, the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, the FBI, NASA, the…well, the list goes on. Where they will be found, I predict, is in a decades-old file that details tales of shocking, secret experiments on people that crossed the line.

There are perhaps no stranger cases among cryptid or alien reports than what have been described as humanoid insect creatures. I have covered this topic before, but there are many other accounts that seem to really go beyond the bizarre to enter realms that are in no way easy to classify or categorize at all. Here we have reports of encounters of what can only be described as walking giant bugs, and they are every bit as completely off-the-wall as you might imagine.

One place where one might expect to see something odd and beyond the explainable would be out in rural or wilderness areas, but nothing likely could prepare some witnesses for their surreal and outlandish experience of seeing an insectoid humanoid in the wilds. This is exactly what allegedly happened to a witness called “Ricky,” who called in his experience on the show Coast To Coast AM on September 27, 2016. He says that at the time he had been on what was supposed to be a fun, family camping trip at the Sequoia National Forest, located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California and known for its towering, ancient giant sequoia trees. With its majestic trees lending it an otherworldly ambiance, this place already looks like something from a dream world, but it would get utterly bizarre one evening after everyone had gone to bed and the witness stayed up gazing upon the flickering embers of the bonfire they had made. He explains:

At about 9 o’clock, everyone decides to go to sleep and my friend and I were left staring at the bonfire. I decided it was a good time to listen to music so I went to my sister’s forerunner and I was opening the back to grab my Ipod. And as I opened the back door, I heard something come out of the tree. It didn’t come out of the tree. It was almost like it was holding on and it fell. And I heard this huge thump. I could feel it. And as I… I had a flashlight on me. I looked over at the tree I heard the fall from and I swear on my life and I swear to God, honest to God, I saw a 6 to 7-foot-tall praying mantis. And as I laid eyes on it, I completely lost breath. I was completely taken aback. It took a step back and it became completely invisible. I could not believe what I saw.

I slammed the door and I ran back to the campfire. I alerted my friend. I woke everyone up and no one would believe me. I was really upset because I knew what I’d seen. So that happened and my friend didn’t believe me. He was laughing at me and then all of a sudden I could hear all these things surrounding us and finally when I brought it to my friend’s attention, he kinda put his ear to it and he heard it too. Finally, I was patrolling the campground with my flashlight and I could just hear these things surrounding us and I heard like this clicking sound, it was like (makes clicking sound). It was really strange. I was so scared.

What was this creature and how can we reconcile it with anything known to exist in those woods? From researcher Albert Rosales we have another account of a camping encounter, this time from the country of Poland. The witness purportedly had been camping out in the remote wilds of Wielkopolska province, Poland, and had her experience as she was walking through a meadow on her way back to the camping site from a hike. As she approached her tent, her attention was drawn to an odd figure squatting down next to a nearby lake. Not knowing what exactly she was looking at and startled that anyone else would be out there in this isolated place, she approached until she was only 8 meters away, as she did realizing that this was not a human being. She would describe it as looking like a humanoid insect, estimated to be around 5 feet tall and with extremely long thin limbs, gray or beige in color, and possessing oversized black eyes that were very much like those of an insect, and thin, fragile looking wings. The witness also expresses that the creature seemed to be surprised that it had been discovered, and would say:

It gazed at me and I knew that it did not know what it would do. Our encounter had no meaning or aim; it appears to have been a total surprise for both of us.

It is unclear what happened after this, but it is certainly not something that anyone wants to run into out in the middle of nowhere in the woods. Another such bonkers report comes to us from the site Phantoms and Monsters, from a witness who says that he has had multiple encounters with some sort of bizarre insectoid, and was just a boy at the time his first. He claims he had lived with his family in a remote mountain area of the wilderness of Ontario, Canada when one day he looked out the window to see something that would leave an indelible impression on his young mind, and which he can clearly remember to this day. He says of what happened:

We had the windows open in the house as air conditioners were not common in 1968. It was a very hot that night. I shared a room with my brother and sister. I woke up during the night and looked out the window into the backyard and in front of a bush about 8 feet away was a small thin creature with shiny black skin. It looked like a small girl but at the same time it kinda looked like an insect. It was crouched on its legs and was leaning forward with one hand on the ground and was looking at me. It had what looked like thin antennas or like needles sticking out from each side of its head and one on top. That’s all I remember and when I told my mom she said it was a dream.

He would have two more sightings of the same creature over the years, each time being told that it was a dream, but he isn’t so sure. Was this all in his head or was there something more to it? The witness himself goes on to say that he feels it might have been an alien presence, and this would certainly fit into numerous reports that seem to definitely be linked to the UFO phenomenon. One report of this kind compiled by Albert Rosales comes from the files of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), and describes a very weird encounter that purportedly occurred in April of 2016, in the area of Zygi, Cyprus. The witness explains that she had been hanging out with friends in her yard when they saw a UFO, followed by what they assumed to be its occupant, which was of a decidedly insectoid appearance. She says:

My two friends and I had just finished our meal and were out in the garden talking and drinking (not alcohol). One of my friends had gone into the kitchen to refill their glass, whilst me and my other friend remained outside. After a moment of silence, my friend pointed out an unusually bright ‘star’ moving across the sky, assuming it may have been a comet or something. After a brief moment, I looked up at it again to realize that it was stationary; around 75-100ft above the treeline. I sat there, staring at this ‘thing’, just in complete shock. Every 15 seconds or so it would lower its altitude, until it was only a couple of feet from the tree tops. The weirdest part about this is that absolutely no noise had been emitted thus far. I tried to get out of my chair to hurry inside, but I felt an overwhelming feeling of paralysis, as did my friend. I turned to her and asked her what was going on, but she looked frozen in fear.

After what felt like hours, something appeared from around the trees underneath the triangular craft. It was a humanoid figure, with a head similar to that of an ant, and skin like a crocodile. It had extremely small eyes in proportion to its head, and long, thin appendages. It walked right up to the fence, before sharply turning and sprinting into the darkness of the trees. After a brief moment of complete fear, dread and anxiousness, the craft moved in a linear path towards the West, before becoming no longer visible. During this time, my friend who had gone to refill her glass watched the entire event through the window. She recalls, although neither me or my other friend do, that the creature had some sort of device in its ‘hand’, and that it held it up briefly before its disappearance.

Other reports are really hard to classify as one thing or the other, and serve to be just plain odd. From an episode of Coast to Coast AM comes a report on August 16, 2017, from a caller in a small town called Harwood Heights, just outside of Chicago, Illinois. He says that one evening he came home from work at around 1:30 AM and looked out the widow to see something outlandish looking back at him from the darkness. He says of the incident:

I looked out to the window to across the street and I saw a crypto, if you will, a Mothman-type insectoid; small body, unusually large head normal, no red eyes, and it kept staring. I went to make tea, fed the cats, came back, rubbed my eyes to see if I was tired and seeing things and, sure enough, it was there. One important thing, there was no foreboding fear. None whatsoever. That I found interesting. I was shocked as many people that had seen similar things. I went several times. I would say about four to five times, just peering outside, looking at the window and it just stood there. I live in a small town near Chicago. I figured police would do their rounds or someone would see it. You could hear a pin drop. It’s a very small community, sure enough, no one was around. It did not faze me to take a picture. I did have a smartphone at the time right but overall no fear and absolutely, you’re just there in the shock because you just can’t believe what you’re seeing. You listen to accounts but you never think you will be in that situation. I went back several times. I was listening to your show that night, peering out every now and then. It just kept standing there.

In the morning I went to see any trace of anything. It was gone, so, yeah. Above all, I would say the strangest thing would be I was not afraid at all and it shocks me to even say that now. Thinking back over the several months and years, I talked to friends, they have an interest in it – I kept thinking it was crouching like a runner would be so it could have been taller as many people claim to it being six or seven feet. It was almost as if definitely the body was much smaller and the head came to a point, almost as if, you know the old cartoons from Mad Magazine Spy Vs Spy, with the nose, if you will, comes into like a parrot’s or a bird beak, but there’s no beak, so it is very kind of pointed protruding face, if you will, but again, there were no eyes and there were no facial features, but again, in that humanoid design that’s where the face would be, of course, so yeah, but the head was much bigger than the body.

The Chicago area has several other strange insectoid reports like this that are really hard to classify. One comes again from the files of Albert Rosales, and describes the experience of a witness who had been sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house in Chicago, Illinois, when he was suddenly roused from his slumber by a crushing sensation of terror, made even worse when he discovered that he was unable to move. When the paralyzed man glanced around the room in terror, he claims he saw looming by the doorway a 7-foot-tall humanoid entity that looked like “a large praying mantis that was wearing something resembling a black and purple cloak.” This horrifying creature apparently then approached the man and reached out to touch his shoulder with a skeletal hand with long, thin fingers, after which the witness lost consciousness. When he awoke the creature was gone.

Another report from Chicago comes from Phantoms and Monsters, and describes some sort of flying insectoid humanoid at Chicago’s Willis Tower. The witness supposedly outside having a cigarette when he looked up to see a winged humanoid figure ominously crouched up on the tower as if perched there like a gargoyle. Then the creature allegedly moved, unfurled its wings, and leapt off the building to go soaring into the sky. It was then that the witness realized that the creature was very insect-like in form, and Lon Strickler says of the report:

The witness states that the being’s outstretched wings were not very large, maybe 6-8 from tip-tip, but were very jagged and insect-like (shaped similar to a moth). The being was also dark green in color and had a body form like that of a mantis. The legs seemed to be human-like and extended beyond the body while flying. He called it a ‘human, insect and bird mix’…that seemed to mutate while in flight.

Joining the ranks of all of this bizarreness is an encounter originally published in the October 8, 2017 edition of Strange Magazine, that supposedly occurred back in 1948 at the shipbuilding port city of Bremerton, in the U.S. state of Washington. One day, a young woman named Virginia Staples was just going about her usual daily household chores, carrying a load of laundry down to the washing machines in the basement of her run-down apartment building. It was a mindless chore she had done countless times before, and there would have been no reason for this time to be any different, but it was to prove to lead to a shocking experience, indeed.

The dim basement was described as enormous, its volumous floor constantly covered with a sheen of water that leaked from the walls and was rumored to come from passageways leading to the nearby sea, but although it all had a rather creepy foreboding atmosphere, Virginia was used to working in this dark and dank place. Yet on this day something was not quite right, as she felt an undefinable sense of unease and dread, as if she were being watched from the ample shadows clinging to everything in there. She tried to cast the odd feeling out of her head, chalking it up to nerves, but it would not abate, indeed becoming stronger the longer she lingered there, graduating to sheer terror for no discernible reason. She would say of what happened next:

It was such a creepy feeling I finally turned around and looked toward the back of the basement and froze. I was so scared I can still feel it. I couldn’t move. In one of the huge holes in the basement there stood this thing. It was horrible! I stand five feet tall and this creature was as tall as I was. It had a bright orange colored body and little spidery thin legs and antennae on its head that kept moving back and in and out. That thing started towards me. I backed out of the basement and got up to my apartment and packed up all my things and moved. I was so scared. I moved over to Seattle to my cousin’s. Really no one would really believe this, but as God is my witness it really happened.

She would say that it looked to her almost like a humanoid shrimp, and that for years afterwards she says she had potent, chronic nightmares. The interesting part of this tale, other than the sheer outlandishness of the entity described, is that this was in the basement of an apartment complex, and not even a remote one out in the boondocks. At the time Bremerton was a bustling Naval port city home to around 80,000 people, so it makes no sense at all that there should be this thing, even if there were passageways to the sea. Where did it come from and why didn’t anyone else see it? The strange abomination was only seen this one time and we are left to wonder just what it could have possibly been or whether it ever really happened at all.

That is a recurring message we are left with in cases like these. Did they ever really happen at all? They are so completely and utterly bizarre that we have to at least accept the possibility that they are hallucinations, misidentifications, or straight up lies. But what if they are real? If that is the case, then what are we dealing with here? Are these aliens, interdimensional interlopers, or something else altogether? How do we even know where to begin? Whatever the answers may be, this is a very outlandish and little known area of humanoid encounters that really lodges out into the outer periphery of the odd, and as long as cases like these come in we are left to wonder what they all mean, if anything.

There’s an interesting new article over at The Drive, as you’ll see from the title of that same article they have published: “Visitors to Area 51 Have to Wear ‘Foggles.’ That Severely Limit Vision When Moving About.” In part, the article – written by Tyler Rogoway – states: “The term refers to goggle-like eyewear that have fogged-out wrap-around lenses and a notch or bifocal-like area at the bottom that allows a wearer to see what is immediately in front of and below them. With the vast majority of the goggle’s viewing area frosted over, nothing can be made out at any meaningful distance.” There is a particular reason why I say that The Drive’s story is interesting. In July 2006, I interviewed a guy named John who told me that while working out at Area 51 – way back in the early 1970s – he had to wear such goggles when he was in certain portions of the base that were sensitive and secret. I first publicly told the story of John and his weird, vision-limiting goggles in 2006. I also publicized it, with new material, in 2010.

As I said back then: “John spent his days off in Las Vegas, playing the slots and getting to know the ladies of Sin City. Then, when his time away from the base was over, he would be flown aboard a Cessna aircraft to Area 51 – with the window blinds permanently down. On each occasion, the other passengers were always the same: three men who he got to know over the course of the following year. Indeed, they all became good friends, and looked forward to their time off in the big city. Weirdest of all, on each occasion when the team arrived at the base – which was only a short flight from Las Vegas – they were all ordered to put on pairs of goggles. These were not ordinary goggles, however.

Far from it: They had split lenses, the top part being so thick and distorted that it was only possible to see anything out of the lower part. There was clearly method to this seeming madness. By preventing the men from seeing out of the top portion of the goggles, they were forced to look down – pretty much at their feet. This was obviously orchestrated to ensure that the men would not be able to get a good look at the surface portions of Area 51. In single-file, awkward, shuffling fashion they would follow their supervisor to a bus with blacked-out windows.”

While working out at Area 51, John was exposed to documents that told incredible stories of wrecked flying saucers, deceased aliens, the autopsies of extraterrestrial corpses, and the study of alien science – with a goal to try and replicate that very same E.T. science. Rather notably, despite being exposed to a truly astonishing wealth of material out at Area 51, John slowly began to wonder if his whole time spent there was nothing but a ruse. He speculated to me on the possibility that this was all some sort of intricate mind-game: to flood John’s mind with bizarre tales and documents relative to dead extraterrestrials, alien autopsies, and spacecraft from other worlds. Maybe, John suggested, it was a loyalty test: to see if he ran to the Washington Post or to the New York Times. John did neither: he stayed quiet (at least until the 2000s, when he was well into his old age), and as a result of his silence he was offered prestigious positions for another decade.

John also speculated on another possibility, a possibility that involved the Soviets. Although he was somewhat reluctant to address the matter in-depth – which is intriguing – John said he heard a few nuggets of information suggesting there was a small program that was trying to convince the Russians that the United States government had not just alien bodies in its hands, but extraterrestrial technology; even highly advanced, powerful alien weaponry. John wondered if all of this was a game – one designed to scare the Russians into thinking we had something that we never really did, but which the staff at Area 51 were hoping the Russians would come to believe. And to fear.

John died in 2013. His widow stated that in his final years John came to believe more and more that what he saw and read out at Area 51 in the early 1970s amounted to a huge mind-game; a fabrication to have the Russians running around like headless chickens, wasting their time on lies dressed up as incredible truths. Ingenious, Cold War-era disinformation, in other words. For John, the whole situation was well and truly fogged. And, it seems, the fogging is still going on.

Last week I was interviewed on the subject of my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. It is a follow-up to my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Both books focus on the theory that what happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947 had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with classified programs connected to high-altitude experiments in New Mexico, exposure to radiation, huge balloons and much more. As for that interview, it was for a new book that the guy is writing on Roswell from the E.T. perspective. As a full-on believer that aliens did come down on the Foster Ranch in forty-seven, he was having none of what I had to say. He basically said there was no way that terrible experiments – of the types described in my books – would ever have been undertaken back in the 1940s. Clearly, he didn’t know his history. I said something to the effect of: “You’re joking, right?” He assured me he was not joking. So, I told him to check out the ultimate report on this angle of “human experimentation” back in the 1940s (and onward). It is titled Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report. Dated October 1995, it runs to no less than 925 pages and was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. One of the days I’ll share with you the very strange story of how I got my copy and how it’s filled to the brim with annotations from the retired person who provided it to me. But, that’s for another day. Back to those experiments.

A careful study of the massive report demonstrates that as far back as the 1940s highly classified experiments were undertaken on people  – revolving around the effects of radiation. Although, it’s important to note that the report doesn’t just focus on radiation-based issues. For example, there is a section on the CIA’s “mind-control” program, MKULTRA and other controversial topics. One of the things that I was told by some of my sources was that in the summer of 1947 – when the Roswell affair occurred – there was not just one experiment, but somewhere in the region of seven or eight (maybe more…), all of which failed miserably. They involved massive balloon arrays, lifting body-type craft, and high-altitude activity. Those same sources claimed that prisoners were used in several of those various experiments.

So far, no evidence has surfaced to show that the 1947 experiments near Roswell, New Mexico involved prisoners. There is, however, plenty of data available that shows prisoners most definitely were used in top secret experimentation. Notably, plans (that were ultimately shelved) show that some of those experiments involved then-newly-planned radical aircraft. Chapter 9 of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final Report states that: “In July 1949 a medical advisory panel met in Washington, D.C., to discuss psychological problems posed by radiation to crews of a then-planned nuclear-powered airplane. During the meeting an Air Force colonel noted that crewmen were concerned about anything physically harmful…” The report continues that although the nuclear-powered plane was never built, the military still had concerns regarding “…space flight, weapons plants, nuclear power plants, and on an atomic battlefield…”

Also from the 1949 panel, there are these eye-opening words: “The Committee is not in a position to make recommendations as to where these tests can be conducted other than that they should be carried out at some federal, state, or Armed Services prison, where life prisoners are incarcerated and where arrangements can be made with the prison authorities to cooperate in the experiment.  The selection of the prison is a matter for top military consideration. Continued cooperation of the prison staff and prisoners for a matter of many years will be required.”

As the report also notes, between 1963 and 1973 “…131 prisoners in Oregon and Washington submitted to experimental testicular irradiation with national security and other societal goals, but no potential for therapeutic benefit for the subjects.” The report also states that two, specific studies were initiated: they were run by Carl G. Heller, M.D., and C. Alvin Paulsen, M.D. As the documentation shows, “The government was interested in the effects of ionizing radiation on workers, astronauts, and other Americans who might be exposed, in a nuclear attack for example.” There’s this, too: “Both doctors viewed prisoners as ideal subjects. They were healthy, adult males who were not going anytime soon. In 1963 few if any researchers had moral qualms about using them as subjects, although there seems to have been a consensus in the research community on the rules that should govern such experimentation. By 1973, however, some ethicists, researchers, and others, such as the investigative journalist Jessica Mitford, pointed out that incarcerated people were not well placed to make voluntary decisions.”

And, there’s more: “In 1976, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research recommended the banning of almost all research on prisoners. Prison experimentation effectively came to an end in this country a few years after the commission offered its recommendations.” Does any of this prove that prisoners may have been used in highly-classified test-flights in New Mexico in the summer of 1947? No, it does not. What it does do, however, is to show that prisoners were used in secret experiments. The idea that some of the New Mexico tests of the summer of 1947 may have involved prisoners no longer seems quite so unlikely, after all.

Part 2 will soon follow…